Stupid Safari tricks

Right, well this one’s kind of obvious, but cool anyway. Wanting to tell an American friend (yes, there are one or two worthy, gentle reader) what temperature it was today in Melbn, I immediately thought of Google’s nifty [calculator](http://www.google.com/help/features.html#calculator)  feature. Apple’s [Safari](http://www.apple.com/safari/)  web browser (as well as a few [others](http://www.mozilla.org/)  ) has a handy search bar that defaults to Google. So I just typed “40c in f” in there, and the page came back with my answer. Simple math works too, and if I’ve already got Safari open, it’s much faster than running the calculator.  Stepping back, it’s bringing the idea of external intelligence to an extreme. First, people would **know**  how to change one format into another: add 100, divide by a goose’s weight in spring and if the answer is greater than 7\.42, add 12, otherwise, cube root it and then add 432\.45\. When we couldn’t be bothered with that anymore, we invented calculators. Little dodads in the desk drawer that would figure all that out for us. Next came computers. Expensive thingos that can figure out all kinds of complex stuff, but the programmers thoughtfully include a calculator program. Now, with the little search box and Google Calculator, we don’t even need that. Just type something in the little box and a computer on the other side of the world will add 1\+1 and send you back the answer. 

That’s celery computing: “They” say that the muscular caloric “cost” of eating celery is greater than the caloric intake you get from it: a net loss. Similarly, the network, computational and mathematical cost of sending the answer to your dumb question though thousands of kilometres of cable, dozens of routers and switches, then (in my case) through the air over 802.11, then displaying it on the screen in all its anti-aliased outline-fonted glory is far greater than the cost of computing the answer in the first place.