Random Thinking

It was exactly 80 years ago today that Judge Joseph Crater was last seen walking down W. 45th Street in NYC at around 9 PM and was never seen again. His disappearance earned him the title of “The Missingest Man in New York”.

Judge Crater had been away in Maine with his wife when he took a phone call and told his wife that he had to return to NY “to straighten those fellows out”. For the next several days he went back and forth between NYC and Maine while also spending some time with his mistress in Atlantic City. On the day he disappeared he cashed two checks totaling more than $5,000 (almost $70,000 today) and apparently emptied his safe deposit box (it was found empty after he vanished). That night he had dinner with his lawyer and mistress who described him as being in a good mood. At about 9 PM, the three stepped outside the restaurant and the Judge walked down the street while his friends stepped into a cab. The Judge was never seen again.

His wife started calling her friends on August 10th but no one was alarmed until the 25th when he was supposed to sit for the opening of courts. Even then, no report was made to the police until September 3rd, almost a month after his disappearance. The Judge quickly became front page news across the country. A massive national investigation found nothing but died quickly when it was found that so much money was missing with the judge and that the judge’s mistress, Sally Lou Ritz, disappeared within a month of the judge. The investigators assumed that the judge had taken the money and run off to avoid charges of corruption. Although Judge Crater was suspected of judicial corruption (NYC government was particularly corrupt during the depression) no evidence was ever produced to show that he was actually corrupt.

Judge Crater was declared dead in 1939 and his missing persons file was officially closed in 1979. In 2005, Stella Ferrucci-Good left notes that were found after her death claiming her husband, a NYC police officer, killed Judge Crater and buried him under the boardwalk in Coney Island. However no remains were ever found there.

For years after his disappearance, “to pull a Crater” meant to disappear and comedians routinely used the joke, “Judge Crater call your office.” Eighty years after his disappearance, whether he was murdered (and is perhaps buried with Jimmy Hoffa) or ran off to Mexico with his mistress, it is no doubt safe to say that Judge Crater is no longer with us.

Here is this week’s song. Note that the lyrics are explicit.

Eminem (real name Marshall Bruce Mathers III) is considered the greatest rapper of all time and according to Rolling Stone magazine one of the 100 Greatest Artists of All-Time. According to Billboard, he has sold over 80 million albums and two of his albums are in the top five albums of the 2000′s. He has had nine number one albums and thirteen number one singles. His music has won eleven Grammy awards and one Oscar.

Eminem was raised by his mother in poverty. His father had abandoned the family when he was two years old. Eminem started rapping when he was 14 years old under the name of M&M. He repeated the ninth grade twice of truancy and dropped out of high school when he was 17. Musically, everything came together in 1999 with the release of the album The Slim Shady LP which sold over 250,000 copies its first week out and went to become 4X platinum. But it was his second album, The Marshall Mathers LP, which broke every record selling almost 2 million copies its first week out becoming the fastest selling hip-hop album and the fastest-selling solo album in US history. Eminem has had problems with alcohol, prescription drugs, and the law although he claims that since 2005 he has sobered up. In addition to a daughter with his former wife Kimberly Scott he also adopted the two daughters of Kimberly Scott’s sister and is the legal guardian of his half-brother.

The song Stan is about an obsessed fan of Slim Shady (Eminem’s alter ego in his music). The first three verses of the song is Stan reading the letters he has written to Slim each becoming more obsessed and more angry as he waits from Slim to respond. The third verse is Stan creating a cassette as he drives his car off a bridge with his girlfriend locked in the trunk of his car. The final verse of the song is Slim writing a letter to Stan not realizing that Stan killed himself until the end. The chorus of the song is taken from the song Thank You by Dido, a British musician. When Stan came out, Thank You immediately jumped up the Billboard chart reaching number three in the US becoming Dido’s first US hit and pushing her album sales to over 21 million worldwide.

Note that the language in the song is explicit.

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Beth is a student in the Baccalaureate Honors Program at her university. Students in the program get the opportunity to meet an author at an informal dinner and discuss their book with them. She was recently sent the book The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. Beth is reading another book at the moment so I grabbed Mr Pollan’s book and started reading it.

