Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands
So here I am, working on my Big Algorithms assignment and listening to music (I’ve finally gotten my iPod to work with Linux, which has made everything really convenient!). One of the questions on this weeks assignment is about splay trees, and why a simpler, though more intuitive, design does not perform as well. As I am LaTeXing this up, I’m listening to Float by The Music, the chorus of which consists of the phrase “you wanna be free” repeated over and over. In a particularly topical mondegreen, I mishear this as the singer repeatedly telling me that “you want a B-tree!” Although I much prefer splay trees to B-trees, I was still quite entertained.
On a tangential note, earlier today I tried to use the word “mondegreen,” but totally forgot it. I tried looking it up on the web by searching for “vendement” and various spellings thereof, but could not find it. I had finally given up, when I happened across it again. What a wonderful word!
On a more newsy topic, President Bush has unveiled his budget proposal, in which he increases the spending for the military and the DHS, while cutting the budget to almost all civil departments: not only Medicare and Medicaid, but education, agriculture, medical research, not to mention the Departments of Justice and Transportation. Although this is an excellent strategy if you’re playing Sid Meier’s Civilization II, I fear it’s a bad policy for our country.
Finally, last week, a Danish newspaper, while running an article about how many illustrators are afraid that the Islamic community will grow angry if they draw Muslim-related pictures, published 12 drawings of the prophet Muhammed (which can be seen here), with the intent of showing that Muslims won’t be enraged by people drawing pictures of their prophet (Islam forbids the creation of pictures/sculptures/etc of Muhammed, although people have done just that, and celebrated their work, throughout the years). However, this totally backfired – the Muslim communities have had riots, several countries have withdrawn their ambassadors from Denmark, and the Danish embassies in several cities have been torched. However, Europe seems to be standing strong, with the pictures reprinted in quite a few newspapers all over the continent. I found a very thoughtful article on the subject here. Personally, I think this is just ridiculous – the way to get people to stop stereotyping Muslims is to show that they’re really just people, not mad, suicidal, murderous jihadists bent on ruling the world with Sharia. However, the Muslim community apparently wants to do just the opposite. Indeed, the death toll is mounting…
Right. I have to go back to my homework.
– Cutting agriculture budget: FINALLY, he does something right!!!!!! Sorry man, but this is one place where gratuitous budget slashing is long due.
– Cutting DoJ budget: considering how the DoJ is Bushie’s pet bulldog, isn’t this a good thing?
– Have you seen the pictures of them burning the Swiss flag in the news? And when did the Swiss ever get involved? It’s long been a staple of my liberal thought that the Middle East hates us because we fuck them over so much. But this isn’t an issue of burning American flags; this is an issue about them going berserk over… Denmark, the land of yummy butter cookies. Mmmmm, butter cookies. *drool* But really, Denmark is up there with the Swiss in terms of docile, unoffensive neutral countries, so why are the Muslims treating them like they are big bad American aggressors? It’s made me think… that these guys are so caught up in fundamentalist 13th century dogma that maybe, just maybe, the neo-cons (i.e., the people who are Republican b/c of their hawkish stance) might not be too off-course after all… boosting military spending? It’s still a bad idea, but not as bad as I had thought a week ago. As you pointed out, this seems to be doing a good job of confirming our stereotypes.
Dude! It’s great to hear from you! Last I checked, your website had been taken down, and I was beginning to think I’d never hear from you again. Drop me an IM sometime; we should catch up with each other.
and as for your crack about the neo-cons, fighting these fundamentalist Muslims is exactly what we should not do: it would, at worst, lower ourselves to the near-barbarism that we are decrying in them, and at best, escalate the conflict. What we should really do is sit down with the heads of the Muslim countries and have long discussions about our cultures and stuff like that, and failing that, maybe consider sanctions if they keep doing this sort of thing. Despite our illustrious president’s actions, military conflict should be reserved as a very last option, to only be used long after all other options have been exhausted.
I should clarify that while this shows that the liberal approach isn’t as great as it seems (Denmark took the liberal approach, and see where it is now), it certainly does not mean that the neo-con approach is consequently any better than the liberal approach. As I said, “boosting military spending? It’s still a bad idea [snip]” I’m just giving credit where credit is due…
The latest news is that Iran has renamed Danish Pastries “Roses of the Prophet Muhammed.”