And thanks to papers recently declassified, it is now known that during World War Two Elizebeth helped to smash a network of Nazi spies trying to foment fascist revolutions in South America – their ultimate goal being an attack on the US. Many of these spies were arrested as a direct consequence of her and her team’s work at the US Coastguard. However, for decades J Edgar Hoover and the FBI claimed more or less all the credit for this achievement. Elizebeth, sworn to secrecy and uninterested in publicity, stayed quiet.
Kind of what I figured. It isn't very wise or practical to loudly advertise who does secret work during their own lifetime.
I suspect we know as much as we do about Turing in part because he committed suicide at a relatively young age. When he was actually doing code breaking for the military and couldn't talk about it, other military units referred to his unit as "The Do Nothings" (IIRC).
Agree. I recently visited Bletchley Park and one of the astonishing life stories was of Bill Tutte. He was as instrumental as Turing and became a professor in graph theory after WW2. Astonishing for me was that he had to 'restart' a career after the war in science, since nothing he did during the war counted as professional experience. Obviously he did very well, but I still felt for the people coming out Bletchley post-war. You had nothing of professional experience to show, while at least some did groundbreaking stuff. There must be untold stories of people whom did not become well-known.
This happened at los Alamos one famous music producer worked there but was unable to use what he had learnt to complete his PHD so he went and invented the modern recording studio set up and helped found Atlantic records
Its interesting that some of the volunteers in Belgium who worked with the Security Service in ww1 wanted and got recognition - unfortunately when ww2 happened the Germans rounded them up and sent many to the camps :-(
That assumption was wrong for me personally. I flagged since code breaking during the world wars was a massive collaborate effort, and this kind of article tries to distill it down to a few people in order to then complain about it and make a political piece about gender. Discussions resulting from that approach is designed to turn volatile in order to raise shares and clicks.
I do think about it from time to time, but since the temptation with features like this is to grossly underestimate their cost, or maybe even not see it at all, I err on the side of paranoid aversion to them, and in this way achieve balance.
Oh, because everyone else's story was told but theirs? Rly... 2017, year of the pro-female SEO and marketing. BBC is doing what about it?
Flag this all you want, I'm a transgender female coder with a wife who also is a computer scientist. Silence me some more while you post headlines about women you hypocrites. Be sure to preach about freedom of speech too.
This breaks the HN guidelines, which ask you to avoid snark and flamebait. This was both. That's bad. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this again.
Edit: it sounds like you have a rare perspective to share, and you're more than welcome to share it here. But you need to follow the rules like everyone else. Our idea here is to try to hold a container for interesting discussion. It's forever fragile, and snark and flamebait have the effect on interestingness that salt has on a slug.
A nice additional effect of posting civilly and substantively is that then your perspective will more likely be truly received.
The BBC are supposed to be a non-political organisation and it seems clear to me they are pushing various trendy agendas, i.e. anti-Brexit, pro-EU, anti-Trump, pro-Islam, pro-feminist, pro-migration, pro-globalist, etc. I anticipate downvotes but I expect a scientific analysis would demonstrate above is true. The article doesn't just happen to be about women - it is part of a pattern that verges on propaganda. And it bothers me so much because I resent being forced to pay for a organisation, under threat of legal punishment for not paying, which pushes various political agenda which it is specifically supposed to avoid, and which I happen to disagree with - but I would complain just as vociferously if it were pushing agenda that I agreed with. If you cannot see that it's dangerous to have a publically funded broadcaster clearly dominated by a particular single political viewpoint then there's not much more to discuss.
The BBC should stick to documentaries, nature, and science, which is what they do best, and keep their political opinions to themselves.
How is it pushing an agenda? Is any story that's about women doing intellectual work that has an impact on our world pushing an agenda? I just see an important moment in history that had been buried for years (possibly in part because of historical sexism) finally coming to light.
Has the BBC suddenly stopped covering men and their contributions to history? I would argue that it's just the opposite. That by finally beginning to cover women's contributions almost as much as men's they're correcting a historical pattern of (perhaps subconscious) propaganda against the concept that women are also (shock) important contributors to our society. And that you're only noticing it because you're acccustomed to news and history coverage being dominated by stories about men.
The fact is, men created most of history. Look around you: virtually everything tangible was conceived, planned and constructed by men. Perhaps this is changing, but to attempt to rewrite history to give women equal participation when this simply is not borne out by the facts is bonkers revisionism, such as the nonsense that black people were part of the typical family in Roman Britain (they were very much the exception to the rule). No doubt I'll be flagged etc. for telling the truth, so I'll just leave you with what Taleb had to say on that story:
'Deeper problem in the UK: the PolCorrect police terrorizes academics wusses & few dare speak up ag. the BS.
UK Academics are too insecure.'
You're right, they weren't given a chance at equal participation in the past, but why suppress stories of the instances when they did participate, equally (as in this instance) or otherwise?
And as for insecurity, you're the one who seems threatened by the mere acknowledgement of stories from our history that were buried until recently.
I direct you back to my previous comments: the BBC is clearly following a specific ideology that I believe strays beyond its remit. As a license fee payer I deeply resent being forced to pay for an unaccountable organisation that has taken it upon itself to force propagandist viewpoints on the audience. A survey of the BBC news website over time would reveal a leftist MSM agenda, i.e.: pro-immigration, pro-Islam, anti-Brexit, pro-EU, pro-globalism, anti-Trump, pro-welfare state, etc. etc. Perhaps one of these days I'll write a script to pull down the content of the front page to prove my point.
Kind of what I figured. It isn't very wise or practical to loudly advertise who does secret work during their own lifetime.
I suspect we know as much as we do about Turing in part because he committed suicide at a relatively young age. When he was actually doing code breaking for the military and couldn't talk about it, other military units referred to his unit as "The Do Nothings" (IIRC).