How a Fake Restaurant Review on Yelp Backfired

W. Blake Gray is a food writer for the SFWeekly. He was informed about a review of Tuba restaurant on Yelp, written by a Maya C. In her review, she claims to be working for the SF.

She wrote: “This place totally rocks! The food blows your mind away. I also write for SF weekly and I definitely am writing about them this week."

But there is one major problem - she never wrote for SF! As the food editor stated, he knows all the writers and what they are and aren't assigned to do. However, he never heard of “Maya C.”!

Blake Gray set out to correct the “mistake” – easier said than done. Yelp isn't easy to deal with, as he found out to his readers’ amusement.

He started by sending Ms. Fakester a message:

"I am the food editor at SF Weekly. Who are you? We don't have a Maya C. working for us right now. Please explain why you cite us in your review of Tuba."

Maya C, sent the following response (to avoid legal action?):

"sf weekly voice, I will fix it. I am very very sorry to cite your name, I haven't checked my reviews since".

Needless to say, she never did. Yelp also took the moral low ground:

SF Weekly is obviously worried about its credibility, while Yelp could not care less.

In the mean time, just ignore the A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! fake review of Tuba - it’s as real as a three dollar note. If you still want to go to Tuba, I have a bridge I want to sell you…..

Harper Lee Sues Her Agent Samuel Pinkus Over ‘Mockingbird’ Royalties

For those of you who don’t know - Harper Lee is the author of one of my favorites – To Kill a Mockingbird which was published in 1960. The novel is set in the racial South and won a Pulitzer Prize. It was also turned into a compelling movie featuring the legendary Gregory Peck who won an Oscar for his portrayal of lawyer Atticus Finch.

Harper Lee is still alive, at the ripe age of 87. Ms. Lee has failing eyesight and hearing. She resides in an assisted-living facility since 2007 after suffering a stroke.

Harper Lee engages McIntosh & Otis as her literary agent for many years. When Eugene Winick,one of the principles at the firm became ill in 2002, his son-in-law Mr. Samuel Pinkus took over. Pinkus was sued by McIntosh for stealing several clients, including Ms. Lee.

In 2007, Ms. Lee signed a document assigning her copyright to her agent’s company. The idea was that her agent, Mr. Samuel Pinkus, would act on her behalf.

Once Harper Lee found out that her agent took advantage of her advanced age and infirmity to swindle her out of royalties due to her. She promptly sued at the federal court in New York. ( Lee v. Pinkus, 13-3000, U.S. District Court, U.S. Bankruptcy Court,Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

Samuel Pinkus et al are sued to confirm Harper Lee’s copyright ownership of “To Kill a Mockingbird”.  In her suit, she asks that all commissions received by Pinkus will be forfeited.

Last year, Lee’s copyright was re-assigned to her after legal action. Samuel Pinkus was fired as her agent. However, he kept receiving royalties from sales of “To Kill a Mockingbird” as detailed  in the legal complaint.

According to Harper Lee’s lawyer Ms. Gloria Phares: “Pinkus knew that Harper Lee was an elderly woman with physical infirmities that made it difficult for her to read and see.  Harper Lee had no idea she had assigned her copyright.”

The defendants, Samuel Pinkus and his wife Ann Winick did not respond. Ms. Winick is the president of Keystone Literary LLC and listed as a defendant. Another named defendant, Gerald Posner, also did not respond. Mr. Posner is a New York lawyer and investigative journalist who incorporated one of Pinkus’s businesses.

Ms. Lee wrote an amazing novel that inspired generations. Taking advantage of her is just obnoxious. Let’s hope that the court sees it the same way.

The Dutch Dirty Past - Slavery Was Abolished in Holland As Late As 1863

Slave trade has been a black chapter in Dutch history. The Dutch always had a problem recognizing the fact that they made hefty profits from slave trade for centuries. Recent research shows that the Dutch traded an estimated total of 600,000 slaves and not 550,000 as reported before. This means that 3,000 slaves a year were transported for profit between the years 1600 and 1800 on Dutch ships.

The driving motive for transporting those slaves to the New Colonies (USA) was pure greed. In 1855 Mr. W. R. van Hoëvell wrote in his book Slaves and Freed Persons under the Dutch Law: “Each house in Amsterdam is like a palace – but the treasures that build these houses are for the greater part the result of squeezing life, sweat and blood out of whipped and beaten slaves.”

