I decided to start blogging here again because, although I’d hoped google wave would turn into a general interest forum, supplanting blogging, IM, and email, activity there has kind of petered out. So although these thoughts are someone disjointed I figured I would put them here.
Although I had been singing the praises of SAGE for a while, and denigrating all non-open source mathematics packages…after coding the same project in both SAGE/python and Matlab professional (on a university system) I can say that I really see why people like Matlab so much. About 70% of the time I spend in SAGE is in getting the various special data-types to work well together and finding the right way to invoke the interfaces to other projects. Matlab takes away all the headaches by having so few data types to choose from and really simple and intuitive commands for loading and saving data. Of course, I’m not ready to surrender to the proprietary software mongers, I just think that the creators of open source mathematics packages should aim to incorporate some of the desirable features of MATLAB for a mass-market audience. Incomplete as it is, Octave does a pretty good job of emulating the basic functionality of MATLAB. I would like to see and/or participate in work to extend the functionality of Octave so that it not only may catch up with MATLAB but also improve on it by incorporating some of the more algebraic aspects of computation that MATLAB is weak at (and that SAGE and Singular and other such packages were recently created in academia to address).
I was also thinking regarding the South Park/Mohammed episode: you would think that a lot of Muslims or Islamist-sympathizer-types with overseas insurgents would threaten right-wing talking heads when they go on news shows and call for various violent acts. I guess they do, but
they are never “censored”. (side note: although a friend of mine was telling me in Ottawa that Ann Coulter had to cancel an appearance there because the administration said they couldn’t guarantee her safety and/or immunity from Canadian hate-speech law–which I think shameful for Canada as much of a mendacious clown as I think that commentator is…) I think what got me thinking about this was Col. Lang
pointing out on his blog that someone like him, who makes pronouncements, based on his scholarship, concerning Islamic society, could be next. It’s really beyond my understanding why the issuers of this threat weren’t tracked down and questioned, so they’d know they were being watched, at least. (According to Wikipedia:
] New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said he was aware of the website posting, but said, “We don’t think that this threat, as is currently assessed, rises to a crime right now.”
[79]) Failing that response from the authorities, I like the attempt being made by some (such as Jon Stewart in particular) to talk about the episode and insult the issuers of the threat, so as to “defuse” it. By making as many people as possible in society an “offender” against these fanatics sense of decency, (the idea would be) we can in effect make no one a particular target.
Two other comments about that Sic Semper Tyrannis comment thread above: I’m quite disappointed that, in the comments, Lang takes the position that assassination of a U.S. citizen abroad would be justified because he didn’t “turn himself in”. Maybe we should’ve tried that against Marc Rich in Geneva or wherever he was! Also, extending on the “diffusing the threat” theme, some commenter notes that “May 20th is ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed Day’.
http://www.mynorthwest.com/?nid=11&sid=313170“
