We all have different prisms we view humanity through. Because I never outgrew my chosen sport of swimming, one of the first things that pops into my head, unbidden, upon meeting someone new, is what kind of swimmer they would have made. How tall is he? How strong? What is his wingspan? How lean? How wide are the shoulders? How big are the hands or feet? What is the lung capacity? When I meet someone who is short and stout, that thought may not occur, but often, when I meet someone rangy and athletic, but who didn't swim, I'll think, hmm, what a waste. This is of course a completely silly and useless response, and the real waste probably would have been if he had grown obsessed with the sport, as I did. I know how utterly ridiculous my reaction is. But I still can't help it, that's my automatic response upon meeting a new person.
Another way I judge people is on the narcissism/sociopathy scale. Nice guys (I'm using the male pronoun for brevity's sake here, but I judge everyone this way) are arrayed at one end of the scale. They tend to be shy, loyal, quick to take blame, nervous, steadfast, and often, boring. Sociopaths are at the other end of the spectrum: they are impulsive, dishonest, disloyal, and totally narcissistic -- as well as often being very charming, even electrifying. You don't want to get close to one, or you will eventually get burned, one way or another. Nice guys make the best friends, of course, although sociopaths can be more fun in the (very) short run, if you can escape the inevitable fallout that accompanies them. You can also be sure that in the long run you will end up hating them.
Being aware of someone's character (as opposed to what kind of swimmer they would have made) is of course a useful -- and also fair -- way to judge them.
There are a few prisms we all look through. The first two things you see when you meet someone new are race and gender. These determine all sorts of attitudes that we take. No need to expand on this, these attitudes are pretty much self-evident, whether or not you admit them.
The next thing we see is attractiveness. Psychologists say if the person is of the opposite sex (or the same sex if we're gay), we make a judgment within the first couple seconds about whether we would want to sleep with that person. (That sounds about right.) There are people who say that they are not affected by such superficial things as appearance, but those who are unaware of the effect -- or deny it --seem to be the ones who are in fact affected the most (as well as the most affected).
One thing that many people judge on is status, or at least its outward manifestations. This is why people buy fancy cars, etc. I worked on Wall Street for twelve (long) years, so I know the extent to which others judge on net worth. And I must admit, I wasn't entirely immune. If I knew that someone had, say, over a hundred million, he did seem to have a certain aura.
One outward manifestation of status is clothes. There are those who take on a sort of reverse snobbery regarding dress, like billionaire Steven Bing, who wears a t-shirt no matter where he goes (I once saw him dressed that way at a wedding). This is his way of saying, "I'm a billionaire, so I don't have to bother to dress up for anyone." But he is the exception. Of course, status considerations aside, there are people who pay a great deal of attention to fashion. If you, like me, feel that if 99% of a shirt is intact why fret about the missing 1%, you should be aware that you will be judged harshly by these people.
There are many who see others in terms of what those others can do for them. I've devoted enough of this blog to those types already, and will not expand on them here.
Most people will judge you by your intelligence, though there are several ways of doing so. Some people will judge you simply by how smart you are. They will measure you by the quality of your arguments, by your memory, and by your perception. There are also the academic snobs, who prefer to look at your academic degrees, and where you obtained them. It's always been my impression that people impressed by degrees are seldom particularly intelligent themselves.
There are those who know a lot about certain fields and judge others by how much they know about their particular field. The more a person judges others by their knowledge about his own specialty, the more narcissistic that person tends to be. ("Oh, [sniff sniff] he knows nothing at all about wines.")
Another prism we all view others through is their sense of humor. Everybody enjoys someone who can make them laugh.
A lot of people judge others through the prism of politics. Whether or not others have the proper politically correct attitudes (defined as your own stances) will determine whether those people are suitable friendship material.
Poet James Merrill once said, the entire world is French or German. By French he meant artsy, liberal, free thinking, accepting. Others might refer to this as the feminine impulse. By German he meant ordered, disciplined, realistic, and tough. This might be referred to as the masculine impulse.
Most of us prefer to hang out with people of similar outlook.
And most of us, unless we are exploitative by nature, want to hang out with people of similar temperament as well.
I suspect there are a lot of prisms out there I'm unaware of, some of which may even be as silly as mine. But reactions that wacky are hard to anticipate.
You can be my friend as long as you're not a sociopath.
And, well, if you're built for swimming.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
That all-important childhood
Whenever I read about serial killers or other obvious sociopaths, I always find myself wondering about their childhoods.
In virtually every other aspect of personality, the weight of evidence over the past few decades has pointed more and more towards biochemical (i.e., genetic) causation. As recently as the 1960's, psychologists used to actually talk about a "schizophrenogenic" mother, i.e., the type who would tell her child she loved him but then push him away. This type of confusing behavior was thought to promote schizophrenia in a child. Now, of course, psychologists know better, and schizophrenia can usually be controlled with drugs. In fact, when a schizophrenic has an episode, it is usually because he is off his meds.
Intelligence, to the extent that it can be considered a single "trait," is now widely thought to be mostly a matter of genetic inheritance. Depression is known to have a biochemical cause, although of course there is also situational depression, to which we can all succumb depending on the circumstances of our lives. Even traits such as shyness are now known to be largely inherited.
Fifty years ago the phrase "tabula rasa" was in vogue. Literally translated as "blank slate," it referred to the theory that a newborn infant was but a blank slate upon whom his environment would bestow a personality. The world has since shifted to E.O Wilson's view of human nature. He has likened newborns to undeveloped (but already shot) film, which need only be exposed to developing fluid in order for their innate personalities to emerge.
Despite all this, there is one aspect of personality which still seems to be primarily environmentally determined: character. The one thing that almost all sociopaths seem to have in common is that they never really bonded with a parent when they were very young. (Such bonding usually happens with the mother, since fathers are often absent a good portion of the day if they're working.) If it doesn't take place early on, usually during the first year of life, then the child loses the ability to ever bond with anyone else. That child may become very adept at counterfeiting the appearance of affection and love, but he never really feels those two emotions himself. Voila, there's your sociopath. (This is why so many of the loving and decent parents who adopted children from Romanian orphanages in the 1980s had such trouble with them later on.)
Reading about Philip Markoff these past few days has brought this dynamic to mind again. When I hear about a particularly loathsome criminal, I always wonder, what were the parents like? Markoff was said to have come from a well to do family; his father was a dentist. But worldly success is not necessarily accompanied by a rich emotional life. Markoff, an obvious sociopath, was certainly good at faking affection, if the protests of his fiancee are to be given any credence. (And given her innocence about the way a sociopath operates, one would have to assume that she herself is actually an honest, if not overly intelligent, person.)
Those sociopaths who don't come from orphanages usually come from emotional orphanages.
When I worked on Wall Street, I got to know one very successful sociopath quite well. (You could say I was doing involuntary field work.) He would often complain, "I've never met a woman who wasn't a pain in the ass....." He would always wait a couple seconds, long enough for his audience to think, gee, you'd talk about your own mother that way? Then he would add, very bitterly, "Not one." I found out later that his mother's mother had died when his mother was but a few months old (so she never got a chance to really form a lasting bond with her). After that his mother's father had remarried, then had died himself when she was just six, leaving her as the unwanted stepchild. Imagine the effect that would have on a young girl's psyche. It must have left her very bitter, for she evidently did her best to make her three sons feel like unwanted stepchildren themselves. The three sons' father, by the way, had been forced to pay rent to his own parents from the time he was ten years old, which undoubtedly shaped his own outlook on humanity. (Imagine the atmosphere the three sons grew up in.) The two sons I knew (one quite well) both grew up to achieve great worldly success, but also to be sociopaths.
Whenever I read about a serial killer, I always try to find out about their own family backgrounds. Most accounts don't give many details, but occasionally some do.
The worst cases often come from parents who not only neglected them, but abused them as well. Charlie Manson was born to a 16 year old prostitute who had no idea who his father was; she once tried to sell him for a pitcher of beer. Manson's uncle made him dress up as a girl for his first day of kindergarten. When I heard this, all I could think was, no wonder. Upon further thought, I concluded that his mother and uncle must have come from the same sort of background.
Ed Kemper, the 6' 9", 280 pounder with an IQ in the high 130's who killed at least six coeds in the Santa Cruz area in the early 1970's, had a monstrous mother. She forced him to sleep in the dark basement next to the noisy boiler as a child while she and his sister slept upstairs. She also accused him of being a homosexual from the time he was eight or nine. At age 15 Kemper shot both of his grandparents dead, but was later released because he had committed the crimes as a juvenile. He started killing again in his early twenties. His first victim was his own mother, whom he decapitated. He then placed her head on his living room mantel, where he threw darts at it for several days before reuniting it with the rest of her body. He also killed his mother's friend before he went on to kill the coeds.
Ted Bundy was born to a young unwed mother in the 1940's, and the family story was that he was his grandmother's child, and that his mother was his older sister. While this story was being concocted, Ted was left in an orphanage for a few months as a newborn. (Interestingly, two other people whose mothers lied to them about their origins were Bill Clinton and Jack Nicholson.) It must have a disquieting effect on a youngster to not even know his origins.
The Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, was given up for adoption at a young age. Kenneth Bianchi, one of the two Hillside Stranglers who terrorized Los Angeles in the 1970's, was adopted. (His partner in crime, Angelo Buono, as a youngster would be dragged along by his mother and forced to wait outside in a car while she enjoyed her various sexual encounters with men. Buono would later refer to her only by epithets.)
But often, there are no such obvious clues to a person's sociopathy. Sometimes his family will be to all outward appearances normal. But there's usually a secret. One correlation I've noticed is that one of the parents, often the mother, will be alcoholic. This invariably results in extremely erratic behavior, and an addiction like that can even mean that the parent loves alcohol even more than she loves the child. This, too, can have a devastating effect.
I can't help but wonder what was going on with Markoff's family.
In virtually every other aspect of personality, the weight of evidence over the past few decades has pointed more and more towards biochemical (i.e., genetic) causation. As recently as the 1960's, psychologists used to actually talk about a "schizophrenogenic" mother, i.e., the type who would tell her child she loved him but then push him away. This type of confusing behavior was thought to promote schizophrenia in a child. Now, of course, psychologists know better, and schizophrenia can usually be controlled with drugs. In fact, when a schizophrenic has an episode, it is usually because he is off his meds.
Intelligence, to the extent that it can be considered a single "trait," is now widely thought to be mostly a matter of genetic inheritance. Depression is known to have a biochemical cause, although of course there is also situational depression, to which we can all succumb depending on the circumstances of our lives. Even traits such as shyness are now known to be largely inherited.
Fifty years ago the phrase "tabula rasa" was in vogue. Literally translated as "blank slate," it referred to the theory that a newborn infant was but a blank slate upon whom his environment would bestow a personality. The world has since shifted to E.O Wilson's view of human nature. He has likened newborns to undeveloped (but already shot) film, which need only be exposed to developing fluid in order for their innate personalities to emerge.
