To all my British readers (cough), there’s a petition going around asking the government to posthumously apologize to Alan Turing, one of the most important figures in the history of computing. Turing was driven to suicide in 1954 after he was outed, ruining his career and forcing him to undergo chemical castration under the same law that had been used to imprison Oscar Wilde more than 50 years before.

Official posthumous apologies are nice, I guess, but really, the best way to say you’re sorry is to stop doing the thing you’re apologizing for. It’s just unbelievable that we still do this bullshit.

31 August 2009