When life gives you melons....

As some of you may know, I like to collect t-shirts.  And I wear them to work just to see what kinds of comments I will get.  You can tell a lot about a person by the kind of t-shirts that they wear (or don't wear).  The same is true of bumper stickers as well.  Which is why I don't put them on my car.  Why?  Okay, I will digress for just a moment....

Since bumper stickers tell you so much about the driver, and since driving is inherently such a dangerous sport, and since many bumper stickers artificially inflame people's already "mental" state, I don't think you want to combine the two.  Never mind the distraction that funny bumper stickers may cause.  It does seem odd to me that people are perfectly okay with putting stupid things on their bumpers, but are not okay with the idea of texting while driving.  To make my point, it occurred to me recently that one of the funniest and best bumper stickers that could possibly ever be invented should say something like, "Text me @ 888 555-1212"

Can you imagine?  The distraction of reading a bumper sticker, texting, and who knows what else, all while driving an object of huge mass down the road at 70 miles per hour?  Now THAT is a very cool kinetic weapon.  Anyone care to do the math and post your results?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projectile#Kinetic_projectiles

So, because of this, I wear T-shirts in safe places.  Like work.  Ha!  Now THAT is funny!   (Remind me to tell you the story some time of the guy who brought a kinetic weapon to work.)

Anyway.  Back on topic.  What does this have to do with search anyway?  Well, a whole lot actually.  How we perceive particular words and phrases makes a huge difference in how good search will work when trying to find a particular "thing".  Not only does the search engine need to understand the "words" that you type in, but a good one needs to understand the "context" of what you typed.  And this, it turns out, is really quite hard to do.  Why?  Why?  Why, you say?  Well, as I told my children when they were very small after about the 8th "why",  well, because....

Seriously.  It is because we are human.  Humans tend to be very creative creatures.  Well, except the bean counters (if you know what I mean).  So let me explain.  As soon as you have something nailed down and completely understand it, someone comes along and changes the rules.  Like an Engineer.  There seems to be a kind of, "I don't like the status quo" about us humans.  I think it is because we just can't stand "boring".  Any teenager will tell you this.  And because of this, we are constantly changing the rules.

An example is in order....

I saw a T-shirt the other day that said, "It is all fun and games until someone brings a briefcase."

Now see, as an engineer, that is really funny.  The reason it is funny, is because of the associations that are made in our minds with every single part of the sentence.  How many times have we heard the phrase, "It's all fun and games until someone pokes out an eye?"  And where did that one come from?  If you know, post a comment.  And what does a briefcase have to do with any of this?  Well, brief cases are often associated with "stuffy", "we have to get this done now", kind of people.  And when you combine the two, it is really quite funny.

But I ask you, how would a search engine know all of this?

And that is why working on search is so much fun.  And why it will be for such a long time.

So to close out this blog entry.  What does this have to do with melons?

Well, when life gives you melons....

You have dyslexia.

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 25, 2010
  You have a #1 fan now inoun!! you would make a great comedian. LOL! literally

• Anonymous
  December 29, 2010
  The comment has been removed