Letters to the editor, September 2008

This a traditional letter column. You are encouraged to write a letter of comment on anything that you find worthy of comment. It will (may) be published in this column along with my reply. As editor I reserve the right to delete material; however I will not alter the undeleted material. E-mail to me that solely references the contents of this site will be assumed to be publishable mail. All other e-mail is assumed to be private. And, of course, anything marked not for publication is not for publication. Oh yes, letters of appreciation for the scholarly resources provided by this site will be handled very discreetly. This page contains the correspondence for September 2008.

Index of contributors

• Anthony R. Lewis, PhD, FN
• Peter Neilson
• sean combs
• Patrick Crowe
• Kevan Moore
• Connie
• Lee R Piazza
• Enid Schantz
• Wendi Rinehart
• Peter Neilson
• Lar Kaufman
• Peter Neilson
• Keleish Blake
• Peter Price
• Peter Neilson
• Economic Logician
• Chip Hitchcock

Other Correspondence Pages

• Master page for correspondence
  
• May 2008 correspondence
  
• June 2008 correspondence
  
• July 2008 correspondence
  

From: Anthony R. Lewis, PhD, FN
Date: 30 August 2008
Subj: Time travel and divers things

Dear Mr. Harter–I know you are in a different time zone because you have dated your pages 1 September 2008 while back here in Eastern Time it is still 30 August. I wish I knew how you did it.

Do you have any evidence of any such discrepancy? I didn’t think so. I’m afraid that your allegations must be relegated to the category of unsubstantiated rumor.

Be that as it may, I suppose I can let you in on a small secret. As you may have observed my public appearance is slightly at odds with my calendar age. This is a mere scam. Quite some time ago I acquired a Home Time Travel Machine from Acme Corporation. As you might expect, its operation is somewhat erratic. Still I have found it useful in maintaining a public presence.

The idea is very simple. When I am out in public I bring back myself from a decade or two ago to do the pretty. When I am in private I replace myself with myself of a decade or two in the future. It takes a bit of work to keep all of the stories straight. Fortunately no one expects me to make sense in the first place, so the little anachronisms are never noticed.

Well, they are horses, after all. I thought you knew about horses.

Jimmy was deceiving you; he is a very deceitful cat. I fear that you are correct about Bridger’s frisbie catching. I will not dignify your speculations about him teaching me to play fetch with this comment.

You’re welcome. It’s always good for con-goers to get away from the con hotel and see the local scenery.

By the way, this last trip is the first one in years where we didn’t see any family members. I did find out, upon returning home, that the niece of my third cousin Kate Rothwell (historical fiction, erotic fiction as by Summer Devon) was there but niether of us knew it.

We just bought a 1 terabyte external drive for backups and archiving; it cost about $250. About 30 years ago, I bought an external hard drive for my home computer–it was 20 megabytes for about $800. That’s a reduction of about 150,000 in what memory costs. But, I still don’t have my jet pack and flying car.

The problem is that we are in the wrong future. In the future I grew up in we had moon rockets in county fair carnivals. Deb and I went to the SD State Fair. Was there a moon rocket there? No. Nada. I was so disappointed. And when we came home the car wouldn’t fly. Something has gone very wrong some where along the way to the future.

From: Peter Neilson
Date: 1 September 2008
Subj: Snack-vending machines in Highmore

Ask any local hunter about snack-vending machines. He will instruct you on the workings of the .22 rifle, which can be used to secure yummy squirrels and pigeons as snacks. For a full meal a larger calibre is suggested.

A nearby preserve also produces waterfowl, many of which are larger than snack size. You may have heard of it. Again, the correct calibre is required.

Do these devices skin and clean these delicious snacks, cut them up into bite sized pieces, marinade them in spiced sauces, cook them, and package them in ecologically disastrous wrappings? That is the very least that is required of a snack-vending machine in this second century of Our Ford.

