“A Great science fiction detective story” – Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine
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Days since the Centenary: 224
Days to the Bicentennial: 36,300
I was talking with my business partner Saul–who is the other half of IndieBookLauncher.com–the other day and we were speculating about which existing Star Trek villain might get reprised in the new movie, Star Trek Into Darkness.
Saul ventured that it was probably the great Khan Noonien Singh, played with awesome dignity and dangerousness by Ricardo Montalbán in the original series episode “Space Seed” and in the second ST movie (he is also a character in several ST novels and doubtless in some of the famous slash fiction that notoriously emerged from the series).
Benedict Cumberbatch: Khan or Khan’t?
I said I hoped he was right, because they’re almost certain to bring back Khan at some point, and if anyone can do the character justice it will be Benedict Cumberbatch, who is known to play the villain in the next movie (though the identity of the villain is, as I write this, still under wraps).
Then, yesterday, came the news that Cumberbatch appears poised to play Turing in the biopic that caused such a fuss last year when the screenplay sold for a large (though undisclosed) sum on the strength of Leonardo DiCaprio wanting to star. Some time ago DiCaprio dropped out, now it seems Cumberbatch is likely to take over.
Which is good news for Turing fans, because Cumberbatch is an awesome actor (although the A.V. Club alleges that he’s not an actor, in fact not even a human being, but rather a “complex script file that allows users to produce the most British person possible”). And Cumberbatch’s star power can only help in terms of actually getting the film made.
I want to pause, though, to consider just what a geeky conquest this is for the actor. In the headline I referred to this as a hat trick, because:
Cumberbatch already plays Julian Assange in an upcoming biopic (see image below),
he’s in the Hobbit trilogy (he plays a role and also voices Smaug the dragon), and
he’s in the aforementioned Star Trek movie.
Now it appears he’ll play Turing, too. Maybe I should have said he’s scored a–well, whatever the hell the word is that’s like hat trick but means scoring four goals in one game instead of three (I am nerding out at the moment, so don’t ask me to recall sports things).
Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange in a still from The Fifth Estate
And, lest we forget, Cumberbatch already plays Sherlock Holmes, who is nothing if not the uber-nerd (though a coke-snorting nerd who’s good with his fists).
All of which is not even to mention that he’s signed on to star in the upcoming sort-of-Monty-Python movie, which involves four surviving Pythons. Nerd-gasm anyone?
This can only mean one thing: I look forward to his inevitable role as the newest character on The Big Bang Theory.
My schedule having been what it is, I didn’t prepare a Halloween post in advance this year. Last year I posted On Hallowe’en I Wore My Homo Sapiens Costume, which included photos of an Alan Turing jack-o-lantern. But this year I was busy and, as much as I love Halloween, it has no particular tie to Turing.
Or maybe it does — some deep, supernatural connection I’m not aware of — because the Turing-Elves weren’t content to let the day go by without connecting the day to the man.
Enter Oscar, a software engineer in San Mateo, California (home to actor Barry Bostwick who, on a Halloween note, so adeptly played the character of Brad in the movie version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show).
Oscar was participating in an office pumpkin-carving event and settled on the idea of creating a jack-o-lantern honoring a luminary from computer history.
Clearly Oscar is a man of discerning taste (not to mention a fan of the classics and a celebrant of the Alan Turing Year), because rather than creating a portrait of another worthy contender (maybe Ada Lovelace or Steve Jobs) he decided to create his own version of a Turing pumpkin.
He was also good enough to send me a few photos, so here I am, creating another Turing/Halloween post. Looks like it’s turning into a tradition.
Here are Oscar’s pics. Happy Halloween everyone and I look forward to seeing you all again next year!
“A Great science fiction detective story” – Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine
NOW AVAILABLE for instant download! Click to find out more.
Days since the Centenary: 75 Days to the Bicentennial: 36,449
One thing that the international Alan Turing Year has made evident as events, gathering, talks, and creative works have been unveiled, launched, or convened: even 58 years after Turing’s death there are still a lot of ideas to be mined from his work.
