The Horrific and The Wonderful

Last night we had another thunderstorm. Poor Terabyte was so frightened by the thunder that she wouldn't eat her dinner. So I took her into the theatre, closed the door and turned on the TV. Of course, the lightning made the power surge and the satelite box had to be reset and then it couldn't find the satelites, so I had to watch something on DVR. So I put on "American Beauty" and held Tera till she felt better. Wow what a horrific movie. This morning I went to Amazon to read other people's reviews of it. So many people give it four stars, saying how deep and amazing it was. But, wow, what a horrific movie.

This morning I turned the TV on and found myself near the beginning of the 1994 "Little Women" movie. Lots of great actors, beautiful costumes, wholesome story. Of course, it made me cry and I hate that, but it was exactly the antidote needed to counterbalance the horror of last night's movie.

In other news, my professor has given my PhD proposal a preliminary green light so I officially turned it in. The anti-plagairism program says that about 11% of my proposal is not my own. But when you look at its report, it mostly highlights my bibliography and these little three word phrases that are industry-specific terminology..there just aren't other ways to say some of these things. So yea for automatic checking like this, but the technology still has a long way to go. I posted almost the exact same thing the other day: Just 'cuz a sentence has the same three words in it that YOUR sentences does, does not mean they are used in the same context or that they have the same meaning or that I've plagairized you. Programs do not yet have human-level text understanding and simple word matching is only a beginning.