Compel candidates for public office to reveal their SAT scores

Two days ago the NY Times reported that Sonia Sotomayor described herself as an "affirmative action baby" who got into Princeton and Yale Law despite lower standardized test scores than many of her classmates. She attributed her lower test scores to "cultural biases" that are "built into testing." (Strangely, those cultural biases don't seem to affect first generation Asians.)

I'm dying to know what Sotomayor's scores were.

If Sotomayor's Bronx background hampered her performance on the SATs, which is certainly understandable, one would think that after four years at Princeton -- where, after all, she graduated summa cum laude -- she would have caught up enough to have aced her LSATs. But her statement implies that she didn't do well there, either.

Sotomayor has certainly made her grades public. Why not her board scores? They are probably a better indicator of her intelligence than her grades (which, after all, can always be grubbed for). S-A-T does stand for Scholastic Aptitude Test. It isn't entirely an intelligence test, since you do need to know stuff like the formula for the area of a circle, and your vocabulary is tested as well (I've been helping my son study for the test recently). But there are also tests of comprehension, and logic, and problem solving of the sort that more closely resemble an IQ test than does, say, kissing a professor's behind.

(Unfortunately for Sonia, she hasn't been able to kiss the Supreme Court Justices' rear ends, which may have something to do with why they have reversed 80% of the decisions she's made that they've reviewed.)

Why shouldn't we know how intelligent candidates for (either elective or appointive) public office are? During the course of a campaign we find out about their job history, their tax history, their marital history (and often, extramarital history), if they've hired any undocumented workers, and their past statements and writings. Much of that is a reflection of their intelligence. Why not find out more directly about their intelligence, though their test scores?

Obviously, people only hide things when they have things they want to hide. Sotomayor's refusal to reveal her SAT scores, and perhaps more to the point, her LSAT scores, indicate she is trying to hide a less than stellar intelligence. What other conclusion can we draw?

(And why has Obama sealed his academic records, for that matter?)

In 2004, most people were shocked to find that George W. Bush's combined SATs were 1206, higher than John Kerry's 1190. Even more surprising was that Bill Bradley, the Rhodes Scholar and Senator who ran in the Democratic primaries in 2000, got only a 485 for his verbal SAT score. These facts are revealing.

The public has a right to some sense of the brainpower that will go into the decisions that affect their lives. The SAT is the closest thing to an intelligence test that everybody has taken under the same conditions. If a candidate feels that he would be embarrassed by his scores, well, embarrassment is part of the contract you sign when you decide to become a public figure.

An aspiring politician may have other qualities he feels qualify him for public office; let him publicize those. There are certainly other qualifications for leadership that are more important, such as character and experience. (No one has ever suggested that these should be hidden.) And no electorate is ever going to opt for the average dork from MENSA anyway. But raw intelligence is important as well. Otherwise you end up with.....the government we have.

Think about it. Wouldn't, say, Warren Buffett have made a better President than any of our recent ones? Or Charles Darwin? Or Albert Einstein? (It's a stretch to imagine the latter two as politicians, but I suspect that they would have been quite adept at solving -- or at least accurately analyzing -- society's problems had they put their minds to it. The problem is, people like them often have neither the appetite nor the stomach to run.)

Which world leaders have had raw IQ points just dripping from their every pore? Abraham Lincoln. Winston Churchill. Mikhail Gorbachev. Wouldn't they inspire more confidence than some of our recent ones?

It would be nice to have all candidates for public office -- either appointive or elective -- take a pure IQ test under controlled conditions and see how they would do. A good IQ test contains no questions which can be studied for beforehand. It's all about reasoning, memory (of what you just read), patterns, spatial sense, etc. The problem with that is, the motivation to cheat would become very large, poorly paid test administrators would be susceptible to bribes, and the conditions under which the test would be taken couldn't be controlled as well as the SATs are. (No seventeen year old will use his wealth to obtain a copy of the test beforehand in anticipation of an eventual run for public office.)

So, we're stuck with the SAT, our impure IQ test.

People have been elected for all sorts of worse reasons -- would Dan Quayle ever have been elected Senator from Indiana if he hadn't been nice-looking? Would Arnold Schwarzenegger have been elected Governor if he hadn't been a movie star? Would a junior Senator from Illinois have been elected President if a wide swath of white people hadn't craved a sanitized, eloquent black candidate to vote for to prove to themselves that they weren't racist? Would George W. Bush ever have even been elected dogcatcher if he hadn't been the son and namesake of the President?

Shouldn't intelligence rank ahead of these other criteria?

