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Tag Archives: weird
Sorting out Wesorts
None of the research blogging posts in my queue are quite ready yet, so it’s time for another update on the weird world of Wesorts. If you’re a Piscataway Indian reading that sentence, please don’t take offense – I’m talking … Continue reading
How to Massage Your Opossum
ME Pearl explains it all for you: For more in the same vein, check out her web site.
Yet Another Robot Psychologist
Dutch clinical psychologists have announced the release of a computer program that allegedly does psychotherapy. I was amused to see them claim that the system, called MindMentor, is the first of its kind:
Two clinical psychologists associated with the Institute for Eclectic Psychology in Holland, Jaap Hollander and Jeffrey Wijnberg, have developed the first robot psychologist, named “MindMentor.” MindMentor is an online computer program that helps people solve problems and achieve goals. It has the unique quality, as compared with other on line psychological help systems, of requiring no live human intervention and being completely automated. Said Hollander in an interview with a Dutch radio program: “What made this whole endeavor exciting, was that we suddenly saw a possibility to create an unlimited amount of psychological help.”
Unlimited, but not free. If you visit the system (at MindMentor.com), you discover that this psychologist charges about ten bucks an hour. That’s cheap for a psychologist, but infinitely more expensive than his competition. If you’re an Emacs user, just type “M-x doctor” and enjoy a free session that lasts as long as you like. Maybe the Emacs version is more primitive, but it would be very interesting to see someone do a study to see what its “success” rate is, using the same definition as the Dutch researchers use for their system.
And, of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask the obvious question: when androids dream, what is the significance of the electric sheep?
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Article of Cheese
Continuing my occasional theme of poking fun at the Federal Register (see this post and this one), here’s another fascinating bit of insight into our weird republic:
Quarterly Update to Annual Listing of Foreign Government Subsidies on Articles of Cheese Subject to an In-Quota Rate of Duty
Section 702 of the Trade Agreements Act of 1979 (as amended) (“the Act”) requires the Department of Commerce (“the Department”) to determine, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture, whether any foreign government is providing a subsidy with respect to any article of cheese subject to an in-quota rate of duty, as defined in section 702(h) of the Act, and to publish an annual list and quarterly updates of the type and amount of those subsidies. We hereby provide the Department’s quarterly update of subsidies on articles of cheese that were imported during the period July 1, 2007 through September 30, 2007.
You can read the full text here, but even after doing that, I’m left wondering: exactly what is an “article of cheese”? I’m pretty sure this posting would count as an article about cheese, but I don’t receive any foreign subsidies, so hopefully The Act (as amended) won’t require The Department to list dovdox.com next year. Continue reading