Saving Bletchley Park

I received my hardcover copy of "Saving Bletchley Park" by Dr. Sue Black with Stevyn Colgan yesterday. I correspond every now and then with Dr. Black, and hope to eventually be able to meet her.

After learning the story behind Germany's biggest team success in chess, the 1939 Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires, the curious tale of the British team leaving to home for a secret government project eventually let me take the opportunity to visit Bletchley Park for myself in 2012. Now, I can NOT recommend hotels in London to anyone, but there is a breathtaking chess book store in Baker Street, and the Simpson's, the Park Lane Hotel (well, if you can afford it, this hotel IS worth it, the personnel is super friendly and even goes an extra mile for you - literally, as I saw personally on my inquiry about the world championship 1986, and I was not even one of their guests!), and other sites of historical events that are worth a visit.

So once you settle with a B&B outside of London (Milton Keynes is a nice place, close to Bletchley Park and less than an hour away of London) you can get to visit Bletchley Park yourself? And why can you? Well, since the British government does not give a damn, Dr. Black dedicated her time to saving it. The full story can be read in the abovementioned book. Through her use of social media, she saved the site where not only World War II was secretly won and the fictional spy James Bond born, but where the most brillant people of Great Britain worked on a project so secret that they literally did not know what they were doing. There is an Israeli t-shirt that says "My job is so secret, I don't even know what I'm doing". The line meant as a joke was true in Bletchley Park: Nobody knew everything, and most people thought they just do some stupid office job, not knowing that they worked towards unraveling a secret of war-turning consequences, trying to break a code that until today is unbreakable, and that might not even have been deciphered at all if the Germans didn't make a tiny mistake. This is the story of 8000 people, living in a small town without even knowing why: CHOD Alexander, Philip Stuart Milner-Barry and Harry Golombek working together with Alan Turing and Ian Fleming. All of this while there is complete war in Europe, while they don't even know about the time pressure brought up by the shoah, by the genocides.

It is exciting history, it is a place of greatest importance in the history of Europe and the world, and it is social media that saved the heritage! While I have yet to read the book, I can say that the place is worth a visit from my own experience, and I am thankful to Dr. Black and everyone else for preserving it, and to Unbound for enabling the book!

Will rape ever be illegal in Germany? / Wird Vergewaltigung in Deutschland jemals verboten?

On occasion of Valentine's Day and the International Day to protest against violence against women we must ask:
Will rape ever be completely illegal in Germany? (link to petition of bff)

The petition of the bff let us hope.
We would also like to remind people that it was completely legal to rape men or the own married wife until 1997. Probably not only this led to a culture where on average every 68 minutes a woman is raped in Germany, making it 7,700 rapes a year. This number most likely does not include forced prostitution. This number also includes only the rapes that are told to the police - the real number might be even higher. And if we include the rapes that are completely legal today - such as when a victim says no but is too frightened to fight - the real number will grow again.

That is not tolerable! That is why I signed the abovelinked petition!


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Anlässlich des Valentinstages und des Internationalen Tages gegen Gewalt gegen Frauen müssen wir fragen:
Wird Vergewaltigung jemals in Deutschland komplett verboten sein? (Link zur bff-Petition)

Die Petition des bff lässt hoffen.
Wir möchten daran erinnern, dass es erlaubt war, Männer oder seine Ehefrau zu vergewaltigen, bis 1997 eine Gesetzesnovelle in Kraft trat. Vermutlich nicht nur dies führte zu einer Kultur, in der durchschnittlich alle 68 Minuten eine Frau in Deutschland vergewaltigt wird, oder insgesamt 7.700 im Jahr. Diese Zahl beinhaltet vermutlich nicht Zwangsprostitution. Diese Zahl enhält auch nur die der Polizei angezeigten Vergewaltigungen - die echte Anzahl wird wohl noch höher liegen. Und falls wir die Vergewaltigungen dazuzählen, die nach geltendem Recht völlig legal sind - etwa, wenn das Opfer nein sagt, sich aber aus Angst nicht zur Wehr setzt - wird die echte Anzahl nochmals deutlich wachsen.

Ich kann dies nicht tolerieren. Daher habe ich die obige Petition unterschrieben.

Sam Sloan for President?

Sam Sloan apparently wants to become President of the United States for the Democrats in the 2016 election.

We are not sure if we should wish him good luck with that, but at the very least it would be interesting.

Sir Jeremy Morse (10xii1928 - 4ii2016)

Reported by Michael McDowell on matplus.net

UAPA 2015 Conflict

Yours Truly will NOT give any statement on the UAPA 2015 affair for lack of information. You can read on Didukh's blog, however, what he writes about it.

http://didok.moyblog.net/2016/01/28/uapa-2015/

As a disclosure, Yours Truly was contacted by Peter Krug a few days ago about this, Krug claims that the UAPA has (via Garcia from what I understood) rejected his award for reasons within the award itself, although no technical error has happened. Rather Krug decided to award too few studies to the UAPA taste.

We would like people to remain calm here. Possibly a neutral investigation, led by officials (WFCC) would be necessary.

UPDATE, 8 February 2016: The official award is now available here:
 http://www.problemistasajedrez.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Provisional-Award-UAPA-2015.pdf

AI pioneer Marvin Minsky (9.viii.1927 - 24.i.2016)

As Wikipedia tells, the AI pioneer Marvin Minsky (of whom Martin Minski once told me he wasn't aware of his almost name-doppelganger) has died at the age of 88. His theories are highly disputed, and his interesting work on AI development make him a great pioneer, albeit an unheard prophet, on the subject of the creation of true artificial intelligence.

Now I personally have not read any of his literature, but I am well aware of the great inflence he held. Indeed, AI philosophy is a very young part of philosophy that might as well have been founded by him (although Asimov's three laws presented in the science fiction books might be the most famous philosophical idea).

Of course, my personal belief is that the human brain is not producing any consciousness but rather just acting as a translator, just like a radio translates impulses into sound. The theory that was widely publicized by Pim van Lommel makes Minsky's theory of brain agents obsolete insofar, but on the other hand it might support the notion that a well developed artificial brain could indeed give host to a human consciousness. But can consciousness be artificially created? Probably not, but a good machine might serve as a vessel, just as the human body does.

Of course, the above linked Wikipedia article does more justice, listing also some of his inventions. Here is the permalink of it as I write.

WCCI judges to be supervised

After the high number of Russian and Ukrainian judges at the WCCI was mentioned in the MatPlus forum, the WFCC has made a decision to not let any rumors of any kind of unneutrality spread.

(8) Posted by Harry Fougiaxis [Monday, Jan 18, 2016 09:08]
We have recently decided that *ALL* WCCI judges should send the spreadsheets with their points not only to the director, but simultaneously also to the members of the supervising panel and to the WFCC president.

Thsi is a very good decision that strengthens the trust of the public into the WFCC procedures, especially as it had to fight with such allegations of not preventing maljudgement several years ago when in international contests judges of one country gave no points and no explanation to compositions from another country, leading to the biggest scandal in the history of the organisation (then named PCCC).


This blog entry shall also serve as a final reminder that the period for sending compositions to the WCCI ends tomorrow. See the announcement and news here.