THE SEVEN PER CENT SOLUTION

by James Lincoln Warren

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction.

“Which is it to-day?” I asked,—“morphine or cocaine?”

He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened. “It is cocaine,” he said,—”a seven-per-cent. solution. Would you care to try it?”

—Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four

Whenever I encounter the phrase “seven per cent,” the first thing that leaps to my mind is Sherlock Holmes’ preferred remedy for escaping ennui and clearing his brain. It is a fact that cocaine and its analogs have a direct effect on the physiology of the brain and temporarily enhance rapidity of thought.1

Cocaine does not make you smart, though, anymore than boozing up makes you better looking, although I have observed that many people act as though they were convinced it does, especially at late night parties. In the long run, the seven per cent solution doesn’t work.

So the Gentle Reader may forgive me when I say that I am not at all convinced that words comprise only seven per cent of communication, although such is the current received wisdom. Usually this nugget is expressed something like this:

One study at UCLA indicated that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues. Another study indicated that the impact of a performance was determined 7 percent by the words used, 38 percent by voice quality, and 55 percent by the nonverbal communication.2

The first thing that strikes me about this quote is that if 93% of communication is nonverbal, then what’s left, i.e., 7%, must necessarily be verbal. The unidentified “other” study merely regurgitates that same figure, dividing up the nonverbal portion into separate categories. But I have questions.

What study at UCLA? When was it done, and by whom?3 How did the people conducting it quantitatively measure “communication effectiveness”? What exactly was being communicated? As I have written before, communication requires both a transmitter and a receiver, and its “effectiveness” depends on how well they both work on their own and how well they work together—and on the nature of the data being pushed across the divide.

Ever try giving directions to someone who doesn’t speak the same language as you? Of course there’s a nonverbal component in providing such an explanation, but it’s a hell of a lot easier if you can say, “Take your third left and then the second right,” with a reasonable expectation that your words will be understood than if you’re stuck relying on pantomime to convey your instructions.

On the other hand, threaten somebody with a claw hammer and words become pretty much superfluous. The words one uses when talking to a baby or a dog are certainly less important than their tone—but infants and pets aren’t constitutionally capable of communicating abstract ideas in the first place. (I make an exception of Valentine, Leigh’s avian companion.)

What I think is that the simplistic notion that nonverbal means convey more information than verbal ones completely misses the point. Words by their very nature are associative. A word, after all, is not the same thing that it represents.4 That means that words’ full meanings are dependent on context. This should surprise no one. The word “awesome” coming out of the mouth of a fashion-conscious girl admiring a pair of shoes does not mean the same thing as it does coming out of the mouth of an astronomer transfixed by the majesty of the cosmos. The context colors the diction. I freely admit that such contexts are frequently, maybe even most of the time, largely “nonverbal”—but not always.

Good verbal skills build contexts, or at least demand that the reader (or listener) engage his imagination to fill in the blanks. (I frequently call this “making the reader do the work.”) One way to get somebody’s attention is to present a scene devoid of context, forcing the reader to ask, “What’s going on here?” The true meaning of the scene only becomes clear when the context is subsequently filled in. This is a very common technique in story-telling, especially in mysteries. It’s why the Iliad begins with the wrath of Achilles, why crime shows so frequently begin with the discovery of an unidentified victim, why so many stories begin with a sliver of dialogue that teases the reader into asking what’s being talked about. Getting somebody’s attention is also a form of communicating.

And that’s exactly what separates a great story teller from a pedestrian one. By engaging one’s imagination, the good story teller enables the reader to build an entire world of context in his own head. The application of words alone breathe life into a tale.

Not to claim such a distinction for my own work, but the comments that most please me from readers are when somebody particularly enjoys a key characteristic of a tale—for the historicals, it’s the belief that one can sense what London was really like in 1776; for the hard-boileds, it’s the defining snappy dialogue; for my soon-to-be published woo-woo5, it’s the brooding and scary atmosphere. Place, character, and mood. All matters of context.

It’s always nice to be complimented on a clever plot or an engaging storyline. But the best praise comes when one has communicated so well that the words on the page transport the reader into a new world. Of course, that’s what some crazy folks claim for cocaine.