Mr. Pollan’s book is about how plant’s have evolved to satisfy our needs and how by doing that we have satisfied their needs. He starts with the apple tree and soon starts discussing John Chapman, a gentleman that most of us know better as Johnny Appleseed. Johnny was a bit of a nut. For example, he once threw away his shoe to punish his foot for stepping on a worm. But Johnny was much more than just a nut. Johnny used to go to the cider mills in Western Pennsylvania and get the seeds from the part of the apple that was being thrown away. Apple seeds have a little bit of cyanide in them which makes them very bitter so cider mills are careful about always throwing them away. Johnny would then take these seeds to where no one lived but where he thought people would soon be moving. He would plant his seeds and grow apple trees. Five years later when people moved into the area (Johnny was very good at guessing which areas would become popular) he would sell his trees. The law at the time required that anyone claiming land had to grow fifty apple trees to show that they were serious about living on the land. Johnny did so well with his apple tree business that he died a very wealthy man.

But here’s the part that Disney never mentions. Apple trees grown from seeds produce very sour fruit that is almost always inedible. Henry David Thoreau wrote, “[the apples] were sour enough to set a squirrel’s teeth on edge and make a jay scream.” The apples that we get in the store are always grown by grafting. So if Johnny’s apples were inedible what did people do with them? They made them into hard cider. Yep, as Mr. Pollan writes, “Johnny Appleseed was bringing the gift of alcohol to the frontier.” And that is the real story of Johnny Appleseed.

So the other night Beth is out with her friends, Michel and Mikey are asleep, and I’m downstairs sitting at the computer. I hear a knock at the door. It must be Beth, I think. Did I leave the hook on the door? So I open the door and there is a police officer standing on the stoop! So I immediately have a heart attack because it must be something awful has happened to Beth. The officer quickly assures me that nothing is wrong and I struggle to get my heart back to a a normal beat.

He asks me if Beth is parked over on a particular street. “Yes,” I answer, “she is over at a friend’s house.” He tells me that the lights were left on and he knocked on the door of the house where the car is parked but nobody answered. So he looked up the address where the car is registered and noticed that a new driver, Beth, was also registered at the house. His first thought was that it must be Beth driving and she forgot to turn the lights off and he didn’t want her to come out to a dead battery. He has daughters of his own and he would hate for that to happen to them. “Could you get her on her cell phone and ask her to run out and turn out the lights?” “Thank you, officer. That was incredibly nice of you.” So I got Beth on the phone and she ran out and turned out the lights.

I didn’t get the officer’s name because I was still in a bit of shock from seeing a police officer on my stoop so let me use this opportunity to thank him and to thank all police officers who are always getting a bad name because of the very few who are bad. That was extremely nice of you.

XKCD doesn’t usually run comics quite like this:

The alternate text for those who missed it: “Mr. Rogers projected an air of genuine, unwavering, almost saintly pure-hearted decency. But when you look deeper, at the person behind the image … that’s exactly what you find there, too. He’s exactly what he appears to be.”

This is from Wikipedia’s article on Fred Rogers:

During the 1997 Daytime Emmys, the Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Rogers. The following is an excerpt from Esquire Magazine’s coverage of the gala, written by Tom Junod:

Mister Rogers went onstage to accept the award — and there, in front of all the soap opera stars and talk show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, “All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are. Ten seconds of silence.”

And then he lifted his wrist, looked at the audience, looked at his watch, and said, ‘I’ll watch the time.” There was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn’t kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch, but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked. And so they did. One second, two seconds, seven seconds — and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier. And Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said softly “May God be with you,” to all his vanquished children.

Qadoshyah, one of the members of the downsyn.com forum, passed this along from an article she had read. This is from Dave Hingsburger’s blog.

We’d just sat down for lunch when we both heard that pronunciation of the word, ‘Mother’ that communicates so much. ‘Muhhhhh-therrrrrr’. I glanced up and saw a frustrated and harried woman, carrying packages from the Bay and her son, a young man with Down Syndrome who was in his pre-teens.

Of course, I listened.

(Realize that I would have listened irregardless of the boy’s Down Syndrome. I would have listened if it was a couple having a spat, if it was a businessman mumbling to himself, if it was someone having an animated conversation on a cell phone. That’s what I do.)

So, aside, aside, I listened.

It seems that the mother wanted to go with him to get his food and then have him go with her to get her food, then they would eat together. Son, thought this was silly. Why doesn’t she get hers, he get his, then they meet for lunch. She did an admirable job of keeping herself calm. I did an admirable job of just listening, not judging. Who knew what kind of experiences she’d had that led to this arrangement? They had been standing arguing and just before she moved again towards the court he said something that had a profound impact on me as a listener and she as a mother.

