"what can teens do with hypodermic needles?" "dull sheep" and "silence in wolf hall" - More interesting Google searches

I've been busy all day, so this is a good time to put up this Google search post I've been building up for a while.   These are terms that people have used to get to this blog in the last couple of months. 


how to find a guy that beat you up - This search led to the post on the man who found the priest who'd molested him and his brother many years ago and beat him up.  That's sort of like what the person was looking for.  I'd love to be able to post this person's story.  Maybe I'll write a book of short stories based on google search terms.


what teens can do with hypodermic needles - Is this someone looking for an school art or science fair project? They got to a post on disposing hypodermic needles at airport restrooms.'


i am chairman can't i voice my oposition about something through robert's rules of order - I don't think he got a direct answer, but he did get to a favorite post entitled "Through The Chair" which mentions Roberts' Rules of Order.


could a button mushroom decompose a bald eagle -It got to a post about an Anchorage International Film Festival movie called "Know Your Mushrooms" which included this sentence about the movie:  ". . . lots of information on mushrooms - their contribution to the decomposition on earth, relationship to religion, health aspects, and psychedelic." aspects.  Bald eagle would have shown up on the page too because it's one of the labels listed at the bottom in the right hand column.

easiest bones to break in your foot - Do you suppose this person wants to break the easy ones first before going on to the more difficult ones? Like many others, Easiest Bones got to the post "Life's Little Surprises" about J's broken foot bone.

what do zoologists wear - got to a picture of turkey giblets. This was in a Thanksgiving day post, "Don't Trust The Internet With Your Giblets" which included very funny definitions of giblets (all different) from an internet forum. One commenter wrote:

 The term is culinary usage only; zoologists do not refer to the "giblets" of a bird.

and this was right next to the picture of the giblets, which I guess is why the picture got linked to 'zoologist'.  And, guessing again, the searcher got distracted from zoologists' clothing by a picture of giblets fresh out of the oven.

why can't 'crazy' people vote? - got to another google search post entitled "Can Crazy People Vote In Alaska?"  to which I responded, 

"Yes, and they can run for office.  And they win too."

everytime i kill an animal with my bike it appears on my shirt i don't know why i think the devil does it -Really?!  got to a picture of the title of the movie "Before the devil knows you're dead."  Image searches, as I said above, give people a lot of choices, and they seem to be easily distracted from what they were originally looking for.  But serendipity isn't a bad thing.

is my daughter going to pull a columbine - This is a red flag kind of query. They got to a post called "I was gonna pull a Columbine." I looked to see if it had any sort of answer for them. Not in the text, but there was a video where Brent Scarpo talks about one of his most rewarding experiences. A guy heard him talking and later told him "I was gonna pull a Columbine" until I heard you. Perhaps they watched the video and got inspired to find out more from Brent.

dull sheep - Do I have a post on boring sheep? Then I checked what this person got to. A picture of dall sheep. I'm guessing that might be what they were looking for.

Coincidence or some trick in google's algorithm?  There was this search:

silence in wolf hall - Got to "Words and Silence in Wolf Hall"  a review of the book Wolf Hall.

Then the very next hit (it didn't show what terms they were searching) took someone to an archive* page that started with a post entitled "Code of Silence or Mob Silence?"
I don't think I have very many posts that have silence in the title and blogspot says I have 3822 posts altogether. 
(*An archive page is an old page that has a number of posts on it.)

florida hitchhiker says there will be no election but catastrophe in the west - Two weeks before the election.  Got to a post on the hitchhiker who got picked up by a taxi.



what does copulation mean - a reasonable question that led to a post entitled "Morrie, does copulation mean what I think it means?"  It also led me to write a very short mnemonic poem to help people remember the meaning:  copulation increases population. 


how can muddling through by lindblom be scientific - Great question.  The searcher got to a post on Lindblom's science of muddling through, I don't directly address that question.  Maybe a topic for another post one day.

who does stephen have to know? -  Got them to the blog.  Except that I spell my name with a 'v'. 

how to know if you have dormant vampire genes - Searches like this remind me of how many different subjects I've covered. This person got to my post Dormant Recessive Vampire Genes?  Neckrophelia?

i applied for vote by mail. it unregistered me voting scam - This came on election night.  It got to a post concerned with the potential for abusing voting machines.

why doesn't Alaska vote -  Is someone spreading false rumors about us?  We do vote.  Not always well.  I got two of these the morning after the election.  They got to the post "There are many ways to steal and election."

why do americans think the gb is the greatest country on earth -  This came from someone in Manchester.  So I googled, "why do Brits think Americans think gb is the greatest country on earth?" and got no direct answers but found this great post "50 Things That Changed Cycling."  BTW, the searcher got to my post  Is America The Greatest Nation? The Newsroom's Response.

electronically obscured license plate texas - This searcher's IP address and ISP said California Highway Patrol.  They got to  a picture of license plates for California senators.

Ethiopian Children with hula hoops and other Google Searches

I think this has been hanging around as a draft long enough.  Here are search terms that people used to get here.  Some got exactly what they were looking for, some google (most are google, but sometimes another search engine

ethiopian children with hula hoops - No Ethiopian kids, but there were some hula hoops at the post they got.

what do egyptian people look like  - The was from a computer at the Egleston's Children's Hospital in Atlanta, so let's assume it was someone young asking this question.  They got to a post with some pictures of Egyptian statues in the Berlin Museum.




things to know about alaskan backyards -  This Kiwi got to a post on moose in the backyard.  Alaska's a big place and some places, like Juneau, don't have moose.  But it's certainly something to know about Anchorage backyards. 



how do you make teotihuacan mask from egypt - It's not easy, since Teotihuacan is in Mexico. They did get to some Egyptian mummy masks in Berlin's Neues Museum.

as an artist, diego rivera related the concerns of, a.) the u.s., b.) the government, c.) workers, d.) women-  Sure looks like a test question.  The answer's on the post about the Detroit Institute of Art's Rivera room, but he or she'll will have to figure it out. 


how big does a glacier have to be - To qualify as a glacier and not an ice cube?  To not melt in the next 50 years?  Wonder what the person wanted to know?  Google did the best it could and got him He got to the post How big is big?  Child's Glacier


2zghx ch`ด' - This was a Babylon search and it showed me what the person got:

