This week the British Government once again refused to pardon Alan Turing. One of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, Turing laid the foundations for computer science and played a key role in breaking the Nazi Enigma code during World War II. In 1952 he was convicted of homosexuality. He killed himself two years later, after being chemically castrated by the government.

On Monday, Justice Minister Tom McNally told the House of Lords that the government of Prime Minister David Cameron stood by the decision of earlier governments to deny a pardon, noting that the previous prime minister, Gordon Brown, had already issued an “unequivocal posthumous apology” to Turing. McNally was quoted  in the Guardian:

A posthumous pardon was not considered appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offense. He would have known that his offense was against the law and that he would be prosecuted. It is tragic that Alan Turing was convicted of an offense which now seems both cruel and absurd–particularly poignant given his outstanding contribution to the war effort. However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times.

The decision came as a disappointment to thousands of people around the world who had petitioned for a formal pardon during the centenary year of Turing’s birth. The Guardian also quoted an email sent by American mathematician Dennis Hejhal to a British colleague:

i see that the House of Lords rejected the pardon Feb 6 on what are formal grounds.

if law is X on date D, and you knowingly break law X on date D, then you cannot be pardoned (no matter how wrong or flawed law X is).

the real reason is OBVIOUS. they do not want thousands of old men saying pardon us too.

Efforts to obtain a pardon for Turing are continuing. British citizens and UK residents can still sign the petition.

To learn more about Turing’s life, you can watch the 1996 BBC film Breaking the Code (above, in its entirety), featuring Derek Jacobi as Turing and Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter as the mysterious “Man from the Ministry.” Directed by Herbert Wise, the film is based on a 1986 play by Hugh Whitemore, which in turn was based on Andrew Hodge’s 1983 book Alan Turing: The Enigma.

Breaking the Code moves back and forth between two time frames and two very different codes: one military, the other social. The film runs 91 minutes, and has been added to our collection of Free Movies Online.

Still No Pardon for Alan Turing; Watch the Film Breaking the Code is a post from: Open Culture

In Fox’s world, nothing good is terribly safe. Even the lovable Muppets fall under withering attack.

Last month, Fox Business spent seven minutes (below) unraveling the left wing conspiracy in the latest Muppet movie. Then the Muppets, not taking things lying down, struck back. Appearing at a press conference in London last week, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy rebutted Fox’s charges in one comic minute. It’s a pretty funny clip. But the best part is watching a major news outlet argue with puppets.

If you need something to make you feel better about the world, don’t miss Jim Henson’s 1969 primer on how to make your own puppets, using nothing other than household items. H/T SF Gate

The Muppets Strike Back at Fox! is a post from: Open Culture

What to do about the sanctioned distortion of our political system? It’s hard to be optimistic when fixing the problem would realistically require a constitutional amendment. But that’s what Lawrence Lessig (Harvard law professor and founder of Creative Commons) is trying to do. Appearing at Google (see below), Lessig describes how special interests corrupt our political system, and what we can do to stop it. But even Lessig will admit that it’s an uphill battle.

That leaves us with the next best solution: turn a joke of an election system into a good joke. Enter Stephen Colbert. The comedian has created his own Super PAC (run by Jon Stewart) that comes complete with its own TV ads. The parody above — an attack ad on attack ads — makes its point pretty effectively. You can watch eight more Colbert PAC commercials here, and make a donation to his PAC here. And, if you’re feeling generous, you can show your support for Open Culture here.

Breaking News: Stephen Colbert ends quasi-presidential campaign

Nine PAC Ads from Stephen Colbert Spoof U.S. Election System is a post from: Open Culture

Some of the big websites are going black today to protest SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, that has been winding its way through Congress. We’re going to handle things in our own way — by illuminating the matter with a little intelligent media.

