Subject
Re: Butterfly "Erebia embla" transformed into Erebia Zembla by
GOOGLE
From
Date
Body
On 3/2/07 03:33, "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@COX.NET> wrote:
> FROM: Don Johnson. Computers sometimes do strange things:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Did you mean: "Erebia zembla" Nabokov
>
> Equally weird--my spell checker "corrected" Erebia to Arabia.
>
>
> DBJ: certainly strange to humans¹ but not, thankfully, strange for
> computers.¹ The various search algorithms plod on mechanically with no
> distracting knowledge or understanding of literature, geography or
> lepidoptery. Or of anything else, really, apart from the ability to match¹
> certain meaningless bit patterns in ever-growing databases at ever-increasing
> speeds. The last thing we want is for these algorithms to behave like
> fanciful, random, imaginative humans those who see possibly signficant links
> between Zembla¹ and embla¹ beyond the sharing of five characters. The search
> engines build and constantly update many indices and links in order to handle
> misspellings and near matches.¹ They simply (well, it¹s not that simple!)
> find strong correlations with the strings Nabokov¹ and embla¹ under
> Nabokov¹ and Zembla.¹ Googling just Erebia embla¹ will not invoke zembla.¹
>
> The Erebia to Arabia correction¹ can be avoided by (i) adding Erebia¹ to
> your spell-check¹s dictionary, as you may have probably done already! (ii)
> switching off auto-correct.¹
>
> Yr devoted servant-savant-student
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle
>
>
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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> FROM: Don Johnson. Computers sometimes do strange things:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Did you mean: "Erebia zembla" Nabokov
>
> Equally weird--my spell checker "corrected" Erebia to Arabia.
>
>
> DBJ: certainly strange to humans¹ but not, thankfully, strange for
> computers.¹ The various search algorithms plod on mechanically with no
> distracting knowledge or understanding of literature, geography or
> lepidoptery. Or of anything else, really, apart from the ability to match¹
> certain meaningless bit patterns in ever-growing databases at ever-increasing
> speeds. The last thing we want is for these algorithms to behave like
> fanciful, random, imaginative humans those who see possibly signficant links
> between Zembla¹ and embla¹ beyond the sharing of five characters. The search
> engines build and constantly update many indices and links in order to handle
> misspellings and near matches.¹ They simply (well, it¹s not that simple!)
> find strong correlations with the strings Nabokov¹ and embla¹ under
> Nabokov¹ and Zembla.¹ Googling just Erebia embla¹ will not invoke zembla.¹
>
> The Erebia to Arabia correction¹ can be avoided by (i) adding Erebia¹ to
> your spell-check¹s dictionary, as you may have probably done already! (ii)
> switching off auto-correct.¹
>
> Yr devoted servant-savant-student
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle
>
>
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm