Remembrance of a Tough, Brilliant, But Challenging Person

I thought this was quite the remembrance in UChicago's alumni magazine. It's written by Jay Mulberry, AB 1963, and I hope he doesn't mind the re-posting. It's innocuously stuck in the back of the magazine along with all the other class updates. I can't find a copy to link-to online, so I'll post it here:

Mel Thurman came to Chicago in 1959 as a poor boy from St. Louis. Th excitement of learning from great teachers and late night conversations in Hitchcock Hall were a revelation to him, and he remained devoted to the University, it being, after his family, the greatest influence on his life. Mel was a brilliant student of anthropology and a protege of Lewis Binford, who arranged for him to do field study in Nubia and South Dakota while an undergraduate. He received his PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1973 with his dissertation, "The Delaware Indians, a Study in Ethnohistory." For the next 30 years Mel was known as one of the preeminent authorities on the early history of North American Indians.

Those who knew Mel well remember him as incredibly hard working. He mastered several different areas of anthropology and wrote two novels as well as a study of the cinematic work of Terrence Malick. At the end of his life, he was a recognized authority on both the French influence in colonial America and the place of prophetic religions in world history. No one who knew Mel doubted that his ideas were built on the detailed analysis of thousands of documents studied in hundreds of libraries throughout the country. But those who knew Mel also saw another side.

Mel had a seeming compulsion to destroy his professional relationships and thus his chances to attain eminence and position. Beginning with his career as an instructor at Princeton, he systematically offended and abused nearly every scholar in his field until he was forced to live outside academia and support himself as an independent scholar. Much worse, in 1995 his wife, Barbara, perished in an awful automobile crash. She had been both his love and his source of stability; her loss left him emotionally unmoored.

For the last decade, Mel lived in extreme poverty in Ste. Genevieve, MO, frequently ill and nearly deaf. But Mel always cared more about ideas than his physical circumstances, and he continued thinking, working, and writing until the end. In a decrepit car he traveled back and forth across the country, studying what remained to be studied and collecting books and articles that remained to be read. how he did this with resources that could hardly maintain a life is a mystery, but survival had always been one of his skills, and he had learned to live with poverty in boyhood. He was too unwell to give the paper on "Ethnohistoric Analysis of Photographs of Native Americans" that was scheduled for the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association in January.

Mel died in Tucson, AZ, on April 4, leaving behind his two beloved children, Tanya and John. Although he had alienated most of his professional peers over the years, they, along with the devoted friends who remain, recognize that in him they have known someone very special -- a American original.

Dark Souls

If one were to go back and play old NES games like Contra or Kid Icarus, I think the nostalgia would be overwhelmed at some point by the cruelty inherent in these older games. There's no saving. There's little room for mistakes. And if you fail over the course of many hours of play, you start over. Who has the time or patience to deal with that kind of thing today? Who would pay money to experience that again?

The makers of Dark Souls apparently thought somebody would. The game has no pause button. There's very little instruction or story. The game is cruel, and when you die, you lose all of your souls, the game's currency. When you go to checkpoints and heal, all of the enemies in the game respawn.

One might think Dark Souls is just a needless nostalgia play, but they only adopt old gaming rules when they support the game's goal: give the player constant stakes. Give them a strong incentive to take care. Make them fearful to fail and jubilant at success. They hit that mark perfectly. I'm no gaming expert (I died 30+ times in the first few hours of play and nearly gave up), and even I have found the game incredibly rewarding. Fromsoft basically made a deal with the player: deal with our hurdles, and we'll reward you with incredible rewards in detail, feel, loot, and fun.

This is an incredible bet for a gaming studio; I can think of no other recent game that attempts to make this deal with the player. But after two excellent games in this vein (Dark Souls' spiritual predecessor is a game called Demon Souls and is similar), I think we may see a resurgence of the high-stakes game. Jaded players need stakes, whether they realize it or not. Here's to more stress and more rewards in gaming's future.

Public Internet Fora

Cross-posting my G+ post here, as it was blog-length. The First Circuit decision I reference is covered here.


***

I'd like to see a law student comment comparing the recent decision linked to below to the arguments in defense of BART's cell shutdown. Clearly the 1st Circuit feels the 1st Amendment protects the ability of a person to film and post police activity via cell phone in a public square. The means of posting for any near-term journalistic purpose is an internet connection.

Some things for the student to consider: does it matter that a cell shutdown delays, but doesn't permanently enjoin, the communication of the speech? Must the government have a security concern, or can they stop immediate broadcasting arbitrarily?

