Semantics and the "BREAK" key

"What lying mortal made that fable, that mindless tale, that slander on the blessed? Who denied the gods are strong? Old friends, the godless man is dead! The house is silent. Turn to the dances!" --- Euripides

I have to admit it was an exciting evening, though the excitement had nothing to do with the tawdry little farce put on by the departing Prince and his snivelling lackeys. Why the Justicar deigned to waste his time with it is beyond me: likely he regrets it even now. Before I write this month's "Notes", here are a few things I want to make perfectly clear:

First, you can imagine my surprise when, many days later, I learned that "Pestilence" was a Toreador. Of course, on further reflection (a commodity most rare in this city, at least as far as I have seen), I decided that this should make not one bit of difference. Had I known this in advance, I might have behaved differently towards her, but this would be due to some fault on my part, rather than a virtue on hers. Ladies and gentlemen, if you behave like an adolescent acting out infantile fantasies of grandeur, then I do not regret or hesitate to inform you that I will treat you exactly as if you actually were one.

Second, many people asked why I did not flee when the "bomb exploded" and the "monster attacked." Frankly, I was supremely unimpressed with either. As I could tell at once that neither posed the slightest threat, I kept my seat and continued my work. I was closely analyzing a statement Mr. Dupree made haphazardly earlier in the evening, that all cultural phenomena are significant. In the coming months, you can expect some further elucidation on this point from my quarter.

Now turning to a more interesting subject, the behaviour of CRANE, an expert system similar to the LANGLEY system I described last month, with somewhat less complexity, though a greater ability for asking questions to fill knowledge gaps. CRANE is designed to simulate poetry-writing activities. I generally believe CRANE output to be generally substandard, though equally generally recognizable as poetry. In other words, CRANE doesn't write -good- poetry, it just writes poetry. It elected to write a pair of humorous haiku about the event:

At the Harley shop
There is a sigh of relief
"Those fools won't return."

Horsemen blew their chance
Vision?  Should have picked better.
"Who was that masked man?"

Obscure humor at best, of course. CRANE declined to explain either joke. CRANE v2.2 will be available in three weeks.

			T. Craydon, PhD.

"Men become civilized not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their willingness to doubt." ---- H.L. Mencken

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