Algorithmic Memories – Reality Check

Algorithmic Memories – Reality Check

This note might be properly redacted for typographical errors in future days.

It is the case that a parent of this technical web journal writer worked in the physiology department of the local state medical center starting in the early-1970s. Seeing that physiology departments are not that common, he has been told that it has consistently ranked within the top ten nationally or globally. Whatever the case might, she was the third person of African-American descent hired in a research role in the history of the campus. And, they all had the rank of a research technologist. Actually, she was the first African American “officially” hired by the state seeing that the others joined the medical center along with a private cancer research center from Chicago that merged this facility around 1968. Those early years were difficult. Many of the other researchers were not “civil” enough that they would speak, and the work environment was very hostile. Also, it might be the case that her second pregnancy was aborted by the actions of one of her coworkers who put a substance in her morning coffee that resulted in a miscarriage between her third and fourth month between 1977 – 1978. It was the case that only a handful of researchers in the department could access the area of the hospital which had substances that would induce an abortion. Memories of conversations between his parents remind him of them discussing a claim made by an attorney for the medical center during a hearing on its premises that the only way that her claim could be established was by titrating the Pacific Ocean. And, it was the case that she said that whenever she was in the departmental restroom for more than five minutes her supervisor the department chairman would bang on the door and ask her if she were “auto-fornication” or “masturbating” in the American vernacular.

Yet, she often changes the subject when those issues are brought up these days. She says that she grew up in the Jim Crow era in the American South and Whites on a whole are much nicer now. When reminded of her childhood playmate whose entire family was lynched and their house torched simply because a European American farmer wanted the land and would not hand over a single red cent for it, she simply is not interested in discussing it. She shared with me a picture of the red hexagonal shape and Latin inscription that accompanies it which was a sign that some one should not enter their house when they came in from working in the fields, leave the county and the state, plus never return. Such was often placed on the homes of African American sharecroppers when someone decided that they wanted all that they had. If, they tried defending their homes. They would be brutalized and killed by a collection of European American Klansmen who were often held some “highly-respected” positions in the town such as membership in the Fraternal Order of the Mason along with roles on the police force, in the town governments, and as the local physician or attorney.

The only reason that this horrible memory is ever breached is this, a moment of conflict arose in the early-1970s when she made a suggestion in a research seminar. One of the male European American researchers lets her know that “quality, fundable” research ideas are very rare and that she should hold her peace among the doctoral-level researchers. Ironically, this was likely the one with a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Southern California. Who only was working in a physiology department because he could not find employment in his field with the skills that he had earnt and what he had truly learnt between smoking cannabis and daisy chaining in Southern California in the 1960s. Her quick retort was this, “My son can come up with a fundable research idea.” And, when she shared this inspiration with me that was coupled with a promise from the research staff that this online journal author would receive a full four-year scholarship at the local state school, that was sufficient motivation enough.

And, it often is said that it is not what you know but who you know that makes a difference. The opportunities that arose from the adoption and implementation of many successful research ideas became a burden whose full weight was felt working as a high school intern and undergraduate researcher in cancer biology under an NIH grant at the local hospital. For one, on more than one occasion, a European American graduate student or faculty person who was not happy with the presence of a few minority-interns placed us in harm’s way at different times. In particular, Kevin Stansbury and his shenanigans will never be forgotten.

Once, he asked that this fellow perform an act that could potentially had caused an explosion that easily could have leveled many of the buildings on the city block that house the main part of the medical. His reply was simply, “Oakey Doke!”. And, intrepidly compliance was given as Kevin slipped out of the laboratory and likely out the building heading for the safety of another part of the city. So, he could later report that he saw this negligent teenager conducting an unsanctioned experiment on the local evening news and in the local paper when they covered the imminent disaster. Truly, who would ever question a White man’s report? Yet, after about five minutes of mixing highly combustible substances, a faithful supervisor entered the laboratory and ask, “Why are you doing that?” The reply simply was, “Kevin Stansbury said it should be done.”

