"Freedom for Wife Killer"

In 1976 Charles Friedgood was convicted of killing his wife with an overdose of Demerol. The NY Times had recent interviews with Charles Friedgood (Relationship With His Children, Remorse and Dying in Prison and His Crimes). Friedgood, suffering from his third bout with cancer, was the oldest prisoner in the NY state prison system.

Now among the trivia I seem to remember about the case was that after injecting his wife multiple times to kill her he spent the night turning her body to alter the lividity (change in coloration due to blood settling) to make the time of death seem later.

The other trivia associated with the case involve his signing his wife's death certificate, quickly burying her out of state, and being arrested at the airport with $500,000 in a bag as he was on his way to Denmark to join his long term mistress with the two children he'd fathered. A real sweetheart.

My reading of the excerpts of the interviews is that he still hasn't admitted his crime. I'm a retrograde type who thinks that a reasonable sentence for premeditated murder is a bullet to the back of the head. (In contrast to the method used in China I don't believe that the family of the criminal should pay for the bullet. I think that we the people should be willing to cover the cost. Lawyers will explain that all premeditated murders are not the same. Mental state, intent, intellectual capacity, etc. are all important before the law, but, me? I don't give a rip. If someone could ask me if the person who killed me should be shot in the head, I'd prefer something more painful and brutal, but then I'm not likely to be asked or my wishes heeded. So if it comes to it, after relations and friends have had their say, please refer this column to the jury.)

Not being in the People's Democratic Republic, the NY prison system had to decide what to do with an old guy with terminal cancer sporting a colostomy bag. The result seems to be to foist him into the VA system so the rest of the country is helping to foot the bill until he dies.

A few years ago, Amy Fisher (the "Long Island Lolita") wrote a column in the predecessor to the Long Island Press about an elderly man who probably chose an abortive career as a bank robber. (I could not find the column. If someone does, I'd appreciate the link because Amy Fisher's columns were usually well written and heartfelt.) In Fisher's analysis, he realized that he had no real prospects after being suckered out of his money by a younger woman. An unsuccessful life of crime would open prison doors and guaranteed medical care.

It's an option more of us might need to consider.

A Phenomenon: The Winning Applicant

For two months now my department has been looking for "instructional technologists". I haven't looked at the ad for the job description, but my feeling was that the motley crew which comprises the department would know what we wanted when we saw it.

Yesterday we saw her.

The director had not yet arrived when I got there. The several there (attendance wasn't mandatory) were discussing a distance learning program. The head of the team on which the successful applicant would be working, finally said, "We might as well get started."

In my expected role of the go-for-the-jugular (lite) I said, "Ok, let's get her!" Not a flinch. Just a smile. And great posture.

(My tone made it clear that I wasn't serious. However, everyone but the applicant knew I'd been warned by the director that if I sandbagged another applicant I might lose my interviewing privileges. On the web I'd discovered a a previous candidate's poorly designed PowerPoint presentation. During the interview I asked that candidate to comment on the merits of her presentation. She was obviously startled, but in my estimation, she not only showed animation for the first time in the interview, but also demonstrated really good analytic skills.

My co-workers have never seen me really go for the jugular. Honestly, though, as savage as I was in my prime, I was only a pale imitation of my role models. But I stray.)

Back to the matters at hand: after the interview each of us said that we'd decided within minutes that the job was her's to lose. She had me by mentioning NPR, Mark Morris, and her mimicking students who wanted to learn more about math. Some were enchanted by a small spontaneous psychodrama wherein she worked her magic on a grumpy prof (played by the guy who would be her team leader). Some were enamored by her ability to express herself openly, honestly, and clearly.

When later we described the interview to those who weren't there, we each in our own way said, you should have been there. It was a great experience. This was indeed a rare thing.

The next day, the director called an assembly of the multitude to review the applicants and decide which could be eliminated, which should be offered positions, and which were told that we were still making a decision.

Because I would have to leave early I said: "Emily. Rah! Rah! Rah!"

The director looked around the table. All those who'd been at Emily's interview nodded in agreement. Now we have to hope she'll take the job. (One of her uncles works for the department. We wondered if we could get more like her from the family tree.)

