Different things
September 14, 2011 (Wednesday)
I ended yesterday’s blog with a picture of a yoke, a farm instrument used to harness the power of two animals pulling together. I didn’t have a picture handy, so I asked Google to give me one. The computer complied with my request, and coughed up several pictures of a yoke, but it also gave me a number of pictures of “yolks.” It somehow knew that the two words sounded alike, so in order to demonstrate its intelligence, gave me the pictures of eggs instead of farm equipment. Here is a case of somebody (the computer) saying, “Look how smart I am,” but sending the message, “Look how dumb I am.”
Hey, is it just me, or is that a message sent out to all of us every day?
Columnists, politicians, public speakers, writers, etc. love to demonstrate their intelligence. Their eloquent phrases sometimes sound like pronouncements from on high, but upon closer examination seem more like the scrawling of immature kids on the back wall of a barn.
A word used these days is “spin,” which describes the slanting of information so facts are skewed. Words are used to misrepresent facts. It can be a “positive” spin or a “negative” one. Reminds me of Julius’ Caesar’s farewell speech in which he repeated the words, “Brutus is an honorable man,” knowing all the while that Brutus had joined his enemies and had the dagger in his hand that would help bring death to Caesar.
We hear, “They lied to us.” We hear it a lot these days. The lesson for all of us is to exercise more discernment in believing what we hear. Do your best to sift out the truth from the millions of words being sent out every day. It will be worth the effort. It pays to know the difference between a “yoke” and a “yolk.”