And, when Kevin was asked, “Why did you insisted that he do that.” He simply started laughing and guffawing as if life is a childish game which one might restart when he runs out of lives. Truth be told, had this chap dared question Kevin when he put him and many other of the members on the Institute and hospital in harm’s way, old Stansbury would become more aggressive, dangerous, and potentially violent. They always do. So, this web history author played the coon and went along with Kevin’s high shenanigans.

And, a knowledge of only a few of his contributions was enough that when he was “accidentally on purpose” placed on haloperidol in the VUMC after experiencing the central nervous system dysfunction associated with exertional heatstroke while a Vanderbilt Commodore football player during the Fall of 1988. This came in the wake of that football coaching staff driving a player named Sonny Bishop until his heart failed during the 1987 year. And, the fear of a civil suit from that player’s family likely loomed over the university. So, medicating a seventeen-year-old who did not know enough about medicine at that time that he would know the proper procedures and treatments for the temporary condition which he experienced was advantageous. Sadly, after contacting that university seeking support in the permanent cessation of the medication given years later, the inquiries were ignored. Interestingly enough, online records from the university’s past athletic rosters do not include the name of this author on the 1988-1989 team or Sonny Bishop during 1987 – 1988 and the previous years which he played for that team. Albeit, his unfortunate death was covered by the national news.

And, the medication administered became a convenient tool for inflicting harm by local physicians seeing that it lowers one level of cognitive functions and induces permanent neurological damage. It was given in large dosages and often by injections that this author could not escape. For one, it has a withdrawal profile that is worst than alcohol. And, its forced use has resulted in the author experiencing seizures. When these would occur in a hospital setting, the nursing staff would often say, “It looks like you are getting better.” And, this cold-hearted insult would often be followed a team of nurses and security guards tackling him on a cold concrete floor and forcibly injecting him with unordered dosages of haloperidol and combinations of other psychotropic drugs. And, history has shown that it is quite common the hospital records are written so they protect the facilities interest and the actual nature and amount of medications given can bury. And, seeing that this country is only about half a century from the supposed end of the Jim Crow era, what a vulnerable African-American experiences at the hands of the average European Americans, even when he is in a medical facility but when they are confident that they will never be held accountable for their actions, is the same. White hearts have not changed. One will rarely find any security films of takedowns and abuse of such wards in on-line forums. For one, it would damning for the facilities. And, they have the financial resources that are sufficient for guaranteeing that those video records are destroyed. One can find security films from a number of venues: stores, hotels, and even private in-home security camera footage. But, that of college campuses and hospitals will never be found in any on-line venue. In fact, these institutions truly only keep records that might potentially condemn their clients, if need be.

 Yet, the cold, hard reality check for those who see so little worth upon meeting this fellow with woolen hair and skin with a deep brown hue. He and his parent who reached the position grade of researcher at the local medical center by retirement are a academic tandem that “unofficially” hold Turing Awards, National Science Awards, and, possibly, one Field Medal, seeing that we were the source of these research vision which were subsequently implemented mostly by European Americans or a person that the masses of this world can accept as intelligent without having a color-struck conniption fit, rioting, plus lynching and burning in effigy.

His first contribution was as a child shortly after he learnt the basics of whole number division. And, as often said while in the local public school district by his teachers, “out of the mouth of babes…” You can certainly finish that phrase. Only knowing the rules of division for the composite of 0 through 10, he sat down in his small room in his family’s apartment and began dividing dividends by divisors producing a quotient and a remainder. Then, he would divide combinations of the dividend, the divisor, the quotient, and the remainder by each other. This produced a short irregular stream of numbers as output. He had seen something about Caesar’s cipher on public educational television and an idea dawned upon him. If the letters of the alphabet each had a single number associated with them, one could encode a secret message as follows. Simply, generate a stream of irregular (random) numbers, combine each letter in the message with an associated number in that stream: first with first, second with second, etcetera, and wrap the value around if it exceeds twenty-six. Beyond public television, this was inspired by a couple of his favorite afternoon shows. He loved watching episodes of Hogan Heroes and Black Sheep Squadron. Which were in syndication at the time.

