Permanent Fatal Errors: The Information Age and the war Criminal Next Door (Essay‪)‬

Last year, at a cocktail party, I found myself in one of those competitive conversations common in university circles, wherein the participants choose a topic--strange neighbors, in this case-- and try to outdo one another with spontaneous flourishes of memoir. Among the neighbors described were: the stereotypical shut-in, sad and creepy as Boo Radley; the stereotypical cat lady who lay dead in her house, unnoticed, for several weeks and was discovered only because her cats wailed so sorrowfully; the stereotypical bully with Tourette's Syndrome. The Tourette memoir was very winning, its performer tossing tics and f***s into his dialogue at every turn, and when he finished he actually turned to me and said, "Beat that." But I had him in spades: I'd grown up next to a Nazi war criminal. "His name was Joe," I said. "One day he was discovered and there were news crews all over the place. He fled to Canada before they could deport him."