Two Tragic Stories of Death From Overwork

Moritz Erhardt, a 21-year-old intern at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in London, died recently as he neared the end of a seven-week summer internship. He'd been working a grueling schedule in an investment bank division that was "notorious for the hours workers are expected to clock in," writes Ruth Margalit of The New Yorker.

Friends said Erhardt had been keeping enormously long hours -- working all the way to 6 a.m. three days in a row shortly before he collapsed in his shower -- leading to speculation that the ambitious business school student worked himself to death.

The idea of a young white-collar employee dying from overwork was novel enough for the story to become news across the world, but it's one I've been familiar with since hearing about Yale Jared Weiner 18 years ago.

Weiner was a lawyer who died in 1995 at age 27. He had a pre-existing heart condition and the huge workload he was under at his law firm was too much for him. I remembered him because of a page created in his honor by Rebecca Eisenberg shortly after he died. Eisenberg, an influential early web writer and essayist, wrote this in tribute:

on october 31, 1995, one of my best friends and favorite persons in the world, yale jared weiner, passed away at age 27. yale was a truly good, kind and generous individual, always eager to place the needs and interests of other people before himself, and always able to see the silver lining in even the most seemingly hopeless situations. yale had a unique ability to cheer people up with his cynical sarcasm, corny humor, and somewhat nihilistic philosophies.

I don't think I knew Eisenberg yet back then, except as one of the seven cast mates on an online version of the Real World called GeekCereal that an online community called Cyborganic created and then shuttered, long before it could have been snarfed up by the Internet Archive to be used against them later. (I got to know her through Michael Sippey, who's like a platonic matchmaker for early web nerds.) Today, Eisenberg's better known for her work as the general or senior counsel at Reddit, Trulia, AdBrite and PayPal and as a founding board member of Craigslist.

Her friend's tragic story stuck with me because when he died, I was in my twenties and still in the phase of life where you could believe yourself indestructible. I worked too much, slept too little and (most importantly) drank too much, then got up the next day and did it again. I also lost a friend to a heart ailment at age 27 in 1995. Matt Anderson, my coworker at the Denver interactive TV startup Zing Systems, collapsed and died on a basketball court of an undetected problem related to mitral valve prolapse.

If you're reading this in your twenties, please keep in mind that you are not indestructible.

Work · Health · Youth · Aging · 2013/08/27 · Comment · Link

Dear Students, My Job is to Kill Your Dreams

When the novelist Kelly Braffet was in high school, she had the worst English teacher of all time:

One day, Mrs. Smith told us to write about what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wrote about wanting to be a writer. I wrote about how I'd loved books as long as I could remember and was never happier than when I was deeply immersed in a story. I probably added something about wanting to win the Pulitzer by 25 and the Nobel by 30, because that was the kind of obnoxious kid I was. I didn't really know anything about either except that winning them would be good, but I was young, and I had big dreams. That's what being young is about.

When this paper was returned, she'd written the following: "I used to want to write mysteries, but as I grew older, I realized it wasn't possible. Eventually you'll find a more realistic goal."

Mrs. Smith was the wind above her wings.

Books · Writing · Education · 2013/08/13 · Comment · Link

Escape the Walled Gardens with ZTE's Firefox Phone

On Friday, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer ZTE's eBay store will be selling the first phone in the U.S. that runs the new Firefox OS. The $80 ZTE Open will be unlocked so that customers can sign up to any carrier and use apps that run without installation.

Firefox OS is an open source operating system built atop a Linux kernel. Apps are implemented with HTML5, Javascript and other open web standards, so any website designed to function as an app will work. In a mobile environment completely dominated by Apple and Google, this is an attempt to pry loose their stranglehold through open web standards and unrestricted data-sharing among apps.

There is an official Firefox Marketplace, but it's not the only way apps can be distributed. Other providers can set up marketplaces and apps can even run without installation at all.

