Joining the Chomsky-Bashing Bandwagon Personal Commentary 'If I ever hear from that effete, boorish, pseudo-intellectual rectocranial inversion again, it'll be too soon. It's like listening to George Bush's ineffectual, bookish cousin, minus the charm.'

I first heard of Chomsky in computer science class. He discovered/outlined/defined the Chomsky language hierarchy (do you "discover" or "invent" math concepts?). For a while after I heard about his more mainstream fame, I had a hard time believing the two were the same person... not that the personas were contradictory, I just didn't expect them to be the same.

Scripting News
Personal Commentary
'"One man in Florida is dead. Another was found to have anthrax in his nose. They worked in the same office. Stevens lived within a mile of an airport that one of the Sept 11 terrorists flew out of. Is this a coincidence or terrorism?"'

If it's terrorism, then so far it's a horribly botched job. 5000 people dead, not to diminish the tragedy of the WTC, was a blip. Two doesn't even rate that.

Scripting News
Personal Commentary
'"One man in Florida is dead. Another was found to have anthrax in his nose. They worked in the same office. Stevens lived within a mile of an airport that one of the Sept 11 terrorists flew out of. Is this a coincidence or terrorism?"'

If it's terrorism, then so far it's a horribly botched job. 5000 people dead, not to diminish the tragedy of the WTC, was a blip. Two doesn't even rate that.

blackholebrain - Freedom First, Justice Will Follow
Personal Commentary

Don't get me wrong -- it all sounds good. But there will never [ever] be any globally-implemented, man-made political, legislative, technological, or militaristic remedy that actually puts an end to terrorism. Period. Why? Because something as completely permeative of the human soul as religious belief is --no matter how radical the belief system-- it's really just part of being human. And beliefs won't just disappear with a UN mandate and some bullets, especially when dealing with belief systems that compel believers to sacrifice themselves in order to destroy those who believe differently. It's true.

Opportunists use crisis to push agendas
Misc.
'Yet amid the chorus of draconian proposals and McCarthyite threats, one voice of opportunism still stands out. That voice belongs to Robyn Mazer, who is using September 11 to call for an international crackdown on counterfeit T-shirts.'

Is there no cause that can't be twisted to be related to terrorism? We're finding out. The more time goes by, the closer we get to "no"...

The 2001 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
Patents
'TECHNOLOGY IG-NOBLE AWARD:
Awarded jointly to John Keogh of Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia, for patenting the wheel in the year 2001, and to the Australian Patent Office for granting him Innovation Patent #2001100012.'

What are the Ig Noble awards?

 

A rant against bad patents
Patents
'Looking at patent US5379129 itself, I see that it contains no new intellectual content. Usually, when I see a claim that Company X has patented Obvious Technique Y, I'm skeptical. Whether you agree with the patent system or not, in many cases the actual patent contains claims that show that Company X has at least used Obvious Technique Y in a new context, or figured out an implementation trick.'

My test today
Personal Commentary
I took a test today in my graph theory class. I thought it might be interesting to share one of the problems:

4. Prove by induction on the number of vertices in the graph (|V|) that every undirected graph G has an orientation such that |indeg(v) -outdeg(v)| <= 1 for every vertex in the graph.

I think I got it mostly right.

One of the things I love about math is taking a course and reading the last chapter the course will cover. Such gibberish. Yet, in just four or five months, it makes sense. You'd hardly even think it was the same book. So much fun!

Hijackers' e-mails sifted for clues
Misc.
'Federal authorities believe that some of the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were using computers in all-night Kinko's stores and cybercafes in South Florida to coordinate their activities in the weeks before the assaults. Investigators have amassed what they described as a "substantial" amount of e-mail traffic among the hijackers.'

'None of the communications, authorities said Sunday, involved the use of encryption or other code to disguise the contents of the messages.'

Postulate
Personal Commentary
Postulate: The civilization level of a society can be completely measured by the congruence between its law and ethics.