hetero-ge'-ne-ous

Do to others as you would have them do to you. (Luke 6:31)

or, as i like to paraphrase it:

Treat others as you would like to be treated
if you were in their shoes and they were in yours.

how to apply to any relationship decision:

1. imagine yourself in the other person’s place, with all their challenges and disadvantages, dealing with someone just like you.
2. decide how you would like them to treat you (thinking healthy and long term versus selfish and instant gratification)
3. do it (or if you have already done it, stop stressing about it — you did the right thing)

try it… it works for any decision that involves a person. it is the best relationship rule i have ever found; it effectively clarifies every relationship conflict/issue/uncertainty… and that’s pretty awesome!

he ran after me, pecking viciously at my legs. when i turned he hissed, leaped high into the air, spread his wings and fluffed out his collar — clearly spoiling for a fight.

a pacifist by nature, i tried to walk away; however, the rooster refused to take “no” for an answer. with aggressive darting pecks he made it clear that my legs would pay the price if i turned my back on him again. with a sigh, i raised my fists and got ready.

i had never fought a rooster before — had never really fought anyone before, whether human or animal, come to think of it. and what was a rooster doing challenging me, a human being, to fight? sure, i was small — but not that small!? perhaps it was my hair, which i sometimes liked to put up in a top-knot to keep cool on this tropical South Pacific island. this particular rooster was a bully among the fowl that roamed freely on our campus; perhaps i had been chosen to show him that his bullying days were at an end. i called to mind the moves i had learned from Wendo, the women’s self-defense class i had taken in Toronto before coming to Tonga. a crescent kick with the smooth bottom of my shoe seemed particularly suited for this situation: i did not wish to harm the rooster, which must belong to someone, yet i wanted to discourage him from any further attacks or challenges.

the rooster leapt as high as he could, which looked to me to be about two feet. i am barely over five feet tall myself, but my roundhouse kick caught the rooster in the chest, knocking him slightly off balance. unfazed, he leapt again and again, only to be met with the bottom of my shoe each time. he never progressed, never got near me, continually re-commencing his attack until finally, after about 50 leaps (and 50 kicks), he suddenly ducked his head and scooted away as quickly as he could. relieved, i turned and headed for the office, all thoughts of victory being quickly replaced by the work i needed to get done that day.

the next time i walked by that same rooster (with some trepidation), he ducked his head and scooted off quickly at the sight of me. with a start i realized that i was now the Chief Rooster at Lafalafa!

from that day forward, no chicken, hen or rooster dared challenge me. although i bore him no ill-will, whenever i saw my vanquished foe he would duck his head and disappear as quickly as he could, the picture of shame. as the new Chief Rooster, i magnanimously allowed my small subjects to hunt and peck freely and without fear of harrassment (by me, anyways!).

since my experiments so far with Google Search have given almost uniformly unexpected results, i thot i would turn my attention to the unwanted words filter available there.

basically one can search on a particular word and subtract the web pages that contain one or more unwanted words.

hypothesis

i expected that a search on a generic word such as “the” would give me a baseline. then, the number of web pages found including another word (e.g., search on “the” and “about”) added to the number excluding that same word (e.g., search on “the” pages that do not contain “about”) should add up to the total web pages found — shouldn’t they?

method

on Saturday, June 19, 2010 at 10:38 am i did a Google Search on the word “the” and found 25.450 billion web pages. i then did a search with “the” and another word, followed by a search on “the” excluding that same word, and compiled the results. all searches were done with SafeSearch on “strict.” no other filters were used.

results

baseline search on “the”: 25.450 billion web pages.

conclusion

results of include and exclude searches did NOT add up to the total number of pages… leading one to wonder why!!! Google Search is not doing what i expect it to do — so just what is it doing?!!!

the Internet is like a massive cybermind representing the myriad thots of society. today, in the limbo between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, i decided to find out who gets a greater chunk of that mind — Mom or Dad?