This becomes apparent all over again if you review some of the presentations at the Turing Centenary Conference in Israel (April 4, 2012).
Turing Centenary Conference (Israel) Agenda
The good folks who put on the event have posted a number of the lectures on Youtube for the benefit of those of us who just couldn’t make it to Israel this April.
I’m posting three of them here that are in English. Naturally some of them are in Hebrew, which is an impediment for me but for those who speak the language you can find a complete set of the videos here.
The first comes from Alfred Spector, who is Vice President of Research at Google, and who puts Turing’s work in an historical perspective in what is probably the most accessible of the three talks posted here, “From Turing to Contemporary Systems and Beyond.”
Next up is Professor Michael Rabin, with a presentation called “Turing, Church, Gödel, Computability, Complexity, and Randomization.” As a long-time proponent of aleatoric art — that is, art that embodies an element of randomness, like William Burroughs’ cut up writing — I can enjoy a lecture touching on randomization even when there are parts of it that are beyond me.
Finally, we have Professor Jacob Ziv, with his “A Non-probabilistic Approach to Classification of Individual Sequences.”
Fortunately for the non-mathematicians among us he leads with a joke.
Okay, I need to do something physical now before my brain implodes. I’m going to walk to the beach, sit under a palm tree, and watch the waves roll in off the Atlantic for a while.
Of course after this I’ll probably see the waves as disturbances travelling through spacetime accompanied by a transfer of energy, but that’s okay — science only adds awe to life.
“A Great science fiction detective story” – Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine
NOW AVAILABLE for instant download! Click to find out more.
Days since the Centenary: 69 Days to the Bicentennial: 36,455
Not surprisingly there’s been a spate of podcasts focussed on Alan Turing in the lead-up to his June 23 centenary and in its wake since then.
Here are some of the better ones. These are fundamental enough for Turing noobs while still providing something new and diverting for afficionados.
To The Best of Our Knowledge (August 19)
To the Best of Our Knowledge on Turing
Wisconsin Public Radio produces an excellent program called To the Best of Our Knowledge (iTunes link, home page) — known to habitual listeners by the acronym TTBook – which I’ve been listening to for years.
NPR describes TTBook in this way:
Each week To the Best of Our Knowledge delivers in-depth interviews with nationally and internationally-known guests whose passion for new ideas will challenge and engage. Hosted by Jim Fleming, this interview magazine is thoughtful and penetrating, and features fascinating topics and guests.
TTBook produced a podcast composed largely of interviews called Getting to Know Turing. You can find it on iTunes or listen to it online in several sections:
BBC’s Discovery is another podcast I rarely miss. It launched a two-part show on Turing’s legacy that draws extensively on the BBC’s archive of historic recordings.
As with TTBook, you can find Discoveryon iTunes or you can listen to the episodes online at the following links:
“A Great science fiction detective story” – Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine
NOW AVAILABLE for instant download! Click to find out more.
Days since the Centenary: 58 Days to the Bicentennial: 36,466
News outlets are reporting (for instance here and here) that Leonardo DiCaprio is not going to play Alan Turing after all, and as a result Warner Brothers has allowed its option on the script of the Turing biopic The Imitation Gameto lapse despite the fact that they paid a seven-figure sum for the option in October of last year.
That doesn’t mean the project’s dead, though. J Blakeson, whose directorial debut was the highly-regarded twisty thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed (trailer below), is still attached to direct and will reportedly be shopping the feature to other studios.
Alan Turing adjusts to life in Hollywood after learning of a biopic to be based on his life.
Now, I like Leonardo DiCaprio, and certainly the possibility that he would star might have helped ensure that the film got made, but his departure may not be a bad thing.
As long as The Imitation Game still hits the screen, not having DiCaprio may be a plus. I don’t doubt that he’d have done a good job, but I do worry that people (including me) might have had difficulty forgetting that that guy up there on the screen was DiCaprio and just being absorbed in the story.
For a biopic — especially of a figure who doesn’t have a strong, pre-established presence in the public mind — it may well be better to use an actor whose fame won’t intrude on the film’s main subject. Suggestions anyone? Email me at nas@nassauhedron.com or post your nomination in the comments, below.
