on the day they invented delight, they invented pardon. like slavery, tis hard to imagine just how recent these things lived... a good new year B http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/world/europe/alan-turing-enigma-code-breaker-and-computer-pioneer-wins-royal-pardon.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB
Yes, I noticed this salient correction. The Cameron government had declined, last year, to pursue a pardon, as all its predecessors had done; but this latest refusal had precipitated an international plebiscite, in effect, of petitions to allow HM the discretion of this gesture. It comes as a balsam touching the lives of many thousands, at least, even if (as many commenters to The Times suggested), it is possible to see it as deficient. Deficient in breadth, deficient in depth, deficient in supernatural power to reclaim Turing's life from his own hand, deficient evidently to assuage some private complaint of expropriating persons who cannot see in their sustained despair the same illegitimacy of his original condemnation. In the lives of most of those thousands who are now living, Turing long ago passed through the imagination of Hugh Whitemore, playwright, to be channeled into art, through an actor Kenneth Branagh cast as Prologue in his masterpiece film of Henry V, Derek Jacobi, whose muse-of-fire speech conveyed to them - us - the height of Turing's brilliance and invention as well as the obduracy of their - our - private darkness. People - we - were willing to cede to Turing the embodiment of an expansive palette of torments; and this willingness to allow him this part is the bitterest, most vital residue of his cruel death to set aside. Of all the pardons to demand, this is the one most thirsty for Christmas.
on the day they invented delight, they invented pardon.
ReplyDeletelike slavery, tis hard to imagine just how recent these things lived...
a good new year
B
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/world/europe/alan-turing-enigma-code-breaker-and-computer-pioneer-wins-royal-pardon.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB
Yes, I noticed this salient correction. The Cameron government had declined, last year, to pursue a pardon, as all its predecessors had done; but this latest refusal had precipitated an international plebiscite, in effect, of petitions to allow HM the discretion of this gesture. It comes as a balsam touching the lives of many thousands, at least, even if (as many commenters to The Times suggested), it is possible to see it as deficient. Deficient in breadth, deficient in depth, deficient in supernatural power to reclaim Turing's life from his own hand, deficient evidently to assuage some private complaint of expropriating persons who cannot see in their sustained despair the same illegitimacy of his original condemnation. In the lives of most of those thousands who are now living, Turing long ago passed through the imagination of Hugh Whitemore, playwright, to be channeled into art, through an actor Kenneth Branagh cast as Prologue in his masterpiece film of Henry V, Derek Jacobi, whose muse-of-fire speech conveyed to them - us - the height of Turing's brilliance and invention as well as the obduracy of their - our - private darkness. People - we - were willing to cede to Turing the embodiment of an expansive palette of torments; and this willingness to allow him this part is the bitterest, most vital residue of his cruel death to set aside. Of all the pardons to demand, this is the one most thirsty for Christmas.
DeleteThank you for your visit and your wishes.