From: sean combs
Date: 7 September 2008
Subj: ORDER

Hi,
from your company.I will appreciate you email me back with those that you carry instock and also their price ranges as well as your terms for payment.Your contact was given to me by a business partener and he recommended how excellent you are in business,i want to be one of your honest customers and do business with you in future as well.Waiting to hear back from you soon and have a nice day.

Best Of Regards,
Mr.Sean

I am desolated to inform you that as of this writing we are not in the toilet seat business. Toilet seats are, so to speak, behind us. If perchance you are interested in acquiring rodents of unusual size please let us know.

… Continued on next rock …

hello,
thanks for the mail i really do appreciate that and can i know what you do carry,thank you and uou and hope to hear from you soon.

Actually, we is me, and mostly what “we” carry is disreputable intellectual property. Sorry to disappoint.

From: Patrick Crowe
Date: 1 September 2008
Subj: advice for career change

I am a 46 yr old cabinetmaker, just learning Autocad. However, I decided that within 36 months I would make a career change and will be working in a technology based job. I have very good math skills, actually was an Engineering student twenty plus years ago, but fell in love with sculpture.

I am interested in getting a BS at a minimum in Mathematics or related field. I cannot go to school right now but am proficient at self study and know I could test out of two years of college math with some diligent work.

My question to you is: what direction would you recommend for someone looking to go into technology thru mathematics and computers? I like to solve problems. I one time devised my own multi-variable calculator program for turning the nominal dimensions on an architectural 2D drawing into the actual dimensions needed for given viewpoints for creating 3D illustrations. I worked for a long time on that and failed over and over till I got it. I realize that’s od stuff today but I did with trigonometry 15 years ago. I also used paper models and trigonometric functions to map out the cutting of large scale spiral pipe, 8″ to 36″ diameter*, to create sculptures for a business in youngstown Ohio.

I have read about Chaos and Fractals and believe that those, along with statistics, would interest me but I want the point of view of somebody out there earning a living doing things that more than 7 people would read. Abstruse, I agree can be interesting, but I want to be involved in something that’s going to market.

Thank you if you read this and for any ideas you relay to me. TANSTAAFL!  

I hope you understand that you have a tough row to hoe. If you go back to college and get a BS you will be at least 50 and probably 52. You will be entering into the job market in your fifties competing with people who are in their twenties.

Don’t let that stop you. A friend of mine who was your age went to college part time for many years. Someone told him, “It’s going to take you ten years to complete your degree; why bother?” He said, more or less, “If I don’t do it, ten years from now I still won’t have a degree; if I do, I will.”

Self study is a good thing, of course. If do well at it you can test out for some of your required courses. I wouldn’t count on that much reducing the number of courses you will have to take.

Then there is the simple issue of cost. Tuitions and fees have exploded in the past few decades. I suspect your best bet is a two year community college ot technical institute. It occurs to me that your best entry into the job market may be as a technician of some kind. I opine that you don’t want a job where you are servicing the public; rather look for something where you can be part of a larger group. That way you would have job mobility along an engineering path.

As far as self teaching in math goes, that depends on where you left off and what you remember. Whether or not you took calculus, it’s probably a good idea to go through a calculus text and work all the problems. You also definitely want to go through a Finite Math text; it will cover things like Boolean algebra, elementary probability, vectors and matrices, some data structures, basic number theory, and linear programming. I would recommend going through a text on probability theory. Understanding probability theory is like understanding calculus; it gives you a head start on everything else.

Beyond that, it depends on what path you think you want to follow. If you want to follow an engineering path, tackle a text that has a title such as Advanced Calculus for Engineers. If you want to follow a programming path tackle a data structure and algorithms text.

It probably is a good idea to get a handle on computer programming no matter what you do. I assume that you have a computer and that you probably have Windows on it. In the old days Basic was the language of choice for the self-taught programmer. I think you can get Visual Basic from Microsoft for free. Another alternative is a good scripting language; I opine that Python is your best choice here. It is also free.