What Do I Know?: November 2008
Nov 30, 2008 ... Lévi-Strauss, in Myth and Meaning ponders in a chapter called "When ... The ones in this chapter are particularly relevant to Alaskan since they ...whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html - 379k - Similar pages

 I checked the archive page this was on.  I have no idea why my page showed up.  There are other posts which have Thai script on them including the letter 'ด' but I couldn't find one on this page.  This Lévi-Strauss post does mention Thailand.  The searcher was from Chile.

baskin robbins halal certificates -Sometimes even I am surprised at what all is on my blog.  This person in Malaysia found a photo of the IFANCA (Islamic Food And Nutrition Council of America) certificate in a Baskin Robbins shop in Klang, Malaysia in this post.

woodpecker shoes pakistan - Lots of thoughts went through my head.  Can't be woodpeckers wearing shoes. . . . Until finally the most logical would be really pointy toed shoes, like a woodpecker's beak.  But who knows?  They didn't get either, but they got to this inspiring story:  Pakistani Official Tends Sikh Shoes and Toilets To Atone Muslim Killing Of Sikh.

Mimas tiliae

Mimas tiliae - Sometimes this blog is like a little bookstore that has obscure titles hidden away, just waiting for the one person who will want that particular book. It's been two years since I posted this one and finally someone from Denmark came looking for it: Instead of a real post - here's Mimas tiliae 


what is interim plan - I recognize that I sometimes report on things that have a lot of jargon.  I have explained more than once, say, terms used by the Redistricting Board, knowing that many readers haven't read the previous posts.  But I didn't think I needed to explain 'interim.'  I can't help but say to myself, "Get a dictionary."  But google does serve that function too.  And bloggers can't be choosers.  I should be saying thanks to the  several people  who got to this Redistricting Board post where I mention the interim plan and I say the Board adopted an Amended Plan and "an Interim plan in case the Amended plan doesn't get all the approvals it needs in time for the June 1 candidate filing deadline."  Do you think that's enough context for them to figure it out? 

rubber ring blender on top or bottom of blade - There's a long colonoscopy post which includes having to buy a new osterizer and then finding out all I needed was the rubber ring.
Maybe the picture helped this person answer the question.


a five column chart for nectarines using your five senses - This was an image search. Something about a chart I had up distracted them from nectarines. They got to a chart on Reported Rates of Voting and Registration: 1996 - 2008 post on Senate candidate Scott McAdams 

yhgujniolmpw - This person, from the Philippines with a US-English language computer, got to an archive page that had a story about an Anchorage man we know who was back from Afghanistan.  It had a word with 'yh' in it. Was this just random typing?

He was in a FOB (Forward Operating Base) in Iskandiriayh most of the time.

That's my best guess why they got to this blog.

batman in arabic -  Another direct hit.  This person got this picture from a post on a hot day in Chicago.   If you enlarge the picture enough and you know Arabic, I think you can see it.


anybody record if i sex with my wife through skype? - I'm not sure if this guy is worried that someone might record them or is looking for someone to record them. I suspect the former. He got to my post on Call Recorder which lets you record skype conversations and video. Your own conversations only.  But he's right to be concerned.  I could tell from his footprint here that he was checking from Vancouver, Canada and his computer is set up to use Indian English.

english mass nouns two gallon gasoline - It took me a bit to figure this one out. But it makes sense and this searcher got to a post on countable vs. mass nouns called "amount of people employed as an architect" 

kosti nohy - 
ayak kemikleri -  I've learned (with the help of online translation websites) that kosti nohy is foot bones in Czech and ayak kemikieri is foot bones in Turkish.  For some reason, I get hits at my post on J's broken foot in Czech and Turkish (and English), but not other languages.



can i copy verbatim from a press release? -Hmmm.  Is this from a newspaper writer?  A blogger?  Got to my follow up post on this exact practice.

what are those cotton like things floating in anchorage - And this person got to a post which answers the question - cottonwood seeds.

porno beauti - First, how does Google offer an image titled 'looking up cactus" to someone seeking 'porno beauti'? Second, why would a porn seeker choose that image over the others that come up? This is definitely a kink I've never heard of before. But once I actually looked at the image I realized it does have some phallic qualities, but really . . .




a travel club of musicians,poets,dancers all come together have a art festival - I had no idea where that might have gone, but the Spenard jazz festival poetry and dance turned out to be related to the search.

only chinese people like kenny g - This is terrible, but I have to admit I laughed. It got to a post on Pat Metheny's view on kenny g. Actually, this almost calls for a whole post to discuss. Let's say I think this person makes kenny g seem better than he is and Chinese people worse than they are.






what is the term for vampire arousal -  We should have a contest to answer this.  It got to my post on Thanksgiving Neckrophelia. I thought maybe I'm just behind the times so I googled "vampire arousal" and looked at the first to sites that popped up:  Vampire Seduction Guide  and Vampire Sexual Secrets.  Neither seemed to have a special term for vampire arousal.

"can crazy people vote in alaska?" - More Interesting Google Searches

One of the 'problems' of this blog is that it's not focused, at least in the same sense as a bike blog, a political blog, or an art blog. But it is focused in a much broader topic - how we know what we know. Which means I can tie in lots of diverse topics. (And sometimes I don't tie them in too well, but if I do it right, at least some of the people who see any given post will see something that makes them rethink what they know or learn something new.)

It's nice, then, to see google hits for some very specific things on a wide range of topics which get to a post that really does address what they were looking for. Here are some examples from the last couple of months:

rice huller traditionally used by hill-tribes in thailand - And I've got two different rice-hullers at a Thai hill tribe village we visited here.

skeena bakery hazelton - As we were driving from the Cassiar Highway in British Columbia to Prince George on the Yellowhead Highway (16) we stopped in Hazelton and asked where we could get free wifi.  That got us to the wonderful Skeena Bakery which I posted about here.


road to child's glacier - got to a post that showed the bridge that is failing which has caused the Department of Transportation to close the road for the next few years. 


taut zehlendorf house - this got to a post about housing in Berlin's Zehlendorf neighborhood designed by architect Bruno Taut in the 1920s as part of a progressive move to build decent housing for working class folks. 


kalanchoe pronounce - a post on how to pronounce the name of this common houseplant. 

