What is Not Said

IBM stops disclosing U.S. headcount data

The headline says it all. Citing the practice of it's competitors, IBM no longer breaks out employment by country. Two stark figures appear in the article: in 2009 IBM reported 105,000 domestic works. Two years earlier (2007 for the math challenged), IBM employed 121,000 people. Slightly less than one-sixth of its work force was no longer employed by Big Blue.

I look around and wonder when my term to be RIFfed. In my mind, RIF (for Reduction In Force) is a particularly sinistereuphemism as it suggests RIP (Rest in Peace) and the thought that a "reduction in force" is an extreme prejudicial way of saying KIA (killed in action).

Alien Abduction/British Understatement

In an article entitled "Keep Calm and Never Mind, Britain Says in Its X-Files", the British Ministry of Defense is quoted as responded to an inquiry as follows:

"Abduction is a criminal offense and as such is a matter for the civil police to handle. The police can only investigate allegations of abduction if there is evidence to suggest that such a crime has taken place."

That sure clears things up.

Hip by Accident

My brother knows hip when he sees it - it's part of his job. "I hope this doesn't come as a shock," he said, "but you're wearing what hip people are wearing."

Now we both know it wasn't true, but from a distance you might be fooled.

I was wearing pants which were too short - showing a couple of inches of white socks, a flannel shirt of indeterminant age, and an over-sized sweatshirt. The pants were tight because I've put on a few pounds in the 15 or 20 years since I bought them. The truly hip buy skin tight skinny jeans. The over-sized sweatshirt was either road kill or a thrift store purchase by my main squeeze. She knows I wear enough layers in the winter to fill out the sweatshirt.

On the subject of clothing, my favorite remark was recounted by a friend who, knowing I always wanted one, bought me a tattersall vest. As she was buying it the salesman, trying to be helpful, said, "You know it's not in fashion." She replied, "He doesn't care."

Saved by the Snow

I forgot to mail in my mother's tax payment.

I remember dropping a whole bunch of mail into the local post box, but not the tax payment. I like to make sure the letter has a validating postmark. (For years I made my own local tax payment in person and getting a receipt. Only recently have I been mailing in my own tax payments, but making sure to get a postmark.)

Last night I opened a manila envelope and, Oh blast! There was the envelope for my mother's payment. Was there any way I could evade taking the rap for a late payment? Maybe the me everyone saw was a substitute from another dimension where I was trapped in a block of carbonite like Han Solo. Better yet, I selflessly volunteered to take Hans's place so he could save the Universe. It was only, now through a series of brilliantly complex actions (much too complicated to explain here) that I was able to escape back to earth. Unfortunately I got here too late to get the tax payment in on time.

OK, that was fun but stupid. I just got off the phone with the tax office. I had called to see if I could drop off my mother's check and my own check for the late payment penalty. It turned out that, because of the recent weather, the governor pushed back the payment due date for taxes until tomorrow. AllI'll need is today's postmark.

Saved by the storm. I'm a lucky guy.

Right after I click PUBLISH POST I'm off to get my mother's payment postmarked.

Albert Across the Street Dies

I went to my house yesterday to shovel more snow from the driveway and remove nails and screws from some old louvered shutters so I could set them out for trash collection. I hadn't been to the house since I'd shoveled out a path to the front door for the mailman and a place for the car a few days ago. I had to go because it was the day the mail delivery resumed.

I was surprised to see an empty yellow recycling container in the path to the door, but I decided to figure out why after I shoveled and took care of the nails and screws in the shutters. (I didn't know what local ordinance I'd be violating if I didn't remove protruding nails and screws, but I wasn't interested in learning about it either.)

So after all that I trotted across the street to see Carol, the neighborhood busybody (her own description). When I rang the bell, I saw the blinds blink, but I didn't hear Albert's growl telling Carol that I was at the door.

I started to describe the recycling bin, when Carol said, "You didn't hear?" Carol usually starts with a mock complaint or an accusation. ("Back from your secret mission?" or "Well, hello stranger.") Something was wrong: Albert wasn't in his chair. The TV was off.

Albert had died in his sleep over a week ago.

There had been a going away party for a fellow headed for Afghanistan. Afterward Al had gone drinking with his boys and Carol had headed home. The next morning before she headed off to church, he'd asked her for some chocolate milk, his usual morning after drink. When she came back, she could see that he'd had the chocolate milk. She went into the bedroom to ask if he wanted another, but couldn't rose him. He was gone.

The police and EMS came. Because he died at home, toxicology tests have to be performed. It'll be several months before Carol can get widows benefits because those are dependent on a death certificate, and the death certificate won't be issued until all the toxicology reports are in.

Carol handled the household accounts so she knows how much money she has and what she can afford, but it's all the unnoticed things he did in his part of their marriage which see sees now. Carol, for example, never put gas in her car. Al always did that. (It reminded me of a friend who misread her utility meters the first time after her husband's death. "So that's what guys do." she told me. (She'd always wondered.) That thought seems especially timely: my friend and here husband were getting ready for bed on Valentines Day when he collapsed right before her eyes. He too was a nice guy.)

Carol said that people came over and said just ask if you need anything, bu tshe'd been there as one of the people saying the same thing. And after a while everyone else goes on with their life, not through callousness, but because life has to be lived.

Carol and the FBI (her next door neighbor) tried to reach me by phone, but as I don't have a home phone, cell phone and I occasionally forget to put fresh batteries in my beeper, they never reached me. Carol said that Albert's friend's came in groups: his post office buddies, although he'd been retired for 14 years, his biker friends, and his bar friends.

Al had a lot of friends for the simple reason that he was a nice guy. He looked out for me because he was a neighbor. It was a simple as that.

Hadju at Port Washington

Riffing on the January 24 entry in Tom Bodett's blog: while I was out shoveling snow a few days ago, someone else while enjoying a stroll on a sunny beach cut their foot on a sharp stone. Now, due to inattention, they are writhing in agony while I'm typing this blog entry.

Ahh, life can be sweet.

On another matter, I got to see David Hajdu at the Port Washington Library talking about his book Heroes and Villians and buy an autographed copy of the book. The program scheduler at the library told me that my name actually meant first born and beloved. That's nice I told her and in my case was probably appropriate. With tongue firmly planted in their cheeks, my parents referred to me as "the Jesusil". (The simplest explanation would be Yiddish for the infant Jesus.)

I will probably have the last photograph of Hajdu with his beard. To his surprise his beard came in almost white. He intended to shave it off the next day. (He pointed out that my beard is unusually darker than my hair.)

There was a young woman at the checkout desk with strikingly dark makeup around her eyes. The effect was more Edward Gorey's kohl-eyed woman than Goth. I asked her if I could take her picture. She wasn't sure, asking me if I was a photographer. "I replied that I was an indifferent one." I went on to tell her that her appearance changed markedly from front to profile and that her eye makeup was more reminiscent of the 70's than the young women around the college. It turned out, surprise, surprise, that she's a student where I work.

I gave her my e-mail address in case she should change her mind about being photographed. I've got to remember to print out and carry release forms.

"Hell hath no wrath like a woman with proof." - Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me"

Champagne Bubble Bath

Among the items which show up in my mailbox is Clipper, a coupon magazine. Alongside offerings to reduce wrinkles without Botox and discounts at local eateries was a 50% off offering from three places in the Poconos for 3 days/2 nights for $525 in a "Champagne Tower Suite". The ad was illustrated with a picture like the one below.
My initial response was, Whoa! I wouldn't want to take a header out of that! Nothing says romance like slipping out of a gigantic champagne glass and crashing to the floor. It would be talk of the EMS for years.

