Just Not Said

The PC side of the nature/nurture debate

2012-01-31T09:13:00.007-05:00

The actress Cynthia Nixon provoked a minor stir last week when she stated that for her, homosexuality is a choice.

She added that for many people it's not, but that those others shouldn't get to define her gayness for her.

This flies in the face of what gay activists claim: that they have no choice but to be what they are, and thus ought not to be criticized or discriminated against for a "lifestyle choice."

I agree with the gay activists. When I run across those who don't agree, I usually ask, "Could you just will yourself into a frame of mind where you wanted to suck dicks?"

They usually concede the argument at that point.

There is no "gay gene" that has been discovered, but homosexuality does seem to be a matter of brain chemistry and hormones, with maybe a small environmental component thrown in. Many gay men seem to have just been predisposed that way from time they were very young.

The separated twin studies seem to bear this out, with identical twins having a much more highly correlated sexuality than fraternal twins, and both having a much higher correlation than adopted siblings. These studies are pretty much irrefutable proof of the role of genes.

Women in general do seem to have a somewhat more free-floating sexuality that can adapt to circumstance. There are women whom I can't imagine ever wanting to be with a guy. But I've seen many others who seem to turn lesbian by default, either because they don't attract men or had bad experiences with them.

In any case, the politically correct belief is that homosexuality is preordained, and that you have no choice in the matter. Genes rule.

However, if you entertain the notion that intelligence might also be genetically determined, you're considered evil. To be politically correct on this issue, you must believe that there are no 60 watt bulbs or 100 watt bulbs, merely different outlets. Your genes have nothing at all to do with your intellectual firepower.

So when it comes to IQ, you must disregard all those separated twin studies.

For those of us who try to be PC, it's all quite confusing.

How much does Hillary hate Barack?

2012-01-30T11:35:00.003-05:00

During Obama's State of the Union speech a few days ago, he made reference to the teamwork that taking down Osama bin Laden required -- and how on that fateful evening he sat next to "Hillary Clinton -- a woman who ran against me for President."

When he said that, the camera panned to Hillary's face. I was struck by how pained Hillary's smile was. And it hit me how much she must hate Obama.

Put yourself in her shoes. In 2008, it was fairly obvious that a Democrat was going to win the White House. The public was sick of the two wars Bush started. The Iraq War was widely viewed as a mistake. The mortgage crisis was heating up, and the stock market was down.

Hillary had Bill on her side (she hadn't stuck with him all those years for nothing). And she had experience: she understood the kind of games she would have to play to win the Presidency. After all, she had learned at the feet of the Master. (Though not on her knees -- that was Monica's job.)

Hillary also had big money on her side, a raft of endorsements, and the rabid support of the feminists. She was all set to make history by becoming the first female President.

Then along came that brash young pretender, who traded on his race the same way she traded on her gender. (There's nothing more annoying than to see someone use your own tricks against you.)

Well, we all know what happened next.

Now Obama is the one who gets to jet around on Air Force One. He's the one who is greeted with shrieking adulation by adoring crowds. He's the one who gets to meet all those heads of state on an equal basis. He gets to live at 1600 Pennsylvania, which used to be her house. (How much of a dagger in her heart is that?)

And all this despite the fact that it's become increasingly apparent that he has little idea of how to run a country.

So now Hillary has to watch him give the State of the Union speeches, while she sits in the audience and tries to look appreciative.

While swallowing her bile.

There are a lot of people who hate Barack Obama. But almost certainly none more than Hillary.

Romney's expression

2012-01-29T13:15:00.009-05:00

During the Republican debates, whenever the other candidates are speaking, Mitt Romney always seems to be wearing an appreciative half-smile. It comes across as if he's demonstrating an avuncular, almost paternal pride in the other candidates as they speak. It's as if he's saying, "I find your little foibles quite cute and charming, and it's always a pleasure to listen to you despite your being wrong on so many issues. Anyway, my occasional annoyance with your errors is far overshadowed by the enormous affection I feel for you. And aren't we all having just a swell time with these debates?"

"Aw, go ahead Newt, give it your best shot. You know, despite all your vitriol, I actually like you."

It's a masterful performance, and it works. It conveys the impression that Romney is somehow above the fray, and that even when his opponents are doing their best to savage him, he is willing to just take it with the same patience that an indulgent father might show when his five-year-old is lobbing snowballs at him.

"Rick, I want you to know, you've been like a kid brother to me. And even though 2012 may not be your year, I know you're going to get it right eventually. I just know it."

Learning how to look appreciative is a highly underrated skill that can serve you well in any number of social milieus. It can make people feel appreciated. But by far the best thing about it is that it makes you look as if you are in charge, and as if you're the one who's in a position to judge them, not vice versa.

"Ron, others may say you're like the crazy uncle who needs to be locked away, but I enjoy your company. I really do."

When someone insults you and you just laugh, it not only takes the sting of his insult away, it makes him look utterly powerless.

"That was a good one, Newt. I really enjoy your sense of humor, seeing as how you're no threat to me."

Craig James

2012-01-28T20:16:00.006-05:00

In a previous post I raised the question of whether sociopaths loved their children. I concluded that they don't, at least not the same way other parents do -- but that that doesn't mean that if you cross their child they're not going to get more vindictive than the average parent too.

The following story popped up on Yahoo News yesterday:

http://www.thepostgame.com/commentary/201201/craig-james-most-hated-man-west-texas

Craig James, an ESPN sports analyst, is now in the news because he is running for United States Senator from Texas. James was a star running back at SMU, and played five years with the Boston Patriots. His chances are basically nil. He is evidently extremely unpopular in Texas for having used his position at ESPN to have gotten the popular football coach at Texas Tech fired. James actually hired a PR firm to effect this.

Why? Because the coach didn't give his son enough playing time. Which pretty much makes James the Texas Cheerleader Dad.

This one act isn't enough to prove sociopathy. But it is the type of extreme vindictiveness that sociopaths often display. And a vanity run for the U.S. Senate certainly shows a lot of narcissism.

I know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover. But those thin lips, cold eyes, and proud expression all add up to a look that I associate with sociopaths. And even when he smiles, the smile doesn't seem to reach his eyes. I realize I'm being subjective, and I'm not claiming to have sufficient evidence to convict him in the court of sociopathy. But James just looks mean to me. Look into his eyes, and see if you get that vibe.

"The President Plays Small Ball"

2012-01-27T14:32:00.001-05:00

Excellent article by Charles Krauthammer on the State of the Union speech:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-the-president-plays-small-ball/2012/01/26/gIQAWo04TQ_story.html

How many feel they've wasted their lives?

2012-01-26T09:36:00.005-05:00

I recently spoke to a friend whose personal style tends toward brutal honesty -- about society, himself, and me, among other things. During the course of the conversation he happened to say, "Sometimes I think that I've thrown my life away. I might have amounted to something if I hadn't tilted at windmills...."

This guy has a tested IQ of 160, speaks three languages fluently, graduated from an Ivy League college and got a masters degree from a prestigious European university. He has worked as an editor for a computer magazine, as a banker, and is a published author. He is also quite handsome, but his lady-killing days are behind him; he has now entered his philosophical years (roughly defined as 55+).

I can't help but wonder if there aren't a lot of people who feel the same way he does, especially those who were constantly told how promising they were when they were young.

My guess is that many do.

In this country, if your IQ is above 150, it would be hard not to be aware of it. No one who goes through the school system doesn't get tested, and the higher people score on their early tests, the more likely they are to be tested further. And sooner or later, someone is going to tell them where they rank. It's inescapable. (And after all that, such people tend to enjoy taking IQ tests on their own for the positive reinforcement they get.)

Plus, people who are smarter than others tend to sense it. (Of course, there are a lot of people who aren't smarter yet still sense it, but that's a different matter.)

The percentage of the population with IQ's over 150, or slightly more than three standard deviations from the mean, is roughly one-eighth of one percent. That doesn't sound like a lot. But in a country with 311 million people, .12% would mean that there are 373,200 people with IQ's above 150. The IQ bell curve has been normed for Caucasians, so taking demographics into account, the actual number is probably closer to 300,000. But that's still a huge number. How many of those get to be truly "great?"

Very few.

After all, only one guy gets to be President. (And neither our current one nor his predecessor were likely members of the 150+ club anyway, though the guy before them seemed to be.)

Add up all the centimillionaires and Nobel Prize winners there are. Then throw in all the authors, inventors, doctors, lawyers, professors, journalists, politicians, and comedians who could rightly be called famous. The total number is still an extremely tiny fraction of 300,000. (And many of the famous ones have IQs below 150 anyway.)

Admittedly, only about a third of the current 300,000 have reached an age where they are resigned to the fact that greatness has eluded them. But most of the younger two-thirds are destined to eventually reach the same conclusion.

Being told you have a high IQ when young is a sort of curse: all it does is raise your expectations, and make you feel like a failure afterwards.

The trash heap of those with IQ's above 150 who never amounted to much is far, far greater than those who did.

Narcissistic excuses

2012-01-25T06:47:00.010-05:00

Newt Gingrich's justification for his affairs is a classic:

"There's no question at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate."

In other words, he went after the stray poontang not for the usual reasons, but because he suffered from an excess of patriotism and work ethic.

The general rule is, the lamer the excuse, the more narcissistic the personality. And no one is more narcissistic than a sociopath.

But Gingrich still looks as if he could be the Republican nominee. If the lameness of that excuse hasn't stopped him, probably nothing will.

It's sort of an Aesop's fable in reverse. Perhaps others could learn from the master, come up with similar justifications, and their careers could move forward the same way. A few suggestions:

For the child-molesting priest:

"Yes, well there's no question that at times in my life, partially driven by my overwhelming love of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I tried too hard to spread His good word, and I might have gotten carried away."

For the greedy Ponzi schemer:

"There's no question that at times, partly because of my love for this great country of ours and its wonderful system of free enterprise, some aspects of my business may have gotten a bit exuberant."

For the corrupt politician:

"There's no question at times in my life, driven partially by my desire to help the people of the great state of New York, I may have worked too hard to please my constituents."

For the big time drug dealer:

"There's no question at times in my life, partially driven by how much I love bringing joy to other people's lives, even if on only a temporary basis, I've worked too hard to make them happy."

For the serial killer:

"There's no question that at times in my life, partially driven by my concerns about the environment and overpopulation, I've worked too hard to restore Mother Earth to her original pristine state."

You too can go far in life if only you can learn to obfuscate like Newt.

MacBeth, revisited

2012-01-24T19:27:00.006-05:00

Something about the race for the Republican nomination brings to mind Act IV, Scene I of MacBeth, in which three witches gather around a cauldron in a dark cave. The second witch recites the following recipe for trouble:

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

An updated version, with apologies to Mr. Shakespeare:

Fillet of a human snake
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Tongue of Newt, and Freddie Mac,
Money of Sheldon in your PAC,
Sociopath's ego, and ex-wife's ring,
A TV station, interviewing, --
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

The second version sounds like a far worse batch of trouble to me.

Sociopath Alert: Newt Gingrich (Part II)

2012-01-24T12:27:00.003-05:00

This blog made the case last May that Gingrich is a sociopath. That view has not changed.

Last Thursday, when CNN's John King asked Gingrich about his ex-wife Marianne's allegation that he had asked for an open marriage, Gingrich declared that he was "appalled" that King would begin a Presidential debate like that.

But Marianne's claim had in fact gotten a lot of publicity, and was something that Gingrich would have to address sooner or later; King merely gave him the opportunity to do it sooner. Yet Gingrich said that for ABC to have aired that interview two days before the debate, and for King to have brought it up, was "as close to despicable as anything I can imagine."

Gingrich then slyly shifted the issue to how the media protects Barack Obama. Gingrich is, of course, right that the media does focus on Republican faults in a lopsided way. And there is a lot of conservative resentment about that, which Gingrich cleverly tapped into. But his outrage -- when he plainly did have an affair -- is reminiscent of the way Bill Clinton waved his finger at that group of journalists and angrily declared, "I did not have sex with that woman."

Sociopaths act outraged when accused of something they are guilty of the same way non-sociopaths do when falsely accused. Most non-sociopaths cannot imagine acting that way if guilty, which is why they get fooled by sociopaths.

This is not a brief against extramarital sex. Some would say that such betray a lack of character. But plenty of non-sociopaths stray -- roughly 60% of married people, according to the polls. What betrays sociopathy is the outrage mustered when caught.

Another Gingrich-ism was to say that he was hired by Freddie Mac as a historian. But as Romney pointed out last night, they don't pay people $25,000 a month for six years to be historians. And, if Gingrich was a historian, why would he be reporting directly to the firm's chief lobbyist?

True, Gingrich didn't register as a lobbyist himself. He undoubtedly made it clear to Freddie Mac that he didn't want to be labeled as such to protect his political future. But Freddie Mac obviously would not have hired the former Speaker if they hadn't wanted his influence. For Gingrich to deny this is just the sort of lawyerly evasion sociopaths specialize in.

What may betray Gingrich's sociopathy most clearly is that he is simply never seems to get nervous, even in the debates. He thinks well on his feet, never gets flustered, and is always glib. It might seem unfair to attribute good performances to sociopathy, but such nerve is in fact a sociopathic hallmark.

Republicans watch Gingrich's masterful debate performances and think, wouldn't it be fun to have this guy dismantle Barack Obama the same way he did some of the moderators.

The problem is, although sociopaths are great performers, they are dissemblers as well. And in the fishbowl of Presidential campaigns, lies have a way of being exposed.

It would be sort of cool to watch Gingrich eviscerate Obama. But if the Republicans are smart, they'll choose the more electable Romney.

Tragedy

2012-01-21T18:59:00.000-05:00

My 17-year-old daughter just came downstairs and wailed, "I'm getting wrinkles!"

She got all the sympathy she deserved.

Eva Marie Saint

2012-01-21T16:45:00.004-05:00

My parents mentioned a few days ago that they were recently introduced to Eva Marie Saint by mutual friends. They now see her around their neighborhood in Montecito, and chat occasionally.

My first reaction was wow, cool!

My second reaction was, what exactly is it about meeting a movie star which is so cool, but also weird? After all, they're only actors, who as a group tend towards dysfunction.

Here's a clip with Saint and Marlon Brando from On the Waterfront which partially explains the allure:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHtJUWO7yeA&feature=related

If we were to meet Ms. Saint, we wouldn't just be meeting the actress, we'd feel as if we were meeting Edie Doyle. And, for that matter, Eve Kendall from North by Northwest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXGWescUeQs

At a certain level, we see movie stars as whoever they've played. It's hard not to conflate the actor with the character. (The stars themselves are not supposed to make that mistake, though, as per the previous post.)

And when the movie the actor starred in is a revered classic, you feel as if you're meeting a part of Americana.

Surprisingly, Saint was already 30 when she played the teenage Edie Doyle in On the Waterfront. Which brings me to how many react to meeting a star: it's always a little shocking to see that an Edie has gotten old, or that an Eve Kendall now has wrinkles.

But onscreen, they're immortal -- and forever young.

My mother asked, "Do you know the most frequently asked question she gets?"

It wasn't hard to guess: What was it like working with Marlon Brando?

Saint's stock answer is evidently, "Why did no one ever ask him what it was like working with Eva Marie Saint?"

Action star-itis

2012-01-21T10:29:00.003-05:00

Two days ago Mark Wahlberg, referring to 9/11, told an interviewer, "If I was on the plane with my kids, it wouldn't have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in the first class cabin, and then me saying, 'Okay, we're going to land somewhere safely. Don't worry'."

A day later Wahlberg apologized for his statement, saying he hadn't meant to offend any 9/11 victims or their families. But then a day after that he said that his comments were misinterpreted, and that it was unfair for the journalist to have asked him leading questions.

It does seem as if Wahlberg mistook himself for Gunnery Sergeant Bob Lee Swagger, the role he played in Shooter. Or perhaps "Irish" Micky Ward, the boxer he portrayed in Fighter. Or any number of other tough guys he's portrayed.

This sort of confusion appears to be an occupational hazard.

When Russell Crowe was briefly considered a potential kidnapping target in 2001, he reportedly said, "They wouldn't be able to hold me very long."

Crowe seemed to have mistaken himself for Maximus, the Roman general he played who single-handedly vanquishes giants and tigers in Gladiator. Or maybe Officer Bud White, his character in L.A. Confidential.

Either way, one suspects the kidnappers could have held onto him as long as they wished.

After Sylvester Stallone made Rocky in 1976, he said that he thought he'd be able to hold his own for ten rounds with a ranking heavyweight. Stallone weighed approximately 175 pounds at the time, and to that point his main exercise had consisted of bench pressing, jogging, and acting. The average ranking heavyweight weighs roughly 220 and has boxed for a decade.

A couple years after Rocky, Stallone sparred a few rounds with Roberto Duran, then the lightweight (135 pound) champion.

At least Stallone had the grace to later say of that experience that "it was like being lowered head first into a Cuisinart."

Mistaking oneself for the action hero one portrays does seem to happen often enough that the American Psychiatric Association ought to include it in their next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

It's not quite as serious as schizophrenia, but there is a certain similarity.

Mixed up

2012-01-20T16:43:00.008-05:00

http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/couple-finally-reveals-childs-gender-five-years-birth-180300388.html

This is a story about a couple who have refused to divulge the sex of their child, Sasha, to all but a couple of close friends, and have tried to raise "it" in as gender-neutral a fashion as possible.

Now that Sasha is five years old and entering school, they have been forced to identify him as a boy. But the couple have objected to the different uniforms for boys and girls and insist that Sasha wear a girl's blouse with boy's pants.

Sasha's mother, Beck Laxton, said, "I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping. Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?"

It's certainly nice to hear from someone who is so enlightened, who realizes that stereotypes only exist because people are forced into them. Now we know: genetics and human nature have nothing to do with personality! Testosterone and estrogen have no effect! It's all just upbringing!

It will be interesting to see what kind of attitude will Sasha have towards his parents in the future. Will he resent them, or swallow their values whole?

Probably the latter. Since most children like being brought up as experiments.

Understatement

2012-01-20T11:22:00.001-05:00

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/highschool-prep-rally/school-t-cougars-because-middle-aged-women-might-161402778.html

Dave Moriarty forwarded above article with the comment, "We have gone too far."

Only if you consider insanity too far.

On a different note, did it not occur to even one member of the school board or faculty to switch the name to "Pumas" or "Mountain Lions?"

Motivational speakers

2012-01-18T17:14:00.000-05:00

Every now and then one reads about an ex-athlete who makes a career out of motivational speaking. It's always surprising that there's enough of demand to support these ex-champions. Watching these athletes be interviewed, it's hard to imagine most of them using words to inspire others. But there seems to be a market for them.

What must happen is that some manager decides he must inspire his troops by having some ex-champion come in to give a rousing speech.

The inspirational tale usually goes something like this: the athlete got injured a year and a half before the Games, and thought his dreams of Olympic glory were dead, but he kept at it and managed to work around his injury and train. And then, he went to the Olympics, no longer the favorite, but still managed to win a gold medal. The message, visible from a mile away: don't give up hope, keep trying and you will achieve your dreams.

You have to wonder what goes through the mind of the average employee forced to endure such a speech. His thoughts must run something like this:

"I sorta remember this guy from twenty years ago....Geez, he's so tall he's sorta of freakish. He hasn't aged any better than the rest of us though.....Listen to the guy go on and on, like I give half a shit......He sounds so pleased with himself. Now how am I supposed to relate to this? How does this story help me with my asshole of a boss, and his impossible demands? How does it help me pay my mortgage, or deal with my harridan, spendthrift wife? How does it help me sell our product? How's this going to help me get my son off drugs, or help my aging parents? I only wish my life were as simple as this guy's back when he was a teenager, when all he had to worry about was getting in shape.....I wonder how much they paid him to come here and tell that useless story? What a goddamn waste of money."

Al Gore and Aspergers Syndrome

2012-01-18T15:30:00.002-05:00

The post about famous people with Aspergers last month mentioned that Al Gore was included on a couple of lists of people with Aspergers. Seeing his name on the list was an eye-opening moment; the diagnosis makes perfect sense.

In 2000, press analyzed Gore's charisma-challenged personality by saying he was a beta male who hadn't yet learned to be alpha, as evidenced by his choice of earth-toned clothing. The press was wrong, as usual. Gore's problem had nothing to do with being cowed too easily, or a lack of self-esteem.

Gore was also described that election year as being a bit of "a wooden Indian," which was a lot closer to the mark. He's just awfully stiff. Even walking and gesturing don't seem to come naturally to him. He moves like someone who has just been taken out of a box.

Gore comes across like a robot who's learned how to act like a human being from a book. After painstaking study, he now does a passable imitation. But really, it's only just passable. (And the robot does seem inordinately proud of that second-rate imitation.)

Think of how he speaks, in that slow, slightly overemphatic, pedantic tone. He always sounds as if he's explaining something to a group of particularly backward third graders.

