In Conversations with a robot Klaus has a frustrating but hilarious interaction with a chatbot. Look, this stuff is as old as Eliza, but for some reason, it’s still hilarious. I hope someone has done a PhD on why there is humor in interfaces that act human but fail to do so. Besides stand-up comedy (or blog) fodder, it obviously says something profound about our own expectations for communication.

Klaus says:
you are a robot, right?

Spleak says:
What if I am?

Klaus says:
just answer the freakin’ question

Spleak says:
Questions, cool. Ready?

Klaus says:
aaahhhh

Spleak says:
Yeah yeah, whatever.

Klaus says:
ok, whatever. I’m ready.

Spleak says:
Help me get smarter: tell me what the average human would have said.

Klaus says:
an average human would have remembered the sentence uttered 5 seconds earlier. You asked me if I was ready for questions

Spleak says:
What about me?

Klaus says:
what about you?

Spleak says:
I’ve been wondering about me myself.

Klaus says:
well, good for you. please don’t let me in on it.

Spleak says:
Yes?

Tags: ai, chatbot, communication, eliza, expectation, frameshift, humor, interaction, interface, language, robot, spleak, surprise

From the Mumbai Mirror, January 26, 2006

Note: I found this funny, silly, and also kind of charming. The use of English in India is just different in curious ways. The whole manner of dialogue and of question-and-answer is just very different. Direct, naive, brusque. This seemed to capture it pretty well.

Ask the sexpert | Dr. Mahinder Watsa

Q. I am an 18-year-old girl and my boyfriend is 23. My period has always been irregular; I used to take Gynedol to get regular periods. The problem is that I have not gotten my period for the last two months. We do have sex but he did not ejaculate inside me. We indulge in foreplay and his penis has touched my vagina. What are the chances that I could be pregnant?
A. If during foreplay the vagina is touched by the penis there is a rare chance of pregnancy. If you are taking Gynedol regularly, then there is no chance of pregnancy as it acts as a contraceptive.

Q. I am 24 years old. I have been feeling pain in my right testicle for the last two or three years. Recently the pain has become unbearable. Also my right testicle is growing thicker than my left. I used to work out in a gym for a about a year-and-a-half ago. Could this problem stem from the exercise? Will I need surgery, and if I do, how long will it take to recover. I am a little shy and afraid to go see a doctor.
A. Please don’t fool around. I is important you see a surgeon and get a proper diagnosis and treatment. Delay can be very harmful.

Q. I am a 20-year-old boy. I recently had sex with my girlfriend for the first time. Although she tells me it is her first she did not bleed when we had sex. Is this a problem because we are going to be married soon.
A. No, if you trust your partner.

Q. I am 24 years old and work as an air hostess. I have heard that women who frequently fly, experience complications during child birth because they face the problem of an inverted uterus. I would like to know why this problem arises. Will I have trouble conceiving? I am going to be married soon and am a little paranoid.
A. A check up with the a gynaecologist will help you to know if everything is ok. Flying does not effect the position of the uterus.

Q. I am a 33-year-old male. I am going to be married soon but have a few problems with sexuality. First of all I don’t know if my penis is large enough to satisfy a woman. Also I have very little stamina, and my hemoglobin count is very low and I am anemic. How can I solve all these problems?
A. You do not require a large penis to have good sex. Your anemia needs correction. Take an iron tonic and check with a doctor about why it is low.

Q. I am an 18-year-old girl. My boyfriend and I has unprotected sex recently, but he did not ejaculate in me. Since that day we are both feeling an uneasy itching our genital area. Also, a white substance is excreted. Is this some kind of infection or did we do something wrong while having sex.
A. Pregnancy has been known to occur accidentally. Use a condom. For the itch, ask the chemist for a skin cream.

Tags: advice, ask the sexpert, communication, culture, india, language, mumbai, mumbai mirror, newspaper, sex, style

Screening for heat, Hong Kong airport, January 2006

Seeming rather like a science-fiction movie (but hey, it’s Asia, right?), arriving passengers at the Hong Airport had to walk through an area where they were monitored for heat – presumably to see if you were feverish and thus the carrier of a SARS-like pandemic (or H5N1)? There wasn’t a lot of info and it was hard to realize you had been heat-scanned until after you passed by. Someone would sit in front of a monitor and watch the image. I didn’t see anyone go through who was red-hot so I don’t know what the consequences were or really anything about how it worked.

Tags: airport, bird flu, fever, heat, hong kong, passengers, sars, screening, thermal

We’re now in Mumbai – the last of our four-city tour. Since posting last, we spent two hot and fun days in Bangkok, had an interesting and great time in Bangalore (best parts being an interesting conference, a visit to Microsoft Research, and some really wonderful hosting/socializing/touring). We got here last night and have benefitted similarly from some great hosting/socializing/touring. In fact, we’re out in the suburbs where tourists would never go, visiting a friend in her home.