how much are polar bears worth - Yes, there's a post that addresses this by taking Alaska's governor's estimation of what it would cost to save the polar bear and showing what else costs about the same.  Is saving the polar bear worth the pizza crusts that get thrown away in the US each year?

strassenbahnhaltestelle joseph beuys -  Joseph Beuys is an artist whose work we saw in Berlin.  One piece was called Strassenbahnhaltestelle (streetcarstop).  And this person got to the post about the Beuys exhibit with three photos of the Strassenbahnhaltestelle piece.  The whole exhibit at the Hamurger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin captured me completely when we were there in April 2010.  I couldn't explain to you why (This is NOT Norman Rockwell!), but I knew this was something special. I didn't buy the huge book on Beuys they had and CS commented that she had it and I could borrow it.  I have it now.  CS is no longer with us.  Joe, I'm keeping it safe for you.  Meanwhile, here's a description of the exhibit from the Independent from August 2011


how do you say hello in karen language - Bingo!  This person gets a video of a Karen teaching me how to say hello in Karen.  But I have to say there are several dialects, and I don't know how different they are in the greeting.

how to find blood volume of a shrew  -  Yes, I have it in this post which has the answer in the title:  "If a 2 g shrew has a reasonable volume of blood to support its metabolism, say 0.1 g, a 2 ton elephant will require 100 tons of blood, an obvious impossibility."
It was from a paper by a Dr. Melanie Moses who gave a talk through the University of Alaska Anchorage Complex Systems Group on how size determines the growth and behavior of organisms and societies.. 

how to tell the gender of a butterfly - I didn't even know I had this one.  But there it was in a past google search post with links to pages that help you figure out if you should call your butterfly he or she.

Then there are those that apparently google doesn't know what to do with and they end up here because I have a post or page with some of the terms the person was looking for. 

can crazy people vote in alaska? - Yes, and they can run for office.  And they win too.  This searcher got a post about the last US Senate race.  A commenter talked about crazy Alaskan voters.  

aliens causing electrical problems -  Extraterrestrial visitors?  The person got to America's Wealth of Fact Free Political Opinion, which seemed a good choice.  But why?  It looked at nonsense about illegal aliens. 



doctor have baby factory in polyps in colon what would life span be - Here's another google search phrase that holds at least a short story.  They got to a post on colonoscopies.


racial bloc analysis of redistricting with vacation homes  - OK, I get 'racial bloc analysis of redistricting.'   There are posts that mention that.  This searcher got to Redistricting Court Challenge: Dr. Arrington's Voter Rights Analysis Primer but how did the vacation homes get into this?  I'm sure there's an interesting story, especially since the searcher is from a Department of Justice computer.

From "Braile Tattoos" to "jesus of course i accept people with pierced bodies cartoon" - More Google Searches

Here are a few terms people used to get to this blog that caught my attention in the last couple of months for one reason or another.


diminutive crony -  Is this like a Leprechaun lobbyist?  The person got to the post on Cronyism at UAA. 

I got enough searches for this that I looked to see why.  It was part of clue #2 in the Independence, Kansas Neewholah Medallion scavenger hunt.  Here are the clues (regular font) with the answer in the bold font:

SUNDAY:
Allan and Mikael sang in this band,
the song was a big hit.
Two singers for the Hollies – “He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother”
A diminutive crony, they lent him a hand,
“He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother”
the first two lines provide the fit.
It’s a long road, with many a winding turn.

Diminutive Crony = My Brother?  That's a stretch, but it's a great, old song that people should listen to today when so many of our brothers (and sisters) need a little help. So I put it here on top so you can listen while you read the rest of the post.



The medallion was found:

LOCATION: Taped underneath a big green dumpster. Adjacent to the parking lot at the 10th street baseball/softball fields 

jesus of course i accept people with pierced bodies cartoon - they got to a photo of the cover of Gary Trudeau's book The Long Road Home.   But I want to see the Jesus cartoon.

utozombiesbra - This one got to a post on when the first Permanent Fund Dividend check was due out in 2010.  Searching the page found 'uto' in statutory and 'bra' in librarian, but no zombies.  The word vampire did appear though. 


ant egg oil reviews -  I didn't know people were using ant egg oil.  For cooking?  For driving?  This searcher got to the post Catching Up- Thai Bugs, which included a photo of a baggie full of red ant eggs - a delicacy for a Thai friend in Chiangmai. 



is there farsi book shop in london - This got to a post from LA which included a visit to a Persian book store.


blurk for newborn baby - Got to Baby Burke Brouhaha. But what's a blurk? The Urban dictionary offers two meanings that don't fit:

1. Popular, conventional wisdom which may be factually right or wrong, but which loses meaning through frequent, often thoughtless repetition
   
   "Tommy never thinks for himself. He just repeats these blurks that he hears all day on CNN and then tries to pass it off as wisdom.
   
   
2. to spew, chuck, or to throw up.
   
   when something is disgusting 

Maybe it was just a typo.  Maybe someone whose vocabulary includes 'blurk' can clarify.


wooden post old timey pig pen - Not too many people say 'old timey' these days. [Actually, since I wrote this, I've started to notice it again.] It's cool when the kind of word someone uses amplifies the meaning of the word itself. And this searcher got to a post (no pun intended really) with an old wooden pig pen in Thailand.
Someone else 20 minutes later got there with natural pig pen which worked, but just didn't have the same ring.


I've been noticing that sometimes two folks get to the same post, one after the other, seconds apart. Does someone clicking on a link cause Google to push that post higher for the very next person who searches for the same or a similar term? For example:
what do i know (from Toronto at 9:26:26am Alaska Time) came right on the heals of explain the quote "what do i know" (from Alexandria, VA at 9:26:25am). But messing up my speculation here (or maybe there's even more going on than I know) the first one came from Bing and the second from Google. This is probably a bad example because the second one got the post with the Victor Lebow quote and the second to the main What Do I Know? page. Or maybe that's evidence that it's just coincidence.  But I've been seeing this pattern lately.

braille tatoos - Never thought about this, though I have thought that surgeons should learn how to make artistic stitches so that the scars they leave have a cool design. This searcher got to a post on braille playing cards.   I'd also note that tattoo has 3 t's, but bloggers who misspell words pick up readers who misspell them too.