Coca-Cola's Friends

The computer tech commentators are falling all over themselves trying to predict the ramifications on the digital ecology/economy of Microsoft's $240 million equity stake in Facebook. Does this portend ill for Google? A looming threat to eBay?

I don't pretend to know. (I care, but only in the distant way that both these companies are held by mutual funds on which my retirement depends.) It's abundantly clear to me that I'm way behind even the social derriere-garde (no iPod, no cell phone, unable to identify most of the people on the cover of People magazine, etc.). However, there is something that doesn't change much with time: people.

For all the exposure to the new and modern there is that perverse human streak. Case in point: a ZDnet newsletter on November 8 had screen shots of Coca-Cola's Facebook page. (Link was valid when created.)

I think the ZDnet's intended their readers to ponder the consequences of ads appearing on Coca-Cola's Facebook pages. I on the other hand, was attracted to the comments of one "Sarah Yousgren (Rancho Bernardo High School)" (I may have the name wrong, because I'm reading from the screen shot) who ended her post with "coke is the best i don't care if it will make me fat and dead".

The best and brightest advertising minds may not be able to compete with the insouciance of youth.

An Unexpected Consequence of Porn?

Sometimes I click on a link and realize how out of touch I am. Case in point:

In the Self article, "Surgery where?", the author, Jennifer Wolff, speculates on an unexpected result of the availability of porn: "Hoping to pump up their sex life, women are having cosmetic surgery on their most private parts." With the ability to now compare their own "nether lips"* with those on view on the web, some women look to plastic surgery to improve their intimate appearance.

The article also discusses conditions where surgery is warranted because some women are in constant discomfort or experience pain during intercourse.

With increasing frequency, I find myself saying to myself, "Who knew?"

* I thought the term came from "Lady Chatterly's Lover", but it apparently goes way, way back to Chaucer.

Colon Cleansing, Ben Stein, & Selecting a Candidate Quiz

I get occasional forwarded e-mail from Harry Cobb, not his real name, but his e-mail persona. We are not very well aligned politically.

About a month ago I receiving both an e-mail from him containing spurious historical rebuttals to objections to Bush's war in Iraq and an offer to flush excess pounds from my colon. (Separate messages, but the pairing was fortuitous.)

How people know more about my colon than I do continues to mystify me, but their message turned out to be just what I needed, although not as they anticipated: The colonic cleansing message proved to be the solution to the persistent problem of replying to Harry's unwanted e-mail.

Now, when Harry sends me a message, actually most of his e-mail is forwarded messages , that I find a waste of my time, I forward the colonic cleansing message to him as a response. I change the subject so it appears that I'm responding to his message he forwarded to me. Harry was a Psych major as an undergraduate so I expect that he'll recognize (and respond) to classical conditioning. (The not so subtle implication that he's a dog is also there, but then he knows I 'm fond of dogs.)

To induce Harry to read, and not automatically delete my e-mail, I try to respond to those worthy of response in a positive fashion. (Psychologist can now weigh in about how my message sending is not classical conditioning, and can send a mixed message. They are welcome to contact me. I'll give them Harry's e-mail account so they can validate their opinions.) All of which brings me to:

Ben Stein

I read Ben Stein on economics. His involvement with "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" is embarrassing to the point of being a failure of reason. Harry forwarded a CBS Sunday Morning Commentary: 12/18/2005 - Christmas by Ben Stein about religion which I felt glibly slid around school prayer, evolution, church state separation, etc. When I got to the part where Billy Graham's daughter explained why God let Katrina happen because among other things we don't have school prayer, I thought Ben Stein was being either extremely funny or in need of help. Being unable to help Ben Stein I opted instead to forward Harry the colonic cleansing missive.

Selecting a Candidate Quiz

On the other, hand, to give credit where credit is due, Harry sent me an 11 question Select a Candidate Quiz from radio station WQAD*. From my own experience I think the quiz is accurate. I was surprised to see that the score for my top two candidates was only near 60. (The value is dependent on the degree of importance selected for each response.)