Another trait of people with Aspergers is that they are very rigid in their beliefs. While there are respected scientists on both sides on both sides of the global warming argument, Gore obviously believes in it as if it is established fact. And he gets becomes infuriated at anybody who doesn't believe in it -- as a true Aspie would.

Despite all of Gore's preaching, he himself lives in a sprawling house in Tennessee whose carbon footprint is famously twenty times that of the average citizen's house. He takes private planes and drives around in an SUV. Hypocrisy of course does not prove Aspergers, but tone deafness is an indicator. And being unaware of how you come across is one of the essential components of Aspergers.

I once heard another Aspie say that her child had to go to the right school "in order to earn social skills." This is a prototypically Aspergerian belief, that learning the social niceties and how to get along with others is something that you would need a school to teach you. Normal people pick up social skills through trial and error wherever they grow up, and whomever they interact with. Only someone with Aspergers would believe that you have to be "taught" how to say hello, how are you, and so on.

Now that I think of it, a specialized school just for people with Aspergers actually wouldn't be such a bad idea. Such a school might teach its students to be less robotic, to recognize humor is, to banter, to look people in the eye, to not have a meltdown when criticized, etc.

Al Gore would make a good student body president there.

The Huffpost and mockery

2012-01-16T11:58:00.002-05:00

Reading about dumb criminals is a little like reading those lists of stupid mistakes that high school students make: it's fun because it makes us feel smart. (Okay, I may not have gotten an 800 on my math SATs, but I'd never be so stupid as to make prank call to 911.)

Reading about the criminals listed in the posts below has the added benefit of making us feel normal as well. (Sometimes I feel like a little bit of a freak for liking women's feet, but Geez, that guy actually had sex with a dog!)

Admittedly, making fun of dumb people is not very sporting. (After the last four posts, the bottom of my fish barrel is riddled with bullet holes.) But this blog has never shied away from acknowledging that there are IQ differences between people -- and peoples.

The Huffpost, by posting all those mugshots in the first place, was also mocking dumb people. Yet the Huffpost is a liberal publication which in other circumstances finds the concept that there are differences between people absolutely anathema.

In fact, they fully subscribe to the notion that those who look too closely at IQ differences are evil. And they regard people who see homosexuality as an abomination as reactionary, intolerant trolls.

But in the meantime, their collection of mugshots essentially mocks both dummies and perverts.

Unanswered questions, Part IV

2012-01-16T06:40:00.012-05:00

I promise, this is the final installment about mugshots which raise more questions than they answer. (I just don't seem to be able to repress my inner bully.) As before, the shots and descriptions of the crimes are from the Huffpost, the italics mine:

This might be the worst way to use your one phone call. Police in Sandusky, Ohio, say Joseph Walsh was already in custody when he dialed 911 on a cell phone and said he was being held against his will. Walsh reportedly called 911 while he was handcuffed in a holding cell early on March 13.

What exactly did Mr. Walsh expect to happen? Another group of rival uniformed officers to come barging in, guns blazing at those unfair local cops? The cavalry coming to the rescue.....to rescue him from the cavalry? How long will it be before Mr. Walsh's acquaintances let this story die?

By trying to talk his way out of a speeding ticket, one man talked his way into jail. Police in Indiana say Adam Yarbrough tried to bribe a female police officer with $5, a kiss and sex if she would let him go without a ticket. It didn't work, and Yarbrough was arrested on bribery and disorderly conduct charges.

We've all heard of women who try to get out of parking tickets this way -- but a guy? What did the female police officer look like that he thought she was so desperate for sex that she would accept his offer? And isn't $5 a little insulting? Is there any chance at all that Mr. Yarbrough is not a complete narcissist?

Police in Florida say they busted a man responsible for prank calling 911 about a Viagra overdose. Matthew Wade Douglas Jr. is accused of making two obscene 911 calls in January in which a caller demanded medical attention and graphically described the effects of taking a few too many little blue pills.

Isn't it easy to imagine that face convulsed with laughter as he made that call? What sort of expression did Mr. Matthew Wade Douglas Jr. have when he saw the cops at his front door? How stupid do you have to be to make prank calls to 911? How proud is Mr. Matthew Wade Douglas Sr.?

Investigators in El Paso County, Colo., say Jack Herbst caused $250,000 of damage to his neighbor's property while driving a front-end loader -- all because the victim owed him $80. On March 9, Herbst allegedly drove the construction vehicle onto Ronald Morphis' property, wrecking part of his home, his garage, campers, trailer, propane tank, classic cars and more than a dozen mature elm trees.

Seriously -- if this guy were your neighbor, wouldn't you just pay him back the eighty bucks?

Some suspects are caught with their pants down. Others are caught with no pants at all. Police say this drunken driving suspect was driving naked in a pickup truck with three nude passengers. Nickolus Borgman is accused of driving under the influence and other violations after a sheriff's deputy pulled him over and spotted two nude men and two nude women crammed in the front seat of the truck.

Doesn't this ride sound as if it were taken on a dare? Exactly how much alcohol was consumed beforehand? Why is it so many criminals seem to have misspelled names? And how much did Nickolus pay for that haircut?

It's always best to practice what you preach. Police in Florida say they arrested the former president of a local chapter of Mother's Against Drunk Driving for driving under the influence. Debra Oberlin has been charged with drunk driving for the Feb. 18 incident.

How sweet is that?! This is evidently the first time Ms. Oberlin has been caught, but doesn't she look like a habitual drinker? And why exactly was she the ex-president? Had the other members caught on to her shenanigans?

You shouldn't mouth off to police -- especially when your mouth is filled with feces. Police in Colorado say a drunken driving suspect spit fecal matter on an officer. Paul Andrew Kausalik, a 61-year-old postal worker, was in a police station after being taken in on drunken driving charges when he allegedly put his own excrement in his mouth and spewed it on an officer's face.

Has it ever once, in your entire life, even occurred to you to try that? Will Mr. Kausalik bring the phrase "going postal" back into popularity? Does he ever worry about bad breath? How often does Mr. Kausalik brush his teeth? Would you want to be his dentist?

Jerome Smith's forehead says he's a "Genius," but police say he wasn't being smart when he allegedly struck a pregnant woman with a handgun. The Cincinnati, Ohio, resident is accused of repeatedly pistol-whipping a woman who was eight months pregnant in late January.

If your IQ is over 150, isn't it considered bad form to boast about it? What had the woman done to incur Mr. Smith's wrath -- denigrate his solution for integrating the unified field theory? Are the other local MENSA members embarrassed by his violence? Once in jail, will he at least tutor the less intelligent inmates?

Onslow County Sheriff's deputies in North Carolina arrested Dale Foughty after he allegedly tried to rob a convenience store while wearing a Spider-Man mask and waving a sword. His plans collapsed when two clerks fought back by poking him in the gut with a broom. They ripped off his mask and part of his ponytail before he fled. Police found him nearby with a shaved head.

Wouldn't Mr. Foughty actually have been more intimidating without the mask? Had those two clerks seen his face, do you think those they would have dared poke him with that broom?

Real doctors conduct breast examinations in their offices. Phony doctors conduct breast examinations in bars. Kristina Ross, 37, has been charged with practicing medicine without a license after she allegedly offered breast exams to bar patrons in Boise, Idaho.

Are the police perhaps taking this case a tad too seriously? Doesn't Ms. Ross's crime sound like the kind of offer that juvenile guys will make without seriously meaning to convince anyone that they are actual medical professionals? After a few drinks, do lesbians turn into juvenile guys?

Unanswered questions, Part III

2012-01-14T05:44:00.017-05:00

A friend just wrote to say that the previous two posts were "funny, but in a cruel intellectual equivalent of torturing small animals way."

Fair enough. And no, it's not very sporting to mock dumb criminals. But it is fun. Anyway, Snark is my middle name, so here goes:

This booking photo from the Broward County Sheriff's Office shows traffic court magistrate Rhonda Hollander. Hollander was arrested after allegedly taking photos of men in the bathroom of the West Regional Courthouse in Broward County.

Did Rhonda not pay attention in her Gender Studies class in college? Isn't this the kind of thing men do to women, and not the other way around?

Police in Pennsylvania are investigating three separate incidents of indecent exposure involving a 35-year-old man named Handy Henry Wood, who allegedly exposed himself to two women.

With a name like that, did this poor guy ever stand a chance of not growing up to be a pervert?

Eugene Hickman's family called Walton County (Fl.) police after his grandson allegedly saw him trying to have sex with a pet bulldog.

Aren't bulldogs the ugliest things imaginable? Were there no aesthetically appealing dogs available? How old is the grandson, and is he now scarred for life? How exactly did that family discussion go down? Will ol' Grandpop be welcome at family gatherings from now on? Did the expression "screwed the pooch" originally derive from a similar situation?

Janet Chiauzzi was arrested after sending threatening letters to her son's little league coach.

How scary is that face? Chiauzzi manages to look high strung, malevolent, and intelligent all at the same time. Is there anyone in the world who finds that a relaxing combination to be around?

Levon T. Sarkisyan, allegedly broke into a Connecticut home and smashed statues and furniture, because he claimed God told him to do it, according to police.

Did God also tell Levon to do his best Pee Wee Herman imitation while having his mug shot taken?

Bernadette Besario Catan-Keeler, 30, was arrested and charged with domestic violence battery after she attacked her husband and bit him on the night of their wedding, according to Broward County Police.

What are the odds of this marriage lasting even six months? And what did her husband do to make her so angry? Does Bernadette look like the kind of inexperienced, blushing bride who has no idea what's in store on her wedding night?

Drunken driving suspect James Scarborough allegedly told police in Florida that he wasn't responsible for crashing his motorcycle -- but the boogeyman was. The 49-year-old reportedly declined to explain exactly who the boogeyman was. He has been charged with driving under the influence, driving without a license and obstructing police, among other charges.

Given that Scarborough has the kind of chin and neck which advertise testosterone to spare, why didn't he pursue sports instead of drunk driving? (His coach probably wouldn't have put him in against the boogeyman.) Think he might still have been under the influence when he struck that devil-may-care pose for his mugshot? Doesn't Scarborough look like Pat Tillman's no-good older brother?

Mark Thompson, a 19-year-old from West Virginia, is accused of killing his neighbor's pygmy goat in his bedroom and possibly sexually assaulting the barnyard animal. Police say they found Thompson hiding in the woods, covered in blood, wearing a bra and panties.

Wasn't just slaughtering and having sex with an animal OR cross-dressing enough of a thrill for Mark? He had to do both at the same time? We all get jaded eventually, but Mr. Thompson is only 19! What combination of wild perversions will he need to get himself excited by the time he's 35?

This suspect likely won't forget his 64th birthday -- and neither will the elementary school students who saw a man naked from the waist down shaking his hips and genitals. Jack Snyder is accused of flashing a school bus in Port Richey, Fla., as students headed home from classes.

Could Central Casting have picked a more likely looking flasher? From his loony grin to his unkempt hair to his age to his red drinker's nose, doesn't Mr. Snyder look exactly like what he is? And yet, somehow, doesn't he look sort of harmless at the same time?

Johnathan Washburn, 23, allegedly hit a man on the head with a skateboard after he took a picture of his bizarre triple-mohawk hairstyle - landing him in police custody.

Why would anyone affect a hairstyle like this if he didn't want people to pay attention to him? Isn't it gratifying when someone like Johnathan -- love that spelling -- fulfills a negative stereotype (this time, about skateboarders) so perfectly?

Unanswered questions

2012-01-12T10:43:00.015-05:00

While browsing through the Huffpost's collection of mugshots yesterday, I found that many of them raised more questions than they answered. All of these mugshots and the descriptions of the crimes are from their site; the questions in italics are mine.

That's Mr. Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop to you. The man with the amazing name was born Jeffrey Drew Wilschke. He changed his name in October 2011, but got in trouble with Madison, Wisc. police on Jan. 5 when he was arrested for alleged possession of a knife, marijuana, and drug paraphernalia.

Think this guy might be a Johnny Depp fan? Does he ever mimic Captain Jack Sparrow's mannerisms? How did his parents feel about him changing his name? And does Mr. Zopittybop-Bop-Bop have a nickname, or must his friends refer to him by his full name? When he gets married, will his wife be tempted to keep her own name? Isn't it refreshing to see a guy who doesn't take himself too seriously?

Ray Lynn Mitcham Jr., of Linden, N.C., was arrested Jan. 9, 2012, in Cumberland County, N.C., for crime against nature with a dog. Debbie Tanna, spokeswoman for the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office, said Mitcham's next door neighbor went to speak with him Jan. 2. The neighbor, who is also Mitcham's landlord, told detectives she opened the door to his mobile home and saw him attacking her dog. The mixed-breed female was taken to a veterinarian, who recovered a DNA sample. Tanna said Mitcham was arrested Monday after his DNA profile matched the sample recovered from the dog.

Is Mr. Mitcham not attracted to human beings? Or was he just using a dog because no human was available at the time? How can the police be sure the dog didn't try to seduce him? The breed of the dog wasn't mentioned; does Mr. Mitcham find one breed more attractive than another? Will other bestiality fans take the moral of this story to be that one should use a condom?

John Robin Whittle wouldn't let a good beer go to waste, police say. The 52-year-old ordered a beer at a bar, left to rob a bank, then returned to the watering hole to finish his brew, investigators in Pasco County, Fla. allege.

Wouldn't this make an awfully good beer ad? Whichever beer company he was patronizing really ought to consider taking advantage of the free publicity; Whittle is certainly the kind of masculine-looking fellow beer companies like to feature in their commercials. A little shave, some contact lenses, a nice smile for the camera, and it could be Miller time. At least after he serves his federal time.

During a stop for an alleged traffic violation, sheriff's deputies in South Carolina seized two crack pipes that Ella Jo Price had allegedly hidden in her private parts: One was concealed in her crotch and the other was stashed in her buttocks, deputies said.

Ella certainly gives new meaning to the term "crack whore." Despite her addiction, she's still sort of good-looking; she must have been a beauty when younger. Which clique did she hang with in high school? Was she one of the popular girls? Perhaps even prom queen? How much schadenfreude are her formal social inferiors feeling now?

Gwinnett County, Ga. police say Trevor Jones broke into a home, then used the victim's laptop to log into Facebook. The problem for Jones, allegedly, was that he forgot to log out before he left.

Is this not proof of how addictive Facebook can be? Wouldn't you think that a man who evidently takes such painstaking care of his mustache would be more careful while breaking and entering? Should Mark Zuckerberg get partial credit for having solved this crime?

Police in Illinois say that Olivia Ornelas blamed her DUI and crashed vehicle on her boyfriend's failure to take her, as he promised, to the new "Twilight" movie.

Seems to me I've dated women like this. How does Olivia react when something actually is her boyfriend's fault? How sorry do you feel for her future husband? And what does this incident reveal about the mentality of "Twilight" fans?

Tina Arie and Howard Windham allegedly got frisky in the backseat of a patrol car taking them in on drug charges. Even though their hands were shackled behind them, Windham's pants were unbuttoned and lowered, allowing Arie to perform oral sex. The deputy ordered them to knock it off and they weren't hit with any additional charges.

Well, at least Tina seems to be a much better sport than Olivia: she's not holding her arrest against her boyfriend. Imagine you've just been busted for drugs, and your life is about to be completely upended. What would your reaction be? Chagrin at having been caught? Concern about how it will impact your career? Shame at the impending social humiliation? Or would it just make you horny?

I would like to know (a) what drug these two were on, and (b) where I can get some.

Police in Florida arrested Karen Henry, 45, after she allegedly threatened her 80-year-old father with a knife for not sharing his potato salad.

Evidently when some people say "Please pass the potatoes," they really mean it. But how can you tell who the serious ones are?

Police arrested Joseph Wilson for the hundredth time after he allegedly stole $174 worth of socks and underwear from a Bealls department store in Port St. Lucie Florida.

After the first ninety-nine arrests, why would it not occur to Mr. Wilson to get a real job? Does Florida have a one hundred-strikes-and-you're-out law?

Florida police arrested Ian Stuart Wood at his home in East Naples after he allegedly choked his wife over a heated game of Yahtzee.

Given how passionate Mr. Wood and his wife seem to be about Yahtzee, would it not behoove them to try chess, or perhaps Scrabble?

Dumb criminals

2012-01-11T10:18:00.001-05:00

Just wasted an hour looking at mug shots along with descriptions of crimes:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/police-arrest-convicted-felon-with-gun-in-bra_n_1198294.html#s270901&title=Dumb_Crime_Masterminds

Just go to the bottom of the page and scroll through the slideshow. I'm not recommending it, but it is entertaining.

Charlize Theron

2012-01-10T09:58:00.004-05:00

Saw Young Adult about a week ago. It's an excellent portrait of a narcissistic personality who descends into alcoholism while self-delusionally trying to win back her married high school boyfriend. It's enjoyable if you have a taste for awkward scenes where people make fools of themselves. It's a little like a Ben Stiller movie, but more realistic.

Charlize Theron was terrific in the main role. The most impressive thing about her is that she is not at all a vain actress. She is completely game when it comes to uglifying herself for a role, or appearing as an unsympathetic character. In Young Adult her character was pathetically self-indulgent and irresponsible. Theron famously fattened herself up to play serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, the ultimate Robert de Niro-like sacrifice for her art. (Unlike DeNiro, however, she regained her looks afterward.)

An example of a vain actress would be Angelina Jolie. She is always shot from a flattering angle, with the lighting just right, and her makeup perfect, in stylish clothes. I haven't seen all her movies, so can't speak with complete authority, but she seems to only accept roles where she gets most of the cool lines. It's hard to imagine her agreeing to play a nerd. She may be serious about being a movie star, but she's not a serious actress.

Maybe Theron can afford to be less vain because she's better-looking.

Homophobia

2012-01-08T14:10:00.006-05:00

One of the bigger thought crimes you can commit these days is "homophobia." But an instinctive aversion to homosexuality is perfectly natural. Think of it this way: the lack of such an aversion would be evolutionarily maladaptive.

This is not to say that gays shouldn't enjoy equal rights. As I've stated many times before, I support gay marriage. And I recognize that there is no moral component to desire.

But at the same time, I'll be honest about my own reactions. When I was 13 and another boy in my dorm made a pass at me. I was utterly grossed out. When I was 14, I hitchhiked home one night after a party in the next town, and was given a ride by a man who made a pass at me. I quickly mumbled "No thanks," got out, and ran all the way home. The thought of having sex with another male made me nauseous.

Since then, I have encountered many homosexuals, and have thought about what they do enough times that the nausea factor has long since worn off. And I've met plenty of homosexuals whom I've liked. But there's still a mild disgust at the thought of what they like to do, especially if they want to do it to me.

I would guess that homosexuals feel the same way, in reverse. To the average gay man, the thought of a woman's vagina is utterly without appeal; perhaps he even finds it grotesque. Likewise, to the average lesbian, the thought of letting some man stick his penis into her is probably revolting. Tastes differ; one man's meat is another man's emetic.

I certainly don't begrudge homosexuals their reaction; but will also not shy away from describing mine. And it seems my initial gut reaction is typical.

Another point: the word "homophobia" a little misleading. A phobia is a fear. If I ever come across a cobra in the wild, I will undoubtedly be extremely scared. I never felt any such fear when a homosexual came on to me; I only felt revulsion. It is far more akin to the feeling I get when I'm pulling up dandelions and an earthworm squiggles into view. It's not fear, just disgust.

The creation of the word "homophobia" seems an attempt to equate that feeling to a mental disorder such as the fear of open spaces, or the fear of, say, snowmen. (He who controls the language controls the discussion.)

But this revulsion is not a mental disorder: it's an almost universal reaction among heterosexual males, and one which makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective.

This is certainly not to justify picking on gays. Perhaps if we accept the inherent instinctive nature of these reactions, it will help us avoid such unwarranted behavior.

I do, however, have a word I would like to introduce to the lexicon: truthophobia, a mental disorder that afflicts the politically correct.

Talk to enough liberals, and you'll realize it's an accurate description of their reaction to the kind of honesty displayed in this post.

Now that I think of it, "truthohysteria" might be an even better term.

The Cult

2012-01-06T21:37:00.003-05:00

My laptop's hinge came undone (again), so two days ago I bought a MacBook Pro. Most people seem to love theirs; I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

My first impression upon walking into the Apple store was of how many salespeople there were. There seemed to be a mildly festive air there, at least compared to most retail stores.

I was helped by a pleasant young man named Romar. I asked him a few questions, undoubtedly betraying my ignorance of Apple computers. He actually started one of his answers by saying, "Well, since you're new to the ecosystem....."

Ecosystem? That's a somewhat pretentious -- if not entirely inaccurate -- word to describe Apple computers. It's also an indication of the way the company -- and its employees -- think of themselves as a world apart. (As in, sniff, we don't sell cars, we sell Rolls Royces.)

