One of the most useful inventions ever is called Duck Tape or Duct Tape. The earliest version appears to have been made from cotton duck cloth sealed with linseed oil and used to water proof things, and first appeared in the 1890s. Later versions used rubber or various other flexible, water resistant coatings, mostly over cotton duck. The Revolite division of Johnson and Johnson made a version that was easy to tear, so you didn't need to use scissors or a knife, and was used to waterproof ammunition cases during World War II, and became widespread among the troops for this and many other uses. This stuff was found to be so useful that other manufacturers started making copies.
The fiber reinforcement makes the tape very strong, and the plastic or rubber makes it relatively water resistant, depending upon the adhesive used. It's traditionally shiny grey although it can be obtained in just about every color imaginable, including transparent, and printed patterns, and it's usually 2 inches (50 mm) wide, although other widths are available. Some time around 1960, the name somehow became conflated with the tape used for sealing furnace ducts. This is one of the very few things it's not particularly good at: the heat tends to make it dry out and become brittle over time. There is heat resistant foil tape which is actually the right thing for this. Nevertheless the name change stuck, and a company was able to copyright the name "Duck Tape".
Present versions are usually based on a thin "scrim" which is a loose weave of some sort of fabric--all sorts, cotton, rayon, nylon, even fiberglass, depending upon the strength needed, and the grey part is usually Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE--type 3 plastic) colored with aluminum powder. The adhesive is generally relatively strong, but relatively cheap, and tends to leave a sticky residue behind when it's removed. Gaffer Tape is a variety that doesn't leave a sticky residue and is reinforced by stronger fabric, so it needs a knife or scissors to cut. Preservation Tape is a variety that doesn't leave the sticky residue and doesn't have much or any reinforcement, so it's easy to tear. Speed Tape, sometimes called Racer Tape, is a variety that has a smooth surface and strong enough adhesive to tolerate the high wind of a racing car or airplane. There are 100mph, 200mph, etc., versions. It's sometimes used to make temporary repairs to airliners before a more permanent repair can be made.
There has been at least one roll of Duct tape on every US manned space mission since Gemini, and it played a major role in the rescue of Apollo 13. It was also used to extend the fenders on the moon rover on Apollo 17 when they sprayed too much moon dust around. It works, at least for a little while, in the vacuum of space.
It is most correctly called "Duck tape", although because of the copyright, it might have to be called "Duct tape" sometimes.
It is, as Red Green says, the Handyman's secret weapon.
12 July 2020
14 June 2020
Youngest Doctor
Last night one of the local PBS stations aired two old Dr Who stories from the late '60s, The Mind Robber, and the Krotons, staring Patrick Troughton, Wendy Padbury and Frazer Hines. I'd been under the impression that most of the Second Doctor serials had been lost and was quite pleasantly surprised to see these two delightful stories for the first time. There is so much less pretense and so much more fun than in the current productions. One thing that I really noticed was that the second doctor was playing a slightly befuddled but wise grandfatherly character, which really makes sense. All the modern doctors are played by attractive younger people and the grandfatherly wisdom comes out as strident and juvenile.
William Hartnell, 1908-1975, 1st Doctor 1963-66. age 55-58. He seemed much older
Patrick Troughton 1920-1987, 2nd Doctor 1966-69. age 46-49. He too seemed older
John Pertwee 1919-1996, 3rd Doctor 1970-74. age 51-55.
Tom Baker 1934- 4th Doctor 1974-81. age 40-47.
Peter Davison 1951- 5th Doctor 1981-84. age 30-34. The first young doctor. He pulled it off.
Colin Baker 1943- 6th Doctor, 1984-86 age 41-43.
Sylvester McCoy 1943- 7th Doctor, 1986-89. age 43-46.
Christopher Eccleston 1974- 9th Doctor, 2005. age 31.
David Tennant 1971- 10th Doctor 2005-10, age 34-39. crippled by /terrible/ writing.
