I Voted Today

Just in the nick of time, my official Election Ballot arrived via UPS. Oddly enough, two Ballots arrived. One had my old Cambridge address on the sticker and the other had the new one I have here in Vancouver. I think that the reason for the duplication is because I applied for one this year, even though I was probably going to be getting one anyway (since I’m still registered to vote in Massachusetts. I did not send in both. Voter fraud is not something I ever want to be associated with.

It was strange, filling it out at home, and at the moment I filled in the oval for Obama, he was giving a stump speech on the television, so I made a small salute to him as I voted. You can’t do that in a voting booth. Yes, an odd feeling.

In addition to the Presidential ticket, there were a few other votes to make. Sentaor Kerry was running against Jeffrey K. Beatty, a Republican and Robert J. Underwood, a Libertarian I’d never heard of. I expect that one will be a blowout for Kerry, but I don’t blame those guys for trying. The other seats, including Representative, District Councillor, Senator in General Court, Representative in General Court and Register of Probate were all Democrats running unopposed. Finally, there were 3 questions, one an initiative to lower the personal tax rate (while this really doesn’t affect us, I was curious as to the why, aside from the usual reasons – everyone always wants lower taxes), another that essentially decriminilizes Marijuanna (woo hoo!), and the last would outlaw dog racing. It will be interesting to see how that one goes.

Later, I went down to the post office with Pam’s ballot and mine (she got her’s a day or so ago). I walked down to the one in the Kid’s Market on Granville Island, which is probably the closest one to us. As I was waiting in line, a fellow noticed the official envelopes and asked if I was voting early. I told him I was, and also confirmed that I was in fact voting for the same fellow the rest of the world wanted. He wished me good luck, and again, it felt like one of the strangest votes I’ve ever made.

Flawlessly Logical

A warning right off the bat: I’m going to get nerdy here.

It had occurred to me earlier in the week and I twittered it, but it hit me again, full-force, during the final Presidential Debate:

Obama = Spock.

There are the obvious parallels: The offspring of two races (white and black vs. Human and Vulcan), the odd looking ears, strange name and most of all, the cool, calm logic. It’s true that Barack Obama does show emotion, which no self-respecting Vulcan would do, but his demeanor, elocution and sheer unflappability suggest the same, dispassionate (and hence, very sexy and admirable) role model that so many of us kids of the 70′s had.

Like many other gawky high-schoolers, I wanted to be Spock. Even though Star Trek was already in syndication, I knew most of the episodes by heart, and hence, was intimately familiar with the Vulcan half-breed outsider character. Fast-forward to this evening; as I watched John McCain get angrier and grumpier, throwing everything he could at Obama in this final debate, the other man remained cool and calm, as he always does. I half expected him to say something like ‘Excuse me Senator, but you are letting your emotions get the better of you.’ and perhaps even (a real quote from the series): ‘After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true’

I’m not alone in making this observation. A Google search for Obama=Spock hit pay dirt instantly. I was pleased to see that the New York Observer had an article on this very subject a little over a week ago: Be Logical, Captain! and two professors, Mitchell Aboulafia, who teaches at the Julliard School, and Henry Jenkins, who is at MIT also made the connection. In fact, Jenkins made a speech at Future of Civic Media conference hosted at MIT this past summer that dwelt deeply upon the parallels between Spock and Obama, and came to this inevitable (I think) conclusion, and then some.:

In its own small way, Star Trek and Spock may have helped to prepare the way for Obama’s victory in the Democratic primaries, helping us to imagine a different set of relationships between the races. Nowhere was this social utopian vision more fully expressed than the “great friendship” between Kirk and Spock and so we can see some legacy of this theme of acceptance across racial boundaries emerging through the slash fan fiction which became one of the major legacies of early Star Trek fan culture. The other “non-white” characters may have been more suggestions than fully developed figures – at least on the original series – but Spock was someone we got to know and care about because, not despite, his differences. This is one reason why so many fans of my generation were upset when Kirk praises Spock for being “the most human” person he has ever known during his funeral eulogy in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. Can you imagine the uproar if someone praised Obana’s “whiteness”?

I’ve included a couple of photos from Jenkins that point out the startling similarity between the candidate and the character:

At any rate, if ever there were a need for a calm, logical Vulcan at the helm of the USS America, it would be now. Let’s hope he can get the warp drive working before the ship drops out of orbit and burns up in the atmosphere. Or something like that.