From: Kevan Moore
Date: 12 September 2008
Subj: save that quarter?

http://richardhartersworld.com/cri/2007/food.html

i was the one that wrote the original story sometime before 2002.

it was twenty cents, not a quarter, 8 cents tax, not 7 cents, and it happened in huntsville, alabama.

other embellishments to the story (like the entireity of the last paragraph starting with “i finally realized that i was missing…”) are entirely unnecessary and quite anticlimactic.

also, the removal of the “i didn’t have my calculator watch” diminishes the arrogant geek factor, as the removal of the “i had someone do that to me at hardees a couple of years ago” diminishes the smalltalk factor.

i do applaud your keeping the “…” separation between “smugly drove off” and “without my food”. other web pages miss that entirely.

as the original author of the story i offer the above critique of your editing for your perusal and expect your reaction to my advice to be as pleasant as mine reaction to your editing.

it was at the checkers drive thru on my way back from huntsville hospital to visit my friend jeff harwell who was there because he’d had a wreck in his pickup truck that morning (veered off the road trying to kill a spider in his truck).

have a nice day. kevan moore nasa engineer.

Thanks very much for writing. As you have probably surmised, I printed a version that was circulating. People seem to feel the need to add a few “improvements” as they pass these things on. I really can’t take credit for such virtues as I have chanced to preserve. I will go ahead and make such corrections as I can – I’m not sure where the calculator watch and Hardees go. Also, unless you very much object, I will add your name as author and your copyright.

NOTE: Kevan went on to resurrect the original. The true version has replaced the corrupted version.

From: Connie
Date: 13 September 2008
Subj: Whatever

hey

hey, you

From: Lee R Piazza
Date: 24 August 2008
Subj: AUGUST

We city slickers know you farmers only work twice a year–spring planting and harvest. August isn’t either so what’s holding up the August edition? If you wait any longer it will be Harvest and then you’ll get really behind. Probably out fixing fences? Farmers always say that.

What do you mean, August isn’t harvest? They were out threre combining wheat. Not only that I was picking vegetables.

The thing is, I wasn’t getting enough letters so I had to something to get people to write. Don’t believe that? I have a bunch more stories, none of them any better. The sordid details are all spelled out in the September editorial entitled “Not this August”.

… continued on next rock …

Which we eagerly await….and wait. BTW what were they combining the wheat with?

Sometime this week. I still have to do my HarterCon II convention report, that and a few more letters.

They combine wheat with combines.

From: Enid Schantz
Date: 25 August 2008
Subj: irving binkin

My husband Tom and I met Irving Binkin in his downtown Brooklyn store, Binkin’s Book Bin, in the early 1970s, early in our career as booksellers and publishers. It was filled mainly with cheap paperbacks, which were selling briskly, but when we told him we were looking for hardcover mystery and science fiction, he looked at us with a gleam in his eye. “Ever hear of H.P. Lovecraft?” he asked. We had. He threw us a book from across the room, a pristine copy of a much sought after Arkham House book by a member of the Lovecraft circle. Then he commissioned one of his customers to mind the shop for him while he took us out to coffee and then for a tour of the other six book-filled floors of the building, which he owned, and he told us about the Grill collection.

The story he told us differs quite a bit from the one Jack Chalker evidently told you, and I have no idea where the truth lies. According to Binkin, he got a call from Grill’s widow out in Long Island who told him she wanted to sell her husband’s library, which included many early volumes on witchcraft. Binkin went to the house, opened one box, which was indeed filled with witchcraft books from the 16th century, and offered her $300 for the entire library, satisfied that he could easily sell the one box he’d opened at a profit. This was his standard operating procedure, he said. He then brought scores of cartons back to the store,which book scouts visited on a regular basis looking for the treasures Binkin was known to produce. Most of the rest of the boxes contained books and other printed matter by and about Lovecraft and the Lovecraft circle, including a complete run of Arkham House books. Binkin had never heard of Lovecraft, but he was intrigued and he got in touch with Jack Chalker, either because of the Mirage Press bibliography in the collection or at the suggestion of one of the book scouts.