Matt Smith 1982- 11th Doctor 2010-14, age 28-31.
Peter Capaldi 1958- 12th Doctor 2014-17, age 56-59
Jodie Whittaker 1982- 13th Doctor, 2017- age 35-
In order of age:
Matt Smith, Peter Davison, Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Jodie Whittaker, Tom Baker, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Patrick Troughton, John Pertwee, William Hartnell, Peter Capaldi.
My favorites:
Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Patrick Troughton, John Pertwee, Peter Capaldi, Jodie Whittaker, William Hartnell, Sylvester McCoy, David Tennant, Christopher Eccleston, Matt Smith, Colin Baker.
As far as I'm concerned, Colin Baker killed the show, he was so bad. I'm not sure how much of this was bad writing and how much was the actor and his sidekick, the almost-as-bad Perpugiliam, played by english actress Nicola Bryant pretending, incompetently, to be an American. Sylvester McCoy was way better than Colin Baker, but not better enough to recover. The 21st century reboot has yet to reach the highs of the Tom Baker-Peter Davison era.
William Hartnell, 1908-1975, 1st Doctor 1963-66. age 55-58. He seemed much older
Patrick Troughton 1920-1987, 2nd Doctor 1966-69. age 46-49. He too seemed older
John Pertwee 1919-1996, 3rd Doctor 1970-74. age 51-55.
Tom Baker 1934- 4th Doctor 1974-81. age 40-47.
Peter Davison 1951- 5th Doctor 1981-84. age 30-34. The first young doctor. He pulled it off.
Colin Baker 1943- 6th Doctor, 1984-86 age 41-43.
Sylvester McCoy 1943- 7th Doctor, 1986-89. age 43-46.
Christopher Eccleston 1974- 9th Doctor, 2005. age 31.
David Tennant 1971- 10th Doctor 2005-10, age 34-39. crippled by /terrible/ writing.
Matt Smith 1982- 11th Doctor 2010-14, age 28-31.
Peter Capaldi 1958- 12th Doctor 2014-17, age 56-59
Jodie Whittaker 1982- 13th Doctor, 2017- age 35-
In order of age:
Matt Smith, Peter Davison, Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Jodie Whittaker, Tom Baker, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Patrick Troughton, John Pertwee, William Hartnell, Peter Capaldi.
My favorites:
Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Patrick Troughton, John Pertwee, Peter Capaldi, Jodie Whittaker, William Hartnell, Sylvester McCoy, David Tennant, Christopher Eccleston, Matt Smith, Colin Baker.
As far as I'm concerned, Colin Baker killed the show, he was so bad. I'm not sure how much of this was bad writing and how much was the actor and his sidekick, the almost-as-bad Perpugiliam, played by english actress Nicola Bryant pretending, incompetently, to be an American. Sylvester McCoy was way better than Colin Baker, but not better enough to recover. The 21st century reboot has yet to reach the highs of the Tom Baker-Peter Davison era.
05 June 2020
Impeachments, Near and Far
Three presidents have been impeached, and none have been convicted. There have been quite a few others that nearly earned this distinction.
John Tyler was the first vice president to be elevated to the presidency by death of a president. The constitution left unclear exactly how this elevation would work, and Tyler arrogated all the powers of his predecessor, which alienated his partisan opponents, and vetoed a number of their bills, which alienated them even further. He was also a slave holding southerner, which didn't endear him to the abolitionists in congress. Articles of impeachment were drawn up but were soundly defeated by the full congress.
Andrew Johnson's impeachment was crassly partisan, for violating a law so terrible that it was soon overturned. He was a terrible president and we owe a lot of the horrible race relations of the present time to his idiotic support of the persecution of ex-slaves in the south.
Warren Harding was perhaps an even worse president than Johnson and probably would have been impeached for his role in the Teapot Dome scandal had he not died.
Richard Nixon came the closest to actually being convicted. Articles of Impeachment had been drawn up and it was obvious he was going to go down, so he quit first.
Ronald Reagan unquestionably committed Iran Contra and he probably should have been impeached and removed, but Sen Monyihan judged that his popularity would make that unlikely to succeed and would cause more political strife than it was worth.
Bill Clinton did lie about an affair with Monica Lewinski, but that is nowhere near a high enough crime to justify impeachment. He was impeached but not convicted in a wholly partisan process. The country understood that it was just a show, and voted out many of the perpetrators, but they held the trial during the lame-duck period. As Monyihan had predicted about Reagan's potential impeachment, the broader consequences of the impeachment were far worse than the actual offense.
George W Bush lied us into a war with Iraq and supported torture during that war. After Trump, he was the most deserving of impeachment of any president.
Donald Trump collaborated with Russian leadership numerous times, to get elected, to undermine intelligence, and more. He also has been sabotaging the free press, used the military and foreign aid for partisan purposes, and numerous other crimes. He was deservedly impeached, but he was acquitted--mostly because Trump and his supporters intimidated Republican senators. Sen Collins rightly explained that Trump had learned a lesson from impeachment, but where she'd thought he'd be chastened, he took it as license to do anything he wanted, no matter how criminal or destructive.
03 June 2020
Degrees of Murder
This is mostly intended to pull together the definitions for my own edification.
Murder is the intentional killing of someone. Intentional-ness is defined by statute. Killing someone is not necessarily a crime unless it is defined that way by statute. If you kill someone in self defense or defense of others, it probably not a crime. Feticide (abortion) is not murder unless specifically defined to be by statute.
First degree murder is killing someone with "malice aforethought". The killer intends for their victim to be dead and had enough time to consider the ramifications of what they were doing. If the killing took place during the commission of another felony, it is sometimes considered first degree, although under some circumstances it's voluntary manslaughter.
Second degree murder is killing someone in the heat of action, without forethought. For example a bar room brawl. The killer may have meant to kill the victim at that moment, but had they had a chance to consider they would probably not have done it.
Voluntary manslaughter is mainly reserved for crimes of passion and for unplanned murders committed during another felony. It used to be second degree murder but in recent years a distinction has been made. The standard example is discovering your spouse with another lover and killing them on the spot.
Killing someone (usually second degree murder but also manslaughter) with depraved indifference is acting in a way that is the killer knows is likely to bring about death, but not specifically intending to kill the person.
Third degree murder is only defined by a few states: MN, PA and FL. It is basically the same thing as murder with depraved indifference.
Involuntary Manslaughter is the accidental killing of someone while acting in a reckless but not felonious way. There is no intent or malice, either aforethought or otherwise. Negligent homicide is essentially the same thing.
It's pretty clear that third degree murder is actually the correct charge for at least some of what happened to George Floyd. I suspect a lot of the outrage is that most states don't define the crime and people don't understand what it is. More seriously though, bystanders were yelling at Mr. Chauvin that he was killing him, yet he continued to compress Mr. Floyd's neck for nearly 9 minutes, while he was handcuffed, including a few minutes after he'd passed out from asphyxiation. I think it became first degree murder somewhere around 3 minutes into this. I've watched quite a few videos, including one that showed the police arrival at the scene. Mr. Floyd never did anything in any way violent or threatening, although he was clearly upset at being arrested, which is pretty understandable. He may have said something threatening and he was a very big, strong guy, so there might be some possible justification in acting defensively, but once he was handcuffed and on the ground, the threat was over, especially since there were 3 other cops on the scene. Ten seconds of knee on neck would have been ample, even had Mr. Floyd been acting violently, which he wasn't.
Murder is the intentional killing of someone. Intentional-ness is defined by statute. Killing someone is not necessarily a crime unless it is defined that way by statute. If you kill someone in self defense or defense of others, it probably not a crime. Feticide (abortion) is not murder unless specifically defined to be by statute.