Despite all this, there is one aspect of personality which still seems to be primarily environmentally determined: character. The one thing that almost all sociopaths seem to have in common is that they never really bonded with a parent when they were very young. (Such bonding usually happens with the mother, since fathers are often absent a good portion of the day if they're working.) If it doesn't take place early on, usually during the first year of life, then the child loses the ability to ever bond with anyone else. That child may become very adept at counterfeiting the appearance of affection and love, but he never really feels those two emotions himself. Voila, there's your sociopath. (This is why so many of the loving and decent parents who adopted children from Romanian orphanages in the 1980s had such trouble with them later on.)
Reading about Philip Markoff these past few days has brought this dynamic to mind again. When I hear about a particularly loathsome criminal, I always wonder, what were the parents like? Markoff was said to have come from a well to do family; his father was a dentist. But worldly success is not necessarily accompanied by a rich emotional life. Markoff, an obvious sociopath, was certainly good at faking affection, if the protests of his fiancee are to be given any credence. (And given her innocence about the way a sociopath operates, one would have to assume that she herself is actually an honest, if not overly intelligent, person.)
Those sociopaths who don't come from orphanages usually come from emotional orphanages.
When I worked on Wall Street, I got to know one very successful sociopath quite well. (You could say I was doing involuntary field work.) He would often complain, "I've never met a woman who wasn't a pain in the ass....." He would always wait a couple seconds, long enough for his audience to think, gee, you'd talk about your own mother that way? Then he would add, very bitterly, "Not one." I found out later that his mother's mother had died when his mother was but a few months old (so she never got a chance to really form a lasting bond with her). After that his mother's father had remarried, then had died himself when she was just six, leaving her as the unwanted stepchild. Imagine the effect that would have on a young girl's psyche. It must have left her very bitter, for she evidently did her best to make her three sons feel like unwanted stepchildren themselves. The three sons' father, by the way, had been forced to pay rent to his own parents from the time he was ten years old, which undoubtedly shaped his own outlook on humanity. (Imagine the atmosphere the three sons grew up in.) The two sons I knew (one quite well) both grew up to achieve great worldly success, but also to be sociopaths.
Whenever I read about a serial killer, I always try to find out about their own family backgrounds. Most accounts don't give many details, but occasionally some do.
The worst cases often come from parents who not only neglected them, but abused them as well. Charlie Manson was born to a 16 year old prostitute who had no idea who his father was; she once tried to sell him for a pitcher of beer. Manson's uncle made him dress up as a girl for his first day of kindergarten. When I heard this, all I could think was, no wonder. Upon further thought, I concluded that his mother and uncle must have come from the same sort of background.
Ed Kemper, the 6' 9", 280 pounder with an IQ in the high 130's who killed at least six coeds in the Santa Cruz area in the early 1970's, had a monstrous mother. She forced him to sleep in the dark basement next to the noisy boiler as a child while she and his sister slept upstairs. She also accused him of being a homosexual from the time he was eight or nine. At age 15 Kemper shot both of his grandparents dead, but was later released because he had committed the crimes as a juvenile. He started killing again in his early twenties. His first victim was his own mother, whom he decapitated. He then placed her head on his living room mantel, where he threw darts at it for several days before reuniting it with the rest of her body. He also killed his mother's friend before he went on to kill the coeds.
Ted Bundy was born to a young unwed mother in the 1940's, and the family story was that he was his grandmother's child, and that his mother was his older sister. While this story was being concocted, Ted was left in an orphanage for a few months as a newborn. (Interestingly, two other people whose mothers lied to them about their origins were Bill Clinton and Jack Nicholson.) It must have a disquieting effect on a youngster to not even know his origins.
The Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, was given up for adoption at a young age. Kenneth Bianchi, one of the two Hillside Stranglers who terrorized Los Angeles in the 1970's, was adopted. (His partner in crime, Angelo Buono, as a youngster would be dragged along by his mother and forced to wait outside in a car while she enjoyed her various sexual encounters with men. Buono would later refer to her only by epithets.)
But often, there are no such obvious clues to a person's sociopathy. Sometimes his family will be to all outward appearances normal. But there's usually a secret. One correlation I've noticed is that one of the parents, often the mother, will be alcoholic. This invariably results in extremely erratic behavior, and an addiction like that can even mean that the parent loves alcohol even more than she loves the child. This, too, can have a devastating effect.
I can't help but wonder what was going on with Markoff's family.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Markoff/McAllister update
This morning's NY Post has an article titled, "Craiglist Bride: It's a Frame!"
The first four paragraphs of the article:
"The wedding is still on.
"The fiancee of accused Craiglist killer Philip Markoff insists she's standing by her man, and friends say the nuptials haven't been cancelled.
"'Philip did not commit this crime'," Megan McAllister told People Magazine. 'Unfortunately, somebody else did and needs to be penalized.'
"'Philip was set up', said McAllister."
Ah, young love. I can honestly say that I've never had a woman in my life who had that much faith in me. In fact, the women I've known would have been far more likely to falsely accuse me.
McAllister's father sounded a much saner note: "She's still confident in Phil. Other than that, we're saying a lot of prayers."
The article went on to say, "Megan's confidence could be rocked by news that a handgun found by cops in Markoff's apartment has been identified as the pistol used to murder New York masseuse Julissa Brisman, 26, on April 14 in a Boston hotel room....Markoff's fingerprints were found on a plastic restraint found on Brisman's wrist....His fingerprints were also found on a staircase rail in a Warwick, RI, hotel, where he is suspected of the April 16 attempted gunpoint robbery of a stripper.....McAllister and fellow med school student Markoff plan to wed August 14 on the Jersey shore."
Note to wedding guests: don't buy those gifts just yet.
Strangely, notorious serial killers (and there is no indication that Markoff was a serial killer) always seem to attract jailhouse groupies. Even Ted Bundy managed a jailhouse wedding with a penpal while on Death Row, though he never got to consummate it (which was probably a lot safer for the bride). What kind of girl considers a serial killer to be enough of a rock star to warrant her attention? Does she actually think he's innocent despite all the evidence? On a related note, what is Megan McAllister thinking?
Note to Dr. McAllister: your diagnosis may be wrong. Time to get a second opinion.
Markoff has evidently been placed on suicide watch. Markoff's lawyer, John Salsberg, said, "That transition from being free to being incarcerated has been very difficult for him."
Note to Mr. Salsberg: any word yet on whether the transition from being alive to being dead was difficult for Julissa Brisman, or her family?
Note to self: no appointments with Dr. McAllister.
The first four paragraphs of the article:
"The wedding is still on.
"The fiancee of accused Craiglist killer Philip Markoff insists she's standing by her man, and friends say the nuptials haven't been cancelled.
"'Philip did not commit this crime'," Megan McAllister told People Magazine. 'Unfortunately, somebody else did and needs to be penalized.'
"'Philip was set up', said McAllister."
Ah, young love. I can honestly say that I've never had a woman in my life who had that much faith in me. In fact, the women I've known would have been far more likely to falsely accuse me.
McAllister's father sounded a much saner note: "She's still confident in Phil. Other than that, we're saying a lot of prayers."
The article went on to say, "Megan's confidence could be rocked by news that a handgun found by cops in Markoff's apartment has been identified as the pistol used to murder New York masseuse Julissa Brisman, 26, on April 14 in a Boston hotel room....Markoff's fingerprints were found on a plastic restraint found on Brisman's wrist....His fingerprints were also found on a staircase rail in a Warwick, RI, hotel, where he is suspected of the April 16 attempted gunpoint robbery of a stripper.....McAllister and fellow med school student Markoff plan to wed August 14 on the Jersey shore."
Note to wedding guests: don't buy those gifts just yet.
Strangely, notorious serial killers (and there is no indication that Markoff was a serial killer) always seem to attract jailhouse groupies. Even Ted Bundy managed a jailhouse wedding with a penpal while on Death Row, though he never got to consummate it (which was probably a lot safer for the bride). What kind of girl considers a serial killer to be enough of a rock star to warrant her attention? Does she actually think he's innocent despite all the evidence? On a related note, what is Megan McAllister thinking?
Note to Dr. McAllister: your diagnosis may be wrong. Time to get a second opinion.
Markoff has evidently been placed on suicide watch. Markoff's lawyer, John Salsberg, said, "That transition from being free to being incarcerated has been very difficult for him."
Note to Mr. Salsberg: any word yet on whether the transition from being alive to being dead was difficult for Julissa Brisman, or her family?
Note to self: no appointments with Dr. McAllister.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Phil Markoff, classic sociopath
The recent "Craigslist killer," Philip Markoff, is a good reminder of some of the important things to remember about sociopaths.
They can look like anybody. Markoff was tall and blond, with a youthful, almost innocent-looking face. He's not the type whose appearance would cause you to cross to the other side of the street. Sociopaths can be tall or short, good-looking or ugly, black or white, male or female. People who are monsters inside rarely look like monsters on the outside.
Markoff was a medical school student at Boston University. This is an important reminder that sociopaths come from all walks of life, and in a full range of IQs. If he hadn't hit upon this
particular scheme, and if he hadn't gotten caught, he would have become a doctor. I can only recall hearing of one doctor who became a serial killer (I'm not including Dr. Kevorkian here, although he definitely had the psyche of a serial killer). There seem to have been more nurses, especialy male nurses, who have become such than doctors. But medicine is a prestigious field, and one that a sociopath might be drawn to for that reason. What kind of doctor would Josef Mengele, another indisputably sociopathic character, have become if he hadn't been presented with the opportunity of the concentration camps? Someone with a reputation as a kindly general practitioner? To take the Hippocratic oath is not necessarily to take it seriously.
Another lesson taught by Markoff is that an intelligent sociopath is a slick manipulator. A case in point would be his fiancee, med school classmate Megan McAllister, who sent the following letter to ABC News: "Unfortunately, you were given the wrong information as was the public. All I have to say to you is Philip is a beautiful person inside and out and could not hurt a fly! A police officer in Boston (or many) is trying to make big bucks by selling his false story to the TV stations. What else is new! Philip is an intelligent man who is just trying to live his life so if you could just leave us alone we would greatly appreciate it. We expect to marry in August and share a wonderful, meaningful life together."
Time to shut up, honey. Whatever you say now will embarrass you later on. As a matter of fact it's already embarrassing you. We're all allowed to be young and naive once -- but we're not allowed to be that self-righteous about it. And a certain police officer (or many) in Boston is owed an apology.
