Rip Van

If you ever find yourself near your old college campus and consider a sentimental stroll, my advice is, don't.

I had occasion recently to be near my alma mater, for reasons that had nothing to do with it. But I did wander around a bit. The setting, the building, the local stores had changed to the point where I felt like Rip Van Winkle. And the students just looked so young to me. Which means I probably looked a little like Rip to them.

All the depressing cliches about the unforgiving nature of time occurred to me.

I've spent better afternoons.

Wasted lives

It has been said that skill at pool is nothing more than proof of a life misspent.

Last night I was challenged to play Scrabble against a recent college grad (who, as it turned out, hadn't particularly wanted to play me, but was put up to it by her boyfriend).

While winning the game handily, it occurred to me that skill at Scrabble proves exactly the same.

Genius

I've always thought that in the right time and place, there are certain "inventions" I might have been able to duplicate. I can imagine myself having figured out what kind of spears work best, experimenting with various woods to find the sturdiest, then figuring out how best to sharpen them on a rock.

But, I am no genius. I cannot imagine being the first to look at a rock and thinking, "Hmm, I think I'll smelt some metal out of that."

There are some jumps humanity has taken which have required a mind so incredibly imaginative and perceptive that it is mind-boggling to contemplate.

I am probably clever enough to have figured out how to divert a stream to irrigate a rice paddy. But I would never -- ever -- have figured out how to divert a river so as to generate electricity.

I can imagine conceiving the idea that if you have a friendly male wolf mate with a friendly female wolf, you might get offspring that are really friendly." But I can't imagine being the first person to think, "Okay -- let's splice these genes into that chromosome and try to cure this disease."

I can imagine blowing through a conch shell and discovering the cool noise it makes. I can't imagine being the first to look at a piece of plastic tape and thinking, "I think I'll record sound on that."

I can imagine myself tapping out a beat -- maybe even a catchy one -- with my fingers on a bongo drum. But I cannot imagine what it would be like to look at a blank sheet of paper and just create, out of nothing, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Or Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty ballet.

I can imagine figuring out that if you have two paper cups with a string attached, and put your ear to the cup, that you can sort of hear the other person's voice a little better than you could with your naked ear. I cannot fathom the kind of mind it would take to be the first person to think, "Okay, let's transmit sound through electric waves -- that way people in Massachusetts can just talk to people in California."

I can imagine having figured out how to use charcoal to draw a buffalo on a cave wall. I can tell you, quite honestly, that the idea of putting an electron gun inside a vacuum tube to bounce images off a fluorescent screen so that everyone could have a TV in their den would never have occurred to me.

I'm smart enough to have figured out the connection between sexual intercourse and the appearance of a child nine moons later. All on my own. After, perhaps, some experimentation. I am quite positive I could never have figured out how to come up with a pill which would regulate a woman's hormones so as to prevent that birth. No matter how much experimentation I did. (Well, wanted to do, in any case.)

You may be thinking, well, these more recent inventions weren't just sudden inspirations from cavemen, they were the result of the long step by step evolution of science. As Isaac Newton famously said, "If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the backs of giants." (Newton himself, by the way, was as great a giant as any, responsible for far more than noticing the apple which landed on his head -- something I always felt I could have done.) But many of those individual steps still represent leaps of genius that are simply incomprehensible to me.

I might have been able to figure out how to harness the power of gravity and create a water wheel (once that apple had conked me in the head). And I can safely say I would have been able to tell which heavenly body provides us with light. But I cannot imagine the kind of mind it would take to figure out that gravity bends light. (And that was just one guy, Albert E.)

I can imagine figuring out how to add and subtract, and even multiply and divide. I might even have stumbled across the formula for the area of a square, or rectangle, had I been constantly faced with a reason for doing so. But I would never, not in a million years, have been able to come up with the formula for calculating the area under a curve.

I probably would have had some sense of speed: the impala and cheetah are incredibly fast, the wildebeest less so. Had someone else already invented the stopwatch, I might even have been able to measure their speed. But I never, ever, could have mustered the mental firepower to be able to calculate the speed of light --186,000 miles per second. Both my stopwatch and brain would have failed me there.

I can imagine having discovered, perhaps through an unfortunate trial and error process, that the elements composing gunpowder are quite volatile when heated. I cannot imagine being the person who thought -- "Hey, let's split the atom and build a bomb which can level an entire metropolis."

I'm your typical upper middle class weenie. All my life I've prided myself on silly things like LSAT scores and being able to finish a crossword a little faster than the next guy. But I am, at most, separated from my competition by inches. The people responsible for the creations above are separated from the rest of us by miles.

I'm not even smart enough to comprehend how smart they must be.

It's not too late to sue him for sexual harassment

Alfred Eisenstadt's photograph of the sailor who grabbed a passing nurse on VJ Day and bent her backwards to give her a kiss has, in the fifty-five years since it was shot, taken on iconic status. To many Americans, it symbolized the joy they felt as they celebrated the end of WWII. At least ten men have come forward claiming to have been the sailor in that picture. And at least eight women have claimed to be the nurse.

Question #1: If this happened now, say, after the last American soldier comes home from Iraq, would this woman complain of sexual harassment and call the authorities?

Question #2: If this man happened to be rich, how big an award could the woman expect in civil court? One million? Five million?

Question #3: Were we as a society crazier back then, or now?

You be the judge.

Mark Hurd

Good article by Joe Nocera in the NY Times business section about the rise and fall of a sociopath (though Nocera never uses that term) at Hewlett-Packard:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/business/14nocera.html?_r=1&hp

(It's fairly long, only for those who are fascinated by corporate politics.)