Faint, misty water-colored memories of those moments recollect him calling his undecipherable message system the German Enigma, because Coronel Klink and that gang would never figure it out. And, fully aware that the world of early-1970s America and even during this day would never knowingly accept any advice from basically any child, especially an African American, he used a pseudonym as the author of the work.  The first name Alan was chosen randomly. The meaning of the second name had significance, “Touring”, intentionally misspelt as “Turing”. And, it was supposed at the time, that any African American male in that era who sought a career in computing would likely spend his whole life “touring” around the country looking for one having door after door slammed in his face. Only, a well-rounded mathematician who had sufficient training could establish whether “pseudorandom” number generators existed before roughly 1974. And, the reports of work done in the late-1930s and early 1940s is not simply governmental propaganda. Faint aural memories from that period remind him that his parent who working in research said that she asked a mother of a playmate for a picture of that child’s grandfather who resembled him and whose surname was Heinrich. Yet, only that family can verify such. Surely, the world can accept innovation from someone who has such an appearance.

Such a simplistic cryptosystem is truly undecipherable when used with privately exchanges keys (seeds) and unique, paired pseudorandom number generators on each communications channel.

If one had a “hidden” message that was one kilobyte in length, one must successfully find the combination of letters (A-Z) that spell the “secret” message using a circular traversal of the range [1..26]. For one, anything could be spelt from that sequence of ciphered values, and it would seem valid. And, it would be the easier finding the appropriate combination on a lock where each spinner had twenty-six possible values and a thousand and twenty-four such spinners existed. Why? The lock would open letting one know that he had the appropriate value. If, he struck upon it. One would never get any signal that he had the correct message with this ciphering system. It would only be discernible with the appropriate seed value and random number generator. Choosing a seed is easy. That number can be yanked out of thin air. And, spinning one’s own random number generator is not difficult. Many on-line references, papers, and books tell who such is done. The average junior high school student who is a computer programming hobbyist could do so. And, with a little knowledge of file formats, he can hide encoded messages in image, audio, and video files as temporary “static” in the multimedia’s signal stream. But, that is enough monkeying around.  Because, cracking messages simply becomes more challenging when one couples this approach with steganography, a vision for ciphering words and not letters, struck upon while a trigonometry pre-calculus student in high school during the mid-1980s. Yet, few in this world, especially those of European descent will accept such.

Yet, seeing that this fellow already has been administered an “apple” around 2015 and survived, based upon the medical knowledge he learnt in early years, and replenished the need chemicals that “apples” flushed from the body, while temporarily surviving on the street as a homeless person, after the local Charles Drew Health clinic would not provide him with any appropriate treatment, he really cares very little about the personal opinion that anyone has about him. The includes members of his own ethic or racial community who say he is an embarrassment for making such “grandiose” claims of accomplishment. Especially, Dr. Sherita Strong who received a promotion from the Director of Diversity and Inclusion at the local medical center became a Vice Chancellor after betraying this author. She, who was an athlete herself, stated that being driven on a practice field until confusion sets in is a complete impossibility and that the documented behavioral health condition must be accurate. Physicians simply do not make mistakes. They are well-trained professionals. She also implicitly stated that medical disparities based upon race and ethnicity simply do not occur in this era and that various genetic factors are the cause for the disproportionate number of African Americans, Latinos, Indigenous North Americans, and other minorities suffering and, at times, dying from certain ailments.

And upon the topic of the WWW, the greed of the business sector in the States United has placed this country in an operational security nightmare seeing that using such a simple ciphering system would allow for the exchange of clandestine messages freely across this global network. During early discussions concerning the development of a public portion of the Internet, called the World Wide Web, for commerce, communication, governmental surveillance, and the assessment of the social health of the world community, it was recommended that the delivered system be much like a read-only kiosk and the content made available by private citizens be approved. For one, considered the “foolish” words spoken by the staff of Charlie Hebdo in France. As the apostle Paul stated in the New Testament, “everything that is permissible is not beneficial”. And, such very acts of “free speech” might very well cost the world community that liberty. Yet, the European American leadership who adopted this initiative in a haste for the rapid accumulation of wealth like that seen by leaders of corporations like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and others put the whole nation and its system of democracy at risk.

