Eight Feet Deep

Google once again has created a buzz in the tech world although its arrival seems a bit anticlimactic. Google Instant was unleashed upon the U.S. today. I’ve just tried it, only for a few moments granted, but I see no real noticeable difference between the new product and what I’ve been using. Perhaps my letdown stems from the Google I’ve been Googling for sometime now already acted somewhat psychically. Its reputed near clairvoyance is a great portion of Instant’s buzz.

I have been a heavy Internet, first through work and then throughout the day, since the mid 90s. I have seen the remarkable — and then sometimes less than remarkable — progress the ‘net has made. I first started used Yahoo as my favored search engine. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because of their TV commercials. I can’t remember any of them offhand but my memory today isn’t as good as usual. Perhaps my use of Yahoo is because I like the name. I have met my share of yahoos. The term was supposedly coined by Jonathan Swift in “Gulliver’s Travels” but among its definitions these days and the one to which I refer are those folks — particularly in my region — who are not the sharpest chain saw blade in the shed and perhaps win the prize for having the greatest assortment of junk in their yard. They are “yokels,” people who are crude, perhaps even violent if you stir ’em up with a stick. Enough about that though.

Strangely enough, I had used Yahoo the search engine for a number of years and I was flabbergasted when about five years ago I interviewed a fairly well-known person in the media who asked me if Yahoo was a search engine. I won’t mention his name or his medium because there are any number of reasons he didn’t know, plus I know many, many people who are intelligent and good who would think a search engine is something used by the fire department.

When I did some freelance tech writing I began using Google more extensively. I found some of its features a very good fit for my business. For instance, I liked the wide swath it cast when doing a search for a definition: “define:” Or its fairly pinpoint location of something in a particular Internet domain. I don’t just snap up any picture on the Internet and use it on this site. I try to stay within the boundaries of Fair Use and other copyright laws. I don’t want to be sued if I can possibly help it.

Google eventually put out more and more features. After time I kind of marveled at how I would type a few letters  in the address bar (location bar/URL bar, whatever) and about ten sites would pop below the bar which suggested sites I might be looking for. Usually the first one would be correct. The same happened when typing something in the search space, upon which a number of suggested sites appeared. Now if Google does that on every computer, I can’t say. I did sign up for some Google experiments. I hope they don’t implant a computer chip in my head that tells me what to buy. After all, that’s what TV is for.

Although I may have been wowed about these helpful functions, the speed with which its performed by Google Instant seems to be among its most useful features. Google says that its epiphany that people read faster than they type is one of the factors in how this feature can shear 2-to-5 seconds off a search.

Time is money. What 2-to-5 seconds translates into money, I’d have to say that it beats me. But I am willing to bet that Google doesn’t trot out new features and spend millions upon it for sheer joy.

A former rock and roll cellist was killed in Devon, England, when a 1,300-pound round bale of hay tumbled down a hill and stuck his van, causing it to collide with another van.

That is a pretty odd sentence when you think about it. First of all, how many rock and roll cellists could you name? Also, how many times do you hear of round bales of hay causing fatal auto collisions? Yet this, definitely, “freak” accident happened Friday to 62-year-old former Electric Light Orchestra member Mike Edwards.

One hears occasionally of an 18-wheeler losing its load and falling on to an automobile that is behind it. Not too long ago a woman was killed near where I live when some object came off a truck and hurled through her window while she driving on Interstate 10. Deer also frequently strike motor vehicles during the autumn “rut.” Thus, some freak accidents are not as random as they might seem.

But this would definitely qualify as a freak accident.

The ability to predict and prevent some unexplained event from happening is something human beings have been trying to tweak since, well, there have been human beings.

Right now it is raining, figuratively speaking, cats and dogs outside due to outer fringes of Tropical Storm Hermine. The storm’s “center” was located about 65 miles southwest of Austin last time I checked.  Austin is 210 miles away as the crow flies. It is thundering and weather forecasters said tornadoes were not out of the question for our area today. All of that is not totally unexpected.

When weather forecasters say there is a percentage of precipitation in an area they are talking about “the probability that precipitation will be reported at a certain location during a specified period of time,” according to the official National Weather Service definition.

Thankfully, weather experts can get within general areas in which a hurricane may make landfall when the storm is still a ways out in the sea. They cannot predict a pinpoint location with any real accuracy, though, until the storm is closer to hitting the beach. Scientists are still trying to better forecast when a tornado is going to strike.

Likewise, it is fun and at times financially fruitful when you make predictions on the weekly college or professional football games. But even though many who bet on and predict games may have advanced knowledge of the teams and players, it is all still a crapshoot.

Many pundits are forecasting that likely the Republicans will retake control of the U.S. House after the November elections. Many polls are showing more and more that the needed 39 or 40 GOP seats needed can be won. Pundits and so-called “political experts” also have history on their side.

It is a day after Labor Day though, and that is when many other experts and  historians say that the campaigns for November really begin. Surely, there are a lot of television ads and silliness that will be heaped upon the American voters between now and that time. Anything can happen which might change voters’ minds one way or the other.