what if i didn't get my alaska permanent fund check yet - This one came October 22 from Las Vegas.   The checks were distributed October 6.  But the website also says, "Applications in eligible status after September 23 and before October 21 will be distributed October 27."  So it may still be coming.  But searches like this stir my imagination. How many stories can you create to explain this inquiry? An Alaskan living Outside? Visiting Oustside? Former Alaskan hoping to get one more PFD check? Or a gambling addict waiting for his check? Lots of possibilities.
BTW, the searcher got to a 2010 post on the PFD, not the 2011 post.   Neither would have answered the specific question.  But this gave me a chance to respond to an overlooked question from Kathy in KY.
 

how many black us congressmen have been members of the us congress - My snarky answer: All of them. Sorry, I just can't help myself. This is not a biggie, but it shows how people can't quite say what they mean. But Google has a lot of tolerance for such people  and this person got to my post on the number of black congress members. Did you want to know about black Congresswomen too?
For those of you who have no idea what I find wrong in the query, leave a comment or email me and I'll explain.

modern office lobbies with taxidermied animals - This was an image search which gave them this picture and highlighted this sentence from the post "Providence Alaska Medical and Animal Park" : "Some places have stuffed moose or bear in the lobby."

This is indeed an office building lobby, but the moose isn't in a glass case.  This is Anchorage and the moose is live,  outside, browsing the landscaping.

andropi -  Do you think they were looking for entropy?  In any case the got the post Happy Birthday, Moni, Alex, and Ropi see the andropi?).  Probably not what they wanted.  It said North America, on a computer using US - English and Linux but in a European time zone. (Yes, Sitemeter tells me all that, and usually the city and country too.)  While computer time in Sitemeter is usually a good clue to the visitor's location when location itself is 'unknown', it reflects the timezone set on the computer.  So, when I'm traveling, my computer still reflects Alaska time.

what to google when you cant sleep -  Why not?  You can find everything else on google.  This person got to a previous google search post "those nights when you can't sleep, it might be bacause you're awake in someone else's dream film" - More Google Search Terms which had gotten that person to a post on the movie Inception.

what is the name of the flower you blow on it and everything little whote thing come out when you make a wish - Google got this person to an archive page.  If the searcher scrolled down long enough, she would have gotten a picture of a dandelion flower gone to seed and an explanation about making wishes.  Not bad Google.  But why didn't you just take the person straight to the dandelion post instead of the whole archive page?




owl to put in tower -  What does this mean?  Is this some sort of Harry Potter reference?  This person got to this picture of a great horned owl up close at the July 4th celebration on the park strip post.  There was also a climbing tower in the post.

frank "the tank" sullivan has acquired 38 plates at the flying saucer - Here's another good example of how one could use Google search terms to write short stories. Clearly there is a story behind this. Google gave him an archive page (August 30, 2011 back to Aug. 17) which includes the words: Frank (Murkowski); tank (underground storage); plates (license); and flying saucer (house). The number 38 is on the page too.

how do you eat them orchestras - Who knows what this person was thinking?   He got to a post about an orchestra that makes its instruments out of vegetables.  I guess Google did about as well as could be expected.

2012 number missouri delegates republican convention  - Google got this person into the vicinty, but should have taken him to the exact page. This person got sent to the blog, but not to a specific page.   I'd done a post recently on the Republican primaries and the possibility of selecting their candidate at the convention specifically answered this question.  I'm not sure if the searcher found it.  If he searched 'Missouri' on the page, he should have found it.

That's it for now, for previous such pages click here.

Image in Images Out - Google's New Reverse Image Search

I noticed today Google was offering me the ability to do an image search,  not by using words, but actually putting the image into the search window. (Did this start a while ago and I just missed it? See more below on this.)

click to make it clearer

I tried it. First I dragged in a picture I'd recently put up on my blog and it found it. It wasn't instant, but maybe 15 or 20 seconds. (A 2.7 MB image took over 4 minutes)

Then I tried an image of a painting of a lotus I'd taken, but not posted.. It found nothing, but gave me what it called "visually similar images."

You can judge for yourselves how 'similar' these are. I need some visual artists to tell me why Google found these others similar.  To me, color is clearly important.  Then the shape - Google seems to see two circles, and how space is taken up in the image.


There are a lot of potential consequences of this ability - whether they are positive or negative depends on whether you are the beneficiary or victim.

1.  You see someone on the street and you take their picture.  Then you could look them up on the web.

Well, this is still in the future.  They don't seem to be doing face recognition yet as you can see below.

It's basically faces that are approximately the same size and have a similar color background.  The original has a full head of hair and a beard, but the pictures include smooth shaven and bald folks and even two women and a baby.   The baby might have been chosen because the background is so similar. 


2.   If someone wanted to see if others were using his copyrighted image, this might help find it.
At this point, this seems like a good use.  It appears the closer the picture is to the original the more likely it is to show up.  Of course if they only used a part of the picture, it probably won't show up because it would change the shape/form and basic colors.  [See more below.]

3.  If you wanted to identify a bird or a flower, this could be a good tool, but so far it isn't.  When I tried a close up of a  round pink flower, it gave me other round pinkish flower closeups, but it clearly wasn't paying any more attention to the flower details than it was paying attention to the facial details above.  They were totally different flowers - again, it was all about the color and shape in relation to the size of the image.

I'm sure this will be refined, and as it is, it will start to change the conditions of privacy even further than Facebook and other internet applications already have.

When you click on "Learn More" you get a page which tells you which browsers are compatible with this:

• Chrome
• Firefox 3.0+
• Internet Explorer 8+
• Safari 5.0+

It also says that the pictures you put into search then become part of their library.  I think I'll be sparing about what I put in.

• Preview image: see a small version of the image that you searched with. (Note that if you return to that results page after a certain time, you may not see this image anymore.)
• Best guess: if our system can find a text description for your image, you'll see it appear as a link to further search results. You might also see a few top web results for that text query. To change your search, edit or add to the best guess by typing in the search bar.
• Visually similar images: see a set of images that are close matches to the image that you searched with. Click the link to see additional images that are similar.
• Pages that include matching images: see web pages that show your image on their site
• Other searches related to this image: if our system finds more than one "best guess" description, you'll see them as links at the bottom of the page. Click one to see full search results for that query.

