6 Die From Brain-Eating Amoeba in Lakes
PHOENIX (AP) - It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die. Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.
Schools blamed as education at home shows dramatic increase
Independent - London,England,UK
Chris Meldrum, head teacher of the City of Preston School in Lancashire told Channel 4 News this week that he believed home schooling had been encouraged in ...
House to House by David Bellavia and John Bruning (Hardcover - Sep 4, 2007
David Bellavia talks to Lyse Doucet on The Interview
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| "People need to know about what's happening over there." |
For US Staff Sergeant David Bellavia the battle for Fallujah in Iraq in November of 2004 was his generation's biggest battle, their Normandy. And he met the challenge head on -- he was nominated for the US military's highest award for his actions in Fallujah where he entered a house alone and killed six insurgents in hand-to-hand combat.
He left the army within a year to return to his wife and young son.
But he is still torn about his experiences and feels a duty to explain what combat is, in all its gore and brutality.
This is his tale.
addenda
Notes for Binding Time: Memoirs of a Programming Man
White Stones
NOTE 1
I quit IBM three times, but to the best of my knowledge they tried to fire me only once. The incident occurred in either 1967 or 68 -- I think 1967, but I did not learn the full (or somewhat full) story until 1974.
In the second half of 1967 I was managing a small programming ad tech group at IBM's Research Triangle Park R&D lab -- i.e., I was semi-retired. One day my boss, Jim Frame, asked me if I would like to be IBM's standards rep. to a CODASYL sub-group working on data communications (I forget the CODASYL name of the group).
The group had only recently been formed, and IBM was initially represented by a full time standards guy (reporting to Jack Palmer, one of the IBM history authors, who at that time was IBM's corporate director of standards and an old acquaintance of mine). The standards guy had decided that he was not qualified to handle the assignment.
Always keen for new experiences, I said "sure". So the following Sunday I was on a plane to Pittsburgh to attend a three day meeting beginning the next day. I was given no instructions/briefings/advice. I was just told to meet up with the IBM standards guy who would introduce me to the group as his replacement.
I checked in to my hotel fairly late on a rainy Sunday evening and bought a Sunday Pittsburgh paper with which to read myself to sleep. One item that I noticed in the paper was that the Monday evening late show on one of the local TV stations was to be "On the Beach" in which I had a speaking part as one of the sub crew ("Aye, aye, sir." "Depth 45 feet, sir." "Controls all rigged for surfacing, sir." -- and similar -- it is still not clear to me why I was not nominated for an award of some kind).
The next morning I met up with the IBM standards guy (whom I knew slightly) and we had breakfast. Again, I received no instructions, etc. We went to the meeting together, and I was introduced as his replacement.
There were about 10-12 people at the meeting, none of whom I knew, but most knew each other. As usual, the meeting went very slowly in the morning, but at lunch things livened up a tad. In the afternoon, things picked up, and I began to get involved in the technical discussion. Without really intending to do so, I soon became the discussion leader as I knew a lot more about the subject than anyone there.
And so the long afternoon wore on. Toward the end of the day, carried away by the exuberance of my own verbosity, I told everyone that I was going to be on TV that evening (beginning at 11:00 PM) and invited everyone up to my hotel room to watch (fortunately, I had a big room). All agreed with alacrity.
[It should be noted that the IBM standards rep. never said a word to me or to anyone else as nearly as I could tell the whole day.]
After dinner, I notified the hotel that there was going to be a party in my room that evening and that I wanted two cases of beer on ice. They produced a big galvanized washtub (even in those days almost an antique) filled with ice and beer.
Everybody showed, including the IBM standards rep. and it was a very satisfactory evening.
The next two days were relatively uneventful, and I flew home Wednesday evening.
Thursday and Friday were uneventful, as were Saturday and Sunday.