hypothesis

there will be more web pages that reference mothers than those that reference fathers.

method

i searched on matched pairings of mother-father words/phrases (e.g., “mother” and “father”, “mama” and “papa”) on Google Search on Thursday, June 10, 2010 around 11:00 am and compared the numbers of web pages found. (SafeSearch was on “strict” and language filter was set to “any language”.)

results

there were consistently more pages about mothers versus fathers with all the paired search terms. the conceptual terms “motherhood” and “fatherhood” showed the greatest disparity, with “motherhood” outweighing “fatherhood” more than 3 to 1.

conclusion

in general, it appears that society’s cybermind is more focussed on mothers than on fathers — and extremely more focussed on motherhood than on fatherhood — for whatever reason.

hypothesis

a Google search on the word “the” for “any language” will find more pages than the same search with “English” language pages only.

method

on Google Search, i searched first on “the” for “any language”, then did the same search with “English” only.

i then searched on “a”, “mailing”, “Toronto” and “whatever” for “any language”, then repeated the searches with “English” only.

searches were done on Wednesday, June 9, 2010 just after 12:00 pm.

results

results with “mailing”, “Toronto” and “whatever” are as expected. there are more web pages found with the language filter set to “any language” than with “English.” results with “a” and “the” give an unexpected result — there are exactly the same number of web pages found under both language settings.

conclusion

the Google Search English language filter appears to work expected with typical search words. it gives unexpected results with the words “the” and “a” — finding the same number of web pages under “any language” and “English.” one assumes that these small words are ubiquitous on the web, and that all or most non-English language web pages either contain at least a small amount of English.

As of July 2009, Google Search was the number one search engine with 78.4% popularity. Bing is the next most popular English language search engine at 3.17% (“Web search engine”, Wikipedia).

Both search engines offer something called “SafeSearch” which is supposed to screen out explicit sexual/adult content. And both SafeSearch filters offer three different settings: “Off”, “Moderate”, and “Strict”. One would therefore assume that any searches done with SafeSearch set to “Strict” would find fewer web pages than searches done with SafeSearch set to “Moderate” or “Off”.

hypothesis

with the SafeSearch filter at “Strict”, both Google Search and Bing will find fewer web pages for the same search criteria as with SafeSearch at “Moderate” or “Off” — i.e., Strict > Moderate and Strict > Off and Moderate > Off.

method

i searched on the word “the” for English language web pages on both Google Search and Bing with SafeSearch at three different levels: Strict, Moderate and Off. all searches were done within seconds of each other on May 28, 2010 at 1:07 pm.

EDIT: i also added a few extra search terms for comparison, namely “about”, “mountain biking” and “Toronto”, in searches done within seconds of each other on Google and Bing on June 1, 2010 around 10:25 am.

results

with Google Search, we consistently discover the unexpected with all 4 search terms: Strict > Moderate, Strict > Off, and Moderate = Off. there appear to be far more web pages available in a strict search than in any other. and moderate filtering seems to be exactly the same as no filtering.

with Bing, in three of the searches Strict < Moderate, which we expected, but in one, Strict > Moderate, which is unexpected. in one of the searches, Strict > Off, again unexpected, while in two others we get the expected result (Strict < Off) and in one another unexpected result (Strict = Off). Finally, in three of the searches, we find that Moderate > Off (unexpected), while in one of the searches Moderate < Off (unexpected).

conclusion

there were plenty of unexpected results, many more than predicted. i don’t know what SafeSearch on Google and Bing are doing, but they are certainly not doing what one would expect them to do — leading me to question their functionality…

in a previous post, i asked the question, “how many English language web pages are there?” and i chose a Google Search on the word “the” as my measure, assuming as might be expected that every English language web page would at least contain the word “the.”

after two and a half weeks of following the ups and downs of the word “the” on Google Search, i am wondering if there are any web pages i’ve missed — i.e., that do NOT contain the word “the” and thus will not be counted in my typical Google Search.