Let's make it, if not mandatory to reveal one's SATs, at least clear that not revealing them is tantamount to an admission of low wattage.

Of course, my personal preference would be that everybody have their IQ tested at age twelve, then get that number permanently tattooed on their foreheads. Some might consider this a bit, well, inhuman. But think how much time you could save that way -- both in your personal life and when it comes to winnowing the field for potential Supreme Court nominees.

Tiger Woods no longer world's best golfer

The previous post mentioned North Korea's lack of a free press. What often happens with such an absence is that the state press then prints whatever "facts" it chooses.

In the case of the North Korean state media, they've reported some amazing things about Kim Jong-il, the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army and the General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea. Aside from being the composer of six operas, the state media reports, Jong-il is also an enthusiastic golfer who "routinely" shoots three or four holes-in-one per round.

A whopper like that makes you realize you can't believe anything that comes out of a communist propaganda machine. Not their GDP, not their trade balance, not their literacy rate, not their infant mortality rate. And not their leader's golf scores.

Jong-il's reported excellence at golf is a little reminiscent of Chairman Mao's famous swim in the Yangtze River on July 16, 1966. The Chinese Communist Party propagandists reported that the 72-year-old Chairman swam 15 kilometers in the river in 65 minutes. This averages out to 26.0 seconds per hundred meters. When you consider that the world record for the 100 meter freestyle was 52.9 seconds at the time, Mao's swim becomes all the more impressive, especially since Mao kept up his remarkable pace for 150 times the distance, swimming mostly breaststroke.

When I first heard of this I thought, well, it's possible that the Yangtze River was flowing at around eight miles per hour, so all he really needed to do was float for an hour. But then I found out that Class 4 rapids, which are not supposed to be rafted without a professional guide, mean water speeds of over 6 miles per hour. It's doubtful that the party functionaries would have wanted their Supreme Leader immersed in such rapids for over an hour.

It's bad enough that our own President gets the fawning coverage he does, and that the former second stringer at Punahou shoots hoops with professional basketball players who deferentially step aside to let him score.

But this is more as if our media reported that Obama took on the Miami Heat by himself, five against one, with each of the pros playing his absolute hardest, yet still defeated them, 218-74.

What does North Korea want?

Like a spoiled child who wants more attention, North Korea has been acting up recently in ways that demand the world respond. Nuclear tests followed quickly by missile tests followed by more missile tests, and now those two U.S. journalists sentenced to twelve years of hard labor for having gotten lost near the North Korean/Chinese border. It can't be coincidence.

How good -- and beneficent -- a government is can be measured pretty directly by how much freedom of the press it allows, and North Korea ranks pretty much near the bottom there. One can be clapped into a hellish North Korean prison for saying anything the least bit critical of Kim Jong-il. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is anything but.

(This measure was perhaps the most obvious sign of how totalitarian the old Soviet bloc countries were. And when a formerly vibrant press in an ostensibly free country like Venezuela is muzzled by the likes of a Hugo Chavez, that tells you pretty much all you need to know about him. Two other obvious measures of a democracy are whether there are legitimate elections and whether people are allowed to leave the country, and North Korea scores at the bottom there as well.)

The question is, what does Kim Jong-il want? In the past North Korea has effectively gotten bribes from the West to tone down its aggressiveness posturing, but this time around the North Koreans have raised the ante. Do they just want bigger bribes? Or do they actually intend to use those bombs?

I think the capture of the two U.S. journalists is actually a good sign. The only reason they would want those two is for use as bargaining chips -- which means they want to bargain.

But whether the West is in the mood to respond to North Korea with a carrot or a stick this time around remains to be seen. Obama far prefers the carrot (unless you're an American taxpayer), but eventually, all naughty children get punished.

Stay tuned.

Big Surprise Department

In an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week" yesterday morning, Hillary Clinton, speaking with her usual heartfelt forthrightness, praised her boss.

Hillary, you may remember, aired an ad last year during the primary campaign in which she said it was a dangerous world out there and that voters should think hard about whom they wanted to handle that difficult 3AM phone call. Her implication was that Barack Obama was not strong, thoughtful, and decisive enough to handle a crisis.

Yesterday Hillary said, "The President has been strong, thoughtful, decisive. I think he's doing a terrific job. And it's an honor to serve with him."

It's a tough economy out there and we all understand you want to keep your job, Hillary.

One of Obama's first moves as President was to appoint a series of high-powered types such as former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke as special envoys to such hotspots as Iran, North Korea, and Afghanistan. Speculation at the time was rife that these men represented a diminution of Hillary's power as Secretary of State.