On Monday toward mid-morning, I began to notice a lot of pedestrian traffic going by my cubicle (I worked in an out-of-the-way corner of the lab) along with some pointing and whispering. Finally, one of the guys who worked in my department brought me a copy of the new "Computer World" -- the major story on the front page was about a nameless IBM ("IBM's lead communications programmer from Chapel Hill, North Carolina") movie star who had been delegated to take over the CODASYL data communications standards activity.
I never heard another word from anybody in IBM about any of this until 1974.
In June 1970 I was promoted to Senior Programmer (and in October 1970 found out that I was the RTP Programming Center Acting Director when I came to work one Monday morning and saw the notice on the bulletin board). In February 1972 my job code was changed to Senior Engineer and I was assigned to the IBM Data Communications Center in Zurich, where I reported to WTC headquarters but was paid by the Research Division. (I worked there for six years and finally became acting director (always a bridesmaid, never a bride) of the center -- I was once asked how I liked my job there -- I responded, "I have what amounts to an unlimited travel budget and an unlimited entertainment budget -- what's not to like.")
In 1974 I was reporting to George Lissandrello. One day he came to me and said that he was giving a paper at a UNESCO conference on data communications in Florence the following week but would be unable to attend -- could I give the paper for him. Still avid for new experiences, I said "sure". He then added that he had not written the paper -- nor outlined it -- nor chosen a title -- nor chosen a topic. I began to feel that I had been had.
Anyway, with the assistance of two of the guys who worked for me (one a U.K. guy, the other a German guy), I put together a pretty good paper in three days and showed up at the conference glowing with confidence. (Almost all of the 500 or so people attending the conference were third worlders in three piece suits, 20 pound shoes, and limos.)
The conference was really bad -- I doubt that there were 20 guys there who either cared or understood what I said (one of the guys was pretty sharp, Doug Carriger -- I ended up hiring him).
Later in the year (1974) I was in the U.S. on a business trip and was wandering down one of the aisles in the 704 Building in Poughkeepsie and happened to bump into (literally) Jack Palmer. We exchanged a few words, and he asked me what I was doing these days. I replied that I was working at the DCC and had recently given a paper at this UNESCO conference in Florence. He looked genuinely shocked and said "They let you go to conferences?"
And then I learned the whole (?) story for the first time. That he had been in deep shit as a result of the "Computer World" story, that a taskforce had been put together to decide what to do about it all (fire him, fire me, hire hit men to get "Computer World"), and that the denouement had been a decision not to fire anyone, to request a letter of apology from CODASYL (the meeting was supposed to be in camera and the letter was forthcoming), and to put a note in my personnel jacket that I was never again to be sent to a meeting outside of IBM.
He said that the IBMer who replaced me (and the temporary standards guy) had a terrible time -- everyone pretended not to believe his assertion that he had never been in the movies, on the stage, or similar.
Notes for Binding Time: Memoirs of a Programming Man
NOTE 2.
These are brief stories of some white stones strung on my lifeline. Naturally, they are interspersed with black stones, but I only count the black ones during periods of insufficient soul light.
Early 1971 (while I was acting director of the Research Triangle Park Programming Center). I was acting director of the center in both name and fact for about four months, in fact only for several additional months.
Anyway, my primary job during those months was to ship TCAM (described by Ted Climis, sometime IBM Director of Programming, as "the biggest disaster in the history of IBM programming" -- which, as we all know, was going some). As part of doing this, I one more time (and for the last time to date) worked 90-100 hours weeks -- and every Friday at 4:00 PM I went to John Fairclough's (died about 15 years ago as Sir John) office (a U.K. engineer at Hursley who at one time worked with Maurice Wilkes, was responsible for making microprogramming a fundamental part of S/360, and who at that time was the Laboratory Director for RTP having replaced Jack Kuehler) to give him a report on progress (this went on for about four months and has a very funny sequel which I may relate later).
