SwimFinsSF

By the way

The floor is done.. and… Oh… My….. GAWD… So purdy… Once I figure out where I put the charger for my camera i’ll snap a couple of pictures…

( Does kinda stink in here though.. Cheap high I guess! )

The Twinkie Defense

In reading on bloggy about Rev. Phelps’ picketing of the Harvey Milk School in NYC ( I’ll spare you my rant on THAT ) I saw a link to snopes about the Twinky Defense. For those of you not familiar, back in 1978 Dan White (a former SF city supervisor who had recently resigned) broke into city hall and shot then Mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk to death. When the case went to trial the defense team was rumored to have used White’s consumption of twinkies as an argument for diminished capacity. When White was ultimately charged with manslaughter instead of first degree murder (purportedly based on this defense) the gay community in San Francisco freaked out and there were riots throughout the city which became known as the White Night Riot.

According to snopes, this wasn’t entirely accurate:

White’s defense was that he had been suffering from a long-standing and untreated depression that diminished his capacity to distinguish right from wrong, and thus he was not capable of the premeditation required to support a charge of first degree murder. Dr. Martin Blinder was called as a witness by the defense to testify that the conversion of the previously health-conscious White to a diet of Twinkies and other junk foods was evidence of his depression.

Very interesting. Regardless of this the city had a right to be outraged but it is always interesting to find that a story that you’ve heard and have been re-telling isn’t entirely accurate..

Anyway - thought I’d share.

Where it all began

Today is the anniversary of the misery that I experience day in and day out. The US Naval Historical Center marks September 9, 1945 as the day Lt. Grace Hopper ‘debugged’ the first computer bug:

Moth found trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9 September 1945. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: “First actual case of bug being found”. They put out the word that they had “debugged” the machine, thus introducing the term “debugging a computer program”.