When I bought the MacBook, I made a point of using Romar, since he was the one who helped me initially. But it was apparent that they weren't on a commission system; that would evidently have detracted from their communal spirit.

I'm certainly not the first to point out the cult-like nature of the company, but it was the first time I'd experienced it firsthand. It does seem at times as if Apple is roughly halfway from Dell to Scientology.

Apple stock has always attracted its share of near-religious devotion from adherents who seem to just want to own a piece of the magic. And people line up early in the morning for the launch of a new product like the iPad the way the Star Wars geeks used to camp out to get tickets to the opening of a new episode.

Certainly the company had its own cult of personality, as all proper cults should. In retrospect it's almost surprising that unlike, say, Kim Jong Il, Steve Jobs didn't just appoint one of his own children as his successor.

Walter Isaacson's recent book makes Jobs sound like a sociopath. Evidently Saint Steve never invented a thing himself, he just cracked the whip until others did for him. He was extraordinarily harsh with those around him; as a result, a lot of his employees, at least the ones who had extended contact with him, disliked him intensely.

But that seems only appropriate as well. What kid of self-respecting cult would worship a well-adjusted nice guy?

Nice guys, average guys, and sociopaths XIII

2012-01-05T10:45:00.007-05:00

Situation: A 22-year-old guy cuts an accidental, audible fart while on a date with a new girl. How does he react?

Nice guy: Turns beet red, figures he's entirely ruined his chances with the girl, and will never live this down. Apologizes profusely. For several minutes he is so mortified he has a hard time making conversation.

Average guy: Mumbles, "Oh Jesus, that was embarrassing. Sorry." Feels awkward for the next minute or so.

Sociopath: Says, "Whoops" in an almost exaggerated tone to disguise fact that he doesn't feel embarrassment. Knowing how annoyed he is when others fart, he winks and says, "That wasn't the slickest move I've ever pulled." Ten seconds later he's forgotten about it.

Situation: Same one; what is the woman's initial reaction?

Nice girl: Pretends she didn't hear.

Average girl: Pretends she didn't hear, but moves away slightly.

Sociopath: Grimaces and rolls her eyes, as if this is the very last straw. Opens her mouth as if about to say something, but then ostentatiously shakes her head and says nothing, as a demonstration of her superhuman patience.

Situation: Two guys are talking; one of them mournfully says, "Girls never give me a second look." How does the other one respond?

Nice guy: "You're better-looking than me. I'm sure girls notice you, you just don't realize it." It occurs to him to tell his friend that Mandy said he was cute the other day, but he refrains, realizing that Mandy might not want this passed along.

Average guy: "You're not that bad-looking. You just need to lose a little weight, that's all." Thinks to himself, he'll never do it.

Sociopath: (with annoyance in his voice) "That's cause you're so fucking fat." Sees the the other guy's expression, and backtracks with, "You oughta to hit the gym, lose some weight. You gotta show a little discipline though. No more thirds on the chocolate cake." Feels gratified that he was able to work these digs in under the guise of concern.

Situation: Three guys are walking down a country road when a 450 pound black bear emerges from the woods to cross the road about thirty yards in front of them. When it reaches the middle of the road, it turns to give them a look, then ambles on.

Nice guy: His heart starts pounding wildly; he is terrified that all three of them could be mauled. Is slightly relieved not to see any cubs nearby. Knows he is supposed to yell in order to scare the bear away, but when he tries to, all that comes out is a strangled squeak.

Average guy: His heart skips a beat, and he feels a jolt of adrenalin. Thinks, shit, I wish I'd brought my pepper spray. It occurs to him that he has some measure of safety because he knows he can outrun his two friends. Yells at it loudly.

Sociopath: Looks at the bear, puts his finger to his mouth, and says in a tone of exaggerated innocence, "Oh I didn't eat your porridge." Then he laughs at his own joke. Wishes he had his rifle with him because it would have been so much fun to kill the bear. Later on his two buddies marvel at his nerves of steel. He makes fun of the nice guy's squeak, imitating it for them, as well as for many others later on. Finds this a source of never-ending mirth.

College websites

2012-01-03T09:06:00.027-05:00

My daughter is in the process of applying to colleges. I've seen a few of the essay questions that she's had to respond to. They are often thinly disguised, self-congratulatory advertisements for the colleges themselves. For example:

"Bowdoin students and alumni often cite world class faculty and opportunities for intellectual engagement. The college's commitment to the Common Good, and the special quality of life on the coast of Maine as important aspects of the Bowdoin experience. Reflecting on your own interests and experiences, please comment on one of the following:
1. Intellectual engagement
2. The Common Good
3. Connection to place"

(Why is "Common Good" capitalized? Is it a proper name? Does that world class faculty not know how to spell? Or are they just Incredibly Pretentious?)

Many colleges require a supplemental essay explaining why you want to go there. (I suggested my daughter respond, "I'm only applying here because I needed a safety.")

One wonders how much pleasure the admissions officers take in reading those responses. Do they actually allow themselves to believe the applicants mean what they say?

Seeing the questions spurred me to look at various other college websites, and what I saw reinforced my feeling about higher education: it's all about brainwashing, rather than learning how to think clearly.

Many colleges feature a Latin motto stating something like "Honesty, curiosity, truth." (Why is English not good enough for academics?) A more accurate motto might be the Latin for, "Getting shit-faced every Friday and Saturday night." Nah -- that would actually show too much honesty and truthfulness.

Many colleges claim to foster "leadership." No college admits to producing "followers," although by definition any student who swallows the pretentious pap most colleges spew has to be a mindless acolyte.

And how exactly do most colleges teach charisma, that elusive quality needed for real leadership? (Silly me -- I always thought that was a quality that couldn't be taught, least of all by some scruffy charm-free prof.)

All of the colleges seem to value diversity. Not diversity of thought, of course -- just of ethnicity.

They all claim to seek students of high integrity. (I'd love to see what would happen to overall college enrollment if every student who had his parent help him with his essays were expelled.)

They all seem to advertise themselves as "highly selective." (I'll die happy if I see just one which bills itself as "not particularly selective.")

The Colby website -- which is fairly typical -- states that their school is "challenging and uplifting, enlightening and provocative, dynamic and focused." It evidently "fosters intellectual and personal growth, with graduates emerging as conscientious, committed leaders ready to make a profound impact on their world. A Colby education is distinctly inspired."

(Warning: do not go to a college website after just having eaten.)

I found myself a little confused by their last sentence: how can an education be inspired? An education is basically inanimate -- it can't be made to laugh, or brought to tears, any more than it can be inspired. Now a student might be inspired by a school, or by his courses, or by his professors. But his education simply cannot be thusly moved. And what exactly does it mean to be distinctly inspired, as opposed to, say, vaguely inspired? I don't get it. Then again, that's how academics write: unclearly, in ways that don't quite make sense. Oh, and by the way -- this paragraph was glad to be of assistance.

At Brown University, "the Brown community creates a dynamic living and learning environment on a picturesque urban campus in historic Providence, Rhode Island.....Visit us to find out why Brown students are said to be among the happiest in America."

Wow! Welcome to Eden! Who wouldn't want to go to a college where you're practically guaranteed happiness?!

But as wonderful as they all sounded, I couldn't help but feel a little dismayed that all these august institutions felt obliged to advertise themselves this way. It seemed just a trifle..... undignified.

I hoped that at least Harvard, of all places, wouldn't advertise itself the same way. After all, its very name is synonymous with prestige! They don't need to boast! But this is what they said on their admissions page:

"There has never been a more exciting time to be at Harvard. Founded in 1636, America's first college has been transformed in recent years by new initiatives that have greatly enhanced the undergraduate experience. Today's students come from all over the nation and the world to attend an extraordinary institution that combines many aspects of a small residential college with the resources of an unparalleled research university."

Oh well.

Another common theme is that practically every college feels obliged to point out how its students come from all over the map. I thought, well, at least state schools must be immune from this. This is what the University of Maryland said:

"It's time to think outside the shell. March to your own drum. And grab hold of your destiny. It's time to discover the University of Maryland."

At first I was confused -- the second and third sentences are cliches, so why not say "think outside the box" and make it three for three? Then I got it -- think outside the shell -- the Maryland athletic teams are the Terrapins! The website's breathless tone sounds a bit more appropriate for an advertisement for a vacation getaway -- it's time you discovered the wonders of Chesapeake Bay! But at least they didn't feel obliged to point out that their students come from all over the world.

They did, however, feature the following photograph on their admissions page:

Note the white girl, Chinese boy, and black boy all climbing together. This was another frequent feature of the college website photographs: many look as if they could have been used for a United Colors of Benetton ad.

It's a little unrealistic. When I was in college, there was a black table in the main dining hall at which white students never sat. I've been told that students still practice such self-segregation at virtually every college. Heck, even our own First Lady said that in her four years at Princeton she never made a single white friend. But to look at those college ads you'd think we're all just one big happy family.

Not one college has the honesty to show a photograph of its dining halls, with most of the black students sitting at one table and all of the whites sitting at others. How droll it would be to have such a photograph juxtaposed with some platitude about the value of diversity.

I thought there must be at least one college which doesn't advertise itself as a bastion of diversity. How about one of those historically black universities, where white students are too scared to go?

But the very first paragraph of North Carolina Central's admissions page reads, "North Carolina Central University is committed to equality of educational opportunity and does not discriminate against applicants, students, or employees based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, or handicap. Moreover, NCCU is open to people of all races and actively seeks to promote racial integration by recruiting and enrolling a culturally and racially diverse student population."

Doth those gentlemen protest too loudly? Repeating something does not make it so.

Many of the pictures you see on the college websites are reminiscent of the photographs on the society page of the Sunday NY Times: an intimate group of people look as if they have just shared a particularly good joke, and are all simply delighted to be at that gathering, at which they're having the time of their lives.

I didn't see a picture of one student who looked bleary-eyed after an Adderall-fueled all-nighter. Not one who looked hungover. Not even one student who looked mildly depressed after perhaps having suffered romantic rejection. They just all looked blissful, as if being at their wonderful school were an unmitigated 24/7 delight.

We've all heard of Stepford Wives; I found myself wondering if there weren't such a thing as Stepford Students.

I also noticed that no college advertised itself as "a great place to spend four years getting drunk on your father's dime." So I checked out a few places with reputations as party schools, to see if there was any hint of that.

The University of California at San Diego features a picture of a big computer with the caption, "SDSC welcomes 'Gordon' computer as research powerhouse." But nothing about keggers or toga night or how you can skip class and spend the day at the beach.

The front page of the University of Alabama website features ways in which Alabama students "touch lives." But no mention of those great tailgate wingdings at the Georgia game.

The home page of the University of Indiana shows a revolving montage of photographs: the Indiana Chief Justice addressing winter commencement, the school's involvement with a supercollider, and their great faculty. Not a word about the legendarily luscious Bloomington coeds.

Disappointing. I guess there are no schools that are actually fun anymore.

Either that, or honesty in academia is dead.

Judging from these websites, I'd have to say the latter. (But I think we already knew that.)

Happy New Year!

2012-01-02T14:55:00.003-05:00

Every year, for the first two weeks of January, my YMCA is packed. And the same thought always occurs:

New Year's resolutions are for those with no discipline the rest of the year.

Do sociopaths love their children?

2012-01-02T09:51:00.003-05:00

This seems to get asked a lot on Google, and it's a good question.

Sociopaths usually stick up for their children, sometimes to a crazy extent (think Texas Cheerleader Mom). But mother crocodiles do likewise: they give rides to their young, put them in their mouths without swallowing them, and kill those who would prey on their young.

Yet it seems doubtful that crocodiles have quite the same tender feelings and sense of attachment that mammals do. I can't say for sure, but my guess is that reptiles, as protective as they can be, just don't seem to have the same depth of feeling.

Maybe sociopaths -- reptilian creatures that they are -- actually feel somewhat positively toward their young. They certainly know they are supposed to feel that way. But do they actually feel the same deep-seated warmth and affection that nonsociopaths do? I don't think so; they're simply not constructed that way.

Some sociopaths abuse and even kill their young. Diane Downs shot all three other children in the back seat of her car in 1983, killing one, and leaving one a paraplegic, and the third partially paralyzed in the face. When the Oregon police arrived, she blamed it on a bushy-haired stranger. But instead of being hysterical, she calmly asked the police was if the damage to the car's rear seat was irreparable.

Charlie Manson's mother, presumably as sociopathic as he, once tried to sell him for a pitcher of beer.

In 1995, Susan Smith drove her small children into a lake in South Carolina and let them drown so that they would no longer stymie her romance with a wealthy local man.

Most sociopaths, of course, do not murder their own children. But do they feel the same devotion, the same maternal or paternal protectiveness? Do they take the same playful delight in their company? It seems unlikely.

I've seen sociopaths who are proud of their children, who view them as little trophies. I've also noticed that the extent to which they want to be seen with their children depends on the child's attractiveness. But pride is an altogether different emotion than love.

So the answer to the question posed in the title of this post seems to be: not to the same extent, if at all.

This doesn't mean, however, that they are not more likely to slash you if you cross their child's path.

College athletics

2012-01-01T12:01:00.001-05:00

I was at my daughter's track meet the other evening and saw two kids, a boy and a girl, former teammates of my daughter. Both had quit their college track and cross country teams after having been extremely dedicated -- almost obsessive -- runners in high school. The girl quit because of injuries, the boy because he didn't want to make the year-round time commitment to the sport.

Track and swimming -- and many other Olympic sports -- can be extremely limiting. If you're constantly concerned with getting enough sleep so you'll be fresh for the next morning's workout, if you have to constantly monitor your diet, if you have to shy away from drinking and partying (every college student's minor), you're going to miss out on a lot. Especially at a time when you should be trying new things.

And if you try to party as well as be an athlete, chances are you're not going to be a successful athlete.

Every student has to make choices. If you get heavily involved in drama, or the college newspaper, or the chess club, it means you have less time for other activities. But serious athletics require a time commitment and use of energy that dwarfs those of other activities. You're going to have to choose a career after college: why not be a dilettante while you can?

This logic of course doesn't apply to athletes who might effectively go on to professional sports careers. For them, an entirely different set of incentives applies. But for the rest of us -- and I'm speaking from experience -- extreme dedication just means putting on the blinders for limited rewards.

I congratulated both of those kids on their newfound freedom.

A departure

2012-01-01T11:29:00.002-05:00

This blog specializes in exposing sociopaths, analyzing hypocrisy, political analysis, wry reveries, and humor. In other words, sarcasm and snark. It generally stays away from heartfelt sentiment.

But I happened to stumble across this poem yesterday. I found it moving, so want to pass it along. There are two versions of the poem. The first is a 1932 version, the second is the original Pagan version:

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow;
I am the diamond glints on snow;
I am the sunlight on ripened grain;
I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning hush
I am the quick uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there, I did not die.

-- Mary Frye 1932

Do not weep for me for I have not gone.
I am the wind that shakes the mighty Oak.
I am the gentle rain that falls upon your face.
I am the spring flower that pushes through the dark earth.
I am the chuckling laughter of the mountain stream.
Do not weep for me for I have not gone.

I am the memory that dwells in the heart of those that knew me.
I am the shadow that dances on the edge of your vision.
I am the wild goose that flies south at Autumns call and I shall return at Summer rising.
I am the stag on the wild hills way.
I am just around the corner.

Therefore, the wise weep not.
But rejoice at the transformation of my Being.

--Author unknown

Addendum, same day: I'm told that this poem is a popular choice at funerals. I haven't been to many funerals, and hadn't realized that.

Mid-life crisis

2011-12-31T04:11:00.005-05:00

You don't hear that expression as much these days. It used to refer to a man hitting his 40's and then doing something silly to prove to himself that he was still young, like buying a sports car or getting a young girlfriend. And it wasn't every man who succumbed to this condition, only the particularly foolish ones.

Even if "mid-life crisis" never quite made it into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it was still considered an identifiable, distinct malady, not too dissimilar in nature to a "nervous breakdown" (whatever that meant).

This dread disease would almost always have its onset in a man's 40's (there was none of that foolish talk about how "50 is the new 35" back then). And it was assumed that the man would recover as soon as his sanity was restored, sort of like a patient being woken from hypnosis.

These days, you hear the phrase "mid life crisis" much less frequently, as people seem to have caught onto its real definition: being a guy -- of any age.

Most guys act in ways which would formerly have invoked the diagnosis "mid-life crisis" as soon as they can -- perhaps in their twenties. And even at the other end, age is less an impediment than it used to be. You might say that Viagra has encouraged "old age crises."

Exhibit A: Hugh Hefner.

Exhibit B: Silvio Berlusconi.

Do these guys look silly? Of course. Nonetheless, they look less so than their counterparts on the shuffleboard court at the retirement home.

The real crisis --no matter what your age is -- is not being able to act like Hefner and Berlusconi.

Our knowledge of psychology is dynamic and ever-changing. And we are far wiser than we were thirty years ago. We now know that to say that a male is having a mid-life crisis is somewhat redundant.

Maturity

2011-12-30T11:18:00.001-05:00

Was chatting with a couple guys yesterday about how we still participate in sports at an age when our fathers were more sedentary, when one of them said, "Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional."

It's a great line; when I Googled it later, it was attributed to both Chili Davis and Bob Monkhouse. I also stumbled across a Wikiquotes site which featured observations on aging. A few of the more clever ones:

On being old -- it's not nice but take comfort that you won't stay that way for ever. -- J.P. Donleavy

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. -- Joseph Lee

Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened. -- Jennifer Yane

"Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself." -- Tom Wilson

"It's never too late to be what you might have been." -- George Eliot

"First you forget names; then you forget faces; then you forget to zip up your fly; and then you forget to unzip your fly." -- Branch Rickey

Confessions of a beta male XIII: Fighting

2011-12-29T11:22:00.003-05:00

There used to be an expression that men would use upon being insulted: "Them's fighting words." Speaking as a beta male, there have been very few such words in my lexicon. As a matter of fact, I can't think of any.

Push an alpha and he'll push back. Push me and I'll fall back.

Alphas start a fight if you look at their girlfriend the wrong way. When I was young, I would just hope you wouldn't take her away.

Alphas are ready to fight if you insult their masculinity. My masculinity is, well, much more even-keeled.

To an alpha, the pleasure of delivering a punch to your face is worth the pain of receiving one to his. To me, a ten to one ratio wouldn't make it worthwhile.

You'll occasionally hear someone say of an alpha, "He's the kind of guy you want on your side in a bar fight." Ever since I first heard that fights occasionally break out in bars, I've avoided them.

If an alpha takes martial arts lessons, and begins to feel proficient, he looks for an opportunity to use his new skills. To me, "self defense" means exactly that. In the twenty years since I got my black belt in karate, the only thing I've kicked are doors which are stuck. (And yes, the UFC did prove how useless karate by itself is; I might as well have gotten my black belt from the Arthur Murray School of Dance.)

I just don't seem to get that angry. I just can't think of anything other than going after my children that would rouse me to action. You can feel free to say what you want about me, my school, my hobbies, my hometown, or my country, completely secure in the knowledge that there will be absolutely no physical repercussions.

It's too easy for me to imagine what it would be like to have to put in false teeth every day for the rest of my life. Or lose an eye. Or even get a bloody nose. And I value my brain, so don't want it jarred.

Yeah -- that's why I'm a coward: I'm just way too intelligent!

In fact, I'll use any of the lame excuses that betas use to avoid a fight: Why would I want to fight him? That guy is crazy.... He's not worth arguing with. A guy like that isn't going to listen to reason....I'm the better man for having walked away.

I'm not too proud to resurrect that old standby from first grade: sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.

A beta's life is nothing more than a series of justifications.

Rest in Peace

2011-12-28T10:29:00.004-05:00

It's sometimes surprising to find out that movie stars you might have assumed were dead are in fact still alive. For instance, did you know that Ernest Borgnine, who played the cruel sergeant in From Here to Eternity, was still alive at age 94? Or Joan Fontaine, 94, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in Rebecca in 1940? Or Celeste Holm, nominated for an Oscar for All About Eve in 1950? Or Eli Wallach, 96, the ugly one in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly?

I had no idea that Cheetah, who achieved fame in the Tarzan films of the 1930's, was still alive, until this morning, when I read the following AP article stating that he had just died at the age of 80:

http://news.yahoo.com/chimp-1930s-us-tarzan-films-dead-80-093119035.html

Cheetah never got any more acting jobs after Tarzan. He was essentially a child star who, once he lost his youthful cuteness, never got any more roles.

One has to wonder if Cheetah was aware of his fame. If he was, was he resentful that he was typecast? He never even got a single speaking part. But perhaps becoming a crossover star wasn't really his ambition.

What would he have thought if he had seen the Planet of the Apes series? Would he have exulted in the ape's triumph over humans? Or would he have objected to the way they were portrayed: every bit as venal, selfish, prideful, and vicious as humans.

