"On the Street Where You Live"

In the comment section of the previous post Guy mentioned Nat King Cole. One of the most beautiful songs Cole ever recorded was from the musical My Fair Lady:

On the Street Where You live

(The music was by Frederick Loewe, but the lyricist deserves credit here too. Alan Jay Lerner, he of the six wives and longtime substance abuse problems, has captured the giddiness of young love perfectly.)

Richard Rodgers

I've taken an informal poll over the last few days about who the greatest composer of the twentieth century is. The answers have ranged from George Gershwin (twice, the only composer to receive two votes) to Arvo Part (who's that?) to Stevie Wonder to Gustav Mahler (partially twentieth century) to Stravinsky to Aaron Copland to David Bowie to Philip Glass to a few others I can't remember.

My pick is Richard Rodgers.

The essence of good music is that it is moving. It doesn't have to move you in just one direction -- sentimentality -- but it does have to move you. As Tolstoy said, "Music is the shorthand of emotion."

Music can make us feel grandiose, sad, romantic, or exuberant. There's nothing intelligent about these feelings; then again, there's no such thing as an intelligent emotion. Anyway, what good is having a big brain if it can't make us feel?

Sophisticates like to look down on Rodgers and Hammerstein productions for being schmaltzy and overwrought. They may have been that, but they were also moving. And what made them that way were Richard Rodgers' tunes.

Rodgers and Hammerstein's biggest box-office hit was The Sound of Music. It takes a guy who's awfully secure in his masculinity -- and intellect -- to admit he likes this movie. So I'm not admitting anything. But I will say that it has some beautiful tunes, and some other decent ones if you can get past the cloyingly cutesy lyrics. One of the most beautiful songs is the title song, which is almost as lovely as the movie's background scenery.

Oklahoma was another big hit for the duo. It, too, it seems hokey now, but the tunes are still great. One of its most beautiful songs was People Will Say We're in Love:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEwVAV3VPw4

(To us Baby Boomers who grew up thinking of Shirley Jones as the mother in The Partridge Family, it's a revelation to see and hear her as a young woman.)

The King and I was another big hit, which made a star of Yul Brynner. Shall We Dance and Hello Young Lovers are classics. Here's Getting to Know You:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aVbJhg23Ao&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=MLGxdCwVVULXdP-7ofnRBOPPQSYAwMvxmv

(Deborah Kerr was one of the screen's all time great beauties, though it is not apparent from this clip.)

Carousel probably had the best music of all the Rodgers and Hammerstein productions: June is Bustin' Out All Over, What's the Use of Wond'rin, A Real Nice Clambake, and You'll Never Walk Alone. Again, with all of these songs you have to get past the lyrics (blame those on Oscar Hammerstein and the year 1945). The most famous song was probably If I Loved You:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuHAh-2xGxw

If by this point you're in the mood for an instrumental, the Carousel Waltz is also beautiful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWK16_i57tA&feature=related

South Pacific was another big hit. Its most well known song may have been Some Enchanted Evening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjgEeKoZ3FQ

One song from that musical, I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy, featured lyrics Hammerstein might as well have been writing about himself: "I'm as corny as Kansas in August, I'm as normal as blueberry pie. No more a smart little girl with no heart, I have found me a wonderful guy." 

The wonderful guy Hammerstein found was Rodgers, who wrote tunes that could make even corny lyrics sound profound. But before Hammerstein, Rodgers had teamed with Lorenz Hart. Hart was a more sophisticated lyricist, and his lyrics tended to be strictly about love, a more timeless topic, so they seem less dated. The average American is not familiar with most of the Rodgers/Hart musicals, most of which were originally produced in the '20's and '30's. But they included some classic songs I hadn't even realized that Rodgers had written.

