Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe – A Good Read!!

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading George Dyson latest book, Turing’s Cathedral:   The Origins of the Digital Universe.  It is a first-rate account of the early years of computing at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton.  All the key characters of the development of the first computers:  John von Newman, Alan Turing, Mauchley and Ekert, Robert Oppenheimer, and Edward Teller are included.  The book carefully provides insight into the relationship between the first computers and building of the atom bomb.  Dyson interviewed several people present at the Institute during von Neumann’s tenure there, including his own father, the physicist Freeman Dyson.  It also includes lesser-known but nonetheless important individuals such as Klári von Neumann (John’s wife), a socialite who became one of the world’s first machine-language programmers and committed suicide by downing cocktails before walking into the Pacific surf in a black dress.

In addition to the luminaries, it was fun reading about the trials and tribulations of working with punched cards, computers with 4K of memory, programs stored on paper tape, machine language coding, etc.   I am not ashamed to say I started my career with the same type of technology at Hunter College in the Bronx later Lehman College in the 1960s.

I highly recommend Turing’s Cathedral… as a good summer read.

Tony

 

 

New York State Approaching “Educational Insolvency”!

Dear Commons Community,

Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, has an opinion piece in the New York Times, criticizing Governor Mario Cuomo and the cuts being made in New York State education aid.

“Governor Cuomo has promoted himself as a leader in education policy. His mastery of Albany’s famously dysfunctional politics has made him one of the nation’s rising political stars. But the results in the classroom do not match his rhetoric — and unless our state government changes course on education funding policy, they never will.”

Easton provides the following example:

“In one recent, glaring case, the valedictorian of a rural school district outside Rochester was rejected by a nearby State University of New York campus — not because her grades were too low, but because her high school didn’t offer the courses needed to compete for college admission.

Such stories are becoming increasingly common across New York State. Poor school districts are being forced to cut electives, remedial tutoring, foreign languages and other programs and services to balance budgets. Many schools in less prosperous areas face what the state commissioner of education calls “educational insolvency…”

Simultaneously, Mr. Cuomo has been a proponent of trendy “market reforms,” like increasing the role of standardized tests in evaluating teachers and using the same tests to make school districts compete with one another for resources. These so-called reforms may be cheaper, but they are no substitute for proven programs that are being cut.”

Agreed!!

Tony

NASA (Heliophysics Program) Video: Incandescent Sun – Absolutely Beautiful!

Dear Commons Community,

To start our Memorial Day Weekend, here is a video from NASA’s Heliophysics Program that shows the surface of the sun in incandescent light. The dazzling video features images  from the Solar Dynamics Observatory, making surface structures more visible. It’s hard to look away. The sun appears to twinkle and gleam as the video covers about 24 hours of activity from Sept. 25, according to NASA.

Enjoy!

Tony