Wild chimpanzees evidently have an average lifespan of 45 years, so it's not entirely certain that this was actually the original Cheetah, and not just an impostor.

If it was him, even if he never really escaped the chimpanzee ghetto, at least he had the satisfaction of outliving costars Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sulllivan.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2011-12-25T13:09:00.005-05:00

Saw the remake last night. I had raved about the original movie nine months ago.

From the previews of the new version, it had looked as if Hollywood just wanted an English language version featuring actors with better cheekbones. Here are the stars of the two versions:

I found it hard to judge the new version, having just seen other movie (and read the book). Whatever dramatic tension existed, I was somewhat numb to, since I already knew what happened. And every time there was a departure from the original, instead of thinking, wow, that's ingenious, I'd think, wait a sec, that's not how it's supposed to happen.

It was a little as if I was reading two books side by side, and constantly going back and forth: it made it hard to get into the fantasy and lose myself in it.

Daniel Craig deglamorized himself well enough to be believable as a journalist. He laid off the steroids, usually had a couple days growth of white beard, and wore glasses. For half the movie he looked as if he had just gotten out of bed, the mark of an actor who can shed his vanity -- and act.

Not even heavy Goth make up and piercings could disguise Rooney Mara's good looks. She didn't give quite as hard-edged or feral a performance as Noomi Rapace, the half-Gypsy Swedish actress. But you couldn't really expect that from the granddaughter of Wellington Mara, owner of the NY Giants.

So, the new version has my recommendation. I think. But maybe not so much if you've already seen the Swedish version.

Does the Tea Party ever behave like this?

2011-12-23T10:41:00.003-05:00

An article which appeared today about how some Occupy protesters drowned out Michelle Bachmann at a campaign stop in Iowa City:

http://news.yahoo.com/occupy-hecklers-drown-bachmann-iowa-diner-231024309.html

Protests on the right -- on the rare ocasions when they occur -- are inevitably orderly, well-behaved affairs where the participants clean up after themselves and obey the law. Protests by leftists -- exemplified by the recent never-ending Occupy protests -- are usually exercises in civil disobedience.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters defecated on police cars, stole from each other, and banged on drums at all hours of the night, keeping local residents from sleeping. A few committed rape and dealt drugs.

A similar pattern occurs on college campuses across the nation. Liberal speakers are never shouted down and prevented from speaking. Conservative speakers, on the other hand, are routinely picketed, shouted down, and occasionally even have water poured on them or pies thrust in their faces. And it's been that way for forty years.

If I knew absolutely nothing else about politics, I'd be able to draw a pretty accurate conclusion about which side to put more faith in based purely on their behavior.

Tra la la la la

2011-12-23T09:14:00.002-05:00

Got a call from my son, who is stationed in Kandahar, a few days ago. When we asked what he planned to do for Christmas, he replied, "I'm going to leave my combat outpost and do some caroling in the local village."

MIssion Accomplished

2011-12-23T06:08:00.002-05:00

Yesterday 16 bombs exploded in Baghdad in a coordinated attack led by al Qaeda-connected Sunnis. At last count, 67 people were dead and 169 injured.

What happened in Iraq yesterday was a foretaste of what will happen in Afghanistan when we leave there. It will explode into sectarian violence, and the wrong side will triumph.

In Iraq it's going to be either the al Qaeda-aided Sunnis or the majority Shiites. Or maybe they carve the country up. And whatever leadership emerges will almost certainly eventually establish a theocracy which can't be voted out.

Obama's pronouncement three days ago that Iraq was now "sovereign, stable, and self-reliant" was, well, pure Obama. (True, Obama didn't get us into the war; he just put a false ending on it.)

After Saddam was overthrown we wasted a lot of time there ensuring.....what, exactly? In the end, what will we have accomplished? Did we actually build a stable and self-reliant government? We stood as good a chance of converting the Iraqis to Christianity.

The same will happen in Afghanistan. We got our man (and Osama wasn't even in that country). So what are we fighting for now? The Taliban may wait a week, rather than just a day, but their ultimate triumph is just as inevitable. The best we can do while we're there is merely repress them.

What are we waiting for?

Oh, that's right, the Presidential election.

.17956

2011-12-22T10:34:00.003-05:00

A friend recently got to chat for an hour with the leader of the mission which went in to get Osama bin Laden. I'm not allowed to describe the circumstances, but this is a true story.

Of all the elite branches of the military, the Navy Seals, are generally considered to have the toughest physical requirements; less than one in five of those who try out make it. A select few Seals are selected to try out for Seal Team Six. And it's probably a safe assumption that the thirty best members of that group went after Osama.

So the guy who was chosen to head that mission was the elite of the elite of the elite.

I asked my friend, so what was this guy like? What was he built like, how smart did he seem?

My friend said that he was polite, and came across soft spoken but confident. He was in his thirties, good-looking, six feet tall, and weighed maybe 210, none of which seemed to be fat. He added, "He wasn't, you know, New York smart, like some of these guys who just have to prove to you how smart they are within the first five minutes of meeting you. But everything he said made sense and fit together, and after a while it just sort of gradually dawned on you that you were talking to a very smart guy."

My friend said that one of the more interesting things that came out of the conversation was that the military brass aren't necessarily fond of Special Operations personnel. Admirals and the like are used to having lower-ranking personnel toadying up to them, and Navy Seals, who are elite in a different kind of way, usually aren't quite as effusive in their obsequiousness. So there's sometimes a little tension.

This Seal had been on 85 combat missions before the Osama raid. That is a mind-boggling number. Let's say the odds of surviving any given mission are 98%. (I have no idea what they actually are, but that seems a reasonable estimate, and it's quite possible the odds on some missions are less.) But using that 98% estimate means that the odds of surviving all 85 missions are .98 to the 85th power, or .17956.

In other words, a less than one in five chance.

People who value their own lives less, or are at least willing to risk them in a good cause, actually lead lives more valuable than those of us who value our lives more highly.

If only all crime were like this....

2011-12-21T06:14:00.019-05:00

The following AP article appeared this morning:

http://news.yahoo.com/12-indicted-beard-cutting-attacks-ohio-amish-212632091.html

Evidently 12 members of a renegade Amish sect were charged with federal hate crimes for cutting off the beards and hair of another group of Amish:

"The five attacks between September and November involved cutting women's hair and men's beards and hair. That's considered deeply offensive in Amish culture."

(The ringleader of the breakaway group was named Mullet, appropriately enough.)

There's something almost nostalgia-inducing about such a crime. Yes, it's disrespectful. And it did involve physical restraint. But in the end, it still seems more mischevious than truly destructive. What harm was done? Hair does grow back.

If only crime in the inner city were as harmless. Imagine the news reports:

"Darnell Pinckney, 19, of Detroit, was arrested on Thursday and charged with a federal hate crime for short sheeting the bed of Jermaine Watkins, 20. Pinckney was reportedly angered that Watkins had disrespected him by making a snowman and placing Pinckney's hat on top of it."

"The LAPD has reported that for the past week the Crips and the Bloods have been engaged in an all out turf war in Compton. To date 47 gang members have been arrested for crimes ranging from squirting each other with plastic ketchup bottles to drive-by water balloonings. In one particularly brutal attack, Bloods member Javon Jackson, 18, was reportedly accosted by three Crips and given a wedgie."

"Demetrius Williams, 22, was arrested in East St. Louis on Wednesday for having placed Defario Smith's hand into a bowl of warm water while Smith was sleeping, causing Smith to urinate in his pants. Williams is being held held without bond and will be arraigned in U.S. district court on Monday. Witnesses claimed that Williams was motivated by a desire for revenge after Smith allegedly put shaving cream on the earpiece of his home phone."

"Adante Brown was arrested at the Marcy Houses in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn yesterday on a charge of sexual assault. 'It was absolutely horrifying,' said victim Sheniece Jones. 'We were standing on the rooftop having a perfectly pleasant conversation when all of a sudden he tried to kiss me. If I hadn't pulled away in time he would have planted a big one right on my lips.' The FBI is looking into whether Ms. Jones' civil rights were violated."

If only...

The Duel in the Pool

2011-12-20T14:58:00.001-05:00

An article about a recent swim meet, for swim fans only:

http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/Commentary/29085.asp?q=The-%22Duel%22

Martha Nicholas, Part II

2011-12-20T11:07:00.003-05:00

A commenter linked this video clip about Martha Nicholas, the sociopath who scammed people into believing that she had cancer, in response to my recent post:

http://www.wric.com/global/Category.asp?c=190525&autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=6552713&flvUri=&partnerclipid=

Observe the way Martha's voice almost breaks as she says she may not see her son again. Look at her sincere expression as she speaks about her terminal diagnosis. Admire Martha's bravery as she announces that she is a three time cancer survivor and a current cancer fighter.

These whoppers are delivered with none of the hesitation that a normal person would have when lying.

If you were unfamiliar with sociopaths you'd have had absolutely no reason to doubt her.

The fourth Kardashian sister

2011-12-19T08:24:00.007-05:00

When I saw this picture of Jersey Shore's Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi in the New York Post this morning, it hit me who she really is.

If she actually were part of that family, her sisters would probably look down on her for being shorter, less intelligent, and so on. But really, the similarities -- especially of character and talent -- are far greater than the differences.

Don't worry, I won't make any portentous comments about how their television shows herald the end of civilization or some such. I actually think it's a positive comment on our society that it can provide such worthless people such a splendid living.

And yes, I am completely ashamed of myself for even knowing who any of them they are.

Presidential campaign

2011-12-18T08:23:00.012-05:00

Six weeks ago I announced that I was running for President, and outlined my platform. I listed additional planks here and here.

I must now admit that I am the first candidate in history to announce his candidacy and then just sort of forget about it.

(Ross Perot came close in '92, but, unlike me, he never entirely forgot.)

It's not senility that caused me to forget. It's simply that I've had more important topics to discuss -- like who the prettiest actresses are.

In any case, I am proud to announce that my candidacy has thus far has been untarnished by scandal.

Well, not that proud. It's mainly because my life is so incredibly boring. (If anybody wants to help me get into trouble, I'm open to suggestions.)

I am proud to announce that unlike Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain, my support hasn't gone down one whit from my peak. I have as many people planning to vote for me as I did a month ago.

But, alas, my support has not been growing. So the next step will probably be to decide whom to throw my support to.

I'd be tempted to say Ron Paul because he seems the purest of the bunch; he certainly has the right attitude about downsizing government. But I saw him on Leno Friday night and he was a complete turkey. He kept making lame comments and then smiling goofily as if he thought he was being witty. Leno's audience had been salted with Paul supporters, so they roared with approval no matter what he said. But it was painful to watch.

At one point Leno asked him what he thought about gay marriage, and Paul answered, "Well, I think the government should stop arguing about it." An evasion worthy of Hillary Clinton.

It's hard to get behind Gingrich given his character issues. If Herman Cain seemed to be using his campaign as a way to get laid more, Newt seems to be using his as a way to make more money. Gingrich reportedly tried to turn a recent top level meeting of Republicans in New York City into a book signing.

I've heard any number of people say that it's very important to Newt that he always be the smartest guy in the room; if any of those people liked him, they'd simply have complimented his intelligence. And when the people who dislike you most are the ones who know you best, that's never an encouraging sign.

Jon Hunstman is a little like the class valedictorian -- oops, make that salutorian (sorry, Newt) -- whom nobody notices. He may be the most decent, most diplomatic, most experienced, and most well-versed in foreign affairs. But nobody seems to care; there's just nothing dramatic about him. If he were 6' 3", more masculine-looking, a little less polite, and a little funnier, his candidacy would probably be doing a lot better.

Michelle Bachmann's husband evidently runs a Christian counseling clinic which tries to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals. Perhaps while he's at it he can perform another miracle and raise his wife's IQ.

Rick Perry is no better. At the last debate he was said to have done well just because he didn't stumble again, but the kudos he got sounded a little like the kind of approval that accrues to a Downs Syndrome child who ties his shoelaces.

Mitt Romney seems like one of those guys from the rich boys' fraternity in Revenge of the Nerds who was always picking on the nerds. His father was a governor, so Mitt deserves the best -- the Presidency!

Still, he's competent, and he'll probably be the last pol standing come spring; in fact, I'd be willing to bet ten thousand dollars on that.

Any of these candidates -- as dumb or sociopathic as they might be -- would make a better President than the current one.

I'll let you know which one I'm backing after he wins the nomination.

Christopher Hitchens, RIP

2011-12-16T11:46:00.002-05:00

http://www.nypost.com./p/news/national/author_christopher_hitchens_dead_I2CJFjBRTGQGhDkbeKPSSL/0

Christopher Hitchens died last night at age 62. He was ferociously intelligent, and a real free thinker. The NY Post obituary, above, gives a sense of him.

You can't possibly be any more iconoclastic than to write an expose on Mother Teresa and call it The Missionary Position.

Addendum, next day: Just read Steve Sailer's dissenting obituary; he does make some telling points about Hitchens' conversion to neocon.

Should I apologize?

2011-12-15T10:56:00.006-05:00

Got this comment yesterday on the post about Jennifer Aniston vs. other actresses I consider more attractive:

"Nothing but white women. Not a single Asian, Latina, or African-American female on your list. Interesting."

The commenter brings up an interesting point: should people apologize for who they are attracted to? I had stated clearly in the post that judging looks was subjective as well as silly. Then I showed pictures of eight women I found extremely attractive.

If this commenter asked a gay friend of his to list his eight all-time-most-attractive list, and there were no women, would he tut-tut, "Hmm, not a single woman. Interesting." Or if he asked Robert DeNiro for his list, and DeNiro answered honestly and named eight black women, what would the commenter's response be then?

Isn't the essence of gay liberation that you can't blame someone for something they can't help, i.e., whom they're attracted to? Should that consideration not be extended to others?

When I was in my twenties I managed to date every race and ethnicity. (I wasn't liberal, just adventurous.) At one point I considered Asian women more attractive. These days I tend to find white women more attractive. Should I apologize for that?

The eight women I chose were all slender. Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and Katherine Heigl just aren't my type. Should I be sorry for that as well?

There is a huge amount of dishonesty when it comes to attraction these days. You constantly see similar lists put out by publications like People and Maxim and GQ which always very carefully include representatives of all races. But is that an honest reflection of their editors' tastes, or are they just trying to be pc?

When Vanessa Williams was selected as the first black Miss America back in 1983, and Suzette Charles was selected as runner up, was it because all the judges that year happened to find them the most attractive and accomplished of all the contestants? Or was it because management had decided ahead of time that it was starting to get embarrassing that in the entire history of the pageant dating from 1921 they had never once selected a black woman?

Every guy has a type he finds most attractive, whether he's honest about it or not. I shouldn't have to apologize for mine any more than a gay man should apologize for being homosexual.

"Famous People with Aspergers Syndrome"

2011-12-14T09:26:00.004-05:00

This is a list of people who are thought to have (or had) Aspergers, a mild form of autism:

http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/article_2086.shtml

You have to keep in mind that lists like this are usually compiled by people who themselves have Aspergers, or parents of people with Aspergers, so they want to claim as many accomplished people as possible, in order to provide inspirational "role models." (It's a little like listening to homosexuals talk about celebrities: they want to claim all the good-looking ones.)

The list linked above includes Thomas Jefferson, Michelangelo, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Isaac Newton, Beethoven, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, and Mozart, among others.

I looked up a few other similar lists, and many of the same names are included.

Some of the people obviously deserve inclusion on the lists. Nikola Tesla, for instance, was obsessive-compulsive, which people with Aspergers often are, and extremely rigid in his personal life.

But is there really enough known about Michelangelo and his personal life to make that diagnosis? And there was nothing about Benjamin Franklin, a famous ladies' man, to indicate that he was mildly autistic. He was a successful diplomat, a role it would be hard for someone with Aspergers to fill, and he had a sense of humor, which those with Aspergers notoriously lack. It was almost as if they wanted to include him merely because he was so accomplished.

Ditto for Mark Twain: he was known for his sly sense of humor and his insight into others; yet the defining characteristic of Aspergers is an inability to read other people. (I'm guessing Twain was diagnosed as such because he became increasingly reclusive in his old age, but this seemed to be a misanthropy borne of disenchantment and world-weariness rather than an organically asocial nature.)

On the other hand, the list of contemporary people mostly rings true. It has been widely speculated that Bill Gates may have Aspergers; he evidently rocks back and forth in meetings, an autistic trait, and he certainly fulfills the nerdiness quotient. Al Gore was widely described as a "wooden Indian" when he ran for President, his pronouncements certainly seems tone deaf enough, and he is awfully rigid in his world view, most notably when it comes to global warming.

Seeing Keith Olbermann's name on the list was a real "aha" moment. Suddenly his personality made sense to me. Olbermann was despised by his coworkers at ESPN, and his colleagues at MSNBC ended up feeling the same way. He is annoying, and extremely rigid in his thinking. And he is widely described, even by those on his side of the political fence, as "crazy," the most common word used by those who don't understand Aspergers to describe those who have it. I had always assumed he was just a garden variety narcissist, but there are aspects of Aspergers which overlaps with narcissism, most notably in the unwillingness to admit one is wrong. And most intelligent narcissists do a better job of hiding their narcissism than Olbermann does.

Take a look at the list; you may have some aha moments as well.

Sociopath alert: Martha Nicholas

2011-12-13T02:38:00.001-05:00

(Martha Nicholas, center)

An article appeared on AOL News today about a woman who pretended to have Stage 4 ovarian cancer, and obtained money from people for her treatment, thereby pulling off a neat sociopathic double play.

Scamming people for money is the province of con men, and con men are usually sociopaths. But getting money under false pretenses by itself does not necessarily mean sociopathy.

Most con men take advantage of others' greed. That doesn't justify what they do, and only makes it slightly more palatable. But if you're ripping off people who are trying to help you, who feel sorry for you, you can't possibly have any shame.

And not feeling any shame is the defining characteristic of a sociopath.

Martha Nicholas almost undoubtedly has Munchausen's Syndrome, which causes people to feign illnesses in order to gain sympathy and attention. Munchausen's is never exhibited by nonsociopaths. Nicholas's "illness" probably started off merely as a ploy for sympathy, since affect-hungry (meaning, hungry for affection) sociopaths have a bottomless need for positive feelings from others, and will do anything to get them.

Imagine that people are holding a large fundraiser in your honor, to help you fight your "illness." You smile bravely and try to fight back the tears as you say that you don't know whether each day will be your last. You're not really sick, you're just a malingerer. Yet you bask in the sympathy and attention you are receiving. Wouldn't you feel just a little bit embarrassed?

Martha Nicholas didn't.

Nicholas’ attorney, Sam Simpson, said, “This was not a scam to rip people off. There is an illness. It’s a mental illness, and I can’t say more about this.”

The mental illness he is referring to is Munchausen's Syndrome. He will undoubtedly evoke it in her defense at her trial, and hope that people don't realize it's just a form of sociopathy.

Why you can't trust polls

2011-12-11T21:15:00.011-05:00

Men's Health magazine just released the results of their poll on the sexiest woman of all time. Jennifer Aniston won.

Opinions about looks are of course purely subjective, and such polls are by their very nature silly. And merely by commenting on it I am betraying my own innate silliness.

Nonetheless, I have to say it: Jennifer Aniston??

There were women in my class at Harvard, and in each of the three classes behind me, who were better-looking than her. And Harvard, unlike Hollywood, is not known as a place which draws beautiful women. (In fact, it has the opposite reputation.)

I can just hear the argument on the other side: "Oh, but she's got that girl-next-door appeal."

True, she does look like the girl next door. And the girl in the house after that. And the one after that as well.

I have to wonder if Aniston's agent had some sort of arrangement with Men's Health.

Open up any Sunday New York Times magazine, look at the fashion advertisements, and you'll see better-looking women than Aniston. Go to virtually any high school and you'll see prettier girls.

Here are a few examples of real physical perfection, for comparison's sake.

Grace Kelly is on everybody's top ten list. She may have been a touch on the bland side, but she made up for it by being perfect:

Tippi Hedren was another of Hitchcock's blonde ice queens. She exuded elegance and femininity:

Donna Reed may be best known for her wholesome performance in It's a Wonderful Life, that perennial Christmas favorite, but she won her Best Supporting Oscar for playing a prostitute in From Here to Eternity.

Heather Graham never quite made it from starlet to star, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have one of the sweetest faces of all time:

Mischa Barton never made it past starlet either, and at age 25 it now seems she never will. But she is proof that you don't have to be sane to be beautiful:

Michelle Pfeiffer is supposed to be a marvel of plastic surgery. If so, she ought to give Jennifer the name of her doctor.