One was Isn't it Romantic. Here is the Rod Stewart version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMesOOVke4w

Another was Where or When. It has been recorded by artists as diverse as Ella Fitzgerald, the Queen of Scat; Dion and the Belmonts, an early doowop group; and Rod Stewart in his classics phase. Lena Horne's version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnRSM3dLSTk

Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered is a song you associate with sophisticated, sultry temptresses. It has been recorded by practically every major siren of the past eighty years: Ella, Lena, Cher, Barbra, Carly, Celine -- and those are just the ones identifiable by their first names. Here's Ella's version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYPoEGAttB8&feature=fvw

The Lady is a Tramp is not the kind of song you'd associate in any way with a production like The Sound of Music, any more than you could imagine Frank Sinatra as Captain von Trapp. But it was yet another Rodgers song, and here is Sinatra's version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VJY97l0jVA

(This song is not moving, but is included just to illustrate Rodgers' range.)

There are many others songs (Rodgers composed over 900 in his lifetime), but this post has meandered long enough already. 

Looking at a list of the songs that Rodgers has composed is a little like reading a list of quotations from Shakespeare. All those common sayings you've heard so many times that you assume they're just part of the lexicon turn out to all be from one source. It's mind-boggling.

It may seem this post has given short shrift to the lyricists. But a good lyricist is basically just a clever wordsmith, a smart guy who works hard at his craft.

Being able to compose beautiful music, on the other hand, is a gift from the gods.

If you've read this entire post without listening to any of the songs, and you think you understand it, you're wrong. You can't possibly understand it without listening to the music. Now go back and click on each of those links.

All in the family

Sonja Kohn, at right, has just been slapped with a lawsuit by Irving Picard, the trustee for the Madoff victims, for having knowingly participated in Bernie Madoff's fraud. 

I can't be the only person struck by the resemblance. She looks as if she could be Bernie's younger sister. Or even Bernie himself dressed up in (not very convincing) drag.

Maromero

I've always thought that being in a big time title fight must be one of the most nerve-wracking things a human being can possibly do. You've known it's going to happen for months, and when the time finally arrives, you enter the ring in front of thousands of screaming bloodthirsty fans, most of whom are hoping that one of you takes the other's head off.

Ernest Hemingway once defined guts as "grace under pressure." Humor under pressure is basically the same thing; it's hard not to admire anyone who shows it.

In the previous post I mentioned Jorge "Maromero" Paez, the Mexican boxer, who was able to pull off a clownish act in what most of us would consider extraordinarily tense circumstances. Just watch the first forty seconds of the following video (it's boring after that). And if you're offended by obscene dancing, don't watch it at all:


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

Tim McKee

Tim McKee (above) is most famous for having lost the gold medal in the 400 meter individual medley by two-thousandths of a second to Gunnar Larson of Sweden at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. After that race the IOC decided that henceforth all races would only be judged to the hundredth of a second. McKee also won the silver medal in the 200 IM at those Olympics. Four years later in Montreal McKee broke the existing world record in the 400 IM but had to settle for yet another silver.

I got to see McKee perform in person once, at the 1972 National AAU championships in Dallas. Back then, US Nationals were, apart from the Olympics, the biggest meet in swimming (the world championships didn't exist yet). Mark Spitz, who four months later would win seven gold medals in Munich, was there, as was every other American record holder of the time. A national title could be the culmination of an entire career, so everyone's nerves were on edge. 

McKee seemed to regard nationals differently -- he saw it as a big party. During warmups for finals he would do a clownish backstroke where after each stroke he would playfully pat the water at his side. (I tried imitating it later, but found it impossible.) Even when the swimmers marched out for finals, towels over their heads, McKee would play to the crowd, joking and waving. I was shocked to see he actually competed in the finals wearing a puka shell necklace.

McKee was basically David Lee Roth before Roth was. There are very few people who can pull off that kind of macho hotdogging while managing to stay cute and funny, and do it all with an undertone of self-mockery that allows them to get away with it. And McKee did it all fearlessly, on a stage where most people would be way too nervous to exhibit such uninhibited glee. Both McKee and Roth were fearless, muscular, acrobatic, and funny -- what every boy wants to be. 