First degree murder is killing someone with "malice aforethought". The killer intends for their victim to be dead and had enough time to consider the ramifications of what they were doing. If the killing took place during the commission of another felony, it is sometimes considered first degree, although under some circumstances it's voluntary manslaughter.
Second degree murder is killing someone in the heat of action, without forethought. For example a bar room brawl. The killer may have meant to kill the victim at that moment, but had they had a chance to consider they would probably not have done it.
Voluntary manslaughter is mainly reserved for crimes of passion and for unplanned murders committed during another felony. It used to be second degree murder but in recent years a distinction has been made. The standard example is discovering your spouse with another lover and killing them on the spot.
Killing someone (usually second degree murder but also manslaughter) with depraved indifference is acting in a way that is the killer knows is likely to bring about death, but not specifically intending to kill the person.
Third degree murder is only defined by a few states: MN, PA and FL. It is basically the same thing as murder with depraved indifference.
Involuntary Manslaughter is the accidental killing of someone while acting in a reckless but not felonious way. There is no intent or malice, either aforethought or otherwise. Negligent homicide is essentially the same thing.
It's pretty clear that third degree murder is actually the correct charge for at least some of what happened to George Floyd. I suspect a lot of the outrage is that most states don't define the crime and people don't understand what it is. More seriously though, bystanders were yelling at Mr. Chauvin that he was killing him, yet he continued to compress Mr. Floyd's neck for nearly 9 minutes, while he was handcuffed, including a few minutes after he'd passed out from asphyxiation. I think it became first degree murder somewhere around 3 minutes into this. I've watched quite a few videos, including one that showed the police arrival at the scene. Mr. Floyd never did anything in any way violent or threatening, although he was clearly upset at being arrested, which is pretty understandable. He may have said something threatening and he was a very big, strong guy, so there might be some possible justification in acting defensively, but once he was handcuffed and on the ground, the threat was over, especially since there were 3 other cops on the scene. Ten seconds of knee on neck would have been ample, even had Mr. Floyd been acting violently, which he wasn't.
22 May 2020
Should We Allow Rich People to Buy College Admission?
I went to college in the mid 1970s. This was a time of transition for many things. One of them was a change in admissions policies that mostly opened it to better scrutiny. By and large, this was a good thing. Policies that had been discriminatory were changed, and lots of people who had been denied college were able to go. For most people, a college degree opens lots of doors. When I went to college, most people didn't have college aspirations, although many people took advantage of Junior College and the specialized trade schools. Today, most people do have college aspirations, including the vast majority who do not have the aptitude for it. This has opened a gigantic market for scam colleges and perhaps even worse, scam college lenders.
Wealthy and upper middle class families have always seen college as a natural step for their children and the vast majority saw to it that their kids got in. Most got in through the various aptitude measurements, but plenty of kids really didn't have the aptitude. In the old days, the college was happy to take a kid that wouldn't have otherwise made it, in return for a nice donation. This would be sufficient to provide the kid with tutoring and other needed support, and in most cases it was sufficient to give a scholarship to a bunch of other kids who did deserve it but couldn't afford it. This was a good arrangement. Everybody understood that the kid was there on the merits of daddy's donation, and kid would end up having career undistinguished by anything but the nice diploma and probably a large bar tab and perhaps a few racy scenes in the tabloids. It was corrupt, but openly so, and the good it did far outweighed the bad.
The new admissions schemes have ended most of the corruption. But not all. Good parents will do their very best to open doors for their kids, and if open corruption is blocked, they will find ways around the rules. The recent scandal involving sports recruiters getting students admitted on the basis of non-existent talent, mostly in relatively obscure sports, is an example of this. Lori Loughlin apparently spent $500,000 getting her two kids into USC. Had this been open, that could have provided 12-15 student-years of free rides for deserving students. Instead, it mostly went to various scammers.
