Benefits of Global Warming

Every year Dauber's World goes back to Northern Virginia (aka "home") for Thanksgiving. Having spent the past eight falls in California (and the previous four before that in Michigan) Dauber's World has missed out on one of the best things about Fall: the leaves turning colors. This year is different, however. Thanks to Global Warming it's much warmer in Northern Virginia than in past years (it was almost 70 on Thanksgiving. Dauber's World thought that perhaps he had missed his flight and was still in the Bay Area). The result of this is that the leaves changed colors much later this year than in past years. If you've never been to this part of the country when the leaves turn you really are missing out. Dauber's World's personal favorite is the bright red that some leaves turn. The picture above is from Wolf Trap Farm Park (which is also the only National Park which is a center for the performing arts). The trees don't stay this way for very long, so Dauber's World considers himself lucky that he saw it this year.

Dauber's World's Holiday Gift Advice: Get Them Something They Don't Know They Want

Buying presents for people is hard work. You never really know what someone wants, and it could be argued that if they really wanted it they'd have already purchased it for themselves (this doesn't count kids and assumes they have the money of course). The other strategy is to get them something that they would want if only they knew it existed. Of course this is what makes gift-buying so difficult, but if it were easy then where would the "thought" come from?

In doing some field research, Dauber's World has found a gift idea that may appeal to someone on your list (or yourself). It's no Wine Rack of course, but potentially useful. After making it to DC in one piece on Wednesday Dauber's World went running Thursday morning with official brother of Dauber's World. Official Brother is, (much like Dauber's World) a gadget fiend and he unveiled one yesterday that is worth mentioning. A GPS wristwatch from Garmin. Before mentioning the highlights it's worth mentioning that it's pricey ($199.99 -- though Official Brother says he got it for $150 at Wal-Mart). It's also big and it takes a while to acquire the satellites if you moved a significant distance from the previous time you used it.

The single best highlight of this watch is that it tells you exactly how far you went running and what your pace is. There's also another model (more expensive of course) that also adds heartbeat monitoring. Dauber's World found in his experience as a runner that's there's always the question of how far did you just go running? Everyone has their ways of guessing, but this watch lets you be precise. It also has a feature that lets you download where you ran to your computer and mapping it on Google Earth (which would be cool if you just ran in the Grand Canyon). Of course, after running with this for a half an hour Dauber's World determined that the cure is worse than the proverbial disease. It's just too bulky and expensive for Dauber's World, but maybe it's worth it for you.

Dauber's World Report From The Front Lines

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is the busiest day of the year to travel. Dauber's World has avoided flying home for years on this day to avoid all the headaches associated with traveling today.

2007 is different, however and Dauber's World (despite his typical better judgment) is blogging from the front lines: SFO Airport in the morning. What possessed Dauber's World to take a flight out on the Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving isn't important. What is important is that he's here to report to you, the loyal Dauber's World reader, what is going on.

And just what is going on at 7am on this, the busiest of travel days? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Dauber's World drove the official Dauber's World car (an Acura MDX for those of you who are curious) up to SFO early this morning only to learn that Long Term parking lot was full. However SFO parking officials had already remedied the situation before Dauber's World could even utter the words "let me speak to your manager". They gave Dauber's World a voucher to park in Short Term parking at the Long Term rates! Why can't that happen all the time? Finding parking then became a trivial task at that point and Dauber's World geared up for what was certain to be a gigantic security line. Much to Dauber's World surprise, however, there wasn't one. The entire line consisted of three people. THREE PEOPLE in a security line the morning before Thanksgiving! Dauber's World has never seen a line this short at SFO. Not even on a Sunday evening for a redeye. Good thing Dauber's World got here an extra half an hour early just to be on the safe side.

Now of course everything couldn't go off without a hitch on Thanksgiving Wednesday. Dauber's World's plane is delayed due to "mechanical issues". Everyone knows the really means "indefinite delay" (especially on a day like today). But as far as the airport conditions are concerned Dauber's World is still stunned at how empty the airport is.

Dauber's World wants to take this time to wish you and your friends and family a healthy and happy Thanksgiving. And remember, always have your pets spayed or neutered.

Who Knew That Shrinkage Could Be Hazardous?