Hillary's take on this? She told Stephanopoulos, "When I agreed to do this job, I made it very clear to the President that...I wanted special envoys."

Yep, that sounds just like the power-hungry woman we've all come to know and love.

Hillary said that she originally had no intention of joining the administration and had thought that speculation that he was considering her was "absurd." She said, "I was looking forward to going back to the Senate, and, frankly, going back to my life and representing New York, which I love."

If she loved representing New York so much, why did she try so hard to leave that job? The only absurd thing here is the thought that she was "looking forward" to going back to New York after her defeat. I suspect that her feelings, far from joyful anticipation, were much more likely bitter rage at the young upstart who had the temerity to usurp her rightful position atop the world.

When Obama first appointed Hillary as Secretary of State, there was much talk at the time that he had only done so as a way of blunting the broadsides he could otherwise expect from the Clinton camp.

Looks like his tactic succeeded.

Why does anyone ever interview Hillary Clinton? Do they actually expect any honesty from her? Or is it just for yuks?

Note to friends

If any of you ever find my naked corpse hanging from a noose with another loop tied around my genitals, please, please, cut me down, dress me, and lay me on the floor as if I'd just had a heart attack or something before you call the police.

It's probably a merciful thing that David Carradine has died, because if he hadn't, he'd surely be dying of embarrassment right now.

Addendum, 6/11/09: The NY Post reported this morning that Carradine was wearing fishnet stockings and a wig when he was found. (Friends: please remove those too.)

Instinct rules

Several recent studies suggest that our political beliefs reflect much less free will than most of us had probably assumed.

A study by Cornell psychology professor David Pizarro cross referenced results from 181 adults on the Disgust Sensitivity Scale (which measures exactly what it says, our reactions to various visual scenarios) and a political ideology scale. It turns out that people who are more squeamish, i.e., who react with disgust to the sight of various insects or blood or entrails are more likely to be conservative. The difference was most pronounced when it came to attitudes towards gays and lesbians.

Another study, by a group of NYU psychologists, showed that conservatives tend to have more well organized offices, whereas liberals tend to have more colorful, comfortable offices.

All of which would seem to indicate that political beliefs are more a matter of instinct, temperament, emotion, and perhaps tribal loyalty, and less a matter of well reasoned thought.

The only purpose of our intellect seems to be to justify the conclusions we have been lead to by our instincts and emotions, which were pretty much preordained by our genes. We are far less rational than we think.

One good example might be our reaction to the NYU study on office decor. Liberals will think, see, we have more style, more imagination, and more sense when it comes to selecting comfortable furniture. Conservatives will react by thinking, aha, see, we're better organized, which is a reflection of our more ordered thought process, and we have less concern for making a flashy impression.

Both groups' thoughts will immediately move towards justification. Which is all it seems our brains are good for.

Is that how you reacted (whichever side you're on)?

I'm afraid it's how I reacted.

Ironclad rule II

One thing I've noticed over the years is that the less self-control people have, the more control they seem to want over others. The extreme examples of this correlation are sociopaths, who lust for power over others, yet who have absolutely no control over their own appetites and desires and emotions. Narcissistic personalities, who are sort of mini-sociopaths without the viciousness, are usually bossy, yet always seem able to justify their own self-indulgence. Self-disciplined people seem to feel less desire to be in control of others.

Think of the people you know. You should find that this rule applies.

Link to swimming article III

Another guest editorial on the Swimming world website:

http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/21313.asp?q=Open%20Up%20The%20Masters
%20World%20Record%20Book

(For masters swimming fanatics only)

Good timing

Yesterday a Muslim deli owner, Mohammad Sohail (pictured above on the surveillance tape), stopped a robber who came into his store brandishing a baseball bat by getting the drop on him with his rifle. When the would-be robber broke down in tears and said he was only doing it to support his family, Sohail, didn't turn him in to the police. Instead he gave him forty dollars and a loaf of bread after making him promise never to rob again. (Sohail also pretended to swear him into the Muslim faith after the man said he wanted to become a Muslim too.)

"I felt bad for him," said Sohail. "I'm a very little man. I just did a good job. I have a good feeling in my heart. I feel very good."

He should feel good about himself. He acted in what, in this country, is often called a Christian way. The story got a fair amount of play on the airwaves.

It could not have come at a more propitious time for Barack Obama's major speech in Cairo today. Obama called for a "new beginning between the United States and Muslims," and said that "this cycle of suspicion and discord must end."

