September 11, 2009

At last. Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated....Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly.
  • About bloody time, too.
  • We might construct a Universal Turing machine that would have all the look-up tables available to the Queen (maybe Sir Elton John's input, and so on). Yet the end result would be undecidable because not trivial. Or so I get from the wiki…
  • This is an encouraging step. What it will take for the U.S. to catch up with this; the treatment of gays by the military continues to be deplorable. "Don't ask, don't tell"? Kudos to the U.K. for growing up. Wish we could do the same.
  • Futurist info theory suggests "(that) intelligent life may be expected to be even more innovation-, adaptation-, and sustainability-oriented than human culture is today… (this) will typically involve bottom-up, local, and evolutionary processes, with only a very minor, yet critical contribution (again, let us propose an average of 5%) coming from top-down, systemic, developmental processes. Maybe it's time for the Queen, if not a US president ever, to supply the top-down ingredient!
  • Well, the Prime Minister, while not able to confer a knighthood, does prove a welcome, though belated, top down evolutionary motion in an advanced society...
  • Good discussion over at Making Light too.