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Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

bankofengland.co.uk

111–120 of 226 posts

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what accomplishments?

First US President to step foot in North Korea. No other President before him has done that.

Any US president could have presented the Kim family with a photo Op. This is not a meaningful accomplishment.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Obama will most likely be on a note at some point

Why? His accomplishments aren't extremely notable.

Getting elected as the first black president in a country founded on the enslavement of black people is a pretty impressive accomplishment in and of itself.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#114
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, of all the different kinds of UK notes the latest Royal Bank of Scotland notes are my favourite designs [0] [1]. Make sure to look at both sides. One of the confusing things about bank notes in the UK is that there are 5 totally different designs for each denomination: Bank of England, Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Scotland, Clydesdale Bank and Ulster Bank. This can lead to some confusion when you try to p…

There's also the Isle of Mann Bank.

AFAIK the Manx pound is not Sterling, although it is in parity with Sterling.

Manx pounds are not legal currency in the UK but UK pounds (whether the notes are English, Scottish, or NI) are legal in the Isle of Man.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_pound

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If history remembers Aubrey De Grey at all I suspect it will be as someone utterly abhorrent for thinking of aging as something to be "cured". Imagine he were right (he's not, for myriad reasons), and he found a way for everyone to live to be 500. He's made clear statements about ceasing pro-creation in favour of extending life spans well beyond what we experience now. What of all the people who would have lived a fu…

How can someone who someone never chose to create have a right to exist?

I don't see what one has to do with the other.

It's the year 2400 and recent developments in technology mean that a person (let's say John) can choose to live for 500 years, in favour of a chain of offspring.

John makes this choice.

John's father Harry would have made that choice had the technology been available, and would have enjoyed a longer life in favour of fathering John.

The only reason John exists is because the technology was not available to Harry - so what right did John have to exist that his unrealized offspring would not also have? (Given that their reasons for existing/not-existing are the same).

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#116
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s poetic, but oddly terrible advice as we can actually build ships. Longer lifespans is already a goal, but aging is unlikely to be “solved” in in the next 100 or even 1,000 years. People took much longer than that to figure out how to fly and we have been trying to solve aging for as long if not longer. Consider buildings age as do diamonds. To fix aging we need to get bodies to do things like regrow teeth and…

And at that point (and I'm venturing into philosophy here so sorry about that) am I still me? If my brain has been downloaded (for lack of a better word) into another, am I living on in that other body or does someone else have my memories? I've often wondered this about Star Trek-style teleportation. Are those red-shirts really moving instantly from one place to the other or are they being incinerated on a coloured…

are you the same "you" that you were last night before you went to sleep? for all practical purposes, yes; if a perfect clone woke up in your bed this morning, it would make no difference to the rest of the world, and your clone would still have all the same problems and goals.

but the best evidence you have that you are the same entity as yesterday's "you" is that you remember some events from the day. the teleportation paradox is no harder to resolve.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think either of those deserve to be mentioned in the same way as Alan Turing, and no amount of time passing will change that. Note that Alan Turing was persecuted for what he was , not for what he did . I also don't think there will be an ACM award named for either.

> Note that Alan Turing was persecuted for what he was, not for what he did . No, he was prosecuted for having sex with other men. That is something he did. Being homosexual was never illegal.

What a crap comment, I can see why you chose to use a throwaway account. That's about the same as saying that a law against breathing would make all of us illegals because it is something that we did, rather than that breathing is a direct result of being alive as a mammal. Sex is a natural thing. If you outlaw sex then you are by definition creating criminals, and you might as well name it for what it is: a law against certain groups of people. The act itself is merely the stick used to hit them with in a legal way.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#118
post #23

It's good that Turing gets put on a banknote - and about time. However, the concept art in that article is really ugly. I'm not that familiar with British banknotes - are they usually that messy looking? Every piece of text is in a different font, and it seems pretty vulgar to have a quote on the note at all. There's even drop shadows! It honestly looks like something I'd put together in Corel Draw in the mid-2000s.

I just got back from a trip to the States and I have to say that US money is very boring by comparison to UK money. How on earth do blind/old people deal with the fact that all denominations are practically the same size, design, colour etc?

Try Dutch money from before the Euro:

https://www.google.com/search?q=oxenaar+geld&client=ubuntu&h...:

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#119
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most consumers don’t use any of those things any longer. Vinyl records, yes (mostly). I'm pretty sure the other two things are still in pretty wide use. [0] https://money.cnn.com/2017/04/27/media/ebooks-sales-real-boo... [1] http://www.insideradio.com/who-s-listening-am-radio-by-the-n...

Something can be in widespread use and not hit the 51% threshold required by “most consumers”.

Claim 1: there will be no paper money at all.

Counter: obsolete things last longer than you think.

Riposte: obsolete things are not used by most people.

Counter-riposte: still used by many people.

Counter-counter-riposte: technically, many != most.

Somewhere, I think the original point was lost. This has been HN comment theater, the greatest arena of technical-yet-irrelevant correctness you can find.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#120
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got back from a trip to the States and I have to say that US money is very boring by comparison to UK money. How on earth do blind/old people deal with the fact that all denominations are practically the same size, design, colour etc?

I recently moved to the US and I hate its coins. To the point that I consider all of them unusable. When I get home, I leave all the coins that I received as change on a plate by the door, hoping someday I will bring all of them at once somewhere to change for bills (I believe there are machines that do this). My complaints: i) They do not have numbers on them!! You have to read words to know the value ii) To make po…

I have this problem any time I go to another country.

Many times they don't even print them in a language I can read!

I'm kidding of course. Because usually, even if I'm only in a place for a week or two, I'll have it figured out and it's not a problem. I mean, there are only really 4 options. 1, 5, 10, and 25 cents.

And I can't remember the last time I used change to buy something.

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