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I was walking into college the other day, and I saw this plaque:
It's a quote from the lyrics of Iron Man, by Black Sabbath.
But what is it doing in Buccleuch Place, in Edinburgh University, round the back of the Adam Ferguson Building, just set into the ground with no other context? Is there some connection between the band and the university? If it were near the Informatics building, with its robotics research department, it might make more sense.
I've been learning about Semantic Web techniques this semester, and this question is the sort that SW would be good at finding answers to. Right now I can just use search terms - "Iron Man", "Buccleuch", "turned to steel", "plaque" and try to piece together bits of answers from the pages that are returned, along with irrelevant pages about Iron Man triathlons in Edinburgh, Black Sabbath gig reviews, etc. If the pages contained metadata to distinguish between Iron Man: song, Iron Man:comic book superhero, Iron Man:athletic event, and there were stored inferences such as Buccleuch Place is a location in EH8 is a location in Edinburgh; Buccleuch Place is a location in Edinburgh University; the Adam Ferguson Building is a location on Buccleuch Place - then you could ask the Web what relation This Thing (with its associations of song, subject, band members) has to This Place (Edinburgh university, possibly Adam Ferguson).
And it might tell you that Ozzy Osbourne started a PhD in Robotics in the university, before giving it up to concentrate on his musical career. Hey, it worked for Brian May.
| He was turned to steel In the great magnetic field As he traveled time For the future of mankind |
 |
It's a quote from the lyrics of Iron Man, by Black Sabbath.
But what is it doing in Buccleuch Place, in Edinburgh University, round the back of the Adam Ferguson Building, just set into the ground with no other context? Is there some connection between the band and the university? If it were near the Informatics building, with its robotics research department, it might make more sense.
I've been learning about Semantic Web techniques this semester, and this question is the sort that SW would be good at finding answers to. Right now I can just use search terms - "Iron Man", "Buccleuch", "turned to steel", "plaque" and try to piece together bits of answers from the pages that are returned, along with irrelevant pages about Iron Man triathlons in Edinburgh, Black Sabbath gig reviews, etc. If the pages contained metadata to distinguish between Iron Man: song, Iron Man:comic book superhero, Iron Man:athletic event, and there were stored inferences such as Buccleuch Place is a location in EH8 is a location in Edinburgh; Buccleuch Place is a location in Edinburgh University; the Adam Ferguson Building is a location on Buccleuch Place - then you could ask the Web what relation This Thing (with its associations of song, subject, band members) has to This Place (Edinburgh university, possibly Adam Ferguson).
And it might tell you that Ozzy Osbourne started a PhD in Robotics in the university, before giving it up to concentrate on his musical career. Hey, it worked for Brian May.
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