Random Thoughts 2/19/11

• My darling über-wife did her first bit of preaching at the women's retreat last night and this morning.  From all reports she did a great job!  She has a good bit of public speaking experience through Weight Watchers but this was one of the first times she spoke in a church setting.
• I watched the "Jeopardy!" episodes earlier this week when an IBM supercomputer named "Watson" squashed two human champions.  I guess I'm not that impressed.  Most of its points came on basic name-that-author, name-that-date kind of questions that a computer ought to be able to answer almost instantly before a human can respond.  On the other, there were entire categories where the computer was utterly clueless, demonstrating how completely unable the super-machine was to understand language that a small child could get.  Don't get me wrong, Watson represents a huge jump forward in computers understanding human language, but it's not there yet in spite of the $1 million "Jeopardy!" win.
• Here's the newest, biggest 747 yet.
• I took the kids to uncle Dustin's last night to play with their cousins and see our old cat, Leuk.  They all had a blast, nine kids trying to pet one cat at the same time!
• I think that school teachers are awesome people in general but the Wisconsin teacher's union issue that's going on right now makes teachers and unions look really bad.  Greedy, selfish, "pay us money that doesn't exist or we'll throw your kids under the bus."  The average Wisconsin teacher gets paid half again more than the average Wisconsin private sector employee in salary and benefits.  Way to bite the hand that over-feeds you!
• Here's hoping that Apple releases a new laptop for me this week.  The rumors point that direction.