Backed by the Motion Picture Association of America, SOPA is designed to debilitate and effectively shut down foreign-based websites that sell pirated movies, music and other goods. That all sounds fine on the face of things. But the legislation, if enacted, would carry with it a series of unexpected consequences that could change the internet as we know it. Among other things, the law could be used to shut down American sites that unwittingly host or link to illegal content — and without giving the sites due process, a real day in court. Big sites like YouTube and Twitter could fall under pressure, and so could countless small sites. Needless to say, that could have a serious chilling effect on the openness of the web and free speech.

To give a quick example: It could conceivably be the case that Stanford might object to my featuring their video above, file a claim, and shut the site down without giving me notice and an opportunity to remove the material (as exists under current law). It’s not likely. But it is possible, and the risk increases with every post we write. If this law passes, the amount of material we could truly safely cover would become ludicrously small, so much so that it wouldn’t be worth running the site and using the web as an educational medium.

The Obama administration has come out against SOPA and PIPA, sidelining the legislation for now. But you can almost guarantee that revisions will be made, and the bills will return soon. So, while other sites go black, we’re going to do what we do best. We’re featuring video of an event held in December by the Stanford Center for Internet and Society (SCIS). What’s Wrong with SOPA brings together a series of informed opponents to SOPA, including Stanford law professors and business leaders within Silicon Valley. (Find their bios below the jump.) Some of the most incisive comments are made by Fred von Lohmann, a Google lawyer, starting at the 19:10 mark.

Note: If you’re looking to understand the debate from the perspective of copyright holders, then we’d recommend you spend time watching, Follow the Money: Who Profits from Piracy?, a video that tracks the theft of one movie, making it a microcosm of a larger problem.

What is Wrong with SOPA? is a post from: Open Culture

18 months after being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, the polemical writer Christopher Hitchens has died at the age of 62. His fans began to fear the worst last month when Hitchens, suddenly hospitalized with pneumonia, couldn’t attend a widely-publicized debate in London. The promoters of the event, Intelligence², quickly turned the debate into a celebration of Hitchens’ life. Stephen Fry played host, and Richard Dawkins, Christopher Buckley, Salman Rushdie, Lewis Lapham, Martin Amis, James Fenton and Sean Penn all paid tribute. Above, we’re highlighting the poignant video once again.

Also fittingly, we’re bringing back another clip that features Hitchens discussing how his struggle with cancer affected his views on the question of an afterlife. “I would say it fractionally increases my contempt for the false consolation element of religion and my dislike for the dictatorial and totalitarian part of it,” he responded. “It’s considered perfectly normal in this society to approach dying people who you don’t know but who are unbelievers and say, ‘Now are you gonna change your mind?’ That is considered almost a polite question.” During the event taped last February (watch the full program here), Hitchens made his views pretty clear: No deathbed conversion for me, thanks, but it was good of you to ask.

And finally we cap things off with a montage of 22 comments from Christopher Hitchens. When you add them all up, you get some vintage Hitchens — everything that made him sometimes loved, sometimes hated but always respected.

If you have never spent time reading Hitch, we’re going to recommend his last piece for Vanity Fair — his reflection on Nietzsche’s famous line “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” It was published last week, and it’s quite the coda.

RIP Christopher Hitchens: Stephen Fry Pays Tribute, Hitch Rejects the Deathbed Conversion is a post from: Open Culture

Back in 2008, Annie Leonard produced The Story of Stuff (see below), a 20-minute animated film that explores the way our consumerist habits take a toll on the environment and sustainability. The video racked up millions of views on YouTube, and now Leonard returns with the second video in a longer series. It’s called the The Story of Broke (see above) and it takes a shorter, animated look at U.S. government spending — at how we prioritize our spending, and what it says about our core national values.

We have a lot of money floating around. The federal government collected $2.16 trillion in tax revenue in FY 2010 (and we borrowed yet another $1.3 trillion more). Meanwhile, roughly $705 billion went to defense spending, which is seven times (or $589 billion) more than the next biggest defense spender, China. It turns out that operating a bloated empire with troops deployed across 150 countries is a costly national priority. Then, as Leonard points out, we also unthinkingly funnel a lot of money, in the form of subsidies and giveaways, to dinosaur industries. And then we’re told that nothing is left over for Social Security ($707 billion), Medicare/Medicaid ($732 billion), and education. But we shouldn’t take those claims at face value. Where we spend money is a choice. It’s ideally our choice, but all too often it’s really a matter of what’s valued by our leaders and their financial backers….

