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 However, this totally backfired – the Muslim communities have had riots, several countries have withdrawn their ambassadors from Denmark, and the Danish embassies in several cities have been torched.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.