1. Nicotine, for example, has been definitively shown to stimulate the brain and increase concentration for short periods of time—that’s why some people light up a cigarette when they are trying to think. Cf. Holmes’ own tobacco abuse:

   “As a rule,” said Holmes, “the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify. But I must be prompt over this matter.”

   “What are you going to do, then?” I asked.

   “To smoke,” he answered. “It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.” He curled himself up in his chair, with his thin knees drawn up to his hawk-like nose, and there he sat with his eyes closed and his black clay pipe thrusting out like the bill of some strange bird.

   —Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Red-Headed League”

   [↩]

2. “Listen With Your Eyes: Tips for Understanding Nonverbal Communication,” by Susan M. Heathfield. [↩]
3. After digging a little, I found out that the referenced study was done by UCLA psychology professor Albert Mehrabian in 1967, and that as I suspected, there weren’t two studies, but only one—Mehrabian got two papers out of it, “Decoding of Inconsistent Communications” in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and “Inference of Attitudes from Nonverbal Communication in Two Channels” in The Journal of Consulting Psychology. Mehrabian also provided this caveat: “Please note that this and other equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable.” [↩]
4. Gertrude Stein’s famous witticism, “A rose is a rose is a rose,” is correctly interpreted to mean that the expression “a rose is a rose” is representatively a “rose” itself, i.e., a flower of speech; and not the more prosaic and common notion that a that which we call rose is an actual rose and not anything but such a rose. It’s a perfect example of context determining semantic content. [↩]
5. See the trailer here if you haven’t already—I had a lot of fun making it, although I must confess that it relies heavily on, ahem, nonverbal communication. [↩]

SPEECH IS FREE
Recording it isn’t.

by Leigh Lundin

In the early dawn, police burst into the home of Maryland Air National Guard Staff Sergeant Anthony Graber, frightening his parents, his wife, and his two young children. In the course of the hour and a half raid, authorities detained Graber’s mother and sister, preventing them leaving for work.

Police seized four computers, Graber’s video camera, and several disc drives. Only the fact Graber couldn’t be moved due to gall bladder surgery prevented police taking him, too, charging him with a felony that could take five to sixteen years out of the soldier’s life. When authorities finally arrested him, they set a $15,000 bond on a $10,000 felony.

Apparently, the search and warrants contain no judge’s signature, making it unclear if a judge signed documents at all. State Attorney Joseph Cassilly says the judge’s name is secret for "privacy" concerns.

What had Graber done? As he rolled to a stop at an interstate exit ramp, his helmet camera recorded an anonymous grey man leap from an anonymous grey car that swooped down upon him, shouting at Graber to get off his motorcycle. The man brandishes a pistol, but as a police car pulls up behind them, the man appears to block sight of his weapon with his body before tucking it away.

Who was that unasked man?

You may have noticed the rash of citizen videos showing county officials nipping out for a nap in the park, state officials nipping into topless bars on expense account, and city bus drivers just nipping. You may have also noticed people documenting incidents of police misconduct including an officer punching the face of a teen girl who’d stepped in to defuse an argument.

If you didn’t notice, prosecutors did and they’ve been quietly punishing… not the wrong-doers but citizens themselves for wielding the video cameras. State Attorney Cassilly previously prosecuted other ‘civilians’ for videotaping police officers conducting questionable activities. Some Baltimore police officers now tell citizens that recording police activity is illegal in Maryland. According to Cassilly, the state can record you– you can’t record them, a reversal of traditional American liberties, reminiscent of Iron Curtain countries that banned cameras, typewriters, and copy machines as treasonous.

Some wonder if State Attorney Cassilly was exacting vengeance for the very public embarrassment after three Prince George’s County Police beat and arrested two students for assault, claiming one was injured by horses’ hooves. Privately shot video showed events the other way around, that police beat and arrested without apparent provocation. (A Boston auxiliary policeman once bragged to me he enjoyed beating "hippie types" with his flashlight simply because he could. "It’s a flashlight; who’s to say it’s a weapon?")

Meanwhile, back to our story…

A month before the raid and arrest, our Sergeant Anthony Graber sped up the interstate an estimated 80 mph in a 65 mile-per-hour zone. Graber wore a helmet camera, an oversized unit in these days of sleek, tiny devices, and his camera recorded Maryland State Trooper Joseph David Ulher– the anonymous grey man who leaped from the anonymous grey vehicle brandishing a pistol but never showing a badge– violate several protocols and call into question a number of "facts" in the arrest complaint (hinting Graber intended to flee but not borne out by the video).

