| The Queen and the Mirror | |
June 24, 2015
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| She was a queen. She lived in a castle. There was a big mirror in her room and every day she stood in front of it, and looked at herself satisfactorily. She was a beautiful woman. One day an idea came to her, and asked to the mirror, "Who is the most beautiful woman in the world?" Of course, the mirror didn't answer because it was just a mirror. She knew an old tale in which a queen, who was a witch, asked a mirror who the most beautiful woman in the world was, and the mirror replied, "It is you, Your Majesty" or something like that. She, the present queen, asked one of the subjects, "I want a speaking mirror. Especially an honest one." Soon a speaking mirror was made. The queen asked the mirror, "Who is the most beautiful woman in the world?" The machine's sensor caught the queen's voice and answered, "It is you, Your Majesty." The queen nodded satisfactorily and asked, "So, who is the second?" The machine didn't answer. Soon after, the subject and mechanic in charge were sent far away to a labor camp. The other subjects realized this was not a game. Soon a special team was made. After a couple of weeks, a more elaborate mirror was made and placed in the queen's room.
"Smart answer, smart answer." The queen said satisfactorily. "In that case, even I can't touch her." The subjects were terrified thinking that 'touch' might mean assassinate or something like that. Then, the queen asked, "How many people in this country supported the idea that I'm the most beautiful?" After a pause, the mirror replied, "87 percent of our citizens, Your Majesty. The other 13 percent are infants and small children who can't recognize beauty." The subjects and engineers were relieved, thinking that this machine's answer seemed smart to avoid a concrete number of citizens. The queen said, as if she saw into their minds, "Ok, for today. But I want to know the exact number of citizens who believe that I'm the most beautiful woman in the world. I'll give you two weeks. I will also allow you to omit under 5 year-old children to vote, although I think they can recognize my beauty." The engineer team became very busy. In this country the Internet was connected to each house because the government spied on people with it. But, the problem was, the country didn't have a sense of voting because they didn't live in a democracy. So even 'voting' to see 'who the most beautiful woman in the world' was a difficult task. Two weeks later, the queen stood in front of the mirror and asked, "Who is the most beautiful woman in the world?" Now all the citizens in this country started to vote punching their computer keyboards. It took a couple of minutes to tally up the votes. The mirror said, "It is you, Your Majesty. 100 percent of the voters supported you, although 43 people misspelled your name." The queen said, "Not bad, not bad." After this, the 43 misspelling people were sent to a labor camp. This became a routine and continued every morning without problems until one day, when the queen asked the mirror as usual, "Who is the most beautiful woman in the world?" Soon the machine replied, "It is you, Your Majesty. 99.99 percent of voters supported you. No misspellings." The queen's face became hard. She asked the machine if it was her mishearing; the machine replied no. Soon all the subjects were gathered. The furious queen said, "If you can't find this 0.01 percent of voters, then all of you will go to the labor camp." That night, the head counselor reported to the queen that they found it was hackers in other countries that broke into the system and voted for different people. The head counselor promised her that they would remove the hackers by the next morning. But, the next morning, when the queen asked the mirror, the number who voted for the queen decreased to 99 percent. The head counselor suggested that she should stop the daily survey for the time being. But the queen wouldn't listen to his advice saying if she gave up, it meant she was defeated by the hackers. The rate of her supporters declined day by day. After a week, the number of supporters became less than 80 percent. Now the hackers became an organized group and started to receive votes from people all over the world. Voters in the world knew about the queen's tyrannical attitude and cruelty, and so voted for other women; soon the voting became a popularity poll. On this morning when the queen asked, "Who is the most beautiful woman in the world?" the mirror replied, "It is Bae Jin-ah, Your Majesty, not you. She is a Korean." The queen couldn't believe this. She fearfully asked the mirror. "Who is the second?" The mirror answered. "It is Nelly Nyong'o, Your Majesty. She is a Kenyan." "Who is the third?" "It is Cintia Belle, Your Majesty. She is a Brazilian." "Who is the fourth?" "It is Elsa Larsson, Your Majesty. She is a Swedish." "Who is the fifth?" "It is Sahel Farahani, Your Majesty. She is an Iranian" c Finally the queen screamed, "So, what's my rank?!" The mirror coldly replied, "You fell out of the rankings completely, Your Majesty." |
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*tally up :to find out the total number (C)
*tyrannical : when a leader or government has too much power and used that power in a cruel and unfair way=tyranny (C)
*poll :the process of finding out what people think about a subject by asking a lot of people the same question.(C)