hypothesis

there are some English language web pages out there that do not contain the word “the” — at least, not as far as Google Search is concerned.

method

various word searches of English language web pages on Google Search, with SafeSearch on “Strict”, that exclude the word “the.”

results

• baseline: at the time of these searches, a Google Search on the word “the” turns up 22.180 billion web pages.
• a: a search on “a” excluding “the” (i.e., “a -the”) turns up 1.680 billion web pages.
• i: a search on “i” excluding “a” and “the” (i.e., “i -a -the”) turns up 509 million web pages.
• and: a search on “and” excluding “i”, “a” and “the” (i.e. “and -i -a -the”) turns up 948 million web pages.
• is: a search on “is” excluding “and”, “i”, “a” and “the” (i.e., “is -and -i -a -the”) turns up 141 million web pages.
• an: a search on “an” excluding all preceding words (i.e., “an -is -and -i -a -the”) turns up 299 million web pages.
• about: a search on “about” excluding all preceding words (i.e., “about -an -is -and -i -a -the”) turns up 82.8 million web pages.
• fax: a search on “fax” excluding all preceding words (i.e., “fax -about -an -is -and -i -a -the”) turns up 13.5 million web pages.
• no: a search on “no” excluding all preceding words (i.e., “no -fax -about -an -is -and -i -a -the”) turns up 669 million web pages.
• buy: a search on “buy” excluding all preceding words (i.e., “buy -no -fax -about -an -is -and -i -a -the”) turns up 12.9 million web pages.
• faq: a search on “faq” excluding all preceding words (i.e., “faq -buy -no -fax -about -an -is -and -i -a -the”) turns up 5.46 million web pages.
• help: a search on “help” excluding all preceding words (i.e., “help -faq -buy -no -fax -about -an -is -and -i -a -the”) turns up 15.7 million web pages.
• we: a search on “we” excluding all preceding words (i.e., “we -help -faq -buy -no -fax -about -an -is -and -i -a -the”) turns up 6.870 million web pages.
• online: a search on “online” excluding all preceding words (i.e., “online -we -help -faq -buy -no -fax -about -an -is -and -i -a -the”) turns up 43.8 million web pages.
• to: a search on “to” excluding all preceding words (i.e., “to -online -we -help -faq -buy -no -fax -about -an -is -and -i -a -the”) turns up 179 million web pages.
• or: a search on “or” excluding all preceding words (i.e., “or -to -online -we -help -faq -buy -no -fax -about -an -is -and -i -a -the”) turns up 21 million web pages.
• in: a search on “in” excluding all preceding words (i.e., “in -or -to -online -we -help -faq -buy -no -fax -about -an -is -and -i -a -the”) turns up 128 million web pages.
• on: a search on “on” excluding all preceding words (i.e., “on -in -or -to -online -we -help -faq -buy -no -fax -about -an -is -and -i -a -the”) turns up 89.3 million web pages.

i also noted in clicking on some of the web pages found through these searches that the excluded words did appear on them. the main reason, as far as i could tell, was because the excluded words were hidden in scripts, and thus invisible to the Google Search engine.

conclusion

there are many web pages that do not appear to contain the word “the” — at least 4.8 billion, and probably more — and therefore a Google Search on the word “the” cannot be considered a comprehensive measure of the total number of English language web pages on the Internet.

hypothesis

a Google search on the word “the” can provide a measure of the number of English language web pages on the internet.

method

i searched on the word “the” on Google, with SafeSearch on “Strict,” for English language web pages. (strangely enough, with SafeSearch off, i found fewer pages!)

i believe these numbers are not sites, but pages. e.g., Wikipedia.org is one site with 7.640 million pages.

results

conclusion:

it appears from these data that the number of English language web pages containing “the” available via Google Search is currently approaching 23 billion.