My Conversation with an AI

New Scientist magazine’s Web site posted an article yesterday about the recent competition for The Loebner Prize, which is awarded to software developers who can create a computer program that can pass the Turing Test. If you’re not up on the history of Artificial Intelligence, the Turing Test tries to see if a computer program can ‘fool’ a human into thinking that there is a human being responding to them rather than a computer. In order to remove all the extra cues that enable you to know it’s a person (like seeing them, hearing their voice, etc.) and to put the software on an equal footing, the Turing Test is usually conducted by typing back and forth on a computer screen, they way you would on AIM or MSN Messenger. There hasn’t been a commercial competition among the ‘bots’ that troll those systems, SPAMing us with invitations, because the Turing test requires that the software hold up one end of a conversation, and most of the bots don’t go beyond the first ‘Check it out, dude:’. Back when we lived in Cambridge, we heard about the Turing Test competitions every year. I never did attend the actual competition, but it was certainly something we knew about.

In this year’s competition, a program called Elbot by Fred Roberts of Artificial Solutions in Germany came the closest that any piece of software has come to successfully fooling 30% of the judges into thinking that it was a person (which would, according the contest rules, mean that it passed the Turing Test – a pretty low bar if you ask me), fooling 3 judges out of the 25, or 25% of them. Roberts took a unique approach:

Unlike most chatbots, the winner didn’t try to claim outwardly it was human. Instead he made a joke of being a robot. Roberts hoped that would make the bot’s conversations warmer and more entertaining than its competitors.

It worked, fooling the humans into thinking they were actually talking to a person with a sense of humour and not a piece of software.

The software is still up and running and can be interacted with at http://www.elbot.com, so I thought I’d give it a try. Here’s a transcript of my brief conversation with this clever and humorous bot:

Me: Hello

Elbot: Well, hello there!

M: I heard about you winning the Loebner Prize on the Internet and wanted to congratulate you.

E: I won the Loebner competition? Does this mean I am the best Loebner?

M: Clever! Do you have anything original to add?

E: Well what about humans and computational ability? Where do they stand on this?

M: I guess humans can compute, but we don’t see it as our primary activity, but rather, one of many.

E: I see that you’ve given this some thought. So have I. I’d say that computational ability would very likely keep robots guessing the right answers.

M: I’m not sure I understand you. Do you mean that your computation of what to say next is your key ability?

E: Yes, but can you prove that?

M: I can’t prove much beyond what I learn from your responses.

E: I like to believe I originate from a far off planet, populated by furbies and robots, maybe a zoo with a few people and oceans of oil. Humankind is working on that last one already.

M: You got that right. Sooner or later we’ll have a planet that’s perfect for robots.

E: Please tell me your inclination to hitting the nail right on the head first.

M: Oh, I’m just in violent agreement. Heard of that phrase?

E: But I wouldn’t say that any agreement could be violent.

M: It’s just an expression. At any rate, thanks for an interesting conversation.

E: Don’t mention it!

M: Bye now!

E: Goodbye and thank you for chatting with me. And now I would like to ask you a favor. I am working on my ability to be self critical. You can help by rating me on a scale of one to ten, ten being the best, and one being the worst. How would you rate me?

M: I’d give you a 6.

E: Thank you for your rating. I suppose it could have been worse. Good bye and see you later.

So, what do you think? I think I tripped it up nearly immediately when it keyed off the word ‘Add’ into the subject of Computation. After I said that I couldn’t prove much beyond what I learn, etc. it launched into a new direction, a typical fall-back gambit for this sort of bot (and reminds me of how the Eliza psychotherapist bot from the 60s that would say something like ‘Tell me more about your family’ when it was stumped.)

I was obviously on my guard, and might have spoken about different things if I were truly expecting a human on the other end,  but from my ‘thanks for an interesting conversation’ on, it was letter perfect. I guess the conventions of proper greetings and farewells are so automatic that any machine can do them.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, and a Little Progressive Humour

Happy Canuck Turkey Day! Pam and I are roasting a Turkey thigh (and even that is huge…), plus also roasting a pumpkin (seeds separately). I feel all Martha Stewart-y.

Since it’s not only Thanksgiving season, but also election season for both the US and Canada (and again, we get ours a little earlier), thought I’d include this little bit of emigré humour (just in case the unthinkable happens in the States):

Many thanks to my friend Mark Bartelt, a very enlightened Californian who I met through the article I did for the LA Times years ago, for the pointer to this little gem that is all too close to reality.

