Best use of Lego's in the History of Mankind.

yes, its a Lego Turing machine, how sweet is that? and yet, more proof that lego are the most awesome toys.

I really don't have anything else to say, if you don't think this is totally awesome and sweet, well, I'm not sure if you are in the right place then.

Britain apologizes for its treatment of Alan Turing after the war.

In what must be a gratifying feeling for the LGBT community but should definitely be celebrated the world over the British Government formally apologized for their treatment of Alan Turing after the war. For those of you who don't know, Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, the solver of the decision problem. and the man who cracked Enigma and very likely won WWII for the allies, was homosexual. and after the war, turing was convicted of Gross Indecency for his sexual preference. he was given the choice of chemical castration and hormone therapy or jail-time, lost all of his access to his classified work, and, after a year committed suicide. One of the greatest mathematicians of this century and the man who did more than any other man to defeat the Axis powers died after being persecuted for something so silly as his sexual orientation. It is I think, one of the more shameful occurrences in modern history and it is quite refreshing to have the government that caused it to formally apologize, even if it is years later.

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

Great Quantum Turing Machine Batman!

Ah, dear reader, It has been a while, not that time particularly matters to you, what with the whole not-existing thing you got going on, not that I blame, you, its not like I update this thing with any regularity, although I would like to change that... and with that note, lets get down to the entry....


So, while i was living in that terrible cess-pit known as the world sans internet I had time to read Programming the Universe by Seth Lloyd. This book is a must read for anyone who is interested in computability and the world as we understand it. Following up in the tradition of Wolfram's A New Kind of Science and Rucker's The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul(which i cant recommend highly enough) Programming the Universe is an exploration of what information science and the mathematical underpinnings of computation mean to how the world works and how to explain the universe in terms of a new physical entity (information) that must be considered when trying to understand what base forces and rules control and manage the universe.

However, Lloyd, a leading researcher in quantum computing, takes an interesting approach viewing the universe as not merely something that can be imitated by any old Universal Turing Machine, but rather, the universe is a giant quantum supercomputer that is constantly computing itself.

This is a elegant way around dealing with the problem of Chaos theory and quantum interaction that plagues most attempts at determinism by Universality of Turing machines. Chaos theory showing that if our measurements are even just a tiny bit off from the real value of the event we are measuring it would be impossible to predict its course, and the quantum interference that puts a minimum bound on how precise our measurements or even any measurements can be.

Lloyd also makes a very interesting point about entropy, viewing entropy as an increase in information, an increase in all those bits, that make up the universe as a complete and wonderful whole. is i think particularly thrilling,

Furthermore, Like Rucker's Work, Lloyd's work reads like a great lecture, anticipating questions and givng a phenomenal overview of the theory and its consequences. I give this book my highest recommendation. It is a fascinating read and has shaped the way I personally, understand the fundamental forces and interactions of the universe.