January 2011
8 posts
2 tags
5 tags
1 tag
Envy My Greatness
In the past month, the total number of people whom I know who have been mentioned in The New Yorker: 2. First, a poem by Kimberly Johnson, who was a TA of mine for a survey course in early English lit (in fact, what made me suspect that this was “my” Kim Johnson was the fact that her contributor bio said she translated Virgil’s Georgics). Second, the article on psychoanalysis in...
4 tags
We Are Robot Overlord's Playthings (Humans Are... →
Today, IBM rolled out its Jeopardy-playing computer, a whiz machine named Watson that was four years in the works. In today’s demonstration match for the media Watson played against Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, the two great (human) Jeopardy champions who will provide opposition for Watson in a two-day exhibition match. That man versus machine faceoff will air in February, and carries a...
2 tags
Classic Who →
The nice thing about being a nu-Whovian is that when the current incarnation goes on break, there’s no lack of older material to mine through. I knew going in about old Who’s legendarily tight budget (which translates to its shoe-string effects), and actually, I find the cheapness impossibly quaint. However, the most jarring consequence of the budget constraints of the serial era is...
3 tags
3 tags
4 tags