But before we get too harsh with her, it's important to remember that she's probably had no experience with sociopaths before. And we are all innocents till we get to really know one. Megan McAllister can't be entirely stupid if she got into med school, yet she fell for his act. Maybe this was a case of love being blind. But Markoff's sociopathic skill at subterfuge is also definitely part of the equation here. He also fooled his prospective mother-in-law, whose greater years should theoretically have made her wiser. Yet tellingly (or humorously, depending on your perspective) she warned her daughter a few days ago about the Craigslist killer who was on the loose, completely unaware that it was in fact her prospective son-in-law.
The evidence against Markoff, by the way, is pretty damning. It includes his internet record, the surveillance tape of him walking away from the hotel where the murder took place, a gun found inside a hollowed out copy of Grey's Anatomy (how appropriate is that?), ammunition, plastic ties used for handcuffs, duct tape, and a collection of panties which the police think are trophies from past victims. (Paging Doctor McAllister!)
Markoff is said to have engaged in these robberies in order to feed his gambling addiction, which he indulged on a regular basis at Foxwoods. Whenever you hear of someone who becomes "addicted" to something that most people don't find addictive even if they engage in it, you can be sure that that is someone with a very low level of inhibitions, which means that he is much more likely a sociopath. Yes, gambling can raise the heartrate and increase the level of serotonin, and sex is nothing but physical pleasure. But neither is addictive the same way heroin, alcohol, or nicotine can be. So when you meet someone who is a gambling addict, or a sex addict, beware.
According to the New York Daily News, a police officer connected to the case said, "He [Markoff] probably thought he was going to get away with it. He thought he was too smart for us." This is true of all sociopaths. They think that they're smarter than everyone else, and this attitude is typical of the contempt in which they hold the rest of the world. If you ever meet someone who thinks he's fooling people when he's not, beware.
Markoff's intended victims were also telling: masseuses whom he thought would not report being robbed. Sociopaths have no qualms about whom they victimize, often picking on the weakest if it suits their needs. This is why serial killers from Jack the Ripper to the Green River Killer have often targeted prostitutes to satisfy their blood lust, because they figure they can get away with it. (Sadly enough, they're often right.) With Markoff, it doesn't seem to have been about blood lust, just money. But the attitude was the same: pick a victim who won't strike back. An attitude not all that different from that of a schoolyard bully (many of whom turn into sociopaths).
They can look like anybody. Markoff was tall and blond, with a youthful, almost innocent-looking face. He's not the type whose appearance would cause you to cross to the other side of the street. Sociopaths can be tall or short, good-looking or ugly, black or white, male or female. People who are monsters inside rarely look like monsters on the outside.
Markoff was a medical school student at Boston University. This is an important reminder that sociopaths come from all walks of life, and in a full range of IQs. If he hadn't hit upon this
particular scheme, and if he hadn't gotten caught, he would have become a doctor. I can only recall hearing of one doctor who became a serial killer (I'm not including Dr. Kevorkian here, although he definitely had the psyche of a serial killer). There seem to have been more nurses, especialy male nurses, who have become such than doctors. But medicine is a prestigious field, and one that a sociopath might be drawn to for that reason. What kind of doctor would Josef Mengele, another indisputably sociopathic character, have become if he hadn't been presented with the opportunity of the concentration camps? Someone with a reputation as a kindly general practitioner? To take the Hippocratic oath is not necessarily to take it seriously.
Another lesson taught by Markoff is that an intelligent sociopath is a slick manipulator. A case in point would be his fiancee, med school classmate Megan McAllister, who sent the following letter to ABC News: "Unfortunately, you were given the wrong information as was the public. All I have to say to you is Philip is a beautiful person inside and out and could not hurt a fly! A police officer in Boston (or many) is trying to make big bucks by selling his false story to the TV stations. What else is new! Philip is an intelligent man who is just trying to live his life so if you could just leave us alone we would greatly appreciate it. We expect to marry in August and share a wonderful, meaningful life together."
Time to shut up, honey. Whatever you say now will embarrass you later on. As a matter of fact it's already embarrassing you. We're all allowed to be young and naive once -- but we're not allowed to be that self-righteous about it. And a certain police officer (or many) in Boston is owed an apology.
But before we get too harsh with her, it's important to remember that she's probably had no experience with sociopaths before. And we are all innocents till we get to really know one. Megan McAllister can't be entirely stupid if she got into med school, yet she fell for his act. Maybe this was a case of love being blind. But Markoff's sociopathic skill at subterfuge is also definitely part of the equation here. He also fooled his prospective mother-in-law, whose greater years should theoretically have made her wiser. Yet tellingly (or humorously, depending on your perspective) she warned her daughter a few days ago about the Craigslist killer who was on the loose, completely unaware that it was in fact her prospective son-in-law.
The evidence against Markoff, by the way, is pretty damning. It includes his internet record, the surveillance tape of him walking away from the hotel where the murder took place, a gun found inside a hollowed out copy of Grey's Anatomy (how appropriate is that?), ammunition, plastic ties used for handcuffs, duct tape, and a collection of panties which the police think are trophies from past victims. (Paging Doctor McAllister!)
Markoff is said to have engaged in these robberies in order to feed his gambling addiction, which he indulged on a regular basis at Foxwoods. Whenever you hear of someone who becomes "addicted" to something that most people don't find addictive even if they engage in it, you can be sure that that is someone with a very low level of inhibitions, which means that he is much more likely a sociopath. Yes, gambling can raise the heartrate and increase the level of serotonin, and sex is nothing but physical pleasure. But neither is addictive the same way heroin, alcohol, or nicotine can be. So when you meet someone who is a gambling addict, or a sex addict, beware.
According to the New York Daily News, a police officer connected to the case said, "He [Markoff] probably thought he was going to get away with it. He thought he was too smart for us." This is true of all sociopaths. They think that they're smarter than everyone else, and this attitude is typical of the contempt in which they hold the rest of the world. If you ever meet someone who thinks he's fooling people when he's not, beware.
Markoff's intended victims were also telling: masseuses whom he thought would not report being robbed. Sociopaths have no qualms about whom they victimize, often picking on the weakest if it suits their needs. This is why serial killers from Jack the Ripper to the Green River Killer have often targeted prostitutes to satisfy their blood lust, because they figure they can get away with it. (Sadly enough, they're often right.) With Markoff, it doesn't seem to have been about blood lust, just money. But the attitude was the same: pick a victim who won't strike back. An attitude not all that different from that of a schoolyard bully (many of whom turn into sociopaths).
Saturday, April 18, 2009
In case you haven't seen it....
I'm evidently a little late to the party with this, but the following clip, featuring Susan Boyle from the British version of American Idol, has become an internet sensation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk
(Sorry, couldn't reproduce it in blue, you'll have to type it in.) It's really quite inspirational. The most satisfying part, of course, is getting to watch the show's hosts have to live down their initial snippiness; they almost make up for it at the end with their graciousness and effusiveness at the end. Almost, but not quite.
It brings to mind a correlation I've long noticed: the best female singers tend to be the worst-looking (think Janis Joplin, or Aretha Franklin). They get promoted for their incredible voices despite their appearance. The over-hyped, under-talented ones tend to be sexier (think Madonna, or Diana Ross, who couldn't sing nearly as well as fellow Supreme Florence Ballard). Perhaps the best examples are the two women from the Mamas and Papas: 300 pound Cass Elliott had a beautifully mellifluous and seductive voice, while Michelle Phillips' weak voice relegated her to a primarily ornamental role.
There are exceptions. Joan Baez when young had a luminous beauty as well as exceptional voice. Whitney Houston, in her pre-crack phase, was a beauty. And I always thought Olivia Newton John an underrated singer. But as a general rule, there is an inverse relationship between a singer's voice and her looks.
Don't ever buy an album because you're attracted to the woman on the cover.
If, on the other hand, the woman on the cover is plain, you can be pretty sure there's great music inside.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk
(Sorry, couldn't reproduce it in blue, you'll have to type it in.) It's really quite inspirational. The most satisfying part, of course, is getting to watch the show's hosts have to live down their initial snippiness; they almost make up for it at the end with their graciousness and effusiveness at the end. Almost, but not quite.
It brings to mind a correlation I've long noticed: the best female singers tend to be the worst-looking (think Janis Joplin, or Aretha Franklin). They get promoted for their incredible voices despite their appearance. The over-hyped, under-talented ones tend to be sexier (think Madonna, or Diana Ross, who couldn't sing nearly as well as fellow Supreme Florence Ballard). Perhaps the best examples are the two women from the Mamas and Papas: 300 pound Cass Elliott had a beautifully mellifluous and seductive voice, while Michelle Phillips' weak voice relegated her to a primarily ornamental role.
There are exceptions. Joan Baez when young had a luminous beauty as well as exceptional voice. Whitney Houston, in her pre-crack phase, was a beauty. And I always thought Olivia Newton John an underrated singer. But as a general rule, there is an inverse relationship between a singer's voice and her looks.
Don't ever buy an album because you're attracted to the woman on the cover.
If, on the other hand, the woman on the cover is plain, you can be pretty sure there's great music inside.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Women in the Army
A recent book, "The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq," by Helen Benedict, has gotten a fair amount of recent publicity. It is based on 40 interviews that Benedict, a journalism professor at Columbia University, conducted with female veterans, and tells of their rape, sexual assault, and harassment by their male counterparts.
There have been many documented cases of rape in the services recently. I have no doubt that the women who have lodged complaints have a very legitimate beef and that there have been numerous coverups. And all of the services have seemed extremely reluctant to prosecute these cases. It's as if they're hesitant to hurt their esprit de corps by even acknowledging that there is a problem.
Rape under any circumstances is obviously wrong, and women who are serving their country should not be put at risk for it. The question is, what to do about it.
Realistically, men who are given guns and asked to put their own lives on the line in a foreign country are going to behave differently than if they were, say, attending a college back home in the States. The ratio of men to women in the Army is roughly ten to one. And the type of men who join the armed forces are generally going to be the high testosterone types who are more predisposed to fight, and be brutal in general. Frankly, those are the men you want in your armed forces. (If our armed forces were composed of men like me, who prefer to sit behind a computer and peck away at a keyboard, we would have been conquered a long time ago -- by Guatemala.)
None of this is an excuse for rape. It's merely a realistic appraisal of the type of men who join the armed forces and the circumstances in which they find themselves. The people who run the armed services certainly realize this. They want fierce fighting men who are willing to kill and possibly die for their countries.
To this day women are not allowed in combat roles: they cannot join the Special Forces, or the Infantry, or be Cavalry Scouts, or Field Support Specialists, or Armor Crewmen, or artillery officers, or any number of other front line positions. As of yet, Demi Moore's "G.I. Jane" notwithstanding, there has been no great hue and cry from the feminists to allow women into those jobs, either. From what I've seen of the training required for Special Forces soldiers, even if they were allowed to try, women would have about as good a chance of getting in as they would of qualifying for an Olympic semi-final in a men's event.