Among the many Seinfeld-isms that litter today's vernacular is the word "shrinkage" to describe what happens to a man when certain parts of him are exposed to cold water. Those of us who watched Seinfeld no doubt laughed heartily when George explains that it shrinks "like a frightened turtle". In all the years since that episode aired I never realized that shrinkage actually posed as a serious hazard to that part of the body. Honestly I couldn't even conceive of how that could be hazardous, but obviously I'm not as clever as Mario Visnjic. If you Google him you'll see various accounts of what he did. Below is my personal favorite. It requires no commentary. It's truly remarkable on its own.


(courtesy of pr-inside.com)
A Croatian man got his testicles stuck in a deck chair. Mario Visnjic returned to his deckchair after swimming naked at West Croatia 's Valalta beach and didn't realise his testicles - which had shrunk after the swim - had slipped through the wooden slats. As he sunbathed the testicles expanded back to their normal size and when he tried to get up to go for a walk, he realised they were stuck in the chair. Mario began panicking and was forced to call beach maintenance services on his mobile phone. When a member of staff arrived, Mario had to wait until the deck chair was cut in half before he was freed.

Best Stand-up Comedian in the Business

I've seen a lot of stand-up comedians in my life. Jerry Seinfeld, John Cleese, Dana Carvey, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Norm MacDonald, Adam Sandler, Lewis Black and Jay Mohr are the best that come to mind. None of them touch seeing Robin Williams live, however. I saw him for what must be about the sixth or seventh time tonight at Bimbo's 365 and he was fantastic as usual. To see Williams at Bimbos is a real treat because it's a small venue (~300 people) and he is much less filtered than he is in his HBO special that aired a few years ago (links to selected clips below). Before I forget, if you live in the SF Bay area and you want tickets to his shows get on this mailing list. You get a days' warning before tickets go on sale, and you better be ready to snap them up in the first 60 seconds or they're all gone (and you can only get two tickets). That being said it's definitely worth it.

Tonight Williams did a few bits I've seen before (he does a great one on intelligent design that is funny every time), but he did a few new ones as well. Of course a good chunk of his material is just him making it up as he goes along which is part of the fun. This one woman in the front row kept getting up to go to the bathroom and he made fun of her every time she got up and every time she got back.

He did a bit on the first answering machine that was pretty funny. In it he pretended to be Alexander Graham Bell playing his outgoing message for a caller.

"Hello, you've reached Alexander Graham Bell. I'm not sure how you're calling me seeing as I have the only phone in existence. Please leave your name and number and when I invent a second phone I'll call you back."

The second new bit that he did relied one of his many fantastic character voices. This is possible his best of them all -- his French "I don't give a sh*t/life sucks" voice (where he's constantly pretending to smoke a cigarette. Why? Because he's French). In it he created a scene where a French clown went to a small child's birthday party. The entire bit focused on the clown telling the child how depressing life is and how the birthday merely meant that the child was a year closer to death. I can't remember all the details, but it was really funny.

The last one-liner that he had that was pretty funny was (again) using one of his voices. He was talking about Bono being at a concert recently where he was having everyone clap their hands together. Then he (Bono) says, "Every time you clap your hands a child in Africa dies." Williams then says a Scotsman in the back then shouts out (and this works best if you know what his Scottish accent sounds like), "Then stop clapping your f@cking hands!" If you don't know what his Scottish accent sounds like or you've never seen his bit on golf you should check this out.

Can a Computer Be a Racist?

That's the question being asked (apparently) after an apparent glitch in some code at Google News showed a picture of rheus monkeys next to a story about Richard Parsons, the former CEO of Time Warner. Former roommate of Dauber's World, Eric (we like to keep some anonymity here), had the line of the week when he said: "...i wonder which lucky engineer gets to modify the code with: if image == monkey && news_person_race == african american then..."

The actual Newsweek article is below.

Last week marked a watershed moment for two stars of the business world. By chance, an abrupt end seemed imminent for the careers of Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons and Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley O'Neal. Both had reached pinnacles rarely scaled in corporate America by African-Americans. And their fates dominated business headlines worldwide last Friday, Oct. 26. Online at Google News, however, the coverage was, in a word, shocking.

