———- Forwarded message ———-
From: 10 Downing Street <number10@petitions.pm.gov.uk>
Date: 2009/9/11
Subject: Government response to petition ‘turing’
To: e-petition signatories <number10@petitions.pm.gov.uk>Thank you for signing this petition. The Prime Minister has written a
response. Please read below.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/Petition information – http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/turing/
If you would like to opt out of receiving further mail on this or any other
petitions you signed, please email optout@petitions.pm.gov.uk
Month: September 2009 Page 3 of 4
From this morning’s apparent training exercise. That’s the Memorial Bridge leading to Arlington Cemetery, with Rosslyn in the background. The Pentagon is off frame, to the left. Click the photo for a larger view.
John Marcotte is on a mission to protect traditional marriage. And I am 100% in support of his efforts. What is he trying to do? He’s asking the people of California to step up and help him put the “2010 California Protection of Marriage Act” on the ballot. The act reads:
SECTION 1. Title. This act shall be known as the “2010 California Protection of Marriage Act.â€
SECTION 2. Section 7.6 is added to Article I of the California Constitution, to read:
No party to any marriage shall be restored to the state of an unmarried person during the lifetime of the other party unless the marriage is void or voidable, as set forth in Part 2 of Division 6 of the Family Code.
That’s right, no divorces. At all. One you’re married, that’s it.* Some might object, saying that that this is giving the state far too much power of the lives of two consenting adults.  But as Marcotte explained, in a recent interview:
[s]ometimes other people need to sacrifice in order to protect my ideas about traditional marriage. It’s just a fact of life. It’s not about their soul-sucking sham of a marriage, it’s about what we value as a society. We live in a divorce-promiscuous society. It’s on the television, it’s in movies, the newspapers. It’s even in our kids textbooks. I’m Catholic. In my religion, divorce is a sin — completely impermissable.
And how does he think he’s going to do this?
We’re going to set up a table in front of Wal*Mart and ask people to sign a petition to protect traditional marriage. We’re going to interview them about why they thing traditional marriage is important, and then we’ll tell them that we are trying to ban divorce.
People who supported Prop 8 weren’t trying to take rights away from gays, they just wanted to protect traditional marriage. That’s why I’m confident that they will support this initiative, even though this time it will be their rights that are diminished. To not support it would be hypocritical.
We’re also going to collect signatures in front of “Faces,” the largest gay nightclub in Sacramento.
Get on it, California.
*Okay, some marriages might be not be forever. Marcotte does acknowledge that “[t]he only exception would be if the marriage was “voidable” — if you married an 8-year-old, you don’t get to keep her. She goes back on the shelf. You can’t marry the mentally incapacitated, etc.”
Josh Marshall has a short, but insightful, piece up that gets to the core of the GOP’s approach to health care:
Piece through the rhetoric [of this opinion column by Reps. Shadegg and Hoekstra (R) in the Wall Street Journal] and the essential message is true to what the Republican leadership believes about health care and health insurance policy.
In short, the problem isn’t that your insurance costs too much or that you might lose it or anything like that. The problem is that you have insurance, especially insurance through your employer. Ideally you wouldn’t have insurance at all or at least you’d have much less of it.
That can’t possibly be true, right? Just a bit of partisan rhetorical excess, surely. But it squares pretty well with what I’ve heard from “conservatives” (at least the ones that aren’t busy bleating about socialism and indoctrination). Consider Marshall’s example:
The problem is that you go to the doctor and agree to take the tests the doctor recommends. Shadegg and Hoekstra want a system where if your doctor suggests a biopsy for a suspicious lump you think about the pros and cons. Is it worth the money? Do you have the money? How suspicious is the lump anyway?
[ . . . ]
This is the essence of the Republican plan: the fact that you’re insured and aren’t directly feeling the cost of individual tests and procedures is the problem and getting rid of the insurance concept is the solution.
Marshall then boils it down:
To be clear, such an approach probably would cut costs because most people just couldn’t afford to get a lot of care, which is a great way of cutting costs. But remember, the problem according to most Republicans in Congress isn’t that there’s not enough insurance or that it’s not good enough. It’s that there’s too much. The problem is that you have insurance. And good policy will take it away from you.
I think that’s a pretty fair description. Sure, I may draw an objection, where someone claims that free-market fairy dust will be spread across the industry, and that this will create competition that brings down prices. But that’s a fantasy (along the same failed lines as HSAs).  The medical services industry isn’t in the business of competition, and individuals don’t approach their health care needs as they do commodities. Health care is an essential service, and doesn’t really work all that well with imaginary free market parlor tricks.
This was the morning view I had for a couple of weeks:
And now I’m back in DC. As you might imagine, such a transition takes a bit of time. I’m working on pieces about diving, cycling, and Australia overall. Just asking for a bit of slack, to recover.
All-American Rejects (I Hope It) Gives You Hell:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kju9VU2B7Bk[/youtube]
Dizzee Rascal – Bonkers
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci40ae8BlcE[/youtube]
Then please consider donating a couple hours of your time. Arlington County volunteers collect bicycle and pedestrian count information several times a year, and there are still a number of unfilled positions for next week’s seasonal bicycle and pedestrian counts. From David Patton, Arlington County Bicycle and Pedestrian Planner:
We could really use more help to have full coverage at the 20+ locations where we count. The September seasonal count is the most important one of the year, and the one with the greatest number of communities participating. (Here in Arlington we have counted four times in the past year – other places only once.)
To check the sign-up sheet, and for lots more information, please visit the website: http://drop.io/september09bikepedcount
Much of what is there is pretty self-explanatory. Please feel free to write to me at this email with any questions. I’ll be checking it periodically over the holiday weekend.
With thanks, and best wishes for an enjoyable end of summer …
David Patton
I’ve done this before, and I’ll be out there next Thursday, at a minimum. Very easy, and very helpful. For more about the National Bicycle and Pedestrian Documentation Project, in which Arlington County participates, visit: http://bikepeddocumentation.org
Just received a solicitation from SmartBike DC/DDOT to continue supporting its bike-sharing efforts by renewing my membership. I will not be renewing. While I very much support the concepts behind SmartBike DC (indeed, I bought a membership despite having more bikes than one person ought to), the extraordinarily poor customer service has soured me greatly on the implementation. While the occasional malfunctioning rack is understandable on a pilot project, the complete lack of any response to my multiple calls and emails about an improperly returned bike, the suspension of my account, and the sharing of SmartBike DC’s customer’s emails on the Internet is unacceptable. These failures weren’t the occasional mistake, but a continuous absence of any sort of customer service. And this doesn’t even touch on SmartBike DC’s ridiculous decisions to occasionally shut down its operations when people need it most (snow days, Inauguration). I hope that DDOT will take this story into account when selecting future vendors and (hopefully) redesigning its customer service standards. Bike-sharing is an important part of the transportation puzzle, but there’s no need to accept such dismal performance.
The email from SmartBike DC/DDOT is on the flip.
Almost missed this:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn29DvMITu4[/youtube]