It can seem magical… … when you realize that you have the ability to read another language, especially one that you don’t know and in a script that you can’t even identify. But that’s what this week’s Challenge was all about–a…
I’m never one to turn down an SRS opportunity… As you can imagine, in the back pocket of my mind I’ve got 4 or 5 SearchResearch Challenges queued up and ready to go, questing ever onward bringing you the tidbits of knowledge we all need in…
I ended last week’s post with this… Once you know that other animals capture and eat bats, you can do a more direct search for them (e.g., [ spider eats bat ]) and get even more articles to expand your range of bat-dining predators, i…
Bats are mysterious… Greater mouse-eared bat (Myotis myotis) P/C C. Robillier, from Wikimedia…. creatures of the night, and you have to admit they have a real PR problem–vampires, high-pitched squeaky noises, their long assoc…
A small bat flittered by me… Greater mouse-eared bat (Myotis myotis) P/C C. Robillier, from Wikimedia…. early one summer evening a few weeks ago, flashing in a hinky-jinky flight path across the blueing sky. Bats have always been creatur…
This mysterious space in the park… What was once here? … is mysterious no more thanks to the remarkable SRS Regulars! To remind you of the Challenge for this week… I was walking through a park in Berkeley (C…
Blank spaces on maps intrigue me, What was once here? .. as do blank spaces on the land. More than a few SRS Challenges have centered on attempting to find out what happened here–this week’s is in that category–what happened her…
Let’s wrap this up… Side comment: Why so long between posts? Answer: In addition to my regular gig at Google as a research scientist, I’m ALSO teaching a class at Stanford University on “Human-Computer Interaction & A…
Another way… As I mentioned last time, there are multiple ways to think about answering this question. I’ll give one way today, and then ANOTHER answer later this week. (I promise that next week we’ll move to another Chal…
Let’s think about this some more… This is such a rich topic that I’m going to break my answer up into multiple posts. Here’s the first with the simplest way to use Wikidata. 1. Can you find a way to…
Let’s think about this… I’ve been enjoying reading all of the comments on the post, watching as people try different search strategies to get at this question. (A general comment–they’re mostly pretty good! Nice job, SRS…
Some names are distinctive… … if you hear names like Captain Ahab, Starbuck, or Queequeg, your mind immediately opens the Moby Dick chapter, and you’re transported to the epic battle on the high seas between Ahab and the white whale.&nbs…
In 2019 we explored some mysterious ruined buildings… .. that I’d accidentally discovered while flying my drone in the upper reaches of Napa Valley. The Challenge then was to identify the buildings and learn a bit about the backstory….
Curiosity prompts us to find answers… DALL-E, “thinking hard in the style of Picasso”.. .especially with questions that sometimes start as vague feeling that something doesn’t quite fit, or that this isn’t what I expected. As you’ve p…
Our world is full of mystery… DALL-E, “thinking hard in the style of Picasso”.. and everyday I find myself thinking about some question or another that pokes at my curiosity. Often, this makes me do some searching with the result tha…