Julian Assange

(Julian Assange)

A NY Post editorial this morning discussed the damage caused by Wikileaks:

WikiLeaks, the anti-war group that dumped 75,000 pages of secret US military material onto the Internet, may already have blood on its hands -- even as it gets set to dump another 15,000 pages, putting yet more lives at risk.

This group needs to be stopped -- and held to account.

The Taliban reportedly has targeted at least 100 Afghans identified in the documents as informants for the US-led counterinsurgency -- and may already have claimed its first victim.

Marc Thiessen of The American Enterprise Institute reports that Taliban leaders gleefully announced they'd begun combing the documents -- which not only named the informants, but in many cases also ID'd their villages, family members and the names of those on whom they'd been informing...

But it may get worse: WikiLeaks says it will publish another 15,000 documents, with perhaps even more catastrophic consequences. That, the Pentagon says, would "compound a mistake that has already put far too many lives at risk."

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange snidely retorts that the Afghan people "should know" who among them has engaged in "genuinely traitorous behavior" -- i.e., helping the US-led coalition.

Assange is clearly a guy bent on mayhem, though he cloaks his motivations in high-minded talk about transparency and openness.

If you check someone's biography on Wikipedia you can often find, reading between the lines, some formative influence (almost always in the "Early life" section) which accounts for their destructiveness and even sociopathy. What they said about Assange's childhood was very illuminating:

"According to The New Yorker, Assange was born in Townsville, Queensland in 1971. In the past, Assange did not publish his exact age, only stating that he was born in the 1970s.

Assange has said that his parents ran a touring theatre company, and that he was enrolled in 37 schools and six universities in Australia over the course of his early life. From age eleven to sixteen, he lived on the run with his mother and half-brother, avoiding his half-brother's father who was believed to belong to a cult led by Anne Hamilton-Byrne.

An article in The New Yorker has stated that Assange was married to his girlfriend in an unofficial ceremony at the age of 18 and had a son. The article says she left him while he was being investigated by the Australian Federal Police for hacking, and took their son."

A guy who touts the virtues of openness and transparency won't even give his own real age? When you've been to 43 schools in your life, it neither encourages stable relationships nor breeds any sense of loyalty. The most telling part, of course, was about how from age 11 to 16 he lived on the run, avoiding a guy whom his mother undoubtedly painted as the bogeyman to him and his half-brother. (It's possible the half-brother's father was the bogeyman.) And whatever happened to Assange's own father? Think that kind of background might have left Assange feeling bitter and deprived? And why did his "unofficial" wife leave him? Does he keep in touch with his own son? And what kind of person becomes a hacker in the first place?

Verdict: not quite enough evidence to know for sure, but probably a sociopath. He definitely seems to want to inject the anarchy that was so much a part of his early life into others' lives.

Be curious to know what that half-brother's up to these days.

Profilers baffled

(Elias Abuelazam in court after his arrest)

From an AP article last night:

RAMLE, Israel – A man accused of going on a stabbing spree across three U.S. states and who was once suspected in a stabbing near his hometown in Israel has baffled profilers, who say murder does not appear to have been his goal.

So it remains a mystery as to what drove Elias Abuelazam, who relatives described as a shy man from a respected family who had recently become despondent. Abuelazam is suspected of attacking people in Michigan, Ohio and Virginia, leaving 13 people wounded in addition to the dead....

A family member in poverty-stricken [Flint] said Abuelazam had become unhappy about his personal life in recent months. And others in the Arab neighborhood where he grew up expressed shock that the man they knew could be a suspect in the gruesome attacks.

"I wouldn't believe it even if I saw it with my own eyes," said Abuelazam's 49-year-old cousin, also named Elias Abuelazam. He said that when his cousin last visited earlier this year, he was tense, unhappy and unsure what to do with his life. The younger Abuelazam said he wanted to get married and settle down in Israel. "He seemed confused," the cousin said. But he said suggestions that Abuelazam was a killer were "malicious rumors."

He said news of the arrest had devastated Abuelazam's mother, who was excitedly waiting for a text message to pick her son up at the airport when she heard the news. "She couldn't stand up ... She was hysterical," he said. In a brief radio interview, she described her son as a "religious, God-fearing man" and said she refused to believe he was a killer.

However, Israeli police said Abuelazam was a suspect in a stabbing attack early this year, although charges were never pressed. A senior police commander said Abuelazam was believed to have stabbed a close acquaintance in the face with a screwdriver during an argument in a parked car about six months ago. The commander said police dropped the case because the victim refused to cooperate with investigators. He said Israeli police would request samples of Abuelazam's DNA to investigate unsolved stabbings in the Ramle area.

The alleged victim in the attack, Ziad Shahin, denied being assaulted by Abuelazam but had a large scar from his right ear to his throat. Speaking outside his candy store in Ramle, Shahin said he was born with the mark. Ramle's roughly 3,000-member Arab Christian community is tight-knit, and residents were extremely cautious about discussing Abuelazam's past.

Acquaintances said Abuelazam's father died of illness when he was a baby, and that he was raised by his single mother and four sisters. The family owned a grocery store and two other shops in town, and the mother was well regarded. Abuelazam, a member of Ramle's Greek Orthodox community, attended two prestigious Catholic schools, they said.

All but four of [Abuelazam's] 18 attacks occurred the Flint area. The others were in Leesburg, Va., and Toledo, Ohio. In one case, the attacker used a hammer. The youngest victim was 15; the oldest 67. At least 15 victims were black, although there's no evidence that race played a role, authorities said. A motive was not known.

