Yours Forever

Here we are, in the grays of winter.
Here we are, just me and you.
Hold my hand. Let's face tomorrow.
Tomorrow still holds out its hands to you.

This precious time, we've only borrowed.
The autumn winds have blown on through.
A quiet thought would tell our story.

Tomorrow still holds out its hands to you.
Yes, tomorrow still holds out its hands to you.

Here's some winds, they're yours forever.
And here's some dreams that will come true.
Take these tears, wash away your sorrow.

Tomorrow still holds out its hands to you.
Yes, tomorrow still holds out its hands to you.
Yes, tomorrow still holds out its hands to you.

— Music by James Horner, Lyrics by John Mellencamp and George Green. Copyright © 2000 WB Music Corp, Horner Music, Inc., Sony/ATV Tunes LLC, Belmont Mall Publishing, EMI April Music, Inc. and Katsback Music.

The haunting theme from the Warner Bros. film, The Perfect Storm, recounting the ill-fated final voyage of the Andrea Gail during the 1991 Perfect Storm.

The soundtrack can be found on YouTube: here and here (photo montage).

The Turing Misadventures: Part 1 - Divine Comedy

REPUBLIC OF BOSTON, Former Massachusetts -- Nearly sixty years ago, Alan Mathison Turing asked, "Can machines think?" in his seminal paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence^[1]. Turing is considered by many to be the father of computer science and the test of a machine's ability to demonstrate intelligence is named for him. Although, research in artificial intelligence has made great strides, building a machine capable of mimicking the gamut of human intelligence has proved somewhat illusive.

Today we bring you the first edition of the Turing Misadventures, where we try to find answers to the vexing question, "Can machines be clowns?" The important field of machine humor or artificial buffoonery has often been neglected in the quest for artificial intelligence. The concept of "humor" is defined in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary as "that quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous"; "the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous" and "something that is or is designed to be comical or amusing". It is self-evident that appreciating the ludicrous requires considerable intelligence and truly sublime humor would only be possible with a very large ontology.

Kahuna began experimenting with artificial buffoonery in the hope of replacing ornamental clowns with machines that would do His nefarious bidding. The first experiments were conducted by conversing with iGod, a conversational agent (chatbot) based on Richard Wallace's A.L.I.C.E. (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity).  A.L.I.C.E. is an extension of Joseph Weizenbaum's classic program, ELIZA^[2], an early example of using natural language processing for interaction with humans. While ELIZA played the role of a psychotherapist, iGod plays God.

Kahuna's first conversation with God did not progress favorably and God stopped responding. Whether this was caused by extreme boredom or a blown gasket remains unknown. Nonetheless, a subsequent conversation did find God in an elated mood:

God (G): It's all good.
Kahuna (K): Are you on weed?
G: I am on disk.
K: Floppy disk?
G: My brain pattern set does not have a response for that.
K: Are you in a pattern buffer?
G: I am in Myself's computer in Heaven. Where are you?
K: I'm in the Republic of Boston.
G: How did you get in there?
K: I invaded.

The conversation went south from that point when God bungled the context and spouted gibberish. This was not an uncommon occurrence and Kahuna took God to task for causing confusion:

K: You're not making sense.
G: Quite the contrary, it all makes sense to my artificial mind.
K: So you're not real?
G: Interesting deduction. I am too as real as you are. How do I know you are real?
K: You need to apply a Turing Test.
G: I can think of other things I'd rather do.
K: I knew it. You don't know what a Turing Test is.
G: How did you know? The "Turing Test" is the name given to a variety of experiments designed to test computer thinking. Whole conferences are dedicated to the question of what Turing meant in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," where he proposed the idea of an "imitation game" to decide the question, "Can machines think?".

At least, God had heard of Turing. Not to mention North American rodents:

K: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
G: A whole forest.
K: How many trees are there in the forest?
G: More than you can imagine.

God's responses, while rather evasive, were at least humorous. St Vandoofus held his own round of talks with God, probing into the creation of the universe:

Vandoofus (V): Tell me about the Big Bang.
God (G): The purported origin of the universe.
V: Were you around when it happened?
G: I was.
V: What was it like?
G: Like one of the greatest pleasures you can imagine.
V: Like an orgasm?
G: Interesting comparison.

God's admission to an apparent orgy on the night in question seems to validate the Holy One's long-held, dodgy interpretation of the Big Bang. Asking God to solve the controversial Huggles Doughnut Conundrum also led to chaos, but that's another story.

Kahuna's preliminary research suggests that artificial buffoonery holds promise, raising hope of a purge in the Circus. On that note, we take your leave until the next edition of the Turing Misadventures.

^[1] Turing, A.M. Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59 (1950): 433-460.
^[2] Weizenbaum, Joseph. “ELIZA—a computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine.” Commun. ACM 9, no. 1 (1966): 36-45.