As John Stossel reports, Graber admitted to speeding and admitted he deserved the ticket. He paid his fine. But then he did something that again enraged Trooper Ulher– Graber posted the video of his arrest on YouTube, exposing Ulher’s violations and excesses that made him look like an unprofessional bully.

Trooper Ulher and State’s Attorney Joseph Cassilly decided to get even. They staged the dawn raid and arrested Graber. And they might even win.

What is going on here?

Government employees– our employees– are too often embarrassed when excesses, petty corruption, vulgarity, and even violence become exposed. Officials are punching back using two arguments to go after videographers, assertions that:

1. Public servants expect privacy without public scrutiny.
2. Citizens are violating wire-tapping laws by recording public officials.

The obvious response would seem to be:

1. They are public officials supposedly in pursuit of their public duties. Citizens have a right to subject public duties to inspection.
2. Wire-tap laws were written to protect citizens from government, not protect government from citizens.

None of these cases have made it to the Supreme Court, which has tilted so far toward government against citizens, a positive ruling is in doubt. For years, some authorities have taken the position they may be government employees, but they are not public servants. (You may have noticed a recent odd decision that an arrestee still has a right to remain silent, but only if he doesn’t remain silent! The Court reversed the law and your rights from opt-in to opt-out.)

Pretext Tickets

Sometimes police can’t find a valid reason to arrest an annoying party, so they devise ‘pretext tickets’, such as disturbing the peace, blocking a public walkway, creating a public nuisance, or resisting arrest without violence. Whether they are eventually upheld or dismissed, they create an atmosphere of intimidation and vengeance that is unfair to good citizens and good cops alike.

It’s important to note this isn’t an anti-police screed, but an article questioning abuses of authority. One may have out-sized expectations of justice, but bad public officials tarnish the reputations of the good. Elliot Ness wasn’t the only honest cop in Chicago in 1929, but he was the one who wouldn’t tolerate dishonesty in his team.

That’s ironic considering the corruption-prone state of Illinois (home of Gov. Rod Blagojevich caught on tape) legislated away your right to video-record in public places. Want to legally tape your family on the beach or public park? You must obtain everyone’s permission who might show up in a frame. Want to capture a politician’s bribe or a security guard clubbing a drunk? You must obtain their permission, else you are the villain.

And here in Florida…

Naturally, Florida has to trump Maryland by arresting a model from Maryland, Tasha Ford, for, in her words, "filming [police] for my own protection."

"Since your mother is such a fucking asshole, I’m going to arrest you for trespassing."

"You fucking northerners think you can come down here and mess with cops. You are about to get a lesson 101 on how to deal with Florida cops."

Supposedly, these police statements were recorded by her video camera as police tackled and arrested her son for allegedly passing a movie ticket back in line to a friend to gain free entry. I say "supposedly", because Boynton Beach Police confiscated her camera.

A police supervisor ordered the mother’s arrest under Florida’s electronic surveillance statute, which is supposed to be applied to recording phone conversations without the other party’s consent. Asking too many questions of police can be considered obstructive, and yes, they added the charge of asking too many questions, to wit– resisting arrest without violence.

At her arraignment, the judge lectured Tasha Ford, asking if she’d learned her lesson.

Say what?

You mean the lesson freedom requires constant vigilance? Probably not what the judge had in mind, but that’s my take.

After Palm Beach State Attorney’s Office dropped charges ("the State will not be able to establish beyond a reasonable doubt either that the defendant’s actions constituted a violation of the interception of communication statute or that the officers were acting in the lawful execution of a legal duty”), Boynton Beach Police were reluctant to release the camera and contents intact but, according to police, the camera should have been returned by now.

Donut Capers

Remember the mounds of doughnuts in Twin Peaks? I don’t mean to pick on cops, I really don’t. It’s a tough job, but I can’t resist a touch of light relief. A few years ago, a policeman called a radio station to complain about the local shock jock ragging on overweight cops and doughnuts– and he happened to call from a Mr. Donut. At least he took his outing in stride.

In separate incidents, civilian videographers recorded officers in a hurry to get to Dunkin Donuts, some variously speeding, running red lights, darting in and out of traffic, and parking illegally– in a handicap space– and then resenting their illegally parked cars being photographed. One of the officers responded by issuing a NYC city councilman a $165 ticket. (As the officer says, each story has two sides and he claimed the councilman illegally parked, too.)