Robert Keppel, a retired Washington state homicide detective who profiles serial killers, said it's rare for someone to attack males exclusively. Whoever is responsible for the 18 attacks, "he's just getting off on stabbing people. He's not guaranteeing that they die," said Keppel, who investigated the Ted Bundy homicides in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s. "For some reason, the satisfaction is just in the action of the stabbings," Keppel said. "He's only turned on by the act of the approach and the initial stabbing. He's got some hang-ups. ... He's a rare killer among rare killers."

Also Friday, police in Leesburg, Va., said they were investigating whether Abuelazam is responsible for the March 2009 stabbing death of a 44-year-old man who lived across from Abuelazam in a townhome community.

Usually when you read about a serial killer, the more you find out, the more neatly the picture of a sociopath fits together: either he was an orphan or had a mother who didn't love him. He was abused as a child. He had a special sexual kink which could only be gratified one way, through killing his victims, and felt no qualms about gratifying it. Or he had a consuming hatred for a certain type of person. And he exhibited a whole host of other behaviors which betrayed his sociopathic nature.

But this guy seems to have neither that background nor those inclinations. His mother seems to have loved him -- and still does, if her behavior is any clue. His father died when Abuelazam was a baby, so he wouldn't have been abused by him. He was raised in a household where everybody else was female, yet his hatred doesn't seem to be directed at women -- all of his victims were male.

The first news reports made the killer sound like some sort of KKK guy on a rampage -- but now it's not even clear that there was any racial motive; it may just be that most of the people he encountered on the street when he was in the mood to attack happened to be black.

When we hear of an Arab being responsible for multiple deaths these days, naturally our first thought is, "Islamic terrorist." But Abuelazam wasn't even a Muslim; he was a Greek Orthodox who attended Catholic schools.

There was no overtly sexual element to his attacks, and he didn't even bother to make sure his victims died so as to eliminate witnesses -- he just stabbed and ran. (Sociopaths tend to be more careful about covering their tracks.)

I can't figure this guy out at all. The more we hear, the more it sounds as if he's just some kind of Mad Slasher -- in the way newspapers of fifty years ago would describe some serial killer, as if he was just plain crazy.

That may actually turn out to the case here -- that there is some form of insanity involved. Stay tuned.

Zsa Zsa's lost son?

Zsa Zsa Gabor (back in the hospital) and Stephen Slater (the steward whose justification for his hissy fit aboard that Jet Blue flight is now being contradicted) were both back in the news today.

I couldn't help but notice the physical resemblance between the two. Yes, there are differences: Gabor's appearance is a triumph of artifice (she apparently wanted to keep that Stephen Slater look for as long as possible), and Gabor was born into the right gender. But despite Gabor's Hungarian extraction and Slater's Irish, they must have had some common ancestors somewhere back in the line.

I am afraid it is a physiognomy I will forevermore associate with drama queens.

One sure sign of a narcissistic personality

One of the surest signs of a narcissistic personality is to constantly laugh at one's own jokes. (Yes, wearing clothes like those above might also be a sign, but that's not what this post is about; don't worry, we'll get to Diamond Dave soon enough.) It might seem as if I'm reading too much into one insignificant mannerism, but I've known several people over the years who always laughed at their own jokes, and, inevitably, there was a whole set of other characteristics that went hand in hand with it.

(Please bear in mind, although all sociopaths are narcissistic personalities, only a small fraction of narcissistic personalities are sociopaths. Quick definition of a narcissist: a selfish individual who will never admit he's wrong. Narcissists are generally not dangerous the way sociopaths are, they're merely unpleasant company. Also bear in mind, only a small fraction of narcissists laugh at their own jokes, although all people who laugh at their own jokes are, in my experience, narcissists.)

When I was in college, my swimming coach would make lame jokes and then let out this weird staccato laugh afterward, as if to signal to his listeners that he had just made a very funny joke and they should laugh too. No need to get into all the gory details of his personality; suffice it to say that he was unanimously disliked. After he left, I heard that unanimity of opinion followed him elsewhere.

Think of it this way: you're texting a friend, and after each of his own rejoinders he writes "LOL!" He doesn't say this after any of your bon mots -- only after his own. Wouldn't that strike you as a little bit off -- and more than a little vain? People who laugh at their own jokes are effectively doing the same thing.

Let me cite an example you may be better acquainted with: rock star David Lee Roth, the lead singer of Van Halen back in the 80's, pictured above. Roth was, by the way, one of the greatest performers in rock and roll, and he made three of the coolest music videos ever, which I will link here. "Jump" shows him at his campy best, vamping sexily for the camera and dancing up a storm -- but also seemingly making fun of himself at the same time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlq0lYB3iSM

Roth's cover of Louis Prima's "Just a Gigolo" is another tour de force: he sings, he dances, and he mocks the other big pop stars of the era. (I admit, this post is, as much as anything else, just an excuse to link these videos.) The first minute and a half of the video is slow, but the next few minutes have more joie de vivre squeezed into them than I've had in my entire life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN-4lX0QyZc

Finally, Roth's cover of The Beach Boys' "California Girls" is equally well staged. Most videos try to be sexy; this one is sexy and fun, if you can make it past the first minute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmbhfI8f_Ek

After having seen these videos twenty years ago, I happened to listen to an interview with Roth on the Howard Stern show around ten or twelve years ago. Roth was extremely witty and quick, one of the few guests who could keep up with Stern. When Stern left the station to go to satellite radio, Roth was chosen as his replacement.