Most will disagree with the choice of Karen Allen as one of the all time sexiest, but for me, she was:

Jaime Pressly exudes white trashiness, but I'm guessing most guys -- at least the ones who didn't vote in that poll -- would rather spend time in Pressly's trailer than Aniston's mansion:

Previous posts have gone on about Elizabeth Hartman, Deborah Kerr, and various Bond girls, so their charms won't be rehashed here.

Jennifer Aniston is a nice-looking woman. For all I know she's a perfectly nice person as well. But to call her the sexiest woman of all time is almost to mock her.

Keepin' it real

2011-12-09T15:55:00.002-05:00

Was just skimming the NY Post when I ran across this picture of fashion designer Valentino:

He is living proof that if you have enough plastic surgery, by a certain age you will look like a Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum replica of yourself.

You occasionally see pictures of celebrities posing next to their likenesses in the museum. As good as some of the reproductions are, you can always tell which one is real.

Well, almost always.

Jon Corzine, Part II

2011-12-08T13:22:00.001-05:00

Jon Corzine issued a statement today saying that he had no idea what happened to the missing customer funds at MF Global:

"Even when I was at MF Global, my involvement in the firm's clearing, settlement and payment mechanisms and accounting was limited."

A lot of people will assume, naturally enough, that he is lying, and just laying the groundwork for an innocent plea in an upcoming trial.

I actually think it's possible he's telling the truth. This doesn't absolve him of responsibility, of course, as he was in charge of the firm. But he clearly saw himself as the big picture guy - which most CEOs are. And big picture guys tend not to pay much attention to what goes on in the back office.

The fact that Corzine had been both a United States Senator and the Governor of New Jersey since his days as CEO of Goldman Sachs probably put his head even further up in the clouds. It's just not that hard to imagine that a 63-year-old who's friends with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and saw himself as next in line for the Treasury job would not dig in and acquaint himself with the nuts and bolts of clearance and delivery.

When I worked on Wall Street as a bond trader, my responsibilities were limited to buying and selling bonds. But I would have had no clue had someone decided to embezzle the actual physical bonds which I had bought for the firm (back in those days, some bonds were still in actual paper form). I had no knowledge about how the firm's clearing and settlement operations actually worked.

Think of it this way: when you buy or sell a stock in your brokerage account, do you follow up and find out exactly whom you bought it from and make sure that the money which is reported to be in your account is actually there? Or do you just believe your brokerage statement?

Obviously, someone was responsible for transferring the customer funds. And that person should go to jail. Maybe Corzine should too, given that he was theoretically in charge. And it's certainly possible that he knows more than he's saying.

It's also possible he doesn't.

Nice guys, average guys, and sociopaths (XII)

2011-12-08T10:33:00.001-05:00

SITUATION: A young man asks his date up to his apartment after a movie. She coyly asks if she can trust him. How does he respond?

Nice guy: Says, “I don’t know” with his heart pounding and a weak attempt at a devilish smile, wondering if he will be able to work up the nerve to make a pass.

Average guy: Says, “I don’t know,” encouraged by her flirtatious response and hopeful she will go to bed with him.

Sociopath: Says, “I don’t know,” with exaggerated innocence, knowing she will have a hard time evading his date rape-like tactics.

SITUATION: A neighbor’s dog wanders into a 10-year-old’s backyard. What does the child do?

Nice boy: Says, "Good dog," scratches it behind its ears, and tries to get it to play with him. Looks into its eyes and feels that they are "soulful." Feels slightly bereft when it wanders off.

Average boy: Says “Shoo,” not wanting the dog to defecate on his lawn.

Sociopath-in-the-making: Says, “Here boy,” then squirts it with the garden hose. Or he flicks lit matches at it. Finds this highly amusing. Thinks, it serves the stupid dog right for coming into his yard.

SITUATION: A new bodyguard has just been hired by a celebrity. How does he go about his work?

Nice guy: Does his job responsibly and unobtrusively.

Average guy: Does his job responsibly; off the job, drops the celebrity’s name frequently. Enjoys thinking about what a badass he is, although he hopes that he will never be called on to actually put himself on the line with any genuine bad guys who want to hurt the celebrity.

Sociopath: Ignores real threats, but constantly throws his weight around, pushing aside young fans to clear a path for the celebrity. When a paparazzi appears, roughs him up in order to ingratiate himself with the celebrity. Hopes he'll get a chance to use his gun.

Things you never hear about Asians

2011-12-08T09:59:00.007-05:00

The prosecutor announced yesterday that he would stop seeking the death penalty against Mumia Abu Jamal, who has been on Death Row since 1982.

Jamal was unquestionably guilty of having shot Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner to death, and became a cause celebre only because he was nice-looking, as I wrote two years ago.

The AP article which came out yesterday stated that, "Over the years, Abu-Jamal challenged the predominantly white makeup of the jury...He also complained that....the judge was racist."

Jamal, in his writings from Death Row, also said the justice system was racist.

I would interpret these statements to mean that (a), he would have preferred an OJ-style jury; (b), he sensed the judge was not particularly fond of him; and (c), he saw a disproportionate number of his racial kin in jail.

Over the past forty years, "racist" is a word which has been used so indiscriminately that it has been rendered virtually meaningless. No one seriously analyzes what it means anymore, it's just a word to throw out when you want to stop people from thinking rationally and analytically. Its original meaning was, to discriminate against an individual because of his race. These days it more commonly refers to anyone who has taken a clear-eyed look at the statistics on crime or IQ or any myriad of other behavioral markers.

Racism is, of course, a charge which is only leveled against white people, since other races are obviously never guilty of such tribal solidarity. But if white people are so naturally inclined to think ill of other races, why do they not harbor these same baseless prejudices against Asian-Americans? After all, Asians are as easily identifiable as "the other" as blacks are.

Yet you never hear a white say:

"Hey guys, I just saw a sign that said, 'Mao Zedong Boulevard' -- better lock those doors and get outa here quick."

"Only reason we have so many Asian students here at Cal Berkeley is 'cause of affirmative action."

"Uh oh. Buncha Koreans walking in our direction -- better cross the street."

"I ran the 100 in high school but no way could I make the team here. You ever see those guys? What chance does a wimpy white boy like me have against those Filipinos?"

"Did you see that end zone dance Watanabe did the other day? Those people can't help themselves -- they just always have to Nip out."

"That electrical engineering class is filled with Koreans. Think of the grade curve -- it's a guaranteed A!"

"All those Chinese-Americans do is breed like cockroaches so they can get more welfare checks."

If white racism is all about ignorance and unfounded stereotypes, shouldn't we be hearing these statements as well?

How many women have you slept with?

2011-12-06T06:57:00.008-05:00

A review of Casanova's memoirs appeared in the New York Times a week ago. The first paragraph:

"PARIS — Giacomo Girolamo Casanova was a gambler, swindler, diplomat, lawyer, soldier, alchemist, violinist, traveler, pleasure seeker and serial seducer."

So far Casanova sounds like an energetic, high-IQ scamp, and possibly even a sociopath. Certainly anyone who has ever worked as a swindler and alchemist has to be be dishonest. Gamblers often have low self-control, and soldiering occasionally attracts those who exult in destruction.

But then, halfway through the review, came the following surprise:

"Despite his many adventures, Casanova was best known as a libertine. His first sexual encounter, he wrote, was at 11, when he was groped by the sister of his guardian. During his lifetime he claimed to have seduced 122 women, including a nun."

You'd think that the man whose name is synonymous with seduction would have claimed more than 122 women. Perhaps Casanova was not a sociopath after all, but a (relatively) honest man who enjoyed the company of women.

There are certainly many guys who claim to have slept with far more.

Wilt Chamberlain once famously claimed to have slept with 20,000 women. He is also known for his quote that nobody roots for Goliath, but the two statements are somewhat contradictory: if his first claim was true, he had at least 20,000 fans. But the first claim is of course a lie. In order for that to have occurred he would have had to have slept with 1.37 women a day from the age of 15 up until his autobiography was published in 1991 -- with absolutely no repeats. People who knew him said he was often awkward around women, and spent many of his evenings home alone. The scoring he was best at was on the basketball court, where he once single-handedly racked up 100 points in an NBA game.

A bombastic fellow once told me -- when he was 40 -- that he had slept with 10,000 women. When I did the math for him, he somewhat sheepishly said, "Well, hundreds, anyway."

(I'm not even sure that's true.)

Basically, any guy who throws out a huge round number at you either hasn't kept count or is full of, well, hyperbole.

I once read that the average man sleeps with six women in his lifetime. That number may be dated now that we live in the age of the internet, which allows like-minded people to hook up much more efficiently. (There's also the question of what you consider sleeping with a woman: do oral sex and mutual masturbation count? Some say yes, some no.)

Every now and then it occurs to me that men who stick with the same women in fact are the ones with higher sex drives, since they never get bored. And that men who constantly need new sources of sexual stimulation in order to get excited -- the hard core womanizers, who tend to get bored quickly -- are the wimps. It takes a real stud to be excited by the same woman for decades.

On the other hand, supposedly one in every sixteen men in central Asia is a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. He, and his sons and grandsons, all enjoyed absolute power, and enjoyed their absolute power as well. And no one ever accused Genghis of being a wimp. (It's generally considered hard to conquer all of Asia, the entire Middle East, and a third of Europe without a higher than average testosterone level.)

The fact is that most men who can, will sleep with as many women as possible. Think of recent dictators who have done as they pleased in every other regard. (Fidel Castro, or Kim Jong Il, or the Sultan of Brunei.) Their numbers put Casanova to shame. Of course, they're not really competing in the same game. Casanova seduced, they order.

Or consider how guys will take advantage of their fame. (Think Muhammad Ali, or Pablo Picasso, or Warren Beatty, or Mick Jagger.)

Or their money. Billionaires are not generally known for their chastity.

If you're extremely rich and famous and powerful and you have a position which requires a certain amount of decorum, you're almost certain to embarrass yourself. (Sylvio Berlusconi, Dominique Strauss Kahn.)

Men generally behave as evolution has selected them to, to spread their seed as widely as they can.

I have a friend who took a year off from college to work as a steward for a major airline, back in 1973. The home base for the stewards and stewardesses was in San Juan, Puerto Rico. My friend had two roommates there. The three of them were just about the only heterosexual guys in a place which was 90% young, single women. So they referred to their base as "Candyland." By my friend's count, one of his roommates slept with 52 women that year, and the other with 70. (My friend slept with 12.)

I know my friend well enough to know he's honest about these things. He's also good-looking and charming. Although he's long since been put out to pasture (i.e., married), in his day he was an unstoppable force. I was talking to him the other day, and the subject turned to women, and his final score, which was roughly 80. He grumbled that it should have been higher, then growled, "And I'm a damn handsome guy, too."

But he shouldn't grumble too much. At 80 women, he is way above the national average. Another 42 and he would have been right up there with Casanova himself.

And those two guys were honest about their numbers.

Fat skeletons

2011-12-04T07:42:00.005-05:00

There was an item in the NY Post this morning about a "dating site for big-boned women called 'The Big and the Beautiful'."

There's nothing wrong with either "big" or "plus-sized" as substitutes for "fat." A gentle little euphemism never hurt anyone. And we should never blame people for things they have no control over.

But "big-boned" is just transparently dishonest.

It's as if they're saying, "It's not me that's fat, it's just my bones. You see, they're all about four inches thick, which makes me look fat. But that's just an optical illusion. It's not that I sit around eating bon-bons all day and I'm too lazy to get up off my fat ass and exercise -- it's that my bones are big."

Okay, we get it: you have no responsibility in the matter. And since it's completely out of your hands, there's no judgment called for. And you're not a tub of lard -- you're a tub of bones! Hey, maybe we should just call you bony rather than fat.

Come to think of it, it does seem as if you have a rather thick skull.

Vasily Alekseyev, RIP

2011-12-03T06:35:00.003-05:00

Vasily Alekseyev, the Olympic superheavyweight weightlifting champion in 1972 and 1976, died last week in Russia. Starting in 1970, he set a total of 80 world records, and was widely considered to be the world's strongest man during that decade. He was the first man to clear 600 kilograms in the Olympic lifts, and ended up with a best of 645 kilograms.

Alekseyev embodied the principle that real, usable strength, and pretty Hollywood muscles are not the same thing. At about the same time Alexeyev was winning his second gold medal, Arnold Schwarzenegger was winning the first of his titles as Mr. Olympia. But Schwarzenegger would have been as out of place in an Olympic weight-lifting competition as Alekseyev would have been at a Mr. Olympia pose-off.

At his prime, Alekseyev stood 6'1" and weighed 350. Schwarzenegger was 6'2" and weighed 220.

Schwarzenegger's workout routine was geared towards isolating individual muscles, and growing and sculpting them. Alekseyev's was geared toward being able to lift massive amounts of weight. My guess is that Schwarzenegger would have been lucky to lift half of what Alekseyev did in the Olympic lifts, which require utilizing all of your muscles at once, and having great tendon strength and grip strength. Olympic lifting also requires great coordination and balance, as well as a little bit of speed. Alekseyev almost seemed to use the momentum generated from his huge torso to jerk the weights upward.

Alekseyev's type of strength would have been far more useful, say, on a farm. After Schwarzenegger had driven the small tractor into a ditch because he was admiring his biceps rather than paying attention to where he was going, Alekseyev could have pushed it out.

Of course, Alekseyev would also have been laughed off the stage at Mr. Olympia.

Just maybe not to his face.

Alekseyev reigned at a time when steroids were already extant, especially in the eastern bloc. It would beggar common sense to suggest that one of the Soviet Union's premier athletes was never doped up; but Alekseyev didn't look as if he was. He always looked seven months pregnant, and didn't have the type of bulging, defined muscles, especially the trapezius (between the neck and shoulder) which characterize steroid users. While wearing street clothes he could easily have been mistaken for just another big fatty.

With his huge body, vaguely ethnic look, perpetually unshaven face, and usually disgruntled expression, Alekseyev looked like one of the bad guys in a Schwarzenegger film -- you know, the type who might have given Arnold a decent fight before Arnold sent him flying with one of his trademark haymakers. But had the two ever met, and had the director ever suggested they go at it for real, Vasily Alekseyev would not have been the one to be picked up and sent flying.

Missing the point

2011-12-02T10:46:00.003-05:00

The NY Post ran an editorial this morning in which they praised Barack Obama for refusing to apologize to Pakistan for the recent drone bombing which left two dozen members of the Pakistani military dead:

[Obama] called the Bush-led War on Terror “a series of hasty decisions.” In his Cairo speech, he apologized to Muslims and even stretched back to 1953 to express contrition for the CIA’s role in a coup in Iran that year.

And who can forget how he literally bowed before Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and Japan’s Emperor Akihito?

The strategy backfired big-time; rather than admire America, the world saw this country as weak. And acted accordingly.

So now Obama’s reversed course — and won’t utter an “Our bad!” to Pakistan?

That sure would be a welcome first step — late in his presidential term though it is.

The Post has, somewhat uncharacteristically, misread Obama's personality: this most recent action does not demonstrate a sudden change in character.

Obama apologized for the 1953 interference in Iran because a bad Republican, Dwight D. Eisenhower, instigated it. He apologized for the War on Terror because a bad Republican, George W. Bush, waged it.

But Obama is not about to apologize for a bombing that he himself, a good Democrat, called for. It would be totally out of character for a narcissistic personality like him to admit fault.

Man's best friend

2011-12-02T09:44:00.004-05:00

An article on Yahoo News two days ago described how a Utah man who was out duck hunting recently was shot by his own dog when he got out of his canoe to set up some decoys.

The relevant paragraph:

"Apparently excited to join his owner in the marsh, the dog jumped up on the boat's bow and stepped on the gun. The gun was fired, hitting the man in the buttocks with 27 pellets of birdshot."

The man was not seriously injured, thanks to the rubber waders he was wearing.

As shaggy dog stories go, this one certainly beats "The dog ate my homework."

But the article leaves out the most interesting part of the story: how has this changed the man's relationship with his dog? Is he still as affectionate to the hound as he once was? Or is his pet now permanently in the doghouse?

And you have to wonder, the next time the man is out hunting with that dog, will he perhaps feel a vague urge to repay the favor?

What we're fighting for

2011-12-02T09:25:00.003-05:00

When I hear the complaints of feminists in this country I am generally unsympathetic. They want to criminalize ogling a woman (which, in their opinion, constitutes harassment). They want to lower the standards for the fireman's test so that more women can pass. They want to make off-color jokes in the workplace punishable by firing.

Can't say I've ever met a feminist whom I've found persuasive, or charming, or even humorous.

In our country, most of the feminists who use words like "exploited" and "abused" to describe their own condition are in fact abusing those words, rendering them almost devoid of meaning.

But there are women in other parts of the world who really are exploited, abused, and oppressed.

A Reuters article on Yahoo News this morning discussed the case of an Afghan woman who had been jailed for adultery after being raped. The big news was actually that she had been pardoned, although there was some question as to whether the pardon had been predicated on her agreeing to marry her rapist.

Question: What kind of backward society throws a woman in jail for the crime of having been raped -- and then insists she marry her rapist?

Answer: The kind the United States fights for. We are waging a war to support the Karzai regime, which has jurisdiction over the courts which threw the woman in jail.

So our troops are effectively fighting and dying in Afghanistan for the right to.....throw women in jail for being raped.

That's what the feminists -- and everybody else -- ought to be complaining about.

Jon Corzine

2011-11-30T11:37:00.005-05:00

Jon Corzine was many levels above me in the corporate structure at Goldman, but since I worked in the same division, I had some contact with him. He struck me as a decent guy in a place which was full of sociopaths.

At the same time, I thought his reputation for brilliance was overblown. On Wall Street, you can get a reputation for being brilliant by merely making a series of yes/no (buy or sell) decisions which happen to go your way.

Corzine was a big, confident, calm, masculine, charismatic guy who had a knack for making people feel appreciated. He was also obviously very smart. But it was his personality, rather than any creative brilliance, that accounted for his success.

There was certainly no questioning his ambition. He reportedly tired of being a U.S. Senator because he was merely one of a hundred, so before his first term in Washington was up he ran for Governor of New Jersey, a position where he would have much more executive power. More recently he reportedly had his eye on the Secretary of the Treasury position, a post he thought he would get if Obama were reelected.

To that end he seemed to want to make a big splash at MF Global, in order to demonstrate that he still had the magic touch. So he made big bets on European sovereign debt, bets which ultimately bankrupted the overleveraged firm. The big question, of course, is whether he was personally responsible for the missing customer funds.

I'd be surprised if he was, since, as I said, he never gave off the smell of dishonesty while at Goldman. But whether he personally made the decision to take money from those accounts or not is somewhat irrelevant, since as the firm's chief he was ultimately responsible for all decisions made there.

Corzine will probably be sentenced to jail, since politically it would be impossible not to do so. If the customer money is recovered -- and maybe even if it's not -- Obama will probably pardon him, perhaps as soon as January of 2013. Corzine was always a big Obama supporter, and while Obama can no longer offer him Treasury, he still owes him, and Obama is all about paying off old supporters.

But even if Corzine gets off with a short stint in jail, his career is over.

A friend, Dave Moriarty, pointed out yesterday that "you are tempting the trading gods when you name your firm 'MF'."

Corzine didn't name the firm, but he definitely had more than his share of hubris. And as the Greeks told us so long ago, that is the best way to anger the gods.

"You'll just feel a little pinch"

2011-11-30T05:08:00.003-05:00

Every single doctor or nurse or dentist who's ever jabbed a needle into me has always said those exact same words beforehand. They must all learn from the same playbook.

I understand why "pinch" is their word of choice. It certainly sounds less dire than, "Brace yourself, I'm about to plunge this big needle through your skin and into your flesh." A "pinch" is something a girl might do to you if she doesn't know how to fight and inflict any real damage. A "pinch" of vodka is a trace amount that you theoretically won't even feel. (Of course, I've never heard anyone ask for a pinch of liquor who didn't really want a big dollop.)

But the fact is, "pinch" is not an accurate description of how a needle feels. A "small stabbing" would convey the actual feeling more accurately. I have to admit, though, that once my expectations have been managed so adroitly, I am more relaxed.

None of this is to suggest that all of these doctors and nurses are not perfectly pleasant. The nurse who administered my shingles vaccine yesterday even added, "This one doesn't even go into the muscle, it's just a sub-cute." Which I guess is the cute way of saying sub-cutaneous.

In fact, this particular nurse was not only pleasant, she was insightful as well: she evidently has the ability to recognize a coward when she sees one.

A telling ratio

2011-11-29T09:31:00.004-05:00

A front page article in this morning's NY Times detailed how Urban Meyer, the new football coach at Ohio State, is getting a base salary of $4 million, plus yearly incentives that could total another $700,000. The Times pointed out that Meyer is making more than three times what OSU President, E. Gordon Gee, made in 2010.

I've long thought that the quality of the education you receive at a college is roughly in inverse proportion to the ratio of the head football coach's salary to the university president's salary. There are certainly exceptions: Cal, the University of Texas, and the University of Michigan are all fine schools, yet all pay top dollar to their football coaches (in all three cases, much more than the university president gets).

