Added 6.13.2008: I am close to desperate: I need a source of quinine sulfate. It's the only thing I can find that reliably controls leg cramps, which are no joke. The FDA made quinine illegal for anything except treatment of malaria, meaning that a doctor who writes an Rx for any other purpose can lose his/her license. I think my best bet is to locate a willing doctor in Toronto, and fly there for a quick consult and an Rx, get it filled, and fly home. I'm serious. Anybody got any leads? Google doesn't turn up much; I'm guessing Canadian doctors don't want to get into this mess. But you would think that a few doctors would figure out a business model that would let them make a living doing mostly this. The posts on Google say that I am far from alone. Email me (see link on left), or if you have something really useful and specific, call me: 212-568-5381. Thanks.

Added 3.16.2008: My good friend Joe Weizenbaum died March 5. He was one of my four best friends, men I met in the 1950s and had stayed in contact with. I met Joe in Tempe, Arizona, in 1956, when we both worked at the General Electric Computer Department. I had a session with Eliza before it went public. I read Joe's 1976 book in manuscript. And Joe and I and two of my other life-long friends, Paul Armer and Greg Williams, were the executive committee of Computer Professionals Against the ABM, ABM being the Antiballistic Missile System proposed in the 1960s.

The obituary in the New York Times of March 13 is completely accurate, as to facts and as to nuances. Other obits that I have scanned say that the concerns expressed in Joe's book Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation sound quaint in 2008. I heartily disagree.

The photo that the Times ran with the obit was taken in the last year or two, apparently. I can believe that that's Joe, but he looks very much older than I remember him. That's the way it goes, I suppose, but I was startled. Google found me a 1984 photo.

As I said after the death of another friend, I wish I had had a chance to say goodbye.

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I've provided some tutorials, on Eclipse as a Java IDE and on two slightly advanced features of Java: Eclipse Without Tears, Abstract Classes and Polymorphism, Why == Doesn't Equal equals()

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"Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire." — William Butler Yeats

Everything that is acquired with toil has more sweetness to it." — Bocaccio | "What is acquired with toil is mostly toil." — Critics of Bocaccio.

"The primary duty of the University to a student is to provide him with such instructors as will make him realize that the responsibility for progress is his own and no one else's." — S.E. Whitnall, 1933.

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