Syria
Latest
New MIT software learns an entire dead language in just a few hours
Whenever we boot up our time machines, cruise back to 1200 B.C., and try to pick up chicks at our favorite wine bar in Western Syria, our rudimentary knowledge of Ugaritic is usually more embarrassing than helpful. The good folks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have us stoked on some new software we hope to have in pocket form soon. It analyzes an unknown language by comparing letter and word patterns to another known language (in Ugaritic's case, its close cousin is Hebrew) and spits out a translation quickly, using precious little computing power. To give some perspective, it took archaeologists four years to do the same thing back in 1928. It's not quite Berlitz yet, but this proof of concept is kind of like the Michael Jordan of computational linguists -- it's probably the first time that machine translations of dead scripts has been proven effective. If we plug some hopeful numbers into our TI-83, we calculate that we'll be inserting our own genes into the ancient Syrian pool in a matter of months. Thanks, MIT! [Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons]
News Alert: Syrian prez doesn't play video games
The controversy surrounding the positive and negative effects of modern video games has drawn commentary from luminaries ranging from the governor of California to the Pope. But among all this high-level pontificating, one question has loomed large: What does Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad think of video games? Apparently, he doesn't like them. This according to an interview Al-Assad gave to Good Morning America's Diane Sawyer, who figured that since the dictator has "talked about the internet," a question about video games was appropriate. Al-Assad tersely answered that he uses the internet "for information, not for video games" before moving on to important topics like his favorite movies and what's on his iPod (we're not kidding). Al-Assad's discussion got us wondering how the world might be different if more heads of state actually were gamers? Could President Bush gain a deeper understanding of history through Civilization? Could a nice, calm game of Mario soothe Tony Blair's nerves after a long day in front of Parliament? Could the world-gobbling power of Katamari Damacy satiate the ambitions of Kim Jong-Il? The world may never know. [Via NewsBusters]
