Babbage is the guy with the Difference Engine, right? That sounds cool.

Yes, but Turing invented the Turing Machine! Plus? Gay. I know that shouldn't be a factor, but I can't help it. I'm sure I'm imbuing him with post-Stonewall conceptions of cool or something, but I find it so hard to overcome that bias.

The slash probably isn't helping. I probably need to go seek out really unpleasant gay people to balance my perceptions, but somehow that never manages to get a high priority on my list of things to do.

I'll vote Alan Turing, but Babbage is interesting too.

Yay!

Being pre-Stonewall, the gay mostly made him depressed. He killed himself, right?

He killed himself, right?

With a cyanide-laced apple, unless the play lied to me.

With a cyanide-laced apple, unless the play lied to me.

Ooh, that's kinda' cool. D'ya suppose that was symbolic of the Fall of man?

That could be a topic for a slow afternoon - rate the suicides of famous intellectuals by how cool the suicide was.

See, I was thinking more Snow White than Fall of Man. . . but I suppose Snow White's poison apple was also about the Fall of Man too.

Apparently, there's a little bit of argument about whether it was intentional, but not much. But yes, death by apple.

And no, the bits of his biography to which his sexuality is relevant are not really the happy bits. But Turing machines! The halting problem! Computability! Breaking Enigma! The Turing test!

Wicked cool. Er, plus he was a character in Cryptonomicon. That probably won't make it into my paper.

I think we see light vibrate at the same frequency or whatever it is that makes colours colours, but I have had shirts that I would classify as blue that other people called purple, and have the same confusion with yellow and green and pink and purple.

Is fuschia a purple or a pink. I always say pink, but a lot say purple.

How do you accidentally put poison on your apple?

Turing machines! The halting problem! Computability! Breaking Enigma! The Turing test!

I love it when you talk dirty.