Doughnuts, just sayin’…

Source Disclosure

My primary source for the latter part of this story is Florida whistleblower Carlos Miller, a veteran news reporter and activist for the right to record officials in the performance of their duties. He’s exposed several abuses and false arrests and has himself been arrested at least twice for videotaping police. Miller’s blog pops up on our local radar screen with unnerving irregularity, and he’s managed to gain national attention.

Darn, I’m hungry for a glazed Krispy Kreme.

Update 09 July 2010

Three states now use wiretapping laws– intended to protect citizens against the state– to protect the state from citizens and make recording police illegal without police permission. Those three states are Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts.

Maryland police are interpreting the law that public officials have a right to privacy– and private citizens do not. "The state can watch you– you can’t watch the state."

It’s different when when police are caught on their own cameras. In the Maryland student beating case, official cameras mysteriously stopped working and the only recordings made came from private cell phones. Maryland police have proved particularly recalcitrant when defendants sought exculpatory police dash cam recordings in court. In one case, police claimed all seven cameras in seven different police cars failed to record at the critical moment.

In Illinois, recording police is a Class 1 felony (same as sexual assault and many violent crimes), punishable with 4-12 years in prison. Journalists now wonder if these laws can be used against them.

James Machado, executive director of the Massachusetts Police Association, makes the point that most private records support and vindicate police in the performance of their duties. As another police man said, "If we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing, we shouldn’t mind."

On 8 July 2010, Neal Conan talked with Carlos Miller (in our article) and Reason Magazine’s Radley Balko in an NPR interview. (transcript)

DASHES AND SPLATS

by John M. Floyd

Sounds like a football game, right? Actually, I’m referring to marks of punctuation. And since we at this blog are writers ourselves, and have already done a number of columns about punctuation and several about the titles of stories/novels/movies, well, today I thought I’d put those two subjects together.

Wild style

Colons, commas, apostrophes, hyphens, etc., are common in titles — but the following are a few examples of unusual punctuation used in titles of fictional works.

NOTE : Some of these involve special characters or other strange content rather than just punctuation. But what can I say? I couldn’t resist.

Multiple colons: Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach

Exclamation Point: Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot

Multiple exclamation points: Tora! Tora! Tora!

Slash: Face/Off (Yes, I know, it makes no sense.)

Dash and hyphen: Jim Thorpe — All-American

Multiple hyphens: They Went That-A-Way and That-A-Way

Multiple commas: Sex, Lies, and Videotape

Parentheses: (500) Days of Summer

Question Mark: Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? (or framed Roger Rabbit?)

Non-possessive apostrophe: Singin’ in the Rain

Multiple apostrophes: Rock ’n’ Roll Frankenstein

Fraction: Nine ½ Weeks

Single letter: M

Single letter repeated: Sssssss

Repeated word: It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

Repeated phrase: The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming

Asterisk: Bat*21

Multiple asterisks (triple splat): M*A*S*H

Multiple conjunctions: Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice

Misspelled word: Killer Klowns from Outer Space

Number only: 21

Number (spelled funny): Se7en

Time only: 11:14

Date only: 11/4/08 (documentary about Obama’s election day)

Ellipses: Slap Her . . . She’s French

Multiple ellipses: Tick . . . Tick . . . Tick

Equals sign: E=mc2

Pound sign: Waterhole # 3

Dollar sign: $ (heist movie with Goldie Hawn and Warren Beatty)

Per cent sign: 99 and 44/100% Dead

Ampersand: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Multiple ending punctuation: The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?

Music to the ear

The following are some titles that have no punctuation (except for one question mark and one apostrophe), but that I like just because of the way they sound. Let’s face it, they got rhythm:

• At Play in the Fields of the Lord

• The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera

• The Sins of Rachel Cade

• The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

• Who the Hell Is Wanda Fuca?

• Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead

Hey, maybe you can’t judge a story by its title — but if a story’s good already, a clever title makes it better.

Lean Mean Thirteen?

