Larry Lippman has been dead for a couple of years now, but he touched my life and made it a little better, even though I never met him. Larry was a net.person.

The network of computers that is nowadays called the "information superhighway" is rather a strange place. You see messages being sent hither and yon. Debates, diatribes, manifestos, static. The net has a terrible signal-to-noise ratio: for every one sincere question and few concise answers, you see several incorrect answers, half a dozen "I wondered about that too" musings, numerous flames and a bunch of guys trying to get rich quick. There seems to always be somebody trying to sell a dinette set in New Jersey, who hasn't figured out how to restrict his advertisement to his local area. And then there is the typical merchant who figures that he can sell some magazine subscriptions by posting copies of his ad to every distribution list under the sun. Things have gotten worse in the years since Larry walked the net. Perhaps he had a part in keeping things together.

Larry was a fount of information. Whatever question you asked, whatever strange technology you were dealing with, Larry knew about it. And he wasn't stingy with the information. Larry didn't do much pontificating. If you posted a serious question, Larry would probably come up with a well considered answer.

Better than just providing an answer, Larry's information was correct. And in a medium where you can't see anybody, can't hear their voices, or read the expressions on their faces, you don't always know whom to trust. Credibility is the coin of the realm on the net, and Larry had a treasure house full.

Larry had more than quick answers. He had humor. His postings were readable and funny. He was able to get his point across, more often than not with a smile, sometimes an anecdote from his own experience, and often a story about the cosmetics company that his family ran.

Larry was not without fault. He was sometimes flamed and occasionally flamed others. But that's life on the net. On the average, Larry's postings were calm, cool, and collected.

But there was something else that Larry did. He signed every message that he posted with "Have you hugged your cat today?" It just made him a little more human. I thought that he had a great idea, and hugged my cat frequently. Like I said, Larry was smart.

It was perhaps three years ago that I heard about Larry's death. Like his life, his death was a distant impalpable thing that came to me over the net. I was sitting at my desk, late in the evening, reading the USENET news, when I came upon a special posting. I kept a copy of that posting. I intend to restore it, as well as some of Larry's writings, from tape archive and share them with you some day. The posting was from Dr. Marvin Minsky, professor of Artificial Intelligence at M.I.T. It was Larry's obituary.

It turns out that, like many of us, Dr. Minsky was a fan of Larry Lippman. It had been awhile, with no postings from Larry, and Dr. Minsky did a rare thing: he picked up the telephone and tried to call Larry in person. At this point, I must point out that Dr. Minsky's action was against all etiquette on the net: you're not really supposed to know who's on the other end of the net; you can choose which parts of your personality you expose in your postings; you can hide behind the mask of E-mail. Dr. Minsky broke the rules and found out who "Larry Lippman" really was. Worse still, he called Larry's house.

That's how Dr. Minsky learned that Larry had recently died. And, in the spirit of exchanging information that has built the net, he posted an electronic message letting the rest of us know what he had found. I collapsed over my keyboard and cried out loud for a man whom I had never met, whose picture I had never seen, and whose voice I had never heard.

Years have passed. From time to time, I think about Larry. I still hug Amber, my cat, a lot. And sometimes I say, "This is for Larry!"

I drifted away from the net for awhile. Earlier this year, I drifted back: I bought a 288 modem, made a deal with an internet service provider, and got back on the highway. I lurked for awhile, reading messages but not responding. I was taking the pulse of the net. Then I saw a question in the recreational pyrotechnics group by a fellow wondering if he could change the color of a candle flame. He had already gotten a couple of replies, mostly negative. This was a subject that I could talk about, so I posted a reply...

Date: Thu, 11 Jan 96 04:46:35 0800
From: Dennis Griesser
Newsgroups: rec.pyrotechnics
Subject: Re: Different colored candle flames

In reference to coloring candle flames by adding chemicals (in this case table
salt) to the wick, billn@PEAK.ORG (Bill Nelson) wrote:
> All you would get is more yellow - and the candle flame is already yellow.
> Methinks it would be a waste of table salt. 

At the risk of providing some information on the subject, I can report on
some experiments that I undertook about a year ago...

Bill is on the right track here.  The problem is not in getting some color,
it is in making that color visible.  When dealing with the flame of an
ordinary candle, you already get a lot of white/yellow light.  That tends to
wash out any color that you get from "doping" the wick or fuel with chemicals.

In order to make the color visible, you have to start with a flame that has
very little visible color by itself.  That instantly rules out candles and
oil lamps, because they are designed to provide visible light.

I have gotten my best results by using alcohol flames.  If you start with a
good, pure ethanol, you get a faint blue flame.  In fact, quite a few people
have been burned by alcohol flames not knowing that they were burning.

Obtain or build a small alcohol lamp and light it.  Adjust the wick to get
the flame size that you like.  Then put it out and remove the wick and wring
it out to remove as much pure fuel as possible.  Then experiment by adding 
table salt to the fuel container.  Make it a saturated solution by adding more
salt than will dissolve.  Replace the wick, setting the wick to whatever
height you decided was optimum for pure fuel.  After the fuel doped with table
salt  reaches the flame, you will get a very nice yellow/orange color.  This
is due to the atomic emission by the sodium in the salt.

Various other materials can provide other colors.  Some are atomic emitters,
others are molecular.  In the latter case, you have to make sure that the
flame temperature is not so high as to destroy the desired color species.

You can perform a "flame test" by scooping a small amount of your proposed
chemical on a loop of inert wire and holding it in the flame of an undoped
burner.  This is basic grade school chemistry.  Try boric acid for a really
nice green.

In my experiments, I had trouble finding salt that dissolved enough in the
alcohol to actually carry up the wick to the flame.  If the salt won't
dissolve, you won't keep the flame colored.  Another problem was that after
awhile, the topmost surface of the wick became encrusted with excess salt,
oxidation products, etc., and choked off the alcohol supply.

Good luck with your experiments, and please share your results with the rest
of us.

[Yes, Larry, I've hugged my kitty today!]

By posting, I had moved from the status of lurker to some form of contributor. I was opening myself up to rebuttal. So I was not too terribly surprised to find that I soon got E-mail on the subject. But it wasn't quite what I expected...

Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 20:29:18 -0800
From: Bill Nelson
To: Dennis Griesser
Subject: Re: Different colored candle flames
Newsgroups: rec.pyrotechnics

In article <4d24o7$mg3@argentina.it.earthlink.net> you wrote:

: [Yes, Larry, I've hugged my kitty today!]

Ah, someone else who misses him.

Bill

- Dennis Griesser

Thank you for visiting. Your comments are welcome.
. . . . . .