After we finally got TCAM out of Beta Test (over 3,000 APARs) we took out two first level managers, one second level manager, and one third level manager -- this was action at the RTP level. At the division level, an audit was put in place to find out what went wrong (there were only two people on the audit, both from corporate and well known in the history of programming, Irv Ziller and Harlan Herrick). They came to RTP and put together a report without talking to me, but they felt they had to review it with me prior to taking it to division and then to corporate.
They did present it to me -- basically it said that the TCAM design was sound, that it had been seriously bungled in development, but that it appeared sound when shipped. A final item was appended: TCAM was the most technically advanced system program developed by IBM to that time but the cost per instruction was well under the average for OS/360 system code. They asked me how I explained this, and I told them the old story about the driver of the 18 wheeler who checked in late one evening (the dispatcher asked him why he was late, the driver responded that he got stuck in the mud, the dispatcher asked how he got out, the driver said that he had some ropes and chain and got a passing kitten to pull him out, the dispatcher said how on earth that could be, the driver said, "I used a whip."). The two corporate guys did not laugh. The two corporate guys did not smile. The two corporate guys got up and left my office -- I never saw either of them again. [Actually, of course, the answer was that our unit testing was inadequate and we had not done system test at all -- Product Test in effect did our testing for us -- and at that time Product Test costs were not factored into the development bill -- I do not know whether they ever figured this out.]
Late 1967 (I think). I decided to grow a beard -- the first to my knowledge in the System Development Division. The beard was not very good, but it was the best I could do. Shortly after I started it, Jack Kuehler, then the RTP Lab Director, started dropping by my office and making nasty anti-beard comments -- he did this pretty regularly every Friday evening, so I guess that he had it on his calendar. After a few weeks, he began to wear me down, and I was thinking pretty seriously about shaving it off. One day I was walking down a deserted hall in the lab and was approached by Kuehler and Bob Evans, then the President of SDD. I said "hi" as we passed, as did they.
In less than a minute Kuehler called me back, and the three of us spent several minutes chatting about this and that, mainly old times in Endicott (I had known Evans in Endicott in the early 60s when he was the Project Manager of the 1410 -- he once gave me a ride in his airplane (people with good sense never rode with Evans more than once -- he is lucky he did not kill himself -- he gave up flying his own plane, as did most senior IBM people, after John Hanstraa killed himself and most of his family while working for GE after leaving IBM), though we had a real run-in later over the 7740 after he moved to Poughkeepsie and I was still in Endicott working on the 1448 (a more extended story which I will cover separately – it is not one of the white stones)). Finally on parting, Evans added as if an afterthought, "I want you to know I really like your beard." -- Kuehler never spoke to me on the subject of beards again and I did not shave that one off until Tom, Jr.'s famous "Winds of Change" memo in the Fall of 1969. [For the mentally retarded among my readers, I will explain that most likely after they passed Kuehler told Evans that he was working on getting me to remove my beard and that Evans just took the opportunity to let Kuehler know who was in charge of beards in SDD.]
Notes for Binding Time: Memoirs of a Programming Man
NOTE 3.
More white stones.
Mid-1970s. My favorite white stone. The DCC had several traditions. One of the strongest was the formal coffee break. We had a large coffee break room with long boardroom kind of table, comfortable chairs, and a big stainless steel coffee maker (handled on rota by the secretaries -- at our peak, we had four secretaries (three of whom could take dictation in three or more languages) and 18 professionals) -- everyone had to bring a cake on his/her birthday (supposedly baked by the birthday person) and volunteers frequently brought goodies of one kind or the other to the morning break (we had two breaks a day, one about 9:30 AM, and one about 2:30 PM, each lasting from 20 minutes to one hour -- at one time, at the suggestion of John Goselin from WTC HQ, we dropped back to one coffee break a day, but that only lasted for about two weeks -- the purpose of the breaks, which were compulsory, was to facilitate communication -- and it worked). During one break, an uncaused spell of silence fell on the group (referred to by the Romans, in Latin of course, as "Mercury passed by") just prior to three of the Swiss Research guys coming in late -- they paused at the entrance, and we all looked up in expectant silence -- finally one of the Swiss research guys, Felix Closs, asked "What did Cyril say this time?"
