journal of interesting negative results

Going through my emails, I cam across this announcement:

In our scientific explorations, sooner or later we try out ideas
which, sometimes for quite deep reasons, fail at the experimental
stage. There is a palpable bias towards positive results at journals,
conferences, workshop and other outlets for reporting scientific
work. Negative results, however, can be just as interesting. We often
learn more from failures than from successes.

We are starting JINR, a new on-line Journal of Interesting Negative
Results in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. We hope
that it will become a forum for research ideas which appear good but,
upon rigorous examination, can be shown not to lead to good results.
It may also become a place to publish counter-examples to accepted
but sometimes unproven truths.

Please visit the JINR home at <http://jinr.site.uottawa.ca>

I love the title.. come on all of you failures out there with negtive results.. you can be published now ;-)

Mai

decipher this!!!

Let's pretend that in a million years my signature in emails will be like this:

Mai Zaki
MA PhD MBCS CITP ILTM

can you figure it out?

p.s. the first two are difficult, I know ;-) and by the way, I'm not making them up.

Mai

another 'bush' linguistic analysis

this time it's in the NYT, soon after his state of the union address.. it's actually cool, and you can search for yourself too.. try it out here.

Mai

weather forcast

(1)
When: around 8 am
Where: BBC 1 Breakfast
What: the weather forcast

Weather man says: "the worst of this wintery weather is clearing out, this said, though, it remains to be cold today.."

(2)
When: around 9 am
Where: BBC 1 Breakfast
What: the weather forcast

Weather man says: "the worst of this wintery weather is clearing out, that said, though, it remains to be cold today.."

hmmmm... coincidence? I think not..

Mai

what a beautiful morning..

I was still in bed when Ali told me "there's snow outside". I had to have a look. I opened the bedroom curtain and this is what I saw:

So I ran down (to get my mobile and take the pictures) and to have a look at our small garden and this is what I saw:

And as I was busy taking pictures, poor Ali had to make his own breakfast :)

And while he was eating it, I was.. taking more pictures:

Finally, Ali was leaving for work and as I was saying to him "oh, why can't you take the day off so we can go out and play with the snow", I took one last picture..

Mai

yesterday's storm

This is what the storm has done to our neighbourhood as pictured from my home office window. Luckily, our shed is doing fine, and my precious swing is in it's place :)

Mai

a very late season's greetings

I'm still going through old emails from around Christmas and new year's time. I just read this email and I thought I have to post it here. At least it kind of changes the rather sad mood of yesterday's blogging.

So, here you are, this is how a linguist sends season's greetings:

Semitic:
Arabic: أطيب تهانيً بعيد الميلاد ، وبالعام الجديد، وكل عام وأنتم بخير.

عساكم من عواده. بعوده الأيام

Hebrew: חג מולד שמח ושנה טובה

(chag molad sameach v’shanah tovah)

Sino-Tebetan:

Chinese (Mandarin): 聖誕快樂 新年快樂 [圣诞快乐 新年快乐]

(shèngdàn kuàilè xīnnián kuàilè)

Indo-European:

English: Merry Christmas and happy New Year.

Persian: كريسماس مبارك / سال نو مبارك

German: Fröhliche Weihnachten und ein gutes neues Jahr.

Romance Languages & Matrix:

French: Joyeux Noël et bonne année.

Italian: Buon Natale e felice anno nuovo.

Spanish: Feliz Navidad y próspero año nuevo

Latin: Natale hilare et annum faustum.

Mai

one life is not enough..

Right now I'm listening to an Arabic song by Amal Wahby saying:

3omr wa7ed mesh kefaya (one life is not enough)
kelma kanet fil-aghany (this was a saying in songs)
2enama 7asalet ma3aya (but it happened to me)
wel kalam luh ta3m tany (and now words have a different taste)

The wind is blowing strongly outside. I am stuck in writing a paper that I have to finish before Monday. I am so stressed that I'm on the brink of exploding. I'm thinking of the miracle of life, and of death. I wish I didn't have to work at all today. I wish all the clocks in the world would stop for one day.

Now the next song says:

2al eih morad ibn adam? (he asked, what is man's wish?)
2oltelo ta2a (i said a meal)
2al eih yekafiy manamo? (he asked, what would be enough for his sleep?)
2oltolo sha2a (i said a small space)
2al eih ye3agel be3omro? (he asked, what brings about his death quickly?)
2oltelo za2a (i said a push)
2al 7ad fiha mokhallad? (he asked, is there anyone immortal?)
2oltelo la2a.. (i said no)

The translation cannot do it justice, but at least it will get you thinking..

Mai

life is nothing but ups and downs

It has been a long while since I last blogged. I did not exactly intend that, but I was caught up in a swirl of events, some happy, some sad. I don't want to sound all wise or anything, but sometimes certain events happen and make you think about your life and how mortal we are. Of course the loss of a loved one is both the best and the worst example. Two days before new year's, we lost my mother-in-law. God rest her soul. And as much as I wanted to visit home soon, we had to fly to Cairo in a sad unexpected visit. I don't know what to say really except that I now feel closer to Ali more than ever. The loss of a mother is never an easy thing to adapt to, but I hope I will be a good consolation to my beloved husband.

Mai