Most of the people who went to college this way in the old days lived undistinguished lives. There are a few exceptions though. It's pretty clear that Donald Trump doesn't have the mental wherewithal to get into a decent college, much less a good one like UPenn. Daddy Fred plainly found a way to open the door though. Don apparently did attend a few classes, but managed to be remembered mostly for being absent from most of his senior year while he started his real estate business in New York, and somehow graduating anyway.
I say: This is ok, but there should be a clear paper trail to be found by anyone who is curious, such as grad schools and newspaper reporters. If each undeserving student pays for a half dozen or more deserving ones, that's an acceptable price, provided the undeserving student can be prevented from using their purchased diploma for evil, as the Trumps did. An undeserved admission should never be used for admission to subsequent education, such as medical school. On the other hand, there are plenty of cases of bad students waking up during their college years and going on to do something great, so it shouldn't be a barrier either. MCATs, GREs, LSATs, and actual decent college grades should be sufficient to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Wealthy and upper middle class families have always seen college as a natural step for their children and the vast majority saw to it that their kids got in. Most got in through the various aptitude measurements, but plenty of kids really didn't have the aptitude. In the old days, the college was happy to take a kid that wouldn't have otherwise made it, in return for a nice donation. This would be sufficient to provide the kid with tutoring and other needed support, and in most cases it was sufficient to give a scholarship to a bunch of other kids who did deserve it but couldn't afford it. This was a good arrangement. Everybody understood that the kid was there on the merits of daddy's donation, and kid would end up having career undistinguished by anything but the nice diploma and probably a large bar tab and perhaps a few racy scenes in the tabloids. It was corrupt, but openly so, and the good it did far outweighed the bad.
The new admissions schemes have ended most of the corruption. But not all. Good parents will do their very best to open doors for their kids, and if open corruption is blocked, they will find ways around the rules. The recent scandal involving sports recruiters getting students admitted on the basis of non-existent talent, mostly in relatively obscure sports, is an example of this. Lori Loughlin apparently spent $500,000 getting her two kids into USC. Had this been open, that could have provided 12-15 student-years of free rides for deserving students. Instead, it mostly went to various scammers.
Most of the people who went to college this way in the old days lived undistinguished lives. There are a few exceptions though. It's pretty clear that Donald Trump doesn't have the mental wherewithal to get into a decent college, much less a good one like UPenn. Daddy Fred plainly found a way to open the door though. Don apparently did attend a few classes, but managed to be remembered mostly for being absent from most of his senior year while he started his real estate business in New York, and somehow graduating anyway.
I say: This is ok, but there should be a clear paper trail to be found by anyone who is curious, such as grad schools and newspaper reporters. If each undeserving student pays for a half dozen or more deserving ones, that's an acceptable price, provided the undeserving student can be prevented from using their purchased diploma for evil, as the Trumps did. An undeserved admission should never be used for admission to subsequent education, such as medical school. On the other hand, there are plenty of cases of bad students waking up during their college years and going on to do something great, so it shouldn't be a barrier either. MCATs, GREs, LSATs, and actual decent college grades should be sufficient to separate the wheat from the chaff.
17 May 2020
What to do About the Novel Coronavirus
The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, was first discovered in late 2019 in Wuhan, China. There is no vaccine, humans have no pre-existing immunities like we do to the Flu, and it weakens us in a way that may kill us on its own, or it might expose us to opportunistic infections. It is fairly infectious, including for a week or more before we show any signs of being ill. Around half of people recover before they show any symptoms, yet they were infectious the whole time. There are no known palliative measures, although a few have briefly shown some promise. So far, none have panned out.
The Trump administration chose to abandon all pandemic preparations made during previous administrations. This included demoting or firing most of the people who had any real expertise, such as the Pandemic Response Team, tossing their extensive plans, and installing a toadie as head of the CDC. The first Trump CDC director was pushed out for blatant corruption, the second seems to have engaged largely in preventing the CDC from doing its job properly.