Let's hope it does.

Sohail certainly did his part to show a side of Islam that doesn't normally get publicized.

It's a good thing the Taliban didn't choose yesterday to punish another young Afghan couple who decided to elope by machine gunning them to death (as they did a couple months ago). That, well, might not have been such great timing.

Feral girl

The most interesting news this morning was this item from Reuters:

Russian police find feral girl in Siberia

Wed may 27, 8:53 am ET

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian police have taken into care a 5-year-old girl who has been shut up in a flat in the company of cats and dogs for her entire life, police said on Wednesday.

The girl, who lived in the Eastern Siberian city of Chita, could not speak Russian and acted like an dog when police took her into care.

"For five years, the girl was 'brought up' by several dogs and cats and had never been outside," a police statement said.

"The unwashed girl was dressed in filthy clothes, had the clear attributes of an animal and jumped at people," it said.

The flat had no heat, water or sewage system.

A police spokeswoman said the girl, known as Natasha, is being monitored by psychologists in an orphanage. Her mother was being questioned but her father has not been found yet.

She appears to be about 2-years-old, though her real age is five, refuses to eat with a spoon and has taken on many of the gestures of the animals with which she lived, police said.

"When carers leave the room, the girl jumps at the door and barks," the police said.

Feral children, the stuff of folklore all over the world, usually exhibit the behavior of the animals with whom they have had closest contact, a condition known as the Mowgli Syndrome after the fictional child from Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" who was raised by wolves in the jungle.

Such children have usually built strong ties with the animals with whom they lived and find the transition to normal human contact extremely traumatic.

The story leaves me wondering:

How did this girl survive five winters in an unheated apartment in Siberia? Did she have any siblings? How were they treated? What was she fed? How much contact did she have with humans when she was fed? What will become of her? Why did her parents do this to her? Are they semi-retarded, or just cruel? What will be done to the parents?

Sadly, from what I remember about the few other reported cases of feral children, they never grow up to be remotely close to normal. Earlier on this blog there was a post about the backgrounds of children who grow up to be sociopaths (http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2009/04/that-all-important-childhood.html). This would certainly seem to be a case where the girl was destined for that outcome. She certainly couldn't have bonded with either of her parents, and at age five, it's too late for her to really do so with any new parental figure. Is it possible that she somehow bonded with some of the animals in a way that would allow for any sort of normal bonding with humans later on?

Tarzan of the Apes was supposed to have been brought up by great apes, yet still turned into an English gentleman when given the right training later in life. (Edgar Rice Burroughs was even more a believer in genetic destiny than E.O. Wilson.) But the Tarzan series was about as realistic as Burroughs' other books (which include "John Carter of Mars" and "At The Earth's Core.")

It's hard not to feel sorry for this girl. The odds are overwhelming that she will never have a normal relationship with another human being. And if she does turn out to be sociopath-like in her inability to bond, you can hardly blame her. It almost gives you some sympathy for other sociopaths; this girl's background is a sort of metaphor for most of theirs. Unlike them, however, she won't be able to do much harm, as she will not be able to blend in with the rest of the population the way they can. So our sympathy can be unalloyed.

Races I'd like to see

Another guest editorial I wrote for the Swimming World website:

http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/21244.asp?q=Races%20I%27d%20Like%20to%20See

Caution: You have to really be into swimming to find this interesting.

Tattoos

(On left, Robert DeNiro with temporary tattoos applied to make him seem scary and creepy in Cape Fear; above, Angelina Jolie achieving the same effect with her real ones)








There is no more eloquent way of saying, "I'm not intelligent enough to realize that I might have a change of heart some day" than to get a tattoo. (The very best way of demonstrating this is to have the name of one's paramour inked on.)

Just as a British accent can give an impression of a high IQ (rightly or wrongly), a tattoo emits the aura of a low one (usually rightly).

They're certainly an effective vehicle for social mobility. Cover your body in ink and you travel instantaneously from upper class to lower class. (Or at least, from upper middle to lower middle.)

Tattoos can also be a way of advertising that one is dangerous. Think of the people who get them. Hell's Angels. Latin Kings. The Aryan Brotherhood. In Japan, the Yakuza (the Japanese mafia) cover their bodies with them. Russian gangsters use them to tell their life stories (see Eastern Promises). And where do all these upstanding citizens get them? Often, in prison. Gang tats are a clear message that this is not a person to be trifled with. Which, I guess, is the point of getting them.

