Project proposal: Penrose

[Joe Darcy]

As a general comment, there are also concerns about how easy a project 
is to find in popular search engines.

-Joe

On 1/11/2012 5:05 PM, John Rose wrote:
> Here's quick comment; I've hesitated several times because I dislike name-choosing discussions.
>
> I assume you chose the name Penrose to honor the creator of the world's cleverest tesselation algorithm.  So far so good.
>
> Note that he is (a) still living and presumably highly interested in other people's use of his name, and (b) far more famous for his non-recreational math and physics.   For both reasons I suggest another name could work better for a software modularity project.
>
> (Point (b) seems to me a little like naming a violin after Einstein, although Penrose tiling is a unique achievement.  Actually, IIRC, there was an attempt to market a cigar or cigarette called "Relativity" when Einstein was newly famous.)
>
> Now I'll stick my neck out even farther:  Perhaps you already thought of this, but the grand master (before Roger Penrose) of tessellations is M.C. Escher, and this is a primary basis of his fame, at least among geeks.  Also, it would honor Penrose indirectly to name Escher in a "tiling" project; see the last paragraphs of:
>    http://www.worldofescher.com/misc/penrose.html
>
> (Of course, maybe there is already an Escher modularity project, and this is the latest escalation of clever nomenclature.  How about "Tesseract", then:  Tiling in a new dimension?)
>
> None of this is to dishonor Roger Penrose himself, whose books I find delightful and instructive.  If nobody shares my scruples (a) and (b), I'll be happy to forget about them.  In fact, I just did, anyway.
>
> Best wishes,
> -- John