Firefox executive Jay Sullivan covered the basics of Firefox OS in a short video. One innovative feature is how user searches can make apps available even when they're not on the device. He demonstrated how a search for the movie Skyfall presented apps for IMDB, Fandango, Netflix and other movie-related services. "My phone immediately transforms itself. Now it's all about movies," he said. "What's interesting is that I may never have seen those applications before. They're shown to me in real time based on what I care about."

Andy Boxtall of Digital Trends writes:

... it's hardly a spec powerhouse, and with a 1GHz single core chip, a 3.5-inch screen, 3.2-megapixel camera, and 256MB of RAM, it's nobody's dream phone. It does have GPS, 3G connectivity, a microSD card slot, and Wi-Fi, so it's by no means useless.

I'm a late adopter on mobile programming, so I have no idea whether a carrier deal might be cheap enough to make it worthwhile to buy one of these to experiment on. But as someone who loathes the walled garden model for software distribution, where a central authority like Apple decides whether your app or content is allowed to run on its device, I'd love to see phones that act more like the web. In 18 years, I've never needed anybody's permission to publish a website or offer software that runs on desktop computers. I want that freedom on my phone.

Mobile · Phone · Firefox · 2013/08/12 · Comment · Link

MIT Puts Pop-Up Menus on the Real World

The Fluid Interfaces research group at MIT is doing some extremely cool things with user interfaces and augmented reality (AR). One is to use a device such as an Apple iPad to make physical objects smarter in the real world. The iPad puts a virtual control on top of the real one and changes the object's functionality over a wireless connection. After the control's functionality has changed, the real object acts differently.

This video demonstrates how a physical radio could be enhanced and controlled with AR:

Once you see how this works, it opens up all kinds of mind-blowing possibilities. I wonder if this is how a 24-year-old Steve Jobs felt in 1979 when an engineer at Xerox PARC demonstrated how to move a cursor across a computer screen with the aid of a device called a "mouse."

Technology · Augmented Reality · Mit · 2013/08/11 · Comment · Link

Zimmerman's Own Words Justify Martin's Punch

Since the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the conventional wisdom among people who agree with the verdict is that Trayvon Martin punched him first, so the teen was responsible for the fight that led to his tragic death. The claim about the punch is entirely coming from Zimmerman and could be a lie -- no one else saw it -- but let's assume for the sake of argument that it's true.

There's still a justification for Martin punching him in self defense, based entirely on Zimmerman's own words in the interview he gave Sean Hannity of Fox News.

Zimmerman told Hannity that when he saw Martin walking on the street while inside his car, Martin reached for something at his waist. This gesture was something he interpreted as a violent threat:

Hannity: You said he started from almost the beginning in that 911 call, you said he came towards you, and he seemed to reach for something in his waistband. Did you think that was a gun?

Zimmerman: I thought he was just trying to intimidate me.

Hannity: To make you think that there is a gun?

Zimmerman: Possibly.

Zimmerman later gave Hannity this explanation for how the fight began:

Zimmerman: He asked me what my problem was.

Hannity: Expletive problem?

Zimmerman: Yes, sir. And I was wearing a rain jacket, and I had put my cell phone in my jacket pocket, as opposed to my jeans pocket where I normally keep it. And I immediately went to grab my phone to this time call 911 instead of a non-emergency, and when I reached into my pants pocket -- because that's where I keep it out of habit -- it wasn't there, and I was shocked. I looked up and he punched me and broke my nose.

Put yourself in Martin's shoes, based on the scenario exactly as Zimmerman described it in that interview. An adult male has been behaving strangely and following him, first in his car and then on foot. It's dark and a heavy rain is falling, making these actions even more suspicious.

He has traveled on foot away from the street to a place behind condos near his residence, and there's Zimmerman again. Martin confronts the man to find out why he's being followed and the man doesn't explain. Instead, he quickly reaches for something in a waist pocket.

At that point, does Martin have any way of knowing the man isn't reaching for a gun?