But when I listened to the show, I was disappointed. Carrying a four hour show five days a week is completely different from being impressive for a half hour as a guest star, and Roth, though he kept up a fairly snappy line of patter, couldn't quite manage it. What was most off-putting about his presentation was that he would punctuate his every comment with an appreciative laugh -- at his own wit. Even when he wasn't witty.

Within a few months, Roth's show was canceled. It was then that I remembered hearing once that his former bandmates all hated him. Then I thought about the kind of boundless self-confidence it would take to be the kind of performer he was, and to make the kind of videos he did. Then I thought of Roth's oft-repeated line about how the only thing he was allergic to was criticism. And then I thought about how long and bitterly he went on about the unfairness of his show's cancellation. And then I started to think about every other person I had ever known who laughed at his own jokes. And I saw a pattern.

(Just counted, and there were seven "I's" in the last paragraph; just so you know, eight is the threshold that marks a narcissistic personality.)

Anyway, think of the people you know who always laugh at their own jokes. Can any of them admit it when they're wrong?

Please don't confuse laughing at your own jokes with not being able to finish a joke because you're laughing so hard. One is a punctuation mark designed to demonstrate to the world -- and yourself -- that you're funny. The other is simply finding something so funny that it robs you of your ability to perform.

A very closely related behavior, by the way, is to listen to someone else make a joke, not laugh, basically repeat it with a very slight variation, and only then laugh. Another endearing habit of my former coach.

Wasn't this a great post?! LOL! LMFAO!! ROTFLMGDAO!!!

Are puns really humor?

A couple days ago I related the two jokes in the post from earlier this month --

http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2010/08/two-little-jokes.html --

to a swimming buddy. He retorted, "Did you hear the one about the giraffe who walked into the bar? He said, 'Highballs on me'!"

I tried to smile, but I'm afraid it came out more of a grimace.

I like the two jokes from the post because they both say something about -- sorry, but I can't think of a less pretentious phrase at the moment -- the human condition. (Hey, just be thankful I didn't say it in French.) The joke about what wives say after sex says something about the nature of marriage that we all recognize and acknowledge (privately if not publicly). And the joke about Hillary and Chelsea makes a statement about Bill that captures the man perfectly.

But my buddy's joke didn't bring a wry smile of recognition, or hit anybody where it hurt, or help crystallize a thought in my mind, or, really, say anything about anything. All it did was bring to mind the age old question: are puns really humor?

When they're made in the service of a larger point, they can add to the humor. But on their own, I gotta say, no.

Does a sense of humor correlate with IQ?

One of the arguments against the g factor is the existence of savants, autistic people who are mind-bogglingly good at one particular kind of mental task, but subnormal in most other ways. I don't find this a particularly compelling argument: severe autistics are too anomalous an offshoot to draw conclusions about the rest of humanity from.

To me, a better argument against g would be the existence of Asians. Northeast Asians (Japanese, Korean, northern Chinese) average somewhere between 105 and 110 on IQ, yet the vast majority of Asians have nerdy personalities. If g is such an all around boost, why do so many Asian-Americans seem to have weak senses of humor? (I'm half-Asian, which is probably why I seem to spend around half my life being lame. Actually, now that I think of it, my white half is pretty lame too: let's call it seven-eighths.)

For that matter, it's been my experience that blacks, who on average do poorly on IQ tests, often have good senses of humor. Does IQ not correlate with humor?

Possibly. I've known plenty of whites with all sorts of intellectual credentials and incredibly lame senses of humor. And I've met plenty of whites with none who have good senses of humor. So what gives?

It may just be that a lower level of inhibitions correlates with a better sense of humor. Much of humor consists of saying things others are unwilling -- perhaps too shy or too inhibited -- to say. Delivery is crucial as well: telling a joke hesitantly basically strangles it. Sociopaths are totally uninhibited, and this allows them to be glibly charming, with what appears at first to be a good sense of humor (in fact they usually just have a bunch of prepackaged lines they trot out at the appropriate times).

It also helps to have an outsider's perspective, which may help explain the many funny blacks and gays.

Gays seem particularly skillful at delivering funny impressionistic summations of situations which highlight their absurdity -- witness David Sedaris.

A sense of humor may derive in part from a sense of helplessness. (As in, the winners get the spoils, the losers get philosophy -- because they have no choice but to be philosophical about things.)

It also helps to have what is known as a twisted outlook, all the better to have a sick sense of humor. But this may also just be a matter of being a left-handed, right-brained type of person, the type long associated with creativity.

Speed of thought helps too. If you're like me, and can only think of the perfect response half an hour later, no one will ever think you funny.

It has often been said that comedians are angry people. So that probably helps. Except I've never seen a person actually throwing a temper tantrum who was funny except in an unintentional way. It's also been said that the top comedians are often substance abusers. And, come to think of it, you don't see a lot of Asian-American alcoholics.

But many of the funniest people I know are also the smartest. This can't be just coincidence. A few of them are even well-adjusted: having a sense of humor would seem to equip one well for the various slings and arrows that come our way.

So is humor a form of intelligence or not? I'd say that it is, even if it doesn't correlate well with measured IQ.

One thing a sense of humor does correlate with is sanity -- which also doesn't necessarily correlate well with IQ. (The existence of Harvard University is testimony to that.) To have a sense of what's absurd or out of place or unexpected, you must start with a strong sense of what is normal.

There also seems to be a gender correlation. Men are just funnier than women. There, I've said it. But it's not as if I'm the only one who's ever noticed -- or said -- this. I've heard similar comments from a wide range of people, including some females. (As the old saying goes, a woman with a good sense of humor is one who laughs at your jokes.)

