Have you ever asked Siri "How cold is it?"
Siri, a computer program known as Apple's "intelligent personal assistant" or "knowledge navigator," is part of Apple's Inc.'s iOS operating system. Folks usually ask Siri for directions. We ask about the weather AND directions.
So on Wednesday noon, Jan. 25, from our Vacaville "weather station," we picked up the Iphone and asked Siri: "How cold is it?'
"It's 53 degrees and I don't find that particularly cold," she said, maybe a little too fiesty. Siri is probably headquartered in Fairbanks, Alaska, where shivering residents experience -70 degrees in January. Or maybe she's based in Grand Forks or Fargo, N.D., where -40 degrees is considered a heat wave.
It's so cold in some of the cities in Alaska, North Dakota and Minnesota--how cold?--so cold that you have to open the refrigerator to heat the house. And, sometimes it's so cold that:
- you step outside and your shadow freezes
- you hear the police telling a robber to "freeze" and he does
- you bake a cake and set it out on the windowsill to cool and seconds later, it's frosted
- you talk to friends and your words freeze, so you have to pick up the letters and thaw them before continuing
- bees are begging to be smoked
So we walked outside to check the newly flowering oxalis for the presence of honey bees. Fifty-three degrees. Scientists tell us that honey bees don't usually fly when it's below 55 degrees, but we've seen bees flying at 50 degrees. So, between 50 and 55, that's a given.
The yellow oxalis seemed to be waiting. Any bees? Yes, one bee. She probably emerged from her hive, shivered a bit, and said to her fellow worker bees: "Let's go, girls!"--or something like that.
So we asked Siri "Do you like bees?"
"This is about you, Kathy, not me," she said.
Still feisty.
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