"The crack of the bat on Vine Street"

I give my Intro Computer Science class an essay assignment on web indexing based on a chapter in the book, 9 Algorithms That Changed the Future (ISBN 978-0-691-15819-8).  One of the questions they have to answer is why indexing is based on words instead of phrases.

There are a number of different explanations.  The one which now stands out for me is that the user may be searching for the wrong phrase.

That's exactly what happened to me.  There was a lovely Randy Newman song on van Dyke Parks debut Song Cycle (1967) album which I thought contained the line, "The crack of the bat on Vine Street".  A web search failed to find the reference in the first 3 pages.

I remembered the lyrics as written in the subject because I distinctly remember the crack of a baseball bat accompanying the word "bat".  When I finally tracked down the song it turns out that I mis-heard the lyric.

You can hear it yourself on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxOVjZW6U-k).  Because songs merge into one another Vine Street itself begins at about 50 seconds into the youtube video with the lyric in question starting about 2:54.

I clipped the segment of the song from youtube.  The "bat" in the lyric that I remembered as "The crack of the bat on Vine Street" was actually "back beat".  The word "beat" was partially obscured by the sound of the crack of the bat sound effect about 18 seconds in on the clip below.

Twilight Zone at the Emergency Room

I dropped a friend at the hospital emergency room yesterday, parked the car off site, and (cue Twilight Zone music) couldn't find her anywhere.  I'll skip the details, but you can imagine them better than I can describe them as I wandered through the emergency room asking if anyone had seen her.  Two checks on the hospital's computer showed no trace, nobody seemed to have seen her, and a call to her cell phone went directly to voice mail.

The rational explanation was that I was a little too fast and probability had its way with me.  My friend had not been entered in the system the first two times I asked and a shuffling of personnel moved everyone who'd seen her (two guards, 2 clerks, and a couple of medical techs) to other areas.

It took about 10 minutes, but the clerk who'd walked my friend from the waiting area said oh, yes, she remembered, and wearing a visitor's badge with the number of the examining roomI located her.

I spent the rest of the evening reading some old trade rags and the current Law Technology News (now Legaltech News, LTN) I'd brought along.

The best part of the evening was finding a tidbit which reminded me about Matthew Kluger, who, as a lawyer at 3 big name law firms used his computer access to improve his fortunes to the tune of $37M through insider trading (dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/two-charged-in-insider-trading-scheme-tied-to-law-firms/).  In some cases all he needed to do was see the names of the files to be tipped off to potential M&A action.  This little factoid will make its way into future discussions of meta data.

The wait also included listening to a guy who may have been a Vietnam vet yell about being disrespected, spied on, taken advantage of, ignored, abused, and frustrated that nobody wanted to know the truth.  I walked over to take a look.  He appeared to be short guy about 5'6 - 5'7" lying on a gurney with a female attendant keeping his eye on him.  He also seemed to be a subject of fascination to another guy who was handcuffed to a gurney with a few cops standing in close proximity.

I would like to say something snarky, but it doesn't seem appropriate.

Oh, my friend, nothing seemed to be wrong and she checked herself out.  She seems fine today.

I know some abuse the emergency rooms, but I remember an incident from many years ago when I was a grad student.  One of the electronic techs wasn't feeling well one day.  The guy with whom he car pooled suggested that he go to the emergency room, but the tech said no.  The tech's wife found him face down dead when she got home.

Several times since I've said to people, go to the emergency room.  Some people may laugh at you for being alarmed but I will not be one of them.  I took my own advice one snowy day.  After an initial examination for an unusual chest pain I spent several hours in the waiting room.  All I can remember is watching a Matlock rerun until they told me that it appeared to be nothing.

And so, dear diary, that was yesterday's excitement.