While we’re talking about titles (or at least since we’ve abandoned all pretense of enlightenment and are at play in the fields of Mindless Trivia) I’d like to offer one more item. It’s a poem I wrote called “An Organized Life,” and serves as a good example of why I’m not a poet:

I got Capricorn One at the video store,
Then saw Two for the Road on TV;
After Three Musketeers and Four Desperate Men
An intriguing idea came to me.

I watched Five Easy Pieces, Six Bridges to Cross,
Followed by The Magnificent Seven;
Then I rented 8 Seconds and went to Netflix
to locate Fahrenheit 9/11.

Ten Commandments and Ocean’s Eleven came next,
And Twelve O’Clock High was half done
When my wife threw a kink in my orderly plan —
She rented 2001.

And, in closing, the weirdest title of all:

The Incredibly Strange People Who Watched All Six Seasons of LOST and Became Mixed-Up Writers!!?

SCHRODINGER’S CUP

by Steven Steinbock

Twenty-five years ago or so, my sister was spending a year in Denmark as part of a college exchange program. During that year she took a trip through several European countries. One of the first stops was Venice, where she saw a cute Venetian glass Kiddush cup that she bought for me.

I still have that cup. But it wasn’t until just a couple months ago that my sister told me the daring story behind it.

As any American college student in the early 1980s would do while on such a trip, she was living out of her backpack. Because Venice was one of the first stops, she had to carry that tender little Kiddush cup for the next couple of weeks while hiking, taking trains, and going from country to country, hostel to hostel.

When she bought the cup, she had it wrapped carefully and put in a box. Throughout her journey, she dared not open the box for fear of seeing broken shards of crimson glass instead of a Kiddush cup. When she got back to Copenhagen she decided not to tempt fate. She decided that as long as she didn’t open the box, as long as she didn’t know whether or not it was broken, the cup was safe.

As luck would have it, the cup did make it back to the States in one piece. And as I said, I still keep it on a shelf with other items of China, crystal, and silver.

After my sister related the story of the cup’s journey to me, I told her how much it sounded like the story of Schrodinger’s Cat. My sister didn’t know what that was. So I explained it.

Schrodinger’s Cat isn’t so much a story as it is a thought experiment. I’ll do my best to recollect it, but astute reader, please keep in mind that while I’m being as precise as I can, I’m a storyteller and not a physicist.

One of the paradoxes of Quantum Mechanics is that it allows the possibility for a single item of matter to be in two mutually exclusive states at the same time. I think this means that on a subatomic level, a particle is in every state that it could be.

Image a camera lens, for instance. The light reflected from a tree passes through the lens where the light particles (or are they waves?) flip upside down where they hit the film. The tree is right-side up, as are the light waves (or were they particles?) on one side of the lens. But on the opposite side of the lens the light representing the tree is upside down. There must be a single point – a singularity, if you will – at which the upside down and right-side up images meet. At that single point, what is the state of the tree image? Is it upside down or right-side up? I assume that at this point the image is in both states, as impossible as this sounds.

So back in 1935, Erwin Schrodinger used the metaphor of a cat to illustrate the paradox to Einstein. I don’t think Schrodinger ever intended it to be understood literally. I may be wrong. He referred to this as a ridiculous example. So I think he was simply illustrating the point.

A cat is locked in a sound-proof, light-proof box. You can’t see or hear how the cat is doing. Along with the cat is a capsule containing deadly radioactive material. There is exactly a 50/50 chance that the capsule will release radiation that will kill the cat. Schrodinger suggested that while the cat is sealed inside the box, it is in a state of being both alive and dead.

From the cat’s point of view, the whole notion is absurd. He knows if he’s alive even if the scientist doesn’t. Just the same, the thought experiment has led to a number of other important theoretical schools of thought in the world of physics. Not to mention, it’s given me a Schrodinger’s Kiddush Cup.

Anecdotal Reporting

You don’t have to be trapped in a box in order to be in two states simultaneously. It’s possible for a person to be both artistic and scientific. However, there are two areas in which physicists and storytellers see the world in completely incompatible terms.

The word anecdote is an anathema to scientists. I live with a scientist, and when she says the word, it is with the same inflection and emotion as she might say “urinary tract infection.” To a scientist, the word anecdotal is synonymous with unproven (which in most scientist’s minds is equated with false). Because an anecdote is a one-time event, it can’t be measured or repeated. Therefore it can’t be used as data and therefore isn’t true.