Of course, these days all sorts of people get tattoos. Baby Boomers grew up associating tattoos with guys from the WWII generation, many of whom sported relatively discreet, Popeye-style, military-themed tattoos. Today tattoos are considered cool again, for reasons that aren't entirely apparent. Do youngsters think if they get, say, that popular armlet tattoo, that people will find them original?

How do you react to a tattoo? Does it make you want to hire its wearer for your company? Have her baby-sit for you? Be friends with him?

Perhaps more to the point, does it make you want to have sex with the person more? (The presence of a tattoo unquestionably does lend that certain air of availability. In fact, young people sometimes refer to tattoos on young women as "tramp stamps.")

I've never understood the concept that tattoos are sexy. I could be with the most attractive woman in the world, but if she disrobed to reveal a tattoo in a private place, I suspect I would immediately be rendered impotent. Luckily, I've never had that experience.

Well, at least not because of a tattoo.

Facial tattoos send the strongest message of all: "I don't care about anything." Or maybe even, "I'm pretty much insane." If you've ever seen pictures of inmates with swastikas on their foreheads, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Should you ever wind up with one of these fellows as your cellmate, prepare to be very, uh, reasonable.

While Googling images of facial tattoos earlier today, I saw several photos of guys with "fuck you" inked across their foreheads (in two cases, where their eyebrows used to be). They needn't have been so specific: any facial tattoo communicates pretty much that same message.

When I heard about Mike Tyson's various early scrapes with the law, I thought, well, it's not entirely his fault, his background didn't exactly lend itself to a bookish existence. When I read about the Desiree Washington rape case, I thought, that poor guy has too much testosterone, he may not have fully comprehended how forceful he was being. When I heard about Tyson's comments to Lennox Lewis about how he wanted to eat Lewis's children, I thought, well, he's just trying to hype the fight. When I heard about the prefight scuffle with Lewis, I thought, okay, he's going to fight him anyway, he's just getting into the spirit of the occasion. When I saw Tyson bite part of Evander Holyfield's ear off, I thought, well, he was understandably chagrined about getting head butted.

It was only when I saw Mike Tyson's facial tattoo that it hit me he was truly disturbed.

When you see a tattoo, you have to wonder if the wearer was drunk when he got it. (If anybody ever dares you to do something, don't do it. It's not in your self-interest.)

When I was in ninth grade, partly out of peer pressure, I "experimented" with marijuana. (Okay, maybe I conducted a hundred such experiments.) Luckily, I carry no visible evidence of all those lapses of judgment.

Tattoos are the opposite. Lapse just once, and you get a permanent reminder.

The British scandal

The brouhaha in the House of Commons hasn't gotten much press over here, but it has stirred some very strong emotions over in the UK. Evidently numerous members of Parliament, under cover of their second home allowance, have put in for some extremely dubious expenses. They include the clearing of a moat, pet food, a trousers press, repairs on a partner's house, and fertilizer (the kind which gets spread on gardens, not voiced by politicians). The list of these abuses is evidently very extensive.

I've long resented the way that rich people in this country have been able to simply buy their way into public office. It's happened with Frank Lautenberg, John Heinz, Jon Corzine, Michael Bloomberg, various Kennedys and Rockefellers, and many, many others.

But one thing you can say for most of the rich people who spend their money to buy a political position is, however undeserving they are and out of control their egos may be, at least they're not doing it in order to feed at the public trough.

What was he told?

Barack Obama has changed his mind on more than enough issues to warrant the F-F label. He flip-flopped on the campaign finance issue, on the Palestinian question, on lobbyists, on earmarks, on the torture photos, on his first act as President being to sign an abortion rights bill, and now on the question of whether captive terrorists should be tried by military tribunals or civilian courts.

Some of Obama's flip-flopping (such as on campaign finance) is politics as usual, and as such deserves censure. But some of it is a little more forgivable, more a matter of his initial idealism running up against the hard realities of governing.

An example of the latter has been his change of heart regarding what to do with the captured terrorists. He has obviously been briefed by the CIA and NSA regarding foiled terrorist plots, the players involved, and what is still being plotted. What he has heard has obviously frightened him into changing his mind.

We kept hearing during the Bush administration about the many terrorist plans for wreaking widespread havoc on American soil, which never came fruition because of our government's vigilance. (We didn't hear the details, just that they were foiled.) New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who has been privy to some of this information, has devoted a fair amount of his manpower to an anti-terrorism task force.

It would certainly be interesting to find out the details of exactly what the jihadists had/have in mind for us.