"Google's use of user-submitted images and URLs

When you use Search by Image, any images that you upload and any URLs that you submit will be stored by Google and treated in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Google uses those images and URLs solely to provide and improve our products and services."

This is below, where the more is.

I decided I better google to see if it's been there a while and I just missed it.  First I found this (notice 2009) and I couldn't believe I'd been so unaware - until I read it all.

Similar Images graduates from Google Labs

10/27/2009 03:34:00 PM

Today, we're happy to announce that Similar Images is graduating from Google Labs and becoming a permanent feature in Google Images. You can try it out by clicking on "Find similar images" below the most popular images in our search results. For example, if you search for jaguar, you can use the "Find similar images" link to find more pictures of the car or the animal.

Same words - ' similar images' - but for text searches.  So that's totally different.

It appears the video they use to promote this when you click learn more, was on  Youtube June 13, so I am a bit behind here.

Searchnewz has a June 15 report saying this feature, which was originally available on something called TinEye and called 'reverse image search' was appreciated by photographers looking for copyright infringement.  It was available on Chrome then, so that might be why I hadn't seen it earlier.  [I've added 'reverse' to my title now.]

Pundit Kitchen did a search like my face search above on June 15 and found Google couldn't distinguish between Obama and Bush.

A July 15 article at addons suggest this was only available on Firefox as an addon, so perhaps it's just recently become a standard Firefox feature.

Technicallydigital has a post touting it as an addon for Mozilla-Firefox on September 19.  I'm feeling better about just noticing it on Firefox today, but I'm guessing it's been up a few days.

Poop, Swoop, Can Weird Be Cool, and other Google Searches

Watching how people get to this site offers an interesting view of how people search Google (and other search engines) and how Google handles them. Some of the more recent ones are below.  For previous posts on google searches click here.


the millions sank awestruck in the dust -This person got to  Susan and William Goldenberg Make Stunning Music a brother and sister team who had reminded me of another couple making music together in Richard Musil's The Man Without Characteristics. So I had a paragraph from the book that began with "The millions sank, as Nietzsche describes it, awestruck in the dust."  I'd say this person found what they were looking for.

pennsylvania had to endora, sorry, endure this lady in 1972 - Who says civility is dead?  This searcher (why do I think it's a woman?) even apologized to Google and corrected herself. I have no idea if she found the scurge of Pennsylvania. She got to Famous People Born in 1908, so maybe.

half moon bay beach - I've gotten this a couple of times recently.  I have pictures of Half Moon Bay beach on this post and this one in moonlight.   But they get sent, instead, to this post of Venice Beach, which does mention Half Moon Bay.  Google, why isn't there an easy way for me to tell you that you sent them to the wrong page?  I've since linked from the Venice post back to the actual Half Moon Bay beach posts.

can weird be cool - got this lucky searcher to a post on Strange,Weird, Wonderful, and Cool, Buildings.  Perhaps the title answered the question.

aiff 2010 film festival scam? - Google, sometimes you exasperate me. I have posts about the aiff film festival scam.  More than one. With scam in the title. And usually you send people to a film festival post that at least mentions 'scam.' But this poor reader was sent to a post of AIFF 2010 Features in Competition which doesn't mention or link to a post with the the scam aspects. Why?   BTW, The Anchorage International Film Festival is legit, and weird and cool, but not the other AIFF which has changed its name to AIFA.

clearing customs in anchorage alaska flying from lower 48 - The same way you clear customs flying from New York to LA.  Oh dear.  There are still people who don't know that Alaska is in the United States.  On the other hand, when traveling overseas where Americans aren't too popular, we can say we're Alaskans and we're always welcome.  They got Flying to Light - From Seattle to Anchorage.  That said, you can go through customs in Anchorage if you are flying from overseas, but not from the Lower 48.
 

morning discovery i shouldn't be alive -  Now, that, with a little editing, would be a great first line for a novel, or at least a short story.  This searcher from India (using a computer set on US English) got to this photo of sunset on Chester Creek in an archive that included an energy conference and Bridgman/Packer.




what does poop look like in litter box - This isn't as dumb a question as it might appear.  They got to my post  kitty litter technology, who knew? which included pictures of what I figured out, eventually, were clumps of cat piss, not poop. 

 money for being born in alaska - Let's get this clear.  There isn't money for being born in Alaska.  There is money - Alaska Permanent Fund Dividends - for people who live in Alaska and intend to stay indefinitely (ie - have no plans on moving away.)  The person got to a previous Google searches post where I'd highlighted someone asking a similar question, and then linked to Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend Application Time.

Horse diagram from an Oklahoma State website

where's mane on the map  - I'm sorry, I can't resist.  (click to make the image clearer) Strangely, the searcher got a map of Africa.  I've noticed, as a searcher, that Google gives you lots of choices of images, so I assume people might check out something different from what they were looking for. Is that serendipity or Attention Deficit Disorder?

 
hulling rice in a thai village - Usually Google does a pretty good job, as it did here. This searcher got to pictures of an old and a newer rice huller in this post  (Sustainable Farming The Old Fashioned Way - Karen Village)  at a Thai village.


how to wash a white rooster -  No laundering instructions, but this person got to a post called Swinging Bulbul and White Rooster.  There's a  video of the bulbul swinging in the tree outside our Chiang Mai apartment window in 2008 and a photo of a white rooster I passed daily on my ride to work. 

what does swoop mean in todays facebook languages - Six Books:  Media, Ethics, Balance and Language, which has the words 'swoop,' 'facebook,' and 'language'  but doesn't answer the question.  (I checked and the online slang dictionary says, in a 2000 posting, that swoop means:

to take something or somebody from someone.
  I swooped on your girlfriend.

The Source for Youth Ministry Slang Dictionary gives it a little more positive meaning:

swoop me up
1. requesting someone to pick you up in their car.  "Swoop me up for school in the morning." 

 The Urban Dictionary in its definition for the verb 'to ninja' echoes the first definition:

14. v. the act of stealing, swooping, or snaking something. usually the person who has been ninja'd upon does not realize it for a little while, and then they are mad when they find out that something of theirs has been ninja'd.

Hey man you ninja'd my chair. Why the hell did you ninja my book, Jordan?

Does this answer the question? 



