Kerry contradicts
John Kerry denies that he confided in Javad Zarif what Zarif told his interlocutor in the recording leaked to the New York Times (tweet below). The Washington Examiner reports Kerry’s denial here.
I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened – either when I was Secretary of State or since. https://t.co/BTOdFE1khW
Now in assessing the relative credibility of Kerry and Zarif we confront something like the paradox formulated in the statement by the Cretan Epimenides: “All Cretans are liars.” Both Kerry and Zarif are proved liars many times over.
Homo informaticus
Luc de Brabandere lets us sail with him along the two great rivers of thought that have flowed down the centuries from ancient philosophy into modern computer science, from Plato and Aristotle to Alan Turing and Claude Shannon.
The history of computer science did not begin eighty years ago with the creation of the first electronic computer. To program a computer to process information – or in other words, to simulate thought – we need to be able to understand, dismantle and disassemble thoughts. In IT-speak, in order to encrypt a thought, we must first be able to decrypt it! And this willingness to analyse thought already existed in ancient times. So the principles, laws, and concepts that underlie computer science today originated in an era when the principles of mathematics and logic each started on their own paths, around their respective iconic thinkers, such as Plato and Aristotle. Indeed, the history of computer science could be described as fulfilling t