‘Trouble is you think I have Down Syndrome all the time and I don’t,’ he said with real frustration.

She stopped again, ‘What?’

‘I only have Down Syndrome sometimes, when I’m learning something new or if the words are real hard. I don’t have Down Syndrome the rest of the time when I’m doing what I know how to do.’

‘And you don’t have Down Syndrome now?’ she asked.

‘No, I know how to get my lunch, I buy my lunch at school all the time. I don’t have someone with me all the time you know.’ he was frustrated, he didn’t even realize he’d said something of real importance, to me and to his mother.

‘So,’ she continued looking at him hard, ‘you don’t feel like you have Down Syndrome all the time.’

‘No, most times I don’t even think about it,’ he said.

She said, her tiredness seemed to be gone, ‘Go ahead, we’ll find a table after we’ve got our food.’

They disappeared from view.

Joe and I looked at each other. I said to him, ‘That kid should teach classes to parents of kids with Down Syndrome.’

On our way home, chatting about just stuff, I realized that at that moment I didn’t feel disabled, it wasn’t part of my consciousness. I knew that everyone saw me in my wheelchair but what they saw, what they thought, didn’t impact what I felt. I’m only disabled sometimes, when things are out of my reach, when aisles are too narrow, when a curb blocks my way. The rest of the time I’m just – me.

Here is this week’s song. This is one of those groups that are exceptionally good but never achieved commercial success.

The Waterboys is described as a Celtic folk music and rock and roll band from Great Britain The group was formed by Mike Scott in 1983. Scott has been the only permanent member of the group which has had 50 members during its life. Among the members of the group from its first years other than Scott were Steve Wickham (fiddle), Anthony Thistlethwaite (saxophone), Kevin Wilkinson (drums), Roddy Lorimer (horns), and Karl Wallinger (keyboards). The songs of The Waterboys often contain literary references and are frequently concerned with spirituality. Scott has described the music as “a metaphor for seeing God’s signature in the world.” The group has received much praise from critics but has never received the commercial success that some of its members have had independently. The group broke up in 1993 when Scott took on a solo career but they reformed in 1999 although the only members from the original years still in the group are Scott and Wickham.

The style of group’s music has gone through several changes during their long life with the first three albums being dubbed as “The Big Music” based on the title of a single from their second album. Their music from the second half of the 1980′s tended to have more of a folk sound. Their current sound is back to their rock and roll roots. The third album, This Is The Sea, has been the group’s most successful. It peaked at 37 in the UK charts but Scott refused to lip synch which prevented the group from getting exposure on rock shows such as Top of the Pops. The single Whole of the Moon from that album has been their most popular song on the UK charts although it did not chart in the US. The group has had four other singles reach the Top 20 in the US.

Whole of the Moon
I pictured a rainbow
You held it in your hand
I had flashes
You saw the plan
I wandered out in the world for years
While you just stayed in your room
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon

You were there in the turnstiles
With the wind at your heels
You stretched for the stars
And you know how it feels
To reach too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon

I was grounded
While you filled the skies
I was dumbfounded by truth
You cut through lies
I saw the rain dirty valley
You saw “Brigadoon”
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon

I spoke about wings
You just flew
I wondered, I guessed and I tried
You just knew
I sighed
And you swooned
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon
The whole of the moon

The torch in your pocket
And the wind on your heels
You climbed on a ladder
And you know how it feels
To get too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon

Popcorn and cannonballs
All the season’s fears
Trumpets, towers, and tenements
Wide oceans full of tears
Flags, rags, ferryboats
Senators and scars
Every precious dream and vision
Underneath the stars
Yes, you climbed on a ladder
With the wind in your sails
You came like a comet
Blazing your trail
Too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon

The Thirty Years War
by Peter H. Wilson

There are a few problems with this book but the main one is that it is simply too long. 800 pages on the Thirty Years War is just too much unless you have an extreme interest in the topic. I was interested in learning about the war because it is one of those topics that are skimmed over in European history classes and there really isn’t that much out there to read. Plus the start of the book makes it seem like it will be fun reading as he discusses how the war was started because of some Bohemian Protestants tossing the Emperor’s representatives out a window. But the book quickly drags with incredible unnecessary detail that for most people will be out of their head three pages later anyway. Yes, I did learn a lot about the war but with so much detail I didn’t enjoy learning it and a lot of what the book covered I have no memory of whatsoever.