If testosterone is associated with humor, then that might explain why blacks are funnier than Asians, since blacks on average have the highest testosterone levels, and Asians the lowest. But you don't generally associate a quick wit with muscle bound NFL linemen. On the contrary, when you look at the top comedians, like Chris Rock or Dave Chappelle or Richard Pryor or Howard Stern, they tend to be skinny guys who look like they'd be lucky to make the JV basketball team.

There's also a correlation with humor and narcissism -- a negative correlation. If you can't laugh at yourself, you're probably not going to be very funny.

So it's settled then: the funniest person is going to be a quick-witted, left-handed, gay, non-narcissistic black man who is exceptionally intelligent and sane.

I started out writing that sentence intending to sound sarcastic. But now that I look at it, that guy actually does sound as if he'd probably have a good sense of humor.

F.I.T.

In the post about coyotes (on August 3rd) I made a snippy reference to the Fashion Institute of Technology.

I'm about to get even snippier.

How did they come up with that name? F.I.T. was founded in 1944. (The California Institute of Technology was founded in 1891, MIT in 1861.) Did whoever came up with the name Fashion Institute of Technology think that perhaps its graduates would be considered to be on an intellectual par with CIT and MIT alumni?

And what, pray tell, does fashion have to do with technology?

Or did they choose that name because its acronym would mesh cutely with a fashion theme (as in, good clothes fit well)?

And wasn't 1944 -- in the middle of World War II -- a strange time to be opening up a college devoted to something as frivolous as fashion?

What does a graduate of FIT say when meeting a graduate of MIT?

"So...What did you major in at MIT?"

"Oh, I studied electrical engineering."

"Hmm. I majored in quantum physics myself."

Comforting the afflicted

An article just came out in the NY Post about how President Obama played basketball this afternoon with a group of NBA stars:

"WASHINGTON -- President Obama pulled together an informal dream team of current and former basketball superstars Sunday. But only a few people got to see it.

Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, Carmelo Anthony and other NBA all-stars joined Obama in Washington to entertain wounded troops.

The present-day stars were joined by some retired legends, including Bill Russell and Magic Johnson. College player Maya Moore of the Connecticut Huskies women's team also played.

The game was played for a group of "wounded warriors" -- troops injured in action -- and participants in the White House's mentoring program. It took place inside at a gym inside Washington's Fort McNair, a short drive from the White House. The President was inside the gym for about two hours.

The reporters assigned to keep tabs on the President were shut out of the gym, forced to wait in vans outside. Asked why media coverage was blocked, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama "just wanted to play."

After the game some of the players joined Obama and a group of his friends for a barbecue at the White House, capping the President's 49th birthday week."

Question #1: Was watching the President play basketball with a bunch of his athletic heroes really what these wounded veterans wanted? (If you're missing, say, your legs, is watching a bunch of healthy specimens run up and down the court really going to cheer you up? And does watching your Commander-in-Chief's worshipful adoration of these basketball stars make your own sacrifice seem more worthwhile?)

Question #2: Or was playing in front of the wounded vets just an excuse for Obama to indulge in some fantasy basketball?

Question #3: Was the media banned because the answer to the above question was so obvious?

Question #4: Was bringing all those superstars to DC done at taxpayer expense?

Question #5: Were any of the wounded veterans invited back to that White House barbecue, or was it just the NBA players?

Question #6: Who deserves to be invited to the White House more -- young men who've risked their lives and sacrificed their health for their country, or young men who happened to grow tall and are good at stuffing a basketball?

Perhaps the NBA stars did pay their way. Perhaps some of the veterans were invited to the cookout. And perhaps Obama considered it a sacrifice to have to hang with Lebron and Carmelo.

But these are questions worth asking.

Butch O'Hare

About eight years ago I stumbled across the following two part story on, of all places, a Yahoo message board for stocks. Someone had pasted it in without listing the author, so I am unable to give the writer credit for this well wrought story. I printed it out and saved it because I found it quite amazing, and quite affecting:


Many years ago, Al Capone virtually owned Chicago. Capone wasn't famous for anything heroic. He was notorious for enmeshing the windy city in everything from bootlegged booze and prostitution to murder.

Capone had a lawyer nicknamed "Easy Eddie." He was his lawyer for a good reason. Eddie was very good. In fact, Eddie's skill at legal maneuvering kept Big Al out of jail for a long time.

To show his appreciation, Capone paid him very well. Not only was the money big, but also, Eddie got special dividends. For instance, he and his family occupied a fenced-in mansion with live-in help and all of the conveniences of the day. The estate was so large that if filled an entire Chicago city block.

Eddie lived the high life of the Chicago mob and gave little consideration to the atrocity that went on around him. Eddie did have one soft spot, however. He had a son that he loved dearly. Eddie saw to it that his young son had clothes, cars, and a good education. Nothing was withheld. Price was no object. And despite his involvement with organized crime, Eddie even tried to teach him right from wrong. Eddie wanted his son to be a better man than he was. Yet, with all his wealth and influence, there were two things he couldn't give his son; he couldn't pass on a good name or a good example.

One day, Easy Eddie reached a difficult decision. Easy Eddie wanted to rectify wrongs he had done. He decided he would go to the authorities and tell the truth about Al "Scarface" Capone, clean up his tarnished name, and offer his son some semblance of integrity. To do this, he would have to testify against the Mob, and he knew that the cost would be great.

So, he testified. Within the year, Easy Eddie's life ended in a blaze of gunfire on a lonely Chicago street. But in his eyes, he had given his son the greatest gift he had to offer, at the greatest price he could ever pay.

