We Don't Get Fooled Again

by David Shamah The Jerusalem Post, Friday, November 25, 2005

I know I put on a good show in these columns, but it's all a sham; far from being an educated, intelligent newspaper writer with hundreds of articles to my credit, I am really a nine year old kid who has managed to fool everybody! Nyah nyah!

Not that you would ever guess; I know lots of obscure stuff, not just about computers, but about history, science, philosophy – you name it, I'm an expert. Wanna test me? Okay; the Battle of Panipat occurred in 1761, when the Afghans beat the Mahrattas. An octavo is a book formed by folding a sheet of paper three times to make eight leaves. Kordofan is a mountainous region in central Sudan.

Now, I'll admit that any kid can look up this stuff on the Internet these days. But I'm not just some kid, and I already know this stuff without a computer! “No Internet? You mean you're a walking genius who was just born smart?” I can hear you asking. Well, if you say so!

Actually, I really should come clean; I wasn't born a genius – I had some help. In fact, everything I know I owe to The Sage.

The Sage is a teacher, preacher, and all around very smart guy. He turned me into a 9 year old genius for free. While the other kids were out playing ball and chasing frogs, I was studying with The Sage – and it really paid off. Now I can start a conversation at any cocktail party, besides making everybody think I'm really a big shot newspaper guy!

Jealous? Don't be; The Sage can do the same for you, if you download him to your computer. The Sage is a comprehensive dictionary/encyclopedia with a completely integrated dictionary and thesaurus that defines words, terms, concepts, historical events, and even an anagram decrypter – with nearly everything cross-referenced, allowing you to jump from word to concept with one click!

What's in a word? Well, according to The Sage, a word is far more than the definition listed in the dictionary; it's a lemma, which means that it really is a “topic” or a chapter heading; for example, a word can be defined as a part of speech, (noun, verb), a hypernym (part of a larger catergory), synonym, holonym, hypernym, antonym (look them up), or other type. Israel, for example, is a country (hypernym), a part of the Middle East (holonym), the home of Israelis (meronym), and it can be defined in dozens of other ways. All this information shows up when you type a word into the search box – and there are over a million such relationships portrayed in The Sage's 150,000-some word database. In addition, you get example sentences that show you how to use the word (there are 35,000 plus such sentences in the program).

Since The Sage's database is fully integrated, you can get information on any definition that pops up by clicking on that definition – which will open up a new tab in the program and list all the information about that word as well. All tabs remain open until you right click on them, and you can have as many definition tabs open at once.

How do you sort through all this useful information? Well, The Sage has that covered as well. All the information is color coded, so once you learn to recognize the colors that indicate whether a particular line or sentence is part of The Sage's thesaurus, encyclopedia, sentence examples, parts of speech listing, etc., you'll be able to visually focus in on the specific piece of data you need immediately by just scanning the screen for a second or two (you can set the colors for each heading on the program's option screen). In other words, The Sage practically “reads” the information you need to you; what a timesaver!

You can even search for a series of words at one time by using The Sage's wildcard function. And the wildcard rules are extensive; you can submit a search with a “general” wildcard character to return a lot of possible definitions – for example, entering the term *ord returned 170 listings, from cord to Mary Pickford – or narrow down the search using more specific search terms. And then there's the anagram generator, which is lots of fun if you enjoy exploring words.

But The Sage provides more than mere words – he provides solid knowledge, and if he can get a nine year old up to the speed on the beaked salmon – a Pacific fish that burrows its snout in the sand – imagine what he can do for big people who actually “have a clue!”

The Sage will work on any Windows computer and is free. Download from http://www.sequencepublishing.com/thesage.html.

ds@newzgeek.com