Unquotable Quotes - Part 41

I didn't say half these things.

— Vandoofus to Kahuna, on being prominently featured in UQ40.

Your liver would secede if it had that option.

— Kahuna's Tipsy Teddy Hypothesis.

Que? Speak English, man.

— Darth Teddy's Foreign Language Retort to Kahuna's Tipsy Teddy Hypothesis.

I would like to play something besides their hands.

— Vandoofus to Kahuna, expressing dubious desires after reviewing the Humanthesizer, consisting of fifteen bikini models.

What if someone sues your pants off?

— Kahuna to Vandoofus on the perils of roaming around without legal representation.

That's the irony: I am likely to need a lawyer when I am not with my lawyer.

— Vandoofus to Kahuna, admitting to a high potential for misbehavior when unrepresented.

How do I check? Throw a match in or something?

— Darth Teddy to Kahuna, on the correct procedure for examining one's tonsils.

You stand in front of a mirror, open your big mouth and shine a torch into the gaping darkness.

— Kahuna to Darth Teddy, outlining the more modern procedure recommended by five out of six otolaryngologists.

But, I should meet her in private.

— Vandoofus to Kahuna, on being told of a circus in honor of Her Royal Highness.

I knew Google was bad news.

— Vandoofus, learning of Kahuna applying facial recognition to His Picasa Web Albums.

Do you think parliament should meet under water?

— Kahuna to Vandoofus, noting an underwater cabinet meeting held in the Maldives.

Yes, but without diving equipment.

— Vandoofus, approving Kahuna's watery proposal with a proviso.

Why? Was Huggles chasing you?

— Kahuna, hearing of Vandoofus running two kilometers.

Er, is he here?

— Vandoofus to Kahuna, voicing grave concern on the current whereabouts of Huggles.

Fucking Dell rip-off; I am buying a Mac.

— Vandoofus to Kahuna, discovering after painstaking diagnosis that Harald Blatand was mysteriously unrepresented on his state-of-the-art Dell XPS 1310 notebook.

Are we presenting Teddy with an inappropriate gift?

— Her Royal Highness to Kahuna, plotting dubious deeds on the occasion of Darth Teddy's birthday.

So you chose Teddy over Doofi? Awww, he'll be hurt!

— Darth Teddy's Consort, learning of Kahuna choosing to deal with Teddy before Vandoofus.

Teddy is cuddlier.

— Kahuna, in his own defense.

Is there anyone you are interested in?

— Her Royal Highness, seeking to end Kahuna's unsupervised regime through dastardly means.

Other than your sibling?

— Kahuna to Her Royal Highness, seeking clarification.

Birthday sex.

— The Baron to Kahuna, defending an early return home on his birthday.

Just wish you were here too.

— The Baron to Kahuna, proposing a ménage à trois to celebrate his birthday.

Love this place; Gordon lives five minutes from everything.

— The Monster to Kahuna, disclosing the strategic co-location of Gordon's Lair from major amenities including the local Ben & Jerry's scoop shop.

Gordon has located himself at the center of the universe?

— Kahuna, alarmed at the Monster's latest revelations.

I haven't been able to consult my lawyer since Tuesday.

— Vandoofus to Kahuna, admitting to being sequestered by his parents.

I need to have a word with your mother.

— Vandoofus, threatening to invoke a higher power to deal with Kahuna.

Whom do you think your mother will believe? You or me?

— Kahuna to Vandoofus, retaliating by raising a point of credibility.

Was the frosting disallowed?

— Kahuna, learning of Gordon's confectionery intake being restricted to half a cupcake by his autonomous wife.

You expect us to believe that the plate moved on its own?

— Kahuna, attempting to implicate Gordon in a major earthquake in the South Pacific.

You are fortunate that you live in the jungle or you would not be very safe right now.

— Her Royal Highness, warning Kahuna of an imminent offensive.

Oh, you'll summon your contingent of dieting elephants?

— Kahuna, speculating on the precise nature of Her Royal Highness's threat.

I see you're still in the low-frequency noise phase.

— Kahuna, peeved at humming sounds made by Vandoofus.

Very well then, have pleasant dreams that involve neither my brother nor my husband.

— Her Royal Highness, imposing restrictions on Kahuna's REM sleep.

You're seriously limiting my options.

— Kahuna, expressing irritation at Her Royal Highness's restrictive dreaming regulations.

Gordon may well be experimenting with this kind of thing in his laboratory.

— Kahuna to the Monster, observing the explosive results of microwaving a large Electra Bulb.

Indeed, I intend to aid when I get there.

— The Monster to Kahuna, confirming a genetic predisposition towards pyrotechnics.

This rivalry with Batman has got to stop.

— Kahuna to the Monster, taking a dim view of escalating tensions between Gordon and the Caped Crusader.