I've never thought about it before, and I'll check, but I'm guessing the reason there are no capital letters or question marks is that Sitemeter simplifies things.  Sitemeter is how I see all these search terms and much more.  You can see what Sitemeter  tells me at the Sitemeter link in the right hand column below "Blogs of Friends and Acquaintences." Click on the number.  Because I believe in transparency, I've left the data available to anyone.

Enjoy your day and reflect on how you phrase your searches and what you get.

Mr. Doob's Google Gravity

I have no idea what this is about, but someone got to this blog from here.

http://mrdoob.com/projects/chromeexperiments/google_gravity/


Go ahead, click on it.  It'll just take a few seconds.  Then, move your cursor.

[UPDATE:  Also check out posts on Weenie Google, Epic Google,  and the Revolving Internet. ]

[UPDATE 9/13:  Here's a post I've now done on "Who Is Mr. Doob?"  An amazing, creative guy.]

"those nights when you can't sleep,it might be because you're awake in someone else's dream film" - More Google Search Terms

It's been a while. Here are some more interesting search terms people used to get here.

samsui women - Google really screws up here.  I posted about a movie called Samsui Women - who had been brought to Singapore to do manual labor.  This searcher was in Singapore.  But Google took the searcher to a post on Ukrainian women.

"my year in germany "  -  How did this one (from Karlsruhe, Germany) get to "How To Pronounce Kalenchoe?" I checked. The comments on this post got into correct and incorrect pronunciation and grammar in general. And in my response, I wrote, "My year in Germany taught me things like why it's "I" or "me" in different cases. But years of teaching also taught me that the actual content is more important than fussing over minor typos. . ."

number of people that had a watch in 1910 - interesting question that wasn't answered here.  Searcher got to famous people born in 1910. 

how move on from ipv "intimate partner violence" and meet new guy - I hope she got some help from the post on a ipv prevention meeting.  Good luck!

how much pfd fund a month i'll get in alaska  - this came from someone in New Haven, Connecticut.  Was the person thinking the oil money dividend we all get each year was worth moving to Alaska for?  He got a page from last year at application time on the Fund . Remember, we all live in igloos, use dog sleds, it's dark all winter, and the one day of summer each year, we get devoured by giant mosquitoes.

those nights when you can't sleep,it might be bacause you're awake in someone else's dream film  -  Wow, that's an interesting thought!  Google guided this Russian image browser to this shot from a post on the movie Inception.  Which is relevant to being in other people's dreams.



how do they get the wires across mountains - This searcher got to a post entitled Man on Wire Raises Interesting Questions - about the movie on the man who walked from one of the World Trade Center towers to the other on a wire.  They got the wire across to the other building with a bow and arrow, but I don't think  they get them across mountains that way.


set up educatoin inside of ten states of south sudanese, then foreigners countries you could think off,or forget it. - A lot of Google searches sound a lot like classroom assignments. This one was a Yahoo search from Kansas City, MO and I like how he added on a bit of what he thought about this assignment.   It didn't say what page he got to here.


how to japanese gift wrap a football - There was nothing about footballs in the post on Japanese cloth gift wrapping, furoshiki.


does idaho exist - I do have a post on this and the importance of studying philosophy, but what struck me about this search is where it came from:

ISP         State of Nebraska / Office of the CIO

did sarah palin and frank prewitt ever work together?  - This got to the review on Prewitt's The Last Bridge to Nowhere.  I don't recall any stories of them working together. 



will my boyfriend in jail know i am corresponding with other inmates on corrlinks - I don't think corrlinks will tell him, but the other inmates might, especially when they want to push his buttons.  My post on email for federal prisoners didn't answer this question.

I think one could write a book of short stories just by creating a back story of google search terms.


oh my god he killed kenny g pat metheny -  I get a fair number of hits on variations of "Pat Metheny on Kenny G" but this is the most extreme to find the posts on this topic.


what famous people were born from illegal parents in american - I'm considering just what 'illegal parents' might mean. They stole the baby? They broke the mommy and daddy laws? Probably the searcher merely meant the parents were criminals. He got famous people born in 1909.

foot bones side
bones of the foot
foot bones  - Suddenly, one day (March 14) I was getting hits with these terms (about a dozen) and going to a post with an xray of my wife's heal fracture. The post has been up almost a year and only today have I noticed people getting there. I googled to see if it had just moved up on google. I went through about ten pages and then switched to google images and still nothing. Then I noticed it didn't say "google." It said "google.ie." That turns out to be google on internet explorer, but when I checked back, I was getting people from google.com as well. But I also found a post at PC world discussing a flaw in google.ie that allows 'politically motivated attacks." It wasn't clear what that meant, but I don't use ie so I'm not worried. Oh, yes, google takes them to "Life's Little Surprises." 
After more hits and more exploring, a picture of foot bones I borrowed for that post - and gave credit for - is high on the google image searches.  (The first person I noticed had clicked on a picture of  my wife's foot xray which I did take myself.)

Mental paradise -  I like those two words together.  I need to stop and think more about the concept.  The searcher found a picture of birds of paradise in the Singapore Bird Park and a page of Singapore posts.  But it must have been ok cause she spent 23 minutes here.

syllables in meandering - Never thought about it, but if you read this word, it would be logical to assume it is  "méan-der-ing" not what we actually say "me-án-der-ing."  Such a good word!  This searcher from India got to a page about Charles Dickens praising meandering at the beginning of David Copperfield. 

    if i give the fbi information does that make me guilty - Some searchers ask questions that make me wish I could call them up and talk to them.  There's obviously an interesting story here from this east coast query.  I don't think the person got the answer they were searching for in the post about the FBI 'whistle-blower' complaint.


things to hate about rafael nadal - There may be some perfectly good explanation for this search, but on the face of it, I find it troubling. Does one have to go looking for things to hate?   The search got to a story on Nadal's coach/uncle.

i know a little bit of this and that blog alaska - I love how the human mind sort of mushes things together and gets close.  If we assume that this blogger actually was trying to get here and was trying to remember the name of the blog, then she would have been conflating the title - What Do I Know? - with the tag line in the heading - this and that as things come up.  Or maybe that person was looking for something else altogether and google delivered her here.

my aunt's husband died we are estranged what to do - Oh Google, how could you do this?  This is where humans beat computer algorithms.  First, there's a talent to writing good search terms and this googler is asking a really open ended question. But evil google saw the words "estranged" and "husband" and took this person to a post entitled Woman Bites Off Estranged Husband's Penis. The aunt's husband is dead google, this isn't the answer.

