Naturally Burnt

Naturally Burnt By the Dragon

By John Taylor; 24 August, 2005

This morning's reading from the Holy Writings happens to be LXVII from
Baha'u'llah's Prayers and Meditations, page 110 for those with
troubles reading Roman Numerals. I read it through aloud this morning
using the dictation software, Dragon Naturally Speaking, which I
bought in Windsor during a side trip on our Leamington summer
vacation. Here is how this prayer of gratitude for the bounty of
belief and faith looked to my eyes in the original, in the lucid and
eloquent translation of the Guardian. This is what I thought I was
reading, anyway:

"Glorified art Thou, O Lord my God! I yield Thee thanks for having
enabled me to recognize the Manifestation of Thyself, and for having
severed me from Thine enemies, and laid bare before mine eyes their
misdeeds and wicked works in Thy days, and for having rid me of all
attachment to them, and caused me to turn wholly towards Thy grace and
bountiful favors. I give Thee thanks, also, for having sent down upon
me from the clouds of Thy will that which hath so sanctified me from
the hints of the infidels and the allusions of the misbelievers that I
have fixed my heart firmly on Thee, and fled from such as have denied
the light of Thy countenance. Again I thank Thee for having empowered
me to be steadfast in Thy love, and to speak forth Thy praise and to
extol Thy virtues, and for having given me to drink of the cup of Thy
mercy that hath surpassed all things visible and invisible. Thou art
the Almighty, the Most Exalted, the All-Glorious, the All-Loving."

The transcription made by Dragon Naturally Speaking differed somewhat
from what I thought I had said. The following is what the program
wrote down. I know, what comes through looks blasphemous and twisted,
but think: artificial intelligence cannot be held to blame for this
kind of error. It knoweth not what it doeth. The only thing I changed
here is the last mistake at the very end, "Yolanda" instead of
"All-Loving" -- to make a correction you say, "Scratch that," and it
deletes the text and lets you try to say it more clearly. In this case
the correction was worse than the original mistake, God becomes not
all-loving but the "All Laughing," which is what He no doubt is doing
even at our most eloquent and sincere prayers, even our prayers
without any outer errors at all but leaving the glaring impurities
that no doubt exist within, that is, our prayers to remove splinters
in the eyes of others while beams stick into our own blinded eye.

"Glorified art though old Lord my God I yield V. thanks for having
enabled me to recognize the manifestation of thyself and for having
severed me from thine enemies that laid bare before mine eyes that
missed deeds and wicked works in my days and for having rid me of all
attachment to them cause me to turn wholly towards thy grace and
bountiful vagrants IQ V. thanks also for having sent down upon me from
the crowds of thy will that which has so sanctified me from the hands
of the infidels in the illusions of the believe is that I fix my heart
firmly on the lead from such as have denied the light of thy
countenance again I think we've were having empowered me to be
steadfast and I love to speak forth thy praise and took still live
virtues and for having giving me to drink of the cup of thy mercy that
has surpassed all things visible and invisible God the Almighty the
most exalted thee all glorious Yolanda (scratch that) the all
laughing."

And besides -- I say switching over to my "sin covering eye"
personality -- I have heard prayers garbled and botched worse than
that by intelligent humans in many a devotional section of the Feast.
But really, do I sound like that when I read? I begin to have self
doubts. Anyway, my reading for this morning was from the Writings of
the Bab. Here is what I thought I was reading:

"SAY, God is the Lord and all are worshippers unto Him. Say, God is
the True One and all pay homage unto Him. This is God, your Lord, and
unto Him shall ye return. Is there any doubt concerning God? He hath
created you and all things. The Lord of all worlds is He."
(Selections, 151)

And here is what the fiery dragon heard me saying:

"Say God is lowered and all are worshipers under him say God is the
true one and all play pay a comment under him this is God your load
and enter him shell you turn is there any doubt concerning God yet
created you and all things that Lord of all worlds as he."