A keyword search for "Richard Parsons" generated a flood of stories about the executive, accompanied by a photo of two rhesus monkeys. Clicking on the image linked users to a story on neither monkeys nor Parsons. Instead, a speculative account on O'Neal's waning support among Merrill directors appeared on screen. Other than the lynch mob's noose and the Klansman's hood, few images of racism are as offensive to African-American as monkeys. Yet the bizarre juxtaposition of image and stories persisted through the week. And even after Google was specifically contacted this week, it continued.

An unstoppable racist hacker? Hardly, according to a Google spokesman. It was an inside job. The perpetrator, however, wasn't human. The search giant blames its computers and algorithms. Despite its cutting-edge advancements, Google is simply incapable of a performing a skill typically mastered by first graders: matching the right words with the right images. The problem generally has plagued Google since June when it introduced the "Image Version" of Google News to pair the top headlines with illustrative photos.

It's an ongoing problem. Recently Google News mismatched stories on Argentina's newly elected president Cristina Fernández with a photo of the California wildfires. A photo of the late Australia crocodile hunter Steve Irwin accompanied a report on the stock market. And thanks to the fast-breaking developments at Merrill Lynch, O'Neal managed to evolve. After he was forced to retire Tuesday in the wake of massive subprime losses, Google News illustrated the story with a 1939 photo of Katharine Hepburn taken during the filming of "The Philadelphia Story."

Google acknowledges the situation, but declined to openly discuss details of the primate episode. Surprisingly, it was even unwilling to go on record and explicitly disavow any racist motivation. "While we don't comment on individual stories on Google News," spokesman Gabriel Stricker told NEWSWEEK, "crawling thousands of sites across the globe is a complicated task, and we're confident that the quality of the crawled pages is extremely good for the vast majority of news sources on our site." In an oblique nod to the problem, he cites the need for "more work to be done," adding, "we're always working on improvements to Google News to ensure that the experience for all of our users ... continues to be great."

If the "Parsons" search result is, as Google indicates, merely a remarkably unfortunate techno blooper, the search giant's explanation in one respect is still as potentially unsettling as the primate imagery is distressing. Short of shutting down searches, the problem will persist for now. Google News relies almost exclusively on algorithms and automation to build its pages. For now, manually correcting one mismatch may fix one issue but simultaneously create many more. When asked when the problem would be resolved, a Google spokesman answered: "As soon as possible."

Despite Google's technical explanation, there's a twist to the Parsons-primate episode that could lead online users to suspect hacker involvement. Over the weekend, the company appeared to have corrected the mismatch, at least temporarily. At times, the primates photo was substituted with a photo of a formally attired Parsons posing with an actor in a Bugs Bunny costume. (The character is owned by Time Warner, which declined to comment for this story.) Later, however, the rhesus photo reappeared, supplanting Parsons and Bugs Bunny. Google denies it was hacked and insists the incident was again, simply a result of its computer systems.

This isn't the first time automation has managed to offend. In January 2006, as USA Today reported at the time, a feature on Wal-Mart's Web site that generated recommended purchases linked a "Planet of the Apes" DVD to films about African-Americans, including Martin Luther King Jr., Tina Turner and boxer Jack Johnson. The retail giant, citing errant automation, apologized to any offended customers and shut down the recommendation system.

Given the sheer size of what Google does, the chances of getting everything right all the time would appear to be statistically nil. In September, the latest data available, Google handled 38.2 billion searches--some 63 percent of the total 61 billion searches worldwide, says Andrew Lipsman, senior analyst with Internet measuring service Comscore. Of Google's total, Google News accounted for some 103 million searches. According to Google, it "crawls" 4,500 English-language news sites, and thousands more worldwide in other languages, to seize freshly posted stories and images for storage in Google's servers that it taps to respond to keyword searches.

Google won't disclose the scope or details of its mismatching problem. But the problem clearly seems to be associated with material from at least one of the world's major originators of news--Reuters, which declined to comment on the situation. The primates and associated Parsons and O'Neal stories, for example, were both retrieved by Google from Reuters--as were the mismatched wildfire photo and Argentine election story, as well as other examples.

Reuters makes its stories and photos available separately for retrieval by search engines, Google foremost. When the search giant dispatches a crawler to snare a story from the Reuters site, it simultaneously deploys a crawler to Reuters's photo gallery. But the image crawler isn't discriminating. It simply grabs the first photo in the gallery, never mind that the particular image often has nothing remotely to do with the text-based story.

Google says it is trying hard to fix the problem. But for now, it seems a primate could do a better job.

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.