To a storyteller, an anecdote is a beautiful thing. It is kernel of a story, a story-within-a-story, a multifaceted gem asking to be gazed at. In The Maltese Falcon, Hammett uses the anecdote about Flitcraft to help establish Sam Spade’s drives and character. This is the beauty of anecdotes: they give you a picture worth a thousand words told in fewer than a thousand words.

The other difference is that a storyteller would never let the cat die.

TAKING PEN IN HAND

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

There’s something special about actually putting pen to paper. It’s as different from composing a story on a computer as it is to receive a hand-written letter instead of an e-mail. The content may be the same, but the delivery is so impersonal.

Pressed for time, digital responses are necessary in most instances, but not all. Even emoticons can’t convey as much in their effort as the words they represent spelled out. And of course, there are the dolts who choose to use texting as a way to break up so as not to have to suffer any fallout in person.

Technology changed the world into running at a faster and faster pace—which is mostly good. I admit e-mail submissions of a short story are more convenient. It saves trees—although paper is a wonderful thing in that it’s recyclable, biodegradable, and replenishable.

E-mails are lost floating around somewhere in cyberspace where they are supposedly available if only we know how to find them. A love letter e-mail somehow isn’t quite the same as one kept wrapped in a ribbon in a secret place. Yes, I realize paper yellows and grows brittle, but there’s something about touching the stationery your lover touched while writing the matter of his heart.

Wait, you say. Isn’t this blog about writing stories?

Yes, it is, but we’ll agree as a group, we love fiction and mysteries in particular. That’s why we’re here.

I write on a computer most of the time, only jotting down ideas in my notebook when I’m out and about living the rest of my life. I filter through these notes and type them into a folder on my computer. Computers are wonderful filing cabinets that take up no extra space in the office or require dusting. Eliminating paper cuts is one great point in favor of using a computer filing system.

Still, every once in a while, I feel a need—almost an obsession—to write a story the old-fashioned way by putting pen to paper. The feel of the pen in my hand is more conducive to some characters joining in the story. I’m not sure if it’s the actual curving of the letters of script or just the pressure of the pen point against the page, but writing “by hand” seems to deliver a different type of story than when I use the computer for the first draft. I’ll eventually transfer the story to the computer, but when I begin as writers have for centuries, I seem to connect with the Muse on a more personal level.

Many writers I know swear they compose à la Margaret Mitchell, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gone With the Wind, in handwriting on yellow legal-sized notepads.

Others write strictly on a computer, and a lone soul going the Ian Fleming route hammers out his novels on a manual he found in a yard sale. He then pays college students to type his masterpieces into MS Word on a computer he keeps strictly for Internet connections.

Who writes better? That’s a matter of preference. I think perhaps it isn’t the why or even the how we write our stories as much that we do.

I’m off to spend a quiet morning with nothing but a fabulous fountain pen I’ve had since I was a teenager and wrote my first short story, an extremely angst-ridden story of young love. The pen fits nicely in my hand and the stories written with it are some of my favorites, probably because they are the most personal.

GOING VIRAL

by Rob Lopresti

I am afraid I am not my usual charming self today. More in a mood to cuss and kick the furniture. I was almost not able to provide a column this week. It looked for a while like James might have had to fill the space with a Mannix rerun or something.

You see, my main computer has been in the hospital for two days, having its discs scoured clean. It caught a virus on Wednesday night. I still don’t know where it came from but it strolled past my ESET brand anti-virus software like it was carrying an engraved invitation.

And. alas, I hadn’t run a backup in a while. So none of my current half-finished blog entries were available, even if I had been in a mood to slap them onto the netbook. But clearly our intrepid computer guru was able to beat the nasty little bug to death and put in a new anti-virus program he thinks will be a bit more awake.

News flash…

So before I resume my epic pout let me tell you about a news story one of the IT guys at work pointed out to us. This was back in March but I saved it, never guessing how much I would need it.

PC Pro reported on a company in Kiev called Innovative Marketing Ukraine. Sounds like a nice place to work. Hundreds of techies, mostly college students, pumping out computer code. There was a human resources department, a call center, good salaries, holiday parties and even paintball competitions.

You’ve probably seen the punchline coming by now. Those hardworking geeks were creating viruses for a living. Like the one that caught me, their products were not just intended to be mean, the goal was to make money. From the article:

The company built its wealth pioneering scareware—programs that pretend to scan a computer for viruses, and then tells the user that their machine is infected. The goal is to persuade the victim to voluntarily hand over their credit card information, paying $50 to $80 to “clean” their PC.

