reverse Jython

[Maurice LING]

> But... it's said that Plato was once asked by a student, what good was
> all this geometry they had to study (Plato made all students study
> geometry first, as the best preparation of the mind for philosophy).
> Plato called a slave and instructed him to give the student a gold coin
> then throw the student out of the school.
> 
> There remains in academia an unconfessed sympathy for the Greek
> position, exemplified by this anecdote, that real scholarship
> _shouldn't_ be "good for something" -- it should be far from the grubby
> preoccupation of everyday life, and in its own idealized spiritual
> sphere.  Nobody in academia will speak this out loud, but, it IS, to
> some extent, still in the background.
> 
It reminds me of my convocation ceremony last year and a certain sense 
of disbelieve when someone was conferred a PhD in Arts for his work to 
"study the numerous bloody scenes of Iliad by Homer." There is a notion 
that academics lives in ivory towers...... But considering the life 
histories of some philosophers, Immanuael Kant for example (I think), 
he's born a nobleman......

I suppose pure mathematicians are still the subscribers to the ancient 
notion of real scholarship, considering they do maths just to produce 
more maths. Applied mathematicians are the ones that brought us computers...

> That's why some of us aren't in academia, often having tried it but
> found it wanting, partly because of that.  The concept of something I've
> done being actually practically useful to some people in their everyday
> work, in their everyday life, is too important for me to give up.
> Doesn't mean I can't explore blue-sky notions, but there's gotta be some
> kind of hope that -- at least if I get real lucky and everything comes
> out just right -- it WILL be useful.  That's why I'm an engineer, not a
> scientist, I guess;-).
> 

I do find more and more academics subscribing to the concept of 
real-world use (if lucky). Even though I am a scientist, I cant really 
handle obscurity, working in my own sphere of my own creation. 
Otherwise, I won't even have asked the question of "is it worth 
reversing jython, to compile java into python?" in the first place. In 
the notion of real scholarship, it is a nice thought, nobody had done it 
or is doing it, why even question the validity...

maurice