So will the movie get made now that it’s lost DiCaprio’s star power?
It can’t hurt to have a strong script, and The Imitation Game screenplay was at the top of last year’s Black List, the annual collection of best un-produced screenplays. The Black List site is here and you can see a PDF of the 2011 list here.
On the other hand, in Hollywood a great script is no guarantee. We’ll post more news as it becomes available.
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As we noted in our previous post about the upcoming biopic, there is already a film short related to Turing called The Imitation Game. You can watch it below.
“A Great science fiction detective story” – Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine
NOW AVAILABLE for instant download! Click to find out more.
Days to Centenary: 1! Yes one!
Just 1 day to the Turing Centenary!
Even though it’s June, it feels a little like Christmas Eve today. Amongst Turing-o-philes there’s a sense of anticipation, and there’ll be difficulty getting to sleep knowing that when we wake up in the morning the big day will be here.
The turing Elves (if you don’t know what they are, see The Turing Elves Put on Radiohead Masks) are busy putting the last frantic touches on the various presentations, constructions, art works, and parties with Turing drinking games.
‘Twas the night before the Turing-versary
So maybe this pre-celebration hush presents a good opportunity to briefly mention something thatyou might have wondered about and I certainly had to spend a little time thinking about.
This blog has spent a long time now — 263 days, to be exact — counting down to the centenary that arrives tomorrow. Along the way we’ve seen a lot of interesting stuff.
We’ve seen the awesome philanthropy of the Turing Foundation and we’ve fallen down laughing at the epic rap battle between Turing and Kurt Gödel.
We’ve recapped Turing’s past inspiration of artists by looking at the Godfather of Pop Art and we’ve looked forward to new inspirations, including a Hollywood film.
Now the question is: does the fact that this particular post is fondly looking back at its past glories mean that it’s coming to an end?
I mean, after all, the day itself will be history soon. So what happens to this blog?
The answer is simple: we start counting down to the Turing Bicentennial.
Much of the hoopla will subside soon and certainly the media attention will drop off dramatically after Saturday. There will still be a few more months left in the Alan Turing Year, but then that will end too.
What’s a geek to do? Obviously: keep coming back here.
In fact, I have a major new Turing project that I’ll be announcing when some more of the details are nailed down. I can’t reveal details yet, but it is definitely going ahead and I think it will please Turing-o-Philes everywhere.
So enjoy the celebrations tomorrow, but when the rest of the world fairly quickly turns their attention to other things, you and I will still have stuff to do.
As Turing himself said in the closing sentence of Computing Machinery and Intelligence:
We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.
“A Great science fiction detective story” – Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine
NOW AVAILABLE for instant download! Click to find out more.
Days to Centenary: 9
Holy Cow! Just 9 days to the Turing Centenary!
Just when you think that there can’t possibly be a video about Alan Turing and the codebreaking at Bletchley Park during World War II that comes at things from a fresh perspective, the folks putting together the June issue of IEEE Computer release this little gem to accompany its Computing Conversations column.
While it doesn’t contain any genuinely new material, this presentation has a slightly different focus than others on the same topic, with the core being a detailed (but still clear and accessible) examination of exactly how the Enigma encoding machine and the Bombe and Colossus decoding devices actually worked.
In the video, Joel Greenberg (@JoelGreenberg), a Canadian mathematician and senior guide at Bletchley Park, refers to the codebreaking project as ”the first skunkworks,” a term used for initiatives run by loosely structured teams involved in radical innovation (it’s also a trademark of Lockheed Martin, referring to its Advanced Development Programs).
And a second substantial video, which summarizes much of the article, helps set the efforts at Bletchley Park in context, both within Turing’s time and from a retrospective, historical point of view.
If you have an interest in Alan Turing, codes and ciphers, World War II history, or any combination thereof, these two videos will be well worth their combined 40 minute running time.
“A Great science fiction detective story”
- Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine
NOW AVAILABLE for instant download! Click to find out more.
Days to Centenary: 17
And we’re back!