I thanked Harry for the quiz, but, as is so typical of me, I couldn't resist chastising him for not citing the original quiz at Minesota Public Radio.

---------------
*I looked up WQAD and was surprised to have to dig around their web site a bit to determine that the Quad Cities are Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa and Moline/East Moline and Rock Islands in Illinois.

Hello Worlf!/Brainf*ck

Students are training for an upcoming ACM programming contest by tackling problems from previous contests. One of the examples from the November 2005 ACM Regional Collegiate Programming Contest at Kean University was the "ungodly creation of Urban Muller", a computer programming language which, in the interest of propriety, is usually written "brainf*ck".

<digression>
First programs written in a new programming language are often referred to as "Hello World" programs in honor of the first program in the classic book, "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Richie. Hello World programs display the words "Hello World!" on the screen or computer console.

All the problems in ACM competitions are formatted the same way and each problem contains sample inputs and the corresponding program outputs so competitors can verify that their programs are working correctly.

It's been a while since I programmed, but I tackled the brainf*ck problem with a classic "top down" approach using the C programming language. (C is usually not the programming language of choice because the language let's programmers do horrible things, often without even a warning. Of course that's the attraction of the language, but I'll limit my digression.) If I were more current I'd be using C++ or Java with object-oriented techniques, but C, with it's cavalier treatment of characters and integers actually was an advantage in writing this particular program. (y ='b' +2; is a perfectly legal statement in C.)

Using top down programming I started with the big picture and worked down toward the actual nitty-gritty of creating the guts of the program. I was surprised at how smoothly things went. Of course, I had advantages over those in the actual competition: I was using Microsoft's Visual Studio with it's exceptional debugger, help just the press of a function key away, and, of course, I wasn't under time pressure. (This endorsement of an older development system has not been influenced by Microsoft, Microsoft partners or affiliates, or Steve Ballmer's threat to sue my pants off if I did not endorse a Microsoft product.)

In actual competition students are using vi for editing, the man pages for help/reference, and dbx on Linux for debugging, all in all a much more difficult environment. (vi is a text editor best described as Trivial Pursuit, Keyboard edition.)
</digression>

To give you an idea of how weird brainf*ck appears, the following program prints out the Roman alphabet in capital letters:

+ + + + + +++++++++++++++++++++> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +< [ >.+<- ] end

Because of my approach, I wouldn't be able to see how the program displayed results until the whole program was written. (This is not technically true, but in the interest of blogging, please accept the statement as true.) So imagine my delight as I got to see the first output of:

<-]>.<+++++[>++++++<-]>-.+++++++.. +++.<++++++++[>>++++<<-]>>.<<++++[> ------<-]>.<++++[>++++++<-]>.+++. ------.—------.>+. end

Using the debugger to step through the program I got 'H' followed by 'e', then 'l', another 'l'. I was thrilled. Throwing caution to the wind, I let it rip and got:

Hello Worlf!

Sigh. The other sample inputs worked fine though. I'll go back and see what I did wrong. It was so tantalizing to feel that the very first run through of program would work flawlessly.

I think I've taken my run-in with my fallibility in stride. I've started to refer to first programs as "Hello Worlf" programs.

Chatting with the Imam

I used to see the Imam on a regular basis a year or so ago. His main line of work is being a business prof, and in that capacity I'd help him out because he is not that adept with computers. Now that his classes use different software he doesn't require my assistance. Still, I liked to drop by for a chat.

Coming from Egypt, he recognizes and values what many native born Americans often take for granted: our attempts to follow our profession of equality and fairness under the law. He is as dismayed as anyone else at his co-religionists slaughtering each other in the Middle East.

He was happy to see me. And why not? I don't seem particularly arrogant or look down on people with less technological expertise. Any number of times I've said that much of what passes for technical expertise is transient knowledge, easily obviated by newer software or methods. The technical expertise is often just a tech edition of Trivial Pursuit.

Also, we just seem to get along

About a year ago, when it appeared that my position was in jeopardy he was one of the faculty who were prepared to go to the mat for me. I didn't fully realize it at the time, something that embarrasses me now, but now I get practically weepy remembering it. So when he asks, "How are things?" it is not a nicety - he's concerned.

