Superficial Intelligence

I found out this week about a version of Wikipedia called Simple English Wikipedia. It is the same concept as the normal Wikipedia with the exception that articles must be written using shorter sentences and easy words. At first glance, this seems almost childish (and you sometimes feel that way too while reading it). But when you think about it, this is excellent for people who are still learning English.

Go ahead and take a look and post your favorite (or funniest) simple sentences in the comments section. Here are a few of mine:

The people who make shampoo try to make it smell nice.

Quantum mechanics ("QM") is a part of physics. It explains how certain very small things behave.

A lot of people like to pick their nose. Nose-picking is a very common habit.

Posted by Fernando Torre at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I love to see extreme examples of paper prototypes or, in this case, paper tutorials. This falls somewhere in between art and giving presentations. These guys take what is supposed to be a simple process and convert it into a painstaking, awesome-looking form of art. This short Google Maps marking tutorial is way more fun to watch than on the real Google Maps. Enjoy!

Posted by Fernando Torre at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Recently, I met a Korean and a Chinese who can speak Spanish. (I also know a Japanese who is taking Spanish). This has been somewhat surprising for me, since it is something that is not very common to see here in Minnesota. Most foreigners are still trying to tackle English, so very few of them go for a third language.

So when I met these people who can speak Spanish, I felt a sudden sense of appreciation. They are taking the time to learn about my culture and my language. I feel that my culture is important to them. It is amazing how a simple thing as learning a language can accomplish so much and shorten the gap between people of different backgrounds.

I hope to someday let them know they are appreciated too and learn some Chinese and Korean. But for now, I hope a simple "Thank you" can suffice.

Posted by Fernando Torre at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I was supposed to post yesterday night, but for some reason, I could not access my blogging tools at UMN's uThink site. Today, I was still not able to access them. I couldn't even access the blog itself. When I ran a search query for "uthink", the correct link and description were shown, but the title was completely wrong. It had something to do with buying cheap drugs. When you looked at the cached page, it was filled with more of the same junk. So obviously the site was hacked. This makes me worry a little bit about the fact that this is where I'm hosting my blog, but at least the consequences didn't seem to affect my blog much, aside from the fact that it was unavailable for a while. Sorry for the short downtime!

Posted by Fernando Torre at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

My wife shared an article with me today which I greatly enjoyed. The importance of stupidity in scientific research is a convincing argument by Martin A. Schwartz on why feeling stupid can be a good sign, especially when you are trying to work on a PhD. We are often trained so much to try to feel smart, that we forget that relative to all possible knowledge in this world, we will always be stupid. Enjoy the article!

Posted by Fernando Torre at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Michael Sherrin wrote a series of posts at his blog, Prodigeek, where he listed what he thinks are the 28 coolest superpowers. I think he got most of the important ones, although I don't completely agree with the rankings. His top three superpowers were:

1) Telekinesis
2) Telepathy
3) Super speed

My top three would have been:

1) Control Machines - I can't help it. I'm a computer scientist. This would make my life way easier.
2) Telepathy - This would provide endless hours of entertainment. (We did agree on this one.)
3) Shapeshift - Excellent way to hide acne.

You can look at the whole list by following these links:
28-22
21-15
14-8
7-1

So what are your favorite super powers?

Posted by Fernando Torre at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Microsoft has gotten marketing all wrong for one of their new products called Microsoft Songsmith. Microsoft Songmisth listens to you singing and automatically figures out the chords that go with your song. It's a cool idea, but not a very practical implementation. I think they should have targeted a younger audience only. Instead, this is what they came up with. The title of this post shows my favorite quote of the whole promo. Get ready to laugh. Or cry.

To make matters worse, according to internet sources, the laptop used in the commercial is a Mac (hence the many stickers covering the logo).

What is even funnier is the unexpected use that people have found for Songsmith. There are now a great number of videos on YouTube which have taken famous music videos, left only the vocals and cooked up the music with Songsmith. The results are funny, entertaining, and sometimes just plain weird. Here are a few of them. Enjoy!

Roxanne by The Police

Beat It by Michael Jackson

Eye of the Tiger by Survivor

And, of course, a metal rock version of Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley.

Posted by Fernando Torre at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)