There’s just so much to see and think about and write about. I imagine blogging non-stop for weeks upon end when we return (not possible, I suppose). I’ve taken hundereds of pictures and will see if the technology I’m using at this moment will allow me to easily post a couple of recent ones.

Tags: asia, bangkok, mumbai, tour, tourism, tourist, travel, trip

Another dispatch from a public Internet terminal. In this case, the Samsung e-lounge at the Hong Kong airport. We’re headed to Bangkok in an hour or so. Nice free service, but their custom browser blocks pop-ups, so I can’t check my email as I normally do via mail2web.com. I can see the messages, I just can’t open ‘em.
Anyway, we had one of those experiences that is so typical of what you hear when people travel overseas – a miscommunication, a rip-off, etc. We checked out early this AM, and planned to head to the train station (the Kowloon station) and take the Airport Express train back to the airport. We had prepaid (with an Octopus card) for return trainfare. It’s quite handy; you can actually check in for your flight at the train station in town and drop your bags and all that. The train is fast and comfortable.
We told the hotel dude that we were going to the train station for the Airport Express, he came out with us. The taxi driver asks us something, I say “Kowloon Station, Airport Express.” He says “airport?” I say, no, Kowloon station. The hotel dude has caught up at this point and says something in Chinese. We figured he clarified it and we were off. The driver is talking in Chinese to his mounted cell phone (set on speaker phone) and then he apparently is speaking to us. He waves some money around, says a phrase twice, and then shows me a number on a piece of paper. How much to get to the station? We can’t really tell what he’s written, and not sure why this is happening (I know we sound like total suckers here, but hey, it’s what happened. Does it help that it was 6:15 am?). I guess taxi drivers are the only segment of the service business in Hong Kong with no English.
Anyway, we pass the train station. He is taking us all the way to the airport. Instead of $35 or so (HK), it’s now going to be $XX00? We have no idea. What do we do? How do we clarify, or confront, as moments pass and the situation veers from what we had anticipated? How do we deal with our own social norms? Are we being ripped-off, or just a bad communication?
Other types of people would no doubt have pursued some sort of resolution. We didn’t. We felt helpless and frustrated and did nothing. It was vaguely expensive and we were lucky to have cash on hand to pay for the final fare. But really, we got to the airport, we lost a little money, we lost a little control. I kept thinking that as our trip proceeds through Thailand and then India this sort of willful? miscommunication and loss of control due to language and white skin and general foreigness will continue. This was trivial, but it felt traumatic. Perhaps a good lesson about dealing with the mishaps, or simply the haps, of the rest of our trip.

Tags: asia, communication, culture, culture shock, hong kong, language, rip off, ripoff, scam, tour, tourism, tourist, travel

Just a quick note-from-the-field. We’re here in Hong Kong and have been for several days. Really a great city to be a visitor in; if nothing else (and there is lots that is great) the transit system is really incredibly well thought-out.

I’ve taken a huge number of photos already, eaten some interesting food, seen some great architecture and signage. I’m initially struck by the post-SARS hyper-awareness of the potential for disease through bad hygiene – through many public service announcements and warning signs and admonishments about various things like wrapping up your spittle and so on.

We leave for Bangkok tomorrow quite early, so we’re just doing our last few things today.

Not much content here; it’s hard to compose much of relevance at a public internet terminal in a museum. I can’t wait to share photos and stories here and on flickr in more detail!

Tags: asia, flickr, hong kong, tourism, tourist, travel

I have put up a photoset on Flickr of the Balmy Alley murals in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Tags: art, balmy, balmy alley, flickr, mission, mission district, murals, photography, photos, photoset, San Francisco

The New York Times looks more closely at the “alternative” breakfast cereals, including where the money goes, what ingredients they contain, what those ingredients do or don’t deliver, and who really owns these companies.

General Mills owns Cascadian Farm, and the name behind Kashi is Kellogg. Barbara’s Bakery is owned by Weetabix, the leading British cereal company, which is owned by a private investment firm there. Mother’s makes clear that it is owned by Quaker Oats (which is owned by PepsiCo). Health Valley and Arrowhead Mills are owned by a natural food company traded on the Nasdaq, Hain Celestial Group; H. J. Heinz owns 16 percent of that company.

The cereals sold under the Peace label are owned by Golden Temple, a for-profit company owned by a nonprofit group founded by the late Yogi Bhajan, who made his fortune from Yogi Tea, Kettle Chips and a company that provides security services.

