[Gllug] Alan Turing petition

[Joel Bernstein]

On 4 Aug 2009, at 23:38, JLMS wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 5:10 PM, Jason Clifford<jason at ukfsn.org> wrote:
>> On Tue, 2009-08-04 at 17:02 +0100, Richard Jones wrote:
>>>   We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to apologize for  
>>> the
>>>   prosecution of Alan Turing that led to his untimely death.
>>
>> Because apologising to a man dead since 1954 is going to make all the
>> difference in the world.
>
> Not to him certainly, but we are not islands, other people would find
> comfort in such an apology for all kind of solid reasons.
>
>>
>> It's not even the same government that is being asked to apologise  
>> but
>> one in place 54 years later.
>
> It is not the government who would be apologizing, it is the British
> State, or crown, or whatever you need to call it formally.

It's still a fruitless, pointless frittering away of effort into a  
vacuum.

> The government of the day just handles the affairs of the British
> State,  the UK of GB & NI and its government are different legal
> entities strictly speaking.

Wonderful. And?

Alan Turing was a clever man. But martyring him and making the British  
government an aeon later atone for the sins of the fathers is just  
absurd. If you're motivated to persuade the government of the utility  
of some geeky idea, how about NO2ID? At least that has a chance to be  
useful to the general populace.

I've never heard anybody suggest that Turing was/is irrelevant because  
of his orientations. You can tilt at windmills all you like, but  
you're addressing the wrong problem, in the wrong way, and i exhort  
you to save your breath for a battle even _vaguely_ worth fighting.

If you're concerned about gender / gay issues, there are still plenty  
of those to fight, too.

/joel
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