Multi-culturalism

[johnckirk]

Making a vaguely topical post, I've been aware of some recent controversy over two related incidents. Firstly, Jack Straw vs Muslim women wearing veils. Secondly, the armed policeman who didn't guard the embassy that he was initially assigned to. In both of these cases, I think that the way they've been reported seems to vary according to the

Comments

[dwagon]

e.g. if an MP was deaf and relied on lip-reading?

Like Jack Straw, who is notoriously hard of hearing (if not full on deaf)? ;)

[johnckirk]

Well, yes, hypothetically :) (I guess I need to do a bit more research into the whole "current affairs" thing...)

[totherme]

Is he?

Wow - I didn't know that :) Didn't see it in any of the reports I read (which is more than the average punter, I reckon), and it does put the whole thing in quite a different light for me :)

[susannahf]

don't you mean Jack Ashley?

As far as I'm aware, Jack Straw has never admitted to having hearing problems.

[totherme]

Just in case you're interested, it seems that Gordon Brown is backing Jack Straw in this (look at the "update" at the end

[pozorvlak]

To quote subsys: "You can't say pre (pre pub curry) pub without brackets. I think we should deprecate the English language".

[totherme]

I think you can say "pub pre pre pub curry" though.... And you can do more if you allow commas and dashes :)

[pozorvlak]

Yay for infix notation! You could also use reverse polish notation, with the following BNF:

Social ::= Ordering | "pub" | "curry"
Ordering ::= "pre" Social Social

[Note how I've surrounded that in
tags...]
But how about (say) pre pre pre curry pub pub pre curry pre curry pub pub? Is that ambiguous, or just confusing (and downright unhealthy)? And it only works as long as "pub curry" doesn't have a separate meaning of a curry bought in a pub, and "pre" only takes a specified number of arguments (which is the /real/ reason Lisp needs all those brackets).

[johnckirk]

I think that "pub pre pre pub curry" is about as long as it can reasonably get, and even then you'd really need tone of voice/pauses to convey it properly. Beyond that, you get into the "buffalo buffalo buffalo ..." sentences which are technically valid but too confusing for real usage.

Coming back to my original example, one way to avoid brackets is to have something like BODMAS rules of precedence, e.g. to say that equal terms (such as "and") associate from right-to-left.