At that point he decided that he wasn’t going to sell the collection, but that he, Irving Binkin, was going to becomes the world’s foremost Lovecraft collector and that he and Mark Owings, Chalker’s partner at Mirage Press, were going to catalog the collection, which they did. The scholarship was undoubtedly Owings’ as Binkin was a great bookman but no bibliographer. According to you, the collection eventually got broken up and sold. But for a while he, Irving Binkin, was the world’s foremost Lovecraft collector, and he couldn’t have been prouder.

At that time we visited him, most of the books were still in boxes on another floor of the building, which was filled with bookshelves, cartons of books, and dozens of cats. In fact, the cats (he continually took in strays) caused the health department to close the store down on at least one occasion. Whenever the shelves in the store started to thin out, Binkin would dash upstairs and grab a fresh box at random, which is what the book scouts who haunted the store were waiting for. But the bulk of his sales were of inexpensive and undistinguished paperbacks and a casual visitor to the store would have been astonished to learn what lay upstairs.

So here is a third version of the story, straight from Binkin’s mouth, and who is to say which one is true. They’re all good stories. And one thing is constant: because of Irving Binkin, an important and unique collection was properly recorded for posterity.

Enid Schantz
Rue Morgue Press

Thank you for a truly fascinating account. Chalker was not above adding a bit of color to add verisimilitude to a bald and unconvincing narrative. I rather fancy that Binkin bent the truth a bit here and there himself. By all accounts he was quite a character.

The story about the dead man in the paper filled apartment is Chalker’s and may well be a bit of colorful drama. Worse, the article is my recollection of his telling of the story many years. A few years ago, perhaps a dozen, I met Chalker at an SF convention, and asked him about the story. He already was is failing health at that point and wasn’t interested in rehashing it.

Mark Owings was there and worked closely with Binkin so he is a good source for what happened. I shall send him a copy of your letter for comments. He wasn’t there when Binkin acquired the collection so he can’t verify that part. On the other he had dealt with Grill; he might know if Grill was married.

In any event Irving Binkin was a fabulous character, and the Grill-Binkin collection is a wonderful story.

From: Wendi Rinehart
Date: 21 August 2008
Subj: waiting…..waiting…..

Richard……..

I know you were blaming Microsoft for the delay with the latest editorial……. so what is the new excuse? You certainly have plenty to write about. I’m looking forward to the wit and sarcasm you seem never to run out of.

Perhaps you will understand why the title of the September editorial is “Not this August”.

In short, I’m skipping August and bringing out August/September as a double issue. I may cheat and bring it out a few days early. Some of the pages will say “last revised September 1, 2008”, but what the hey. After all, this is the site that brought you Calamity Jane Austin.

From: Peter Neilson
Date: 20 August 2008
Subj: resurrecting georgian preefrooding

In my note to you about Swedish Citizenship I used the word “Cleary” where I meant “Clearly.” Or did I? Perhaps I meant Cleary, who just might be some transplanted Irishman. And we all know the Scandihoovians did settle in Ireland. Or was I thinking of Tim Leary? “I can see Leary now, my brain is gone…”

I think what happened was that you meant “Clearly” but you wrote in a moment of abstracted consciousness, and inadvertently intercepted a cosmic resonance that should never have touched you. Fortunately for you (and the rest of the inhabitants of this planet) you clearly do not not know who or what Cleary is, or more precisely, will have been. All told, I think you are all right – you had the name and not the presence – so there shouldn’t be any further difficulty. I grant that it would be best if you spent the rest of your life curled up in a fetal ball, but I don’t think you need to take measures quite that desparate.

Remember there are things that man is not meant to know for more than a very short time.