Trump has consistently poo poohed the need for testing, and has consistently lied about it. He has also obstructed the distribution of medical ventilators, and most alarming of all, has obstructed the distribution of all types of Personal Protective Equipment: masks, gloves, gowns, etc. We're 3 months into this thing and while it's finally possible to get a simple mask, it is still not possible to get an N95 without a special connection. Most of this can be categorized as negligence, but two things: forcing the distribution to be exclusively on the open market, which has led to enormous gouging, and numerous cases of federal agencies swooping in and confiscating PPEs just before they got to their end user, have massively and needlessly exacerbated the problem.
So what should we do? In the absence of anything better, quarantine. The bubonic plague has been pretty much eliminated through quarantine. Smallpox was substantially suppressed with quarantine, although its final elimination didn't come about until we had a vaccine. And so on.
But there's all this asymptomatic contagion. The first step was stay-at-home orders for just about everybody. Unfortunately we need medical attention and groceries, so there has to be some big holes, which allows a lot of spread. Fortunately, we already have several tests, but unfortunately, the knucklehead in charge at the CDC screwed up when it was discovered that there had been a mistake, and Trump has insisted on the vicissitudes of the free market governing availability. This would have been a perfect use for the defense authorization act, but no. He has several times suggested that he doesn't like testing, and the reason always seems to be that he's afraid that knowing the truth will make him look bad. On this I am sure he is correct. How about fixing this problem by not being such a pathological idiot?
The first and most important thing we need to do is to get a lot more testing. As of today (May 17), we are doing about 200,000 tests a day. People who regularly come into contact with the disease, mainly medical people, should be tested every day. There are 1.1 million doctors and 3.8 million nurses in the country. Not all of them are working COVID. Let's estimate that 2 million of them are. In addition, there are around 20 million people who have jobs rated "essential" (e.g. grocery clerk) that come into contact with a lot of people, but only a few of them are likely sick, and with barriers and similar measures, we can reduce their risk, but not eliminate it. We should probably test them once a week. That's another 3 million tests a day for a total of 5 million. This is the bare minimum.
We need to test the people in nursing homes. These are people who are especially vulnerable and they're living in very close contact with each other. There are about 1.5M of them. they, and the people who take care of them, should probably be tested pretty often. Lets say 300,000 tests a day nationwide. The prisons are roughly the same size. There are only about 70,000 people in the meat slaughtering and packing business, but they work in very close contact and there have been several bad outbreaks. They should probably be tested a couple of times a week. There are probably a bunch of other such occupations.
I'm thinking we should probably test everybody at least every other month or so. There are 320M of us, but subtracting the people from other categories, it's a bit under 300M. If we test each of them every 60 days, that's another 5 million tests a day. We're up to a total of 10 million tests. That means we're undertesting by a factor of 50.
The Trump administration chose to abandon all pandemic preparations made during previous administrations. This included demoting or firing most of the people who had any real expertise, such as the Pandemic Response Team, tossing their extensive plans, and installing a toadie as head of the CDC. The first Trump CDC director was pushed out for blatant corruption, the second seems to have engaged largely in preventing the CDC from doing its job properly.
Trump has consistently poo poohed the need for testing, and has consistently lied about it. He has also obstructed the distribution of medical ventilators, and most alarming of all, has obstructed the distribution of all types of Personal Protective Equipment: masks, gloves, gowns, etc. We're 3 months into this thing and while it's finally possible to get a simple mask, it is still not possible to get an N95 without a special connection. Most of this can be categorized as negligence, but two things: forcing the distribution to be exclusively on the open market, which has led to enormous gouging, and numerous cases of federal agencies swooping in and confiscating PPEs just before they got to their end user, have massively and needlessly exacerbated the problem.
So what should we do? In the absence of anything better, quarantine. The bubonic plague has been pretty much eliminated through quarantine. Smallpox was substantially suppressed with quarantine, although its final elimination didn't come about until we had a vaccine. And so on.
