Today when I opened my browser, xombrero, and navigated to google.com, I saw the following doodle:

“What a fitting coincidence,” I thought, “since today is my birthday. I wonder whose birthday they’re really celebrating?”

When I hovered my mouse over the image to see its title text, I jumped out of my chair.

Of course I soon realized that since I was logged into my Google account, Google knew who I was and that today is my birthday. Still, it sort of gave me the creeps. One step closer to this.

A fly’s eyes
Multi-faceted, complex, and ugly
the right one clears, then they both disappear

A line of hieroglyphics, the heqa-crook

Nefertiti and a sphinx with Tutankhamen’s head
The sphinx, the sphinx

The riddle of the sphinx
Not a very clever riddle
Except for the third leg

Does the riddle have anything to do with it?

NO!

The old man with a staff
Brain partially exposed
Drooling
Hair missing
Eyes falling out

Try to make him move forward, so difficult
No, don’t try
Just watch

He suddenly turns to bones that collapse and clatter on the floor

I walk over and grab his staff
Then beat his bones to powder with it
I walk away with his stick
Humming a tune

In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
To bring unto these western nations
The gifts of western civilization:
Disease, enslavement, Christianity
(But please forgive my redundancy).

Drawn with Dia. Cleaned up with gimp.

As I was walking the dogs this morning along our usual route, Halley and Harry stopped to sniff a greasy spot in the road which had been occupied the day before by an unlucky squirrel. “Hmm… some other scavenger must have cleaned it up,” I thought, then corrected myself: “scavenger, or scavengers.”

English has no specific form to indicate “one or more” — nouns can be singular or plural, not (usually) inclusive of both. The more advanced syntax for Regular Expressions uses ‘+’ to indicate this set. I propose that we adopt this into English, as in “some other scavenger+ must have cleaned it up.” That would naturally cause some consternation for present tense verbs when one of these nouns is the subject, but we could use the same ending there: “The scavenger+ eat+ all the dead squirrels.” (I never understood why the ‘s’ occurs on singular verbs instead of on the plural).

Of course, in a regex /scavenger+/ would mean “scavenge” followed by one or more “r”s. We’d need to say /(scavenger)+/ instead.

Wait, that isn’t right either — that just indicates one or more occurrences of the word scavenger. Not one or more scavengers. Abstract symbols are a bit foreign to Regexen, but they do exist in the more advanced syntaxen. Take Ruby’s, for example:

/(#{scavenger})+/

Now that says,”one or more of what the word ‘scavenger’ represents.”

The English language is not nearly so rigorous. Take the plural, for instance. You might think that a regex equivalent for “scavengers” would be:

/(#{scavenger}){2,}/

That says, “two or more of what the word ‘scavenger’ represents.”

In English, though, we also use the plural form for zero. “Yes, we have no bananas.” Let’s add that ambiguity to our expression:

/((#{banana}){2,})*/

The star says, “zero or more of the previous pattern” — so this accurately represents the idea of “two or more bananas, or none at all”.

Of course, in English I could use the singular form for zero as well: “Yes, we have no banana.” That would carry the connotation that we could have exactly one banana, but we don’t. We’re going to need a smarter squirrel.

I glanced at my watch as I weaved the cart between old ladies and children. Right on schedule — ten minutes to get checked out and drive over to pick up my daughter. I scanned the checkout lines until I found a conveyor with some empty space — the checker was just scanning the last item. I veered in behind the previous shopper, lifted my cargo onto the belt, and whipped out my debit card.

“$54.50,” said the checkout lady to the slightly overweight, very young lady — too young to be juggling one child in her arms with another in a stroller.

“Oh wait,” she said, and began to pull items out to be removed from her total: first the cola, then the cupcakes. Yeah, honey, you don’t need those. Couldn’t you keep a running total while you were shopping? Oh yeah, I guess you were distracted by all your offspring. Now I’ll probably be late for my daughter, thanks to your lack of planning.

“$47.80.” Still not enough. Reluctantly, a package of ground beef and some broccoli left the ensemble. Doesn’t she realize that she’s holding me up? Then, a pang of guilt. Look at me, in such a hurry to checkout with my case of champagne — so I won’t be a few minutes late picking up my daughter from ballet. I have it so hard. And here she is, just trying to make ends meet.

But why not? (says the capitalist in me) I’ve worked hard to get where I am and to be able to enjoy just a few of the finer things. And what series of bad decisions led this woman to her present misfortune? Alone with children at such an early age — she probably doesn’t have a job.