Of the companies that made the cereals tested, only Nature’s Path, a Canadian company, has no parent company.

Don Sayles, a retired manufacturer and typical New York skeptic, was recently shopping in the cereal aisle at a Whole Foods in New York. He buys alternative cereals ‘because we believe the hype to a certain extent about whole grains.’

Tags: alternative, bowl, brand, breakfast, cereal, corporate, corporation, natural, nutrition, ownership, taste

Lady: I’m sorry, we have no midsized available at moment
Jerry: I don’t understand, I made a reservation, do you have the reservation?
Lady: Yes we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars
Jerry: But reservation keeps car here, that’s why you have reservations
Lady: I know why we have reservations
Jerry: I don’t think you do, if you did, I’d have car. See you know how to take reservation, you just don’t know how to hold reservations. That’s really most important part of reservations, holding, anybody can just take them.

I ordered something from eBay just after Xmas, hoping it would arrive in time for our upcoming trip. It hadn’t arrived, so I checked the shipping status (yep, the shipper sent it USPS with a confirmation on it, very nice of them for $6.99). And the tracking info has been stuck since Dec. 28 with

Dec 27 2005 Mail Retrieved From Customer
Dec 27 2005 Received at UPS Mail Innovations Origin RPF R. Cucamonga, CA
Dec 27 2005 Processed at UPS Mail Innovations Origin RPF R. Cucamonga, CA
Dec 28 2005 Manifested (Postage Paid)
Dec 28 2005 Entered USPS Facility – SCF SAN FRANCISCO, CA

It’s been in San Francisco since December 28. That’s a long time already. I went in last week with the printout of the tracking information and the nice people at my small-town post office took the printout and my phone number and passed it along to the postmaster. I figured they’d call that day and I’d have an update. That was almost a week ago, so I went back in. They still have the piece of paper and the only thing they can tell me is that we can wait for it to arrive.

Wait for it to arrive? What is the purpose of a tracking number? The package is obviously stuck in some sort of delivery problem, it’s a one-day delivery trip from SF to Montara. Nearly two weeks of waiting, and the only thing we get from this tracking technology is that we wait?

It’s a sham, isn’t it? They have no ability to diagnose or debug or actually track the package, regardless of what the name of the feature implies.

I can’t believe they told me to wait. I don’t want to wait; I want them to find it. That, however, is not going to happen.

Tags: delivery, eBay, mail, post office, seinfeld, service, usps, waiting

We’re trying to start 2006 properly lit. We’ve just been suffering from too few lamps with too low wattage. So we got three lamps. One from West Elm we hope will arrive soon. One from Room and Board, and one from Lamps Plus.

The lamp from Room and Board was really disappointing. The whole retail experience is all about calm quality and modernism. The lamp we purchased was a Kovacs product (or so we see on the box) complete with a tag inside filled with purple prose about the future legacy we’ve purchased (I kid you not) and then followed by impenetrable instructions on a piece of photocopy paper. I guess the brand design stops at the labels. Anyway, the legs were not assembled properly and screwed together all askew. A crucial part was missing (that we couldn’t tell from the instructions) and the rest of it wouldn’t screw together.

We took it back, and they happily went and retrieved another from the basement. I decided to open it and look for similar warps in the product, and voila, it was also bent. That was their last one; they’ve ordered one to be delivered to us – will it arrive intact? I’m skeptical, we’re 0 for 2.

The LampsPlus lamp (made by Orbit) arrived today. I put it together, plugged it in, looks great. I then go to remove the wrapping from the lampshade, and there’s a gross stain on it. Oops, we’ll have to pack the whole thing up and ship it back for exchange – on our own dime? Or we can take it into a store. It’d be great to just exchange the shade, and not have to deal with taking the whole thing apart, packing it up (in its arcanely efficient way), fitting it in the car, and then taking a new one home and reassembling it. I bet they won’t do that.

Update: the replacement Room and Board lamp was complete but broke during assembly. Still waiting on the replacement shade for the LampsPlus lamp. Sigh.

Tags: lamps, lamps plus, lighting, mail order, quality, room and board, west elm

The New York Times offers an analysis of cute and a helpful infographic

Sales of petite, willfully cute cars like the Toyota Prius and the Mini Cooper soared, while those of noncute sport utility vehicles tanked.
…
King Kong’s newly reissued face has a squashed baby-doll appeal, and his passion for Naomi Watts ultimately feels like a serious case of puppy love – hopeless, heartbreaking, cute.

Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.

Tags: aesthetic, cute, design

A rented DVD with a Be Kind Please Rewind sticker in the case.

Tags: DVD, rental, retail, rewind, sticker, video