Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

Yesterday a computer beat a Mormon at a trivia game. Riveting, right?!? Let me break the excitement down for you. Jeopardy is an old school answer and question game– you know the format: A: The coolest website in Utah (probably). Q: What is ryanbyrd.net?

But for clearly defined queries, that’s what we have Wikipedia and Google for. If you don’t know something, don’t phone Ken Jennings or any other uber-nerd, GOOGLE IT. IBM demonstrated that computers are good at searching and recalling distinct pieces of information in a rapid manner in a highly structured situation. But we already knew that, like, 50 years ago.

Here’s how you build Watson:

1-  Load in all previous Jeopardy answers and questions into a database
2- Load in other data sets of questions and answers from quiz books
3- Install a language parser (to tease out the important words from any fluff in the answer)
4- Parse the answer. “He played the lead role in the award-winning Zombies are Forever film”: He, played, lead, zombies are forever, film
6- Search vertical data sets (like IMDB for films)
7- Rank each result with a relevance score
8- Buzz, return the highest ranked result

I, for one, don’t see any computer overloads yet, so they won’t get my welcome. This “win” is neither culturally, nor technologically relevant. I’m embarrassed to have devoted any blog space to such an underachievement.

Rex, a sterling scholar, will probably argue that public libraries serve a valuable purpose other than as a haunt for transients (and goth teens) or to provide free babysitting of the children of neglectful parents. I disagree and have predicted the death of public libraries within ten years. If it isn’t disuse, it will be budget cuts that shut them down.

But what about bookstores? Can they survive modernization (the Kindle!) and the attack of cutthroat online price competition?

I very much like bookstores. Borders, which arguably put so many small bookshops out of business, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday, announcing the closure of 1/3 of their stores. This makes me sad. We still have Barnes and Noble though, right?

All the hippies out there are going to chime in and say that we should only be supporting independent booksellers because the big shops only print popular books and because Borders represents the evils of capitalism and because Borders doesn’t have feral cats running amok in their stores. Those hippies are delusional. Cats spread disease, after all.

Martin Luther King Jr. accepted the Nobel Peace Prize 1964 in Oslo, Norway, saying,

Yet, in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers… This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual “lag” must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the “without” of man’s nature subjugates the “within”, dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.

Indeed technology, particularly with its fog of anonymity,  seems to magnify our troubles within. When people are free to verbally attack without the burden of attribution, they do so with an unparalleled violence and ferocity. There are, of course, times when controversial opinions and beliefs are rightly protected behind an innominate veil, but when the Internet is used as a cowardly weapon to intimidate, vilify, libel and threaten, we’ve crossed the line of acceptability. If ever you want to glance at the dregs of society, simply click over to any public forum (like the comments of Youtube, or KSL) and you’ll be astonished at the perverse, vociferous evisceration targeted at the most benign and innocent. It’s disheartening, demoralizing and sickening.

If we disapproved of something or someone, we should at least be strong enough to stand behind our words.

If national demographic statistics could be applied to RBDN viewership, 13% of you would self-identify as black.  Some of you are going to berate me for not saying, “African American“, but consider this: Black does not equal African American. Black does not even equal African. And why are we still appending our ancestry to our identity? Let’s review:

• Using the term African American to refer to all black skinned people in the United States is misguided. For one, it’s not universally applied (are Egyptians-Americans African American? How about white skinned people from South Africa?) If we’re talking about all black skinned people, why leave out black skinned people not from the continent of Africa (like some groups of people from India, certain islands, etc.)?
• African American is not an accurate descriptor. Calling a black person in the United States an African American assumes:

1. The black person is African and not Australian, a Siddi or Shudra or Dalit of India, a Sheedi of Pakistan, or an Aeta from the Philippines.
2. The black person is a citizen of the United States and not a foreigner.
3. That everyone in Africa is black. This is especially inaccurate for some northern Africa countries (Morocco) and in South Africa.

• And we haven’t even touched on the discussion of the American part of the label. Does it only refer to United States of Americans or can it be applied to North, Central and South Americans? Is a black person in Mexico a African Mexican or an African American still?
• How much African ancestry do you need to have before you can claim you’re African American?

Isn’t it interesting that the largest black advocacy group in the United States self-describes themselves with the seemingly pejorative description, “Colored People”? (NAACP) What, too, about the “United Negro College Fund”?

Okay, but back to the N word. Some people are offended by the N word*. To be clear, we’re talking about the word nigger. The N word was once regularly used to refer to black slaves. It’s so repellent to some, that books containing the word are frequently outlawed in school curriculum, even if those books are amazing works of literature. Let’s take Mark Twain’s epic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It uses the word in question more than 200 times, so the book is consequently one of the most banned in the United States. This bothered one professor so much that he just released an edition of Huck Finn without the offensive word (it’s replaced by ‘slave’.)

But that switcheroo is not just censorship, it’s worse. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a portrait of a time when the N word was commonly used. To redact it out is to rewrite history.

But… what do you think– should we eliminate the N word in all books? What other words should be erased from history?

* The offense only seems to be taken when the word is used by white-skinned people. Black people can (and do) use it regularly (or at least the cousin: nigga) with impunity.

Shay Carl Butler is a gregarious, zany, bearded fat man whose quotidian video blogs center around his endearing Idahoan, Mormon family. Shay’s YouTube channel’s (SHAYTARDS) video postings enjoy a healthy viewership of more than 250,000 people each day. In the Internet world, he and his family are kind of famous. Despite revealing many details of his life for all to see, he gives code-names to himself and his family members in an attempt maintain anonymity.

Shortsighted?

Much as Shay Carl might have preferred for the details of his family to remain a secret, his ascent into celebrity has paralleled the consequent increased publication of information about his family.

If you Google “shaytards real names” the first entry has this information:

Shay Carl = Shay Carl Butler, Mommytard/Katielette = Colette Katy Butler, Sontard = Gavin, Princesstard = Avia, Babytard = Emmi Laurie, Shay’s mom = Laurie Udy Butler, Rocktard = Brock, Shay’s dad = Carl Scott Butler, Logan = Logan McKay Butler and Carliestyle = Carlie M Butler

A pipl search shows his current and past addresses, his birthday, and his former business. Like it or not, his personal and family details are out on the net for all to see. Is this a case of information wanting to be free? Is anything private anymore?

Last year I blogged about how my mom is better than your mom. (She still is, BTW.) Since that’s already established, this time around I’ll talk about moms in general and why they’re so great.

Mothers are essential to the traditional family structure because they provide: stability, kindness, compassion, softness, responsibility, spirituality, support, a listening ear, unconditional love, health, order, encouragement, selfless service and nurture.

Basically, moms rock and we’d be messed up without them.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!