Contrast enlisted women to enlisted gay men. I've always found the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding homosexuals ridiculous. Either they should be allowed in, or not. (Personally, I think they should be. The Spartans, a notoriously if not flamboyantly gay fighting force, were some of the finest soldiers ever.) I've heard that when women soldiers go on a battleship, roughly 20 percent of them become pregnant and have to be taken off the ship; gay men, no matter how many times they have sex with other men, will not get pregnant. (That Village People song did have its roots in longstanding tradition.) And gay men, especially the type interested in enlisting, can make great soldiers. The TV show "Generation Kill" features an obviously gay elite Marine known as "Fruity Rudy." I am perfectly comfortable with the knowledge that tough, strong guys like him are defending my country. So why the ridiculous policy?
The military shows a similar ambivalence towards the fairer/weaker sex. When it comes to issues of political correctness, the military gets cut a lot of slack that other institutions don't. This is partly because the military itself is not populated by the liberals you might find, say, on a typical college campus. And it's partly because even the most pc types realize in their heart of hearts that if the military starts spending too much time and energy enforcing modern notions of equality that they might lose sight of their primary mission, which is to defend the country -- so that the liberals can stay safe on their college campuses.
Which still leaves the question of what to do.
One solution would be to not allow women into field (as well as combat) positions. This would undoubtedly elicit a huge outcry, and it does seem unfair to exclude an entire gender from a career opportunity. But the ultimate raison d'etre of an army is to fight battles, and as of now, women are not allowed into combat roles anyway.
As long as women are out in the field with men who are trained killers in a life and death situation, rapes and harassment will occur. This is certainly not right, it is merely a realistic appraisal of human nature. If I tell you not to go into a certain section of town because you are in danger of being mugged, that doesn't mean I'm condoning mugging. I'm merely being realistic about that section of town.
The choice seems to be either to not let women go into the field, or to prosecute the soldiers who harass and rape them to the full extent of the law.
I say the answer is clear: let's do everything we can to keep those pc types safe on their campuses.
There have been many documented cases of rape in the services recently. I have no doubt that the women who have lodged complaints have a very legitimate beef and that there have been numerous coverups. And all of the services have seemed extremely reluctant to prosecute these cases. It's as if they're hesitant to hurt their esprit de corps by even acknowledging that there is a problem.
Rape under any circumstances is obviously wrong, and women who are serving their country should not be put at risk for it. The question is, what to do about it.
Realistically, men who are given guns and asked to put their own lives on the line in a foreign country are going to behave differently than if they were, say, attending a college back home in the States. The ratio of men to women in the Army is roughly ten to one. And the type of men who join the armed forces are generally going to be the high testosterone types who are more predisposed to fight, and be brutal in general. Frankly, those are the men you want in your armed forces. (If our armed forces were composed of men like me, who prefer to sit behind a computer and peck away at a keyboard, we would have been conquered a long time ago -- by Guatemala.)
None of this is an excuse for rape. It's merely a realistic appraisal of the type of men who join the armed forces and the circumstances in which they find themselves. The people who run the armed services certainly realize this. They want fierce fighting men who are willing to kill and possibly die for their countries.
To this day women are not allowed in combat roles: they cannot join the Special Forces, or the Infantry, or be Cavalry Scouts, or Field Support Specialists, or Armor Crewmen, or artillery officers, or any number of other front line positions. As of yet, Demi Moore's "G.I. Jane" notwithstanding, there has been no great hue and cry from the feminists to allow women into those jobs, either. From what I've seen of the training required for Special Forces soldiers, even if they were allowed to try, women would have about as good a chance of getting in as they would of qualifying for an Olympic semi-final in a men's event.
Contrast enlisted women to enlisted gay men. I've always found the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding homosexuals ridiculous. Either they should be allowed in, or not. (Personally, I think they should be. The Spartans, a notoriously if not flamboyantly gay fighting force, were some of the finest soldiers ever.) I've heard that when women soldiers go on a battleship, roughly 20 percent of them become pregnant and have to be taken off the ship; gay men, no matter how many times they have sex with other men, will not get pregnant. (That Village People song did have its roots in longstanding tradition.) And gay men, especially the type interested in enlisting, can make great soldiers. The TV show "Generation Kill" features an obviously gay elite Marine known as "Fruity Rudy." I am perfectly comfortable with the knowledge that tough, strong guys like him are defending my country. So why the ridiculous policy?
The military shows a similar ambivalence towards the fairer/weaker sex. When it comes to issues of political correctness, the military gets cut a lot of slack that other institutions don't. This is partly because the military itself is not populated by the liberals you might find, say, on a typical college campus. And it's partly because even the most pc types realize in their heart of hearts that if the military starts spending too much time and energy enforcing modern notions of equality that they might lose sight of their primary mission, which is to defend the country -- so that the liberals can stay safe on their college campuses.
Which still leaves the question of what to do.
One solution would be to not allow women into field (as well as combat) positions. This would undoubtedly elicit a huge outcry, and it does seem unfair to exclude an entire gender from a career opportunity. But the ultimate raison d'etre of an army is to fight battles, and as of now, women are not allowed into combat roles anyway.
As long as women are out in the field with men who are trained killers in a life and death situation, rapes and harassment will occur. This is certainly not right, it is merely a realistic appraisal of human nature. If I tell you not to go into a certain section of town because you are in danger of being mugged, that doesn't mean I'm condoning mugging. I'm merely being realistic about that section of town.
The choice seems to be either to not let women go into the field, or to prosecute the soldiers who harass and rape them to the full extent of the law.
I say the answer is clear: let's do everything we can to keep those pc types safe on their campuses.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Not the usual messy affair
Most international incidents the United States gets involved in are usually complicated affairs, with all sorts of causes and ramifications that don't necessarily meet the eye.
Maybe the US has a history of cooperation with a repressive government in the region. Maybe soldiers from local US bases have engaged in atrocities. Maybe the CIA has propped up a murderous dictatorship. Maybe the US financially supports an apartheid regime.
Maybe the local populace has a good reason to be resentful of the Americans, or maybe they don't but feel they do. Even the Islamic terrorists we've been combatting recently, as heinous as their actions are, have legitimate beefs.
On top of all this, a sitting President usually has to mollify different factions among the electorate, Congress, even his own administration.
What happened yesterday was much simpler and cleaner. Somali pirates, motivated purely by money, held an American hostage and threatened his life unless they were paid off. No ideology, no longstanding resentments, just greed.
So the Navy Seals took three shots, each hit its intended target, and Captain Richard Phillips was rescued unharmed. Good for the Seals, and good for the heroic Phillips, who had offered himself as hostage to spare his crew.
The international community, especially the Europeans whose ships have proven so vulnerable, must be at least secretly happy with the outcome.
Would that it were always that simple.
Maybe the US has a history of cooperation with a repressive government in the region. Maybe soldiers from local US bases have engaged in atrocities. Maybe the CIA has propped up a murderous dictatorship. Maybe the US financially supports an apartheid regime.
Maybe the local populace has a good reason to be resentful of the Americans, or maybe they don't but feel they do. Even the Islamic terrorists we've been combatting recently, as heinous as their actions are, have legitimate beefs.
On top of all this, a sitting President usually has to mollify different factions among the electorate, Congress, even his own administration.
What happened yesterday was much simpler and cleaner. Somali pirates, motivated purely by money, held an American hostage and threatened his life unless they were paid off. No ideology, no longstanding resentments, just greed.
So the Navy Seals took three shots, each hit its intended target, and Captain Richard Phillips was rescued unharmed. Good for the Seals, and good for the heroic Phillips, who had offered himself as hostage to spare his crew.
The international community, especially the Europeans whose ships have proven so vulnerable, must be at least secretly happy with the outcome.
Would that it were always that simple.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Oakland rally
Two posts ago I mentioned that last month's mass murderers included white, yellow, and black, so there were no patterns to be noticed there. One of the shooters I mentioned (not by name) was Lovelle Mixon, who gunned down four police officers in his hometown of Oakland. He initially shot two motorcycle officers who had pulled him over, then later killed two more policemen who came looking for him at his sister's apartment.
I just read yesterday that they held a rally in Oakland in his honor.
The San Francisco Chronicle gave the following report:
"About sixty people marched and rallied in Oakland on Saturday to condemn the police and honor Lovelle Mixon, who was killed by Oakland police after he fatally shot four officers Saturday.
"'OPD, you can't hide -- we charge you with genocide' chanted the marchers as they marched along MacArthur Boulevard, near the intersection with 74th Boulevard, where Mixon, 26, a fugitive parolee, gunned down two motorcycle officers who had pulled him over in a traffic stop....
"The protest was organized by the Oakland branch of the Uhuru Movement, whose flyers for the march declared, 'Stop Police Terror.'
"Lolo Darnell, one of Mixon's cousins at the demonstration, said, 'He needs sympathy too. If he's a criminal, everybody's a criminal.'
"Asked about police allegations that Mixon was suspected in several rapes, including that of a 12 year old girl, marcher Mandingo Hayes said, 'He wasn't a rapist. I don't believe that'." (There is DNA evidence tying Mixon to the crimes.)
The youtube video of the rally (taken from a newscast) shows a woman screaming, "Lovelle is a hero! Lovelle is a hero!"
As of yet the Vietnamese community has not held a rally for Jiverly Voong, the Binghamton shooter. Nor has anyone in the Polish community in Pittsburgh declared Richard Poplawski, who ambushed three police officers there, a hero.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
The recent shootings
It has seemed that one couldn't look at the news recently without hearing of another mass murder. The shooting deaths of ten in Alabama. The shooting of four police officers in Oakland California. The shooting of seven in an upscale home in Santa Clara, California. The murder of three police officers in Pittsburgh. The shooting of eight at a nursing home in North Carolina. The killing of thirteen people in Binghamton, NY. The father who shot his five children in a trailer park in Washington state.
The only common themes in the killings were two very common ones: guns were involved, and the killers were men. All major ethnic groups managed to get in on the action, so those of us who notice such correlations will find no pattern there. (Although after Virginia Tech last year and Binghamton and Santa Clara this year, Asians do seem to be catching up in the rankings.) The shooters came from different areas of the country, not just the Bible Belt/gun belt. And they ranged in age from 23 to 51.
There have been predictions that the worsening economy would result in an increase in crime, but this spate of shootings doesn't seen to have been brought on by the recent downturn. Most had more traditional causes: either they were domestic disputes run amok, or individual lives simply gone off the tracks.
Jealousy is certainly a powerful motivator. The North Carolina killer was a man gunning for his estranged wife who worked at the nursing home. The father who shot his five children in Washington was taking revenge on his wife, who had just announced that she was leaving him for another man. Whenever I read of a murder-suicide involving a husband and wife (there seemed to be a spate of such involving police officers in the New York area around ten years ago) I just assume that the husband probably caught the wife cheating. (Husbands certainly cheat too, but wives tend to be less murderous about it.)
