We were supposed to be in Bergamo for a few days. But when it came near the time, neither of us were feeling up to going — was it a recurrence of Covid?

It was a rather good thing that we didn’t set off, as whatever virus it was led to sudden after-effects a week later for Mrs Logic Matters, leading to a short hospitalization, and a very distracting and worrying few days. But seemingly all has been quickly sorted. Hooray for NHS emergency medicine again. Though both of us are left decidedly weary.

In the circumstances, and with some stress-induced brain fog, logic hasn’t exactly been at the front of my mind. Certainly I’ve not been in the mood for writing. But I have had occasion over the last day or two to be thinking a bit about Turing and his epochal 1936 paper. So let me pass on a recommendation of a really excellent fairly recent piece which so helpfully and lucidly explains what is (and what isn’t) going in Turing’s paper — namely Joel David Hamkins and Theodor Nenu’s ‘Did Turing prove the undecidability of the halting problem?’. Warmly recommended if you don’t know it. And perhaps also read §§2.3–2.5 of Peter Millican’s ‘Alan Turing and Human-Like Intelligence’, where §2.5 in particular offers a plausible reconstruction of the line of thought leading to key features of Turing’s paper. (Definitely to be mentioned in the relevant section of the next edition of the Study Guide.)

Earlier in the summer, the Pavel Haas Quartet played at the East Neuk festival. There is a recording now on BBC Sounds of their performances of the first Janáček String Quartet, and of the Schubert Quintet (with Ivan Vokáč as the second cellist). Stunning as usual.

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