Police removed from his pockets a rosary, a crucifix, a religious medallion, and a poem clipped from a magazine. The poem read:

The clock of life is wound but once,
And no man has the power
To tell just when the hands will stop,
at late or early hour.
Now is the only time you own.
Live, love, toil with a will.
Place no faith in time.
For the clock may soon be still.


STORY NUMBER TWO

World War II produced many heroes. One such man was Lieutenant Commander Butch O'Hare. He was a fighter pilot assigned to the aircraft carrier Lexington in the South Pacific. One day his entire squadron was sent on a mission. After he was airborne, he looked at his fuel gauge and realized that someone had forgotten to top off his fuel tank. He would not have enough fuel to complete his mission and get back to his ship. His flight leader told him to return to the carrier. Reluctantly, he dropped out of formation and headed back to the fleet.

As he was returning to the mother ship he saw something that turned his blood cold: a squadron of Japanese aircraft were speeding their way toward the American fleet. The American fighters were gone on a sortie, and the fleet was all but defenseless. He couldn't reach his squadron and bring them back in time to save the fleet. Nor could he warn the fleet of the approaching danger.

There was only one thing to do. He must somehow divert them from the fleet. Laying aside all thoughts of personal safety, he dove into the formation of Japanese planes. Wing-mounted 50 caliber's blazed as he charged in, attacking one surprised enemy plane and then another. Butch wove in and out of the now broken formation and fired at as many planes as possible until all his ammunition was finally spent. Undaunted, he continued the assault. He dove at the planes, trying to clip a wing or tail in hopes of damaging as many enemy planes as possible and rendering them unfit to fly.

Finally, the exasperated Japanese squadron took off in another direction. Deeply relieved, Butch and his tattered fighter limped back to the carrier. Upon arrival, he reported in and related the event surrounding his return. The film from the gun-camera mounted on his plane told the tale. It showed the extent of Butch's daring attempt to protect his fleet. He had, in fact, destroyed five enemy aircraft.

This took place on February 20, 1942, and for that action Butch became the Navy's first Ace of WWII, and the first Naval Aviator to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.

A year later, Butch was killed in aerial combat at the age of 29.

His hometown would not allow the memory of this WWII hero to fade, and today, O'Hare Airport in Chicago is named in tribute to the courage of this great man. So, the next time you find yourself at O'Hare International, give some thought to visiting Butch's memorial displaying his statue and his Medal of Honor. It's located between Terminals 1 and 2.

AND


Butch O'Hare was "Easy Eddie's" son.


As I said, it was quite affecting.

But a story like this also calls for a little research, so I recently did a little search to find out if it was entirely true. It turned out the part about Butch O'Hare is completely factual -- he did single-handedly attack that Japanese squadron, his medals were awarded, he is well established in military lore, and Chicago's airport is named after him.

The story about his father was, well, maybe a little stretched. Easy Eddie was, in fact, Capone's lawyer, he did testify against him, and he was killed in a blaze of gunfire on a Chicago street a little while later, almost certainly by Capone's henchmen. But it seems that the real reason Easy Eddie testified against Capone was most likely to save his own skin and stay out of prison. (His FBI handler, Fred Wilson, later said that Eddie was the best witness he ever had.) It also turned out that he was not only Capone's lawyer but his business partner as well, and he actually helped plan some of Capone's nefarious schemes. He did love his son, who was spoiled as a young boy but evidently straightened out as a teenager. And he probably made a deal with Wilson that his own crimes not prevent his son's admission to Annapolis.

I was unable to establish one way or the other whether the bit about the crucifix and the poem in his pocket was true.

But I have to admit, I sort of wish I hadn't done the research. I liked the story better the way it was originally told.

A definition of sociopathy

Someone told me recently that since I talk about sociopaths all the time, I should define exactly what they are. True enough: just because sociopathy is one of my obsessions doesn't make it so for everyone else. So, a brief three paragraph primer (lifted partly from a December '08 post) for those unfamiliar with the syndrome:

Sociopaths are not capable of real love or affection, and are disloyal to everyone. They feel no guilt or shame. They are dishonest, glib, and instinctively skillful manipulators. They hate others and are destructive. They are also supremely self confident, completely uninhibited, impulsive, and arrogant in the extreme. This gives them tremendous nerve and an ability to withstand what normal people would consider stressful conditions. As a result they are often great performers. They like to be in control and they hate to lose. They can be very charming, and often have dynamic, even electrifying personalities. But the more you get to know them, the more you see their hypocrisy and their core dishonesty. And they frequently think they're fooling people even when they're not. If you spend enough time with them, they will always leave you feeling used and bitter.

When you hear about someone that "you either love him or you hate him," he's probably a sociopath. If you hear that "he'll stop at nothing" to get what he wants, he's probably one. They often develop reputations as "pathological liars." They're often very successful, although they will often also crash after what seems like strangely self-destructive behavior.

Think of the most dishonest, two-faced, selfish -- in short, the most despicable -- person you've ever met. He's probably a pretty good example of sociopathy.

Two little jokes

I've always felt that retelling others' jokes is basically a confession that one has no wit of one's own. So, in that spirit, let me pass along two I've heard recently.

The first joke is from a blog called The Epicurean Dealmaker, which is written by an anonymous fellow who works on Wall Street. He normally writes about the foibles of big shots, and today his blog was about why older men still make fools of themselves over love. (His thesis: because they feel mortality closing in on them.) In any case, he closed with a rather cute joke which he claimed to have heard from his wife:

Q: What's the difference after sex among a prostitute, a mistress, and a wife?