Mid-1970s. A slightly off-color stone. Frank Corr (introduced to me on our first meeting in RTP in the 1960s as "the smartest man in FSD", now dead from liver cancer) did not often cause a spell of silence, but on one occasion he did. We had just started a Monday morning break, and the conversation had not really commenced -- Frank, apparently trying to kick things off, asked me "What did you do this week-end [slight pause] besides drink?” This did not get the conversation off to a smooth start.
Mid-1970s. A small white stone. I showed up late at an afternoon coffee break, and as I came in the door everyone looked up at me with quizzical expressions. I said, "Please excuse me. I was on the phone with Frank Cary [IBM CEO at that time and an old acquaintance of mine]." Everyone laughed, and the break proceeded to its conclusion. As we were leaving, Clayton Andrews (generally called "Andy", founder, and at that time still Director, of the DCC, dead now) said to me “Would you come up to my office with me." -- He, shrewd guy that he was, had realized that I was not joking (or, at any rate, was stating a fact) and wanted to find out all about it.
Mid-1970s. Another RTP white stone. While assigned to the DCC I had for all intents and purposes an unlimited travel budget (which made me a Swissair VIP -- several interesting stories there) and so naturally tended to flit hither and thither. On one occasion I was at RTP when Fred Brooks was there on one of his consulting assignments -- I forget doing what. A number of us chanced to have lunch together in the IBM cafeteria, and as was his custom Fred dominated the conversation. We were talking about the Japanese and their peculiarities and for some reason Fred saw fit to give us the Japanese 101 lecture (need for consensus, respect for age, etc.). After he got through rattling on about respect for age, with examples, I remarked that the older I got, the wiser I thought that social characteristic.
Nobody at the table laughed, though several smiled -- Fred did not smile -- he gave me a long thoughtful look and went on to something else. [The two best systems guys I worked with in IBM were Glenn Henry and Fred -- and neither had a sense of humor (they were smart enough to recognize humor when it occurred and would on occasion socially smile or maybe even laugh; however, they apparently found nothing funny).]
1Q65. My second best white stone. I first met Fred in 1964 and had extensive work and social interactions with him for many years (we were about the same age, came from similar backgrounds, had three children of the same ages, were next door neighbors for seven years, etc., etc.); however, neither of us liked the other (about the only interest outside of work and family we shared was C. S. Lewis -- Fred also liked Tolkien -- I thought, and think, that Tolkien produced nothing but shit -- also, Fred disliked beards even more than Kuehler did -- Fred for years as head of the Computer Science Department at Chapel Hill would not hire, or accept as a graduate student, anybody with face hair), though I certainly respected him, and I think he had some respect for me.
In early 1965 I was managing the data communications programming group for OS/360 (BTAM, QTAM, and RJE -- at that time, RJE had not started, BTAM was in pretty good shape, but there was a lot of resistance to QTAM) and having quite a bit of difficulty keeping QTAM in plan. Fred, who had originally been engineering manager for S/360 was at this time programming manager for OS/360 (and starting to phase out to take over the CS department at Chapel Hill), and it was his custom to conduct a formal review of every component of OS/360 prior to external release of information (S/360 and OS/360 had both been announced on the IBM magic date of April 7 -- this time April 7, 1964 -- but no detail had been provided in re OS/360). The meetings were quite formal and held in Fred's office (he had a big office and a big desk with a long boardroom kind of table making a T with his desk the crossbar at the top of the T -- all the powers that be in OS were there other than my second level manager (Jim Kessler, an old SABRE guy -- I had replaced him as the first line manager for data communications -- he never showed up at any meetings I attended – save one – that story will be covered later)).