Father of the Year

The following item appeared this morning in Yahoo News:

"JONESBORO, Ga. – A Georgia man is sentenced to 100 years in prison for poisoning his children to extort money from Campbell's Soup Co.

"William Cunningham was sentenced Thursday after a jury found him guilty on seven counts of aggravated assault for forcing the children in 2006 to eat soup laced with prescription drugs and lighter fluid.

"His 3-year-old son and 18-month-old daughter were hospitalized twice. A family member said the youngsters may suffer lifelong respiratory problems from lung damage caused by the lighter fluid.

"Cunningham's wife has since divorced him.

"Cunningham pleaded guilty in 2007 to a federal charge of making false claims against Campbell's Soup by threatening to sue them over the contaminated soup."

There are high IQ crimes and low IQ crimes. This is not one of the former.

A more appropriate punishment for Cunningham would be to have to imbibe that same nourishing formula he provided his children, once a month, for as many of those hundred years as he lasts.

A little more eye-for-an-eye Old Testament spirit in our legal system would undoubtedly have a dampening effect on our crime rates. There are practical limits to this: you can't kill Ted Bundy thirty-six times, nor, unfortunately, are there fifty billion dollars to steal back from Bernie Madoff. But to the extent you can take a tooth for a tooth, it would certainly serve justice.

Bombs away

Yesterday three American soldiers were killed and nine wounded when a suicide bomber attacked them near a crowded outdoor market in Baghdad. Twelve civilians were killed and twenty-five wounded in the same attack.

Earlier the same day, a suicide bomber killed seven Sunni paramilitary officers (who worked for the US-backed government) in Kirkuk. Eight others were wounded.

Two days ago, on May 19th, a car bomb went off near a group of restaurants in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, killing 41 people and wounding over 70 more.

On May 6th, 15 people were killed by a car bomb at a vegetable market in Baghdad.

On April 29, two car bombs killed 51 people in Sadr City, a Shiite neighborhood.

Given the frequency of such bombings in Iraq, you'd think that people would make more of an effort to avoid crowded places.

If I lived in Iraq, I'd move my family to the countryside (if I could), and shop only at unpopular stores during off hours. I'd certainly never eat at a restaurant nestled into a group of other restaurants.

The only place I want to witness a bombing is on a movie screen. Actually, even there it's a little too jarring for my taste.

Hieronymus Bosch was an artist most famous for his triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Most of us have seen posters of it: on the left, a scene from the Garden of Eden; in the middle, a vision of paradise; and on the right, his vision of hell. The aftermath of a real bombing makes Bosch's vision of hell look like paradise. The scene is littered with corpses, and body parts are strewn everywhere. And though we first notice the number of dead, the wounded are often horrifically maimed.

The Sunnis and Shiites (especially the Sunnis, it seems) are hellbent on exterminating each other.

It's their country, let them do what they want. But why waste American lives in the bargain?

Elmore Leonard

This past Wednesday evening my son and I went to see Elmore Leonard, who was speaking at the New Canaan library.

He was introduced by columnist Mike Lupica as "our greatest living writer." I might give that nod to Tom Wolfe, but there's no doubting Leonard's greatness. He is unquestionably our foremost crime novelist. I have an entire bookcase shelf -- you might call it a shrine -- devoted to his novels.

What Leonard has in common with Wolfe is his skill in creating dramatic, climactic showdowns between macho characters. They both understand courage and cowardice, intimidation and retreat. What Leonard has over Wolfe is that he has a great feel for how sociopaths think and act, and knows how they differ from the rest of us. Wolfe has a tendency to make all of his characters equally venal and self-serving. (What Wolfe has over Leonard is that he ranges over a wider variety of social milieus, and perhaps has a keener eye for status considerations.) Both men have great, sly senses of humor.

Leonard's characters tend to hang out in places like The Glades Correctional Facility in Florida, or the Kronk Gymnasium in Detroit. They are mostly low-lives: fortune tellers, loan sharks, small time gangsters, and the like. For those of us who have led relatively sheltered lives, they illuminate that world in a way that makes it come alive and seem very real.

When you go see someone like Leonard, you don't really expect to learn anything about him, or from him. You do that from reading his books, and reading about him. It's more to just see the great man, soak up his aura, sort of sniff him. There's a certain quiet thrill in seeing the actual human being behind all those enjoyable adventures you've read. And maybe you can give yourself a conversation- (or blog-) piece later on.

Leonard read a bit from his latest book, "Road Dogs." He also answered a few questions, including this one from a young-ish man: "Do you write to escape, or to find yourself?" (I guess no matter how rich or successful you get, you're never entirely insulated from stupidity. Leonard's answer was, "I write for the money, and I also enjoy it.")