What we call in these parts a “round bale” causing the death of who some have described as an “obscure” rock and roller  should remind us of how fickle is fate and the future.

Predict away. Though keep in mind that things do not always turn out as we expect.

Today I start with the headline and see where matters find themselves at the end. Why not, it’s Labor Day weekend, for me at least.

Why the headline reads: “Stop making sense” is  because that is the sentiment I want to express to Gov. Haley Barbour, R, Miss. Bringing up the parenthetical rear of the hed is as it is, I suppose, “stop making sense” used as a pun when used with “talking heads.” I’m talking about the term as in the nickname for today’s pundits. However, “Stop Making Sense” is also the name of a concert album from 1984 featuring the new wave group Talking Heads. And yes, I’ve been a fan of David Byrne and the rest since I heard those life-altering lines: “You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack/You may find yourself in a different part of the World/You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile/You may find yourself with a beautiful wife in a beautiful house/You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here? — from “Once in a Lifetime.”

Of course, I heard these lines when the song was first released, which was a few years before the movie. I just want to get that straight so some of my friends won’t ask: “You mean you never heard “Once in a Lifetime” before “Stop Making Sense?” Why of course I did. You were there, don’t you remember? And you—and you—and you—and you were there. Maybe your little dog too!

If you wish, you may veer off from this discussion completely and listen to the Talking Heads for awhile. Or perhaps put “The Wizard of Oz” in the video and play Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon.” I will understand.

Or else, you can stay here and see why I would like the potential GOP presidential candidate to stop making sense.

Barbour, unlike most of his Republican counterparts from their dark corners in their fetal positions who are shaking 8.0 on the Richter Scale due to the “Tea Party Terrors,” has what I feel is a pretty sensible position on immigration.

Chris Good at TheAtlantic.com writes a really interesting piece on Barbour and how he faces thrashing from fellow GOP candidates in the early primaries all because this former Republican National Committee chairman talks straight. At least on immigration matters.

Barbour shares a point of view with me that following the hurricanes of 2005 on the Gulf Coast, no one seemed to be complaining about Spanish-speaking folks when they wanted their roofs shingled — yesterday. Not exactly how he put it — of course the wonderful coastal portion of his state was destroyed by Katrina and my area was wrecked by Rita — but close.

A reality that should be slapped in the face of all Americans who are “tough” on immigration emanates from Barbour, saying that it is foolish to think we can jail or deport 10-14 million people. The math just somehow doesn’t work. What would we do with the nearly five million inmates of mostly American citizenship locked up in our own jails and prisons?

I do question Barbour’s contention as to how more immigrants who graduate in professional fields should be given citizenship. His analogy is that all Indians with Ph.D.s who graduate from Stanford should get citizenship so they will start businesses and employ workers here rather than going home and starting a business. That sounds simplistic and perhaps Barbour meant it to be, but I think it needs a lot of work.

*Refers to an incident at the University of Houston in the late 1960s when then Texas-Gov. Preston Smith was confronted by an angry mob that was chanting: “Free Lee Otis. Free Lee Otis.” The “Lee Otis” to whom they referred was Lee Otis Johnson, a black activist with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Johnson had been sentenced to prison for 30 years for giving one joint of pot to a Houston undercover officer. Smith thought the crowd was shouting “frijoles” and he told a reporter that he didn’t know what they all had against “Mexican beans.” Johnson was released  after serving four years in prison. I don’t know why this came up. It just did.

How people do business these days simply amazes me.

You have large hospital corporations that purport to be steeped in religion — after all, they have “St.” in their name — who either treat you like a can of tainted ham or else they are so incompetent they don’t know what companies are subcontracting their business. Of course, hospitals use so many subs that it’s kind of understandable. You have the ER doctor company, the radiology company, the company that gives you shots, the specialists, the anesthesiologists, the podiatrists and, of course, the proctologists in case some patient just finally has enough and he launches a size 12 Red Wing up somebody’s anal cavity. “Look ma, no cavities!”

Then you have the telecoms. Satan has either developed a special place in Hell for them or else they are Satan. Not being religious in a traditional sense, I’m not sure.

Also, there is a close line between medicine today and the telecom industry. That would be the fact that both have some workers that are not trained in English nearly as proficiently as those who hire them believe. Please, you know me. I’m don’t have an ethnocentric bone in my body. Well maybe my ulna has something against Canary Islander but I’ve been trying to work that out.

When I hear good ol’ Americans complain about people whom they can’t understand because of their language background, I don’t completely tune them out. When you have a  job in which communication can be a matter of life and death, you would like for them to be somewhere on the same page. If you don’t like people speaking a language you don’t understand because you think they are making fun of you — they probably are — you are just paranoid.

I’ve heard good ol’ boys who need a translator as well. Thank goodness dispensing fishing bait doesn’t require critical language skills. And, I know this will stir up people, but the DEA is looking for translators who speak Ebonics. No s**t.  I think that is crazy.