Usain Bolt pulls it off. I've seen various boxers, most notably Jorge Paez, pull it off. But the vast majority of us would simply be way too nervous, klutzy, and inhibited to be able to do it.

A college teammate of mine once joked to me that when he would be at various AAU meets, he would lay down on a mat, ingest a little honey exactly a half hour before his races, try to stay warm, and get up to shake his muscles loose right before his event. Meanwhile he would see McKee and his Suburban Swim Club teammates running around like a pack of feral animals. They never bothered to put on their sweats, and would take turns putting their fists six inches from each other's arms, and then punching as hard as they could. They evidently found this a never-ending source of entertainment.

One of my coaches told me that when McKee was at the Pan American Games in Colombia in the summer of 1971, he led an expedition of swimmers into the seediest section of Cali to find a whorehouse. He was 17 years old at the time.

The Olympic training camp in 1972 was located at West Point. Word filtered back to the coaches that McKee smoked, so one of them took him aside and suggested he lay off the cigarettes. McKee looked the coach straight in the eye and said, "Oh no sir, I would never smoke cigarettes. Cigarettes are bad for you." Meanwhile, the coach couldn't help but notice the nicotine stains on McKee's fingers.

One day McKee started to climb the 10 meter diving platform at the pool. This was strictly off limits to anyone but the divers, so the Army guards told McKee to come down. McKee just ignored them and continued to climb, so the guards started to go up after him. McKee got to the top, and looked at the men coming after him. He waited until they were almost at the top, and then did a perfect one and a half somersault dive into the pool. (If you've never been to the top of a ten meter dive, it's thirty-three feet up but looks as if it's three hundred and thirty feet down.)

One of my college coaches had been a teammate of McKee's at the University of Florida. This coach told us that McKee trained hard, but would also party all night, every night. Every morning as the other Florida swimmers trudged down the corridor of their athletic dormitory for morning practice, they would see McKee poke his head out of his dorm room, usher a couple of girls out, and then join them. After practice, when the other swimmers would go to class, McKee would just go back to his dorm room and sleep all day until it was time for afternoon practice. 

At the time, I thought McKee the coolest thing I'd ever heard of. Looking back three and a half decades later, with the wisdom and (theoretical) maturity of my years.....he still seems awfully cool.

In 1971 A Clockwork Orange was released. It made Malcolm McDowell, who played Alex, the antihero of the movie, famous. Alex was bad, but in such a gleefully exuberant way that he made a certain brand of naughtiness -- or evil, if you prefer -- attractive. (And yes, I realize I'm describing the charm of a sociopath.)

Tim McKee was Alex come to life (minus, perhaps, the viciousness).

The "perhaps" is because the kind of unbridled confidence it takes to pull off such an act usually goes hand in hand with a narcissistic personality, and maybe even a sociopathic one. I never met McKee (he was about eight levels above me in swimming), and it's entirely possible that he was a difficult personality. On the other hand, I knew a fair number of people who had met him, and none of them ever expressed dislike. (Most simply expressed amusement, or more frequently, awe, at his antics.) So he gets the benefit of the doubt.

Last summer McKee was one of the swimming celebrities who took part in the Swim Across America (a cancer fund raiser), and I saw a picture of him. It's always a shock to see how anybody has aged after a long period of time. But somehow it's more of a shock to see someone who was immortalized at a young age, someone famous for having been a wild young man. (He is second from left, below.)

He was quoted recently, when asked about his near miss in Munich, as having replied, "You waste the present and the future when you dwell in the past."

No one could ever accuse McKee of having lived anywhere but in the present.

Addendum, 12/25/10 -- Just spoke to the aforementioned college teammate of mine who had described McKee running around like a feral animal at those AAU meets. My friend, who was a great swimmer in his own right, had gone on a foreign trip representing the US in Sweden with McKee in early 1976. He told me that McKee won both the 200 and 400 IM's at that meet -- without having even warmed up. I was a little incredulous at this. I asked, what do you mean he didn't warm up -- you mean he just took a short swim beforehand? My friend said, no, he literally never even got into the water before his events. He just stood on deck and shook his arms a little, then raced. (This is unheard of in swimming.)