I'll jumpstart the comment by providing some early thoughts. What comes to mind for me is the doctrine of a semi-public or private forum's transformation into a public forum based upon access. We tend to think of this caselaw as being about physical grounds - the military base, when opened for 1 day for a public parade, becomes a public forum and folks can bring anti-military posters on the grounds for that day only.

Similarly, when the BART folks decided to create cell service in BART stations, they unintentionally made such stations a "public internet forum," if not a public physical forum. This is why we shouldn't conflate BART's ability, for safety reasons, to control protests in BART stations, with their ability to control the non-physical public forum created by internet access.

I'd thus like to propose that BART may be able to make a valid constitutional argument that the physical forum of a BART station can be closed for security reasons if viable alternative physical fora for speech are available. But they cannot constitutionally invoke a security-based argument for closing a public internet forum except in the most extreme of circumstances (ex. specific knowledge of a cell phone bomb trigger in the area). Once the government decides to provide internet access and create a public internet forum, an individual should have the right to invoke a right like the one seen the case below (use a cell phone to record officers in public), and not have the means of speech dissemination inhibited by the government. Closing the internet public forum and delaying the speech dissemination is unconstitutional except in instances of immediate, specific, and deadly security concerns. Physical-space-based concerns, such as overcrowding, simply aren't valid for public internet fora.

Now I need a law student to make my normative argument about public internet fora into something grounded in some actual cases beyond the one below. :) If someone does it, I'll look forward to reading it!

By the way, I also recommend my former boss Nicole Wong's thoughts on this matter.

https://plus.google.com/115873428613023435238/posts/1dYGPQTTWRy

Google+ Invites

I'm posting a lot of nonsense there. If you'd like to join, but haven't received an invite, use this link and you'll get one.

Google+

The product I've been working on for half-past forever, Google+, is finally public. This product long caused me to state in vague terms what I did at Google. I'm very happy to no longer say "I still do Google Earth," or "I do ads stuff," when probed on my daily activities.

Check it out at plus.google.com. Sign-ups are opening from time to time, so keep plugging away if you're interested.

News Tip

So far as I can tell, there is only one good source for nightly news on TV: PBS Newshour. One hour of commercial-free coverage of the top 4 or 5 stories of the day, plus a special report on something. They preview all of this for you in the first 30 seconds, so if nothing strikes your fancy, you turn it off. Also, don't miss Shields & Brooks on Fridays. The best weekly conversation on politics on TV.

As Adam Carolla noted, all cable TV news options are horrors. They are not worth your time. All network TV news shows are lacking in depth (partially due to time constraints) and easily distracted by stupid political stunts. My wife and I were proud to say a few weeks ago that we had no idea who Casey Anthony was. Such is the power of watching PBS Newshour: you can stay blissfully ignorant of incredibly stupid things.

Now, I don't begrudge people watching other news sources. I do think it's a waste of your time, but I also waste my time on things (see: baseball). I just think we should all recognize what's actual informative news and what's just a diversion. I'd really prefer not to be an NPR/PBS San Franciscan who considers people who don't follow what I follow to be inferior. Note the use of the word "prefer"; it is very easy to be sucked into the SF superiority vortex. Patting oneself on the back is a more popular physical activity than yoga here. Thankfully my abundant self-awareness keeps me from such self-congrat . . . shit.

8 Blog Facts, Courtesy of Google Analytics

1. Twice as many visitors use Chrome to visit this blog than any other browser.

2. People spend about 90 seconds on the site.

3. Android and iPad are tied for the most popular mobile means of visiting the site.

4. 80% of visitors use Windows.

5. There are a decent number of French, Russian, and Spanish language visitors.

6. Traffic comes almost equally from my ad and organic search traffic. Clearly the ad is useful!

7. Besides "that's news to me," "bankruptcy" and "google lawyer" are popular search terms that lead one here.

8. That being said, sometimes weirder stuff leads to traffic. Like "91 toyota pickup 38s behemoth" and "any narrative skit for a poor wretched man with biblical lessons to draw as a lost son who finally comes home".

Fun!

Going to Vegas Tomorrow

A colleague asked today about appropriate Vegas attire for a club. Goodness knows I'm no expert, but the funny thing about Vegas clubs is that shoes are key. They won't let you in with tennis shoes, even nice black ones. Gotta be leather, gotta be fairly nice. You can go jeans, you can go no jacket at most places if you have a collared shirt. But if the shoes could be used to hit a forehand winner, you have no shot of getting in short of paying-off the bouncer.

I know this rule well, as I brought the jacket/Adidas combo 7 years ago to LAX at Luxor. I was on the list for a birthday party that rented out a good part of the club. It didn't matter. Note that I was, and probably still am, too cheap to buy shoes on-the-spot to resolve the situation. I went back to my friend's house.

