[Gd-hackers] Names

[Miles Gould]

On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 07:17:24AM -0700, Peter S. Housel wrote:
[Snip Quine]
> In his large body of work, he has taken some highly complex
> philosophical positions, and I dare say that few of us know enough
> about philosophy to say whether or not we want to endorse them,
> explicitly or implicitly, deliberately or not.  I don't want to go
> there, or even get close.

IIRC, Quine's work was mostly fairly technical stuff about formal logic
and its relation to the physical world (he also did research into logic
and set theory in their own right). I don't think he ventured into
political philosophy or anything like that that could cause us
embarrasment.

Besides, it's possible to honour the man for his contributions to
philosophy and mathematics without agreeing with /everything/ he said -
I think that's taken as given. If I called a mathematical object
"Cartesian", would you expect me to endorse Descartes' vortex theory of
gravitation?

On another note, can I suggest "Columbine Dylan", after Harlequin's
female counterpart from commedia dell'arte? According to Wikipedia,
"[s]he was often the only functional intellect on the stage" - sounds
like a good name for a functional language to me!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbina

Miles

-- 
Are you OK? Can you play bass?
  -- unknown driver, upon hitting Jamie Zawinski with his car door.