I suppose it is a miracle that anybody ever understands anyone, what
with all the slips and confusion that comes out of our mouths, even
when we are reading well-composed text. As the program's documentation
recommends, though not in so many words, if you have not composed your
thoughts and laid them out clearly in your mind before you open your
mouth then just forget about this program ever deciphering what you
think you are trying to say. And if you try saying a sentence as
complex as the one just before this sentence? Forget about it; just
type it in or better still, do not express it at all.

Still, I have invested a great deal of money in this program and I
cannot just leave it aside without giving it a fair chance. So every
morning I have been starting the day with what it calls a "training
session" where I read a long passage that it already has written down
and it listens to how I pronounce and enounce it; it then starts into
a processing session that it says will take five or six hours and
always takes about three minutes. Maybe my computer is faster than the
computer it expects, I do not know. Supposedly, Dragon learns from
this cogitation session about the peculiarities of my voice and its
transcription errors will eventually fade away.

A side benefit of reading aloud I have found is that I can pick out
kid-friendly texts. Then Silvie, languishing in bed late these summer
holiday mornings starts listening to my dictation and inevitably
sneaks quietly out of her upper bunk and into my study and listens on
the sly to the story behind my back. Then I can add to the performance
by theatrically reacting to events. When the dictation arrow fails to
catch my meaning and stays at a word it is no matter how often I try
to say it CLEARLY and NATURALLY, I can extemporize. For example, this
morning I read the first chapter of "Alice in Wonderland," and some of
the English words vary from how we pronounce them on the other side of
the pond. Over and over I would say an interjection in the text but it
would not to recognize what I was saying. I reacted by breaking down
in mock tears, or sometimes I would become furious and take hold of
the monitor and try to strangle it, rewarded by stifled laughter
behind me. At the end of the training session I must pretend to be
surprised that Silvie was there behind me listening all along.

The first morning Silvie could not stand it when I messed up and the
arrow stayed at the same word for multiple attempts. She tried to
intervene and say it herself. This happened often, for I would
repeatedly be tempted to dramatize the dialog in the given young
person's novel by saying a little girl's words in a high voice or a
bear's voice in a gruff tone. This is a definite no-no for Dragon, it
must hear everything in a normal speaking voice, no matter what. It
refused to recognize anything I said in any but my most completely
natural tone, and often not even then (which I guess is why they call
it "Dragon Naturally Speaking;" it seemed like a good thing when I
first read it on the box). Silvie would cry out in frustration every
time I messed up, even after I explained that it was learning my voice
and would only be confused more if it heard her say it, or if it heard
any background noise butting in. All my funny voices, my wonderful
squeaky voice, my growly voice, my nasal drawl, all wasted and
ignored.

This dictation session from Alice in Wonderland, whose alternate title
is "Down the Rabbit Hole," lingers in my mind, as do all first
thoughts from the morning. Now I seem to be falling down not a rabbit
hole but a dragon's hole, a lair with walls littered with bones -- my
oral black hole, a DNS dictation training session every day,
everything coming out normal but ending garbled on the page of memory.
My dream is Alice's plunge into Wonderland, the event that starts her
story,

"The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then
dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think
about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very
deep well."

How like my ideal structure this rabbit hole is, the round tower of a
farmer's silo. If I built a silo office, Lewis Carroll describes just
how I would furnish the inside walls; a visitor would climb the silo
on outside stairs, visit my eagle's nest writer's office with a view
at the top, then leave by plunging down the middle of the silo,
suspended by invisible wires, as in a Chinese martial arts film,
looking all around at the walls just as Alice did at the walls of the
rabbit hole in her slow descent.

"Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had
plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what
was going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out
what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she
looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled
with cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw maps and
pictures hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves
as she passed; it was labelled 'ORANGE MARMALADE', but to her great
disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar for fear
of killing somebody, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as
she fell past it."

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com