The Mathematica system makes some beautiful, informative graphs, and presumably users can make those graphs with a minimum of fuss and bother. It's technically very nice.
Yet, in the entire blog post, is there one insight that wasn't a priori obvious? Maybe the bits about migration.
The progression of interests over time was non-obvious to me. For instance the explosion of interest in travel in the 20s, and the temporary dip in interests like philosophical quotes also in the 20s.
Theres a lot of stuff in the post, I wouldn't dismiss it because its TL;DR
They said they'll use it to support their 'personal analytics' programme [0], which is free via wolframalpha.com - I don't see how this data would help with Mathematica or anything else they charge for?
Even though WA is closed source and for-profit, I few them (and the company) as a kind of fellow scientist and not the evil big corporation (like oracle, microsoft etc.).
Even if we set out to build an entirely consistent set of notation for use in all of physics, maths and engineering today, we would face obvious problems, mostly that there are only about 100 different symbols (Latin + Greek + some extras) with maybe a handful of modifiers (primes, dots, tildes…and no, combining them is not good) and typefaces (difficult to replicate in handwriting).
So if we wanted to name every quantity and every concept possibly encountered by physics/maths/engineering today consistently, we already would have a hard time fitting everything in. Add to this that you also need a ‘working space’ of free, unencumbered symbols, a space of symbols free to use in the future[0] and the possibility that seemingly unrelated concepts today might well be linked in a few years time, and you will come to the conclusion that there is no way we could possibly build a consistent set of notation.
Really, be happy with what we have at the moment, choose a convention suitable to your current field of work[1] and everything will be fine.
[0] Some people started using Arab letters for new mathematical functions. Try googling for that.
[1] Or even invent the n-th one if you work at the edge of two existing fields or recognise that you can get stuff done more easily if you choose other symbols.
> this is based on the Quill v North Dakota interpretation of the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution.
Note that this is a very old reading, and any modern court would likely wash that out, as everything related to human existence is considered interstate commerce by the modern court.
> If goods are taxed more businesses raise their prices. Businesses aren't being taxed. Consumers are.
This is entirely dependent on which part of the supply chain has the fiercest competition. Sometimes consumers get the economic profit and pay cost (commodities) and sometimes the producers do (monopolies, who already charge what the market will bear)
Sales tax should go to the state where the buyer is, since the buyer is almost always the human person in the transaction. The only reason that it goes to the seller is that sellers are easier to regulate than individual buyers. With modern IT, that's not an issue anymore.
Yet, in the entire blog post, is there one insight that wasn't a priori obvious? Maybe the bits about migration.
I don't see the "art and science" in this analysis, I see "stamp collecting" (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Rutherford)