But there's all this asymptomatic contagion. The first step was stay-at-home orders for just about everybody. Unfortunately we need medical attention and groceries, so there has to be some big holes, which allows a lot of spread. Fortunately, we already have several tests, but unfortunately, the knucklehead in charge at the CDC screwed up when it was discovered that there had been a mistake, and Trump has insisted on the vicissitudes of the free market governing availability. This would have been a perfect use for the defense authorization act, but no. He has several times suggested that he doesn't like testing, and the reason always seems to be that he's afraid that knowing the truth will make him look bad. On this I am sure he is correct. How about fixing this problem by not being such a pathological idiot?
The first and most important thing we need to do is to get a lot more testing. As of today (May 17), we are doing about 200,000 tests a day. People who regularly come into contact with the disease, mainly medical people, should be tested every day. There are 1.1 million doctors and 3.8 million nurses in the country. Not all of them are working COVID. Let's estimate that 2 million of them are. In addition, there are around 20 million people who have jobs rated "essential" (e.g. grocery clerk) that come into contact with a lot of people, but only a few of them are likely sick, and with barriers and similar measures, we can reduce their risk, but not eliminate it. We should probably test them once a week. That's another 3 million tests a day for a total of 5 million. This is the bare minimum.
We need to test the people in nursing homes. These are people who are especially vulnerable and they're living in very close contact with each other. There are about 1.5M of them. they, and the people who take care of them, should probably be tested pretty often. Lets say 300,000 tests a day nationwide. The prisons are roughly the same size. There are only about 70,000 people in the meat slaughtering and packing business, but they work in very close contact and there have been several bad outbreaks. They should probably be tested a couple of times a week. There are probably a bunch of other such occupations.
I'm thinking we should probably test everybody at least every other month or so. There are 320M of us, but subtracting the people from other categories, it's a bit under 300M. If we test each of them every 60 days, that's another 5 million tests a day. We're up to a total of 10 million tests. That means we're undertesting by a factor of 50.
11 May 2020
Marion Medeiros
Marion was a teammate of mine on the cross country and track teams at Cupertino High School in the early '70s. I stumbled on this last night, which is an obituary from the San Jose Mercury. He was a sophomore when I was a senior, but we were pretty good friends anyway. He was a good kid and a great runner and pole vaulter. He set the school pole vault record as a sophomore and seemed destined to go quite a bit farther.
He had been teased as a child about having a girls name so he usually pronounced his name "Morion". He was definitely not a girl, although I have no idea about his sexuality. We talked about all sorts of things in the two years we were teammates. I think he thought of me as a sort of mentor, although he was a better runner than I was by far.
His older brother Baron was also a teammate and I knew him well too. The last time I saw either of them, Baron had just enlisted in the army, and would join up after finishing high school. Apparently Marion joined the army too and worked as a recruiter.
The article says Marion had a stroke which made him quadriplegic. It doesn't give a date, but it looks like it happened in 1990, give or take. Marion would have been about 38. 19 years later, in July 2009, the house he and his family had grown up in burned. His mother was able to get out, but Marion was not. (This house was in Rancho Rinconada, a housing development in Cupertino, not far from the High School)
My heart aches. Rest in peace, Marion.
He had been teased as a child about having a girls name so he usually pronounced his name "Morion". He was definitely not a girl, although I have no idea about his sexuality. We talked about all sorts of things in the two years we were teammates. I think he thought of me as a sort of mentor, although he was a better runner than I was by far.
His older brother Baron was also a teammate and I knew him well too. The last time I saw either of them, Baron had just enlisted in the army, and would join up after finishing high school. Apparently Marion joined the army too and worked as a recruiter.
The article says Marion had a stroke which made him quadriplegic. It doesn't give a date, but it looks like it happened in 1990, give or take. Marion would have been about 38. 19 years later, in July 2009, the house he and his family had grown up in burned. His mother was able to get out, but Marion was not. (This house was in Rancho Rinconada, a housing development in Cupertino, not far from the High School)
My heart aches. Rest in peace, Marion.
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