I said it looks like I'm doing OK, how about you.

Not so well it turns out. He's not getting any younger and one friend, a friend since childhood recently "expired" in the hospital. We reflected on the term. It was as if his friend had lived too long. Another old friend had called him recently to inform the Imam that he had cancer which was now affecting his brain and the call would probably be his last.

I asked if, like some of his colleagues, he was going to take early retirement. He said no. He didn't have a talent like others who painted or played a musical instrument. He'd keep on teaching. (He's much more accepting than other professors whose chagrin at a decline in the quality of the students drove their acceptance of early retirement.)

With those portents of mortality, the Imam went out and bought a Mercedes SUV. Really? Yes, it's right over there. The tan one. I offered to scratch it for him so he wouldn't have to deal with the uncertainty of it getting scratched. He declined my offer. He said the Mercedes was a wonderful car. People treated him with more respect. The guys at the gas station now called him sir even though he doesn't spend any more money than before.

I told him about the time I was watching TV with my mother (always an experience) when I responded to an ad for a Porsche by saying, "I could never own a car like that." Quick to challenge my perceived inferiority complex, my mother shot back, "Why not?" Well mom, I'd worry about it getting scratched and, well it's a fine piece of machinery which deserves to be well taken care of - something which unfortunately isn't my style.

(I keep as a model of car ownership a wealthy distant relative who, along with his acquaintances of similar means, had a master mechanic on retainer. On one occasion, after brunch at my parent's house he discovered sap from a maple on his Porsche. He quickly came inside and called his mechanic to arrange for the car to be cleaned and re-waxed. This was in the days before cell phones.)

We parted. He to enjoy his SUV. Me to play with computers.

I Read and Weep

Reading the web pages of the faculty of the Genome Center of Wisconsin brought back a story from my childhood.

Not very long after my family moved to the suburbs my father asked painters for an estimate for painting his library. In most homes, the room would have been called "the office" rather than "the library". But because My father and his father-in-law (my grandfather), built book shelves along the inner wall of one room. Because my father was a chemist and, the bookcase was packed with books and Chemical Abstracts, the room was called "the library". (It is with some trepidation that I say "was". You can take a chemist out of the lab, but you can't always take the lab out of a chemist. The Chem Abstracts are long gone. A few months ago I helped him tie up and put all his back issues of Clinical Chemist out on the curb. There are plenty of books still, but bare spots on book shelves seem wrong to me.)

(This was way back in the 50's when individuals could afford their own subscription to Chemical Abstracts. I still remember the pale blue lettering on white covers and bindings. As an undergraduate I could not understand why the grad students gave me odd looks when I said that my father read Chemical Abstracts. Now I know that nobody actually "read" Chemical Abstracts the way someone might read a magazine. Someone looked at the abstract, which comprised one or two tightly written paragraphs summarizing an article, to see if the whole article was worth reading. I'm sure patent lawyers trawled the abstracts for actionable references.)

One of the painters who came over to estimate the job, took one look at the library and broke down crying. He'd always wanted to be a chemist but the Great Depression thwarted those dreams. And there in my house he'd found someone who'd somehow lived his dream.

(At this point I should say that my father's family was not wealthy, probably not even well off, but never in need during the Depression. My father's father was a plumber who spent the Depression installing indoor plumbing in Brooklyn. My mother's family, on the other hand, lost everything in the Crash. One of my mother's indelible memories is overhearing her parents deciding whether her father should take the last quarter to get to a job and buy lunch or whether he should walk to work and leave the quarter buy milk for the children. Theirs was not the life depicted in the screwball comedies of the era.)

The story of the painter is paired in my mind with a comment by Aaron Broder. (Aaron Broder was a very famous and successful malpractice lawyer.) He was on the back lawn of his house in Kings Point, NY looking out at the Long Island sound. It was a glorious day and there on the bay, in all it's glory, was the Merchant Marine Academy's sailing ship, a three-master. Broder said it took all his will to resist going out to the ship and begging them to take him wherever it was that they were going.

