Wolfram Alpha is Stupid

I’ve seen a demo of Alpha by Wolfram.  It was impressive.  It shows how having specialized knowledge of sophisticated software can enable useful results.

On the other hand, after news today of their “pro” version coming out, I gave it another try.  Simple task: give me a plot of the average high and low temperatures in Denver through the year.  I was looking for climate data.  The NWS site gives it directly, in tabular form, though.  A plot would be nice.  So, I asked Alpha for each, in turn.  You can see that it gave me the same plot for both.  This is quite misleading.  Is it showing the actual temperature for the past year?  Why would the average high and low be the same?  On top of this confusion, there appear to be non-functional crosshairs in the actual site, which one would think would allow clicking in the page to get details.  Not on Safari.

Iran and Nuclear Weapons

I don’t support the theological state politics and leadership in Iran, but I can understand their point of view on nuclear weapons.  Israel has nucs.  It is natural for any country to want parity in power with a neighbor.  Why was there an arms race between the US and USSR?  Anyone who dismisses Iran’s expectation for parity with Israel is either stupid or sophists or intentionally ignores facts contrary to their biased point of view.