Professor Piet Emmer made it his mission to downplay the historic profits of the Dutch slave trading by juggling the numbers. He fails to understand that the numbers are not important; it’s the attitude and lack of conscience that makes it all so obnoxious.

The Dutch tradesmen got the lowest purchase price by enlisting African Ashanti slave traders to raid whole villages to meet the demands of the US. Ships were stocked to the maximum in order to compensate for the “loss of cargo” percentage during the voyage.

Food was also calculated as a business cost in order to transport as many “goods” as possible for the lowest possible costs. Once arriving in the US, the “heads” were sold as cattle and put to work on the plantations – whipped, abused and suppressed by their “owners” and local authorities. There was only one goal: making as much profit as possible by producing sugar, coffee, cotton, and indigo for the lowest cost.

The reason that the main Dutch trading companies (the West-India Company and the Middelburg Commerce Company) decided that slave trade was not profitable anymore does not make them any less inhuman.

Abolition of slavery was not inspired at all by decency or morality, but solely by the fact that it just was not financially viable anymore. It was therefore a pure business decision and nothing else.

This makes remembering the slave trade even more horrific. The last thing we need is another “Holocaust denial” movement to gloss over the horrific acts our ancestors conducted towards African slaves.

 (Image© ANP. 2002: three statues in the Scheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam, part of the exposition 'Slaves and Ships – One way trip, destination unknown'.)

The Voynich Mystery – Part II

In September 2012, I wrote about the Voynich mystery. The Voynich Manuscript is a detailed 240-page book written in a language or script that is completely unknown. It is named after the Polish-American antiquarian bookseller Wilfrid M. Voynich. He acquired it in 1912.

The pages are filled with colorful drawings of strange diagrams, odd events and plants that do not seem to match any known species. The appeal of the manuscript is impossibility to decipher it.

Many scientists are still trying to crack the Voynich code. One of them is Jorge Stolfi, a professor of computer science at the State University of Campinas, Brazil. He was able to compose a grammar for Voynichese and concluded that it behaves like a natural language, more so than like a code, as many others believe.

According to Stolfi, Voynichese points to an Asian language like Chinese with its short words with tonal structures. He theorizes that someone went to the Far East and phonetically transcribed something he heard or read. He explains: “It is not unusual at that time to make up an alphabet to record a foreign language.” 

  

But Andreas Schinner, a theoretical physicist, argues that the non-randomness of syllable distribution is a strong indication that it is a hoax, not a natural language. He concluded that the ‘language’ is very different from human writings, even from ‘exotic’ languages like Chinese. In fact, the results better fit to a ‘stochastic process’ (a sequence of correlated random events).” In an article in Cryptologia, he concluded that the Voynich Manuscript does not contain any encrypted messages.

Psychologist Gordon Rugg agrees that it is a hoax. This creates a new mystery – why would anyone create such a manuscript? Creating a hoax for profit?

The main suspect for penning a hoax manuscript is EdwardKelley who had a track record of creating made-up languages and perpetrating frauds and hoaxes. As a convicted villain, he had his ears cropped for forgery.

However, the Voynich Manusript shares many similarities with Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, a 17th-century utopian tract about a fantasy island. In it, Bacon’s ideal college is described, including the  unknown plants, the grafting, the code, books on velum, and new types of animals, as well as a bath full of naked ladies.

For now, the Manuscript keeps its secrets, although many experts believe that the key to the Voynich manuscript is just around the corner. Let’s wait and see...I will keep you posted!

How the City of Amsterdam was Duped by an Author with a Questionable Reputation

The City of Amsterdam wanted to hire a consultant to formulate a better policy for managing prostitution in the city.

Mayor Mr. Van der Laan and Councilman Mr. Asscher hired Ms. Valérie Lempereur, a journalist. She had published an “autobiography” under the pen name Patricia Perquin. In her book “Behind the windows in the Red Light District”, she tells her “true story” as a prostitute.

As 'Patricia Perquin', she also penned a series of articles for the Dutch newspapers Het Parool and AD. Based on these articles and her “autobiography”, she was hired as a consultant. In this capacity, she submitted various recommendations that were included in the City’s official Prostitution Plan.

