Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mac Con Ulaidh who wrote (6971)	10/23/2001 5:29:05 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

More on Alan Turing and political, medical and military intelligence: turing.org.uk <But since 1948, the conditions of the Cold War, and the alliance with the United States, meant that known homosexuals had become ineligible for security clearance. Turing, now therefore excluded, spoke bitterly of this to his onetime wartime colleague, now MI6 engineer Donald Bayley, but to no other personal friends. > Looks as though the USA was in on the act. And turing.org.uk <Dear friends of Alan Turing: I have messages from two distinguished people who are unable to be present today. The first is from Sir Roger Penrose, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, who writes: This century has witnessed several revolutions in scientific thought and in technology. Relativity, quantum mechanics, antibiotics, genetics, aeroplanes, and television are some obvious examples. As the century draws to its close, however, it is another revolution that is now beginning to make the most profound mark on almost every aspect of our lives. This is the general-purpose computer. The central seminal figure in this computer revolution was Alan Turing, whose outstanding originality and vision was what made it possible, in work originating in the mid 1930s. Although it is now hard to see what the limits of the computer revolution might eventually be, it was Turing himself who pointed out to us the very existence of such theoretical limitations. These issues raise pivotal philosophical questions, which will, I am sure, be argued about for centuries to come. Turing was, indeed, a deep and influential philosopher in addition to his having made contributions to mathematics, technology and code-breaking that profoundly contribute to our present-day well being. The second is from the Rt. Hon. Chris Smith, MP, Minister of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who writes: It is long overdue and very welcome indeed that the birthplace of Alan Turing should now receive official recognition. Alan Turing did more for his country and for the future of science than almost anyone. He was dishonourably persecuted during his life; today let us wipe that national shame clean by honouring him properly. In 1952, while Nazi war criminals went free, Alan Turing faced punishment: a choice between prison and chemical castration. The shame is that this country enforced a sexual Apartheid law which penalised honesty. Betrayed by his country, Alan Turing embodied scornful resistance to that Apartheid; he acted and suffered accordingly. Comment on his alleged naivete misses the only point that matters: that such a law should never have existed; least of all after a war fought in the name of freedom. But 1952 saw the first public opposition, and thereafter increased persecution induced a new consciousness. In the long term, the naive unrealistic intransigence of Alan Turing's attitude has eclipsed more worldly wisdom. After decades of non-violent struggle, last night the House of Commons voted to eradicate that law....> Freedom, an elusive butterfly. Religious and other crackpots who attack homosexuals [and others] could perhaps be cured of their aggression with chemical lobotomy. The SAS in Afghanistan are doing a good job too. We could have a law that they have either jail or injections of oestrogen combined with testicle removal [which as a side benefit would help them avoid prostate cancer, not to mention reproducing]. Mqurice