And the longest sentence is...

I was looking at the longest line in the texts (see previous post) of Heart of Darkness and Alice in Wonderland; and I was struck by the fact that these longest lines were not whole sentences. So I now adjusted my program to find the longest sentence in these two texts. I pleased to tell you that the longest sentence in a book is much more interesting than the longest line.

With the Heart of Darkness example, I provide the preceding and following sentence of the longest sentence in the book as it frames the longest sentence very nicely. In order to make clear which sentence is the longest I have presented it in a boldface.

Without further ado... Here are the longest sentences in Alice in Wonderland and Heart of Darkness.

Alice in Wonderland

Hardly knowing what she did, she picked up a little bit of stick, and held it out to the puppy; whereupon the puppy jumped into the air off all its feet at once, with a yelp of delight,and rushed at the stick, and made believe to worry it; then Alice dodged behind a great thistle, to keep herself from being run over; and the moment she appeared on the other side, the puppy made another rush at the stick, and tumbled head over heels in its hurry to get hold of it; then Alice, thinking it was very like having a game of play with a cart-horse, and expecting every moment to be trampled under its feet, ran round the thistle again; then the puppy began a series of short charges at the stick, running a very little way forwards each time and a long way back, and barking hoarsely all the while, till at last it sat down a good way off, panting, with its tongue hanging out of its mouth, and its great eyes half shut.

Heart of Darkness

How could you?--with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums--how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude--utter solitude without a policeman--by the way of silence--utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference.

later...

And the longest line is...

I wrote a little program this evening that takes a text and works out the longest line in it..

I fed it (1) the dictionary (2) Heart of Darkness (3) Alice in Wonderland

Here are the results:

(1) pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
(2) the _Golden Hind_ returning with her rotund flanks full of treasure, to be
(3) `Why,' said the Gryphon, `you first form into a line along the sea-shore--'

hmmm....

"Free Will is considered a conceptual confusion."

This year one of university courses is on Artificial Intelligence.

I have started on the first assignment which only requires one to get a general feel of the different fields and ideas which one will be required to confront and to situate oneself within in order to be able to, in turn, also situate the ideas that will be taught. Ouch.

Anyways... Of the ideas that artificial intelligence needs to examine are the notions of free will and determinism. In my reading I discovered a philosophy called "Pessimistic Incompatabilism" which states that there is neither determinism nor free-will in this world!

Here is a definition of it from Wikipedia

Pessimistic Incompatibilism
While hard determinism clearly opposes the concept of free will, some suggest that even non-determinism might be incompatible with free will. This is pessimistic incompatibilism. Under the assertion that events are not predetermined (e.g., for quantum mechanical reasons), it is then suggested that any event has a probability assigned to it. Taking this concept further, it is suggested that an event is determined not by free will, but by the concept of randomness. For example, if there is a probability of 1% that one will delete this article, then whether or not it is deleted is not considered to be of free choice, but rather a brute random fact about the world. On this account, the notion of free will is considered a conceptual confusion, i.e. it does not exist in the sense which is misconceived, regardless of whether or not the universe is deterministic.


hmmm....

I hear its been hot in Europe this year...

Hot in Europe this year... polar ice-caps melting... hmmm...as my new favourite internet comic book writer, xkcd, says...


hmmm....

my tooth hurts

Last night of my Fedora Core 5 installation I upgraded my kernel to the latest stable kernel release; in order to make use of its better abilities to work with my ATI graphic chip. I also had to install the source for the latest kernel in order to build and link in the ndiswrapper module for my wireless.

I just was at the dentist, where for 1 and 1/2 hours he did things to my teeth. Its sore. He also gave me the quote for all the work that needs to happen due to damage I did to my teeth. I think I cracked one or something. Two crowns are needed. I already have four crowns. Its not cheap. In fact its so expensive its depressing. But I think medical aid will cover most of it.

I am also hungry, but my mouth is too numb for eating anything. Useful thing the mouth. If you don't know I had a car accident last week. I hit the back of someone else's car when there was a sudden traffic stoppage in the fast lane of the freeway. I am now driving a hired car. The spares to repair my car were meant to arrive tomorrow, so hopefully I will have my car back. I miss the car. I am still hungry; I suspect I am going to get more hungry as the day progresses.

Great start to 2007!

And then this Sunday.... my 3 year wedding anniversary!

And onward ho, driving into 2007

Well. What a week. I had a car accident. Ugg. Am now driving a rented car whilst waiting for my car to be repaired.

Last night, Orli and Denzil came over for supper on the last night of 2006. It was a really enjoyable evening. We had a cheese fondue and laughter.

Its now the 1st January 2007 and instead of going to see a movie I will be cleaning the study.

later...