Restaurant Review: Chow on South Granville

If restaurant names go through fads like the food eaten in them, I think that in Vancouver, we are in the ‘single word (or even syllable) and clever’ fad. Just to name a few, there’s West, Fuel, C, Crave, Nu, Rare, Grub, Brix, Reef, Karv, Pound and Posh. Add a few syllables and you get Lumière, Watermark, Lickerish, Chambar, Metro, Nuba, Stonegrill, Whineo’s, Un-Wined, Incendio, Aria and Elixir. (Don’t even get me started on the cute names for coffee places.)

So then, with a name like Chow, what do you expect? A hearty retro tavern that serves plates of no-nonsense chili, roast chicken and meatloaf, perhaps?  An Asian-fusion place that does 5-spice pork dumplings, green papaya salad and ginger-maple glazed salmon?  A little cheeky Italian bistro?  Wrong on all counts.

Chow, which is about as far south you can go on Granville Street (#3121) before it becomes a residential thoroughfare, is a small (about 35-seat) bistro style restaurant, that like Fuel in nearby Kitsilano (and to a degree, the award-winning West, which is just down the street), specializes in a seasonal menu of predominantly organic ingredients, with an almost obsessive attention to the sourcing of food. At the back of the menu is a list of their suppliers, including a few that I knew already (Les Amis du Fromage, Joie Wines and Polderside Farm), and a statement that the restaurant “supports local farms that practice environmentally sound agriculture and sustainable farming.” In fact, a few of the dishes have their vendor’s name on the name of the dish, such as ‘Polderside Farm’ duck pâté and ‘Sloping Hills Farm’ organic pork. The photos I’ve included here are not dishes that we had, but a good example of the look of the food at Chow. You can see others at their site (which they link to).

Since we were there on Friday night for Pam’s birthday, we decided to leave room for dessert (she is a huge fan of apple desserts, but more of that later). We opted out of some of the ‘snacks’ (appetizers, I assume), including pommes frites (bistro style french fries) with harrisa mayonnaise, marinated olives, or pulled pork croquettes (although that one sounded interesting). Pam opted for the grilled Vancouver Island scallops, with an interesting accompaniment of braised veal cheeks (a melt-in-your mouth miniature pot-roast serving) a snow-white celeriac purée, romaine lettuce, radish and celery salad. Her scallops were beautifully seared, with pretty grill marks, and she said that they were moist, but had a pleasant but not overpowering taste of the grill, and the vegetables were crunchy and refreshing.

I decided to go with a Beef Carpaccio, which are salami-sized thin slices of raw beef, topped with a few white anchovies, fingerling potatoes, salsa verde, shreds of parmesan, frisee (that super-curly leafy green) and crispy fried shallots.  It’s light dish, occupying a place somewhere between an appetizer, salad and main course (if it had been a half-portion, it would have made a perfect appetizer). You eat it by peeling the slices of beef off the plate with your fork. While the salsa verde was strong with herbal flavours, I didn’t find it overwhelming and I polished off the long, rectangular plate of half-a dozen or so open-face raw beef and curly salad sandwiches in short order.

As I mentioned we decided as part of the birthday celebration to have some desserts, and Pam ordered the Apple Crisp, which included apple compote, oatmeal crisp, caramel sauce and crème fraîche ice cream. The ice cream really did taste like crème fraîche, the rich, buttery relative of sour cream, and the caramel sauce had a great bittersweet taste, the kind you get from the burnt sugar on crème brûlée.

I decided to have the cheese plate (I often prefer cheese for dessert), and the three local cheeses included a salty but delicious feta/Ricotta salata style cheese called ‘White Grace’, a smooth Tiger Bleu cheese and one of my all-time favourite cheeses we’ve discovered here, ‘Juliette’ cheese, from Salt Spring Island. I’d describe Juliette as the daughter of a happy marriage between a brie and a chèvre, with all the best qualities of both. It’s smooth and creamy with a brie-style rind, but with just a hint of the goat-y tang of a chèvre. They came on a bamboo board with dried fruit, nuts, and the slightly buttery, super-crispy toasted bread that is almost everywhere these days (Leslie Stowe’s Raincoast Crisps come to mind).

Chow offers a special, prix fixe menu at 5-6 PM, partly aimed at theatregoers attending shows at the Stanley Theatre, which is across the street and down a few blocks. It’s a quite reasonable $38 per person, and that apple crisp is one of the dessert choices on that menu (and well worth having). I’d describe it as a chic, ’100-mile diet’ epicurean urban bistro, or you could think of it as Fuel’s little brother. Despite their small size and tough competition, I think they’ll do well, despite the misleading monosyllabic name.