A combination of bad things (a disastrous hard drive crash) and good things (meeting the publication deadline for Luck & Death despite the hard drive crash) conspired to take up every available moment for the last month, but just in time for the final countdown The Turing Centenary is back to help usher in the next century of Turing-enabled living.
And what better way to return than to take a deadly serious endeavor — the breaking of the Enigma code during World War II, a critical element in the Allied victory — and having some fun with it?
The good folks at Geek-o-System have just posted a DIY project that is sure to warm the heart of any Turing-o-phile with idle hands. It includes everything you need to build your own Enigma machine using common household items and a downloadable PDF.
A segment of the downloadable Enigma PDF
Download and print the PDF (in colour), follow the instructionsto wrap the printout around a cylindrical can and tape it in place, and voilà! You can now reproduce the encryption techniques that Hitler thought would prove unbreakable — a viewpoint with which Alan Turing pointedly, and successfully disagreed.
The fully assembled Paper Enigma
In a similar vein, the good people at Instructibles, who specialize in DIY projects, have revealed the secret to transforming a child’s toy into an Enigma in 6 easy steps using an Arduino (an open-source electronics prototyping platform).
Using a child’s toy to mimic the Enigma
And now, as the Pythons would say, for something completely different.
It’s my experience that the world of Turing-o-Philes consists of a variety of constituencies, among them scientists and science geeks, science fiction fans, history buffs, and members of the LGBT communities. Obviously these aren’t entirely distinct groups — they overlap in a Turing-Venn Diagram.
For the science fiction fans amongst you — and as a reader and writer of science fiction I count myself among you — today is notable for the news that Ray Bradbury, an author many of us grew up on, has died at the age of 91.
I could weep and mope, but frankly I suspect that would be doing the great dude a disservice. For all the foreboding that sometimes cropped up in his work, he was a guy who loved life. After all, this was a guy who once wrote:
In my later years I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.
So at this moment I prefer to be happy. I prefer to be thankful that he was around than to regret losing him.
In that spirit, here are a couple of videos.
First, here is Rachel Bloom’s crudely-irreverent-but-amusing novelty song “Fuck me, Ray Bradbury.” Is she really a Bradbury fan or is she just pandering to the Big Bang Theory demographic? I have no idea, but it’s an amusing song either way.
Next, to remind us just how long Bradbury’s career was, here’s a retrospective about Bradbury’s work. A retrospective from 1963. Yes, even then he had done enough to merit a filmic summing up. (And get ready for some great retro visions of what writing, books, and book stores used to be like!)
Finally, let’s let the man speak for himself. Don’t let the slow pace of the intro put you off — this interview is well worth watching. This is Ray Bradbury on the show Day at Night, among other things defending the importance of fantasy.
Now, if — like me — you just couldn`t make it to Reykjavik between January and April you`ll have missed them.
Reykjavik by day. Don't you wish you were there?
Fortunately for people like us Luca Aceto, a professor in the School of Computer Science and the first presenter in the series, has been blogging about the talks at his Process Algebra Diary page (it looks like he didn’t blog number four, but if I find it I’ll add it):
In addition to discussing each event, he has ensured that audio files, and in some cases promotional posters and slides, are available for download, so that those of us who couldn’t attend can still join in the fun.
Reykjavik in the evening. Seriously?
So thanks to the internet — which we have in part thanks to Turing himself — we can share in Alan Turing Year events around the world, no matter where we may be at a given moment.
As a bonus, I’ve embedded Professor Aceto’s lecture Developing software is a game!, below. It’s brief (8 minutes), entertaining, and informative.
I cited a few other examples of LGBT scientists, intending to finish posting my prepared list of scientific luminaries in today´s post. Then, in the Turing Centenary Twitter feed, I asked if people wanted to suggest any names. I´m going to put the rest of my list on hold so I can focus on two responses I got.
The first response I got had nothing in particular to do with discrimination against today´s LGBT scientists (that part´s further down the page) — it just happens to involve two fascinating gay men who were scientists by trade. One had a scientific life that was entirely distinct from his work, while for the other his work and his orientation were all part of a whole.
