There’s a prophet hollering on the street corner. People are passing him by, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He’s holding his big black book in one hand, and his mouth is saying things over and over. Tonight it’s:

“Everybody out there is looking for a thrill! But what they don’t know is that Jesus has the will! and the skills! to give you a thrill!”

I didn’t stick around long enough to find out if Jesus is like some kind of pill to take when you’re ill.

Talk about ill, though. When I was a missionary, we compared our activity to scattering seeds. It’s a benign metaphor; seeds grow food, and food is good for you. But I’d say that this kind of activity is more like spreading a virus. Ideas are like viruses (including this one) because they can catch in the mind of a host, and the host can propagate the idea through a community. Whether you think ideas are seeds or viruses probably depends a lot on how helpful you think the idea is.

What if a sick person were purposely spreading viruses among an urban population? People would wisely avoid him (as indeed people were avoiding the street prophet). They’d isolate him in a hospital until he got better. A mental hospital would be the right sort of place for someone who spreads mental viruses. But no, he’s still out there, still propagating.

Here I am in Sydney. I caught the 0:25 red eye, and came straight to the conference.

Did you know that airplane seats are ergonomically designed to concentrate the entire weight of the body onto one place on your ass? I’ll never know how they do it. It’s not like I’m not used to sitting all day. I’m in CompSci. Sitting on chairs all day is what I do.

But I’m not complaining. I’m having fun meeting up with everyone again, and gawking at computational linguist celebrities. Ooo, look, it’s Aravind Joshi. Dude — is Charniak here?

I have just finished presenting my poster/short paper. I did so with some apprehension. I always get a bad case of Perceived Project Inadequacy because everyone else’s work seems much more complex and intimidating than mine. But, do you know, people whose work I admire came up to the poster, asked me some tough questions, and then said, “Huh! That’s kind of cool. Let me know how it works out.”

Hott!

I am now going to have dinner, and then it’s off to stay at a youth hostel in King’s Cross. This may be the last thing I ever write.

I’m off to Sydney for ACL/Coling 2006, only the biggest and baddest conference in the area of natural language processing. I got a short paper accepted at SIGdial, which is of itself no big deal, but I’m just pleased to be there so I can shmooze. You should see me. You wouldn’t recognise me. I work that room.

So I may be posting slightly more linguistic things, or I may just tell you what Sydney’s like. Either way, you may have to wait on the Friday Random Five because I don’t have my usual system. How will I survive without music? I’ll just have to groove on the rhythm… of life.

From the Department of Very Obvious Results:

If you eBay, it’s better to snipe.

Bid late and win big—that’s the conclusion of two Korean researchers who studied online auctions on eBay and developed an equation that describes the relationship between bidding behavior and item winning.

People who bid just a single time, during the last moments of an eBay auction, are the most likely to win, say Inchang Yang and Byungnam Kahng, physicists at Seoul National University in Korea.

…and founders of the Sailor Moon DVD Collection Institute.

Well, how about that. You’re more likely to win if you snipe. Which is something that every eBayer knows if they’ve bid in more than three auctions.

There are also risks to banking on a last-minute attempt. Such bidders may find themselves unexpectedly busy when the auction closes or unable to get a very late bid to transmit successfully.

Which is the other thing that snipers have found. There is a strong inverse correlation between sniping with a dialup connection and winning.

Oh, all right. It’s good to have someone come and verify empirically what others have found by experience. But this piece of research probably only sounds scholarly to people who don’t eBay. To anyone who has, it’s bleeding obvious.

How about the interesting aspects of auction behaviour? People tend to pay more for things than they’re worth because

1) most bidders will stop at a reasonable price, but the highest bidder will often go over, and that’s the one who sets the final price.

2) Having bid a certain amount, people allow their final price to creep up, reasoning that an extra buck isn’t much more.

3) Having to fight everyone in the world for a Lilac Time CD makes the item seem that much more desirable.

4) There is some investigation to be done with ‘nickel-and-dime’ strategies. I never bid even dollar amounts; I’m much more likely to go for something wonky like $21.67. Bidding $21 helps me beat out those that stopped on $20, and the extra cents have even made the difference on some auctions, minimum increments notwithstanding.

Perhaps the Korean team could get a grant for these aspects of group psychology once they’ve finished watching the DVDs. Unless they’re too busy studying the effects of trying to sneak cash through the mail.

It was a pretty good day today. I got to be with my boys for the day. We listened to music, drove around and did some errands, ordered some Thai takeaway.

We had electricity and food. We had everything we needed. No one came to kill us or hurt us.

Not everyone was as lucky.

The court documents, quoting one of the soldiers involved, say Green took the girl’s parents and her five-year-old sister into another room and shot them dead.

‘Green came to the bedroom door and told everyone, “I just killed them. They’re all dead”‘, said FBI Special Agent Gregor Ahlers, who is investigating the murders.

Green and another soldier then raped the girl, Abeer Qasim Hamza. Green is said to have shot her in the head and chest with her father’s AK-47 assault rifle, which he kept to protect his family, and set her body on fire in an apparent attempt to hide the crime.

I haven’t felt right since reading about that a couple of days ago. Everything I’ve been doing has felt trivial and empty. I feel vaguely guilty for eating, which is nuts. I felt horrible buying petrol.

