GreatRidge Station

With news earlier this year that Saudi Arabia may ban the letter X because it looks like a cross, it strikes me that it is time for some significant revisions to the English Alphabet to protect the sensibilities of all.

Letters that need to be removed are as follows:

A — The letter A, both upper and lower case, must go because of its close association with the greek letter alpha. Jesus identified himself as the “Alpha and Omega.

C — The letter C looks too much like the is|amic crescent, and for the sake of the non-establishment clause, it must go.

H — The letter H is offensive to baseball fans, because it looks too much like a football goalpost.

I — The I looks too much like the number 1, and therefore favors monotheism.

J — Too much like a fish-hook, and Jesus said he would make his followers “fishers of men.”

O — The letter O is too reminiscent of the empty tomb of the resurrected Christ.

T — Actually, the letter T also looks too much like a cross. Both upper and lower case have to go.

W — The connection isn’t immediately obvious, but Omega (see A — alpha, above) is related to the english letter W. Incidentally, this is why some idioms are best left in their original language: “I am the A&W” wouldn’t have the same meaning or impact.

X — We already know the story on this one. Actually, it looks more like the cross on which St. Peter was martyred, but no sense splitting hairs.

This might cause a few problems. Joan, for instance, would be called N; Wally becomes Lly; and Bob becomes Bb.

In his keen wit, Amru Mohammad Faisal suggested that the ban be extended to the plus sign in mathematics “to prevent filthy Christian conspiracies from infiltrating our thoughts, our beliefs, and our feelings.”

So the only good thing about this change: NO MATH. Without X, there would be no unknown values, and therefore, no algebra (and there was much rejoicing).

Comment Magazine is doing a series on people who have made a significant contribution to the field of computer technology. I strongly recommend their work, for though it has a slight “North of the Border” slant (Comment is headquartered in Canada), their journal is a delight.

So far, though, no information about my favorite IT pioneer, Grace Hopper, a remarkable leader by any standards. And speaking of standards, that was one of the areas she pioneered. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, she pioneered high level programming languages and programming standards that would allow software to run on a variety of machines. Until she championed standards, programs were custom designed for individual machines, and were not portable. Incidentally, she wrote the COBOL programming language.

Decades later, she pushed for new standards for software testing. If the information I received is correct, her testing protocols went into the software that NASA uses. Not every organization or software company uses Hopper’s protocols, but those that do produce some of the most reliable software on earth.

Hopper saw the future, and thanks to her creativity and ingenuity, in many ways she shaped the future. Some will certainly argue that it was easy for Hopper because of her high rank, but we should remember that her high rank was conferred in response to her contributions.

As leaders, it is our responsibility to assess the current circumstances and blaze the trail ahead, and do so in an ethical, God-honoring way. And if we do that well, who’s to say that we won’t change the world in the process.

Sorry for the late post today. Had a meeting all morning.

With a hat tip to David Koyzis, here’s what technical support may have looked like 1000 years ago. It’s in a northern European language (Danish? Dutch?), but the subtitles are helpful.
Here’s the link.

And here’s the same with more complete subtitles.