Proud moment
#7 in the Google PageRank for 'reductionist'.
Nearly in Nature
The book Christof Teuscher edited, including my chapter on Turing and Fibonacci phyllotaxis, got reviewed in Nature this week (access restricted I guess).
It's a positive review, but in truth a pretty perfunctory one. It is ungrateful of me, I know, to point out that while it's nice to be told 'it is difficult to find the superlatives to describe the wonderful job the contributors have done', it would have been nicer for the commissioned journalist to actually do his generally accepted job of finding the correct words.
But I am minded to be ungrateful given that the reviewer's main complaint of the book is that it only has one chapter (mine) on mathematical biology, yet he doesn't grace that chapter with any comment. Humph.
(Casti is wrong in fact, I think, to say that Turing 'helped build' the Manchester computer, but who cares).
There is also a review in New Scientist. which also reveals more of the reviewer than the book, but in this case a little more positively.
On Tour 2004
I will be giving a talk on Turing and morphogenesis at a conference in Manchester on June 5th this summer. Two days later will be the 50th anniversary of his death, and will see a plaque unveiled outside his house in Wilmslow.
Last year I got invited to a meeting in Switzerland, which was very nice, so it was pleasing to get this invitation and feel I'd secured my place on the international Turing gravy train. I was slightly less pleased when I realized it was in Manchester, so all I can claim in expenses from the organisers is a £2 tram ticket.
Why this site is incomprehensible
One of the reasons this site is incomprehensible is that it deals with ideas I don't fully understand. Another is that it is really hard work to make things you do understand comprehensible to others, and this is just a hobby site, so don't expect too much hard work in it. Another is that the site's structure, while present, is obscure.
I did put quite a lot of hard work into making the book chapter I wrote on this subject comprehensible. In return for that hard work, and the assignment of copyright in it to Springer, my total financial recompense was: one (1) copy of the book. They now sell the book for £36.99, but I don't get any of that money.
There is however, no copyright in ideas, and I am trying to ensure that all the ideas in that chapter find their way onto this site. The order in which I am doing that is not the order in which the ideas should be read, so this blog is not the direct way to read this site first. Use the outline page first instead.
