I Finally Finished

Posted on 25/02/2019 by Grumpa Joe


In my old age I should know better than to struggle for twelve weeks to finish reading a book. My time on earth is rapidly diminishing and reading useless literature is not what I want to be known for. The book that almost broke my back is Alan Turing: The Enigma. I love the story of the Enigma. It is an important piece of WWII history. A machine invented by the Germans to scramble messages, it drove the British nuts. I saw the movie Imitation Game and loved the story. Following my rule that a book is usually  better than the movie I trusted my fellow reading club members that this was still true. Except, in this case the movie is infinitely better.

Who ever this author Andrew Hodges is, I will never read another of his works. This work is over six hundred pages of small print. The story could have been cut in half that amount of words and pages. True, trying to describe a mathematician’s work process and ideas is trying. None of Hodges’ descriptions of Turing’s early work while inventing the modern digital computer was understandable. The only way I was able to decipher what he was trying to say was by looking at Turing’s sketches of his early machine which contained a series of zeros and ones. It was then that I began to understand some of his gibberish. I learned to program an early digital computer using binary numbers which was the basis of the machine i learned to program.

This story convinced me that I abhor intellectual work and should refrain from reading it. I love good stories. I hate reading math books. Even a physics book is more exciting than a math book. Alan Turing was a pure mathematician and Hodges failed to tell his story in a simple understandable way. The last two hundred pages finally started to read well, but by then the story drifted away from math and toward the man and his life struggles.

I also like stories with short chapters. This work has boring with long chapters of a hundred pages or more. The chapters could be shorter. The author may have decided to cut some of them had he done so.

All in all, if you want to learn the story of the Enigma go see the movie “The Imitation Game.”

Five ughs.

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True Story Based on Historical Facts

Posted on 09/02/2015 by Grumpa Joe

Whenever I have writer’s block I do a movie or book review. Last week, Peg and I went to the movie complex to see the Theory of Everything only to discover it was gone. We missed it, and now must wait until it comes out on DVD, or to On Demand. Instead we watched the Imitation Game. A thoroughly entertaining story about how the British broke the German message code during World War Two. The central character Alan Turing is a nerdy genius mathematician type who is gay. At the time Britain had very strict (and stupid I might add) laws on homosexuality. I’m convinced the British Secret Service knew of the Nerd’s sexual preference when they hired him, they chose to bury the fact and expunged his record of any reference to his gayety in the interest of National Security. To make a long story short, the nerdy genius mathematician solves the secret of the German Enigma codifier, and invents the computer in the process. Long after the war, a detective goes to look for evidence on the Nerd to say he is gay. He suspects the man is, but can’t prove it because Turing’s military file is empty.

The detective did as all good detectives do, he stayed with the case until he found the evidence he needed to arrest the Nerd. The sad end to this movie is that the man responsible for saving England from losing to the Germans and for saving an estimated fourteen million lives was convicted of being gay. Turing faced a long prison sentence or a long hormonal treatment. Which do you think he chose? Now, I am not a pro-gay person by any means, but I do believe that people have a right to choose how they want to live. It just seemed sad to me that the Nerd didn’t get any slack from the English system. Had he lived in the USA our President Obama would have hung the Medal of Honor around his neck, and directed Arnie Duncan to include gayness in social studies text books in grades K through 12. At the same time, he wold have directed Eric Holder to ignore all laws ever written, including the bible, about gayness.

Benedict Cumberbatch who played the Nerd did an excellent job of making me believe he was gay, a nerd, a mathematical genius, and weird person.  Kiera Knightly played an equally genius mathematician type, but was not in the least nerdy or weird. She played the role delightfully. The British Secret Service guys were excellent bad-good guys who keep the pressure on Turing throughout the story.

This is a good true story, based on historical facts. Go see it.

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