tail calls

[John Rose]

On Jun 12, 2009, at 6:50 PM, Daniel Weinreb wrote:

> John Rose wrote:
>>
>>   http://jvmlangsummit.com
>>
> The Vitruvian Duke on
> http://openjdk.java.net/projects/mlvm/jvmlangsummit/agenda.html
> says "Rubius Serpens" in the upper right.  Shouldn't that be "Rubeus"?

Maybe!  :-)

The two words are separate; it's not about a red serpent.  Serpens is  
a weak synonym for python (English snake, not the Greek dragon).

Rubius refers to Ruby, of course.  The English dictionary says ruby  
comes via French from the phrase rubinus lapis (reddish stone).

My Latin is very poor, so maybe rubeus would have been better.  But  
that word is a simple substantive for the color "red", which isn't  
quite the same as the gem ruby.  For the stone the Latin would be (I  
suppose) corundum, but that's even more obscure than "serpens" for  
"python".

On the shirt, I opted for a cutesy back translation replacing English - 
y by Latin -i and declining from there.  Not rigorous, but it makes me  
laugh.  (If I'm the only one, please don't tell me!)

-- John