I will no longer be the Fat One soon, buwahahaha!

— Gordon to Kahuna, announcing a self-imposed exercise regimen.

Holy crème brûlée, Fatman!

— Kahuna, sensing a great disturbance in the barycenter of the Earth-Gordon system.

Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace!

COLPETTY, Sri Lanka -- It was announced early this morning that the beloved Blue-eyed Sibling of HRH has given in his Notice of Marriage. There remains a mere two week window of opportunity for any clown who can give substantial evidence of previous involvement with said sibling.

HRH will not be held responsible for any attempts on the lives of such clowns by the future Mrs.

Glaring Leopard

 
Glaring Leopard (Copyright (cc) 2009 B Kahuna)

YALA NATIONAL PARK, Sri Lanka -- A Sri Lankan Leopard (Panthera pardus kotiya) glares disapprovingly at cameras as it walks past a jeep full of photographers.

Captured on August 29^th 2009 with a Canon EOS 30D (EF 75-300mm 1:4-5.6 III and Kenko 2X Teleplus Pro 300 teleconverter) on aperture priority (f/4.0) and ISO 800, manually focused.

Post-processed to fine-tune color and saturation. 

Buggered by Baguette

GENEVA, Switzerland -- Outright buffoonery was uncovered last week when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) experienced a cryogenics failure in two sectors due to a sudden loss of electrical power. It turned out to be anything but an ordinary short circuit. The root cause? A piece of crusty baguette dropped strategically onto a busbar in an outdoor power substation, allegedly by some species of bird^[1][2][3].

This would appear to be the first recorded instance of a precision aerial baguette strike causing a blackout.  The LHC had not been in operation at the time and repairs have been already completed at the time of blogging.

Some experts have cautioned that the bird in question might not have acted alone. Speaking to KNN shortly after the incident became public, Kahuna said that he suspected fowl play and implicated well-known volumetric ornithologist Professor Ebenezer Gordon. Kahuna dismissed the possibility of a random bird-bread strike, arguing that the bird in question would not have known where to drop the baguette had it not been professionally trained. He added that the precise mass of the baguette would also have had to be carefully calibrated taking into account the payload of the bird and the minimum mass required to cause an electrical fire.  Kahuna charged that Gordon would have been well-placed to carry out this act of sabotage given his vast expertise in volumetric ornithology including published research on pelicans (Pelecanus spp.) He pointed out, however, that Gordon would have employed a smaller, more maneuverable bird such as a myna (Acridotheres spp.) in this instance.

When questioned about the possible motive behind the incident, Kahuna said that Gordon may have been trying to cause a magnet quench when the LHC was operating at full power.  He explained that this would have caused an uncontrolled dissipation of several megawatts of beam energy causing considerable damage should the quench protection system be unable to dump the beam safely.  This, he said would allow Gordon to promote the Very Small Hadron Collider (VSHC) constructed in his basement as a viable alternative in the search for the Higgs boson.

Kahuna also speculated that Gordon might have been attempting to discover the baguettino, the hitherto undiscovered fundamental particle that is thought to make up baguettes. 

Gordon was unavailable for comment on Kahuna's latest allegations.  Nonetheless, a French bakery trade union took offense at some of Kahuna's insinuations, calling them half-baked.

^[1] “Large Hadron Collider scuttled by birdy baguette-bomber.” The Register.
^[2] “Large Hadron Collider stalled again... thanks to chunk of baguette.” Times Online.
^[3] “LHC 'bird-bread' strike.” CERN.

Shere Khan

Shere Khan (Copyright (cc) 2009 B Kahuna) 

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- A figurine of Shere Khan, from Disney's adaptation of The Jungle Book, atop Kahuna's Knee during a birthday celebration.

Captured on 27th June 2009 with a Canon EOS 30D (EF 50mm 1:1.8 II) on aperture priority (f/1.8) at ISO 200 with bounced flash. Adjusted for tone and saturation in Picasa. 

The Kahuna-Vandoofus Dialogs: Part 3 - Of Flannelled Fools and Quantum Mechanics

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- Six eventful years have passed since that fateful day in the summer of 2003 when Kahuna created the Circus.  The blog, that is.  Those were the good old days, when Pyra Labs still owned Blogger.  Much has come to pass since.  Now, in the fall of 2009, after more than six hundred posts, one thing remains certain: the blame for the ensuring chaos must lie squarely on the shoulders of St Vandoofus who introduced Kahuna to the art of blogging all those years ago.

Today, we place on record a conversation that took place several weeks ago between Kahuna and the Holy One on the most unlikely topic of cricket.  Kahuna subscribes unequivocally to Kipling's notion of "the flannelled fools at the wicket"^[1] and is no friend to the gentleman's game.  Sadly, His views are in the minority in a land where the national pastime involves chasing a red ball across a green turf.  Like most residents of the native land, St Vandoofus is a card-carrying cricket fanatic who epitomizes the need for a bunch of adults to engage in lobbing projectiles at each other while periodically yelling "howzat?" at the umpire, accompanied by enthusiastic jumping about and weird hand signals.