A: The prostitute says, "Did you enjoy that?" The mistress says, "Did you enjoy that as much as I enjoyed that?" And the wife says, "Beige.....I think I want to paint the ceiling beige."


The second joke was told to me, appropriately enough, in the locker room of the local Y:

Before the wedding Hillary took Chelsea aside and asked her if she and her fiance had had sex yet.

Chelsea's reply: "Well.....not according to Dad."

Sociopaths you meet rather than read about

There seems to be a general reluctance among people to acknowledge that people they know personally are sociopaths. When I explain what sociopathy is to people, they will nod their heads in general agreement about what I'm saying. But when I tell them -- on the rare occasions that it's true -- that such and such an acquaintance is a sociopath, I'm often met with a response along the lines of, "Oh, Joey? I don't think he's a sociopath. No, not Joey."

To these people sociopaths are exotic creatures whom they read about, not the ordinary-looking person they've had frequent contact with and with whom they might have shared some laughs. They will often say something like, "Joey? Well, sure, Joey has a dark side, but I mean who doesn't? I certainly don't think he's a sociopath."

You can practically see the wheels turning in their heads: Joey? Well, it's not as if he's ever killed anybody. I don't think he even could, he just said the other day that taking a life was wrong. Yeah, he can be a little selfish and even self-righteous at times, but basically he's a stand up guy, I mean he's always talking about morality and stuff. And he just seems so.....ordinary. I don't think he could be one of them.

This kind of thinking is erroneous. One needn't be a murderer to be a sociopath. Serial killers are only a small sliver of the sociopathic population, those whose favorite sexual fantasy involves death. To them, your life is worth less than their orgasm. Most sociopaths enjoy ordinary sex, which means taking someone else's life is unnecessary. But their basic psychology is no different: your well-being is worth less than any small gain to them.

Also, just because someone has given you a compliment and talked about what a moral guy he is doesn't ncessarily make him either a fan of yours or a moral guy. Someone who talks that way may merely be manipulative. Compliments may be heartfelt, de rigueur, or false; you must judge from the context and the speaker which. But people who go on at length about their own integrity usually have none.

There is one group of people who are an exception to this tendency to disbelief: ex-wives. Roughly three-quarters of women with ex-husbands seem willing to ascribe sociopathy to them.

Something tells me the percentage with ex-husbands who actually are sociopaths is somewhat lower.

Sociopath alert: Karen Sypher

(Karen Sypher)

The NY Post this morning had a brief article about the woman who tried to extort $10 million from University of Kentucky basketball coach Rick Pitino:

A cop who took a rape complaint from the woman accused of extorting ex-Knick coach Rick Pitino said yesterday that she made crying sounds -- but never actually shed a tear.

Karen Sypher left out important details and contradicted herself several times when, during a taped interview in July 2009 at police headquarters, she claimed Pitino had raped her in two separate incidents, the sergeant who took the complaint testified yesterday.

At one point on the tape, he even confronted her about waiting nearly six years to file charges.

"I'm still trying to figure out: why now," Louisville Police Sgt. Andy Abbott, told Sypher, 50, after she was rambling about being a devout Catholic, her grandmother dying, and misgivings about having previously had an abortion....

She is accused of demanding college tuition for her children, her house to be paid off, and $10 million in exchange for her silence about a one night fling with Pitino on July 31, 2003, at the Porcini restaurant in Louisville.

That is pretty much all you need to know about Sypher. First, the crying sounds she made with no actual tears shed is a wonderful clue pointing to her emotional dishonesty -- as well as the perfect metaphor for sociopathy. Who pretends to cry without really crying? Someone whose modus operandi is to manipulate others. Most men's instincts would compel them to go to the aid of a crying woman; but cops deal with sociopaths all the time, and Sergeant Abbott saw through her immediately.

Her other statements, which had no direct bearing on the case, were also calculated to elicit sympathy. Talking about her "devout" Catholicism was aimed at winning over fellow Catholics, of whom she probably assumed Sergeant Abbott was one. Speaking of her dying grandmother -- if in fact she had one who was dying, and as if Sypher would care if she were -- was also calculated to milk sympathy. Finally, her "misgivings" about a previous abortion were calculated to make her look like a loving, feeling, caring person, all of which she is not.

The key word in the previous paragraph is "calculated." All of the emotions she displays are false, but she waves them around like a banner with "I am a Good Person" written on it. This phony emotionalism is a hallmark of sociopathy.

At another (but not entirely unrelated) level, this entire incident might also be read as a parable of greed. Had Sypher merely asked for $100,000, Pitino might have paid up and she might have gotten away with her scheme. But her greedy nature made her overreach, and that was part of her downfall.

It is often said that if you look into a sociopath's eyes there is nothing there. I often find this not to be the case. But if you look at the above photograph of Sypher, she does seem to be a bit of -- I'll go ahead and make the obvious pun -- an emotional cypher. The dyed hair, the slightly overdone makeup, the carefully fitted clothes meant to accentuate her killer body, all give a vague impression of falseness, but a lot of women dress to that effect, and it certainly doesn't mean they're sociopaths. But the blankness of Sypher's face is a little disconcerting.

Then again, I could be reading too much into her facial expression given what else we know of her. There is no misreading of her actions and words, however: they are all dead giveaways of her sociopathy.

Let's hope she gets a long sentence.

Addendum, 8/5/10: The jury at her trial found her guilty after just five hours of deliberation; she will be sentenced in October.

Zsa Zsa Gabor

Zsa Zsa Gabor was in the news recently for having landed in the hospital with some broken bones, and conflicting reports about her condition. She had been off the radar screen recently, understandably enough given her age of 92.