The Story of Broke: An Animated Look at US Federal Spending and Values is a post from: Open Culture

Noam Chomsky joined the faculty of MIT in 1955, and, soon enough established himself as “the father of modern linguistics.” (Watch him debate Michel Foucault in 1971.) During the 60s, he also firmly positioned himself as a leading public intellectual taking aim at American foreign policy and global capitalism, and we regularly saw him engaging with figures like William F. Buckley.

All of these years later, it’s quite fitting that Chomsky, now 82 years old, would pay a visit to Occupy Boston and deliver a talk in the Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series. Why has our political system become more responsive to corporations than citizens? How has wealth become increasingly concentrated in the hands of an ever smaller elite — a plutocracy, to put it simply? And why do billionaire hedge fund managers enjoy a lower tax rate than maligned school teachers and pretty much everyone else? Chomsky explains how we got to this point, and what’s to be done about it. Find his talk in three parts: Part 1 (above), Part 2 and Part 3.  via Dangerous Minds.

More Occupy Videos:

Willie Nelson, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie at Occupy Wall Street

Slavoj Zizek Takes the Stage at Occupy Wall Street

Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Lessig at Occupy Wall Street

Noam Chomsky at Occupy Boston is a post from: Open Culture

The intellectuals have paid a visit to Occupy Wall Street (Joseph Stiglitz, Lawrence Lessig, Slavoj Zizek, etc.). And so have some iconic cultural figures. This week, Willie Nelson and his wife wrote and read a poem supporting the surging movement.

Then last night, Pete Seeger marched some 30 blocks through the streets of midtown, NYC. At 92, the legendary voice of protest can still raise some hell. If you have any doubts, just watch his musical protest against British Petroleum performed last year.

Near 1:00 a.m., the festivities were capped off at Columbus Circle with Arlo Guthrie and friends leading a singalong to the folk classic, “This Little Light of Mine.” As more cultural figures pay a visit, we’ll post them…

H/T to @webacion

Willie Nelson, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie at Occupy Wall Street is a post from: Open Culture

In September 1976, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford squared off in a presidential debate (watch here), and the following day, the legendary communication theorist Marshall McLuhan appeared on the TODAY show, then hosted by Tom Brokaw, to offer some almost real-time analysis of the debate. The first televised presidential debate was famously held in 1960, and it pitted John F. Kennedy against Richard Nixon (watch it  here). Sixteen years later, pundits and citizens were still trying to make sense of the format. Was the televised debate a new and vital part of American democracy? Or was it a carefully controlled act of political performance? For McLuhan, there was still some idealistic sense that televised debates could enhance our democracy, assuming the message was suited to the medium. But McLuhan came away disillusioned, calling the Carter/Ford spectacle “the most stupid arrangement of any debate in the history of debating” and chalking up technical difficulties (watch them here) to the medium raging against the message.

Related Content:

Norman Mailer & Marshall McLuhan Debate the Electronic Age

Marshall McLuhan: The World is a Global Village

Marshall McLuhan on the Stupidest Debate in the History of Debating is a post from: Open Culture

When Slovenia’s hip Marxist/Lacanian critical theorist takes center stage at a Wall Street protest, it’s news for a culture site. No doubt. How can we not observe a rare moment of praxis? But, what it all means for the Occupy Wall Street movement, we’ll let you wrestle with that. Part 2 appears here. H/T Biblioklept.

Related Stuff: It looks like the 2005 documentary Zizek! has found its way on YouTube, and if you want to understand the essence of Occupy Wall Street, it’s worth listening to this recent episode of Planet Money. They do a good job of demystifying things…

Slavoj Zizek Takes the Stage at Occupy Wall Street is a post from: Open Culture