Technically Incorrect

I know those little Google search ads are supposed to be terribly clever.

And I realize that Google has lots of other highly interesting services, none of which come to my mind just this minute because, well, I seem to have done without them until now. They don't move me. They don't make me think "oh, what a fabulous little invention."

Then I heard about GMail Goggles. So brilliant and yet so wonderfully, non-mathematically human.

Someone at Google clearly came into work one morning and said: "You know that girl I met in a bar two nights ago? You know, the one who turned her back on me...the one I regaled with the one-legged martian and the hermaphrodite pterodactyl joke...yeah, the one who poured her White Russian over my black satin H&M shirt?...well, I sent her an e-mail last night telling her I loved her."

"Step away from that laptop, sir. Step away from it now."

(Credit: CC Andronicus Max)

The lovely thing about these Goggles is that the Googlies haven't totally sacrificed their mathematical religion on the altar of humanity.

Essentially, if you enable the Goggles they will ask you several mathematical questions before allowing you to send a late-night Gmail. And you have to complete them within a certain time. It's a little like the GMAT (but probably more difficult).

Surely there is not one amongst us who hasn't sent the wrong e-mail when the mind was a little slurry.

Or, perhaps worse, sent the right e-mail to the wrong person. Come on, admit it, you've once sent an e-mail saying that Gregory Snoggings was a conniving, two-faced son of an ill-bred dachshund TO Gregory Snoggings. Just by mistake, Freudian or not.

The Goggles will sit by your side and electronically whisper into your ear: "Step away from that laptop. There's nothing to see here. Certainly not the way you're seeing things right now. So drink lots of water and go to bed with Winnie the Pooh and Loopy Lou. Tomorrow morning you will be glad we had this conversation."

I would very much like to buy the wise, wonderful person who invented these Goggles the largest and most refined drink possible.

And, come to think of it, isn't this the week for the Nobel Prizes?