Channelling HPL,
Richard Harter

From: Lar Kaufman
Date: 15 August 2008
Subj: Whatever

Dear Richard,

I somehow ended up on your webaite this evening, just doing some research after having gotten bored playing on Pokerstars… I think I was looking for information on the modulus of elasticity of baleen, in order to determine its practical utility as a construction material for crossbows to be used in the arctic environment…. I don’t think I actually discovered why google pointed me to one of your webpages, but I was delighted to find a number of well, if not parallel, at least loosely parallel (on average) aspects and shared interests, synchronicities and serandipities in the course of our disparate lives… And so I write…

We do seem to have a lot of those things in our disparate lives. I greatly appreciate hearing from you. It is always a pleasure to get correspondence from people who are sane, sensible, and interesting. Almost all of my correspondents are, of course, but there are exceptions. For example there is the chap who took exception to a joke page comparing Rush Limbaugh to Barney the Purple Dinosaur. See http://richardhartersworld.com/cri_c/letters/1999/let99jan.html#cline

There is no telling how you got to my site; there are a large number of pages that pop up on google. I opine it might have been a long review by James Asher of a book on the evolution of whales. One of my pages turns up as number four in a googol search on: baleen “modulus of elasticity”. Make of that what you will.

I haven’t actually implemented the language yet, although I have a framework for it and a lot of utilities. It’s a long term, on again, off again project. It gives me room to rework my thinking. I expect that in the near future I’m going to substantially rework the specification so as to simplify. As to what it is for, why

… if you are looking for programming of a new and different kind, and you would like a language that’s similarly designed, then I’m prepared …

with apologies to Tom Lehrer.

We invented our own when I was in college. Time is merciful; the details have faded from my memory. IIRC it was something like this: 13-16 pts and a 5 card D,H,S suit open the suit. If you have a long cheesey suit and something near an opening bid, open with a two bid. Otherwise open with 1C which was non-forcing. Something like that. We did well with it, mostly because we had guile and deception in our souls.

I like the match the pot provision; it sounds nicely bloody.

I wrote my first program for money in 1961; it’s been down hill ever since. I must have read some of your manuals; I hope you will forgive me for I really don’t recall their details. When I am next in the Boston area I will take you up on that offer.

I’m curious; what distinguishes said universal database from the various web compendia such as wikipedia. Is there a position paper on the web that I could look at?

You do understand that you are in the last generation to go out and independently establish themselves in the world. Lord knows what the next generation will do when they have grown children.

Thanks for writing; I will let you know when I am next back east.

From: Peter Neilson
Date: 15 August 2008
Subj: Jewish survival joke

When I read the joke, I thought it was mildly funny. I thought I got the point. Then I googled for the phrases. Let’s just say, there are different levels of being able to speak a language. Now I’m literally rolling on the floor laughing. (When I say “literally” I mean figuratively.)

Next year in North Dakota.

You inspired me to look it up. If I am not mistaken the first line is the children’s line in the Seder, “Why is this night different from every other night”, and the second is the response, “Every other night we eat bread, tonight we eat matza.”

I seem to recall that a Jewish chap of my acquaintance married his shiksa (gentile girlfriend) after some years of cohabitation. His friends found out where he was spending his honeymoon and sent him a telegram on the wedding night that read, “How is this night different from every other night”.

From: Keleish Blake
Date: 4 August 2008
Subj: I’ve visited your website http://www.bertc.com/recipes.htm

We’ve seen your website at http://www.bertc.com/recipes.htm and we love it!

We see that your traffic rank is 144157 and your link popularity is 261. Also, you have been online since 12/1/1999.

With that kind of traffic, we will pay you up to $4,800/month to advertise our links on your website.

Alas, that’s not my website.
Pity, I could use a few thousand a month of spare change.

From: Peter Price
Date: 10 August 2008
Subj: please do

your page http://richardhartersworld.com/cri_c/travel/italia.html

Will you ever finish
The Amalfi Coast

Positano

Arrivederci Italia.

Now that you’ve written and asked plaintively I will have to.