Insanity and guns are never a healthy mix either. The Binghamton shooter, judging by the suicide note he left, was probably schizophrenic. (He felt the police had tried to involve him in 32 separate traffic accidents and were watching him while he slept.)
All of the shootings provide ammunition for gun control advocates. Most of the killers had at least two guns as well as spare ammunition when they went on their rampages. If you're hellbent on killing someone, you can do it even without a gun: just sneak up from behind and slit his throat. But it's awfully hard to commit mass murder without a gun (or bomb). Think of the Virginia Tech shooter last year: how many would he have been able to kill with just a knife before being subdued? One? Two? The same goes for most of last month's killers. And some of the guns used recently the past month were legally owned, some of them recently acquired.
But the NRA has a point, too: if guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will carry. Anybody willing to commit murder, that most illegal of acts, is certainly not going to be swayed by gun control laws. I know if I had armed robbery in mind, I'd hesitate less to invade a home if I knew its residents were unarmed. And there is evidence that murders (as opposed to self-defense killings) go down when gun ownership is legal.
I guess I favor private ownership, but with longer waiting periods before purchase (to cool off hotheads looking for revenge), with stricter controls on who gets to buy them. And given the correlation between youthfulness and murder rates, I wouldn't mind a minimum age of thirty for gun purchasers.
But other than that, it's hard to take away much from last month's killings, other than, how tragic. There just wasn't enough in the way of patterns.
Despite the back to back news coverage, there didn't seem to be any copycat aspect to these crimes, as there seemed to be when there was a spate of schoolyard shootings a few years back.
One pattern I have noticed among both serial killers and mass murderers in the past is that a lot of them have tried to join a police force at some point in their lives but were rejected. I'm not sure what to take away from this. Should we feel reassured that the police departments were able to screen these individuals? Or should we question the psychology of people who are attracted to law enforcement work in the first place -- and wonder how many maladjusted types have slipped through the cracks. (The Alabama killer was rejected only because he couldn't pass the physical.)
In a country of almost three hundred million, there are bound to be a lot of misfits with guns. Our nation is certainly better off without them. It's just too bad that the ones who erupted in paroxysms of rage this past month took so many innocents with them.
The only common themes in the killings were two very common ones: guns were involved, and the killers were men. All major ethnic groups managed to get in on the action, so those of us who notice such correlations will find no pattern there. (Although after Virginia Tech last year and Binghamton and Santa Clara this year, Asians do seem to be catching up in the rankings.) The shooters came from different areas of the country, not just the Bible Belt/gun belt. And they ranged in age from 23 to 51.
There have been predictions that the worsening economy would result in an increase in crime, but this spate of shootings doesn't seen to have been brought on by the recent downturn. Most had more traditional causes: either they were domestic disputes run amok, or individual lives simply gone off the tracks.
Jealousy is certainly a powerful motivator. The North Carolina killer was a man gunning for his estranged wife who worked at the nursing home. The father who shot his five children in Washington was taking revenge on his wife, who had just announced that she was leaving him for another man. Whenever I read of a murder-suicide involving a husband and wife (there seemed to be a spate of such involving police officers in the New York area around ten years ago) I just assume that the husband probably caught the wife cheating. (Husbands certainly cheat too, but wives tend to be less murderous about it.)
Insanity and guns are never a healthy mix either. The Binghamton shooter, judging by the suicide note he left, was probably schizophrenic. (He felt the police had tried to involve him in 32 separate traffic accidents and were watching him while he slept.)
All of the shootings provide ammunition for gun control advocates. Most of the killers had at least two guns as well as spare ammunition when they went on their rampages. If you're hellbent on killing someone, you can do it even without a gun: just sneak up from behind and slit his throat. But it's awfully hard to commit mass murder without a gun (or bomb). Think of the Virginia Tech shooter last year: how many would he have been able to kill with just a knife before being subdued? One? Two? The same goes for most of last month's killers. And some of the guns used recently the past month were legally owned, some of them recently acquired.
But the NRA has a point, too: if guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will carry. Anybody willing to commit murder, that most illegal of acts, is certainly not going to be swayed by gun control laws. I know if I had armed robbery in mind, I'd hesitate less to invade a home if I knew its residents were unarmed. And there is evidence that murders (as opposed to self-defense killings) go down when gun ownership is legal.
I guess I favor private ownership, but with longer waiting periods before purchase (to cool off hotheads looking for revenge), with stricter controls on who gets to buy them. And given the correlation between youthfulness and murder rates, I wouldn't mind a minimum age of thirty for gun purchasers.
But other than that, it's hard to take away much from last month's killings, other than, how tragic. There just wasn't enough in the way of patterns.
Despite the back to back news coverage, there didn't seem to be any copycat aspect to these crimes, as there seemed to be when there was a spate of schoolyard shootings a few years back.
One pattern I have noticed among both serial killers and mass murderers in the past is that a lot of them have tried to join a police force at some point in their lives but were rejected. I'm not sure what to take away from this. Should we feel reassured that the police departments were able to screen these individuals? Or should we question the psychology of people who are attracted to law enforcement work in the first place -- and wonder how many maladjusted types have slipped through the cracks. (The Alabama killer was rejected only because he couldn't pass the physical.)
In a country of almost three hundred million, there are bound to be a lot of misfits with guns. Our nation is certainly better off without them. It's just too bad that the ones who erupted in paroxysms of rage this past month took so many innocents with them.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
The NATO protesters
Anti-war activists protesting the meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have expressed their displeasure by turning the area near Strasbourg into a.....war zone.Approximately a thousand protesters threw Molotov cocktails and rocks at police. They set a customs station on fire on a bridge linking France and Germany and torched several stores, winning over the hearts and minds of the locals.
Protesters also stormed a hotel and stole alcohol from its bar before setting the hotel afire.
(Stealing alcoholic beverages has long been an honorable way of demonstrating one's commitment to the cause of peace.)
The police responded with water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets. No protesters were seriously injured.
NATO was formed sixty years ago as a mutual defense pact against the Soviet threat. What an interesting experiment it would have been to transport these protesters in time and place to the Moscow of, say, 1965 to see if the Soviet security apparatus would have reacted with such forbearance.
I'd even settle for seeing these protesters try their act in modern day Russia to see how Putin would react.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
G20 protesters
The G20 protesters did themselves proud again (http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2008/11/behavioral-differences.html) this past week in London, successfully proving to the world once again that capitalism is wrong.
They demonstrated the superiority of socialism by smashing bank windows and invading the Royal Bank of Scotland offices. At one point, as the police tried to help a man (a nonprotester on his way home from work) who lay dying of a heart attack on the street, the protesters pelted them with bottles, thus illustrating the inherent risks of free trade.
Onlookers previously uncertain about the bank bailout packages were swayed against them by the young Englishwoman who smashed computer monitors inside the Royal Bank of Scotland. Those previously supporting higher CEO compensation were convinced of the error of their ways by the young Lithuanian who set fire to the Venetian blinds inside the offices of the bank.
Thank goodness that even during our current economic crisis there are still some voices of maturity and reason out there. It is demonstrators like these who give reassurance that there is still some sanity left in the world.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Strong opinions
Many people seem to feel strongly that global warming is inevitable. But how can they possibly know?
To have an informed opinion on global warming you'd need extensive knowledge of a wide range of technical subjects. You have to know the historical patterns of temperature change going back hundreds of thousands of years. To be able to calculate how much methane might be released from the ocean floor by warmer water temperatures. To factor in the earth's orbital patterns and how solar variation affects planetary temperatures. To understand the breakdown rate of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. To be able to calculate exactly how much the depletion of the ozone layer will increase water vapor in the atmosphere, and how the increased water vapor will affect temperatures. To understand how the height of the troposphere changes the emission of infrared radiation. (That last bit was lifted from Wikipedia; don't worry, I don't understand it either.)
Any of you who understand all these things and have pondered long on how they will all interact over the next hundred years, please feel free to speak up. Otherwise, please hold your peace.
Thank you.
Yes, the average temperature has increase 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. Yes, Arctic ice is retreating. And yes, human beings are burning fossil fuels and clearing natural vegetation at heretofore unseen rates. And it does seem logical that these activities would have an effect on the atmosphere. This post isn't a brief against the hypothesis of global warming. (I actually think it would be a good idea to cut down on carbon emissions for a number of reasons.) It's merely a brief against people with strong opinions about subjects they can't possibly understand. Most of us can't predict the weather a week from now. We can look at the forecast. But we'd be hard pressed to come up with one on our own.
Predicting global warming is essentially predicting the weather 20, 40, or 100 years in the future.
Al Gore, by the way, is not a scientific expert either. He is a politician with an agenda. His movie, An Inconvenient Truth, was anything but truthful. One example: in order to show how water is being mismanaged, he showed a film of a flowing river, then showed how by the next year it had run dry. He never mentioned that the reason the river had gone dry was because a dam had been built upstream during the previous year. (Perhaps he was too busy turning on the lights in his mansion in Tennessee, which has ten times the carbon footprint of the average American house.)
The global warming debate is a little reminiscent of the controversy years ago over whether the Air Force needed the B2 bomber. Many people seemed to have a strong opinion on the subject, yet very few were scientists, let alone armaments experts. Sometimes these people would be able to quote an expert who leaned their way; yet there were experts on both sides of this issue, and it seemed to me that most of these people would simply pick an expert who leaned their way. (And yes, almost all the people that I knew with strong opinions were liberals.)
It's also a bit like predicting the direction of the stock market, whose path is determined by a myriad of factors, all of which interact in infinitely complex ways, making reliable prediction basically impossible. One thing I learned after twelve years on Wall Street was that the surer a person was of the direction of the market, the more full of it he was.
The same might be said of opinions on global warming. Our planet has gone through five Ice Ages (and subsequent warming periods) in the past 800,000 years. No one completely understands why they occurred. And no one, least of all nonscientists, should feel certain about where we're headed in the future.
It's not a crime to say, "I don't know."
I once heard that true wisdom was knowing what you don't know.
As good a definition as any.
To have an informed opinion on global warming you'd need extensive knowledge of a wide range of technical subjects. You have to know the historical patterns of temperature change going back hundreds of thousands of years. To be able to calculate how much methane might be released from the ocean floor by warmer water temperatures. To factor in the earth's orbital patterns and how solar variation affects planetary temperatures. To understand the breakdown rate of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. To be able to calculate exactly how much the depletion of the ozone layer will increase water vapor in the atmosphere, and how the increased water vapor will affect temperatures. To understand how the height of the troposphere changes the emission of infrared radiation. (That last bit was lifted from Wikipedia; don't worry, I don't understand it either.)
Any of you who understand all these things and have pondered long on how they will all interact over the next hundred years, please feel free to speak up. Otherwise, please hold your peace.
Thank you.
