Once again we're at the close of the year...
 |
| Sunset over the Pacific with a tiny green flash |
... and I'm trying to summarize all that happened in SRS as a way of looking back over the year. It's a bit of a complicated story--we certainly covered a number of topics (see the list below), and touched on a number of SearchResearch topics, methods, and means. We talked about whether a parakeet is really a kind of parrot, where the oldest solar observatory is in the Americas (A: Peru), and how to read in language and scripts that you don't recognize.
This was also the year where I taught the Human-Computer Interaction & AI class at Stanford (with Peter Norvig) which was a tremendous amount of fun, but I'd forgotten how much time standing up a full class takes, even if it's in a domain that you know well.
Despite the class and a few trips here and there, we managed to keep SRS rolling along. We had 55 posts this year, just over 1 per week and just a few less than last year.
I hope you found these entertaining and educational--that's certainly my intent in writing them. I want to encourage your curiosity, and give you some of the tools I've found that help me with my curiosity addiction.
I'm looking forward to next year's crop of SRS Challenges. Where in the world will we go next?
If you would, leave a comment about what you found most interesting in SRS during 2022, and if you have ideas, what would you like us to cover in the year ahead? The comment line is always open.
As always,
Search on!
I loved ever Challenge, every Answer and the comments that we made. I like the most Challenges about animals and nature. Also the series How to Find Anything is awesome!
ReplyDeleteThe best however, is the surprise each week with something new. Stuff that I couldn't think about. And how the SRS Magic keeps coming even after years. It's incredible how you read something and it's connected with some Challenge. As Dr. Russell says: Learn while reading. And always thinking what skeptical Dr. Russell ( you said skeptical Dan) would think.
I'm sure 2023 will bring us a fantastic journey. I'd love more How to Find Anything and the return of 1MM.
Thanks for another amazing year, Dr. Russell and everyone. Thanks 2022 !
Wishing everyone a great and full of SRS's Challenges in the upcoming 2023
I was thinking about a Challenge. However, I am not sure how to and if it is real.
DeleteA tree keeper a few months ago told me that camphor tres give cold shade. Is that something real? For me all shades by trees feel the same. He means if your house has camphor tree will be colder than if you have another tree species.
Also this week discovered something amazing and new for me. Opossums eat banana peels?
Searched for them and found
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencealert.com/something-really-cool-happens-when-you-use-banana-peel-as-an-ingredient/amp
BPF, I did not know that
Deletealso, bird & mammal related…
bats — TPR, Houston
from under a bridge
and tropical spy bird…
"Ian Fleming took the name “James Bond” from a famous ornithologist. In exchange, Fleming told the real Bond he could give a horrible bird the name “Ian Fleming.”"
rjb
Tyto alba bondi
Bond, Bird Bond
in a data base
inspir-wiki
…could Dan be 008?
Thanks Remmij. Also related to birds:
DeleteFlight feathers and other kinds:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_feather
More about bats
DeleteNearly 700 frozen bats nursed back to health after surviving chilly weather
...It’s hard to feed bats in care, because they normally eat in flight..."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/29/houston-texas-frozen-bats-nursed-health-winter-storm
happy neue year… 2023 or 536?… and yet, here we are - "C'etait une nuit orageuse et sombre"
ReplyDelete536
wiki account
more
Schulz
wiki
Happy Hooligan
whine wind witches…
for sell…
6 words
sci-fi
"We thought lenticular clouds were clouds."
frohes neues jahr/urte berri on/novus annus……例年通り
ReplyDelete536 ☛ 538
538
Justinian
3 things
as 1941 started
flash fiction
ReplyDelete(true or false?)
ChatGPT prompt:
did Ernest Hemingway write a six word story
Yes, Ernest Hemingway is credited with writing a six-word story that reads, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." This story is often referred to as the "shortest story" and is an example of a form of literature known as "flash fiction," which consists of extremely short stories that typically have a complete narrative arc within a few hundred words. Hemingway's six-word story has been widely anthologized and has inspired numerous imitations and variations.
did he?
Mull: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."
Arthur C. Clarke duped?
correction -
Happy Hooligan
For Sale: search engine, incorrectly used ˚‧º·(˚ ˃̣̣̥᷄⌓˂̣̣̥᷅ )‧º·˚ .·´¯`(>▂<)´¯`·. Ernie Himminwaygone
ReplyDeleteyear end wandering
ReplyDeletestochastic parrot
Turing Institute, tl;dw
to peruse
err
Bach faucet… & I'm out
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year. I really liked the Year in Review table, although it made me realize that I need to follow through and write up my search path more often. I noticed that while I had done the challenge, I hadn't actually written up and posted my search path. There's next year to do better. :-)
ReplyDeleteI always the enjoy the challenges that involve imagery (going way back to "I woke up here".) I also like challenges that involve finding a new tool to either search or create something.
Something I'm wondering about: Educators have long been encouraged to look at writing Google-proof questions. Questions that can't easily be googled for the answer. I always thought the writers for Jellyvision, the makers or That's A Fact, Jack! Read did a good job of this when the questions were posed to the students in situations that weren't stated explicitly in the book. Questions like "How do you think Fern would react to finding a stray dog with a hurt leg?" or "When Jim is freed what is probably the first thing he will do?"
Will AI be able to answer those types of questions? Will there be a way for educators to ChatGPT-proof their assignments?
I've also been thinking of proposing a challenge to you dealing with corpuses that might not be indexed by Google. This year I might actually figure it out to the end and get it to you...
Wishing everyone a safe and Happy New Search Year.
As you know, the AGoogleADay site had a few thousand "non-Googleable" questions, but with the intro of Large Language Models, some of those have become moot. In general, we ARE going to have to figure out how to work around LLMs for educational purposes. Having a student use ChatGPT (or friends) to answer questions is a just a waste of everyone's time--the student and the teachers.
DeleteI hope it isn’t too late to chime in here.
ReplyDeleteI prefer the challenges that have to do with science and nature, such recent topics being tides, bats, and internal incorporation (from 2021). I especially like ones that are more complex and open-ended and lend themselves to explorations beyond the challenge after the answer is known, ones that can spawn other questions for my personal musings. That is how life is, at least mine, and how some scientific discoveries (and disasters) occur.
I have learned a lot from the challenges that have introduced me to tools I did not know, such as Google Books, Images, and the reverse dictionary. These are not as thought provoking but have proved useful in a wide range of contexts.
Never too late. Thanks for the comments... and glad you're finding SRS useful!
Delete