Let’s compare this book to Desmond Seward’s book on the Hundred Years War. Seward covers his topic in sufficient detail in only 300 pages. That book moves quickly and is fun and interesting. But it takes Wilson eight chapters (almost 250 pages) to even get to the beginning of the Thirty Years War. And Wilson throws so many people and places at us without enough maps or family trees that trying to remember who’s who and where’s where makes the book even more frustrating. We get emperors, kings, dukes, princes, knights, bishops, generals, electors from German states, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Italy, Holland with cities, towns, provinces, principalities, protectorates and trying to keep track of who is in charge of what place and where that place is in relation to the next place is impossible or at least it was for me. The book has only two maps other than battle maps. One is a map of central Europe that lacks sufficient detail and the other is a map of Switzerland(!) that is mostly useless. The battle maps themselves look like something Wilson might have drawn on the back of a cocktail napkin. This is the 21st century so getting a clear and detailed map should not be a great difficulty. Try to imagine someone writing a book on World War II without including several maps showing the pitch and flow of the war across Europe during the 6 years of fighting. And as far as pictures go, the pictures on Wikipedia’s article on the war are better than anything you will find in this book.

But the main problem is that the book is way too long because Wilson feels a need to tell us everything about the war (and the 50 or so years before the war started) that his research dug up. Plus Wilson is a lousy writer. If Wilson had limited himself to even 500 pages and aimed his book at a reader other than the historian in the next office this book could have been worth reading. It’s too bad that Wilson didn’t use his first chapter as a model for writing the book.

I found this on snopes. Kulula Airlines is a low-cost airline from South Africa. Apparently they have a sense of humor about themselves and like to decorate their planes in a way that puts a smile on their customers’ faces. Here are some pictures of one of their most recently purchased Boeing 737-800s.

And here is one of their other planes that I also thought was funny.

Here is a link to more pictures.

Here is this week’s song (a few days’ late so it’s actually last week’s song) off my iPod. Beth loves this song and thinks highly of the Pumpkins and Billy Corgan.

The Smashing Pumpkins is an alternative rock band from Chicago, Illinois. The group was formed by Billy Corgan (vocals, guitar) and James Iha (guitar, backing vocals) in 1988. The members of the band during their biggest years in the 1990′s were, in addition to Corgan and Iha, D’arcy Wretzky (bass guitar, backing vocals) and Jimmy Chamberlin (drums, percussion). Chamberlin was kicked out of the group in 1996 when he and touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin overdosed on heroin in a hotel room in New York City. Melvoin died and Chamberlin was arrested for drug possession. The group remained a trio for the rest of the 90′s. Today Corgan is the only original member of the group.

The group had their biggest success with the albums they released during the 1990′s, each of them going at least platinum. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, a double album released in 1995, was the group’s most successful album going 9X platinum in the USA and featuring five singles reaching the top 10 on Billboard’s alternative music list. The album was noted for the Pumpkins heavy use of guitar overdubs which is considered their singular style. “Tonight, Tonight” was the fourth single from the album and besides being a commercial success was critically acclaimed. The video for the song was also critically acclaimed and won several awards. The video was inspired by Georges Méliès’s 1902 silent film “A Trip to the Moon” and was filmed in the style of a turn-of-the-century movie using theater style backdrops and primitive special effects.

Tonight, Tonight
Time is never time at all
You can never ever leave
Without leaving a piece of youth
And our lives are forever changed
We will never be the same
The more you change the less you feel

Believe, believe in me, believe
That life can change, that you’re not stuck in vain
We’re not the same, we’re different tonight
Tonight, so bright
Tonight

And you know you’re never sure
But you’re sure you could be right
If you held yourself up to the light
And the embers never fade in your city by the lake
The place where you were born

Believe, believe in me, believe
In the resolute urgency of now
And if you believe there’s not a chance tonight
Tonight, so bright
Tonight

We’ll crucify the insincere tonight
We’ll make things right, we’ll feel it all tonight
We’ll find a way to offer up the night tonight
The indescribable moments of your life tonight
The impossible is possible tonight
Believe in me as I believe in you, tonight

The video for Tonight, Tonight