Codebreaker At The Science Museum
This morning, I went to see the exhibition about Alan Turing called Codebreaker at the Science Museum.
Posters for Codebreaker
it is actually only a small exhibition, but with good quality and some unusual exhibits, including a differential analyser built out of Meccano.
There was also some exhibits and documents on Turing’s personal life, including the Coroner’s report on his suicide.
The exhibition says that his mother thought his death may not have been suicide and in his Wikipedia entry, this is said.
Turing’s mother argued strenuously that the ingestion was accidental, caused by her son’s careless storage of laboratory chemicals. Biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed himself in an ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability. Hodges and David Leavitt have suggested that Turing was re-enacting a scene from the 1937 film Snow White, his favourite fairy tale, both noting that (in Leavitt’s words) he took “an especially keen pleasure in the scene where the Wicked Queen immerses her apple in the poisonous brew.”
If you look at others like Turing, such as Newton, you find characters very much on the edge. I used to work with a programmer, who always sang and made strange noises as he coded. He argued that programming was such a logical business, you had to do something mad to balance the mind. Turing wasn’t a programmer in the sense we think now, but he was someone steeped in logic and I suspect the same applied to him.
Sadly, in today’s world, Turing would probably be treasured in much the way Stephen Hawking is.
At least now, hopefully his sexuality would not have been the problem it was in the 1960s.
I Am A Man Who Is Approaching His Terminus
Not me, I hasten to add!
But the very brave Clive James has said this about himself, as he battles against cancer.
He is obviously determined to go with dignity and humour.
Is there any other way? Not in my book there isn’t!
Hit By a Strike
London’s buses are on strike today.
I can’t remember the last time, I was personally hit by a strike, but I suspect it was the odd Underground strike in the 1970s, when we lived in London.
It doesn’t really affect me much, as I can walk to the end of the road to get the Overground. But I know someone, who is having radiotherapy and the only way they can get to hospital is on a bus.
What annoys me about this strike, is that it appears to have been totally avoidable. Olympic bonuses should have been settled months ago, but I suspect UNITE were waiting to see if Ken got to be London Mayor. And where are Ed Milliband’s statements on this strike. Nowhere! But who funds the Labour Party? UNITE!
On fairness grounds, the bus staff should be getting something. But there is more to this row, than has appeared in the media.
Wedding of the Century Ends in Jail
Kirsty Lane wanted an amazing wedding. So she nicked £200,000 to pay for it. It’s all here in the Mail.
She’ll have 0f plenty of time to mull it all over in jail. Jail might also help her to lose a bit of weight!
What’s Wrong With Society
Helen Wright, headmistress of an independent girls’ boarding school in Wiltshire has her view on this and says it is all summed up by covergirls in underwear.
Her views are published in full in this report in the Daily Mail. Here’s an extract.
Kim Kardashian is the poster girl for ‘almost everything that is wrong with Western society’, according to a leading headmistress.
The reality TV star is part of a culture that glorifies women’s physical appearances over their character, claims Dr Helen Wright, head of a private girls’ boarding school.
In a speech tomorrow, Dr Wright will show Miss Kardashian posing in her underwear on the cover of men’s magazine Zoo.
The headline, from an edition last month, praises Miss Kardashian as ‘the hottest woman in the world’.
‘It is not too strong a statement, I venture to suggest, to say that almost everything that is wrong with Western society today can be summed up in that one symbolic photo of Miss Kim Kardashian on the front of Zoo magazine,’ Dr Wright will say.
‘The descent of Western civilisation can practically be read into every curve, of which, you will note, there are in-deed many.
In the 1960s, girls like Miss Kardashian, were generally labelled by that wonderfully complimentary term, scrubbers.
But then it has always been thus. At present, I’m watching Royal Ascot and a Royal historian has said that it was the place where George IV went to show off his mistresses.
There has always been a class of woman, who felt the quickest way to the top, was lying on their back, with their legs in the air and their knickers, if any, around their ankles.
They’ve Now Occupied the Park
As I took the bus yesterday to Moorgate, I noticed a lot of tents in Shoreditch Park.
The Occupy Movement in Shoreditch Park
It would appear that the Occupy idiots have decided to ruin someone else’s environment. There’s a report here. Note the commenyts of locals in the report.
Later the bus passed their former site in Finsbury Square.
FInsbury Square After Occupy
So it’s probably been cleaned before they left, but this time last year, it was grass and flower beds.
And Now It’s Super Obesity!
The BBC has two health stories today. One is about the fact that the NHS is in crisis and the other about super-obesity.
Are they by any chance related?
I recently had a visit to a hospital, where under pressure of clinic space, we had the consultation in a consulting room fitted out for the super obese.
It was extremely threatening. I was sitting in a chair, where three of me could have sat and the couch was like the bench, you’d get in a garage, where heavy trucks would be serviced.
I was surprised that the BBC didn’t put a warning before the obesity report, like they do for flash photography.
Jenny Hill has just said obesity will cost up £60billion a year in a few years. I hope that figure is wrong, as the total NHS budget for 2011-2012 is £120billion a year.
Back to the Eighties
In The Times today, Lord Mandelson is reported as saying that the Unions are taking the Labour Party back to the 1980s.
It certainly seems to me that the two organisations are not singing from the same hymn sheet.
I doubt in this country, there has ever been any strike, that has ever achieved all its objectives. Some small ones might, but in most cases the threat of strike action ends up with a positive result and usually for all parties concerned.
Professional Theft – PIP Breast Implants
It has been reported that Prof Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHS medical director has looked in to the sub-standard breast implants supplied by French company PIP and has said that despite their double-than-normal failure rate, they did not appear to be linked with increased levels of cancer.
It would appear that where the NHS is concerned, the organisation has offered to remove any implants it made, but the problem in England lies with the 95 % of women, who had the operation done privately.
I’ll give an example here. Suppose I had taken my Jaguar to an approved dealer after the air-conditioning pump had failed and it had been replaced by a sub-standard import, non-approved part. If I’d have noticed this, I’d have asked the dealer to replace it with the approved part at no charge and I suspect that Jaguar would have backed up my demand.
The NHS seems to be fulfilling its similar obligations, but many private clinics seem to be washing their hands of the whole thing. Surely, to use a sub-standard part and probably charge for the kosher one is theft. I call this professional theft, where the customer is milked by a professional, who should know better.
And when the report from Professor Keogh doesn’t take a robust attitude to those of his profession, who didn’t put the best interest of the patients first and insist they replace the offending implants, some might think he is putting the doctors before the patients.
In my view these women should have their implants removed and replaced and those done outside the NHS, should be paid for by the skimping clinics and doctors involved.
Who’s Eating All The Pies?
And it would appear everything else!
Accordiung to a report on BBC Breakfast Time, a third of the obese people in the world, live in North America. But only six percent of the world’s population live there!
I think that the answer is a no brainer!
The Anonymous Widower 