Leonard let on that most of the movies which had been made from his books were lousy, though he liked "Hombre" and "Get Shorty." This was no surprise; I've seen many of those movies.

It was obvious that even at 83 he's still quite sharp, which is encouraging for all of us who are younger. He's not a particularly distinctive-looking fellow. I've seen his picture in the back of most of his books, and as always when I read a book, have found myself turning to look at his picture fairly frequently. Yet if I saw him on the street, I doubt that I'd recognize him.

He reiterated a few of his rules of writing, including this fairly famous one: "If it sounds like writing, re-write it."

He also said that he tries not to get in the way of his characters. This is a quest in which he succeeds admirably. When you read him, you really feel you're in a shack on the fringes of the Everglades listening to some drug dealers, or in a Michigan prison yard listening to real inmates.

My son and I sat in the back of the audience so that we could leave early without causing a scene. As a result, even though I raised my hand several times during the Q and A session afterward, I was never called on. What I had intended to say was this: "I just wanted to pass along an observation my seventeen year old son, who's a big fan of yours, made a few minutes ago. He said, 'Here we are in the New Canaan Public Library surrounded by a group of well-behaved, respectful, bookish people. I can't imagine a more un-Elmore Leonard-like setting'."

Had that gotten a good response, I would have added, "Please promise me one thing, that you'll use this setting in at least one of your books in the future."

It would have been a vain request, but it might have given the great man a small chuckle.

Coolest thief ever

Albert Spaggiari (1932-1989) is known as the mastermind behind what was known at the time as the greatest heist ever, the robbery of the Societe Generale bank in Nice, France, in 1976.

Spaggiari grew up in Hyeres, the son of a shopkeeper. The story -- perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not -- is that he committed his first robbery in order to be able to give a girlfriend a diamond.

As a young man, Spaggiari joined the French Foreign Legion, the legendary refuge for criminals on the lam. He later fought as a paratrooper in the Indochina War.

He became involved with the OAS, the secretive nationalist organization which wanted France to maintain control of Algeria. He was sent to prison for several years for his OAS activities. He wrote his first book, (translated as) "One Needn't Laugh with the Barbarians," during this stretch.

By 1976 he was living a quiet middle class life as the owner of a photography studio in Nice. But he was bored, and as he later described it, felt like a "200 pound walking carcass."

When Spaggiari heard that the vault of the Societe Generale bank in Nice was located right next to the sewer lines, he began planning. He rented a safety deposit box himself and placed an alarm clock in it; he set the alarm to go off in the middle of the night to check to see if there was any acoustic or seismic detection gear. But there was none, since the vault was considered impregnable.

With the aid of the Corsican Union (the French Mafia), along with some ex-OAS friends, Spaggiari put together a team of men to do the job. They spent two long months digging a twenty-six foot long tunnel from the sewers into the vault. Finally, on July 16, during the middle of the Bastille Day celebration, the men broke in. Spaggiari then served his men a meal of wine and pate so they could have their own celebration inside the vault. They then opened 400 deposit boxes and made off with 60 million francs.

Before they left, the men wrote on the wall of the vault, in French, "Without hatred, without violence, without weapons." (This later became the title of a French movie about the robbery.)

At first the police were baffled by the break in. But by October, a former girlfriend of one of the thieves tipped them off, and they arrested the man. The man eventually broke down after an extended interrogation and named names. Spaggiari was arrested along with the rest of the gang.

Spaggiari hired an old friend, Jacques Peyrat, a French Foreign Legion veteran who was a member of the National Front, to be his lawyer.

During his hearings, Spaggiari convinced the judge that the purpose of the heist was to finance a secret political organization called Catena. (Spaggiari's previous involvement with the OAS made this claim more credible, but in fact the organization was totally fictitious.) Spaggiari then wrote up a document which he claimed was proof of the existence of this organization. He coded the document so that he would need to spend more time with Judge Bouaziz in his second floor chambers.

One day, while conferring with the judge, Spaggiari walked to the second floor window, opened it, and jumped down onto the roof of a car parked below. He rolled off the car like the paratrooper he was and onto the back of a waiting motorcycle, which sped off through the traffic. As the judge stared open-mouthed from the open window, Spaggiari turned and gave him the finger.

Spaggiari was never caught.

After his escape, Spaggiari was sentenced in absentia to life in prison. He reportedly went to Argentina and underwent plastic surgery to make himself unrecognizable. He also was rumored to have returned to France several times, secretly visiting his mother and his wife.