Yes, the average temperature has increase 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. Yes, Arctic ice is retreating. And yes, human beings are burning fossil fuels and clearing natural vegetation at heretofore unseen rates. And it does seem logical that these activities would have an effect on the atmosphere. This post isn't a brief against the hypothesis of global warming. (I actually think it would be a good idea to cut down on carbon emissions for a number of reasons.) It's merely a brief against people with strong opinions about subjects they can't possibly understand. Most of us can't predict the weather a week from now. We can look at the forecast. But we'd be hard pressed to come up with one on our own.
Predicting global warming is essentially predicting the weather 20, 40, or 100 years in the future.
Al Gore, by the way, is not a scientific expert either. He is a politician with an agenda. His movie, An Inconvenient Truth, was anything but truthful. One example: in order to show how water is being mismanaged, he showed a film of a flowing river, then showed how by the next year it had run dry. He never mentioned that the reason the river had gone dry was because a dam had been built upstream during the previous year. (Perhaps he was too busy turning on the lights in his mansion in Tennessee, which has ten times the carbon footprint of the average American house.)
The global warming debate is a little reminiscent of the controversy years ago over whether the Air Force needed the B2 bomber. Many people seemed to have a strong opinion on the subject, yet very few were scientists, let alone armaments experts. Sometimes these people would be able to quote an expert who leaned their way; yet there were experts on both sides of this issue, and it seemed to me that most of these people would simply pick an expert who leaned their way. (And yes, almost all the people that I knew with strong opinions were liberals.)
It's also a bit like predicting the direction of the stock market, whose path is determined by a myriad of factors, all of which interact in infinitely complex ways, making reliable prediction basically impossible. One thing I learned after twelve years on Wall Street was that the surer a person was of the direction of the market, the more full of it he was.
The same might be said of opinions on global warming. Our planet has gone through five Ice Ages (and subsequent warming periods) in the past 800,000 years. No one completely understands why they occurred. And no one, least of all nonscientists, should feel certain about where we're headed in the future.
It's not a crime to say, "I don't know."
I once heard that true wisdom was knowing what you don't know.
As good a definition as any.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Fargo
Now that Fargo is facing an epic flood, one can only wonder if North Dakotans will go on a looting rampage similar to the one that occurred in New Orleans after Katrina in 2005. (The media at the time suggested that the looters were merely after otherwise unobtainable essentials like food and water, but the news footage I saw showed many of them carrying away designer jeans and the like.)
True, the disasters are on a different scale. But both nonetheless shine a light on the character of the locals.
Will the mayor and a sizable percentage of the police force desert Fargo?
When rescue helicopters arrive, will the citizens of Fargo shoot at them?
If many of the newly homeless from Fargo are relocated in another city, will the crime rates in that city suddenly spike?
Most importantly, if the mayor and governor fail to institute proper evacuation procedures, once the flood is over and the human and economic costs are totaled, will the media then blame President Obama for what happened?
True, the disasters are on a different scale. But both nonetheless shine a light on the character of the locals.
Will the mayor and a sizable percentage of the police force desert Fargo?
When rescue helicopters arrive, will the citizens of Fargo shoot at them?
If many of the newly homeless from Fargo are relocated in another city, will the crime rates in that city suddenly spike?
Most importantly, if the mayor and governor fail to institute proper evacuation procedures, once the flood is over and the human and economic costs are totaled, will the media then blame President Obama for what happened?
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Resolve
During the Viet Nam War, it grew increasingly apparent that the Viet Cong simply had more grit than we, or the South Vietnamese, did. The Viet Cong would sometimes live in dirt tunnels for months at a time, not seeing the light of day once during that entire period. Meanwhile American soldiers lived in air conditioned barracks, went to whorehouses in Saigon, and got high on a regular basis. (Can you imagine the Cong sneaking into Saigon to sample the fleshpots or search for the best ganja?)
Perhaps the best examples of this quiet resolve were the Buddhist monks who would immolate themselves in the street to protest American policy.
I can't help but be struck by the parallel between those Buddhist monks and the current crop of suicide bombers. The bombers are, of course, far more dastardly, since they commit mass murder as well as suicide. But both are willing to sacrifice themselves for their cause.
Bill Maher lost his talk show "Politically Incorrect" because he said that the suicide bombers who steered those planes into the World Trade Center were courageous (as well as evil). In the political climate of the time, it was simply unacceptable to say anything positive about the bombers, true or not. (Maher long ago apologized abjectly for this, his one true foray into political incorrectness; he has has since landed on another talk show, where he is as predictably liberal as ever.)
But Maher's original statement was in fact on target: very few Americans would willingly go on a suicide mission. And no matter how superior our technology, in the long run no one can win against an enemy who simply won't give up.
When Americans join the military, it is usually because they want their college tuition paid for, or because they need a job, or because they want to learn a marketable skill. There are some who enlist out of a sense of patriotism, or because they actually want combat experience, but they are the minority. When Muslims take up jihad, it is for the greater glory of Allah, and because they have a hatred of the United States that is bred into their very souls.
They're tougher than we are, period. We may inflict more casualties, but they'll outlast us, especially with the war being fought on their home turf.
Time to cut our losses, and let them kill each other instead of us.
Perhaps the best examples of this quiet resolve were the Buddhist monks who would immolate themselves in the street to protest American policy.
I can't help but be struck by the parallel between those Buddhist monks and the current crop of suicide bombers. The bombers are, of course, far more dastardly, since they commit mass murder as well as suicide. But both are willing to sacrifice themselves for their cause.
Bill Maher lost his talk show "Politically Incorrect" because he said that the suicide bombers who steered those planes into the World Trade Center were courageous (as well as evil). In the political climate of the time, it was simply unacceptable to say anything positive about the bombers, true or not. (Maher long ago apologized abjectly for this, his one true foray into political incorrectness; he has has since landed on another talk show, where he is as predictably liberal as ever.)
But Maher's original statement was in fact on target: very few Americans would willingly go on a suicide mission. And no matter how superior our technology, in the long run no one can win against an enemy who simply won't give up.
When Americans join the military, it is usually because they want their college tuition paid for, or because they need a job, or because they want to learn a marketable skill. There are some who enlist out of a sense of patriotism, or because they actually want combat experience, but they are the minority. When Muslims take up jihad, it is for the greater glory of Allah, and because they have a hatred of the United States that is bred into their very souls.
They're tougher than we are, period. We may inflict more casualties, but they'll outlast us, especially with the war being fought on their home turf.
Time to cut our losses, and let them kill each other instead of us.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Keep the money, boys
I was as outraged as anyone (see earlier post) when I heard of the AIG bonuses. But this afternoon I read in the local paper that ACORN had held a protest against AIG in my hometown.
About thirty protesters were bused in to stand in front of AIG financial products headquarters. They chanted, "Who are we? ACORN! What do we want? JUSTICE! When do we want it? NOW!"
Another chant was, "AIG gets bailed out, the people get sold out!"
All of a sudden I had a little less desire to see those bonuses returned.
Put yourself in an AIG executive's shoes. What would you do if given, say, a half million dollar bonus? You had been promised this money a year ago, before the sky came falling down, and you are legally entitled to it. In fact, this is part of the reason you stayed at AIG rather than taking a job at JPMorgan. You work in the financial products division, but you had nothing to do with the credit default swaps which brought AIG down. So far you've managed to save $2.7 million, including the equity in your house. This would give you a nest egg of roughly three million, after taxes. In the meantime, it's not clear if you'll even have your job six months from now, and if you do, it certainly won't pay as much as it does now. You have three children, one currently in college and the other two on their way. AIG has just suffered about the worst publicity any company ever has, and if you do lose your job, at age fifty there are no guarantees you will be able to find another. Would you give the money back?
I'm not sure that I would.
And I would like to thank ACORN for helping my thinking evolve on this matter.
This, of course, begs the question of whether or not, as an AIG employee, that choice should be up to you. If the firm had been allowed to go bankrupt, wouldn't those contracts for the promised bonuses have been abrogated? So should they be honored now? (No, they shouldn't.)
Perhaps more to the point, should all those contracts with Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, et al, also have been honored at one hundred cents on the dollar? None of these contracts were given even the slightest of haircuts. All of the firms which took out credit default swaps with AIG were sophisticated financial entities which essentially made a bad bet. (When you make such a large bet, you're also betting on your counterparty's creditworthiness.) The government simply should not be in the business of bailing out people -- or firms -- who made bad bets.
But if they are, I want to be compensated for my stock market losses. Where do I get in line?
About thirty protesters were bused in to stand in front of AIG financial products headquarters. They chanted, "Who are we? ACORN! What do we want? JUSTICE! When do we want it? NOW!"
Another chant was, "AIG gets bailed out, the people get sold out!"
All of a sudden I had a little less desire to see those bonuses returned.
Put yourself in an AIG executive's shoes. What would you do if given, say, a half million dollar bonus? You had been promised this money a year ago, before the sky came falling down, and you are legally entitled to it. In fact, this is part of the reason you stayed at AIG rather than taking a job at JPMorgan. You work in the financial products division, but you had nothing to do with the credit default swaps which brought AIG down. So far you've managed to save $2.7 million, including the equity in your house. This would give you a nest egg of roughly three million, after taxes. In the meantime, it's not clear if you'll even have your job six months from now, and if you do, it certainly won't pay as much as it does now. You have three children, one currently in college and the other two on their way. AIG has just suffered about the worst publicity any company ever has, and if you do lose your job, at age fifty there are no guarantees you will be able to find another. Would you give the money back?
I'm not sure that I would.
And I would like to thank ACORN for helping my thinking evolve on this matter.
This, of course, begs the question of whether or not, as an AIG employee, that choice should be up to you. If the firm had been allowed to go bankrupt, wouldn't those contracts for the promised bonuses have been abrogated? So should they be honored now? (No, they shouldn't.)
Perhaps more to the point, should all those contracts with Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, et al, also have been honored at one hundred cents on the dollar? None of these contracts were given even the slightest of haircuts. All of the firms which took out credit default swaps with AIG were sophisticated financial entities which essentially made a bad bet. (When you make such a large bet, you're also betting on your counterparty's creditworthiness.) The government simply should not be in the business of bailing out people -- or firms -- who made bad bets.
But if they are, I want to be compensated for my stock market losses. Where do I get in line?
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Just an excuse to boast
I've always found world records more impressive than Olympic gold medals. The Olympics are a big meet, well publicized to be sure, but winning gold just means you're the best on a particular day. (Maybe the best athlete had a virus, or was injured, or distracted by his personal problems, or at the wrong stage of her menstrual cycle.) If you're the world record holder, on the other hand, you're the greatest of all time.
Imagine they held a televised competition to see who could get up Mt. Everest the fastest. Who would be greater, the winner of that race or Sir Edmund Hillary? Of course it would be Hillary, because he was the first: he had done what no one else had ever done before. This is essentially what any world record holder can say: that he was the first to high jump eight feet, or run a marathon in less than two hours and four minutes, or do whatever it is that he did.