There is an argument to be made in favor of paying a handsome salary to a coach: a big time football program can receive a lot of money from television networks and actually turn a profit that way.

There is also an argument to be made that most university presidents themselves are empty suits, whose jobs consist primarily of meeting, greeting, and fund-raising. From what I've seen, the main qualifications for being a university president are a fine head of white hair, nice elocution, and gracious manners. Presidents are the equivalent of show captains, those fellows who have nothing to do with actually running an ocean liner but who don captains' uniforms and go around greeting the passengers. (The dean of the faculty might be considered the equivalent of the fellow who actually steers the boat.)

So perhaps the better ratio would be the football coach's salary to the average associate professor's salary.

But either ratio is a fair inverse approximation of how much emphasis is placed upon academics at any given college.

"Breaking the silence"

2011-11-29T08:48:00.001-05:00

An interesting editorial in Sunday's NY Post discussed how the Brooklyn DA has now arrested 89 Orthodox men on charges of child sex abuse.

The most interesting paragraph:

"When rabbis who hate and fear the non-Jewish world can dictate to the parents of Jewish child victims whether or not to talk to (mostly non-Jewish) police, a prosecutor’s job is not an easy one. In 2000, after a Hasidic family went to police over alleged abuse of their young son by another Orthodox Jew, some 50 rabbis signed a public announcement in a Yiddish-language Brooklyn newspaper literally authorizing the murder of anyone who “informs” on a fellow Jew to secular authorities."

Isn't this in effect the equivalent of Sharia law?

"Leash the hounds"

2011-11-27T11:20:00.001-05:00

An editorial in the NY Post this morning discussed the danger of pit bulls. Evidently pit bulls bite humans more than six times as often as the next most aggressive breed of dog.

Some people are calling for their ban. Councilman Peter Vallone is quoted as saying, "People refuse to admit that pit bulls are bred to fight, they have higher pain tolerance, stronger jaws, and they do not have the instinct to back down — they refuse to submit.”

Not everyone agrees. Mario Merlino, of the NYC Health Department, says, "There’s no differential between breeds — we say everyone should treat their dogs well.”

Ada Nieves agrees: “Sometimes, it’s the owners with the bad temperaments.”

Ah, the old nature vs. nurture argument. Can't help but be reminded of the parallels with different breeds of humans.

Fair and balanced

2011-11-26T11:35:00.004-05:00

The NY Times has studiously avoided giving the Solyndra scandal much front page coverage; as scandals go, it is obviously of less national significance than the Duke lacrosse rape case, which garnered front page coverage for three weeks running (as long as it looked as if the players might be guilty). But the Times did run an editorial yesterday titled "The Solyndra Mess." The first two paragraphs:

The Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee appear to have hit the pause button on their investigation into the failure of Solyndra, a solar panel maker that entered bankruptcy proceedings in September, defaulting on a $528 million federal loan.

What have we learned? Nobody comes out of this looking good. Not the Obama administration, which appears to have misread the market in its eagerness to proclaim that it was creating green jobs. Not the Republicans, either, as their partisanship turned a legitimate inquiry into a circus of broad accusations aimed more at tarnishing the administration than contributing to a serious discussion of energy policy.

Ah, I see. Here all along I had thought that the Solyndra scandal was about how the administration had rewarded George Kaiser, a big time Obama campaign contributor who was a major investor in Solyndra. But no, it was just about the administration's eagerness to create (and take credit for) green jobs. Hey -- their intentions were good!

I had also naively thought that the scandal had only tarnished the Obama administration and, by extension, the Democrats. I couldn't have been more mistaken! Now I see that it has made the Republicans look equally bad, since rather than helping the Democrats sweep it under the rug, they instead used it to score partisan points. Bad, bad Republicans!

Please remind me, because my memory is fuzzy: the last time the Republicans were embroiled in a scandal, did the Times point out that it made the Democrats look bad as well since they tried to score partisan points off of it? Or did they just take delight in talking about the scandal? I'm sure they must have been just as even-handed then; I just can't remember, that's all.

Hilarious skit

2011-11-24T07:40:00.000-05:00

A friend sent the following link a couple days ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqA577_IoBk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

It's from the comedy show, Life's Too Short, which originally appeared on the BBC. It's perfectly cast, and perfectly acted.

Ironically, I'd thought before that Liam Neeson, a former Ulster amateur heavyweight boxing champion, would have made a good James Bond except for the fact that he'd never demonstrated any discernible sense of humor in any of his movies.

As if I needed further proof that I'm a fag at heart....

2011-11-24T07:19:00.001-05:00

I wasted close to two hours on this gossip website over the past two days:

http://www.blinditemsexposed.com/

The worst part was, I actually felt sort of gay while I was reading it.

I don't even remember which links led me to the site, and I certainly didn't mean to spend so much time there, but reading the items was a little like eating Doritos....

Nice guys, average guys, and sociopaths (XI)

2011-11-23T11:04:00.000-05:00

SITUATION: A buddy owes you $500, is several days overdue, and cannot pay in the next five days. What does he tell you?

Nice guy (feeling horrible): “I’m really sorry, but I don’t have the money, and can’t pay you until next week. I'll pay you interest. I understand if you don’t trust me, so here, take my new laptop as collateral. I'll use my old one.”

Average guy (feeling badly): “I’m sorry, something’s come up, I’ll get the money back to you as soon as I can.”

Sociopath: (feeling nothing, and with no intention of ever paying you back): “I’ll have the money by tomorrow. I swear -- you have my word on it. And you know I never go back on my word.”

SITUATION: A lawyer walks by a Mercedes dealership on his way home from work and sees an SL500 convertible in the showroom window. What does he think?

Nice guy: What a flashy car. I wonder if the people who drive it are ever embarrassed by it. It'd sure be nice to be able to afford one though.

Average guy: Let’s see. If I saved a thousand bucks a month for the next year and a half, I could put down a deposit…..nah, that’s silly.

Sociopath: Hmm, that thing’d look damn good on me, I’m a Mercedes sport coupe kind of guy. I wonder if my credit card would be good enough for a down payment? By the time the next payment comes due, I’ll have figured out some way to get the money.

SITUATION: A man has a strong opinion about an upcoming football game. What does he do?

Nice guy: Bets his best friend ten dollars on the outcome and watches the game if his wife hasn’t made other plans.

Average guy: Makes a $20 with each of three buddies, and watches the game, telling his wife he'll rake the lawn the next day.

Sociopath: Phones his bookie, and bets $1000 on the game even though he doesn’t have the money. Figures he can always get it from his father-in-law, that tight-fisted old bastard has so much money he doesn’t know what to do with it anyway. But why even worry about it? This game is a lock.

SITUATION: The host of a large party has left ten $20 bills on his bedroom dresser upstairs. On his way to the bathroom, a guest sees it. What does he do?

Nice guy: Puts the money in a dresser drawer, and tells his host where he put it.

Average guy: It occurs to him how easy it would be to steal, but he quickly banishes the thought and walks on by.

Sociopath: Quickly calculates how many other people have been up here during the course of the party, then pockets the money, knowing they will never be able to pin it on him. Thinks, that guy ought to pay me for coming to his lousy party anyway. I’m easily the most charming guy here.

In case you want to feel good about your own parenting abilities.....

2011-11-21T21:19:00.003-05:00

The following AP story appeared on Yahoo News today:

Nazi-naming parents seek to regain custody of baby

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — A New Jersey couple who gave their three children Nazi-inspired names is due in court Monday to try to regain custody of their newborn.

Heath and Deborah Campbell's lawyer says state child welfare officials took custody of the child named Hons after he was born Thursday at Hunterdon Medical Center.

The state took custody of the couple's other children nearly two years ago, saying there were in danger because of previous violence in the Campbell home.

Their parents made headlines in 2009 when a supermarket refused to decorate a birthday cake for their son, Adolf Hitler. His siblings are named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler.

One has to wonder exactly what is going through the mind of a parent who bestows this name upon his child. Exactly what kind of chance does a boy named Adolf Hitler Campbell have in life? How much teasing will he undergo? How much outright hostility will he face? How old will he be when he legally changes his name? What sort of relationship will he have with his parents in the future?

Forty years ago Johnny Cash composed A Boy Named Sue, about a boy who was given that name by a soon-to-be absentee father so that he would grow up to be tough because of all the ribbing he would take.

Sue had it easy by comparison.

What sort of political and racial attitudes will Adolf have when he grows up? There are basically two possibilities here: either he will absorb his parents' (evidently) Nazi values, or he will be a flaming liberal. It's one or the other.

A name like that just doesn't seem to leave much room for a moderate, centrist position on those issues later in life.

I was curious as to what they looked like, so I Google imaged Heath and Deborah Campbell and found this picture of them with their young son Adolf:

I was a little surprised to see that they look a little like hippies.

Adolf himself looks adorable. But I'm not betting that he stays that way, especially personality-wise, as he grows older.

Brothers?

2011-11-21T10:09:00.003-05:00

While pondering the question of whether J. Edgar Hoover was part black (see previous post), it occurred to me that the one person Hoover resembles most, ironically enough, is Jesse Jackson. Both men have their eyes spaced far apart, often a sign of fetal alcohol syndrome, and both have a somewhat bug-eyed appearance as well:

J. Edgar

2011-11-20T13:07:00.006-05:00

Saw Clint Eastwood's latest directorial effort, J. Edgar, last night. Not bad, but not great either.

The movie came across more as documentary than as drama. Eastwood tried to hit all the highlights (and lowlights) of the FBI director's career. The movie briefly touches on Hoover's role in centralizing a fingerprint database, on his role in apprehending the most famous criminals of his era, and on his relationships with various Presidents, without delving too deeply into any of them.

The movie tries too hard to be even-handed about the question of Hoover's sexuality, in the end leaving it unresolved. Clyde Tolson, Hoover's longtime companion, is portrayed as unquestionably homosexual. But Hoover is portrayed as someone who on the one hand proposes marriage early on to a woman, and who claims to have gotten "physical" with actress Dorothy Lamour, yet on the other as a man who dressed up in his mother's clothes on the occasion of her death and constantly dined with and vacationed with his companion Tolson, to whom he eventually left his entire estate. Eastwood's refusal to extrapolate from the documented facts of Hoover's life comes across less as scrupulousness than as an abdication of a moviemaker's responsibility to take a stance. C'mon, Clint: was he or wasn't he?

The third possibility is that both Hoover and Tolson were simply repressed homosexuals who had a homoerotic relationship but who never consummated their relationship that way. If that was the case, then the movie was an accurate portrayal. But the young Tolson was portrayed as a tall, good-looking, well-dressed, self-confident young man. The idea that such a man would be satisfied for his entire life with this one never-consummated relationship just doesn't ring true.

DiCaprio did a workmanlike job in evoking Hoover. DiCaprio may be a great actor, but playing a stiff like Hoover takes less chops than other roles.

Armie Hammer, great grandson of billionaire Bolshevik Armand Hammer, demonstrated his familial loyalty by playing Clyde Tolson, Hoover's longtime companion. (What better way to strike back at the ferociously anti-Communist, wannabe he-man Hoover than to play his closest friend as a flamer? Armand would have been pleased.)

Judi Dench plays J. Edgar's mother, who tells him at one point that she would rather have a dead son than one who was a daffodil (read: gay). Her forbidding performance is not too far in spirit from the one she gives as M, James Bond's boss.

Naomi Watts, one of the few actresses who has managed to be both siren and serious actress, plays Helen Gandy, Hoover's longtime secretary. Watts gamely lets herself be gradually aged for her role. Her performance is so good -- and unobtrusive -- it never occurs to you you're looking at the same woman King Kong fell so hard for.

Jeffrey Donovan, star of television's Burn Notice, takes a turn as Robert F. Kennedy. He seems to have been cast more on the basis of buck teeth than acting ability. His Boston accent is too broad, and even his bushy wig lacks subtlety.

Steve Sailer's review of the movie mentions that J. Edgar may have been a mulatto, from a family which passed. (Look closely at the picture above.) If that was the case, then Hoover, as both a gay man pretending to be straight and a black man pretending to be white, was certainly well suited for his job of catching criminals who essentially led secret lives.

Surprisingly, given all its other faults, the movie was actually sort of touching as a love story. Any long relationship where there is still visible affection at the end is moving, and the odds against such a relationship make it even more so.

Eastwood is arguably our second best film director, after Martin Scorcese. He's brought us Unforgiven, A Perfect World, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Father, Letters from Iwo Jima, Gran Torino, and Hereafter, among others. But this latest effort will not further his case for overtaking Scorcese.

Why not be truly daring?

2011-11-18T17:27:00.009-05:00

The NY Post ran an editorial this morning detailing how the Brooklyn Museum is up to its old tricks. They are running a video entitled, "Fire in My Belly," which features a figure of a crucified Christ with blood on it, and ants crawling all over it.

This is obviously some artists's way of demonstrating his rebellious, independent, epater le bougeois spirit. In fact, such works of "art" are getting a little tiresome after all the similar things we've seen in years previous. The Brooklyn Museum, in case you forgot, is the place which -- run by the same Arnold Lehman who runs it now -- exhibited Andre Serrano's infamous "Piss Christ," a work which showed a figure of Christ in an aquarium filled with urine. It also exhibited a painting of the Virgin Mary made out of elephant dung, juxtaposed with pornographic pictures.

Being "controversial" is one way for a young artist to gain attention. But if a young artist really wanted to get attention, why not create a "Piss Menorah" or "Shit Koran"? Those would get far, far more attention, and generate far more outrage, than yet another piece meant to demean Christianity.

Evidently there are no artists courageous enough to produce such works. And even if there were, my guess is that Arnold Lehman would not exhibit them. Because Lehman, like the artists themselves, displays only politically correct "courage."

Which is to say, none at all.

Nice guys, average guys, and sociopaths (X)

2011-11-18T10:28:00.005-05:00

Situation: A group of young male students attend a college mixer. How do they behave?

Nice guy: Has a beer just so his friends won't think he is a square. Chats politely with whoever talks to him, male or female. One particularly pretty girl catches his eye but he is too shy to try to talk to her.

Average guy: Makes a desultory attempt to chat up various coeds; doesn't know any better, so stares at their breasts rather than looking them in the eye while talking to them. Awkwardly tries to get a couple of phone numbers, but is rebuffed. Takes advantage of the free beer by having several. Ends up hanging out with his buddies; they agree that most girls just go to mixers for the opportunity to turn down guys in order to feel more desirable.

Sociopath: Doesn't bother with the beer, since he knows he doesn't need one to loosen up. (Inhibitions are for losers.) He mingles successfully, knows how to make each girl he talks to feel as if she is special, and gets a few phone numbers. He makes an unsuccessful attempt to bed one of the girls in a nearby dorm room. Later tells his buddies the attempt was successful. They admire his nerve and slickness.

Situation: A man is walking down the street in a hurry, late for an appointment, when someone in a car stops to ask for directions to a local restaurant.

Nice guy: Stops to answer, gives detailed directions. Repeats directions when asked.

Average guy: Gives a rushed answer indicating the general direction of the restaurant. Starts to edge away even before he is finished giving directions, so as to forestall further questions.

Sociopath: Stops to answer and gives detailed directions to a seedy section of town. Afterward cackles with delight at his cleverness and wishes he could see their faces when they find themselves in the ghetto.

Situation: One of a group of buddies is diagnosed with terminal leukemia. How do his friends react?

Nice guy: Is stunned, and saddened, but doesn't say much because he knows that mere words cannot do justice to the gravity of the situation. At the funeral, is afraid he might cry in front of the deceased's relatives on the receiving line, so avoids it.

Average guy: Is saddened. Visits the guy, and says the right things. Also can't get over how bad he looks; is a little grossed out by him. While at the funeral, reflects a little on the nature of life and death, and feels bad for the grieving relatives, but also can't wait for it to be over so he can go home.

Sociopath: He makes a big show of grief, raises money for a group gift for the sick person; makes sure to take credit for the gift. He comments disparagingly about how the nice guy hasn't demonstrated sufficient sympathy for the sick person. He may let his mask slip by asking inappropriate, probing questions about the physical effects of the disease. He instinctively knows that this is a good time to ingratiate himself with the ill man's relatives, and pretends that he and the sick guy were closer than they were. At the funeral, summons up a few crocodile tears for them on the receiving line. Uses his "grief" as an excuse to misbehave. Forever after lambastes the nice guy for the fact that "he didn't even bother" to offer his condolences to the relatives.

Logic

2011-11-17T09:16:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I was complimenting someone for being logical when I was interrupted by someone else. She said, "Uh, what do you mean by logical?"

I was taken aback by the question, so could only come up with "The word is pretty self-explanatory, don't you think?"

If you look it up in the dictionary, most of the definitions of logic use the word "reason." For instance, Merriam-Webster's definition:

a: a science that deals with the principles and criteria of validity of inference and demonstration : the science of the formal principles of reasoning

b: a particular mode of reasoning viewed as valid or faulty

Upon further reflection, I've come up with a more usable, illustrative definition: a logical person is one who looks at the facts, then comes up with a theory based on those. An illogical person is one who comes up with a theory, then looks for facts to support it while studiously ignoring those which don't.

The two people mentioned above happen to be particularly good examples of each type.

Tex

2011-11-16T10:58:00.005-05:00

Just saw an article about how Charles "Tex" Watson, one of Charlie Manson's followers -- and one responsible for several slayings -- is up for parole today. The article goes on at length to quote his lawyer, who feels he is reformed, and the relatives of his victims, who feel he shouldn't be freed. No big surprises there. While Watson seems a good candidate for lifetime imprisonment, I can't get all that worked up about whether a 65-year-old who's been in jail for 42 years stays there.

But what caught my eye was the following sentence:

"Watson married and divorced in prison and has four children from conjugal visits..."

That, of course, is the real outrage. Watson should never have been allowed the pleasure of conjugal visits, let alone the satisfaction of knowing that he has had more reproductive success than most Americans who've led law-abiding lives. (And far more reproductive success than Sharon Tate and some of the others he killed.)

Must be why he's half-smiling in that mug shot.

That's going to be another plank of my Presidential platform: no more conjugal visits for felons. If a guy like Tex wants children, let him try to have some with his cellmate.

Addendum, same day: Watson was denied parole for the sixteenth time, and also told that he cannot seek parole again for at least five years. (His kids, however, are doing fine.)

Confessions of a beta male XII: pessimism

2011-11-16T09:58:00.003-05:00

One of the key differences between alphas and betas is their outlook on life. An alpha's glass is always half full. I find the second half of my glass rarely worth finishing.

An alpha's motto is, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Mine is, nothing ventured, nothing lost.

To an alpha, many ideas, even some of the cockamamie ones, sound good. As a result, he is often disappointed, but occasionally succeeds. To me, they all sound bad. I am never disappointed, but also never succeed.

Had I been a venture capitalist back in the 1970's, and had a young Bill Gates approached me with an idea for "software" for computers (what a stupid concept!), I would have told him that computers are just overweight calculators, and as far as storing other data goes, encyclopedias are far more convenient. Had Steve Jobs approached me with the iPod, I would have told him he was too late: the Sony Walkman already had that market locked up. Had a young Henry Ford beseeched me, I would have informed him that my horse was plenty reliable.

If things don't go an alpha's way, he becomes furious, and will often pass blame around in a very generous manner. I never expect anything good to begin with, so rarely get mad.

To an alpha, every party sounds like a good idea because he just knows this is the one that's going to be stocked with beautiful and willing females. I figure, I didn't get laid at the last ten, this will be no different.

An alpha is always up for a new adventure. I know the movie will suck, the concert will be off key, the comedian will be lame, the traffic will be bad, and the seats inconveniently located as well as uncomfortable. So why bother? I am the stuff hermits are made of.

An alpha's enthusiasm will often be described as "contagious." I like to think that my wet blanket attitude functions as an occasional reality check. (Mostly it checks peoples' enthusiasm for me.)

Mention Hawaii to an alpha and he thinks of sunny beaches, lovely girls dancing the hula, tropical drinks, and great surfing. I think of the long waits at the airport, turbulence on the airplane, jet lag, locals regarding me with disdain, sunburn, and the high cost of it all.

Aloha.

Dirty tricks

2011-11-15T09:05:00.002-05:00

There has been concern expressed in some quarters that I have entered this Presidential race in a somewhat unprepared and naive fashion.

Don't worry, I'm not naive: I watched The Ides of March. I know all about the dirty tricks which are a vital part of every well-run campaign.

That was me, not Rick Perry's staff, who got those women to come forward and accuse Herman Cain of sexual harassment.

I had a few former foster children of Michelle Bachmann all set to testify as to what kind of a "mother" she actually was, but her poll numbers are telling me those won't be necessary.

