The gifts have been unwrapped, the nutmeg drunk, and _It's a Wonderful
Life_ watched for the 4363th time. (We Finns celebrate Christmas on
Christmas Eve, for some reason, and, truth be told, don't actually drink
nutmeg.) I was thus in a suitably festive if a bit pensive state of mind
when stumbling over the following interesting description of Alan
Turing's achievements in _Inside WikiLeaks_ by Daniel Domscheit-Berg:

    [Alan Turing] is considered one of the leading minds of the
    twentieth century because he wrote the software for one of the first
    computers, and was instrumental in cracking the Nazis [sic] Enigma
    Code.

  Now, in all fairness, the book was originally written in German and it
shows. The translation is full of sentences like:

    Wouldn't it be a gas if we could lead this likable little island out
    of its current crisis?

One can only assume the translator has not quite managed to faithfully
capture Domscheit-Berg's usual voice. (We are after all talking of a
relatively young German hacker, not a character out of a bad Wodehouse
pastiche.) So the possibility can't be ruled out this passage about
Turing might be less baffling in the original German.

  It need hardly be mentioned here that in actual fact Turing is of
course considered one of the leading minds of the twentieth century
because of his seminal paper on Church's use of punctuation.

  Be that as it may, it remains for me to wish everyone a merry
Christmas. And a happy new year, too, for good measure. There.

-- 
Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.koskensilta@uta.fi)

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, dar�ber muss man schweigen."
  - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Aatu Koskensilta <aatu.koskensilta@uta.fi> writes:

>   Now, in all fairness, the book was originally written in German and it
> shows. The translation is full of sentences like:
>
>     Wouldn't it be a gas if we could lead this likable little island out
>     of its current crisis?
>
> One can only assume the translator has not quite managed to faithfully
> capture Domscheit-Berg's usual voice. (We are after all talking of a
> relatively young German hacker, not a character out of a bad Wodehouse
> pastiche.)

  Um, on further reflection, remove that bit about Wodehouse. Everything
else stands.

  It must be all that nutmeg.

-- 
Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.koskensilta@uta.fi)

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, dar�ber muss man schweigen."
  - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Aatu Koskensilta <aatu.koskensilta@uta.fi> writes:

>   It must be all that nutmeg.

  And, um, erhm, also, I wrote "nutmeg" when I meant eggnog. Three
times. In two posts. The second correcting the first. I guess it's true
what they say -- nutmeg in high enough doses does induce delirium.

-- 
Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.koskensilta@uta.fi)

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, dar�ber muss man schweigen."
  - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Aatu Koskensilta wrote:

> 
>   Be that as it may, it remains for me to wish everyone a merry
> Christmas. And a happy new year, too, for good measure. There.

And the same to you, my little Myristica fragrans blossom.

-- 
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by 
this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift: Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting

On Dec 24, 1:35=A0pm, Aatu Koskensilta <aatu.koskensi...@uta.fi> wrote:

> It need hardly be mentioned here that in actual fact Turing is of
> course considered one of the leading minds of the twentieth century
> because of his seminal paper on Church's use of punctuation.

I thought it was because of his research and series of articles with
Post and Rosser regarding the viability of spelling the last name of
the inventor of the incompleteness theorem without the umlaut.

MoeBlee