That’s approximately what appeared on my machine. Would you believe these Ukrainians earned—if I may use that word in this context—approximately $180 million in 2008?

They are closed down now but of course there are many rivals in this thriving sector of the business economy, all eager to ruin your week for a few bucks. So back up early and often and change your anti-viral software occasionally.

I’m going to go grumble some more. I wonder what Mannix would have done?

Here is the beginning of the introduction of my good friend two-time Edgar-winner Daniel Stashower‘s new book, The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder.

I had decided to have a piece about the Mary Rogers murder and how it inspired Poe’s second detective story today, and was looking for something in the public domain when I found out about Dan’s latest opus. Well, it’s not public domain, but this was too clearly an act of Providence not to take advantage of it. I wrote to Dan and asked his permission to print this excerpt, and as of this writing I haven’t yet heard from him, but I’m going ahead anyway, since anybody who reads what is reproduced below is going to want more and buy the book. —JLW

THE BEAUTIFUL CIGAR GIRL

by Daniel Stashower

In June of 1842, Edgar Allan Poe took up his pen to broach a delicate subject with an old friend. “Have I offended you by any of my evil deeds?” he asked. “If so, how? Time was when you could spare a few minutes occasionally for communion with a friend.”

Poe’s correspondent, a magazine editor by the name of Joseph Evans Snodgrass, would have known only too well what was coming next. Once again, Poe would launch a tirade against the latest publisher or literary rival to have wronged him. This done, Poe would admit to finding himself in a state of “pecuniary embarrassment” with no work and few prospects, and would ask his old friend to offer some “very trifling aid” in the form of a loan.

Poe’s latest letter, Snodgrass noted with relief, marked a departure from the usual pattern. “I have a proposition to make,” he wrote. “You may remember a tale of mine published about a year ago . . . entitled the ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ Its theme was the exercise of ingenuity in detecting a murderer. I am just now putting the concluding touch to a similar article, which I shall entitle ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt’—a Sequel to ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The story is based upon that of the real murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers, which created so vast an excitement, some months ago, in New-York.”

Snodgrass needed no reminders of that vast excitement. Mary Rogers, who was widely known as “the beautiful cigar girl,” had been a figure of note on the streets of New York City. From her post behind the cigar counter of John Anderson’s Tobacco Emporium on lower Broadway, Mary Rogers had cast her spell over half the men in the city. Her famous “dark smile” was said to be as potent as cupid’s arrow. Admirers from all walks of life, from the Bowery to City Hall, came to bask in her presence. Some offered up poems to her beauty. Others spoke in carrying voices of their business triumphs, sometimes patting their wallets and casting sidelong glances in her direction. All the while the cigar girl stood prettily behind the counter, eyes cast downward, pretending not to hear. Sometimes she would flutter her fingers to her mouth, as if shocked by a coarse phrase, but the eyes were cool and knowing.

It was feared by some that Anderson’s impressionable young employee would come to grief in such rough company. The New York Morning Herald expressed an earnest desire that “something should be done instantly to remedy the great evil consequent upon very beautiful girls being placed in cigar and confectionery stores. Designing rich rascals drop into these places, buy cigars and sugar plums, gossip with the girl and ultimately affect her ruin.”

These fears proved tragically prophetic. In July of 1841 Mary Rogers was found brutally murdered, sparking a massive public outcry and setting the stage for one of the most harrowing public dramas of the nineteenth century. driving one man to suicide, another to madness, and a third to public disgrace and humiliation. The death of the cigar girl, wrote one New Yorker, marked the “terrible moment when the city lost its innocence.”

For good or ill, the crime also became a catalyst for sweeping change. The city’s unregulated and disjointed police force proved unable to mount an effective investigation, prompting an ambitious slate of social and political reforms, even as the prurient details of the murder gave fuel to a furious newspaper circulation war, pushing American journalism into previously unimagined realms of sensationalism. The wily James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald seized on the case as a “grim cautionary tale,” giving himself a pretext to linger over the more lurid aspects of the case, and sparking a ferocious debate over the limits of journalistic propriety. “We cannot have the blood of murdered innocents served up to us at breakfast,” declared one outraged reader. “Have the gentlemen of the press no shame?” The plea for restraint went unheard: the drama of Mary Rogers would be one of the earliest and most significant murder cases to play out in the pages of the American press, laying the groundwork for every “crime of the century” to follow, from Lizzie Borden’s murders in 1892 to the murder of Stanford White in 1906, through the present day.