Zsa Zsa wasn't quite famous for being famous the way, say, Paris Hilton is now, but she was definitely a spiritual predecessor. (Coincidentally, she actually married Paris's great grandfather Conrad Hilton at one point, and later claimed that her only child was the result of a rape by him -- while they were married). Zsa Zsa had an acting career of sorts. Strangely, she didn't start in films until 1952, when she was 35. She never broke into A films, but more importantly, her starlet status gave her the platform from which to attract a better, or at least richer, class of suitors.

In the end Gabor was more famous for her many marriages and her personal dramas than for her film career. (Quick, name a film she was in.)

Gabor was married nine times, several times to rich men. (She once claimed that she was a good housekeeper because every time she got divorced she kept the house.) The longest marriage before her final one, at age 69, lasted six years. Evidently once the passion ran out, so did the marriage. One of her marriages officially lasted for one day, from April 13, 1983, to April 14. That marriage was annulled because the previous one hadn't been properly ended yet. (Another quote: "I believe in large families. Every woman should have at least three husbands.")

What is someone who gets married that many times thinking? Samuel Johnson once famously said that getting remarried is the triumph of hope over experience. Was Gabor really that hopeful? Or was there a certain underlying cynicism involved there? Certainly by the fourth or fifth time she coudn't have been taking that "till death do us part" vow too seriously.

Liz Taylor once said that the reason she got married all those times was because she was an old-fashioned girl who didn't believe in sex outside marriage. Not having sex outside marriage certainly is an old-fashioned concept (although getting married eight times doesn't exactly seem traditional). But that doesn't seem to be the case with Gabor, who worked hard at appearing the sexpot.

One of the two pictures of Gabor in the article on her in Wikipedia features her with Porfirio Rubirosa, the famous Dominican playboy/gigolo. In that picture (above) she looks happy, so maybe Rubirosa's reputation was justified. Then again, women who flaunt their sexuality the way Gabor did are often not really that interested in sex. Mostly they just need attention. And Gabor probably figured there was no better way to get attention than with Rubirosa.

In a sense Gabor's entire life was a bit of performance art, a term not around during her era. The Hungarian accent was a little too exaggerated, the display of wealth too self-consciously ostentatious, the various romances too histrionic and overblown. So who was the real Zsa Zsa? Whoever she was, after all those decades playing the sexpot, her original personality probably got lost and forgotten, even by Zsa Zsa herself.

In any case, when Gabor's obituary appears -- most likely in the not too distant future -- it will allow us to take a trip down memory lane and marvel at how much times have changed. And how little.

Wile E.

(above, Western coyote; left, gray wolf; below, Eastern coyote)

Eastern coyotes, long considered vermin by farmers, were pretty much eradicated by 1900. But as wolves were also wiped out, the environment became more hospitable to coyotes, which often compete with wolves for food (a pack of coyotes has been known to take down a 550 pound elk). So the midwestern coyotes started to migrate back East. But as they did so, they took a northern detour, around the Great Lakes, and en route interbred extensively with Canadian gray wolves. By the time they reached the Northeast, they had grown much larger.

When a coyote mates with a wolf, the offspring is known as a coywolf. Technically, the coyotes seen in the Northeastern U.S. are mostly coywolves. (Lest you think me the boy who cried wolf, this has been confirmed by DNA evidence. In one study done in Maine, of 100 coyotes collected, 22 had at least 50% wolf ancestry, and one was actually 89% wolf.)

Many scientists believe that the so-called red wolves found in the eastern part of the U.S. (especially in North Carolina) are not a true separate species of wolf, but simply coywolves. Analyses of mitochondrial DNA shows that red wolves are mostly descended from coyotes, and genetically they are halfway between coyotes and gray wolves.

Coyotes have also been known to mate with dogs, with the resulting offspring known as coydogs. However this is a much rarer pairing; around my neighborhood the coyotes are evidently much more apt to kill and eat the dogs, especially the smaller ones. (I must admit, those foofy little dogs spark that same instinct in me.)

Coyotes -- of every variety -- are famously adaptive creatures which can thrive in a wide variety of environments from desert to forest to urban. One coyote was captured in New York's Central Park in 1999, another in 2006, and yet a third was spotted there in 2010. Three coyotes were spotted near Columbia University in 2010 as well. Tests have shown that they are better than dogs at "observational learning." (Translation: they're smarter. This must be why they were found near Columbia rather than the Fashion Institute of Technology.)

Full grown western coyotes range from 25-35 pounds. Eastern coyotes range from 30 to 50 pounds; the largest have been known to reach 75 pounds. Coyotes are athletic as well as smart, able to reach speeds of 43 miles per hour while in pursuit. (Usain Bolt's top speed is 27 miles per hour, and he is undoubtedly more of an outlier for his species.)

The larger coyotes found in the Northeast are more dangerous simply by virtue of their size. This is how 19-year-old folk singer Taylor Mitchell was killed by two coyotes while hiking in Nova Scotia recently: harder to imagine this happening with two 25 pound western coyotes.

Coyote packs are generally smaller than wolf packs, and the relations between individuals tend to be more fluid. (Thus you hear of an alpha male wolf, but not an alpha male coyote.) Coyotes usually hunt in pairs, but there can be up to six involved in a kill.

I've seen maybe five coyotes in my backyard in Connecticut in the past decade. I've always been impressed by the way they move: they prance elegantly, almost like foxes, rather than trot like dogs. And I've always been surprised by their size: they usually seem to be about the size of German Shepherds.

If you live in the Northeast and see a large coyote in your backyard, think wolf.