Coming soon: revelations about the inner workings of the Mormon Church where Mitt Romney was a bishop. Yes, Bishop Romney. It has a nice ring, doesn't it? I promise, these will be almost as revealing as the revelations Joseph Smith himself experienced in the desert of Utah. Didn't know about Mitt's four other wives, did you? Stay tuned.

I also have a push-pull phone poll all planned out for the general election. Some of the questions we will ask include:

"Do you feel there is any truth to the rumors that Bill Ayers was in fact the real writer of Obama's two "autobiographical" books just because their writing styles were so eerily similar?"

"Do you sometimes feel that Brother Obama might as well have written his black nationalist preacher Jeremiah Wright's speeches?"

"Do you feel that Obama's gift to Queen Elizabeth of an iPod containing his own speeches displayed a deft diplomatic touch? How about his gift of a pair of White House cufflinks to the Dalai Lama, who never wears Western-style clothing?"

"Was obsequiously bowing to the Saudi king the right way for Obama to demonstrate Presidential protocol?"

"Did you feel good about the way Obama threw his own grandmother under the bus in the last election?"

"When Obama said, in the last election, that he had been to fifty-seven states with one more to go, did you worry that there were eight states that you didn't know about?"

"Do you feel that a weekly five hour golf expedition is a necessary part of a Commander in Chief's duties?"

"Do you feel that Michelle Obama has made a good First Lady? Do you feel that Marie Antoinette would have made a good First Lady?"

"Do you feel there is any truth to the rumors that Barack Obama hates white people?"

Even more planks

2011-11-15T08:54:00.002-05:00

A few more positions:

Anything which gets this country further away from a pure democracy is a negative. The Founding Fathers didn't want any one area of the country to get too much power over another, and so instituted the Electoral College. Thanks to modern communications, we are all now just one big unhappy family. Every member of that family deserves to have his vote count, so get rid of the electoral college.

Congress ought to get the same medical insurance and pensions the rest of us get, not the lavish benefits they keep for themselves. They also should not be able to exempt themselves from the laws they pass for us -- which they do on a regular basis, even though the public is mostly unaware of this. They'll think twice about passing restrictive laws if they themselves are subject to them as well.

If a judge or jury deems a lawsuit frivolous, the plaintiff and his lawyers must pay the court costs of the trial.

Although I believe in the death penalty, I also believe that if someone given the death penalty is later found to have been innocent, the prosecuting DA should serve a year in jail. This will not prevent obvious serial killers, killers convicted on the basis of DNA evidence, or killers whose crime was viewed by multiple reliable witnesses from being given the death penalty. But it will prevent the penalty from being sought when there the evidence is shaky. And it should save the taxpayers from endless appeals.

Unions for public employees wield far too much power, which is why they have far better pensions on average than the taxpayers who pay their salaries. There should be no more collective bargaining for government workers. And with campaign contributions outlawed (see original platform), public unions will no longer be able to muscle in their candidates of choice.

Part of the reason unemployment is so high is because we have been exporting jobs. Companies which outsource labor will have to pay a tax equal to the difference between what they are paying their foreign employees and what an American worker would be get for that job. Every time I want my computer fixed, I have to talk to someone with an Indian accent so thick I can only understand half of what he is saying. I'm tired of it. (Those Indians who don't want to lose their jobs needn't vote for me.)

Abolish rubber stamp boards of directors. If a company does something illegal, the board should be liable. Otherwise, why have them?

Let shareholders vote on executive compensation, for at least the ten highest-paid employees of a corporation. Why should the owners of a company have no say in how they pay their employees?

The highest paid employee of a company ought not to be paid more than forty times what lowest paid employee is -- which is the way it was forty years ago. And stock options and bonuses will be counted as part of their pay. This would not prevent an Edwin Land or a Bill Gates of a Steve Jobs or a Bill Hewlett or a David Packard or a Henry Ford from becoming fabulously wealthy, as they all deserved to be. They got rich by founding companies which they then grew. But it would prevent corporate climbers from taking advantage of a company's shareholders. These types tend to rise by virtue of their skill at corporate politicking, then tell us that their presence is invaluable to the company, and reward themselves outrageously. I have a hard time lying back and enjoying it when I get raped this way.

Needed: new image consultant

2011-11-11T15:01:00.003-05:00

(Herman Cain with supporters yesterday)

Given the nature of Herman Cain's recent problems, is this really the way he wants to be posing for pictures? First of all, he's doing everything except winking at the camera. His lascivious grin plainly states, I'm gettin' laid for sure tonight baby.

Then check out that outfit. The open jacket and sweater are fine. But that hat and gold chain all but proclaim "The pimp is in."

Well, at least he's not appearing in pajamas and a red silk robe embroidered with "Herm."

Still, someone should inform Cain he's campaigning for President, not for the title role in the remake of Superfly.

Gotta admire his devil-may-care attitude though.

Good reason not to show off

2011-11-11T11:06:00.012-05:00

From this morning's NY Post:

I woke from a stroke-- gay!
By Andy Soltis

A hulking, beer-guzzling rugby jock suffered a stroke in a freak training accident -- and woke up gay.

Chris Birch was a straight, 266-pound Welsh bank worker who liked sports, girls and booze and was engaged to his girlfriend before the life-style-changing event.

Now, he’s a 154-pound hairdresser who bleaches his tresses and lives with his 19-year-old boyfriend above his salon.

“I was gay when I woke up and I still am,” he said.

Birch, 26, was showing off before friends in a gym by doing a back flip, but he broke his neck and suffered a stroke, according to Britain’s Daily Mail.

EXTREME MAKEOVER: Everything about manly rugby player Chris Birch changed after his stroke, including becoming a gay hairstylist (above).

He was rushed to Royal Gwent Hospital in the Welsh town of Newport. His girlfriend and relatives waited for him to recover consciousness.

“It sounds strange, but when I came around, I immediately felt different,” Birch recalled. “I wasn’t interested in women anymore. I was definitely gay.”

Birch, who lives in the town of Ystrad Mynach, said he never experienced any gay inclinations previously.

Researchers have reported many cases of stroke patients experiencing changes in behavior and personality, such as becoming less satisfied with their lives, losing confidence in themselves, or being easily irritated.

But turning gay? That’s a new one.

Birch said the change was sweeping and instantaneous.

“Suddenly, I hated everything about my old life. I didn’t get on with my friends. I hated sport and found my job boring,” he said.

So he underwent a transformation, quitting his job and shedding more than 100 pounds.

He said his family and friends were shocked by his change of sexuality.

“I think I’m happier than ever, so I don’t regret the accident,” he said.

“I’m nothing like the old Chris now, but I wouldn’t change a thing.”

A few observations:

He seems to like his new incarnation, and almost disdain his old self. But my question is, what would the old Chris have thought of the new one?

He claims to be happier than ever; if true, that means that "gay" is not a misnomer.

Could this possibly work the other way? Could a 154 pound hairdresser have a stroke and turn into a 266 pound beer-swilling football player? (Somehow that seems less likely.)

If I get caught molesting little boys, can I blame it on a stroke? ("I used to be a real stud, I swear, you'd be amazed how many women I did. But somehow, ever since the stroke I just haven't been the same.")

Is this a possible defense for Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant coach? He actually looks like a stroke candidate.

On a more serious note, a brain scan to see which areas of Birch's brain were damaged by the stroke could provide some interesting insights into the roots of sexuality.

Addendum, 11/12/11: For those of you who are curious, this is the only "before" photo I could find of Birch:

Why couldn't he just be happy with Barbie dolls?

2011-11-09T10:23:00.012-05:00

Those of us who marvel at the vagaries of the human psyche recently received a gift in the form of a Russian man, Anatoly Moskvin, 45, who had dug up the bodies of 29 women and dressed them up like dolls to decorate the three room apartment he shared with his parents. (Mom and Dad sure set a new standard for parental leniency there.)

The NY Post reported that police investigators were shocked at what they found in the city of Volga River city of Nizhny Novgorod. Moskvin reportedly stole just the bodies of young women. (Well, at least he wasn't a pervert.)

From this one snapshot it looks as if his apartment could have been selected for an episode of Hoarders. Three rooms does seem an awfully small space in which to fit 29 bodies, as well as three living people.

Moskvin is a professional historian who supposedly speaks 13 languages, and was described as a "genius" by his neighbors. (If he can actually speak 13, then he merits that description.) He once stated that his interest in the dead dated from the time he was 12, and was made to kiss the face of a dead 11-year-old girl.

Moskvin has the thin lips of a serial killer, and his sneer and unkempt appearance in this picture certainly make him look creepy enough. But Moskvin didn't kill. He was more spiritual cousin to Ed Gein, the infamous Wisconsin man who stole the remains of nine women from local graveyards in the late 1940's and early 1950's, and occasionally dressed up in their skins. (Gein also killed two women, and was used as the model for Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs.)

When the police searched Gein's house, they found nine masks made from human skin, bowls from human skulls, human skin covering several seat chairs, nine vulvae in a shoebox, a belt made from female human nipples, a pair of lips on a drawstring for a window shade, and a lampshade made from the skin of a human face.

You can decide for yourself who's weirder -- Anatoly Moskvin for dressing corpses up as dolls, or Ed Gein for occasionally wearing someone else's skin.

Or me, for being so fascinated by these guys.

More planks

2011-11-08T20:43:00.007-05:00

Please note that my campaign platform outlined three posts ago actually favors the middle class. Most Presidents talk the middle class talk but then enact policies which favor either the upper or lower classes.

In the meantime, several more people have told me I have their vote. Among these are a couple of liberals, which caused me to take another look at my stated platform, and sure enough, there are several positions more closely associated with Democrats. So I will list several more policies which will discourage liberal support.

(Like all good politicians, I shudder at the thought of votes from people who don't fully comprehend my mindset.)

Here goes:

We need to declare war on gangs. Gangs -- whether they be the Crips or Bloods, MS-13, the Mafia, the Mexican Mafia, the Tongs, the Albanians, or the Russian mob -- have no redeeming social value, and make certain neighborhoods unlivable. Virtually all motorcycle gangs are criminal enterprises as well. Merely joining a gang should be criminalized.

Legalizing marijuana would deprive the gangs of a large revenue source, and create one for the government. The same rules will apply to marijuana as to alcohol use, i.e., not for use by minors and no driving under the influence.

I would even legalize cocaine use, but with far stricter usage requirements. You can only use it in government-controlled locations, and if you agree to have some semi-permanent form of birth control implanted. This would also deprive the criminals of money. And not incidentally, it would mean fewer crack babies would be born.

Keep the death penalty, and cut down on the time spent on Death Row. If the death penalty is not a deterrent now, it's partly because the endless appeals process tends to make it more of a life sentence.

Abolish the National Endowment for the Arts. It should not be a function of the government to be the arbiter of artistic taste. If someone wants to be paid for his art, let him sell his art in the marketplace.

Disparate impact is one of the more insidious, destructive concepts ever to get past the Supreme Court. This country spends an inordinate amount of energy pretending that all races are equal on average in every way, and that any differences must be the result of racism. We can't keep saying that "our diversity is our strength" and then deny any real diversity. Throwing out the New York Fire Department's entrance exam -- or any other exam -- because blacks score lower on it is as ridiculous as insisting that the NBA be 70% white, 12% Hispanic, and 5% Asian.

In case that's not enough to turn off the liberals, in my second term I plan to institute eugenics.

Bye bye Herman

2011-11-07T18:22:00.008-05:00

With a fourth woman now coming out to say she had been harassed by Herman Cain, his campaign for the Republican nomination is now effectively over.

When one woman accused him, it seemed like, well, who knows, there are a lot of people who just want attention out there. When one became two, he started to have a bad odor about him. When the third woman came forward, most doubt was removed. And now that a fourth has emerged, it's all over.

What a clodhopper Cain must be to make such awkward passes at these women that they felt they were being harassed. Before you put your hand between a woman's legs, you ought to have some sense that she wants you to do that. Were his antennae so blunted that he had no clue?

Cain seemed like an affable enough fellow during the debates, but these women must all have resented him immensely to come forward like this to sink his campaign. Was he not otherwise gentlemanly?

Evidently not. The fourth woman, Sharon Bialek, said that when Cain reached for her genitals, he also grabbed her head and brought it towards his crotch, saying, "You want a job, right?"

As a result, it looks as if he is no longer a contender for the job he wants.

Romney, of course, would never admit to it, but he must be chortling.

I, on the other hand, as the only honest candidate, freely admit that I find this entire episode hilarious.

Back

2011-11-07T12:37:00.007-05:00

Well, power has finally been restored to my house, after seven days. I won’t grouse, because that’s boring. In any case, it did serve as a convenient excuse not to blog for several days.

The “convenient” is because I was so busy campaigning for President anyway.

My campaign for the Presidency, in case you are curious, is going extremely well. In the past several days nine people have told me, either in person or via email, that I have their vote.

Nine is an infinite multiple of the number of supporters I had just one short week ago. If that rate of change continues, I will end up at 1600 Pennsylvania.

Wait a sec, the week really didn't seem short, given how cold and dark my house was. And, what with setting the clocks back Saturday night, it was actually long.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the campaign is going exceedingly well. In case you're wondering about about skeletons I might have in my closet, a concern raised by a commenter after I stated my platform, consider the following.

It has often been said that in politics you can get away with pretty much anything, as long as you are not found with either a dead girl or a live boy in your bed.

Well, the other day I was caught in bed with both -- at the same time.

I explained to the police that I had been walking by a house when I heard the sound of anguished cries coming from within. Thinking I might be of assistance, I rushed in the front door of the house – which happened to be ajar -- and found a young man trying to revive a 16-year-old girl who had just had a heart attack. I tried to help by performing mouth to mouth resuscitation on her. In fact I tried so hard to save her that somehow my clothes fell off in the process. That’s when the police appeared.

They bought my story.

Bill Clinton has nothing on me.

I am the Teflon candidate.

Power outage

2011-11-01T13:15:00.002-04:00

he early storm which swept through New England this past Saturday knocked power out in 80% of my town (including my house). No electricity means no light, no TV, no internet, and no land line phone. It also means no heat (the oil heater is run by an electric thermostat) and no water (the pump is run by electricity as well).

So the local Y and library are basically refugee camps. There's nothing intrinsically interesting about this, I guess, unless it happens to you. Whenever I read about the inconvenience caused by extreme weather elsewhere, I must admit I am never stirred to sympathy.

Just goes to show that self-pity is more easily stimulated than the other kind.

Well, at least with me.

Important announcement

2011-10-30T17:53:00.013-04:00

I hereby announce my candidacy for President of the United States of America.

As I have limited financial resources, my campaign staff will consist of one person -- myself. Campaign headquarters will be this blog.

I feel that as the only candidate who refuses all contributions from everyone (no, no, please, keep your money), I am the only candidate beholden to no special interest. And therefore, the only honest one.

Here are my positions on all the hot button issues of the day.

Gay marriage: As long it doesn't hurt me or cost me any money, let the gays do what they want. They'll find out soon enough that there's no better institution than marriage to take the gaiety out of being gay.

The current war: In the old days they used to subject prisoners to hard labor, which often consisted of going to quarries and breaking rocks with picks. So why have we sentenced our country to an equally futile labor on that worthless pile of rocks known as Afghanistan? Because we want their warm water ports? Osama is dead, long live the Taliban. And if the Taliban decides to invade us, next time we can just pay them back with nukes -- without setting foot there. Afghanistan is such a desolate place already, I doubt anyone will notice anyway. "Nation building" is just a euphemism for "nation destabilizing."

Bases abroad: Let Japan, Germany, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and every other country pay for their own defense. The only reason we should have troops over there is if we decide to invade them.

Foreign aid: We should consider it when, and only when, our own budget is balanced. At that point, we should have a national referendum to see how it should be allocated.

Illegal immigration. Build a tall fence along our southern border, electrify it, and post armed guards every hundred yards. Shoot anyone who comes within firing range. Just kidding. Here's my real plan: American citizenship will be open to anyone who has either a million dollars (unless he's a criminal) or an IQ over 115 (we need to start catching up with the Chinese, and now). Otherwise, try your luck elsewhere.

Tax reform. A lot of people seem to feel that the only way to simplify the tax code is to flatten it. (Why?) Eliminate all the loopholes, including the mortgage interest deduction and the charitable deduction, and keep it graduated. In fact, the graduation should extend through income levels of $500K, 1MM, 2MM, and 5MM a year. Obama's labeling of couples making 250K a year as "millionaires and billionaires" is wrong. But the idea that someone making five million a year is going to lose his ambition because he is netting slightly less is also ridiculous: if anything, with less money, he should work harder. Then, with no loopholes, you should be able to lower the overall rates, which would be the greatest stimulus of all. My heart refuses to bleed for someone who can't buy a sixth house.

ObamaCare attacked the spiraling cost of health care by adding more people to the insurance rolls, which only increases costs. We need to attack the problem at its root, by driving costs down. This means less insurance, not more. People should be given incentives not to visit the doctor as often (think higher co-pays) and be given incentives for a healthy lifestyle. We don't need more sick people visiting more doctors, we need more healthy people.

College loans: since college is a waste of time and money for most people anyway, let's not throw any more money down that drain. There are certainly cheaper ways of proving you're smart, like acing the SATs and then not going to college. Whom would you rather hire: someone who got 800's and had the wisdom not to attend college, or someone who got 650's and then partied on his father's dime for four years?

The inheritance tax: Keep it. For those who would abolish it: sorry, but you can't take it with you. Once you're dead, you give up your rights as an American citizen. (All those who would like those rights back are welcome to vote for my opponents.) No one earned the money that their parents worked for.

Energy: If solar and wind power can prove their economic feasibility, fine. Otherwise, convert to natural gas. We have a 200 year supply of it. So people should be allowed to frack wherever they want, as long as they return the land to a pristine state afterward. In order to insure that they do so, all fossil fuel companies will pay into a fund which will go towards that end. And the government is not allowed to "borrow" from this fund the way it has from Social Security. It's high time we got our fracking energy independence -- if you'll pardon my language.

The Chinese have already declared a trade war on us with their piracy of intellectual material, their purposeful stifling of the yuan, their lax pollution laws, and their government-sponsored attempts to undercut certain US industries (like the solar industry). We can either continue to pretend that they haven't declared war, or respond with a tariff. I say the latter. If they respond by no longer buying our bonds, fine; under my administration we will no longer be running a deficit anyway. And if they want to sell the bonds they own, fine. It will merely depress the value of their own holdings and drive up interest rates in general, which is fine with me: I'm as tired as everyone else of getting less than one percent on my money market funds.

Lobbying: all campaign contributions will cease immediately. Our politicians have been bought and paid for by special interests for far too long. All campaigns should be publicly financed, and every candidate who has 20% or more support will get an equal chance to be heard. (I have not quite breached that level so far, so will have to content myself with this blog -- for now.) The idea that not being able to spend hundreds of millions on air time abrogates one's free speech is ludicrous. We need honest legislators, not prostitutes.

Affirmative action will no longer be race-based, but will be economically-based. A poor kid from the ghetto should get a leg up over a white middle class kid, but a poor white kid from Appalachia should likewise get a leg up over a middle class black kid. The only thing our current affirmative action policy affirms is that our diversity is not our strength.

Abortion should be available to anyone who wants it, free of charge from the government. This will be one of the best investments the government ever made. There are only so many resources, and kids are too important to be just an accidental byproduct of screwing. (A worthwhile life begins not at conception, but at birth when you have two parents who love you.) If you find abortion morally objectionable, then don't get one.

Welfare should be available to everybody who agrees to have Norplant implanted under her skin (and the equivalent drug for males) and who's willing to work for it. The only exceptions to this rule are the blind, the crippled, the infirm, and the retarded, along with those under 18 and over 65. People already on the dole shouldn't be popping more kids with their only plan of support being more welfare.

Yes, the cute little slogans at the end of some of the paragraphs are ridiculous oversimplifications. None, however, are quite as unsubstantive as "hope and change."

Confessions of a beta male XI: Drinking

2011-10-28T16:26:00.003-04:00

One primary difference between alphas and betas is their drinking styles. You'd think that alphas might drink less, given that they tend to already be high on life -- or at least on themselves. But that doesn't seem to be the way it works.

An alpha drinks simply because it's fun. I drink when I need courage -- or at least a certain numbness.

After he's had three beers, an alpha, whatever his actual build, feels like a twenty-seven-year old Arnold Schwarzenegger. After three beers, my beer muscles only grow slightly: I'm still an ectomorph, albeit a slightly more toned one.

I don't find others' vomiting either charming or funny, and find my own extremely unpleasant. I've seen alphas step outside to throw up, then just calmly go back inside to continue drinking.

After his first drink, an alpha thinks, mmm, that tasted good. I think, that drink just cost me five bucks plus tax and tip: was it really worth seven bucks just to feel a little dizzy?