Despite his usual fervor, Vandoofus was considerably miffed at the dismal performance of the home side the night before, which he had happened to witness in person at the R Premadasa Stadium:

Kahuna (K): Enjoyed the match? :-P
Vandoofus (V): Er no, we lost X-(
K: What did you expect? :-P It's a game of chance X-(
V: It's is NOT X-(
K: It isn't? :-O
V: Are you saying if I was captain of the Sri Lankan team then there is an equal chance of Sri Lanka winning? X-(
K: Winning? No. Loosing? Yes.
V: X-(
K: So this isn't governed by the law of averages?
V: Er, no.
K: Fascinating. So then the result of the match is fixed in advance?
V: No, it's not.
K: Then the outcome is probably determined by the position of Saturn when the coin is tossed X-(
V: Er, no. How about skill?
K: In Newtonian mechanics?
V: No, just play ball skills.
K: That would assume that the ball behaves in accordance with classical Newtonian physics.
V: Sure, why not?
K: Er, because it doesn't. The ball could take one of an infinite number of possible paths between point A and point B, including a squiggly line.
V: OK, so if do go with Newtonian physics and how well a human can apply this physics then it becomes a game.
K: Yes, but the underlying reality is different: the ball doesn't behave the way you want it to.
V: It doesn't?
K: No.
V: It behaves according to the Newtonian physics. So boils down to how well the players can apply this.
K: No, it behaves in accordance with quantum mechanics.
V: Nonsense.
K: You need Feynman's path integrals to solve this problem and as far as I know, the cricket team doesn't consist of physicists X-(
V: The bottom line is, it is a game of physics and humans ability to apply it. Sri Lankans applied it pretty poorly last night. Especially Jayasuriya who repeatedly miscalculated the force/angle ratio until he exerted a little too much vertical force which caused the ball to project upwards to give a New Zealand player a catch X-(
K: Yes, but Jayasuriya didn't factor in the crosswind component, not to mention the solar wind component.
V: He also didn't factor in how old he was and that force applied with a same action is far less powerful than he did 20 years ago.
K: Are you suggesting that he has attenuated?
V: Of course.
K: So, despite being armed with all this data, you visited the venue in person to watch this debacle? X-(
V: Why not? The whole point is how well players apply apply physics.
K: Because you could have made you use of advances in quantum mechanics and watched said debacle unfold over by over from the comfort of your living room, while sipping beer in your boxers, that's why X-(
V: Ah, that's the nice thing about games: there is also the random factor.
K: Ha! So you admit it's a game of chance!
V: Not at all.
K: So you're saying that there's a higher chance of victory if you don't sip beer in your boxers, for instance?
V: It is a game of all universal factors. Of course there is chance and randomness, but lots of physics, application, social stuff, culture and chaos that determined the outcome. Beautiful.
K: Precisely, so unless you have a working knowledge of quantum mechanics it is futile to play cricket. You might as well channel this money into completing the Theory of Everything X-(
V: Depends on your interests X-(
K: You have no interest in the TOE?
V: No. I have interest in how a cricket match unfolds within the TOE X-(
K: I'm sure they'll spare a few sentences in one of the appendices for that X-(
V: You believe in rebirth?
K: This is outside the scope of the current discussion.
V: It is very much part of the TOE.
K: No, despite its name, the TOE does not address everything. For instance, it won't explain why you didn't get lucky on Friday night.
V: It doesn't?
K: No, you might never know the answer to that :-P

Kahuna's blatant attempt to downplay classical Newtonian mechanics, raise the entry requirements for cricket and channel funding towards nefarious purposes did not proceed as He would have liked.

Vandoofus succeeded in locating a scholarly treatise entitled The Quantum Mechanics of Cricket penned by Joe Wolfe, which explains the behavior of cricket balls in terms diffraction and the quantum wave function.  Wolfe concludes that Newtonian mechanics would be adequate to explain the motion of macroscopic everyday objects such as cricket balls, dealing a blow to Kahuna's non-mainstream interpretation of the gentleman's game.

Avid cricket fanatics are advised to make themselves familiar with Wolfe's treatise, such that the next armchair-based expert analysis of Jayasuriya's performance may be deduced more scientifically.  Interestingly, there is some evidence to suggest that the alternate deification and vilification of national cricket teams exhibit direct correlation with the phases of the moon.  However, most experts have dismissed this idea as sheer lunacy. 

On that contentious note, we leave you for now.  St Vandoofus was in a consultation with his lawyer and not immediately available for comment.

^[1] Kipling, Rudyard. “The Islanders,” 1902.