My clever missus just got published - much excitement in our house.
Readability of information leaflets given to attenders at hospital with a head injury
In case you are wondering why this matters to me... why not get a little insight by reading my favourite Woody Allen Short. Anyone quoting the title at SWMBO and referencing me will be shot.
And in case you are wondering why this matter more generally... head injuries are serious, people die yall!
Another dreary winter in Scotland has me feeling a little SAD. I wonder if highly efficient Vitamin D generators (milk bottle skin-tone!) like myself are more prevalent among sufferers?
Having had a look at Wolfram-Alpha it seems like Stephen and friends have been busy little bunnies. I've been a fan since the first time I got my mitts on a copy of Mathematica way back when and it just did EVERYTHING better. Of course other stuff has come along to fill little niches and do some stuff really well but it is still the biggest the best and has the most delicious syntax. If a syntax can be beautiful the Wolfster def made the best stab at it. Look at the wonderful things you can do with it. Easter eggs on Mathematica - I bet they taste even better than they look. Not bad for an Old Etonian.
But what the Real Michael J and friends have been up to recently looks like a real step forward in information collation for the nation, and I do mean the nation; though I salute more than Stephen's team's indefatigability their most recent progeny glut are certainly norteamericanos and sans passport at that. But the turtle progresses only by sticking its neck out and this lot have clearly been wearing their turtlenecks.
Music on a search engine - these guys have been thinking afresh and thinking it through. I've never read it but I can't imagine there are not at least a few synesthetes in the development team to come up with this stuff. What would Duke Ellington and Miles Davis have made of this stuff I suspect they would have loved it. I'm guessing Richard David James is already a keen follower...
So many clever boys and girls make explicit connections between what for many, are very different spheres of knowledge. The sysnethete to me seems both the extreme example of, and the niche polymath - and I note that last bit smells of oxymoron. I don't want to colour anyone's views but could this be the first steps towards a more general correlation of pools of knowledge in the population. I often say to people that clever people do a few things in the vedic tradition of little and often,
Well the boys at Wolfram have a wonderful alpha out there now and as it passes my 5-point test I'm all for it. Centred on America, sure; Does loads of things worse than Google, definitely; Loads of bugs, you've got me! Like I said earlier - you have to stick your neck out, so why not check it out and take it somewhere new?
