Wot I did on my wekend

First I went to see a ballet and hear mr alan bean who is a astronaut from outer space he went on the moon but wen he got there he found out 3 other people had been there first and i sat next to a nice lady called mara who teaches english licherture at NAU and studies fay weldon wot used to live near where i used to live in england and then the next day i runned a 10 kilogram race and came second in my age but it was really really hard cos it kept going uphill all the time and never went downhill again honest and my shoes got muddy but it wasnt my fault neither and then i went to the park but did not play on the swings just some science things and talked to some boys about their robots and then i went to bed and got up again and went and sat under a tree in the park in the sunshine and then went to look at jupiter which is a long way away so you need a tellyscope but that’s ok cos they got one of those up at the lowell observatory so after i talked to some nice ladies from maryland for ages they let me look in it but i didn’t see mr alan bean through it

Ode to Joy

Someone I know said recently that we should all list five things each day that we’re grateful for. She’s quite right, we should, and I do. I’m always gasping to myself about the things I’m grateful for, including the person who said this and the fact that I actually wake up each morning (I’m only going to get to see about 0.00000026% of all the days there have ever been or ever will be, so each one is precious).

I’m not going to list five things here, just two that I’m particularly grateful for today. The first is that I didn’t get struck by lightning! I climbed Mount Wilson, near Sedona, and the view was so stunning that I failed to notice a mere 20-mile wide thunderstorm creeping up behind me and trapping me on the mountaintop. To one side of me was a thousand-foot sheer drop, and to the other was safety, but to get to it I would have had to cross slightly higher open ground, directly under the worst of the storm, so I’m additionally grateful that a) I was very interested in atmospheric electricity many years ago and so I understand how things behave in a large potential difference, and b) I’m only five foot ten. Anyway, I got away with it but it was a bit close for comfort. I was otherwise engaged during the really scary ones, but here’s one of the many lightning strokes that were busily seeking out my head:

Yoo-hoo! I'm over here!

The second thing I’m grateful for today is that I was born on such a beautiful planet. The other day I was looking at photos of Mars and it looked amazing. But the interesting bits were hundreds or thousands of miles apart. Earth’s a bit more complex. Here is just a small fraction of the beautiful things I saw in a mere ten square FEET on the flanks of Mt. Wilson today. You need to have “What a Wonderful World” playing in your head as you look at these. Enjoy!

An end to Turing Instability

Alan Turing was a superhero. Admittedly he got a bit distracted messing around with mathematical logic, artificial intelligence and inventing the digital computer, but in-between he also developed some of the first ever theoretical ideas in artificial life, specifically his work on nonlinear dynamical systems in the chemical basis of morphogenesis, and his posthumously published and little-known explorations of “unorganised machines“, which we would nowadays recognise as neural networks. Unlike the digital computer, neither of these alternative paradigms for computation has yet been fully developed.

But Turing was also wrapped up in the highly secretive world of code-breaking, through which he helped to shorten the Second World War substantially and save thousands of lives. Wartime Britain took its secrets very seriously and this “walls have ears” attitude became so ingrained in the culture that much of Turing’s work was hidden from view for too long to become part of established history. As a consequence, few members of the general public had even heard of him, let alone realised his role in creating the 21st Century, at least until Andrew Hodges’ biography of Turing came out in the early 1980’s. Bletchley Park, the headquarters of the code-breaking effort, still unaccountably struggles to preserve what’s left of its gently rotting history in the absence of government support.

Turing was also gay, and hence became considered a security threat. He was sentenced to be chemically castrated and came under harassing scrutiny. In 1954 he apparently committed suicide. At the very least he was effectively hounded to an early death by the British government, and it is even possible that he was secretly assassinated. This is not the way to treat heroes.

But last week, thanks to a petition started by John Graham-Cumming, Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued the following official apology. It’s far too late for Alan Turing, but I’m sure it will go some way towards correcting the insult to his name. I’m sure the gay community will appreciate the sentiment too, although I imagine this is just one of a thousand hoped-for apologies as far as they’re concerned. Apologies are pretty empty things when given by someone other than those who carried out the offence, but I do think they represent a statement of intent for the future and can be held against people when they act hypocritically, so I think it is still A Good Thing and a valued correction to history. I hope it will now be followed by some positive government action to preserve our heritage at Bletchley Park, where I’ve twice had the honour to tread in Alan’s footsteps and give talks on AI.

Thanks to Ann for telling me about the petition.

[Update: September 30: Bletchley Park have just announced a grant of half a million pounds from the Heritage Lottery Fund and are applying for another 4 million. English Heritage and Milton Keynes Council have also provided almost a million for repairs. Jolly good show chaps!]

2009 has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices – that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Gordon Brown

What a country

A couple of days ago I went out for my morning run and was really upset to see that some jerk had spray-painted graffiti over every available surface in the park I run through. It was such a disappointment because that’s the first real sign of inconsiderate behavior I’ve seen in my three months in Flagstaff.

But today I ran again, and tripped over a couple of the park’s neighbours, out on their hands and knees with scrubbing brushes, quietly cleaning it all off again. I just wanted to say thank you to those people publicly, as well. The United States as a corporation has a lot of cleaning up of its own to do, and deserves the poor reputation it has developed over the past decade. But the American people as individuals never cease to amaze me for their diligence, public spirit and kindness.