Two Finite Automata
1
Monday morning sprint planning. The scrum master has opened up Jira and is paging through issues. “We don’t need to look at that one, that’s a prior issue. That one’s also prior… that’s prior… prior… prior….” I draw breath and turn over in bed. A crow is calling outside, “Pra… pra… pra….”
2
What’s on the homepage of The New York Times today? What else but a data visualization: “Unlocking the Genius of Mozart Through Data!” We’ve rearranged Mozart’s scores to play every note he ever wrote—in pitch order. First come all the Cs. It takes an incredibly long time to get through them. Eventually we switch to C♯, which we don’t expect to be quite so thick on the ground, but it’s still going to be a good long while before we get to D.