We were all present at the meeting start time of 9:30 -- with the exception of Fred. We waited quietly for about 15 minutes until Fred came in. He slammed the BTAM and QTAM draft SRLs down on his desk and looked around the group catching eyes. Then he apologized for being late -- said that he had been engrossed in the QTAM SRL and could not put it down -- said that QTAM was a "pot of gold, a box of jewels -- the finest thing in OS/360" [exact quote – the words are graven on the inside of my eyelids]. Needless to say, you could have heard a pin drop (I think everyone there, including me, had been expecting that the result of the meeting would be the demise of QTAM). Anyway, I do not recall much subsequent detail of the meeting, but needless to say I did not have any problems after that keeping QTAM inplan. [It should be noted that the designer of QTAM was John Beurket, who had been on notice when I came in as manager -- the only way I kept him was to tell Scotty Locken that if John went, I went -- it was about John that I was on the phone with Frank Cary in the DCC stone above -- they wanted to fire him again because he wrote a nasty memo about FS before it became politically correct to write nasty memos about FS -- they didn't fire him this time either -- in fact, Cary wrote him a letter of apology that read like a letter of commendation (at Andy's suggestion I wrote Cary a follow-up memo to our telephone conversation -- his letter to John contained much of my memo -- I tried to get them to fire John's manager (Pete Schneider, the MULTICS guy IBM hired to do TSO), but they wouldn't).]
Notes for Binding Time: Memoirs of a Programming Man
NOTE 4.
Still more white stones.
Mid-1970s. My third whitest stone. On one of my DCC flittings I decided to go to EuroMicro 2 (I think -- it may have been EuroMicro 1) in Venice. It was held at some convention center reachable only by gondola. I caught a gondola at my hotel and in a couple of stops it was almost full, though I still had an open seat beside me, when to my mild surprise Fred Brooks got on (this was the first time I had seen him since the piano episode, and I did not know if he was still mad). Anyway, he sat down beside me, and we chatted away like old buddies (it turned out he was chairing some session there). Though I was attending purely in a spectator capacity, I was planning to go to the big dinner the next evening, so we agreed to go together (which we did, but that has nothing really to do with the white stone). The conference was somewhat strange in that microchips at that time were primarily of interest to people who manufactured pocket calculators and people who used them in weapons control systems (e.g. the cruise missile), so a good third of the attendees were from iron country countries, and at least half of these looked like cartoon depictions of KGB agents.
In the afternoon I was taking a coffee break in the company of an employee of the Department of the Navy (stationed somewhere in Germany -- he said that he was just on loan to the Navy from E-Systems in Texas -- he gave me his card and invited me to come see him about possible employment) and a Consultant to the Finnish Army (that was what his English language business card said) when Fred wandered up, so I introduced everybody, and as we were getting ready to break to go back to the technical sessions, we all agreed to meet that evening after the conference for a few drinks on the Piazza San Marco (Fred was/is a born again Christian, and I had previously thought 100% teetotal, but perhaps teetotal elsewhere he was not so in Venice -- he had a fair amount of wine again the following evening with me at the big convention dinner). So, we all met in the gloaming (it was mid-summer) on the Piazza San Marco amid the pigeons and the tourists, sipped Asti Spumante, and discussed the future of artificial intelligence: Fred, the employee of the Department of the Navy, the Consultant to the Finnish Army, and I. A very nice white stone.
Notes for Binding Time: Memoirs of a Programming Man
NOTE 5.
Last of the white stones (as of July 17, 1994, anyway).
Circa 4Q74. On one of my flittings from the DCC I ended up in the RTP lab and happened upon one of my old managers, Norbert Seif. But before recounting the stone, I need to provide background.