Now here's something worthy of investigation. Someone must find this appealing. A quick web search for "Champagne Tower"showed that not only was there a "Champagne Tower by Cleopatra", but a "Champagne Tower from Rome". Who knew? The site says it's for couples. Same sex couples? In this economic climate their money may be gratefully appreciated.

I must have a defective romantic gene combined with an unreasonable fear of bodily harm. The ad has no appeal to be except as a voyeur. I wouldn't be surprised if an upcoming Survivor type reality show has a "Champagne Tower Challenge". Those more creative than myself will dream up the challenge, but I imagine that the contestants will have to perform something requiring manual dexterity and balance in a tower filled with Ripple "sparkled" with seltzer.

True Cost of Credit

Today's NYTimes's article "The Damage of Card Rewards"identified truecostofcredit.com as a site which would give the reader a sense of how much the rewards associated with a credit card cost a merchant.

I found that because my card doesn't have any rewards associated with it, I was startled to find that a convenience store could be paying 18.7% for the purchase of a pack of gum. According to truecostofcredit.com I'm "in the minority, since the majority of credit cards are now rewards cards." Seeing what merchants have to pay brought up the usual arguments about cash discounts.

Semantics are marvelous: credit card companies prohibit surcharges for use of their cards, but do not prohibit cash discounts. You can almost hear the rim shot: what's the difference?

I've always felt that shopping was a game of wits between the merchant and me. They want me to part with my money and I'm trying to minimize what I spend. The credit card is a tremendous convenience for me, and as it turns out, a reduced number of cash transactions also reduces the business as a target for robbery.

All told, the article and the web site made me think that I should start paying in cash. The gas station with that lower price for cash may be getting my business. We'll see.

Show Boat

The December 10th New York Times carried a piece about the scaled down staging of Rogers and Hammerstein's "Show Boat". (I just got around to reading it.) Originally carrying a cast of 50 and an orchestra of 28, Arlington, VA's Signature Theater's production had just 24 actors and an orchestra of 15.

While the article discusses the various incarnations and staging of the musical, I was struck by the thought that it will be increasingly rate for us to see musicals the way they were back in the day due to production costs. How can you get that many people on stage?

Knowing that most of us couldn't afford to see something close to the original staging made me doubly sad.

How Full of It?

I weighed myself after the Thanksgiving meal without an intervening stop in a small room. While my weight was at the upper end of my guesstimated weight range, vanity wanted it to be at the bottom.

Weighing myself again today with the same clothes after emptying my pockets and an intervening pit stop, the difference was 5.8 pounds.

Now when people tell me I'm full of it, I can agree and provide a quantitative response.

Childhood in a Strict Modernist Household

Once again I find myself reading the NY Times out of time. I couldn't tell. The cover said "Design & Living Winter 2009". (I didn't know when it was published. After a few perfunctory searches I decided to bag the baloney and move on. Here's a quick scan of the cover.)

On second thought, I went to the NY Times site and searched for the title of the article. "Empty Nest Syndrome" and there it was with the subheading "When your parents are hard-core-minimalist, you grow up with nothing — and like it." by Fred A. Bernstein. The article was practically new having been published on November 8, 2009. A passage bothered me:

In Chicago, Emanuela Frankel has spent her life in a loft with concrete floors, white walls, black leather furniture and not much else. Even in her own room, ‘‘I can’t have anything on my desk except a pencil holder and a tissue box,’’ says Frankel, 15, whose parents are both designers in the strict Modernist camp. And nothing on the walls — ‘‘no posters, no magazine cutouts,’’ she said. She compensates, however, with a colorful wardrobe.

No clutter. I can appreciate the thought, the dedication, the rigor and ruthlessness of their lives. I am appalled. I've been in very modern designer residences saddened by the lack of the warmth, the absence of humanity. They don't have a dog do they? Who would want to live in such a sterile environment? Weren't kids supposed to be able to hang posters in their room so that 10 or 15 years later they could mock their younger selves?

Where are the books that a kid in sheer desperation and boredom might pick up and hours later, where did the afternoon go? Perhaps kids of those parents have enough of the parental gene and psyche to be able to live in that environment. To me it smacks of Harlow's maternal-separation and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys and infant macaques. (See for example A Critique of Maternal Deprivation Experiments on Primates and The Nature of Love by Harry F. Harlow, first published in American Psychologist, 13, 673-685. I remember reading reports of the experiments not long after they were published.)

The only claim I have to knowing about child-rearing is that I was one once. (My immaturity allows me to speak with greater authority on the subject, but I'll wait to be asked.) A strict modernist house, as I interpret the term, doesn't let kids be themselves. In that regard, the "100 feet of sock-sliding potential" cited by Phoebe Greenwood might be a saving grace.

Reading History/Boxing and Cleaning Gutters

Just as I was bundling the November 14th New York Times Saturday Sports section for recycling, an article about Joe Santiago, Cotto’s Trainer Learned Outside the Ring caught my eye. The nice thing about reading old newspapers is that the internet makes it easy to jump to the end of the book to see if the butler did it. Did Cotto beat Manny Pacquiao in their World Boxing Organization welterweight title fight?

A quick search gave me the answer: Pacquiao had won. If I were really interested I would have tried to do a competent job determining if ring aficionados blamed Santiago for the loss. Instead, I posted this.

This day was noteworthy because after several weeks of fantasizing (if that is the correct term) I cut a Styrofoam™ block (a Dow registered trade mark for a polystyrene plastic), stuck it on the end of a ladder to avoid marring the siding and unblocked the drain on the gutter of my parents' house.

The whole gutter cleaning operation was unremarkable except that I was reminded once again how aluminum ladders wiggle and why spending a lot of time on ladders with sneakers is a bad idea. (In my case it's because a great deal of pressure is applied to a small area of the foot by the round ladder rungs. I used to wear very stiff soled boots which distributed the pressure evenly on the foot.)

12 - 8 = 4

I'd had a few e-mail exchanges with a student about tutoring. Our original schedule didn't fit her schedule, but as more tutors came on board and the schedule was changed she let me know she was coming in. That she did. The tutor did the best he could, what with two other students also being there.

She was having problems converting values between number systems. (It is possible to teach students to convert from decimal to binary in their head. I've done it. They've even done the conversion with negative numbers which seems impossible until you learn the trick. I'm shading the truth a bit. The students do the conversion by having each student act as a binary digit. Each student performs a subtraction and passes the remainder on to the next student representing the next smaller digit. I've wandered afield - back to the narrative.)

All that conversion requires is that the student be able to recognize which of two numbers is bigger (most get that), be able to multiply and subtract. Having spent a long time among technical people I was taken aback when the student needed to use her fingers to calculate the result of subtracting 8 from 12.

I thought she was a joking. Then I saw that she had no feel for numbers: when asked "how many times 4,096 went into 49,000" I expected that she's say "a little more than 12." I never expected her to say, "I dunno" and then start guessing.

Hoo-boy we're in trouble here. She said she didn't like math, I replied that part of the reason that the country was in the financial mess it's in might be attributable to people quite literally being unable to do the math on their mortgage commitment. Her answer was something I never have expected. "Oh, I'd only get a fixed rate mortgage.

