Friday, March 25, 2022

Travel to the Past and Closed Time-Like Curves

 

My prior post but one dealt with time travel to the future. This one will consider ways to travel in time not restricted to strictly future-ward possibilities – ways with some scientific credentials and ways with supported only by the science of fiction.

Friday, March 11, 2022

What legal stuff was totally made up in “Inventing Anna” ?

 

Print and online discussion of the Netflix limited series “Inventing Anna” is chiefly about the character of Anna Sorokin, alias Anna Delvey, of high society, high life, big lenders and their lawyers, splashy journalists and the doubtful judgment and ethics of all the above. In these respects the public has been eager to learn how much of “the whole story is completely true,” and what are the “parts that are totally made up.” I am here interested in these latter questions, but not much in the doings and sayings of Anna, her friends, and enablers, or the hotels, restaurants, and resorts of their cavorts. Instead, my interest is in the court case, its investigation, prosecution, and defense.

I was for a year an Assistant District Attorney in the Frauds Bureau of the Manhattan DA’s office, and before that a member of the Career Criminal Bureau where in my first court appearance I second seated our then Assistant Bureau Chief, Cy Vance. So my perspective might have some prosecution bias, although I subsequently defended cases against my old office and in between taught law for several years at NYU.