I’m not used to this. Usually war and violence are so far away that these stories feel like they come from a different time as well as place. But I keep thinking about the little 5-year-old girl. What must she have thought in those last moments of her life? Did the soldier kill her first, or did she have to watch her mom and dad die? How would I react if it happened to me? How would I try to comfort Youngest Boy, now only 7?

I have no idea what it’s like for American soldiers over in Iraq, but I can imagine that it’s an awful situation. Subduing a whole country just isn’t possible with the numbers of troops that Rumsfeld has sent in. And when people cycle out, there aren’t enough to replace them. The only way to keep it going is to lower the bar for entry. What this incident shows me that the bar is now low enough to accommodate psychopaths. Add in some nazis to give the situation a philosophical bent, and you’ve got a real problem — in Iraq for as long as the war lasts, and in the USA when it’s time to bring them back.

Tomorrow we’ll probably watch a DVD in safety and comfort.

Languages are disappearing, and saving them is a bit of a puzzle.

Do you try to get recordings of words and stories in the hope of capturing it before it dies? And then what do you have? Dead language in a jar. Sometimes that’s all you can do.

Or if there are more people in the population, do you try to revive the language so the younger people will keep it going (even in a cut-down version)? But why would they when Shakira sings in English?

Looks like New South Wales is trying the second option.

The Wiradjuri people of southern New South Wales have received a Government grant to help them preserve their language.

The State Government has announced $17,000 funding will be given to the Brungle School near Tumut to employ a Wiradjuri teacher to improve language skills and to develop education materials to help primary school students learn Wiradjuri.

I hope it helps. Doubt it though — would you teach for $17,000 a year?

Education is okay, but as long as English has all the prestige, it’ll be an uphill battle. Linguists have to try to trade on people’s natural sense of community. I especially like the idea of indigenous radio in Australia. Local music, and broadcasts in indigenous languages. It could just help the younger folks to see their native language as a viable alternative to English.

Forehead-slapper of the day:

“When history looks back, I’d rather be judged as solving problems and being correct, rather than being popular,” Bush said.

Wow, nil for three.

And this from a guy (and a party) who uses domestic issues not as problems to be solved, but as opportunities to split the electorate, excoriate cultural enemies, and rally the base? This from the guy who went to war with the wrong country?

I know Bush lives in an alternate universe where men are men and he’s not reponsible for anything. But this comment really shows his lack of comprehension.

So I’m inviting my readers to submit ONE problem Bush 43 has solved, or ONE thing he has done right, during his presidency. I have pointed out the marine protection thing; credit where credit is due. But is that it?

Removing Saddam Hussein from power may seem like a good thing, but in the process, everything else was made hellish. I’m looking for examples where a problem existed, and the Bush administration fixed it without other horrible consequences.

UPDATE: Now this:

The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday heard testimony from Steven Bradbury, head of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel. When questioned by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) on whether the President’s interpretation of the Hamdan case was right or wrong, Bradbury replied, “The President is always right.”

Always right!

Bush can’t think of anything he’s done wrong. His lawyers can’t think of anything he’s done wrong. Therefore, he’s always right.

Or could it be backwards? They think he’s always right, so they can’t think of anything he’s done wrong.

Either way, for someone who’s right so very often, it should be easy to think of one thing he’s done right. Come on, any Bush apologists that happen by. Throw me a bone here. There are lots of Utah IPs wandering around here. Surely they could think of something.

One thing I hate is when people say, “You can make a scientific study say anything.”

I do admit that sometimes I get suspicious of studies that are funded by interested parties. I was checking up on the old “Milk causes mucus” idea because someone I know insists this is true. Sure enough, the first hit on Google says:

This is a common myth. Research shows that milk definitely does not cause the production of mucus.

There you go, another myth busted! Right there on the webpage of… www.dairygoodness.ca

Okay, cancel that, thought I. And then I thought, “For shame. Something’s true if it’s true, no matter who says it, you left-wing academic.” And then I thought, “Hey, just watching out for bias.”

But there’s a fine line between watching out for bias and insisting that everyone who disagrees with you is biased.

Here’s an objective view:

The following is part four of an interview with Robert Cohen, author of “Milk, the Deadly Poison,” and www.Notmilk.com

Sounds reliable. What’s he got to say?

Mike Adams: What about all the science the dairy industry produces to claim milk is good for you?

Robert Cohen: You know something interesting? The dairy industry sponsors studies, and as a researcher, I could design any study I want to and prove anything I want to based upon the parameters of the study and the species of mammal I use. But the dairy industry has done studies with humans, and they say, “Here’s a glass of milk. Drink the glass of milk.” And the subject does, and ten minutes later — “How do you feel? Do you have mucus? No? Great.” Headline in paper because they’ve got a great press conference: “Drinking milk does not cause mucus.”

I guess if he didn’t believe the study from the milk board, he could try to replicate it, which is, you know, one of the great things about the scientific method.

But hey, maybe he’s got some good ideas about how to do a study. What would it look like?

Now, you say that to any marathon runner or triathelete or opera singer or Broadway star, they know that using dairy products causes mucus. They have to stay away from it or they’re not going to be able to perform. And that’s not a scientific study, that’s just something they just know. It’s a given! Yet, the study, the science shows that drinking milk doesn’t cause mucus.

Here we’ve been wasting our time doing scientific studies, and we could have just asked four people what they think! That’s better than some dumb double-blind ‘peer-reviewed’ study.

We should all rely more on the wisdom of the common people. Because everybody… just knows.