I half-expect that someday even a jacket and good shoes won't be enough. Some bouncer will tell I don't value the club experience and don't have the face of a clubber (is that what they call them?). "You look ok, but I can tell this is not for you." And homeward I will head.

Back in San Francisco

It's been a long time since I spent a Monday - Friday in San Francisco. Observations about Brazil and Hawaii:

Brazil - casual, cheap drinking and good conversation every evening seemed like the local routine. Very fun, relaxed place. Absolutely no one outside of my office spoke English. At all. Including at a very popular museum. They had to find a fellow visitor to translate the tour for me. I got a one week membership at a local gym via gestures and semaphore.

Kauai - undeveloped. The north is stunning, like everyone says. All goods are ridiculously expensive, even for San Franciscans. Lots of fun stuff to do - we hiked, surfed, snorkeled, golfed (both mini and full), and ate. Surprising number of good places to eat. The little town of Hanalei is particularly stuffed full of good casual or sit down food options.

Despite all that fun, happy to be back.

Woefully Unprepared

You know you've been travelling a bit too much when you realize the night before a flight to Brazil that you have no place to stay. I kinda let that item slip past me. Thankfully, a Brazilian contact came to the rescue.

I also didn't feel like packing last night, so now I'm packing a few hours before my flight leaves. I also haven't planned a single non-work activity. I don't even really know what the city I'm going to looks like. I think all of my Brazilian energy went into getting the visa. Now I'm tapped out and just hoping to show up on time.

This is how your turn a work trip into an adventure.

Obvious Sentiment of the Day

Florida is very tropical. Quite different from California in this respect. California is palm trees, desert, and rattle snakes. Florida is palm trees, marshes, and alligators.

How are they similar, besides palm trees? A big one: Orlando and Orange County should declare themselves separated at birth. Two warm, Republican places in which countless acres of orange groves were sacrificed for 1. theme parks and 2. planned communities.

Miami Beach is pretty great - it's a grittier but prettier Santa Monica.

I don't know what Tampa is, but I enjoyed a Rays game. Gave me Kingdome flashbacks, though Tropicana Field is a far better, more intimate dome. Probably about as good as dome/AstroTurf baseball can get. Not competitive with any of the new parks but not a terrible experience either. I saw the construction in Miami of the Marlins' new joint. Tampa folks must be jealous.

Going to Florida Next Week

Trying to determine what is better about Florida than California. There's gotta be stuff, but I haven't come up with anything yet. Not weather, not universities, not food, not beer, not wine, not sports teams. That's most of what I care about in this world. I suppose it's competitive in lunacy and intrigue. After all, the game is Germany or Florida?, not Germany or California?. I'll look out for that.

One fun thing

One fun thing about (barely!) bringing this blog back to life is looking at site traffic. I get a little stipend from work, so I run ads too. Fascinating that the ads on search actually kinda work. Six people clicked already!

I've also learned that a majority of you use IE. Go Chrome. It's better.*

* I refuse to annotate this endorsement despite the FTC guidelines' mandate to contextualize blogger testimonials. Enjoy your unconstitutional guidelines while you can, FTC. Boo.

Just like that

We have a new domain: thatisnewstome.com. Very easy to buy a custom domain, it turns out.

Read a Real Blog

By the way, check out a real blog, The Red Humor. It's beautifully written by a friend of mine. I expect a book deal shortly.

Back From the Dead! (kinda)

I see Tom has long given up on blogging here, and I don't blame him. I haven't been active here in 7 years. But I thought I'd at least repost some items I do share via Twitter and Reader, with the occasional real blog post thrown in. I'd also like to use this page to test some of our ads and analytics products from a user perspective.

Site News

For various reasons, I've opted to delete virtually all of the posts I've made to this blog. I'm currently doing much more focused blogging on another site, and don't anticipate going back to blogging on current events, political stuff, law (outside of strictly professional posts), or general blogging. I did, before deleting my contributions, save copies of them, so hit me up on the blog email address if you want a copy of anything.

Hmphf

I don't know why I still have this. I'm not updating it, but worse, I'm bookmarking lots of stuff with the vague and sure to be unfulfilled intention of posting it here. Time to stop that.

Best Books

I've recorded every book I've read* since December 2003. I used to do book reviews on here regularly, but have since stopped that for one reason or another. Still, I feel like I should tell you, my mythical reader, what's worth reading. So, by year, here are the books I've read that have been good. Note here the definition of "good" is "books you should consider reading even if you normally don't read books like that."

