My travels in early 2001: Andrew Hodges Out We$t
Gran Canaria: pages 1 | 2 | 3 America (east): pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 America (west): pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 and page 10 More pages will follow.

A Good Friday on the Beach

It looks wonderful. According to the excellent guide Naked Places there is been a long history of conflict over what parts of the beach can be clothes-optional. However it looks perfectly peaceful on this Good Friday morning.

The Pacific looks peaceful too, but over the horizon, the new administration seems to be picking a fight with China. I don't think the US would welcome Chinese spy planes appearing over the Californian coast. Knowing something about the secret war of 60 years ago, I doubt whether we shall ever know the whole truth about this plane downed in the enemy — errrm strategic competitor — country.

Here we are on Blacks beach. I don't see any blacks, unfortunately, but there is a pleasant anglo-hispanic cultural encounter. It is not appropriate to take photographs on Blacks Beach so I shall leave this to your imagination.

Instead I look out at the ocean, imagining the beaches on faraway Pacific islands. Here are some pictures 'from the Net' instead of the ones I didn't take on Blacks Beach. What am I doing here? I am gripped by a great sense of futility about my work, whilst Garrett is busy in well-supported research in molecular biology. We talk about theories of history and the role of contrafactual arguments, Dawkins and evolution, bottom-up computing using genetic algorithms and Internet-distributed computing for Fight AIDS at Home. Garrett thinks I should join up with molecular biology; he says they want mathematicians. But... life is too short. I am trying not to think of Professor Copeland across the Pacific in New Zealand, and my long-standing duty, at this moment highly depressing, of writing an article for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to counter his preposterous account of the Church-Turing thesis. (This article has subsequently appeared.) The reason I find this a depressing duty is that it involves nothing new or creative, just explaining something that's perfectly well known already. My depression is relieved by the thought that global warming is going to destroy everything anyway, so it doesn't matter much what I do.

The cliffs remind me of my week in Gran Canaria, as on these earlier pages of my travels. The same friendly lizards. There is no sociobiology going on in those bushes Here's the cliff we have to climb on our return. Onwards and upwards: driving past San Diego's enormous military-industrial complex, to Hillcrest for a delicious Thai dinner.

Saturday 14 April 2001

Theatre of Peace

	We are at Diversionary Theatre, which I am very impressed to learn sustains a full program of semi-professional productions based on the San Diego lesbian and gay community.
	This is the last night of their production of Breaking the Code, the play based on my Alan Turing book.
The production is excellent (which my photographs are not) and I'm again surprised to find Brits playing a leading role at this opposite corner of the United States. We're invited to a party afterwards to celebrate the end of the production, which has been particularly successful in attracting new audiences.

Breaking the Dress Code

I understand that US Navy regulations mean that in San Diego, men can't bare their butts. Alan Turing would have found this hilarious.

Sixty years ago, Alan Turing's work was the salvation of the US Navy in its Atlantic theatre: by science. Science is about baring the unbare-able. Next day, Easter Sunday, I continue to see this in Balboa Park.

my Second Home Page

Next to come: Science and religion in Balboa Park

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