Zimmerman's own words make the case for Martin punching him first to defend his life. Reaching for something at your waist in that situation is a threat, and we all know that Florida's Stand Your Ground law removed the obligation of anyone to remove himself from a potentially dangerous situation before using force.

If Martin punched Zimmerman believing he had a gun, it was a fear that had a basis in fact.

Florida · Crime · Law · 2013/07/18 · 12 COMMENTS · Link

Stand Your Ground Let Zimmerman Go Free

There's a lot of talk about how Florida's Stand Your Ground law did not play a role in George Zimmerman's acquittal. His attorneys did not call for a hearing, as entitled under that law, but instead presented self defense as justification for his actions at trial.

But Stand Your Ground rewrote the instructions read to juries on self defense.

Dan Gelber, the Democratic candidate for Florida attorney general in 2010, has offered a succinct explanation for why Zimmerman was able to use self defense after following and shooting his neighbor's son to death: Stand Your Ground changed the rules for what a person in Florida is obligated to do in a physical altercation.

Gelber explains:

If the Trayvon Martin killing was tried prior to the Stand Your Ground law being passed, the jury would have been told that self-defense was not available to Zimmerman unless he had used every reasonable means to avoid the danger. The jury would have been told that even if they believed Zimmerman had been attacked wrongfully by Trayvon, he could not use deadly force if he could have safely retreated or run away.

Here is the actual jury instruction read to Florida juries prior to the legislature's enactment of Stand Your Ground.

"The defendant cannot justify the use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm unless he used every reasonable means within his power and consistent with his own safety to avoid the danger before resorting to that force.

"The fact that the defendant was wrongfully attacked cannot justify his use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm if by retreating he could have avoided the need to use that force."

Florida · Law · Crime · 2013/07/15 · Comment · Link

Seth Finkelstein Kills His Blog

One of my favorite writers who covers the societal implications of technology, Seth Finkelstein, is shutting down his blog after 11 years. The closure of Google Reader this morning, which will cost bloggers a huge chunk of readers who follow them over RSS, was the final straw:

It's been clear for a long time I've considered blogging to have been a failure, for me. I'll skip reciting again my delusion. In sum, while I treasure the occasional indication that someone has enjoyed something I've written, the practical matter is overall, the net effect on my life is that I have much more to lose than I have to gain. I'm reaching the same tiny audience over and over, and squeaking in a basement does nothing against those who shout from the rooftops. More importantly, protesting from below has been sadly useless when being trashed from the top.

Finkelstein's a much-needed voice in tech because he's allergic to BS. As an admirer of his writing I hate to see his site close, but I can't argue with his premise that the rewards of running a personal blog with moderate traffic aren't high enough to justify the effort. Blogs don't receive as many comments as they used to, and the amount of conversation a blog post attracts elsewhere seems to be dropping as well. Now that millions of people have social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter, they have a place they can comment with home field advantage. They don't need to play on the road and respond on your blog.

With low comment counts and low reach on other sites, if you aren't making money on ads or promoting a business, the only reason left to blog is the joy of writing. There are other ways to scratch that itch.

(I'm still publishing Workbench because I enjoy having it around. I've convinced myself there's still a sizable quiet audience here, just like political activists who always think there's a silent majority out there that shares their beliefs.)

Finkelstein was a terrific columnist for The Guardian from 2006 to 2009, and I'm hoping he finds a new platform for his thoughts that's more rewarding.

To give you one perspective on how costly the loss of Reader will be to bloggers, here's how many of my current RSS readers on three sites are coming from Google Feedfetcher:

• Drudge Retort: 11,861 of 15,449 subscribers (76.8 percent)
• Workbench: 780 of 1,242 subscribers (62.8 percent)
• SportsFilter: 245 of 687 subscribers (35.7 percent)

Feedfetcher includes both Reader and iGoogle users. I could just have lost half my RSS readership. I hope none of them are the silent readers who keep me going.

Google · Blogging · Publishing · 2013/07/02 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

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