Take home message? Maybe a heuristic is an adequate substitution for knowledge. Even so, seeing a college student use their fingers to perform simple math still upsets me. (One exception: computer science students learning once again how to use indexes which begin at zero instead of one.)

The Drummer/TPE_U-theatre Drum

Last Friday I saw "The Drummer", a reckless-youth-becomes-a-novitiate film. In this case, it is a drum troupe (U-Theatre) that the young man wants to enter. When first heard, the drums are a faint sound coming down from the Taiwanese hills.

The drumming didn't raise the hair on the back of my neck like the drumming in the Chieftains version of "Loch Lomond", but
TPE_U-theatre Drum

Film Critics United

I stumbled across Film Critics United (http://filmcriticsunited.com/) which seems to be a one man operation by Christopher Armsted. The reviews are enjoyable, but especially so for me because almost every one contains at least one typo. Dirty Pretty Things was an exception: the page was blank.

The mailto: link is labeled "Let Chris How wrong He Is" [sic]. I sent him a list of typos, but have yet to hear back.

The following reviews are worth reading if only for style:

• The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3


• Pan’s Labyrinth
• Star Trek


• Angels and Demons

and especially "Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors" because among the typos he omitted a word making the review seem a damning confession. About one of the characters Chris wrote:

"His presence in the film I found the most perplexing and I would probably have to watch the film to get a better understanding of his place in the film."

Ah what a difference the word "again" would make.

Glory for Christ Football League

On June 25, 2009 The New York times published "Home-Schooled Football League Thrives in Georgia", an article by Mike Tierney, about a football league for home schoolers.

The picture of a sign on a practice field misspelled two of their 4 priorities and says more about their education than the proverbial thousand words.

The Internet to the Rescue: Brakelights

I lent my car to my main squeeze. Later that night she called to say that all the brake lights (left, right, and high mount) would not go off. She tried pulling the fuses, but that didn't work. I suggested that she just pull the battery cable, but she didn't feel up to doing that in the night. It took a call to AAA in the morning for her to get started.

Being ever resourceful, when she got back, she searched the web to find the brake wiring diagram on about.com which seemed to show that the brake light switch was the culprit. Some more searches and I had a decent idea where to find the switch and what to do on answers.yahoo.com. (Being who I am, there was an interlude to notify all-parts.com that they'd misspelled "Cadillac" as "Caddillac".) With her watching the rear lights we determined that two thicknesses of a postcard were all that separated the switch indicating the brake being on or off. My guiding principle in this regard is to ask myself, "What would Bob do?", Bob being a fellow graduate student with a firm idea of quality workmanship, integrity, and what slapdash fix would hold until the cavalry arrived.

I didn't have the necessary open end wrenches so I wrapped the brake pedal lever with the necessary cardboard and went looking for a sale on open end wrenches. My usual source for cheap tools (tools I can lend or lose without getting upset), National Wholesale Liquidators, closed it's stores in my area due to the credit crunch and there doesn't seem to an obvious replacement.

Stay tuned.

Stats Update

One of the stats profs dropped by for something else and I managed to inveigle him into analyzing a particular set of stats. It looked to me as if there was a difference between accredited departments and those which weren't. Sure enough a Chi-square showed significance way out to the p=.0001 level.

What was interesting because I don't yet understand it was that calculating Chi-square using a spreadsheet was half the value generated by SPSS. The stats prof said it was because of the way Chi-Square stats treat a 2x2 matrix. Beyond me, but I passed the good news along to the prof who wanted to find something significant to say about her survey.

Only later I found that "significance" is not as significant as it once was: statisticians seem to prefer describing confidence levels rather than specifying the probability of significance.

My Favorite Porn - I

Watching math videos is a rarefied perversion, but a fascinating one none the less. The poster child is BottemasTheorem. The theorem is simple to state: Draw squares on AB and BC on two sides of the triangle ABC. Let R and S be the points on the squares opposite vertex B. Then the midpoint M of RS is independent of B.

The setup looks like this:
The point labeled M does not move regardless of how the red triangle is changed. Mathematica's Demonstration site shows the deformed triangle (below) but the understanding of the theorem conveyed by the triptych is nothing compared to the impression of the online demo.

Click on any of the images to go to the site and start the animation.

The mathematicians who stumble onto the Mathematica are mesmerized by the demos until the need to tap a kidney bring them back to reality.

If math doesn't attract you, you still might want to take a look. Measuring the Speed of Light with Marshmallows is fascinating even for mathphobes.

Enjoy.

Blind Shaft

Based on familiar scandals in China's mines, Blind Shaft is a raw Chinese film about two ruthless grifters who, by pretending to be the relatives of miners who die in "accidents" they've staged, collect money from the mine owners. Mines owners pay because the mines are operating illegally or with substandard safety.

An unsparing camera follows the two men and their next victim, an innocent 16-year old who's trying to earn money to get back into school or get the school fees for his sister.

In a karaoke type singalong in a brothel, one of the grifters selects "Long Live Socialism" on the karaoke machine. As the men start to sing one of the girls asks if he's a hick. He's singing the old lyrics? Old lyrics? The new lyrics (according to the subtitles) include "The capitalist came back with their American dollars."

In one of the nicer touches in the film, one of the men who has misgivings about this particular scam tries to give him a last good taste of life with session with a prostitute. The boy bolts, but later, by chance, meets her again at an office where both have goneto wire money home.

The very fact that the film got made speaks volumes about changes in China. There is no musical sound track. There are no special effects. The production values are low. The story seems to have been caught on home video and seems just as real. The depiction of the underclass and the relentless drive for money makes its case more than any proletarian socialist realism film ever could.

The Future of Textbooks is Colored Orange

This has been sitting in draft since May 25^th 2009.  In the interim the textbook rental market has taken off.  The references to the movie theaters, airlines, and credit card companies are still relevant as business are still nickel and dime-ing, "breaking out services", or scrambling to make up forlost revenue.

On the very first day of Stats the instructor asked who had purchased the book, where they got it, and how much they paid. One student said she rented her book on line from Chegg.com for ~$40. Others had paid over $150.

I took a look, rented the text on Wednesday, paid for expedited shipping, and, lo and behold, an orange box arrived via UPS on Friday. The book looks pristine. Amazing!

Chegg.com and the recent Credit Card Bill Of Rights legislation got me thinking about capitalism, movie theaters, and credit cards. It seems that credit card companies cannot make money on people like myself who pay their bills on time in the same way that supermarkets can't make a profit from me because I've never left the impoverished graduate student mentality behind.

Credit card services provide an exceptionally useful service by minimizing the need to use cash for transactions and speeding commerce. If I had to pay for the textbook by check I would not have gotten the textbook anywhere as quickly as the check winged it's way to the vendor and being routed through the banking system. Add on the delay of a weekend and I would be half way through a summer course without the book unless I forked over considerably more money.

If the credit card companies are making money, they're not making money on me.  Someone else is taking up my slack. Thank you, but is it fair? It is analogous to the movie theater owners who can't make money on what is ostensibly their business: showing movies. I'm told that their profits come from the (overpriced) concessions.

(It was not always thus. Back when I was an undergraduate, someone obtained a large brown paper sack of popcorn. I was told that the sack was what theater owners poured into their popcorn machines. The popcorn machines in theaters only warmed the popcorn.   The machines didn't actually pop the popcorn. (It was one of many myths shattered in college.) I remember bringing the sack into the theater with about half a dozen others. The kid with the sack sat in the middle seat in the second of 3 rows with the sack extended lengthwise so it overlapped the seat of the guys next to him. We punched a hole in the top side of the bag at either end and in the middle so all of us could reach in for popcorn. Nowadays, something like that could only happen at free films.)