From: Peter Neilson
Date: 13 August 2008
Subj: Highmore in 2008

Mr. Harter!
I understand that you are to host a small sf convention; that indeed you perhaps are already doing same. My best wishes to all the attendees and to the Large Black Dog, who will probably get the best of everything, regardless, even from those like ARL who prefer cats.

PS: Polishing the convention facilities seems to have interfered with updating your website.

HarterCon is scheduled for the 15th and 16th of August. I dare say I will have to do two convention reports.

August is fated not to happen; that which should have been August is being moved to September. It is not just a matter of Convention facilities – my portable hard drive died an inglorious death, slain by Microsoft, or so I believe, and took much of the August issue with it. Not only that, part of my time was spent in stoop labor. I am not cut out to be a Mexican.

From: Economic Logician
Date: 30 July 2008
Subj: Your research on my blog

Hello,

I wrote today about your research. Thanks for your research!
—
Economic Logician
http://economiclogic.blogspot.com

You are welcome. Thank you for writing.

From: Chip Hitchcock
Date: 28 July 2008
Subj: July

“Said aunt discovered that if you only unlock one side and then crank vigorously that the window will break instead of opening. ”

Interesting — I shall have to not try that on those of our new windows that are d/r/i/v/e/n/ o/p/e/n/ /a/n/d/ /c/lo/s/e/d/ /o/p/e/r/a/t/e/d/ supplied with cranks. But it doesn’t surprise me. 35 years ago, in my first professional job, every laboratory in the building had been designed so that you could get directly outside if there were a fire between you and the hall door; each had an emergency exit consisting of the sort of framed w indow that would have been crank-operated if it hadn’t had to open quickly. (Instead it was secured by a simple latch.) The first time somebody actually tried to use one of these exits the window not only shattered but left jagged three-foot spears of glass in the frame. (Fortunately it was just a drill.) As I’m sure you’ve remarked, nothing is > made better now than it used to be. . . .

I’m sure that I have so remarked, but that means nothing. I try to repeat every bit of cheap wisdom at least once so as to cover all bases.

“just a drill” – one of the principles of design is (or ought to be) to design things so that they can be tested properly. Another is to actually test them.

Frightening, simply frightening. Then there are the things that they do to coffee….

We have become a nation of large people consuming large portions. I don’t mind the large drinks so much – one just has fewer drinks that last longer. Restaurants are another matter. They insist upon providing monstrously large portions. Sometimes I ask for a half size portion, telling the server I am happy to pay full price but I just don’t want that much food on my plate. This seems to upset them.

The portions thing is good for college students. I know a petite young lady who always o rders the largest entree when she is out to dinner. She nibbles on her entree and has the remainder boxed. I suspect she dines the rest of the week on the remains of those gargantuan piles of food.

Oh dear. I was thinking of “his daughter in-law elect” and somehow had her singing sisters, etc. Given time, I suppose I shall manage to put all of G and S into the Mikado. It will be ever so much more convenient that way.

I imagine the “gentlemen of Japan” were every much the gentleman as the “gentlemen of Britain.” I do wish you wouldn’t refer to school girls licking all-day suckers; after all, I do run a family oriented website. (A very dysfunctional family, but still…)

You and Peter shall have to settle the Sweden/Norwegian thing between you – I have entirely too many demands made upon my scholarship already. I do know that Sweden was real kick-ass during the latter years of the thirty years war. I once read a history of the thirty years war – it took me thirty years to finish it. I’m hoping to finish a history of the hundred years war….

… continued on next rock …

I had written:

The portions thing is good for college students. I know a petite young lady who always orders the largest entree when she is out to dinner. She nibbles on her entree and has the remainder boxed. I suspect she dines the rest of the week on the remains of those gargantuan piles of food.

Point well taken. There are no restaurants in Highmore that warrant boxing up the remains of the meal. Come to think on it, I’m not even sure there that there are snack vending machines here.