Fungible Convictions

I tried KGB for the first time tonight, and it looks like the whole thing is automated using a semantic language program (similar to how Ask.com worked).

Here in Boston there’s an commercial running where an auto dealer will pay the first year of a lease if the temperature at Logan Airport reaches 96 degrees this Labor Day. I wanted to see what the chances of that happening are, so I texted KGB “What’s the hottest Labor Day on record at Boston’s Logan Airport?” KGB’s reply was, “The highest temperature ever recorded in Boston, MA was 107 degrees Fahrenheit on Aug 2 1975.”

So KGB ignored two key parts of the question that a human would see—that I’m asking specifically about Logan Airport and specifically about Labor Day—leaving me to think a computer is doing the answering, at least initially. (There’s a third part, “on record,” that’s more or less redundant.)

When I replied that they didn’t answer the question, they followed up with an acknowledgment that they couldn’t find the answer and they were issuing me a credit for the $0.99 charge per answer. It’s a little disappointing overall, because there is an answer—KGB staff would simply have to click 122 times (the first official Labor Day in Boston was in 1887) through a page like this one at Weather Undergound. KGB just wasn’t interested in spending the time it takes to look it up.

I went ahead and did it. The answer to “What’s the hottest Labor Day on record at Boston’s Logan Airport?” is 94 degrees in 1928*. So if you’re thinking of leasing a car with Pride Motors of Lynn, Massachusetts, don’t do it just because you think you might get a year free.

* Temperature records at Logan go back to 1920, and the airport itself opened in 1923, making ’23 the latest possible year applicable to the question.

When I opened my eyes this morning, the sky was yellow. Not the sun, because it was overcast and a little rainy. The sky was literally yellow. I got a reply-tweet from an MIT student who confirmed she saw the same thing:

@akwhitacre Glad I’m not crazy. I spent a while wondering if my eyes were going wonky.

The weirdness of the yellow sky captures the mood today, because I’m watching my wife get one piece of weird news after another. Her father found out he has five herniated disks. Her cousin went to the hospital and was diagnosed with diverticulitis and may need surgery. She checked Newsday to find out a) a woman was beaten a couple blocks from the church where we were just married and b) an old classmate of hers has gone missing.

I pray for healing backs, healthy colons, a lot of justice, and a safe return. But mainly I pray that I don’t see that yellow sky again.