Today’s economy. Perhaps she did have a job that recently evaporated. She might be a Navy wife, with a husband on extended duty. It doesn’t take much to upset most people’s finances. In the recent mortagage crisis, we were lucky — one additional bad credit decision could have spelled the loss of our home.

In fact, most of what I have accomplished in my career and finances resulted from making a good choice when a bad one seemed just as good at the time. Call it luck. And I hate to see her have to give up the beef and broccoli — that’s good food.

So I leaned over to her, handed her a $20 bill, and said quietly, “Maybe this will help.”

Her eyes widened with surprised joy, then turned aside in shame. “No, I couldn’t. Thank you very much, though.”

“C’mon,” I said. “You’ve got a family to feed, right? Just take it.”

She looked back hopefully, trying to make out in my eyes whether it really would be OK to accept.

“Oh, thank you! Nobody’s ever done that for me before. Thank you so much.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

I noticed with some satisfaction that she took back the beef and broccoli, and left out the cupcakes and soda. She offered me the change, but I waved it back at her. She thanked me again, gathered up her groceries and her children, and hurried toward the door. As the checkout lady began to scan my bottles, she called to one of her assistants in a voice that was calculated to get her attention without alerting anyone else, “Check her.”

In response to my puzzled expression, she explained, “That one’s in here a lot, and things seem to go missing.”

I didn’t know what to think. Suddenly, my first opinion of her seemed confirmed — even augmented. Or was the checkout lady unduly suspicious of her because she was poor — maybe also resentful of the extra time she took checking out? Had I aided a minor criminal? Would my act of kindness encourage her to reform?

No matter. I had achieved my purpose: getting her through checkout, and out of my way.

My youngest son likes to eat a fortune cookie as a snack.  I’ve been trying to put on some weight, so I decided to have one, too.  I popped one out of its plastic wrapper, then crunched the two halves apart.  Pulling out the slip of paper, I anticipated reading some vague prediction that might serve as a not-too-serious guide for my day.  It read:

You will read this and think, “Geez, I could come up with better fortunes than that!”

Truly, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I heard a piece on NPR the other day that claimed that fortune cookies were not Chinese at all.  Rather, they were brought to America by Japanese immigrants.  When the Japanese on the West Coast were interned during Word War II, the Chinese restaurants picked up on the popular oriental after-dinner treats – and that’s how they became associated with Chinese food.

I turned to my son and asked, “So, what did you get in yours?”

“Paper.”

A psychologist told me many years ago that rather than getting out and doing things, I prefer to (as he put it) “sit in the catbird’s seat” and critique all the options.  He may have been right about that, but I’ve often wondered about his choice of metaphor.

Have you ever actually seen any bird… sit?  In a seat?  I don’t know about you, but to me the whole sitting concept seems completely out of the avian character.  Their hip bones just aren’t right for it.  They can blame the dinosaurs for that.  You never see an artist’s conception of a Tyrannosaurus kicked back in a La-Z-Boy, now do you?  No, it’s not working for him.  It might be relaxing for you and me, but for T-Rex it’s just not comfortable.  No place for the tail, arms too short to reach the lever – what was the idiot who designed this thing thinking?

And why a “catbird?”  What does that have to do with smugness?  The catbirds I grew up hearing were so named because they mewed like a cat — that doesn’t sound so smart to me.  What conversation could an intelligent bird possibly want to have with a cat?  Maybe something along the lines of “No birds in this tree, Snowball – I already checked.”  I can tell you, though, if you’re a bird trying to speak Feline, you’d better be sure you have the local dialect down.  You don’t want to accidentally invite Felix and friends over to dinner.

I suppose this post proves the psychologist’s point.  Naturally, Wikipedia has all the answers – if you can believe them.

thrux, n.  The primary meaning of a communication, and simultaneously the critical factor in what it communicates.  Furthermore, it carries the connotation that the speaker is too agitated about the subject matter to select between “thrust” and “crux”.  Seeking a defensive position, and instinctively relying on the principle of offense as the best defense, they resort to a metaphoric combined attack involving swordplay and crucifixion.

Example: “The thrux of this agreement is that if you use undocumented features, we can’t support you.”

Encountered in the wild.

My son asked for something.  My wife said, “What’s the magic word?”

“Now!”

In response to our shocked expressions, he added, “and ‘please’.”