In this regard what is fair? Am I taking unfair advantage of the poor credit card companies, enjoying the good life financed by the wretched of the earth who can't manage their credit or driven in desperation to borrow at exorbitant rates? (Will Jesus not drive these money lenders from the temple?)  Could be.  On the other hand, by taking advantage of the situation I'm revealing flaws in the business plans of the credit card companies thus strengthening the capitalism's Darwinian imperative. (The Cato Institute is invited to donate to my PayPal account.) Or helping to destabilize evil Capitalism. (Surviving members of the International Communist Conspiracy are invited to donate to my PayPal account.) Or playing into the hands of the Capitalist masters so they can appeal to their government lackeys to use legislation to save them from the proletarian onslaught when their profits tank. (Whoo. the 60's are coming back with a rush!)

Is there a sensible way of viewing the situation?  I always considered credit card purchases as a short term, no interest loan. In my days of impoverishment (make a note: not a bad title) I would keep a mental tally of what I owed. I was fortunate enough that I didn't need to cover a large unexpected medical bill. Are the frequent flier miles programs essential for their business or a marketing idea come back to bite airlines? Does the need to offer inducements or grow their market by extending credit to those who can't repay the total represent a flawed business model or have credit card companies found themselves caught short like Long Term Capital Management: strategies which worked well during "normal" economic times fail disastrously in times of upheaval.

Statistics - Aaarrrggghhhh!

My knowledge of statistics is embarrassingly poor. I've a layman's sense of what variance, covariance, and standard deviation means. The calculation part is simple. Understanding when to apply a measurement (1-tail, 2-tail, general linear model) and the significance of the result is beyond me.

I can usually skate by with just this, but I created a program which, among other things, calculates Cronbach's coefficient of alpha. From my readings, Cronbach's alpha is not a statistic, but a measure of internal consistency. As an example, does the overall exam grade reflect the overall question grades? Described as a measure of internal consistency, as I understand it alpha let's you see how the the variations on individual questions compare with the variation of the entire exam. (I've been told that the coefficient of alpha was really designed to be used on Likert scales, e.g., scales from excellent to very poor, rather than on test scores, but I'm having enough trouble wrapping my mind around the concept that I'll agree with anyone who purports to know what they're talking about.)

Onward.

I recently volunteered to analyze the stats of a recent survey figuring that I'd learned something in the process. What I learned was that the survey was not constructed well, that there was no universally accepted way of analyzing the survey, and I needed to know more about stats.

The statisticians were uniformly kind and most enjoyed themselves richly making derogatory comments about the people who constructed the survey. I could smile because I had nothing to do with creating the survey.

In the end, only one of several important questions on the survey yielded a significant result if you made certain assumptions about the responses: instructor's teaching distance learning courses seemed to think that the size of the classes they taught were appropriate. (The reason the results are questionable is that there was no indication that the instructors were answering questions about the same type of class(es).)

But that's not why I started this post. I had rewritten an Opscan/Scantron grading program and all the stats but Cronbach's Alpha worked out correctly. We know that only one instructor actually checked those statistics, so I was able to let that slide citing the press of other work. It looks as though I'll have the time now. So...

Always one to shirk duty, but having used up all my excuses, I searched the web for information about Cronbach's coefficient of alpha and was disappointed to find that the example on the NIH's web site had an error. The bleeping National Institute of Health! Sigh. Double check me: Table 18-2. Number of Teeth in the Sex Comb on the Right (x) and Left (y) Legs and the Sum of the Two (T) for 20 Drosophila Males contains an error. If you've got a moment, find the average value of column labeled x. The total of 20 numbers comes out to 133 with an average of 6.65 by my calculations. The illustration shows the average to be 6.25. The error seems to have escaped the authors and reviewers because the value of 6.65 is used about a quarter way down the page in the calculation of cov xy. The book, should you be inclided to investigage is Modern Genetic Analysis by A. J. F. Griffiths, W. M. Gelbart, J. H. Miller, R. C. Lewontin published by W. H. Freeman and Company (1999) ISBN 0-7167-3118-5.

I'm off to find another reference which will show me how to calculate Cronbach's alpha. Alternatively, maybe I can convince people that they don't need alpha calculated. Most instructors just look at the grades. Only one instructor actually looked at the kurtosis values, but then he was a Psych prof and measurements was his specialty.

Economic Indicators/Latisse

Like my mother, I say I'm reading history when what I'm really doing is reading old issues of the NY Times. Today's readings included two bell weathers of economic tidings. From February 5th, Vanity’s Downturn: Botox Use, and Allergan Sales, Dip reported that facial fillers were down 8.8%, breast implants were down 12%, and botox injections were down 3% for year over year quarterly sales. This is taken as a sure sign of a decrease in disposable income.

As someone who sense of style is notable by its absence, even more fascinating was learning that Allergan, whose main business is eye care pharmaceuticals, will be introducing Latisse an "eyelash growth drug". My immediate thought was that this might be the next Pretty Feet, the product which put Jerry Della Femina on the map. (A web search shows that the product, now known as Pretty Feet and Hands, is still on the market.) (The pro forma sarcastic comments are now inserted: Now in addition to worrying about the economy, health insurance, violence and locusts, women will also have to worry about the thickness of their lashes.)

And if you needed additional confirmation about the tragic state of the economy, there it was in black and white in today's NY Times: More Artworks Sell in Private in Slowdown. Private sales are increasing for a number of reasons. From the sellers side a private sale hides the seller's need for money and loss of face if an auctioned item gets not bids or if the selling price is low. Auction houses on the other hand charge less for private sales, but that is balanced by reducing expenses by avoiding price guarantees, advertising, insurance, and the logistics of shipping and storage.

It's a different world from my college days when a Personality Poster was all you needed to decorate your room. You knew the student had class and money if the poster was framed instead of just tacked to the wall. (Diverted by the thought, I stumbled around the web trying to locate the iconic W.C. Fields poster: "Never give a sucker an even break". It was offered for sale for $99 plus $6 shipping on ioffer.com. That the offer had no takers since November of 2008 indicates that it might be overpriced. maybe the poster is available in a store. Should real, traditional, you walk-in-the-door store now be preceded by the retronym: "brick and mortar"?)

I Make Matzos Balls (Everyone Survives)

I promised my brother I'd make matzo balls for Passover. After many years of experimentation we found the "best" recipe, that is best by the normal culinary standard of uniformity of texture and taste, to be the recipe on the side of the box. All we had in the house was a canister of whole grain matzo meal which did not have a recipe for matzo balls on the side. The previous year my father had a family friend buy regular matzo meal rather than use the whole grain stuff so the whole grain stuff was at least one lunar year old.

Where was I going to find a recipe? I turned to the web of course. (A more traditional approach would have been to go to go to a supermarket and look at boxes of matzo meal.) In the course of searching I learned that Manischewitz revolutionized matzo by inventing machines which could satisfy the rabbinical strictures (I believe that to be kosher for Passover the dough has to be be baked within 18 minutes of mixing), and that Streit's sold their lower East Side bakery in 2007, but I had a hard time finding a recipe. (In these times "hard means a web search which takes more than a minute.)