The FBI is Looking For Some Code Crackers for 1999 Case

People have been getting to a December 2008 post  titled Can You Crack FBI's Code?  today.  Enough to make me wonder if they had put up a new code.

And they have, only this one isn't a game.  But I guess the success of the gamers (someone sent me the answer to the code nine minutes after I posted it) has spurred the FBI to post a real code that they can't figure out.  There were two coded pieces of paper in the pocket of a murder victim in 1999.  Here's the first note:

You can go to the FBI's site to see the whole story and the other note, and to let them know what it says.  I went to the link of the person who solved the 2008 code so quickly and left a message.  Maybe he can do this one in 20 minutes.

Google Works in Mysterious Ways - Liz Taylor's Husbands and Bones of the Foot

There was a bump in hits to the blog this morning.  People were getting here by googling variations of "liz taylor's husbands/children." 

(Let's pause a moment in remembrance of this beautiful woman and talented actor whose life was filled with great and not so great moments.  Each person is born with different personal characteristics and into different life situations.  There are no instruction books for life that fit all those different conditions.  The life of a beautiful woman has its own opportunities and hazards.  The life of child celebrities has additional perils. Elizabeth Taylor got to meet some of the most interesting people of the 20th Century, and was, perhaps, one of them herself.  But that's not, as her life demonstrated, a guarantee of generally sustained personal happiness.  Taylor's work for cures for AIDS has made a big contribution as did her excellent acting.)

Back to google's mysterious ways.  People are getting to my post on Famous People Born in 1909 which includes a short bio of one of Taylor's husbands, Mike Todd, which includes the line, 'and one of Elizabeth Taylor's husbands.'  (The one, I'd note, that seemed like the one that would last, but he died in a plane crash.  But a lover who dies in the height of the romance can never do wrong, so who knows?)   But could this humble blog's obscure mention of Taylor be snagging google hits for this?  I googled to see where What Do I Know?  showed up.  I gave up after 20 pages of google.  I did a google image search and didn't find the Todd picture I have up either. 

A second google mystery I've been pondering:  Suddenly one day last week I was getting hits on a post about my wife breaking a bone in her foot.  People were googling "bones of the foot" or 'foot bones."  I tried googling and again couldn't find a google page leading here.  But then I noticed these were image searches and there is a picture I found and posted (with attribution) with bones of the foot - in addition to an x-ray of my wife's foot.  And that showed up near the top of google images.  But why is google sending them to my blog instead of the original site with that picture? I realize this has to do with other factors google uses to rank websites and that blogs that update regularly like this one gain some advantage that way.  But what changed last week after 10 months with no hits from people searching for foot bone pictures?  It's like all of a sudden the switch was turned on. And it's continued every day since. 

These are hits I don't think I really 'deserve.'  They are accidents of google algorithms.  But then there are hits google botches - getting them to this blog, but not really to the best page here for the search terms. 

And since I'm doing this parenthetical blogging post, I'd note that I started a Famous People Born in 1911 post.  I have a list of names and started some bios.  But each year the internet gives me more 100 year old names than the previous years and my bio research keeps getting more elaborate and it takes more time.  And I'm distracted by other topics.  But I want to do this one because this year would be my father's 100th birthday.  So it might happen. 

"amount of people employed as an architect"

I keep collecting and posting (for example) interesting (or odd) google search terms that get people to this blog and I have a list to post before long. But this query is really a grammatical point too long to talk about in one of my google search posts.

Amount versus Number

"amount of people employed as an architect"

I'm not sure how aware I was of this misuse of 'amount' before I went to Thailand, but in Thailand I learned what the problem is. In Thai, you don't do something like add an 's' at the end of the word to indicate more than one. Instead you use a classifier. So, you say

• "man, two people,"  
• "car, four vehicles," or 
• "chair, two things-with-legs." 

Every noun has a classifier appropriate to that noun.  Usually a variety of things use the same classifier.  Tables, chairs, animals, are all in the class of things-with-legs.  But NOT people who have their own class. (Chinese has a similar way of making plurals.)

I realize that sounds totally weird to people used to adding an 's.' But we actually do the same thing in English for mass nouns. Some examples:

• I want five gallons of gas. (Not five gasses)
• Two cups of coffee please. (Though people say "two coffees," this is really short for "two cups of coffees" and not two beans or two pounds of coffee.)
• Three pounds of beef.
• We talk about dollars and cents, not monies.
• We can talk about three days of bliss, but not three blisses.

Count Nouns and Mass Nouns

The key is a distinction between 'count nouns' and 'mass nouns.' Like the term suggests, count nouns are things you can count - birds, books, noses, toes, bikes, songs.

Mass nouns are things that aren't individually separable: water, humanity, time, distance, rice, music, mail.  You have to use another word - a classifier - to indicate amounts of these things.  Some, like humanity, I can't think of any classifiers for, just vague descriptions like 'a lot of' (which, we can use for mass AND count nouns.)
 
So, 'people' is a count noun.  We can count people.  There is one person, two people, three people, etc.  Amount is used for mass nouns:  amount of rice, amount of space, amount of depression, amount of money, amount of mail.  To indicate a specific amount we have to use a classifier:

• two sacks (or bowls or grains) of rice
• 1500 square feet of space
• several bouts of depression
• forty Euros
• in two hours 
• seven pieces of mail or five letters and two magazines.  

For count nouns, we don't usually say 'amount.'  We say

• The number of people employed as architects.
• The number of books in the library.  
• The number of bikes sold in May.  

All these things that can be counted and we can determine a number for them.  This isn't true of mass nouns.
For mass nouns, we ask, "How much?"  We want to know the amount.

• $5
• ten gallons 
• 21 lbs. in three months
• a pinch

We have some specific words for 'how much?' in certain situations:

• How far?  
• How long?  
• How high?

For count nouns, we ask "How many?"  We want to know the number.



So, if we say 'amount of people,' we're implying an amount of something that is not countable by itself, like rice or water or beef.  We use a classifier, some unit of measure for that noun.  It would be as if the person were asking about a mass of indistinguishable people:  How many busloads of people?  How many pounds of people?  How many acres of people?

I suspect the searcher was looking for a number.

