Google Oracle

I was playing with Google's auto-complete feature.
Some of the results are amusing.
Some are a poignant commentary on human life.
( screen captures... )

I wonder how Google's algorithm works, for determining which phrases to show - how often a phrase must be searched on, and from how many different IP addresses, until it is shown in the auto-complete list. I suspect that once an unusual one makes it into the list, its popularity then remains high due to people clicking on it out of curiosity.

Out of curiosity, I searched on "how do I kill my..." and interestingly, "myself" is not included in the list, although various other words are. Google must have special logic to hide that particular phrase from the list, even though you can search on it and get results.

(no subject)

I'm not going to tell you what I want or need, for you did not care. Your lack of concern injured me. Your lack of understanding, and everyone's lack of understanding; everyone's dissimilarity from me, jaded me. You do not care, and no one cares. I will keep it hidden deep inside me where it is even hard for myself to find or remember it.

You mistook a need for a want. So I decided that you were right, it wasn't a need, for I need nothing. And there's no point in wanting something that doesn't exist.

It's funny how reading a 3-year old temporary chat log file can still make me cry. And that is why I still haven't deleted the file.

(no subject)

Qiao has several times expressed disdain for certain methods of child-rearing / discipline. He thinks that "touchy-feely" types of discipline don't work on all children, and that they wouldn't have worked on him or his brother. He's scoffed at the Super-Nanny TV show. Nevertheless, I turned the show on yesterday to watch it, because I find it interesting, and because SuperNanny is awesome. (SuperNanny seems able to see exactly what the problems are in a family, and how to fix them.) Qiao commented that we must not usually be home on Fridays when the show is on, because we've very rarely watched the show together. He didn't realize that we haven't watched it precisely because I don't feel very comfortable turning it on when he is here, due to his negative comments about it.

Yesterday, he scoffed at the show again, calling it "psycho-babble". He says that time-outs may work for about half of children, but not the others, and that it wouldn't be so bad if shows like this at least admitted this fact instead of pretending that time-outs work on all children.

Things like that get under my skin. It's a conservative versus liberal thought-pattern thing, and it feels like an attack on me for being liberal as opposed to being conservative like him.

I don't totally disagree with him. It is possible that time-outs won't work in a good way for all children. It makes sense that a single method would not work for everyone, because people differ a lot. But having him use words like "touchy-feely" and "psychobabble" irritates me a lot.

I'm not even totally against physical discipline such as spanking. Perhaps spanking works best for some children; I don't know. It probably depends on the child's personality, as well as how it is implemented - how forceful and how often, and for what kinds of infractions. From people's own accounts of how physical discipline affected them, I know that it can emotionally scar some people, while other people feel it was necessary for them to to grow into the well-mannered and successful adults they are now. Perhaps the difference is due to the physical discipline not having been done correctly in some cases, assuming there is some "correct" way that would work in all cases. Likewise, perhaps time-outs don't always work, due to them not being done correctly. Or perhaps the difference is due to whether or not the child feels accepted and loved for who they are during the time when they are not being disciplined.

So anyway, today I was reading this article, What Makes Time-Out Work (and Fail)?.

One of the points made by the article is that in order for time-outs to work, the rest of the time (the time-ins) must be a rewarding and positive experience for children:

A child’s daily environment must be pleasant and full of positive attention from caregivers if time-out is going to work. In short, if a child spends most of his day being bored, ignored, belittled, and yelled at, going to time-out might not seem that much different and consequently will not change his behavior. In fact, many children will misbehave on purpose, even during time-out, just to get some kind of attention, resulting in their parent’s faulty thinking that even more severe discipline strategies are needed.

So basically, when rearing a child, you have to spend a lot of time at it.

I don't want any children. If forced to take care of a child, I'd want to spend as little time at it as possible. I'd be looking for quick simple solutions, ways of getting the child to behave and not cause me grief, and hoping to be able to ignore them most of the time. But there aren't any quick and simple solutions.

It's similar with the puppy. She's a cute puppy, and she deserves love and affection and a caregiver's time. But I don't really want to have to spend any time on her. I feel sorry for her when she's outside or in the garage alone while I'm in the house doing other things, but neither do I want to spend hours playing with her, cleaning up after her, and training her. When thinking about giving her away, my main concern is that she ends up in a good home where she will be happy and well-taken care of, and that she won't feel sad that I've abandoned her. I don't feel sad in thinking that I'll no longer have her around.