Heres a pic from a very pleasant jaunt I had with Craig Burton to the Snowbird ski resort just outside of Salt Lake City.
Originally uploaded by iainh1
Here’s a response from UK.gov:
Prime Minister: 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
If you would like to help preserve Alan Turing’s memory for future
generations, please donate here: http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/
Check out this worthy petition on No10 site.
‘Alan Turing was the greatest computer scientist ever born in Britain. He laid the foundations of computing, helped break the Nazi Enigma code and told us how to tell whether a machine could think.
He was also gay. He was prosecuted for being gay, chemically castrated as a ‘cure’, and took his own life, aged 41.
The British Government should apologize to Alan Turing for his treatment and recognize that his work created much of the world we live in and saved us from Nazi Germany. And an apology would recognize the tragic consequences of prejudice that ended this man’s life and career.’
I’d have to say that, on a nice day, Edinburgh has to be one of the most scenic cities around.
Here’s a view of Princes Street Gardens (East).
I’ve decided to give up latte coffees, i’ll stick to Americano for now.
Here’s my last one, Starbucks in Putney.
This sums up the weather in Scotland over the last two weeks….
Remind me to go somewhere else for summer next year.
And they are sharp, as I found out earlier…
I was shocked today to read this …..about the death of Nick Givotovsky, age just 44.
I first met Nick, along with Mark Lizar, over many beers, in the Sun in Splendour pub in Notting Hill – a few years back. His views were very aligned with mine – and since then every contribution he has made to the Identity and VRM discussions has been rich and perceptive.
Here’s just one example quote:
‘I believe we need explicit, uniform and enforceable and yes, universal rights to our own user-related data. Not just for purposes of privacy, but so that individually and collectively we can use our leverage as rightful owners of what are in fact valuable assets to obtain and enforce a much better “digital deal”, not just for us, but for others not (yet) directly addressed here, who will have to deal with the consequences of our collective (in)actions.
There are indeed technologists fully qualified to architect the infrastructure to enable a better, more equitable, reciprocal, transparent and accountable digital realm, and they have to a large extent already built the tools and system. Now, the application of that prospective infrastructure to systems and services with the potential to change “the digital deal” from the user-centric perspective is what’s needed, and I hope, what’s next.
Going forward, the formulation, creation and assertion of binding identity rights agreements in the context of “leverage” that in turn drives change enabled in the market by market forces is the most pragmatic, short path to something better than a-shrug-a-click-and-a-sigh privacy statements.
It’s exactly the implementation of such use cases to which I think the most beneficial and productive (though not always the most immediately profitable) effort can and should be devoted. We all need a better, fairer, more accountable and credible digital deal. If we are to be “digital citizens” should we not also know the real “digital deal”? Thoughts? Words? Deeds?’
Wonderful stuff – which we’ll now deliver on; unfortunately Nick won’t be here alongside. My thoughts are with his wife and familiy.
Iain
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