Sunday, June 17, 2018

Its good to be mii

When I taught  ugrad  Elementary Theory of Computation (Reg, CFL, P, NP, Dec, c.e.) I made 5% of the grade be MEET THE PROF- come to my office, in groups of 3-6 (though sometimes I got 10) just to talk to me. I ask them what there plans are, why they took the course, and they get to ask ME what they want.

The most common question I got:

              Why is your mii the example of a mii on the Wikipedia entry on mii: here (way back)

I was originally hesitant  to blog about this because (1) it may go away soon, and (2) I don't know.

But (1) its been there and stable for a while, and (2) I can speculate:

1) A prof in my department (not me) made and posted a Wikipedia page about me.

2) That page used the mii.

3) The powers that be at Wikipedia took down the mii (along with the list of my grad students who got PhD's).  This post is not a rant about this, but I will note that I think they should have allowed the mii since it looks like me. whenever I am going to meet someone at an airport I email them the mii and it always works.

4) Speculation: since it was on my Wikipedia page this mii was in the public domain and they could easily access it. Hence they used it. Is Wikipedia this arbitrary? Yes.

5) My darling thinks is unfair that the mii page can use my mii but my page can't. I just think its odd.

4 comments:

  1. who is darling ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Darling is my wife. I have mentioned her in the blog a few times, mostly notably her conviction that the Banach-Tarski Paradox means math is broken. She could be right. The blog on that is here:

      https://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2011/04/what-did-banachs-wife-think-of-banach.html

      Delete
  2. Is Darling her first name ? Just wondering.
    If not, why not simple use "my wife" instead ?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Her first name is not darlng.
    I just call her that.
    ``my wife'' sounds old fashion (though accurate and not offensive). Hmm. I think I'm just used to calling her Darling or My Darling.

    ReplyDelete