2004
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
Beyond Fear by Bruce Schneier

2005
An Empire of Wealth by John Steele Gordon (Americans only)
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
Hyperion by Dan Simmons

2006
America's Game by Michael MacCambridge (Americans only)
The Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The American Revolution: A History by Gordon Wood
Dune by Frank Herbert

2007
The Price of Admission by Daniel Golden
Americanism by David Gelernter

2008
1491 by Charles Mann
The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (I violated my "don't read a series until it's done" rule for this book, and I don't hugely regret it)

These are far from the only books I read those years, but they're the only ones I can say really are good.

Holy Day of Obligation Preview

NOTE: GUESSES ONLY. NO SPOILERS. I WOULD NOT DO THAT TO YOU.

I've been far more absent from TNTM than I've planned lately, but wanted to get this up tonight.

And Harry remembered his first nightmarish trip into the forest, the first time he had ever encountered the thing that was Voldemort, and how he had faced him, and how he and Dumbledore had discussed fighting a losing battle not long thereafter. It was important, Dumbledore said, to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated. . . .

And Harry saw very clearly as he sat there under the hot sun how people who cared about him had stood in front of him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and finally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him; but now that was over. He could not let anybody else stand [for him ...] There was no waking from his nightmare, no comforting whisper in the dark that he was safe really, that it was all in his imagination; the last and greatest of his protectors had died[.]

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, p.644-45 (US hardback first printing). Slightly over two years ago, I read those words, and something quite specific came to mind. I posted about it then, without explicitly making the connection clear, lest it be considered spoiler-ish. Now, on the eve of Deathly Hallows, I feel no such compunction.

What would you do / if you were asked to give up your dreams for freedom?
What would you do / if asked to make the ultimate sacrifice?
Would you think about all them people / who gave up everything they had?
Would you think about all them war vets / and would you start to feel bad?
Freedom isn't free / it costs folks like you and me
And if you don't all chip in / we'll never pay that bill
[...]
'Cause the only reason you're here / is 'cause folks died for you in the past
So maybe now it's your turn / to die kicking some ass

PREDICTIONS:
R.A.B. is Regulus Alphard Black.

The remaining Horcruxes are (1) Voldemort's remaining soul, (2) the locket, (3) the cup, (4) Nagini, and (5) the Marauder's Map.

We will return to the Room of Requirement. Snape's old Potions book is in there. So is a Horcrux, likely the brain of the Marauder's Map, which has some connection to Rowena Ravenclaw.

Voldemort will die.

Harry will "go on to the next great adventure" (i.e., die).

Snape will betray Harry to Voldemort, and Voldemort to Harry. While I'd like to see Harry kill him, Voldemort will.

Arthur Weasley will become Minister of Magic, though possibly not until the epilogue/last chapter.

Which is a good thing, because Mrs. Weasley will die. So will at least 2 Weasley children.

If Harry dies, Ron and Hermione will live. If I'm wrong and Harry lives, either Ron or Hermione will die.

Madam Sprout will die, likely in a battle at Hogwarts. This way Neville can be Herbology professor.

Peter Pettigrew will fail to deliver up Harry to Voldemort, and will die for it.

The Hepzibah Smith who owned the cup and the locket will prove to be kin to Zacharias Smith and his haughty father mentioned in HBP.

Really out on a limb: Regulus Black is still alive, and was the huge blond death eater who kept missing all the non-death eaters with jinxes in the battle at the end of HBP.

Aberforth Dumbledore is the bartender at the Hog's Head. Aside from JKR's wink and a nudge w/r/t RAB = Regulus Black in the LeakyMug interview when HBP came out, this is the common projection in which I place the most faith.

I think John Granger is probably right when he posted that Hagrid was the one character JKR planned to kill, then decided to save.

See also here for some of my predictions (name "tojgow"). I particularly stand by Malfoy gets to live because he's an idiot.

Ollivander will show up. The theory that he's been helping house elves get wands, and we'll see the house elves of Hogwarts defend the school is an interesting one, but not one I personally subscribe to.

Harry is NOT the Heir of Gryffindor. I can't remember if JKR has officially debunked this or not, but it certainly doesn't seem as popular as it did a few years ago.

Something will happen w/r/t the Dursleys, but I haven't figured out what exactly, nor do I know what Dudley is most scared of.

In all probability, I have overestimated the number of people to die.

Finally, a sure bet: after only sleeping from about 2:15 to 6:35 last night, I will be very tired when I finally go to bed tonight after finishing the book. I will likely write up spoilerrific material, but WILL NOT post them on here. I'll grab some webspace elsewhere, put them up there, and post a link here.