So, in reading the faculty research interests at the Genome Center I saw the curve of molecular biology investigation and felt the pull on my heart for research. Not the lure of fame, but being intimately a part, even if only a tiny part, of a grand quest of Knowledge. (Yes, "Knowledge" with a capital "K".)

It was Aseem Z Ansari's description of using "designer transcription regulators" which got me all weepy for biochemistry. Imagine synthesizing a molecule which will trick a cancerous cell to use it's own mechanisms to produce proteins which will cause the cell to differentiate (change) from a cancerous cell back to something like normal. This is a far cry and so much more elegant and radiation and chemotherapy which by comparison is of the "kill them all and let God sort them out" approach.

Sigh.

Thief Catcher

I was reading a Computerworld Shark Bait entry, "What is this orange stuff on my fingers" about a computer operator back in the day who was caught looking at confidential salary information from the data center director's desk. The person narrating the story was not the person who found the key, but someone who worked on the same shift who found that his hands were turning color, first orange and then purple.

"Ah-ha" I thought, "gentian violet." (You can take a chemist out of the lab, but you can't take the lab out of the chemist.) I thought I'd post a comment, but, being the wussy type, I wanted to check my facts first.

I remember a memoir by a pharmacist who suggested to a newspaper seller that he could catch the person who was stealing newspapers by sprinkling gentian violet on the to paper, but to only handout papers from below the top. A few days later the pharmacist forgetting his suggestion, paid for a paper, took one from the top, and, because his hands became stained, was accused of being the thief.

In the story the pharmacist referred to gentian violet (hexamethyl pararosaniline chloride) as "thief catcher". Searching on the web was an adventure. I couldn't find a good reference for "thief catcher", but eventually found several links to "Thief Detection Powder". From the descriptions, it appears that some of the powders are gentian violet. (There were others which did not produce a visible skin stain, but are related to a dye I used many years ago: fluorescein. The dye became visible under UV light.)

But, the web is a marvelous thing: in searching for "thief catcher" I stumbled across a description of the notorious housebreaker Jack Sheppard, whose jail breaking exploits could have served as inspiration for Mission Impossible or MacGyver exploits, and Jonathan Wild the King of Thieves or the First Criminal Underworld Boss.

It was in one of the links concerning "thief catcher" that I came across "Chartism", as in "Chartism came to permeate English political and cultural discourse during this period", the period being the 1830-1850, and knew that "chartism" would eventually be a term I'd be using to confuse a debate and add to the general impression that I know "all kinds of weird stuff".

It's what happens when wanders the web. Gotta love the web.

Guerrilla Marketing Condoms?

In the space of two weeks I've seen 4 different sealed condom packages in the University's parking lot. There were three Trojans (one white, one blue, and one red - a very patriotic color scheme) and one Durex (blue with white lettering).

I can understand that college age males (and the women who are their objects of desire) are the ideal target market, but I've enjoyed idly speculating whether what I've seen reflect

• a successful guerrilla marketing campaign,
  
• the failure of the Bush administration's Abstinence Only campaign,
• a failed marketing campaign (students discarding samples),
• the aftermath of aftermath of an orgy which never made the papers, or
• something else (your suggestions welcome).
  

Network Computing Disappears From the Face of the Earth

Another of the trade rags I read is disappearing from print. This morning's e-mail carried Art Wittmann's "Strategy Session: Transformations" column with the following:

"We're saying goodbye to the standalone print version of Network Computing. But worry not--we're not going gently into that good night. ... Starting in July, Network Computing will be merging with its sister publication, InformationWeek."

It was not left unsaid that the unnamed people who produce the print version would be missed. Those of us who've suffered unemployment know the feeling in the pit of our stomach's when the bottom drops out of your world.

One of the visuals I expected to use in the next computer class I teach is to hold up a copy of InfoWorld's thick 20th anniversary edition and say, "And now it looks like this!" holding up my other hand with nothing in it. InfoWorld announced in April of 2007 that it "closed down its print edition and moved to a Web-only model." Many like myself, half-jokingly wondered what we would read in the loo, but behind it was the same sense of loss I feel when the exigencies of the march of time disrupt the quotidian.