There were recipes for tri-colored matzo (green colored with pureed spinach, yellow made with turmeric and a red using tomato paste), using matzo with veal, for frying fish, etc. I passed on every recipe which promised "light and fluffy" matzo balls. My brother and I like matzo which my brother describes as aldente. I describe my preference as soft on the outside and rubbery on the inside. (Guess which one of us works in the food industry.)

Matzo Balls III (jewishfood-list.com) got my attention:

"I use a little over a cup of matzo meal but be careful, too much turns them into 'sinkers.'"

The recipe promised to serve 5. That sealed the deal: we expected 5 for seder.

A background in chemistry and biochemistry prepares one to following recipes, but not necessarily for creative cookery. I almost followed the recipe. The list of ingredients contain a "dash pepper", but the recipe doesn't describe when or even if to add the pepper. (Maybe the pepper was to throw at people who annoy the cook or to ward off evil spirits.)

Matzo balls are a subset of genus dumpling. To my embarrassment, I was surprised that the melted margarine solidified when I added it to the dry ingredients. Getting a uniform mix of the dry ingredients and the margarine provided a good aerobic workout.

I stored the matzo balls in the refrigerator, my brother used the turkey broth frozen since Thanksgiving to make the soup, and we all got to weigh in on their matzo ball preferences. Much to my relief nobody complained about the matzo balls and, as the heading states, everybody survived.

My brother conducted two services: Michael Rubiner's "The Two-Minute Haggadah" and then his own service (complete with seder plate orange) from the Maxwell House haggadah. I might have been tired. It might have been the realization of the futility of some other reason, but I refrained from complaining that the erudition of rabbinic sages is a cover for delusional numerology.

So passed another Passover.

"Hey kids! Let's put on a show!"

I was asked to help one of the bigger cheeses with his presentation on the current economic turmoil ramifications for higher education. I've enjoyed working with him in the past because he freely admit his limited understanding of technology, but he knows what he wants, has a decent feel for what technology can do, and has an excellent sense of organization. By this last I mean that he'll find references and statistics and knows how to arrange them in the presentation. I do the dog work, make a few stylistic suggestions which are usually taken, and, in this case, had two slides I suggested included in the presentation. We used PowerPoint in the past and this was no different except we used a newer version.

As deadlines approaches there are always modifications, but these never even rise to the level of an imposition: moving a few slides around or maybe deleting or adding a few slides a day or two before the actual presentation. Anyone in a similar position will recognize this as nothing unusual or onerous. What was gruesome was the videos.

Jumping to the chase: the presentation worked flawlessly on multiple laptops and desktops whether run from hard drive, CD or USB key. On his Lenovo X61 notebook videos froze. Because we weren't as sharp as we should have been and because of certain initial problems with the videos we didn't realize that the problem was the notebook not the videos. We tried to contact the conference's technical contact because it wasn't clear from their instructions whether presentations had to be run on their equipment or whether we'd be allowed to use our own. Could the presentation be on a CD or USB key? Our preference would have been to FedEx a CD with the presentation to someone at the conference who would let us know if there were any problems, but the conference's technical contact didn't get back to us until the day before the conference.

(Because of an ugly incident at a conference we hosted many years ago we've been exceptionally sensitive about these things. People who indicate that they don't need anything special don't realize that their standard company issued PC includes a special sauce.)

Something no one anticipated sucked several other members of my department into the project. In desperation some proposed converting the whole presentation to Flash.

My throw-in-the-towel solution was to send him to the conference with the old laptop they had around his office (the same laptop I used to develop the presentation) and his X61 which he used for business. When I say old I mean a laptop with no Windows key on the keyboard, a Y key which is askew, and a defective left Ctrl key. (The right Ctrl key works.) My guy's attitude is great: if he won't be embarrassed during the presentation he's satisfied. (They may kick sand in his face because he's schlepping an old laptop, but as long as the presentation doesn't blow up he'll be satisfied.) The conference organizers might not have liked it, but it was unlikely that they'd tell the keynote speaker that he couldn't use his own laptop.

That said, he knew humor was needed to leaven the steady drumbeat of grim economic news. Video clips seemed the most natural.The first was a clip from Horsefeathers, the Marx Brothers' farce, where Groucho deciding that it is too expensive to maintain both the college and the football team decides to tear down the college. Where will the student's sleep? "They'll sleep where they always sleep: in the classroom." (Always mindful of running afoul of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) the Horsefeathers clip came from a VHS tape.)

Then there was a scene from Damn Yankees. He wanted to introduce the clip by saying "Nobody likes times like these, except..." and then the clip of Appplegate (the Devil) singing about the "Good Old Days". (The clip included scenes of people jumping from windows on Wall Street. )

What we all felt would be a natural conclusion was a clip with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland saying "Hey kids! Let's put on a show!" A quick web search turned up an einsiders.com review indicated that it was in Girl Crazy in which Rooney and Garland put on a show to save Cody College. As fast as you could whip out a credit card the box set was ordered on a Friday and delivered to me on Monday. (I did say the presentation was for someone at the top.)

After watching over 6 hours of the dynamic duo (Babes in Arms, Babes on Broadway, and Strike Up the Band in addition to the aforementioned Girl Crazy), I stand before you to say that "Hey kids! Let's put on a show!" may join the ranks of "Play it again Sam" or "Alas poor Yorick. I knew him well." - lines which everyone remembers, but were never said. The line may exist in an Andy Hardy film, but not in the versions of the films in the boxed set. (What did you do today? I watched 4 Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland films to find 5 seconds of non-existent dialogue. Three other people scanned the films looking for the line.)

We tried to cobble three snippets from Girl Crazy) to show a radio news flash of the legislature's intention of closing Cody College due to a lack of enrollment, Mickey and Judy suggesting to the dean that they put the college on the map with a rodeo show, and the scene where they dump a sackful of applications on the dean's desk as Judy triumphantly exclaims "The governor can't close the school now!" Our ability to extract a clip from DVD to QuickTime worked fine. Editing the QuickTime clip worked fine. The conversion to WMV format not so fine. We lost or gained fractional parts. In the end we never got a usable clip from the boxed set. (I now have the background, but not the nerve to apply for a grant for Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland studies.)

TheGreat Train Robbery

When I spotted the book at a garage sale I remembered the movie with Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland, and Leslie-Ann Down was a good historical drama/thriller (a "ripping tale") and thought, why not?
The novel reminded me of a Mark Twain story, the title of which now eludes me, and John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman. Twain interspersed statistics, the effect not unlike the cinematic effect of a voice over describing a city with the subsequent action reflecting the facts. The French Lieutenant's Woman provided Fowles ample opportunities to discourse on Victorian era sociology. (I'm a sucker for this stuff: I have fond memories of a classic sociology study Family and Kinship in East London")

Part of the enjoyment of The Great Train robbery stemmed from deciphering period criminal slang. In one section, ostensibly quoting from the trial transcript one of the thieves explains, "... he plays like a flimp or a dub buzzer, or a mutcher, no interest or importance, and this because he don' want the skipper to granny that a bone lay is afoot." (p 104) and then the theif is perplexed when the judge asks the thief to explain his explanation. (I thought that a judge who dealt with criminals would have mastered the argot, but then this is a novel and the passage is amusing.)

I was struck by one curious difference between the movie and the book: the novel made repeated reference to the mastermind's red beard, but this was not significant enough to have Sean Connery's beard dyed red for the movie.

