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Famous people with Covid-19

I remember hours of programming my own version of Life, trying different starting patterns and watching it evolve.


I went to a personal computer show in Philly in the summer of 1976. (For era perspective on that: Altair and Imsai were the big names in the business. S-100 cards—circuit boards about the size of an iPad mini—with a whopping 16 kilobytes of RAM on a single card had just come on the market, for about $1200 each. Or $1500 if you preferred the components already soldered on. One small booth was demonstrating the Apple 1.)

Every computer being demoed was running either the Star Trek game if it didn't have a graphics card, or Life if it did. Star Trek and Life were the killer apps of the hobbyist side of the business. Hobbyists quickly became a sidelight when CP/M and VisiCalc became prevalent, but a lot of the early industry leaders came from that scene.
 
Boris Johnson has recovered, and some are speculating that it's a suspiciously fast recovery.
 
God alone knows at this stage. I was perfectly prepared to believe it was all genuine, but after a bit you end up keeping an open mind because nothing, and I repeat nothing, would surprise you.
 
Boris Johnson has recovered, and some are speculating that it's a suspiciously fast recovery.

Not from what I’ve known about other people’s recoveries. And at the best of times they want people out of hospital as quickly as possible, in these times that is going to be turned up to 11. Any objective assessment as to whether someone is medically safe to be let out of hospital would have someone like Johnson at the top of the list.

One can question a couple of things

1) why has he gone to Chequers
2) why was his girlfriend not only allowed to breach the new laws in regarding essential travel, but was aided by the police and security agencies to do so.
 
Not from what I’ve known about other people’s recoveries. And at the best of times they want people out of hospital as quickly as possible, in these times that is going to be turned up to 11. Any objective assessment as to whether someone is medically safe to be let out of hospital would have someone like Johnson at the top of the list.

One can question a couple of things

1) why has he gone to Chequers
2) why was his girlfriend not only allowed to breach the new laws in regarding essential travel, but was aided by the police and security agencies to do so.

As far as Chequers is concerned, it probably makes more sense he goes there than 10 Downing Street as the briefings are done from there are they not? Best not have him around to spread the lurgey.
 
As far as Chequers is concerned, it probably makes more sense he goes there than 10 Downing Street as the briefings are done from there are they not? Best not have him around to spread the lurgey.


Number 10 as we call it is really a mini office block, the living accommodations are separate to the office areas so even if he is still infectious he’s separate to everything else. By all accounts the two flats (don’t know which he lives in) are reasonable sized and don’t require an intensive staff to keep. Chequers however is a rambling large house which requires extensive staff to keep running and of course a separate security detail has to be provided when the PM is here. So if it is on the bases of less people being exposed then Number 10/11 would be the sensible place.

Now apart from that I don’t object to him using the most pleasant place he can recuperate in.

What I really, really do object to is the flagrant breach of the law in regards to his current girlfriend being allowed to leave her residence to go and shack up with him.
 
Number 10 as we call it is really a mini office block, the living accommodations are separate to the office areas so even if he is still infectious he’s separate to everything else. By all accounts the two flats (don’t know which he lives in) are reasonable sized and don’t require an intensive staff to keep. Chequers however is a rambling large house which requires extensive staff to keep running and of course a separate security detail has to be provided when the PM is here. So if it is on the bases of less people being exposed then Number 10/11 would be the sensible place.

Now apart from that I don’t object to him using the most pleasant place he can recuperate in.

What I really, really do object to is the flagrant breach of the law in regards to his current girlfriend being allowed to leave her residence to go and shack up with him.

My only objection is that it puts him to close to me, we had enough of him when he was an MP the first time! I've always said that in this constituency you could pin a blue rosette on a turnip and it would get elected. The tragedy is that we didn't.
 
Boris Johnson has recovered, and some are speculating that it's a suspiciously fast recovery.

Bear in mind when thinking about such accusations that the NHS staff would also have had to be complicit.

And he hasn't recovered, he's been discharged from hospital. Public announcements are that he won't be returning to work for a while, and that he is currently fit enough to take short walks.
 
Bear in mind when thinking about such accusations that the NHS staff would also have had to be complicit.

And he hasn't recovered, he's been discharged from hospital. Public announcements are that he won't be returning to work for a while, and that he is currently fit enough to take short walks.

off very, very, short piers ? ;):p
 
ng the most pleasant place he can recuperate in.

What I really, really do object to is the flagrant breach of the law in regards to his current girlfriend being allowed to leave her residence to go and shack up with him.

And what sense does it make for a pregnant person to go visit a Covid-19 patient anyhow?
 
Numberphile put up a podcast today about Conway.


Thanks for the link. That was very interesting.

First stumbled in to Conway's work when, as a a late teen (or early 20's, not sure), I read a book that really boosted my interest in science to a new level, and got me reading popular science books. It was "Complexity: The Emerging Science At The Edge Of Order And Chaos", by M. Mitchell Waldrop. It was perfect for me, at the time - an intro into complex emergent phenomena at an easy to digest, layman level; inspiring and exiting.

As I was into programming, I made my own version of the game of Life, and played around with it quite a bit, and also got into some artificial life simulations.

Such an interesting man, Conway. He was getting quite old, but still sad to have lost him to this damn virus.
 
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