Obviously, the popular consensus is that an Olympic gold medal is the crowning achievement of sport. And as long as the public perceives it that way, it is, for that reason. To aficionados, Michael Phelps may have been the greatest swimmer of all time after the World Championships of 2007. But until he had the imprimatur of eight golds at one Games, the public still regarded Mark Spitz as king.
I never came remotely close to doing either, so for me the debate about which was more impressive was purely academic.
Until yesterday.
Thank goodness for masters swimming, which keeps track of world records in every swimming event, for every five year age group, in both 25 meter pools and 50 meter pools. When you have that many records, they obviously become severely devalued currency. But they are still wonderful vehicles for ego trips.
Yesterday I set the world record for the 55-59 age group in the 200 short course meter butterfly. The old record had been 2:21.90; I went 2:19.72. I had told myself beforehand that in order to get the moral victory I had to beat the record by two seconds, since I was going to be wearing a new generation (Blueseventy) suit, which previous record holder Greg Shaw had not (the new suits weren't available in 2007 when he set the record). I was genuinely surprised when they told me my time, because it had felt more like a 2:24; I had felt awkward and weak. This would indicate the suit was worth more than two seconds. On the other hand, I had felt great while warming up, and the reason I felt awkward and weak during the race was because the suit was so constricting. So I'm not sure where I stand on the matter. Flyers in particular need to feel fluid and loose during their events, so I can understand why five of the eight finalists in the 200 fly at Beijing wore only leggings, even though the full body LAZR was then available.
The Ancient Mariners, the masters team who host this meet, have always been particularly gracious. Five years ago I made an attempt at the same record for the 50-54 age group at the same meet (and missed by less than a second). Jason Crist, a member of the club seeded in the next lane, asked me beforehand how fast I wanted to take it out at the 100. When I told him 1:06, he obliged by going out exactly that fast himself, even though the aggressive early pace meant sacrificing his own race. Yesterday, Jeff Roddin, another Ancient Mariner who is a great all around swimmer and better than me even in my best event, actually sat the race out because he figured it would be better for me to have the next lane empty rather than have someone kicking water in my face. (He claimed he was using me as an excuse not to have to swim a 200 fly, but I don't buy that: he swam the event three times last year.) You're supposed to ask for three backup timers if going for a world record, but I was too embarrassed to do so. (How foolish would I have looked if I missed by a lot? And since I hadn't swum a race in nearly two years, I wasn't sure what to expect.) Jeff understood that, and asked for me.
[An aside: Crist and Roddin have a teammate, John Feinstein, the well known author. Feinstein, an excellent sprint butterflyer, competed in the 400 meter freestyle in a masters meet several years ago. One of the competitors in his heat was a woman in her early thirties who was visibly pregnant. She beat him. Feinstein's teammates, naturally enough, teased him unmercifully afterward. I happened to witness one such incident, after which Feinstein wailed in mock outrage, "It was no fair -- it was two against one!" The perfect response.]
Masters swimmers in general are a very congenial lot, partly because what they share is a labor of love. (After working on Wall Street, where the subtext of every handshake is "I want your money," I found this a refreshing change.) Nobody wants anything from you, so all friendliness is without agenda. And since only pride is at stake, even the most competitive rivalries tend to be friendly ones.
It's easy to think, what's more pathetic than a 55 year old trying to recapture lost glory? (Especially when that glory existed only in his own mind.) But then when you actually go to a masters meet and see all the fit, attractive people there joking with each other and having a good time, the natural reaction is, I have to do this more often.
I drove down to Maryland for the meet by myself. But during the drive back to Connecticut, I had my new record to keep me company; and I have to admit, it was very good company, at least for the first couple hours.
(I had in fact held one record previously, for the same event in the 45-49 age group; that one was such delightful company it actually prevented my feet from even touching the ground for the first forty-eight hours after I made its acquaintance -- as pathetic as that sounds.)
I suppose the appropriate comparison here would be with a gold medal at the World Masters Championships.
I'll take my record, thanks.
I swore when I started this blog that it would not turn into a diary. I've tried to stay true to the original idea of writing only about things that others would find interesting, and not just my personal obsessions. So I apologize for this slip. (But I'm not that sorry, of course, otherwise I would have deleted it. Sometimes I just have to boast -- my personal form of Tourettes.)
Addendum: an article which appeared about me in the local paper: http://www.wiltonvillager.com/story/467066
(I'm afraid the writer, John Nash, made me sound nicer than I am.)
Addendum II, 4/16/09: As an example of the type of friendly rivalry you find in masters swimming, several days ago I got the following email from Greg Shaw, whose record I broke:
"Hey John, I saw recently that you got the 200 SCM fly record and didn't just get it, but creamed it. Glad to see that you are in such great shape. It's a tough one, as you know. The LCM 200 fly record [also Shaw's] is right there too. I expect to see you get that this summer....What you did is fantastic. Congrats."
(Please don't expect that kind of sportsmanship from me when somebody breaks my record. I'm a bit more possessive.)
Imagine they held a televised competition to see who could get up Mt. Everest the fastest. Who would be greater, the winner of that race or Sir Edmund Hillary? Of course it would be Hillary, because he was the first: he had done what no one else had ever done before. This is essentially what any world record holder can say: that he was the first to high jump eight feet, or run a marathon in less than two hours and four minutes, or do whatever it is that he did.
Obviously, the popular consensus is that an Olympic gold medal is the crowning achievement of sport. And as long as the public perceives it that way, it is, for that reason. To aficionados, Michael Phelps may have been the greatest swimmer of all time after the World Championships of 2007. But until he had the imprimatur of eight golds at one Games, the public still regarded Mark Spitz as king.
I never came remotely close to doing either, so for me the debate about which was more impressive was purely academic.
Until yesterday.
Thank goodness for masters swimming, which keeps track of world records in every swimming event, for every five year age group, in both 25 meter pools and 50 meter pools. When you have that many records, they obviously become severely devalued currency. But they are still wonderful vehicles for ego trips.
Yesterday I set the world record for the 55-59 age group in the 200 short course meter butterfly. The old record had been 2:21.90; I went 2:19.72. I had told myself beforehand that in order to get the moral victory I had to beat the record by two seconds, since I was going to be wearing a new generation (Blueseventy) suit, which previous record holder Greg Shaw had not (the new suits weren't available in 2007 when he set the record). I was genuinely surprised when they told me my time, because it had felt more like a 2:24; I had felt awkward and weak. This would indicate the suit was worth more than two seconds. On the other hand, I had felt great while warming up, and the reason I felt awkward and weak during the race was because the suit was so constricting. So I'm not sure where I stand on the matter. Flyers in particular need to feel fluid and loose during their events, so I can understand why five of the eight finalists in the 200 fly at Beijing wore only leggings, even though the full body LAZR was then available.
The Ancient Mariners, the masters team who host this meet, have always been particularly gracious. Five years ago I made an attempt at the same record for the 50-54 age group at the same meet (and missed by less than a second). Jason Crist, a member of the club seeded in the next lane, asked me beforehand how fast I wanted to take it out at the 100. When I told him 1:06, he obliged by going out exactly that fast himself, even though the aggressive early pace meant sacrificing his own race. Yesterday, Jeff Roddin, another Ancient Mariner who is a great all around swimmer and better than me even in my best event, actually sat the race out because he figured it would be better for me to have the next lane empty rather than have someone kicking water in my face. (He claimed he was using me as an excuse not to have to swim a 200 fly, but I don't buy that: he swam the event three times last year.) You're supposed to ask for three backup timers if going for a world record, but I was too embarrassed to do so. (How foolish would I have looked if I missed by a lot? And since I hadn't swum a race in nearly two years, I wasn't sure what to expect.) Jeff understood that, and asked for me.
[An aside: Crist and Roddin have a teammate, John Feinstein, the well known author. Feinstein, an excellent sprint butterflyer, competed in the 400 meter freestyle in a masters meet several years ago. One of the competitors in his heat was a woman in her early thirties who was visibly pregnant. She beat him. Feinstein's teammates, naturally enough, teased him unmercifully afterward. I happened to witness one such incident, after which Feinstein wailed in mock outrage, "It was no fair -- it was two against one!" The perfect response.]
Masters swimmers in general are a very congenial lot, partly because what they share is a labor of love. (After working on Wall Street, where the subtext of every handshake is "I want your money," I found this a refreshing change.) Nobody wants anything from you, so all friendliness is without agenda. And since only pride is at stake, even the most competitive rivalries tend to be friendly ones.
It's easy to think, what's more pathetic than a 55 year old trying to recapture lost glory? (Especially when that glory existed only in his own mind.) But then when you actually go to a masters meet and see all the fit, attractive people there joking with each other and having a good time, the natural reaction is, I have to do this more often.
I drove down to Maryland for the meet by myself. But during the drive back to Connecticut, I had my new record to keep me company; and I have to admit, it was very good company, at least for the first couple hours.
(I had in fact held one record previously, for the same event in the 45-49 age group; that one was such delightful company it actually prevented my feet from even touching the ground for the first forty-eight hours after I made its acquaintance -- as pathetic as that sounds.)
I suppose the appropriate comparison here would be with a gold medal at the World Masters Championships.
I'll take my record, thanks.
I swore when I started this blog that it would not turn into a diary. I've tried to stay true to the original idea of writing only about things that others would find interesting, and not just my personal obsessions. So I apologize for this slip. (But I'm not that sorry, of course, otherwise I would have deleted it. Sometimes I just have to boast -- my personal form of Tourettes.)
Addendum: an article which appeared about me in the local paper: http://www.wiltonvillager.com/story/467066
(I'm afraid the writer, John Nash, made me sound nicer than I am.)
Addendum II, 4/16/09: As an example of the type of friendly rivalry you find in masters swimming, several days ago I got the following email from Greg Shaw, whose record I broke:
"Hey John, I saw recently that you got the 200 SCM fly record and didn't just get it, but creamed it. Glad to see that you are in such great shape. It's a tough one, as you know. The LCM 200 fly record [also Shaw's] is right there too. I expect to see you get that this summer....What you did is fantastic. Congrats."
(Please don't expect that kind of sportsmanship from me when somebody breaks my record. I'm a bit more possessive.)
Monday, March 16, 2009
Ken Kesey
(Ken Kesey, above and right, around the time he was writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)
Ken Kesey grew up on a dairy farm in Oregon. From as early as he could remember, his father had him and his younger brother Joe shooting, running, swimming, fishing, wrestling, boxing, and running rapids. Fred Kesey also instilled in his sons the value of self reliance and independence. He must have been proud of Ken, who went on to become a star runner and football player, and a champion wrestler in both high school and at the University of Oregon. (If you're a champion at 174 pounds, as Kesey was, it means you can handle pretty much anybody who comes your way.)