An alpha will drink a three hundred dollar bottle of wine on the company dime and think, hey, I'm a classy guy who appreciates quality -- let's have another. I think, that's basically six glasses at fifty dollars a glass, which works out to maybe five dollars a sip. I have no idea whether the wine is actually good because all I can taste is the money going down my throat.

After a few drinks an alpha thinks, getting a buzz on is a GOOD thing. I start wondering how many brain cells I've just killed.

An alpha may take pride in his "empty leg." I know I'll never win a drinking contest, so the thought would never even occur to me.

For an alpha, beer goggles can turn a 3 into a 7. (Alphas have a tendency to view 5's as 7's to begin with.) The prescription on my goggles was always weak: they might turn a 6.0 into a 6.5. (Then again, alcohol occasionally did give me the courage to start a conversation with that 6.5.)

Towards the end of the evening, an alpha will have one more "just for the road." I pull out the tablet of Vitamin B I brought and ask for water, to counteract the dehydration alcohol can cause.

An alpha will then pile into his car, secure in the knowledge that he's such a good driver he'll never be pulled over even when drunk. I walk back and forth in the parking lot until I think my blood alcohol level is legal.

Fate

2011-10-27T17:30:00.003-04:00

A swimming buddy yesterday related a story that he had only heard from his 87-year-old father about eight years ago:

His father had enlisted in the infantry in 1943, after his freshman year of college, and was sent to fight in Europe with the 104th Mountain Division -- the Timber Wolves. He was supposed to have been part of a two man Browning Automatic Rifle team, but when the Army found out that he was an engineering major, they turned him into the Company radio man. Because of this, he was usually positioned fifty yards behind the front line, which often meant the difference between life and death.

The Timber Wolves, based in Holland and Germany, fought in the Battle of the Bulge as well as in many other lesser known battles of WWII. The soldiers in his Company got to the point where they could tell just from the sound which shells were going to land close by and which weren't. One day my friend's father and his unit were walking along a road when they heard a mortar, then the ominous whistling which meant that a shell was about to land nearby. The entire unit jumped into a nearby bomb crater. Then the shell exploded.

When my friend's father looked up, he saw that every single other man in his unit had been killed. He realized he had to deliver the bad news to headquarters, so he unstrapped the radio -- radios were cumbersome affairs back in those days -- from his back. When he tried to contact headquarters, he found that the radio didn't work. A quick examination revealed the reason: it was riddled with shrapnel.

The radio had saved his life.

By the end of the war, that young man was the only one out of the 200 men in his Company who hadn't been either killed or wounded.

If it hadn't been for that radio, my swimming buddy would never have been born, nor his children, and so on. All of human history, of course, is filled with stories like this. Some people die, and some survive and procreate. And so much of what happens is just a matter of luck.

It's impossible to hear a story like this, though, and not marvel at the hand of Fate.

87 is the new 37

2011-10-25T11:18:00.005-04:00

http://news.yahoo.com/indiana-man-87-nabbed-228-pounds-cocaine-police-230721897.html

Whenever I read of a 37-year-old who has been caught with this amount of drugs, I quietly think: glad they caught him, hope they get a conviction. Then I go on to the next article. But somehow when I read about an 87-year-old being caught like this, I can't help but think: Way to go, grandpa!

Think of the average 87-year-old. If he's still alive, he's probably lucky to get across the room with his walker. But this guy -- Leo Earl Sharp -- still had the juice to be committing crimes, and not just any crime, but a big one.

I'm not quite going to say he's my hero, but.....you gotta admit, there is something admirable about him.

Here's how I want my obituary to read:

"John Craig, 104, was killed in a knife fight in a medium security prison yesterday in Washington state. He managed to kill four other inmates before the fifth one killed him. Craig succumbed to his wounds almost immediately.

"Craig had been convicted the previous year of statutory rape. At his trial, the 103-year-old Craig had groused, 'How the hell was I supposed to know she was only 17? She told me she was 21, and anyway, she was plenty willing.'

"But the judge said that Craig should have known better, and sentenced him to a two year term. When Craig then told the judge he'd better be looking over his shoulder after Craig got released, the judge added an extra year."

(It's my blog. I can fantasize if I want.)

Legacy

2011-10-25T10:34:00.001-04:00

Zurana Horton, the mother who died shielding her children from stray gunfire on the streets of Brownsville, a particularly lawless section of Brooklyn, has gotten a fair amount of publicity. For having used her own body to ensure the safety of her children, Horton is certainly a hero.

The NY Post this morning ran an editorial about her case being a good example of why the police stop and frisk policy is a good one:

http://www.nypost.com./p/news/opinion/editorials/grabbing_guns_for_real_2aidqxGj6bGgc6xPc5eMFK

The article mentioned that Zurana, who died at 34, had 12 children. What the article did not mention, but I am curious to know, is how many fathers were involved, whether Zurana had ever married any of them, what sort of child support the fathers were paying, and to what extent her family was living on municipal assistance.

The legacy that Zurana will leave her children is that they had a mother who loved them. The legacy she leaves the taxpayers is probably less benign.

"McCain vs. Buchanan"

2011-10-24T20:13:00.002-04:00

A must-read from Steve Sailer:

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/10/mccain-v-buchanan.html

"How to Spot Psychopaths: Speech Patterns Give Them Away"

2011-10-23T13:05:00.002-04:00

An article which appeared on Yahoo yesterday:

http://news.yahoo.com/spot-psychopaths-speech-patterns-them-away-152209939.html

A couple excerpts:

Using computer programs to analyze what the men said, the researchers found that those with psychopathic scores showed a lack of emotion, spoke in terms of cause-and-effect when describing their crimes, and focused their attention on basic needs, such as food, drink and money....

To examine the emotional content of the murderers' speech, Hancock and his colleagues looked at a number of factors, including how frequently they described their crimes using the past tense. The use of the past tense can be an indicator of psychological detachment, and the researchers found that the psychopaths used it more than the present tense when compared with the nonpsychopaths. They also found more dysfluencies — the "uhs" and "ums" that interrupt speech — among psychopaths. Nearly universal in speech, dysfluencies indicate that the speaker needs some time to think about what they are saying.

Focusing their attention on food, drink, and money, are themes this blog has mentioned in the past. One of the things that distinguishes a sociopath (which is essentially another word for a psychopath) is their utter lack of human(e) feeling. Therefore, after committing a murder, which is the last time a nonsociopath would be thinking about food, they are so relaxed and unperturbed they will immediately think about food or drink. And they will do anything to get money. We all like money, but for sociopaths, it often takes on an almost talismanic meaning. (As in, sociopaths are the root of all evil.)

Use of the past tense is certainly interesting, and makes sense. ("That was the old me, now I've turned over a new leaf.") I had never noticed the more frequent uses of "ums" and "uhs" before, but that makes sense too. ("Uh, officer, the, uh, gun just flew into my hand and, um, just went off on its own.")

What I had thought the article might mention, but didn't, is a tendency I've noticed with at least two sociopaths I've known well: they like to overpronounce their words, like overly actor-ish news broadcasters. I've never been sure whether this is because they are so in love with the sound of their own voices, or because it is just their naturally uninhibited way of being emphatic -- or both.

That, um, concludes this, uh, post.

PTSD-free

2011-10-22T08:08:00.005-04:00

My son recently came home from Afghanistan for a two week leave. My biggest worry, of course, has always been that he would be injured or worse. But I was also mildly worried that he might get some form of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, so I was on the lookout for any signs that he might not be his usual rude, obstreperous, humorous old self.

He was kind enough to allay those fears even before he arrived home. We spoke to him by phone when he first arrived in the States, and he said that he had brought us a present: a camel spider and scorpion encased in glass. I commented, "As long as the spider's dead and it's not going to break out and escape in our house." Johnny immediately replied, "Well, actually it's not dead, it's cryogenically frozen, and the glass it's encased in is pretty fragile. Oh, and just so you know, it's a pregnant female."

He added, "I was also going to get one of those plastic severed fingers you can get in a novelty store, you know, just to make Mom happy, but I didn't."

When he arrived at LaGuardia, we of course greeted him joyfully, whereupon he informed us, "I just came home because it's an obligation, not because I wanted to. What I really wanted to do was send two of my buddies to the house to tell you I had died." He chuckled at the thought, "Yeah....that would have been good." (It wouldn't have been good for him; had he done that, he probably would have died, at my hands.)

At dinner that night, he kindly put any remaining doubts we had about him having PTSD to rest. He looked at our dog and mused, "I wish Tyke would stop telling me to shoot couples in parked cars." I laughed at this Son of Sam reference; my daughter laughed as well. Johnny then asked Rebecca, "Do you know what I was referring to?" Rebecca couldn't answer, so Johnny mocked her for being the type to laugh at jokes she didn't get.

When Johnny's mother pointed out that -- like most people -- her ears were not exactly at the same level, he reassured her, "You know, I always thought you looked like a Picasso painting."

After we had discussed politics for a bit, Johnny said to his mother, "Unless you have a certain testosterone level, I'm really not all that interested in what you have to say." When he saw me trying to repress a grin, he added, "Dad, I'm not sure you qualify either."

When my parents came for a visit, my wife suggested they try the sea salt -- rather than the regular salt -- with their lamb. Johnny then said, "Mom, you've got to stop calling it that, it's so pretentious." A few minutes later he pointedly asked, "Could you please pass the mine salt."

After a few days Johnny went to spend the weekend with an old friend now going to college in New Orleans. Upon coming back, he wasn't particularly forthcoming with any details about his trip, but he did volunteer that he had made a mistake by coming back and should have stayed in New Orleans longer. To underscore the point that he was bored at home, he said, "You know, after being back here for several days, I realize, I really miss the Taliban."

At one point, after I had made a few lame jokes, Johnny offered, "You're so funny Dad. Geez, my diaphragm can't take any more of the spasms from laughing at your jokes."

When I mentioned to him that I was going to put up a post about the Lord's Resistance Army, Johnny asked, "Didn't Steve Sailer just write a post about that?" I said yes, but mine was going to make a different point. Johnny then retorted, "If you're not going to call your blog 'Just Not Read,' you really should call it, 'Just Not Said -- Except By Steve Sailer, Who's Already Said It'."

Well, at least Johnny doesn't have PTSD.

Five more months....a long time to hold your breath.

Nice guys, average guys, and sociopaths (IX)

2011-10-20T12:30:00.002-04:00

Situation: A nice guy, average guy, and sociopath, all of average intelligence, are put together in a social situation. What do they think of each other?

Nice guy: At first likes both. Continues to make excuses for the sociopaths's behavior long after it is apparent to others that his behavior is inexcusable. When someone points this out, the nice guy replies, "Well, I guess he has a dark side, but I certainly don't think he's a sociopath."

Average guy: At first sees the nice guy as boring, and thinks the sociopath is really cool and dynamic and fun to be around. Sees him as what he wants to be -- courageous, cynical, funny, and irreverent. As time goes on he eventually sees the sociopath for what he is -- disloyal, dishonest, self-serving, and hypocritical, and grows to hate him. Still sees the nice guy as a turkey, however, and avoids him as much as possible too.

Sociopath: Sees both of the others as potential marks. As time goes on, he realizes that the nice guy is a much better mark. When he sees that the average guy has caught onto him, he hates him back in turn. Resents the nice guy for so obviously having come from a loving family, and for being so naive.

Situation: You run the 400 meter dash for your college team.

Nice guy: Shows up to every practice, trains hard, and gets so nervous before his meets he sometimes throws up beforehand. Is somewhat in awe of the muscular guy on the team who is so fast.

Average guy: Shows up to most practices, gets nervous before the meets. Realizes that many world class competitors take performance enhancing drugs. Finds out about a food supplement store whose proprietor sells steroids on the side. Knows he would feel bad about cheating, but the really deciding factor for him is that he doesn't want his testicles shrunk, nor does he want to grow breasts after he stops taking steroids.

Sociopath: Doesn't really enjoy practice, and skips it whenever he feels like it, but looks forward to the meets as a place where he can strut his stuff. Occasionally throws up after a race as he doesn't get nervous ahead of time and just eats whenever he's hungry. As soon as he hears about the local dealer, seeks him out and goes on the juice. Figures those side effects he's heard about will never affect him.

Situation: You brush up against someone in a bar, causing him to spill his drink. He takes a swing at you, and without thinking you instinctively swing back, knocking him out. What do you do then?

Nice guy: Is absolutely mortified at what he's done, and is afraid that he might have caused some sort of permanent damage to the other guy. Asks the crowd if there's a doctor in the house.

Average guy: As the realization of what he's just done sinks in, he looks around to make sure his buddies have witnessed his glorious feat. His exultation as he realizes he will be able to dine out on this story for a long time is tempered by a moment of panic as he realizes this could get him into trouble. He quickly says to his buddy, "You saw what just happened, right? It was self-defense."

Sociopath: Once the guy is down on the ground, stamps on his head once for good measure, and also kicks him in the ribs. Doing this feels awfully good to him. He says somewhat threateningly to the surrounding witnesses, "It was self-defense. I had to make sure he wasn't going to get up and attack me again." Then adds, in aggrieved tone, "Crazy guy like that, you never know what he's going to do." He is immediately filled with the hope that he will get to do this again, and soon.

Equivalence

2011-10-18T15:06:00.001-04:00

A friend sent the following email last night:

"On the plane ride from Costa Rica to Atlanta my girlfriend started conversing with another woman. The woman related that she’d been bitten by a tarantula while in Costa Rica. The clinic she went to was awesome – they waited on her almost immediately, it was cheap, they sent her away with three pills and she was fine – what a contrast with the US health care system. She also told us that she lived in Cambridge for years. Based on that, her appearance, and the Costa Rican vacation, I'm guessing that she’s liberal. She also mentioned, by the way, that a tarantula bite is not poisonous, just painful. One might wonder why she needed any care at all, but no matter, the care was awesome.

"If I’d been quicker on my feet I would have responded with the following story: We spent a lot of time with David, our primary host for the surf camp. At one point he said his ear had been hurting on and off for a year. He described his symptoms,which were consistent with swimmer’s ear. David had gone to a Costa Rican clinic a while back. He was seen almost immediately, and the visit was inexpensive, but the doctor told him there was nothing that could be done for him and he should take ibuprofen. [My girlfriend] recently had swimmer’s ear and had the medication with her. She gave it to David and after three days his pain was gone."

I guess the moral of the anecdote is that the US health care system is overpriced but more competent than those in Third World countries. But the email got me to thinking: why is it that liberals always try so hard to look for the worst about the US and the best about other countries?

This is not a brief for how everything here is wonderful: there is plenty wrong here, including overpriced health care. But the way liberals struggle so desperately to talk up Third World countries is actually comical.

The same people who rave about the artistry that goes into a clay pot or a wood carving would never be caught dead praising the intelligence which went into, say, designing a space station.

The same people who rave about the ecology-friendly lifestyle practiced by the Yanomamo Indians -- in stark contrast to our own -- would never dream of mentioning their penchant for cannibalism.

The same people who pride themselves on being "open-minded" in fact keep their minds closed to all the the most rigidly leftist mindset: socialism (though not by that name) is better than capitalism, race is a social construct, etc. etc.

I once heard a liberal use the following phrase: "a really horrible person, you know, like Richard Nixon or Idi Amin." The liberal actually thought he was demonstrating his fair-mindedness by including Idi Amin, a black man, in that horrible company.

Nixon was not a saint, but he didn't gain power through a coup, he never personally tortured political opponents, didn't keep the heads of his enemies in his freezer, and never killed his wife for having an abortion. But, evidently he and Amin were morally equivalent.

You can twist yourself into a pretzel trying to insist that there are no differences between people (or peoples), just as you can when you try to insist that there are no differences between countries, other than the moral ones which show us in a bad light.

I guess the direction our country will go in next depends largely on who our next President will be -- someone nice and smart like Barack Obama, or someone horrible like Mitt Romney or Jeffrey Dahmer.

The Lord's Resistance Army

2011-10-17T09:26:00.003-04:00

This past Friday, Barack Obama announced that we would be sending 100 troops to help central African governments fight the Lord's Resistance Army. Obama said, "I believe that deploying these U.S. Armed Forces furthers U.S. national security interests and foreign policy."

This is, of course, Obama-speak for "It has nothing to do with U.S. interests." (Remember, this is a man who said that he would be the "post-partisan President," and who, before picking Sonia Sotomayor to be Supreme Court Justice, said that he wanted a "strict Constitutionalist who would not legislate from the bench.")

Of course, the fact that helping Uganda and the Congo battle the LRA has little to do with our vital interests makes it no worse than our other military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. If anything, it's more justified. The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), according to Wikipedia, practices murder, abduction, sexual enslavement of women and children," and forces children to participate in the hostilities. (The Ugandan Army has also been known to recruit children and practice mass rape, but let's ignore that for the moment.) The LRA will on occasion cut off the noses, ears, lips, and hands of its victims.

The LRA is not animated by any known political ideology, but rather by a toxic brew of mysticism, Acholi tradition, and the Ten Commandments (!).

In other words, they are religious nutcases. Not unlike some of the factions we've sided with at various times in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The LRA was founded by Alice Lakwena, who informed her followers that if they covered their bodies with shea nut oil, it would make them impervious to the Ugandan Army's bullets. She also told her followers that they should never take cover in battle, and should never kill snakes or bees. Her movement was later taken over by Joseph Kony, who told his followers that they should use oil to draw a cross on their chests as protection from bullets.

It is inevitable that after we leave Iraq, it will descend into sectarian squabbling and perhaps even civil war. Worse, it could be overrun by Iran. It is also inevitable that when we leave Afghanistan, the Taliban will take over.

At that point, we will have effectively lost both wars.

Should we lose to the LRA, it certainly won't say much for our military adventurism.

Perhaps at that point, our soldiers should start covering their bodies with shea nut oil.

Better yet, maybe our politicians should start slathering it on, to protect themselves from bad decisions.

Nice guys, average guys, and sociopaths (VIII)

2011-10-16T12:21:00.001-04:00

Situation: You served in the Army as a Public Affairs Specialist, writing news releases and the like. As part of your job you once traveled to Kabul briefly. What do you tell people about your service?

Nice guy: Tells the truth, that he worked behind the lines briefly in Afghanistan. Takes pains to point out that he never saw combat.

Average guy: Says that he served in the Army in Afghanistan. If asked exactly what his job was, tells the truth, but emphasizes that he was in danger too, carried an M4, and traveled with a patrol once. Says he thought about trying out for Special Forces (the thought fleetingly crossed his mind), but in the end decided to go to college instead.

Sociopath: Says he was a Navy Seal, and engaged in covert operations he can't talk about. Once he sees that his tough guy credentials are established, burnishes his nice guy credentials by saying he is tormented by the thought that one time there might have been collateral damage from a hand grenade he threw.

Situation: How do you react to the sight of a legless veteran in wheelchair?

Nice guy: Looks away quickly; the tear forming in his eye embarrasses him.

Average guy: Looks away, then looks back at the veteran and nods, remembering what he once read about how people in wheelchairs don't like the way they become "invisible" since people are taught that it's impolite to stare. Feels sympathy, but also thinks, better him than me.

Sociopath: Stares directly at the stumps for a few seconds with a look of rapt fascination. Then looks up at the man's face as if he is a freakish curiosity. When he is out of earshot, or perhaps not quite out of earshot, says to his buddies, "Jesus, if I was that guy I'd kill myself."

Situation: You've just put a week working for Habitat for Humanity.

Nice guy: Just hopes his work has helped a little. Doesn't really focus on his own participation, other than to worry that perhaps the quality of his work might not have been good enough. For him, the work actually is its own reward.

Average guy: Joined thinking it would be a good way to meet girls, and figures it will look good on his resume. Feels this is definitive proof that he is a good person. Manages to insert his work into every conversation. Also figures the week has bought him respite from any good deeds for a long time.

Sociopath: Sees himself as a saint. Tries to portray himself this way even to the other people at Habitat, in the process managing to annoy all of them. Walks around in a constant state of egomania about his "sainthood." Exudes "goodness" all the time. Gets quite preachy about the need to help others. Becomes angry when others don't regard him in a saintly light.

The curse of Cain

2011-10-13T09:00:00.003-04:00

The Mormon church has traditionally believed that the visible manifestation of the "curse of Cain" was black skin, and that all black people were descended from Cain, the biblical figure who slew his brother Abel. The church has distanced itself from this scriptural interpretation recently, but it was part of their doctrine for a long time.

How ironic that the leading contender for the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney, is a Mormon, and that the candidate who may -- according to this morning's poll -- have just overtaken him is a black man named Herman Cain.

This blog probably pays too much attention to names. After all, what's in a name?

Still, one can't help but marvel at the coincidence.

"Occupy Cupertino"

2011-10-13T05:37:00.000-04:00

http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/operation-cupertino/

Another amusing take on the Occupy Wall Street protesters. (The comments afterward are interminable, boring, and often ill-informed, but the post itself is worth reading.)