Boots Of Spanish Leather/Suze Rotolo

I heard her girlish voice introduce EmilyLou Harris on a YouTube video, but couldn't remember Nanci Griffith's name. In these times, I search the Internet to fill gaps in my memory. Remembering one of her albums was titled, "Other Voices, Other Rooms" I was off to the races. The track listing led me to a discussion of Bob Dylan's "Boots Of Spanish Leather".

There I learned the meaning behind a song I've known most of my life. Well, yes, I see now that the initial verses alternate between characters and the last three stanzas belong to the lover left behind. And knowing something about Suze Rotolo made it that much more poignant and embarrassing to see how much I missed.

(Aficionados of the era knew that it was Suze, a red diaper baby, who introduced Dylan to William Blake, Bertolt Brecht Arthur Rimbaud and certainly sparked his social conscience. Dylan obsessives know there is an instrumental named for her, Suze (The Cough Song). Suze's name pops up in David Massengill's concerts. I first heard her voice when she was interviewed on WNYC when she was interviewed about her memoir, "A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties". In an interview on WFUV's Words and Music from Studio A Steve Earle commented that he spends a lot of time turning German tourists in the right direction when they try to have their picture taken in the same spot as the cover for “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album.)

Hey Bob-a-Ree-Bob

A name popped into my head a few days ago and I turned to the web to look for information about Bob, a musician I hadn't seen for many years. When I'd first met him almost two decades ago he'd been married multiple times and was renting a room from a friend. He was separating or had just been divorced again and, as a result of multiple alimony payments, always short of cash.

He said that he'd meet woman who seemed fine, but after marrying them, they turned into castrating bitches. I repeated his comment to my mother, who replied, "Maybe he's comfortable with that type."

After Bob told my friend that he felt that every date should have a real possibility of the two of them ending up in bed together, my friend, who was in her 80's, dubbed him "Hey Bob-a-Ree-Bob". I don't claim to understand why, but the term seemed appropriate.

When I last saw Bob, perhaps in the early 90's, he was getting getting married again. My friend, who'd gotten the blow-by-blow account of the courtship told me that as the nuptials got closer both Bob and Betsy, his intended, admitted to being older than they originally claimed. At the time I was surprised that I wasn't surprised or even cynical about it. Bob must have been in his early or mid 50's and Betsy in her 40's.

Betsy was a computer programmer and was teaching Bob about programming. (I remember Bob being enthusing about using fractals in programming.)

It turned out he had a web site. He'd had a stroke in 1999. As part of his recovery he worked on web pages, picking the letters out one at a time, which show the effects of the aphasia:

and posted pictures of his notebooks to show how his handwriting was affected.
He seemed to have recovered enough so that a year and a half later he lead a big band at a gala celebration for Beverly Sills. There were links to an English Springer Spaniel Rescue organization, site survey for property upstate New York, and pages about his living in Mexico.

The web site has a script which makes each page appear to be updated when viewed. Broken links made it clear that the site wasn't being maintained.

I sent him a "hi-how-are-you" note, which bounced back the next day.

More searching and I found a Requiem announcement that he'd died in 2006. The same page also listed "Michael L. Brecker - Saxophone".

Rest in peace Bob.

Gas at $1.91

Yesterday I saw regular gas for $1.91 at the Citgo station on Hempstead Turnpike in Hempstead, NY. Wow! To think that a few months ago a good price was a little over $4.

An image flashed through my mind of me standing under the price sign with a newspaper in the same fashion as a kidnap victim holding up the front page of a paper to demonstrate proof of life.

The (Financial) Sky Is Falling

Today started with a segment of Brian Lehrer's talk show with Michael Oxley of Sarbanes-Oxley fame. A long time conservative Congressman (R-OH 4th) and now Vice Chairman of NASDAQ, Oxley pointed out that changes in banking regulations his Financial Services Committee proposed passed the House, but died in the Senate with White House opposition in 2005. Those regulations would probably have prevented a good portion of this situation by increasing transparency and documentation. Can you say "Liar Loan"?).

Listening to NPR and Market Place today I was struck by the wide spectrum of the opposition to the Bank Bailout ("Cash for Trash"). One southern Congressman made this point about the unspecified portions of the bailout: the motives of people in the administration who may be responsible for devising the minutia in the agreement cannot be known. What assurance did the taxpayer have that the people in the administration who were responsible for hammering out the details will not be exploiting them by returning to Wall Street after the next election?

Caught Peeing at the Crime Scene

I was taking a wiz at the urinal closest to an open window overlooking the forensics lab's crime scene when one of the students, pointing to the bathroom window said, "Hey, there's an open window there."

The lab assistant, spotting me, said, "And there he is." I waved with my free hand, wondered if this was similar to the Paris pissoirs: guys relieving themselves while people looked down from their offices.

There was a difference: I was above rather than below the crowd. In the time I had to reflect, I wondered whether I should wave? If so, with one hand or two? What was the proper look to have on one's face while relieving oneself? Impassive? Joyful? Relieved? Studious? (Will a survey reveal a gender-based difference in responses?)

Emanuel Haldeman-Julius - "The Henry Ford of Literature"

This blurb was irresistible: "He was the 'Henry Ford of Literature,' a 'Voltaire from Kansas,' and 'the Barnum of Books.' The greatest American publishing genius you never heard of." I followed the link from Arts & Letters Daily (September 3, 2008) to Rolf Potts article in the September issue of The Believer.

The article described the Little Blue Book publishing phenomenon, a publishing venture in Girard, Kansas which sold vast quantities of cheap paper back books often with intellectual content. Potts contention was that the venture was done in by a combination of Federal harrassment (the publisher, a socialist at heart had antagonized J. Edgar Hoover who sicked the IRS on the publisher), red-baiting, and television. Quite an interesting read.

"The problem will be deviated"

If asked, I would include myself with the language curmudgeons. I grumble about the term "repurpose" to mean "use for another purpose", "impact" instead of "affect", etc. Will posterity understand terms? I suspect that those who still read will regard these terms as turn of the century oddities.

What leads me here is a search of IBM's web site for a problem with Sonic's RecordNow! software. Although the operating system (WinXP) shows both a DVD and a CD drive, the RecordNow! software can't find either drive. The usual culprit in situtations like this is a driver problem. A search of IBM's knowlege base turned up plenty of links for ThinkCentres and IntelliStation E's, but I was using an IntelliStation M. I finally spotted a promising link, but after reading I wasn't quite sure.

What does "deviated" mean in this context?

Sonic upgrade page - IBM IntelliStation M Pro (9229), Z Pro (9228) ... Install the upgrade pack when you encounter the following problem: When installing CATIA V5R16 SP2 under the presence of Sonic DLA in the system, installer will fail to read the CD. Use the upgrade pack to upgrade Sonic DLA and the problem will be deviated.

I despair.

Menu Cowardice

There, on the back page, was Friendlys' "Over 60 Menu". I didn't have the courage to order.

But You're an Engineer!

The other day EGGDEW, a long time faculty member asked me about recycling his old computer (EGGDEW is his username. Some in the Systems Group dread his calls because the problems won't be solved by a standard fix. But I digress.)

It was unfortunate that he asked me then because just two weeks earlier two towns held their electronic recycling days. His PC still had its original install of Windows 95. EGGDEW said he was concerned about possibly revealing confidential information.

"Not a problem" I said. Just pullout the hard drive."

"I wouldn't even know what it looks like."

"But you're an engineer!" I sputtered. I couldn't believe that EGGDEW, a guy who installed his own Unix workstation, who has his own personal MATLAB license, who uses computers to analyze NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Doppler radar didn't know what his hard drive looked like.