Fellow journalists started digging into the background of Ms. Lempereur. They quickly found out that she could never have worked full time as prostitute for 4.5 years as claimed in her “autobiography”. It turned out that during those years, she was managing the now defunct publishing house “Lampedaire” in Antwerp, Belgium, for at least two years. She also worked in Holland and Belgium as a society and crime reporter for various magazines including NieuweRevu, Story, TV Familie en Het Laatste Nieuws. 

The newspaper De Volkskrant interviewed 25 acquaintances of Ms. Lempereur. Several did not want to go on record out of fear for repercussions.

Not without reason: the three newspapers “de Volkskrant”, “het Parool” and “AD” are all part of the same media group (“de Persgroep”, CEO Mr. Christian Van Thillo). Lempereur worked for years at the Belgian branch of the group.

Many of the well-known acquaintances accuse her of lying and fraud. The crime reporter Peter R. de Vries fired her from his program due to multiple cases of fraud.

Lempereur tried to get an injunction against the Volkskrant newspaper. She asked the court to forbid the newspaper to publish her true identity. The judge dismissed her case.

The Mayer and Councilman declined to comment.

The scandal (not her first one!) will not harm the sales figures of her books. She has already published her second novel as Patricia Perquin, The theme is this time the victims of lover boys.

As for her “autobiography - booksellers will just move it to the fiction section. 

Go to Hell – Literally (In the Turkish City of Pamukkale)

The ancient Greeks believed that a cave in the ancient city of Hierapolis was the “gate to hell”. Known as Pluto’s Gate (Plutonium) was believed to be the portal to the underworld.

The opening of the cave was filled with lethal mephitic vapors as described by the Greek geographer and historian Strabo (circa 64 BC – circa 24 AD):

 “This space is full of a vapor so misty and dense that one can scarcely see the ground. Any animal that passes inside meets instant death. I threw in sparrows and they immediately breathed their last and fell.”

Only the eunuchs of Cybele, an ancient fertility goddess, were able to enter the Pluto’s Gate without any apparent damage, since (according to Strabo) “They hold their breath as much as they can."

He goes on to notice that their immunity could have been due to their "menomation" (impairment), “divine providence” or “certain physical powers that are antidotes against the vapor.”

Classic archeology Professor Francesco D’Andira and his team were excavating the Hellenistic city of Hierapolis in Pamukkale, Turkey, when they found Ionic semi columns and, on top of them, an inscription with a dedication to the deities of the underworld Pluto and Kore. The temple remains, pool and a series of steps placed above the cave were all as described in ancient sources.

The bustling city of Hierapolis at the time had temples, a theater and popular sacred hot springs, believed to have healing properties. It seems that the site was managed at the time by a tourist organization. Pilgrims received (quite likely against a fee) small birds to check out the deadly workings of Pluto’s Gate (not unlike coal mine canaries). They would take the waters in the pool near the temple, sleep close to the cave and would promptly experience visions and receive prophecies (the Oracle of Delphi effect).

According to the Professor, “We could see the cave's lethal properties during the excavation. Several birds died as they tried to get close to the warm opening, instantly killed by the carbon dioxide fumes.”

So the next time you tell somebody to go to hell, they might send you a postcard from Turkey!

(Image: a digital reconstruction by Edal Anton Lefterov)

Google Nose (Beta) – Google’s Perfect April Fools’ Day Prank 2013

If you googled during the first day of April, you might have noticed a new tab: “Google Nose beta”. There was also a link under the search field: “New! What’s that smell? Find out with Google Nose”

Google Nose promises to be “the sharpest olfactory experience available."  It claims to be the latest sensation: searching with your nose. To enable this, Google Nose uses professional knowledge statistics to combine images, descriptions and scents.

Afraid of bad smells? No problem, SafeSearch protects you from foul odors!

According to Google, the product intersects "photons with infrasound waves" and "temporarily aligns molecules to emulate a particular scent." The "mobile aroma indexing program" at the heart of the product has amassed a “15 million scentibyte database of smells from around the world.”

Google Nose is even available on mobile devices with its "Android Ambient Odor Detection" which allows users to collect smells on their smartphones.

Google even created a YouTube video explaining how users can “search for smells.”

It all seems too good to true, right? Well, that’s because it is! This fake product is Google’s April Fools’ Day prank 2013.

In my opinion, it’s brilliant! Just a pity I will never be able to find out what space smells like.....