Spaggiari later wrote a book about his escapades, "Fric-Frac: The Great Riviera Bank Robbery." He described how, with the war over and most of his friends dead, he had felt trapped by his humdrum existence in modern society. He also gave an account of how distasteful it was to have had to spend such a long time in the fetid sewers.

Spaggiari died of throat cancer in 1989 while with his wife in the Piedmont section of Italy.

Hollywood has a tendency to make movies about lovable, loyal, admirable, honorable criminals, as in The Godfather, The Sting, Oceans Eleven, and so on. Such characterizations are almost always misleading.

Almost always.

Another Eco-hypocrite

From this morning's NY Post:

"TRUDIE Styler -- who co-founded the Rainforest Foundation 20 years ago -- flew her hairstylist from New York to Washington, DC, last weekend on a private jet to do her hair and makeup for the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

"While her husband, Sting, flew on commercial flights round-trip from London, Styler and an entourage of eight, including her Manhattan-based hair guru Antonio Prieto, took a private plane to the event, instead of taking the shuttle or taking an energy-saving Amtrak train.

"'The stylist was added to a previous scheduled flight to DC and flew back commercially,' a rep for Styler told Page Six.

"Styler herself added, 'Yes, I do take planes. My life is to travel and my life is also to speak out about the horrors of an environment that is being abused at the hands of oil companies.'

"The rocker and his wife are big proponents of saving the rainforests. But as The Post reported last year, Sting's star-studded charity concert for the Rainforest Foundation in 2006 donated only 41 percent of the proceeds to tree-saving programs. Well-run charities typically spend 75 percent on programs.

"Last May, Britain's Daily Mail reported the couple owns seven homes and 'have a carbon footprint estimated at 30 times that of the average UK resident'."

Why is it that those celebrities most preachy about the environment are invariably the most wasteful themselves?

There's definitely a correlation. Al Gore and his gigantic mansion in Tennessee with a carbon footprint twenty times that of the average US household. Barbra Streisand with a room just for her furs which she keeps at fifty-five degrees all summer (after telling the rest of us that we should only turn our thermostats down to eighty). John Edwards, who campaigned as an environmentalist, and his 25,000 square foot house. Leo DiCaprio and his private planes. John Travolta and his private fleet of jumbo jets.

The common thread seems to be self-indulgence. It takes a very self-indulgent person to surround themselves with gigantic mansions and fly on private planes. And it takes a very self-indulgent person to preach to us common folk how we should lead our lives. (In psychology, such people are known as narcissistic personalities.)

It's true, part of the reason that celebrities are so wasteful is because they are rich, and some of us common folk, had we similar bank accounts, would be wasteful too. But most of us, even if we did indulge ourselves, wouldn't compound the sin by telling everybody else they should be the ones to sacrifice.

Those evil oil companies Trudie Styler rails against must be delighted to have her as a customer.

You didn't have to bother to read either the Post article or this blogpost, by the way. All you had to do was look at the picture. The over-collagened lips, the extreme nose job, the too-tight face lift, and the self-satisfied smile tell you all you really need to know about Trudie.

Straight from Central Casting

Sometimes, when I see photos of criminals, I'm surprised by how good-looking they are. (This happens more frequently with men, as good-looking women rarely need to turn to crime.) Sociopaths, those lowest forms of humanity, often look like the boy -- or girl -- next door. Their outward appearance rarely reflects their inner monstrousness.

But every now and then, nature cooperates beyond our wildest expectations.

The couple pictured above, Gale and Sheila Muhs of Westlake, Texas, were arrested two days ago for having leveled shotgun blasts at a family which was doing some off-road ATVing on public property. The Muhs evidently mistakenly thought that the ATVers were on their property. Sheila Muhs took aim with a 12 gauge shotgun, and handed the gun to husband Gale, who took a turn. Each then took a subsequent turn. They killed the family's 7 year old boy and wounded his 5 year old sister. The father was also wounded, and a 30 year old friend of the family is in serious condition.

Hollywood often casts people who look like this (these two look like extras from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) to play the part of Southern hicks who terrorize the tourists who happen to pass through their communities. This is a common horror movie theme. When I see such movies -- and actors -- I usually attribute them to the prejudices of Hollywood directors and producers (who themselves are usually at least as prejudiced, albeit in a different direction, as the people whom they portray as bigots). I always think, that's not my experience of Southerners. I've found Southerners mostly friendly and hospitable. And often, quite good-looking.

I may now have to reconsider.