google

If you ask Google Maps to calculate directions between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario—the only point where you go due south to enter Canada from the United States—and then ask for directions via public transportation, here’s what you get:

And here’s what you get if you reverse those directions:

There are, of course bus services operated by both cities’ transportation systems, naturally. I am uncertain as to whether you can walk through the Detroit-Windsor tunnel, though.

Google Calculator is pretty nifty, and able to handle some rather complex high-level (i.e. English-like) syntax. For example, it handles 1.190 CAD per litre in USD per gallon quite nicely, to let you figure out just how much that tank of gas you bought this afternoon cost (the answer, if you can’t be arsed to click on the link, is about USD$4.55—that’s what you get for having high oil prices combined with the recent woes of Alberta oil companies), compared with what they’re paying in the States (more than a dollar less, on average, per gallon). And Google Calculator is pretty awesome for this sort of thing.

But try stringing together several conversions, and even though it gets the parentheses right, it still utterly fails. The calculation 1.19 CAD per litre per 16 litres should parse as 1.19 $/L x 16 L, which reduces to $(1.19 x 16), but the calculator fails utterly on the calculation. Just look at the ridiculous answer: 75,111.0894 USD/metres to the sixth power! U.S. dollars weren’t even mentioned, and metres to the sixth power?? Now I truly understand what they mean by ‘a higher plane of existence’.

Language Log has a highly amusing post about some new examples of strange English translations on Chinese restaurant menus. This is, of course, not new (as has, of course, been widely documented), but this particular instance is quite amusing because of the way the word wikipedia shows up in there. Unfortunately I cannot read Chinese, so I’ll have to wait for LL’s official explanation—they’ve already got a pretty good hypothesis in a primitive form on the first linked post. But when you take into account the P.R.C.’s on-again off-again blocking of Wikipedia using the Great Firewall, I’m somewhat surprised that the word even occurred to someone (or some computer) as an acceptable translation at all. I would understand if it were Google, given the censorship issues that surrounded its creation and continued existence, but the ultimate permission being granted to remain after Google hopped in bed with the P.R.C. government. But Wikipedia?? That’s just weird.

Another thing that’s just weird: my spelling checker, which I never modify or anything because I can’t see the purpose or the relevance of trying to do so, recognises the words ‘Wikipedia’ and ‘Google’ without a second hesitation; even the word ‘wikipedia’ as in ‘barbecued congo eel with wikipedia and Fermented bean curd’ is recognised. But ‘href’ isn’t. Go figure.