Kesey embodied a certain sort of backwoods ruggedness, and he fully understood the visceral appeal of the macho ethic. But he wanted something more; this is what made him Ken Kesey. So after college, in 1958, he enrolled in Stanford University's graduate writing program, a self-enclosed, arty community.
Tom Wolfe, our greatest living writer, has always had the ability to convey what is admirable about certain people, to make his heroes our heroes. He did this with Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, and he did it with Kesey in The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. Wolfe described the scene at Stanford thus:
"[Kesey] had Jack London Martin Eden Searching Hick, the hick with intellectual yearnings, written all over him....And their cottage on Perry Lane -- well, everybody else's cottage was rundown in a bohemian way, simplicity, Japanese paper lamp globes and monk's cloth and blond straw rugs and Swedish stainless steel knives and forks and cornflowers sticking out of a hand-thrown pot. But theirs was just plain Low Rent. There was always something like a broken washing machine rusting on the back porch....Somehow it was perfect....to have him and Faye on hand to learn as the Perry Lane sophisticates talked about life and the arts."
Well, we all know what happened next.
Kesey took a job working nights at a mental institution in nearby Menlo Park, where he volunteered to take an experimental drug, lysergic acid, later known as LSD. He often talked to the inmates, sometimes while under the influence of the drug. This was the inspiration for Cuckoo's Nest, a novel of such extraordinary power that it became an immediate hit upon publication in 1962, and has since become a classic.
The book revolves around Randle Patrick McMurphy, a swaggering con who has faked mental illness in order to escape the drudgery of work detail at a regular prison. He demonstrates all the bluster and charm that one senses Kesey had at his disposal. But Kesey also understood and sympathized with the sad and broken creatures most of the inmates of the mental institution were. The book is narrated by one of them, a huge, mute (by choice) Indian named Bromden, disparagingly called Chief Broom by the attendants because of his cleaning job. McMurphy briefly gives the other inmates a taste of freedom and self respect before he is subdued by the machinery of the institution.
Two years later, Kesey came out with Sometimes a Great Notion, about an Oregon logging family, and the conflict between two brothers, one a neurasthenic Yale graduate, the other the personification of backwoods machismo Kesey was so well acquainted with. This book never gained the same popularity as Cuckoo's Nest, but it did achieve critical acclaim.
This book was also made into a movie, starring Paul Newman as the tough brother. Ironically, Kesey himself looked a bit like Newman, minus some prettiness and plus some testosterone. (The movie might more appropriately have starred Kesey as the tough brother and Newman as the Yale graduate.)
After this Kesey became more involved with the nascent LSD movement, and led a group of proto-hippies -- the Merry Pranksters -- on a cross country expedition in a bus called Furthur. It was this expedition that Wolfe devoted the majority of Acid Test to. The group included a couple holdovers from the Beat era, most notably Neal Cassaday, a friend of Jack Kerouac's. But for the most part they were feckless acidheads who would have gotten into trouble on numerous occasions had Kesey not been steering the bus, both literally and metaphorically.
One scene from the book has stuck with me all these years. At one point, the group is partying with some Hells Angels. Sonny Barger, their fearsome leader at the time, calls Kesey out for having casually insulted another Angel ("Nobody -- nobody -- calls an Angel a bullshit person"). Kesey, calm as ever, merely tells Barger that he knew the Angel. Kesey wasn't confrontational about it, but he never lost his starch; he didn't back down from his statement, but he didn't expand on it; and he made his answer just confusing enough to take the volatile Barger aback for a moment, which was enough to defuse the situation.
Throughout the book Kesey constantly plays the role of the friendly, unpretentious, beneficent peacemaker who always seems to be in control of the situation. And he controls it not through intimidation -- though he could have been as intimidating as anyone -- but through sheer force of personality.
Which, come to think of it, is not a bad definition of charisma.
Kesey was a superman. He could outmacho the meanest, yet eloquently identify with the weakest. And he used his power for protection (and personal exploration) rather than for aggression. He did it in his writing, and he did it in his personal life.
Which, come to think of it, is not a bad definition of a hero.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth, above, is known primarily as the author of such blockbusters as Day of the Jackal, The Dogs of War, and The Veteran.
Forsyth started out as a reporter for the BBC, and in 1969 covered the Biafran war. Out of this experience came a book, The Biafra Story, written to alert the world to the plight of the defeated Biafrans. Like most books of its kind, it died a quiet death.
After that, Forsyth decided to write instead for money, and in 1971 came out with Day of the Jackal, a fictional account of a failed assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle, which he reportedly wrote in 38 days. The book was a bestseller, and was followed in quick succession by The Odessa File, about a German reporter who tries to track down a Nazi concentration camp commandant, and The Dogs of War, about a mining magnate who hires mercenaries to overthrow an African country.
While reading Day of the Jackal in 1974, at age 20, I found myself occasionally looking at the picture of Forsyth on the inside back flap. There was just something about the no nonsense prose of the book, combined with its occasional sly humor, which gave the impression that the author himself was pretty formidable.
The picture on the inside cover of the book showed a three quarter view of a lean man gazing off to the side focusing on something in the distance. Not particularly handsome, but hard-looking. (It wasn't the photograph above; I couldn't find the original one on the internet). The copy read:
"Frederick Forsyth was born in 1938 and was early attracted to a life of adventure: at six he tried to hitch a ride to the D-Day invasion on an American tank; at sixteen he was soloing in a Tiger Moth biplane; at seventeen he became an aspiring matador; and at nineteen he was a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force."
After reading his first three novels, I didn't think much more about him, though those three books always occupied a preferred place on my bookshelf.
Then in May of 1978 I happened upon a Newsweek article headlined The Forsyth Saga, featuring the same photograph of him from the book's inside cover. This immediately attracted my attention. The article summarized a longer article which had appeared in the previous Sunday's London Times:
"According to the Sunday Times, Forsyth put up nearly $240,000 in 1972 to overthrow President Francisco Macias Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, one of Africa's most ruthless dictators.
Forsyth's chief operative, the paper said, was a Scottish mercenary named Alexander Ramsay Gay, whom Forsyth had met in Biafra when the writer was covering the region's attempt to secede from Nigeria. For the Guinean caper, Gay supposedly ordered a small arsenal -- including automatic rifles, light machine guns, mortars, bazookas, and 40,000 rounds of ammunition -- from a prominent Hamburg arms dealer. In the southern Spanish resort of Fuengirola, he found his troop transport, a 64-foot fishing vessel called the Albatross. He recruited thirteen other mercenaries and lined up 50 former Biafran soldiers who would join the invasion at the last moment. According to the Times, Forsyth's 'objective throughout was to provide a new homeland for the defeated Biafrans'."
But the mercenaries were arrested by Spanish authorities off the coast of the Canary Islands in December of 1972, so the coup never happened.
[The Dogs of War is a thinly veiled account of the actual coup attempt, with the only difference being that the fictional coup was successful, and had been motivated by a desire to get at the fictional Zangaro's mineral wealth instead of to help the Biafrans.]
The true story emerged when one of the mercenaries Gay had hired was killed by the police, who then had come upon his diary which had detailed the plot.
Forsyth of course denied the story, and authorized his former literary agent, Bryan Hunt, to deny it as "a load of old codswallop." Hunt went on to say that Forsyth could not have organized the operation since "at the time he was reportedly forming this army, around the summer of '72, he was actually in my London flat, sick for three weeks with a stomach virus." Hunt also said that Forsyth was too tightfisted to fund such an operation, adding, "To imagine Freddie giving anyone tenpence would be amazing."
Let's examine that statement for a moment. If Forsyth actually had been staying with his agent for three weeks while sick, it can only be because they were good friends. (Most of us wouldn't stay for three days, let alone three weeks, with people who weren't good friends.) And no good friend would tell the press what a skinflint you are unless he were doing it to cover for you.
It was that discrepancy which convinced me the story was true.
Gay himself later said, "I'm not denying my part in it, but I won't comment on anyone else involved."
The original Times article itself was more detailed, and reported that Forsyth had originally met Gay while covering the Biafran war, that the two were good friends, and Gay had actually been the model for the title character in Day of the Jackal.
So Gay had been covering for Forsyth as well.
Two of the most admirable qualities are intelligence and toughness. Either without the other becomes infinitely less appealing. Forsyth embodies both.
A more recent update: A year ago I took out an audio version of Forsyth's 2001 book of short stories, The Veteran, from the local library. One of the longer stories was a love story, a departure from the blockbusters about international intrigue Forsyth is known for. It was quite well done; I found it moving.
Most recent/older update: While searching for an appropriate picture of Forsyth on the internet for this post, I stumbled across an old photo from the early 1970's showing Forsyth with Faye Dunaway, then at the peak of her beauty:
This picture did not detract from my admiration for the man.
A.I.G.
A.I.G., the black hole which has already swallowed more than $170 billion in taxpayer-funded bailouts, is paying its top executives $165 million in bonuses today.
A.I.G chairman Edward Liddy said that the firm was contractually obligated to pay out these bonuses since they had been agreed to before.
[If the firm had gone bankrupt -- which it essentially has -- would it still have been obligated to pay these bonuses? And a "bonus" is supposed to be an extra payment given at the end of the year for a job well done in a profitable year for the firm.]
The bulk of the bonuses are for employees at AIG Financial Products, the branch of the company responsible for selling credit default swaps, the very instrument which drove A.I.G. under.
Liddy explained, "We cannot attract the best and brightest talent to lead and staff the AIG businesses....if their compensation is subject to....arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury."
How "best and brightest" can these employees be if they are the ones responsible for socking the taxpayers with a $170 billion bill? And that argument about how the employees might go elsewhere if not richly compensated is wearing a bit thin: there are very few elsewhere's for them to go to anymore.
"A.I.G." must stand for Always Incredibly Greedy.
[All Income Governmental?]
Expect the townsfolk to come out with their torches and pitchforks.
A.I.G chairman Edward Liddy said that the firm was contractually obligated to pay out these bonuses since they had been agreed to before.
[If the firm had gone bankrupt -- which it essentially has -- would it still have been obligated to pay these bonuses? And a "bonus" is supposed to be an extra payment given at the end of the year for a job well done in a profitable year for the firm.]
The bulk of the bonuses are for employees at AIG Financial Products, the branch of the company responsible for selling credit default swaps, the very instrument which drove A.I.G. under.
Liddy explained, "We cannot attract the best and brightest talent to lead and staff the AIG businesses....if their compensation is subject to....arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury."
How "best and brightest" can these employees be if they are the ones responsible for socking the taxpayers with a $170 billion bill? And that argument about how the employees might go elsewhere if not richly compensated is wearing a bit thin: there are very few elsewhere's for them to go to anymore.
"A.I.G." must stand for Always Incredibly Greedy.
[All Income Governmental?]
Expect the townsfolk to come out with their torches and pitchforks.
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