Saturday, May 16, 2009

Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram and Hart - Secret Connection?

So, I've been hearing a lot on NPR about this new search engine that's available to do certain kinds of searches better than Google searches. I think it has a lot to do with math, and data, and information-gathering, as opposed to giving the answer to "subjective" questions (like, "who is the most super-cool blogging minister/sex-educator who's not named Debra Haffner?"). It's called Wolfram Alpha, after its founder. And hey, if you create some sort of crazy search engine that can compare the GDPs in ratio form of the US and Canada over a 40-year period, hell, you deserve to have that search engine named after you!

It's just that, every time I hear the name, I cannot help but think of Wolfram and Hart, the evil law-firm-cum-ruler-of-the-Angel-multi-verse. I am sure there is no real connection, but it still creeps me out just a little bit.

And, in case you were wondering, I always kinda thought that Joss Whedon didn't do enough with the wolf, ram and hart imagery (get it?) in the Angel multi-verse. There were definitely some missed opportunities to really flesh that out. But what we mostly got was, "Eeeeeeeevilllllllllllllllllll corporation, run by eeeeeeeeeeeevilllllllllllllllllllllllllll lawyers!" Meh.

3 comments:

jimpurdy1943@yahoo.com said...

I asked some of those "subjective" questions in a silly little chatbot-style conversation with WolframAlpha, which I posted on my blog, spooframalpha.blogspot.com .

And he/she/it really CAN compare apples and oranges!

I'll get serious with WA soon, after we get better acquainted.

Debra W. Haffner said...

Dear LiturgyGeek:

So, thank you for the compliment (I think it was a compliment!) but tell me who YOU are...besides from Bill Stayton, I didn't know there were other minister sex educators out there? I'd love to know you!

Debra

LiturgyGeek said...

Debra, it's TOTALLY a compliment - you are my shero! I'll shoot you an email in the next couple of days.