Geekspeare

Just stumbled across this, which I thought I would share.

It was apparently written circa 1997 "to purge the irritation" arising from wholly unjustified criticism of my (probably extended use) of metaphor and analogy in describing certain computer algorithms for optimisation. [If I recall correctly, I probably described a piece-wise linear optimisation as a Darwinian Ecosystem... at length, with examples, and possibly diagrams]

The original Sonnet XVIII by the Swan of Avon

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

The alternative version, as preferred by computer scientists with no poetry in their hearts:

Can I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thy beauty is not an objective fact!
Beaufort defines the strength of wind in May,
Not buds that subjectivity must rack!
Always the sun by Stefaan's law does shine
Though sometime is his colour index low,
But comfort is by human mind defined
And how to speak of it I do not know.
Knowing summer, and his mean duration
Why worry whether it be long or short?
Who can hold with idle speculation,
When analogy is with danger fraught?
So long as facts are facts that men can see
I'll have no truck with subjectivity.

Emetic Stuff.