EDIT: in a following experiment, i determine that there are at least 4.8 billion English language webpages that do not appear (to Google Search) to contain the word “the.” so any estimate of the total number of English language web pages should be incremented by approximately 5 billion, i.e., it appears that as of the end of May 2010, there are approximately 30 billion English language web pages out there.

i wrote in a previous post about my “dark night of the soul,” without much explanation of the term. astute readers will recognize a term coined by John of the Cross (1542-1591), an active leader in the Catholic church who established several new orders and was suddenly imprisoned because of his involvement with the Catholic Reform.

i am not a reader of classical literature by any stretch of the imagination, but because of an online course i was very recently forcing myself to read thro the book Devotional Classics by Richard Foster (2005: RENOVARE) when i happened upon a brief excerpt by John of the Cross entitled The Dark Night of the Soul. i never expected the writings of a Carmelite monk from 500 years ago to speak to my troubled heart which such sweet clarity — but that is exactly what happened. i was captivated.

John of the Cross details 7 “capital sins” that can easily overtake those believers who are greatly enjoying the awesome pleasure of God’s presence and comfort in their lives. In the “dark night” God very thoughtfully removes that same pleasure “to purify them and move them on to greater heights.”

The sins are as follows:

1. “secret pride” in one’s spirituality (“i should be a teacher; i no longer need to learn”),
2. a “spiritual greed” that more strongly desires the good feelings over God Himself,
3. “spiritual luxury” — a stirring up of the impure while in prayer,
4. “spiritual wrath” — anger and frustration when the good feelings end,
5. “spiritual gluttony” — an addiction to these same pleasures,
6. “spiritual envy” — feeling unhappy about others being praised for their spirituality (“it should be me they are praising”), and
7. “spiritual sloth” — laziness when the good feelings are no longer forthcoming (“what’s the point? i may as well quit”).

i read it once and it nourished me with unexpected sweetness. on second reading, i recognized almost all of these sins in myself. if you have just read this list with a sinking feeling (as i did), take heart! John of the Cross reassures us:

Through the dark night pride becomes humility, greed becomes simplicity, wrath becomes contentment, luxury becomes peace, gluttony becomes moderation, envy becomes joy, and sloth becomes strength. No soul will ever grow deep in the spiritual life unless God works passively in that soul by means of the dark night.

with this utter and complete encouragement from John of the Cross, i wholeheartedly embrace this God-ordained “dark night” i am now experiencing, and i joyfully receive the transformation of spiritual sins into spiritual strengths!

thank You, Papa God. You are SOO GOOD!!!!

yesterday was a special day, a milestone for me and my 13-year-old son. it was the first time i couldn’t see the top of his head. when we checked, we discovered that yes, he is now half an inch taller than me! he was pleased and i was proud, but i also felt… in some way diminished. probably because he no longer needs me the way he once did. when he was less than a year old, sitting in his highchair in the kitchen, if he could not see my face, he was immediately upset. now when i walk in the door and say, “i’m home!” he says, “oh, did you go somewhere?” if he answers at all.

i never got to reach that milestone with my own mother. she was 5’4″ and i have never quite been able to attain 5’1″. however, i have reached another milestone: i am now older than her. i was 14 when my mother was first diagnosed with breast cancer; 17 when she died of the spread to her bone. and this year, for the first time, i have reached an age that my mother never lived.

being older than my mother makes life feel different. i am no longer walking in my mother’s footsteps — not that i ever truly did, but at least before the option was there. my mother was a psychiatrist, and i — perhaps in reaction to her ultra-busy-ness — dropped out of medical school and chose to be a stay-at-home mom. but now — there is nothing to react to, because my mother never reached this age.

and my son — he’s no longer a child. he’s a teen, and he doesn’t need me to comfort or reassure him. he doesn’t even like to be hugged anymore, but will submit with some resignation to one hug at bedtime. it’s — different. i used to be the mother of a child. i’m not anymore. i used to walk behind my mother, but she’s no longer there ahead of me. i’ve passed her.

now i get to choose. my life lies before me like uncharted territory. now what?