Thanks, John--- I'm glad you enjoyed it. It was fun to experience and to write about, where for me the two things aren't unrelated.
As for your questions:
1. No relation. He, I suspect, exaggerates a little every once in a while. My work is pure documentary.
2. The origin of "torpified" is a sort of long story involving Benjamin Jowett's translation of Plato's Meno and a VAX mainframe I used in college --- "torpified" was my "process name."