Norbert and I both joined IBM on just about the same day and worked together from the beginning. We got along well though we did not have much in common (Norbert was about 14 years older than I and had arrived in NYC as a refugee from Germany about 1938 -- he had owned an operated a candy store in NYC up until getting a college degree and joining IBM in June 1960). He moved to RTP from Endicott in 1966 or thereabouts and became my manager.
During my semi-retirement while managing the programming ad tech group at RTP (beginning circa 3Q67), Norbert was asked to write a history of Type I Communications Programming Support in IBM for Cravath, Swain, and Moore -- which, naturally, he assigned to me. I did this in my spare time (of which I had a fair amount -- my belief then and now was that managers manage and workers work -- and at that time I was a first line manager of only one department with 6-7 professionals reporting to me (somewhat previous to this, I had been acting first line manager of four departments, three in Raleigh (we were there in rented facilities until the buildings in the triangle were completed) and one in Kingston, with 42 professionals reporting directly to me -- that kept me right busy)) over a period of a couple of months. I did a pretty good job and the document was well received (I think I still have a copy somewhere). Time passed and I relocated to the DCC.
Along about 1974 I got a call from Norbert (who stayed in RTP until his retirement and move to Florida at about the age of 70) saying that Cravath, Swain, and Moore had done it again and had asked him to update my report with happenings after 1967 -- could I come and lend a hand? I chatted with my boss and called Norbert back to say sure but he would have to pay expenses (the DCC would cover salary -- they would have covered expenses too, but we just wanted to see how keen they were to get me). Did not hear from Norbert after that until I ran across him at the RTP lab about 8-9 months later. I asked him what he was doing, and, looking quite depressed, he said that he was still working on the history for C/S/M. I was surprised and asked him what in the world was the matter. Still looking quite depressed, he said that every time he asked one of the former VTAM managers what went wrong he got the answer that VTAM was perfectly OK when that particular individual left. I literally fell against the wall laughing -- this did not help Norbert's depression at all. [I do not know whether the update was ever completed -- I do, however, know what went wrong with VTAM -- will relate under “Technical Whimsicalities”.]
Well, cannot at the moment recollect any more white stones, so will proceed with vignettes (similar to white stones but not white stones).
August 1977. Rochester. The white stone above also reminded me of this vignette. I returned from the DCC to IBM Domestic in July 1977 after shutting down the Zurich DCC (transferring the function to the IBM LaGaude lab, finding jobs in their home countries for all the people in the DCC, personally taking the sign in front of our building down, etc.) and, after some home leave, began in August working for Glynn Henry in the IBM Rochester lab as Manager of System Architecture for Pacific (the IBM System/38 -- all that survived of FS -- will relate under “Technical Whimsicalities”).
I had been on the job for less than one week and was sitting in an empty office in front of an empty desk when the phone rang. I answered it and was exceeding surprised to find Phil Kolko, one of my previous managers, on the other end (even today I am amazed that he found me -- I really do not know how he got the phone number of an empty office). Anyway, he claimed that he was working on the IBM Legal Support Team and was out in California helping to defend one of the IBM antitrust suits (I think Memorex but I am not sure) and they required a copy of the "Advanced QTAM Design Study Final Report" (which became in effect the objectives for TCAM).
I said that I would be happy to fax them a copy -- and asked with trepidation if they needed any other documentation. Phil said "no" that they had everything else they needed. I said, "Including the trip reports which fed into the design study?” To my horror he said "yes" (I later verified with Jack Palmer that they did indeed have the trip reports). I worried for several months that I would be called to testify in the case but in the eventuality I did not.
The point of this vignette is that the design study was preceded by about 17 trip reports -- all hand-written by me -- documenting visits by Lew Kreger, Dick Borsuk, and myself to IBM branch offices and customer accounts across the U.S. to develop data communications functional requirements (we visited mainly BTAM and QTAM accounts but also some others). We generally went to at least one titty bar per city visited and included a review of their performance in the trip report. If these had showed up in court, I am sure that "Computer World" would have surpassed themselves.
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