From the first. however, false leads and misconceptions dogged the case. In the days following the discovery of the body, it was widely assumed that Mary Rogers had fallen prey to one of the notorious “gangs of New York,” such as the Plug-Uglies or the Hudson Dusters, who ran riot through the streets, apparently reveling in the complete absence of any effective police authority “Must we yield our streets to these villains?” railed the New York Tribune. “Can we not call upon our elected officials to bring law upon the lawless?” The newspapers were eager to create a martyr. “In one emphatic word,” declared the Herald, “New York is disgraced and dishonored in the eyes of the civilized world, unless one great, one big, one strong moral movement be made to reform and reinvigorate the administration of criminal justice, and to protect the lives and property of its inhabitants from public violence and public robbery. Who will make the first move in this truly great moral reform?”

As the public’s indignation grew, Mary Rogers achieved the dubious distinction of becoming a bankable commodity. Within two weeks of the murder, a daguerrotypist had procured an engraving and struck a huge number of copies, said to he a “correct likeness” of the dead woman. “A peddler might sell a great number by taking them to Hoboken,” he declared in an advertisement for his wares, “where so many people are visiting the spot daily.” Pamphleteers also got into the act; a lurid account entitled The Dark Deed sold for six cents and recounted “several attempts of courtship and seduction brought about by her manifold charms.” A potboiler novel called The Beautiful Cigar Girl would soon follow.

One year later. however, the crime remained unsolved, leaving lives ruined and reputations shattered. As public interest began to wane, Edgar Allan Poe saw a unique opportunity. His plan, as he told his friend Snodgrass, was to take up the case in a manner that had never been attempted, or even imagined. Through the lens of fiction, he would study the facts of the case, expose the weaknesses and false assumptions of the official inquiry, and offer his own conclusions as to what had occurred—even pointing a finger at the likely villain. In short, Poe suggested, he would lay out a solution that could well force the New York police to reopen their investigation.

It was an astonishing gambit. At the time of the murder, Poe had been enjoying a rare interlude of prosperity as an editor of Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine, an illustrated monthly journal. He had followed the details of the Mary Rogers case with great care, and is even said to have been a patron of Anderson’s Tobacco Emporium, where the cigar girl had worked. Poe’s tenure at Graham’s marked a brief period of calm in an otherwise turbulent career. In spite of his obvious gifts as a poet and short story writer, Poe had a constant struggle to cobble together a living and was often reduced to begging for loans from sympathetic friends such as Snodgrass. Whatever small reputation he enjoyed rested chiefly on his work as a literary critic, a field in which he displayed great sensitivity and insight, but also a ruthlessness that earned him many enemies. Much of Poe’s greatest work had already been written at the time of the cigar girl’s death, but fame and creative freedom continued to elude him. “I have not only labored solely for the benefit of others (receiving for thyself a miserable pittance),” he wrote, “but have been forced to model my thoughts at the will of men whose imbecility was evident to all but themselves.”

“The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” he hoped, would change all that. Poe’s groundbreaking story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which introduced the amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin, had appeared in Graham’s in April 1841, about two months before the Mary Rogers murder. Poe presented Dupin as a reclusive, brilliant figure, shuttered away in his dimly lit chamber, venturing out only at night to prowl the streets of Paris and enjoy the “infinity of mental excitement” afforded by his powers of observation. The story anticipated virtually every convention of what would become the modern mystery story—the brooding, eccentric sleuth; the comparatively dense sidekick; the wrongfully accused suspect; the unlikely villain; the false clue; and—perhaps above all—the impossible, locked-room crime. Today the story stands as a literary milestone—the genesis of tire entire crure fiction genre—but its original publication drew only scant notice. By the following year Poe had left Graham’s and his fortunes had taken a precipitous downward turn. Casting about for an idea he could sell, Poe decided to apply Dupin’s powers of “ratiocination,” or deductive reasoning, to a real-life puzzle, transforming the murder of Mary Rogers into “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.”