I was and remained stunned.

Someone Stole My Kickboard

I've been known to be absent minded, leaving things and then wasting time hunting for them later. This was not one of those times.

The only difference from last night's swim and my usual routine was that I sat on the can before I showered. (I realize that this falls under the TMI (Too Much Information) heading but...) It meant that my kickboard was left unattended while I attended to a call of nature. But why would anyone take my kickboard?

As you can see nobody else would not be able to use the kickboard at my pool - it's so recognizable. I looked around the locker room, I had a friend look for it out in the car. She even checked the Ladies bathroom. Maybe I'd handed it to her and she'd left it in the bathroom. Nope. The kickboard was nowhere to be found.

I borrowed a board from the pool and during my swim tried to think the situation through. Maybe I'd put the kickboard on top of the lockers. I hadn't looked there, but that would be so out of character. I just couldn't come up with any explanation other than the kickboard had been stolen.

As I was showering after my swim it suddenly hit me, maybe someone had thought the kickboard had been discarded and threw it away completing some previously unrecognized cycle of nature.

At this point it might be pertinent to explain that I'd pulled the missing kickboard from one of the pool's trash cans a year or so before. (I have no pride.) I intended to use it as a backup when my old blue kickboard eventually wore away. You see the old blue one served me well for a number of years before starting a slow disintegration. Each semester I thought I could get another semester out of the blue one before I would need a replacement kickboard. My friend actually bought me a yellow kickboard to have on hand when the blue one couldn't be used any more. I actually got two years out of the blue kickboard before I - this is hard to explain - misplaced it.

I'm sure the blue kickboard is resting comfortably under something I own. One day it will see the light of day and give me another semester or two of service. Be that as it may, sometime between the time my friend bought me a kickboard and I misplaced the blue one I pulled the missing yellow kickboard out of the trash.

As I left the pool to shower I mentioned to the other guy in the locker room that it seemed someone had taken my kickboard. "Y'mean the one with the broken handle?" "Yeah. I can't believe it."

While showering it hit me, "Hey! Maybe someone threw it out." I looked in two of the trash cans in the locker, but it wasn't there. The guy in locker yelled, "You're right! It's here." My kickboard was in the third garbage can in the locker.

So this tale of high drama ends with a guy reunited with his kickboard, faith in the foodness of others restored, and a moral tale about the unexpected consequences of the urge for cleanliness laid out for all to see.

My Pusher Calls

So there I was at work when a co-worker says the phone call is for me. I didn't place the name at first - it's been over 6 months since we spoke. It was my old CD pusher, Mike.

Mike recounted the last half year: he use to send out a weekly e-mail of used CDs he'd picked up from libraries, garage sales, store closings, etc. The lists were enhanced with his commentary. (Mike is especially knowledgeable about jazz.) Being one of his regulars had certain benefits: Mike knew what I might like, knew that I only bought CDs with the original artwork and inserts, he'd look out for stuff I wanted, and he'd take back stuff which didn't work on my Aiwa. (There were CDs which played fine on Mike's players and computers, but my Aiwa's 20 year old system is showing it's age.)

When Mike found that the response to his e-mail list was falling off he decided to go the eBay/Amazon route. His jazz stuff is selling, but the city-folk music isn't. ("City folk" is one of those descriptions which seems immediately obvious to those who recognize it and a non sequitur to those who don't. As I understand it the term characterizes the music of WFUV (Fordham University), WMVY (Martha's Vineyard) on the east coast: hip, urban, but with roots in folk music. I yield to any authoritative definition.)

In this age of the virtual experience I suggested something classic: what about going to his house and pawing through his CDs? He like the idea. Over the next few weeks or so he'll stack them up and I'll be taking a look and listen. All the money I didn't spend when he stopped his e-mailing may get spent. (I think of music as a kinder gentler drug. It keeps on giving until you lose your hearing late in life.)

Back to My Music

It just dawned on my that in the last few weeks, as I worked on a program with a drop dead date, that I'd started to listen to CDs in almost the same way that I listened to record albums when I was a senior in college.

In those days we usually listened to the entire side of a record. (I can't remember if anyone had a record changer so they could listen to multiple sides without getting up.) In those days I was the only guy in a house with 8 or 9 other guys who did not have a turntable. It was more a matter of me feeling impoverished, rather than real impoverishment or an matter of self-denial. But, be that as it may, my time in that house had an accompanying soundtrack of Jimi Hendix, Cream, David Blue, Tim Buckley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Koerner, Ray, and Glover, and the Doors. To this day, when I hear a song from those albums I find myself anticipating the next track.

Those of us from that era seem to have listened to album the same way. The very first time the album was played we sat on the floor, back to the bed, transfixed by the liner notes. And the album played over and over again the tunes impressed into our brains. If the liner notes had the lyrics we remembered them from simple repetition. (Without the liner notes, "A girl with kaleidescope eyes" became "A girl with colitis goes by", "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky" was sung as "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy", and "She's a must to avoid" got an unanticipated frisson as "She's a muscular boy.")

Now I have an old Aiwa boom box with a CD player. Sometimes I have to prop the boom box at an angle for some of the CDs to start to play, but once the CD starts I can lower the box and listen to the whole CD. And then start it up again and listen again. (It just occurred to me that I could press the repeat button.)

Occasionally I have to turn off the music so I can determine if a σ is the standard deviation for a population or a sample, but now the music has become the soundtrack to the program I'm writing.

Over the course of a few weeks I've played, Uakti's "Aguas da Amazonia" (music by Philip Glass), Paul Simon's "Graceland", John William's "The Ultimate Guitar Collection", Rosanne Cash's "Black Cadillac, the Dixie Chicks "Wide Open Spaces", and I'm now listening to David Berkeley's "After the Wrecking Ships".

Every once and a while I throw in Ottmar Liebert & Luna Negra's "Viva!".

Some years ago I bought a Richard Thompson CD and was not impressed by what I heard. I listened to it as background music. I gave the CD another listen to confirm my opinion, but for some reason I decided to read the insert as I listened and my opinion changed. The very dull lightning flash: it's words AND music. It was something I'd managed to overlook in the need to actually get something done.

Perhaps it's something to look forward to in retirement.

Have You Ever Exposed Yourself to a Child?

Nope, but it was close. I'm one of the people who get to the pool in the last hour. If I show up before 10 PM all the attendants quickly check the clocks. There are a few other late nighters. If we don't know each others names, we are nodding acquaintances.

About a month or two ago there was someone I don't believe I'd ever seen before: a father with his little girl. The kid seemed to be having a great time riding her father's back like a whale rider.

Because it takes me a long time to shower and dress I leave the pool a few minutes before they blow the everybody-out-of-the-water whistle. I was toweling myself off when I heard an exceptionally high pitched voice in the locker room. The title of this post flashed across my mind.

Children under 5 are allowed in either locker room when accompanied by an adult. I imagined being asked about this at, say a Senate hearing: "Well, I didn't really expose myself to the little girl, she just walked into..." or "You see children under 5 when accompanied by an adult are allowed ... "

I gave up, dressed quickly and managed to leave without seeing either of them.

Stealing Shampoo By Accident

About two weeks ago I noticed a half-filled bottle of shampoo in the shower at the pool about a quarter to 11 PM. I was the last one at the pool. My finely honed sleuthing skills reasoned that the shampoo probably belonged to the guy who left as I arrived. Because the swim staff seems to throw stuff out stuff like shampoo rather than put it in the lost and found, I thought I'd take the shampoo and bring it back to the pool and give the shampoo to the guy the next time we met.