This is not intended as a rant, but rather as a clarification.  I appreciate grammatical creativity. I'm less amused by grammatical laziness.   Grammar can sometimes seem unnecessarily complicated.  But the words and grammar have their own meanings embedded.  Sometimes they are redundant.  But when the speaker and the listener both understand the nuances of the grammar and use it correctly, the redundancy acts as a confirmation of the speaker's intent.  Meaning is more precise and there is less misunderstanding.

More Interesting Google Searches

It used to be that sitemeter would take me to the google page the searcher found and I could see the hits and the other sites the searcher found as well. It also hightlighted the words in each post that were in the search terms. But now I just get sent to the page - or photo if it's an image search - they found. So I have less information about why or how they got here.

But here are some search terms - mostly google - that got people here, my thoughts, and where google delivered them. 

we seen a pigeon egg on the floor what should wed do? - This Manchester searcher got to post on pigeon eggs in a nest in Juneau that had been blocked off, but probably didn't answer the question. Clearly though, one pigeon egg is too small for an omelet.

moral mushrooms - Got them to an archived post on mushrooms, but I'm not sure how moral any of them were. And there wasn't even a morel among them.


colorado house eating tiny insects - OK, so does this mean a Colorado house that is eating tiny insects? Or a house-eating tiny insects? I just got it. Termites. In any case, he got to my post on fruit flies or fungus gnats.

boat powered by a chainsaw The Slovakian searcher got to a post on the Anchorage Weekend Market which included a picture of chainsaw art. But I think using a chain saw to power a boat is much more creative.  (A Canadian has a YouTube up of this 4 foot R/C motor boat powered by a chain saw if you really need to see one, but don't go here unless you're really, really interested.)


how compatible are 5 jan 1982 and 19 nov 1990 born - Eight years apart. Not too bad. But this Australian inquiry didn't get the answer on my post on people born in 1910.


bill allen alaska democrat - Maybe this is totally innocent, but I can't help conjuring up an image of Southern Conservatives (this came from Rocky Mount, North Carolina) turning Allen into a Democrat to show how depraved we are. There's nothing in my post about the sex charges against Allen being dropped that mentions either Republicans or Democrats. The ADN story the post links to does say,

"And he and other officials of Veco Corp. were some the most important sources of campaign contributions for the Alaska Republican Party and its candidates."

But the searcher didn't use the link to read the original.

ufo files denali state park 2009 - I didn't know Denali State Park was a UFO hotspot.  My pictures were from June this year so it never got dark.  But why shouldn't UFO's come by in the day too?  I should have been looking up instead of down at the flowers.  In any case, Google got the searcher to an archive page that came up blank when I searched it for "denali'.


what is jury meandering - Is this where the jury gets bored and they start wandering around the courtroom? This got to a post titled 'meandering' but nothing with a jury in it. Was this supposed to be jury tampering?  Jerrymandering?

art of cloud scavenging women - This Norwegian searcher got to this picture of a lost cloud poster.

unnoticeable earth quack -There's a lot of these characters walking around, but you can't tell since many look like honest citizens.  Anyway, this person got to a post on a noticeable earthquake in Anchorage.

what do americans call rapeseed oil - Got to a post titled, can you guess? What Do Americans Call Rapeseed? This ones from Prescot, Lancashire, UK.  Sometimes people get a bulls eye.

what do americans call sex - another Brit got to the same place.

headline sept 2008 bailout -got this image from Sept. 2008.

is the family doomed - Someone in Cambridge, MA wanted to know and got to my affirmative post - The Family is Doomed.

 


in idaho about how many people know what a blog is - The only logical conclusion they can come to from the post they got is: none. This was called Does Idaho Exist - Why Everyone Should Study Philosophy? And the answer was no.


 


on 12th near commercial drive vancouver tree with red leaves and white seeds flowers in fall - Wow, someone is googling to find out about a specific tree in downtown Vancouver. And the person got this picture, which looks like red leaves, but I think it was a flower from tree at Wat Pa Dara Phirom north of Chiang Mai.  The picture, in this case, has three of the words in the search terms - red tree flower. And they probably caught Vancouver from one of the archived titles.





wrapping japanese - I knew immediately what post they got to - one on Japanese cloth gift wrapping techniques.  And I assume that is what they were looking for.  But the image of someone wrapping up a Japanese man did flash through my head.  And then I saw on stage a group of Japanese rappers.  I'll assume they found what they were looking for.

i was born in alaska can i get the permanent fund money - This googler from a computer in O'Fallon, Illinois wants in on Alaska's oil money.  Being born here isn't enough.  You have to live here.  Mostly.  She got to a post about filing for an application.

opera house in oslo frozen ice -  OK, so googling is something you do in the privacy of your own computer and you don't have to be perfect.  But 'frozen ice'?  As opposed to the unfrozen kind?  Let's give the person a break.  It was from Oakland, California where they never see ice outside the freezer.  The person got to my post on the Norwegian Carl Nesjar's ice sculpture in Anchorage.  (I better check and see if I wrote 'frozen ice.' Whew! I didn't.)


killer bugs a power stamp nasty thorms and im using them - This came from a computer in Tel Aviv.  I'm sure it made sense to the searcher.  He got to a post that did have some nasty thorns, but I'm not sure about the rest of what he was looking for.
  
if u were born in 1909 in diead in 1920 how long ago was that - This one leaves me pretty much speechless.  But Google got this person to a post about people asking how old they would be if they had been born in 1909.

what is alaska's daylight in years -  I don't think this is like "what is Alaska's size in square miles."  Maybe someone else can deconstruct what this person wanted to know.  This surfer got to a page on Alaska's failed bill to end daylight savings time.  Another hint from sitemeter - the location is listed as City:  APO  State:  Armed Forces Pacific.  Maybe it's a soldier who was just assigned to Alaska, or considering Alaska, as a next posting.
  
caution paradigm invisible  - This is just an interesting thought.  I'd like to talk to this searcher to see what the person was thinking.  The result may or may not have been helpful:
Who Cut Off That Invisible Hand: Paradigm Outsiders Needed in Financial Crisis

sex drive shoe tree - some search terms exhaust even my fairly flexible imagination. Google directed this person to an archive page of posts in August 2008. There are three instances of the word drive. There's a 'shoe tree', but no sex.