It was the late Rush Limbaugh who fondly told the account of African tribesmen who would catch monkeys by putting peanuts in an empty coconut with a small opening in one end. This hole was large enough that the hapless monkeys could fit their hand in it and grasp the nuts; however, it was small enough that the monkey could not remove his fist that was tightly holding the peanuts fast. And, despite cries of distress, hoots and hollers, as a tribesman reeled them in, the monkeys seemingly did not have enough sense that he would let go of those nuts even if it would save his life. Such bears itself out on this modern communication medium called the WWW “wholly-supported” and furnished the government of the States United in more ways than one. And, at this juncture in history, Uncle Sam simply cannot let them nuts go without causing total chaos in his world. The subsequent withdrawal systems of letting go are more than all of his military might could possibly handle.

And, the cold-hearted reality check is this, “someone has been lying so long about his ability and accomplishments and its nascent presence in his life and this existence that the daft fool believes it.” It is the case that this someone is either the author, who might be in need of more haloperidol, a neurotoxin, or the proverbial White man who, as an aggregate, has accepted the author’s research insights since his years as a toddler, implemented them, and predated their origination so his shallow sensibilities and false sense of superiority rooted in the insecurity of a feared imminent inferiority be pleasantly appeased. Whatever the case might be, one or both of us are a ninnyish nape.

By, the way, for those of you who read the entry on Gödel’s Halting Theorem, that was a mathematical heuristic drafted after learning some elementary BASIC in junior high. Gödel never existed. He is a mere legend. The product of government propaganda hoping that the social position of the European masses remains secure.

And, for those who do not teach; but, who are students, the term heuristic as defined in older dictionaries crafted before 1965 is a teaching tool given students that requires future investigation and the use of skills learnt throughout the educational process both old and new in the resolution of a challenging problem. In other words, heuristics are solvable. Open problems simply do not have a known solution. And, some closed problems are classified as not having any known solution and the discovery of one is unlikely. Yet, upon the topic of “Gödel’s work”, it was well-known in junior high that few students question an instructor or grand names. And, living in a community just fifty miles north of the international center for the distribution of National Socialist literature, most of the Europeans in this area of the country who can claim German-heritage do. So, the selection of such a pseudonym would place the work beyond the scrutiny of most. And, the convoluted proof that starts with the contrived construction of a contradiction and proceeds in a circle proving that a contradiction will arise after a series of deductive steps would ensure that most simply would not question the mathematical smoke and mirrors layered under a thick quilt of hocus pocus. The words written on the bottom of the notebook page on which this was drafted was simply curve ball.

And, nearly forty years later, that curve just hit the catcher’s mitt.

And, upon seeing the numerous inaccuracies in proof-work based upon this heuristic in textbooks like Computability, Complexity, and Languages: Fundamentals of Theoretical Computer Science by Martin Davis, Ron Sigal, Elaine J. Weyuker while working on a postbaccalaureate degree, the most mathematically merciful thing that this author and recreational mathematician could do is let his fishes of the hook plus give this advice, “[Jas 2:1 KJV] 1 My brethren, have ye not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, [the Lord] of glory, with respect of persons.” That is a rhetorical statement for those of you who were expecting a question mark at the end of that verse. And, for those who know scripture or have heard of Christ’s Legacy know that He would question and challenge any of the synagogue’s leadership without the least bit of trepidation.

Also, another small bit of advice, do not passively accept everything that instructors say. They might be wrong. Seek and discover the truth for yourself. Yet, be careful who you tell. This world’s ears itches for the soothing sweet nothingness of prevarications.