I enjoy reading old magazines. Sometimes, they read much like science fiction and HP Lovecraft novels where an ill defined something looms behind the narrative. Anyone reading Time magazine in the 50's and 60's understood that the author's were writing in the looming shadow of world communism. Such understanding might not be apparent for a youngster reading the same article 40 or 50 years later. Those of you old enough to be able to be able to reread "The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner 30 to 50 years later should be struck to see how the permanence of communism was taken for granted. So too in the trade press, stories' brief reference to IBM's industry hegemony/FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt), Microsoft's Evil Empire, or the out-sized egos of Steve Jobs/Edward Esber Jr. (Ashton-Tate)/Philippe Kahn (Borland) provided only hints of the mind share these actually occupied.

It was only by reading a number of articles in different sources from the same time that I could get a feel or get a sense of the time. Whether it is true or not, I feel it is easier to read an old article in a magazine lying around, than to stumble across the same online. (My jaundiced attitude is conditioned by the inefficiencies of the search capabilities of Computerworld and Informationweek, but that's another story.)

So it is with a small sense of dread that Time marches on as I wonder what I was doing as it passes.

Paris Hilton: Stars are Blind

One of the computer trade rags I read had a link to photo widgets (slide.com). Among the choices for background music was a song by Paris Hilton ).

Her song was not my first choice, but after I listened to a few of the other songs I thought, oh what the heck, I might as well listen. I've wasted so much time in my life that a few minutes more won't do much to my credit worthiness or social standing. If and when the subject came up I would be on firm ground when I disparaged her singing.

Well, children, I was surprised. "Stars are Blind" is a catchy pop song. I let it repeat several times without embarrassment. There are many sarcastic things which can be said (my poor taste in music, the talent of music producers, etc.), but to my ears, "Stars are Blind" isn't worse than much of what I enjoyed in my teens.

As this is being written Paris Hilton is in jail. Juxtaposing her foray in the music business with her jail time I wondered if she would capitalize on her time in the slammer for a gangsta rap album.

Idle speculation as always.

Officially Slowing Down

I'm usually the fastest walker around. It's something of a joke. My coworkers will say, we're going and then almost reflexively add, oh, he can catch up later.

I remember only one student walking faster than me. As fate would have it, a prof I knew who had studied walking was nearby. "Is that kid walking especially fast or is he doing something special, because he is pulling away from me and I'm walking at my usual (legendary) pace?", I asked.

The prof took a look, and said it was the student's beat, not the length of the pace.

This morning, however, as a student pulled ahead of me as I walked, I realized that I was walking slower. I could pick up the pace, but somehow, without my recognizing it, my standard pace had slowed down. Not a momentous shock, but another small loss on my march through time. Sigh.

15 Minutes of Fame on the Installment Plan

Andy Warhol famously stated that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. I'm doing it on the installment plan.

A few years ago I was interviewed as the "domain expert" for a Consumer Affairs TV show in NY. A viewer's father left her a JFK Memorial album as an heirloom and she wanted to know how much it was worth. In this neck of the woods you can find one or two JFK Memorial albums in any weekend round of garage sales so the record wasn't worth more than $1.

I count that as 1 minute of fame.

Just in time for Passover I got a minute of air time on the NYC public radio station discoursing on matzo balls. I'll call that another minute of fame.

The station had asked listeners to post comments about the perfect matzo ball recipe. My post described the years my mother and my aunts searched for the perfect recipe only to discover the perfect recipe on the side of the matzo meal box. The difference between perfect and what my mother made was not the ingredients, but whether the egg whites were separated and beaten and how the meal was mixed. This was information provided by my brother (to whom I defer in all things culinary).

Now perfect is in the eye of the beholder. Gourmet matzo balls, "perfect" matzo balls, are expected to be light with a uniform texture - something like quennels. In my estimation, quennels is divine food, but (also in my estimation) "real" matzo balls are rubbery in the center. Matzo balls with bounce is what I want to eat at seder. I don't want wimpy food. I want food that fights back.

I got an e-mail from the show's producer the next day and a few days later I was on the air reprising my post. I gave full credit to my brother for my purported expertise.

Thirteen more minutes of fame to go.