When I got home I remembered that the guy I intended to give the shampoo to makes a point of NOT showering at the pool. Duh. Another example of collateral damage from my sleep deficit.

I finally saw the guy tonight and explained the situation. Did he want the shampoo? Nah, you keep it. Sigh. My intentions were noble. Maybe I'll get off with a judicial reprimand.

I Cut My Father's Nails

My parents have long maintained that getting old is not for sissies. My father has stated several times that he's no longer getting old, he's there. He's old.

As they've gotten older my parents have made their accommodations to their diminishing strength through planning. They minimizing the number of times they use the stairs, wait for me to come over rather than chance climbing up a latter to change a bulb, etc.

After triple coronary bypass surgery my father suffered some problems which led to a loss of feeling in his right hand. One of the results was that just yesterday he asked me to cut his nails. The nails on his right hand were nicely trimmed, but because he couldn't trust his right hand to do the job the nails on his left hand were long.

My father had must have thought about it for a while before coming to the conclusion that he had to ask for assistance. It was an awkward experience on my part. I didn't think I'd nip his finger, but I couldn't feel where the clippers were. I had a new respect for manicurists and nail technicians. It might have appeared comical. I'd position the clipper, then move my head around to see if the clipper was going to nip his skin before actually clipping his nails.

I wonder why he doesn't use a nail file, but then maybe it's also a problem with gripping.

Ten Most Wanted

The Director told all the staffers to make a promotional piece/advertisement for themselves. For many years I'd thought that my department should have made trading cards made for the staff or the student assistants.

I tried to make a trading card, but, in my sleep deficit induced dehabilitation, I'd never be able to do a reasonable job with Illustrator or PhotoShop. I settled for imitating a wanted poster.

The first poster I used for a model was a US Postal Inspection Service poster for Sy Hien Nguyen. Nguyen ran a multi-million dollar identity theft ring along with bad check and credit card fraud. The wanted poster is interesting for two reasons:

• The two bands of blue are slightly different shades (0:0:153 or #000099) for the reward band and slightly darker for the bottom band (1:1:154 or #01019A).
  


• None of the sans serif fonts seemed to match the lowercase "n" the poster's fonts.
  

The color difference might just be an artifact. When I went back to check on the n's, the difference I remember wasn't as obvious. What I remember was that the width of the curve of the n as it connected to the vertical stroke was far wider than for any of the fonts I had. (I should really look into the effects of sleep deficit.)

I looked for an FBI poster in the hope that it might be different. Surprise - it was. The very first FBI poster I found was Usama Bin Laden's. The FBI poster uses serifed fonts one of which looks like Times New Roman. I don't know why design people despise Times New Roman, but if it is good enough for the FBI I wasn't going to quibble. Using only MS Word 2003 and PhotoFiltre (a freeware graphics program to resize images and adjust the color) I knocked out the poster. In this poster also the blue colors are different, with the top banner being lighter (0:0:205 or #0000CC) than the color of the text (0:0:255 or #0000FF).

The scary part was looking at pictures of myself: I looked haggard. (Note to self: get some sleep.) Can someone tell me why haggard in black and white is less upsetting than haggard in color? The best I could do for humor was to describe my eyes as "Penetrating, but kind" and for "Scars and marks" enter "Displayed on request." I listed the charges against me as providing solutions and sound advice. (It was late and the muse had already left to get a beauty rest.)

The next day, the boss said she like it. Mine was different. That seems appropriate. We never got around to discussing the advertisements. Somehow that too seems appropriate. We're scheduled to go over them again at the next staff meeting. (Given that my department is supposed to be a technology department I would have thought that we should have posted the adverts to a web page to save paper, but nobody asked me. As it is other staffers cranked off a lot of colored printing.)

(Maybe I can use the extra time to make a trading card for myself. What I'd really like to do is make something with a foldout. Many from my background will cite Jethro Tull's Stand-Up album as cool, if only for the pop-up of the band when the album gatefold opened.)

Just today the head of a different department sent an e-mail with the words "Promotion" and "permanently" in the subject line. I got a sinking feeling that the poster was going into my employee file.

What a relief to find that message concerned Adobe software licensing.

Sleepless in PA/Sex Scandal

I had to go for training in rural PA this week. There were better times for training, but intervening events intervened. (I was intending to write that "The turn of events turned into this", but considering that this is dairy country and "turning" connotes souring I'll leave it as a parenthetical phrase.) I left NY very late on Sunday, survived two near collisions (the first the fault of the other guy, the other mine) to arrive at my motel about 2:30 AM.

On 4 hours sleep I staggered over to the training site. (I was smart enough to have booked a motel within walking distance of the training site - the only plus I'll give myself for this excursion.) I was surprised to find that the training I'd signed up for was not the one I expected, but what the heck, I could put it to good use anyway. (I have the feeling that I'm an observer in my own life. Hmmm I wonder what I'm going to do next. Thought balloons would be helpful, but there's no guarantee that I'd do what I think I'd do.)

Back at the motel, I couldn't find an NPR station. I was too tired to get the shakes. (It's an extension of my family's joke that my father gets withdrawal symptoms if he's without the NY Times too long.)

As a poor substitute I watched TV - a rare and mystifying event. The camera work confuses me. Why the cuts? If the producers want to show something why not run continuous footage with voice over commentary? The flashy graphics seem to be a keeping-up-with-the-Jones phenomenon. So it was on TV that I learned that Elliot Spitzer, an ostensibly respectable guy, former US attorney with a well deserved reputation for prosecuting despicable Wall Street types, now Governor of the great state of New York, was caught in a prostitution sting. Say what?

Now I'm willing to be as venial as the next guy (if it doesn't take too much effort), but I was naive enough to believe that politicians these days care too much about their ambition to do something as incredibly stupid as get involved in something like this. People delight in pointing out that I clearly overlooked the obvious: many successful people believe they can play by a different set of rules without paying the consequences. I'm so lacking in self confidence that I'm absolutely certain that any misstep I make would be caught on video cameras with unimpeachable witnesses providing color commentary.

So again I don't understand. Spitzer is the bleeping governor. Was the lack of judgment due to something less obvious than hubris? Is this a Wilbur Mills/Tidal Basin Bombshell event? (Wilbur Mills, a Congressional representative from Arkansas was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in the 1960's and acknowledged as one of the most powerful men in Washington, fell from grace after a series of events involving a stripper and alcoholism.) I add this only because I can testify to how impaired judgment can be by things as mundane as a sleep deficit.

So we bid tearful farewell to Elliot's national political ambitions and turn to the best Unreality Show in the World: the US presidential contest.

Sweet Old World/Emmylou Harris

She said, "I've got the lyrics from one of your damn whiny woman singers stuck in my head:

Together with another one
Didn't you think anyone loved you?
See what you lost when you left this world.

"It's Lucinda William's song, 'Sweet Old World' sung by Emmylou Harris on her 'Wrecking Ball' album." I said. (I didn't add that Emmylou doesn't qualify as one of the whiny woman singers whose voices twist my heart, but that's another story or that I was surprised that I could identify the lyrics provenance like the old days. In the old days I might have been able to supply the track listing.)

This post is to document the fact that my memory sometimes works and gives me a chance to say that Emmylou Harris deserves her accolades and respect.

"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.