I´ve never met @RalfBuelow (he´s in Germany and I´m in Brazil), but we´ve had at least one good conversation and he´s got an awesome web site called Retro-Futurismus.
He suggested two names: American Richard Montague (1930–1971) and German Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935), both choices that were not on my original list and each interesting in its own way.
Richard Montague
Montague was an accomplished mathematician and philosopher working in logic and set theory. In 1971 he was strangled to death in his home in a murder that is still unsolved. Montague had apparently brought several people home from a bar one evening and then was killed by one or more of them.
His life and murder were the foundation for no fewer than three novels: The Semantics of Murder (by Aifric Campbell), Less Than Meets the Eye (by David Berlinski, about whom more below), and The Mad Man (by Hugo- and Nebula-winning gay science fiction master Samuel R. Delaney). You can find an article on some of Montague´s fictional incarnations here.
In his book Black Mischief: Language, Life, Logic, Luck, Berlinski gives a portrait of a Montague as a man of provocative wit:
Richard Montague was a small, very dapper, compact, cufflink of a character. He was dressed in a neat blue suit, a snowy white shirt, and a matching crimson tie. We had met for drinks in mid-town Manhattan—he, Daniel Gallin, and I. His hands, I noticed, were square, the fingernails manicured and covered with a clear polish. A logician by profession, Montague had a reputation for great technical brilliance. His papers were adroit, carefully written, biting, and completely beyond the intellectual grasp of all but a handful of analytic philosophers.
…
We talked of taxes and politics and how on Earth do you survive in this place—meaning New York. Then the discussion turned to mathematics and Montague cheered up. He had just commenced his research program into formal grammars and had published a series of papers of truly monstrous technicality. He liked to imagine that he and Chomsky were rivals. “There are,” he said, “two great frauds in the history of twentieth-century science. One of them is Chomsky.”
I reached for the peanuts.
“And the other?”
“Albert Einstein,” Montague said decisively, glad that I had asked.
I´ve included Berliner´s account here because it´s entertaining, but frankly if Berliner told me the sky was blue I´d double check. He´s an advocate of the ¨theory¨ of intelligent design who works for the Discovery Institute, a right-wing, ostensibly Christian, advocacy organization think tank which argues that there is a controversy among scientists over the accuracy of the theory of evolution, which there isn´t in any meaningful sense. I´m just sayin´.
Richard Montague
Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld was a physician and a gay man and was one of the earliest advocates for sexual minorities. Erie Gay News summarizes his work:
In 1919, Hirschfeld founded the Institute for Sexual Research, which housed a vast library on sexuality and the Museum of Sex, provided educational services and resources, and offered medical consultations. The same year, he produced the film “Different From the Others,” likely the first gay film.
In 1921, Hirschfeld organized the First Congress for Sexual Reform, during which the World League for Sexual Reform (WLSR) was formed. Touring internationally, he promoted the WLSR and its goals. At its peak, the WLSR boasted 130,000 members worldwide.
With the rise of the Nazi Party, Hirschfeld came under attack both politically and personally. On May 6, 1933, while Hirschfeld was abroad, a mob of students and storm troopers raided the Institute for Sexual Research. They burned books, journals and other materials in a bonfire to cleanse the city of “un-German” materials.
Exiled, Hirschfeld settled in Nice, France, and died two years later. He left a legacy of innovative research and advocacy.
San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown declared May 14 — which was his birthday and also the date of his death — “Magnus Hirschfeld Day” in recognition of his contributions to sexual emancipation.
Left: A cartoon mocking Hirschfeld for his activism, Right: Nazis raid the Institute (images from Homocaust web site)
The Price Paid: the Scientific Closet
The other response came from @alanturingreads and deals directly with the current state of the scientific closet.
On the brighter side, the article does chart some of the progress that´s been made in the career prospects of science-oriented members of the LGBT community.
It highlights Out to Innovate, “A Career Summit for LGBT Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Students and Professionals.” On the one hand it´s a shame that in the 21st century something like OTI is still necessary — on the other hand, given that it´s necessary, it´s good to see it happening.
A highlight reel from the 2010 Out to Innovate is embedded below.
