Free Heatherington; Turing Lecture

Glasgow Uni D 755

At the beginning of the year, Glasgow University announced that the Heatherington Research Club would be closed, because they’d accumulated £40,000 of debt and didn’t have any way to pay it back. Well, here it is nearly 6 months later, and the postgraduates have rebelled: they broke into the building last week and have occupied it, serving free coffee and tea, and giving the postgraduates a space in which to congregate once more. It was silly of the University to leave the space unused (D. wished that it could have become postgraduate office space, as there is so very little of that on campus). Now, it’s back to being a postgraduate space … without the membership fees.

This evening D. went to a “Turing Lecture” given by Donald E. Knuth. It was deadly dull (one of the questions was on whether P=nP, and Knuth asked whether anybody wanted the problem explained … and a lone hand extended: one of the university faculty. D. and the rest of the audience could have screamed and chased the man out of the room.), but the man is a legend in computer programming circles. D. admits that he’s been away from the computer science people for long enough to feel uncomfortable at the vast amounts of body hair and all-around geekery present. When nerds want to get a book signed, be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

-D & T

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