Friday, September 04, 2009

experiments in lack of context

Thanks to the Language Log, this morning I found out about the HealthBase, a search engine that aims to bring the Internet's wealth of health-related information together in one place.

Theoretically, you enter a symptom, drug, condition, or food, and HealthBase searches the ENTIRE Internet to bring you the best info.

The funny part is that you can put in any word at all and, for most words, be given the Treatments, Causes, Complications, and Pros & Cons of it.

For instance, here are the Pros & Cons of "love."

Or the suggested food and plants for "travel."

Or the Complications of "education."

Or the Causes of "grammar."

We can't say they didn't warn us.

3 comments:

Emily said...

Pros and Cons of "ice cream":
http://healthbase.netbase.com/#ice%20cream&Pros

Jack said...

It's not working for me at the moment, but the concept is brilliant!

Emily said...

Hmmm. It looks like they've been disabled or something. Bummer.