Sunday Papers Big for Coupons? Who Would Have Thought It?

This, from yesterday's New York Times: "Readers of Sunday newspapers are more likely than other Americans to use coupons, according to a survey released recently by Scarborough Research, which measures consumer shopping habits." Given that Sunday papers are probably the biggest source of daily coupons, is it any wonder that the readers of those papers are the biggest users of coupons? This to me is the equivalent of saying that people who drive into gas stations are more likely than others to purchase gasoline. The next biggest source of coupons is direct mail and, amazingly enough, people are probably less likely to use something they never asked for than something they paid for.

Dave? Goo Goo, Gah Gah, Dave

Stanford University researchers have written a program that "learns to decode sounds from different languages in the same way that a baby does helps to shed new light on how people learn to talk," according to Reuters. It supports the theory (which is different from coming close to proof) that babies listen to sounds and sort out how the language is put together.

"In the past, people have tried to argue it wasn't possible for any machine to learn these things, and so it had to be hard-wired (in humans)," [Stanford psychology professor James McClelland] said. "Those arguments, in my view, were not particularly well grounded."

I want to know when they have the computer start talking, based on what it learned. Will the first word be programmama?