I almost missed Shakespeare Day this year.  When I heard the news, I immediately sent a curse-filled rant to my closest Shakespeare friend, one Bardfilm by name, because I knew he would understand.  Again, Bardfilm, I apologize for using so many F-words on Easter Sunday. 🙂

Here’s what I realized, when I almost lost my day.  Today might very well be the happiest day of the year for me.  I’m not counting anniversaries and children’s birthdays and such, those are happy on a whole different level.  But they are small.  How many people will celebrate my son’s birthday with me?  His friends, sure, and his parents, and various grandparents and cousins. But still, we’re talking about a couple of dozen people?  Who are there for my son.  It’s not really my day. I’m happy for *him*, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

Shakespeare Day is the one day of the year when I feel a kindred spirit with literally thousands (millions?) of like-minded people all around the world. It is a day where I can tell, hear and repeat Shakespeare jokes with people who actually get them. No, not who just get them – anybody with a high school English education can “get” them. I’m talking about all you good folks out there who, like me, are made fundamentally happier because we get to do this. And we get to do this all day long.

My wife doesn’t fully get my Shakespeare addiction, but she tries. She’s learned over the years that on April 23, my thoughts are in another place. When I am not writing about Shakespeare I’ll want to be reading about him, and when I’m doing neither I’ll be thinking about him. She tries, and my kids try (my daughter suggested that I “paint my face and shave my head like Shakespeare”), but they know that these things work at a much bigger and deeper level than that.

Most of today’s posts, including this one, have been written ahead of time and scheduled, because I will be wrapped up with the day job responsibilities. But I’ll be with you in spirit!  Thanks for sharing the day with me over the years. There’s nothing else quite like it.

The contribution that famously carries his name, however, is The Turing Test (which he originally called the imitation game, hence the movie title). In the game he proposes, a human witness would ask questions, through a computer terminal, to a human player and to an “intelligent” computer player. The witness must determine which is the computer. The computer is trying to convince the witness that it is human. Being Turing, he even put numbers on the probability of winning the test,
writing that “an average interrogator will not have more than 70 per cent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning.”  

Ever since, people have been making “chat bots” that are good at changing the topic and avoiding the question. Apparently nobody else reads the rest of Turing’s paper, because he gave a great example about the kind of conversation he expected the computer to have:

Interrogator In the first line of your sonnet which reads ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’, would not ‘a spring day’ do as well or better? 

Computer It wouldn’t scan. 

Interrogator How about ‘a winter’s day’? That would scan all right. 

Computer Yes, but nobody wants to be compared to a winter’s day. 

Interrogator Would you say Mr. Pickwick reminded you of Christmas? 

Computer In a way. 

Interrogator Yet Christmas is a winter’s day, and I do not think Mr Pickwick would mind the comparison 

Computer I don’t think you’re serious. By a winter’s day one means a typical winter’s day, rather than a special one like Christmas. 

 I love when the computer science people use Shakespeare as their test content. Makes my day. I do the same thing :).  Consider how much intelligence is in this small example, beyond the ability to form grammatically correct sentences.  It needs to understand what sonnet 18 is, first of all, and what it means to compare someone to a summer’s day. It needs to understand the relationship between spring and summer, as well as the purpose of meter in poetry. It needs to understand why you compare someone to a summer’s day but not a winter’s day. It needs to recognize who Mr. Pickwick is, and why you might associate him with Christmas. It needs to understand what Christmas is, and why it is a special day.

In June 2014 there was a big story in the computer science world that a bot has “passed” the Turing Test.  Here’s a transcript.  You be the judge.  Personally I think we’re still a long way away – but imagine how exciting it would be if we ever get there!

Back in November 2011 I reviewed a graphic novel called Romeo and Juliet: The War. I remember that I quite liked it.  It’s overly violent, and there’s a weirdly gratuitous nude scene that may have been inserted to appease the teenage boy demographic but completely ruled out the chance of me showing it to my kids, but overall I was happy with the effort. It looked very nice and stayed consistent with the world they’d built.

I even said:

You know what? I said that it looks like a movie. I think that if somebody tried to tell this version of the story as a movie, it could be pretty awesome.

Well, look what I found.  Romeo and Juliet: The War is coming in 2017. It’s one of those “only accessible with IMDB Pro” deals so I can’t get all the scoop. Maybe one of the readers out there can see it?  We definitely know it’s the same source material, though, because in the “People who liked this also liked…” section, I can see a Stan Lee movie :).

I’ll keep watching for more news about this one!

A funny thing almost happened on the way to Shakespeare Day this year. The day job has been very, very busy on a number of fronts.  There’s actually a big all day meeting scheduled today at the home office. Most of my April has been spent building up to that.

On top of that, I’m having work done on my house, which means that my living situation’s been in disarray for the last two weeks.  As in, no beds for the children, who are sleeping in sleeping bags on various couches around the house.  Since my most productive time is typically late at night after everybody’s gone to bed, this has made it quite a challenge, especially when you factor in all the day job work that’s been going on.

But I couldn’t miss it. I would never forgive myself if a Shakespeare Day came and went and I failed to celebrate it.

So my many apologies that this is something of a mini celebration compared to previous years. We definitely won’t be breaking my marathon record (which I believe is 26 posts, or something like that?)  But I shall do what I can.

Happy Birthday, Shakespeare.

Welcome once again to another Shakespeare Day celebration! It’s not going to be a big one this year (for reasons to be explained in coming posts), but I couldn’t miss it.