My friend also said that all of the guys on the US team tried to get the attention of the Swedish girls at the meet, but that the girls only wanted to pay attention to McKee. My friend said he had heard a lot of McKee stories before this, but had never really believed any of them. After that trip, he believed all of them.

A silly discussion

Steve Sailer (isteve.blogspot.com) put up a brief post yesterday about a table ranking various sports by their physical and mental requirements: 

http://www.nismat.org/phil/perffact/perftab.html

You don't have to bother to look at it, it's mostly a bunch of pseudoscientific criteria, i.e., someone's subjective judgment about which sports are the most difficult to perform. (And no, I didn't dislike this study because swimming was given short shrift; it was actually ranked in the middle on most criteria.)

These lists are always absurd. You'll hear these arguments from time to time; just last week I overheard some idiot at my local gym expounding on how cross country skiers were the best athletes. The only logical answer is that any sport's athletes are in the best shape -- for that sport.

Put a competitor from the World's Strongest Man Competition in the Tour de France and he wouldn't last a day. But put a Tour de France cyclist in the World's Strongest Man competition and he'd look like the weakling he is.

Twenty years ago Matt Biondi, the Olympic champion swimmer, participated in the Superstars competition. When he ran the 100 yard dash he looked like a big, ungainly stork, especially next to all the black NFL players (and, somewhat surprisingly, some of the black baseball players as well). But most of those NFL players looked as if they were drowning when they attempted the 50 yard freestyle.

What does all this mean? Nothing.

One similar discussion actually was resolved, about two decades ago. Back in the old days people used to argue about which was the most effective martial art. When the Ultimate Fighting Championships, the first large freestyle tournament, started back in 1993, that argument was definitively decided. Whenever a grappler got into the ring against a striker, he would inevitably render the striker helpless in very short order. End of argument. (These days a fighter has to have all the skills, because grapplers often neutralize each other's grappling techniques.) 

But when it comes to questions of comparing different athletes in different sports, and trying to determine who is better, comparisons are pointless, and a little ridiculous. It's equally pointless to argue about who was more dominant, Roger Federer in tennis or Michael Jordan in basketball.

It's basically like trying to argue about who was greater, Beethoven or Shakespeare.

Time to drop these discussions.

Studying the enemy

I got a call the other day from a friend of my son's. He is a college freshman and is taking a course on feminism, which, according to him, he pretty much has to take. The course is taught by a professor with exactly the kinds of attitudes you would expect. My son's friend had been assigned to write a paper on masculinity for the class and wanted to know if I had ever written anything on the topic. I said that although I'd skirted around the topic obliquely, I'd never addressed it directly. Then I remembered this post:

http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2009/06/toughest-guy-i-ever-met.html

I suggested he say that masculinity was often associated with toughness, but that toughness was more than just acting macho, that it took many forms, and then use some of the examples from the post, which included a few women. I told him that his professor would like those examples.

(When my son found out that his friend had asked me for help on the paper, his response was, "Asking you for advice about masculinity is a little like asking a midget his opinion on height.")

During the course of our conversation my son's friend mentioned that he was actually enjoying the course because although he disagreed with much of what the professor said, it had forced him to think about those issues and had crystallized his thinking.

I thought this particularly perspicacious coming from an 18-year-old. It's true: if you don't expose yourself to different viewpoints, you'll never learn to think for yourself. There are too many people who can only recite the boilerplate from their own side, because all they ever do is listen to like-minded people. If you want to understand an issue -- and if you want to be able to really lacerate your opponents -- you have to really listen to what they have to say. Then you can analyze their arguments, and pick them apart.

One of the things that makes Ann Coulter funny is that she really listens to what the liberals say. Love her or hate her, she pays attention, which is something most people on both sides of the aisle don't do. This is why she can turn her commentary into humor whereas a Keith Olbermann can only vent his bile.

There are times you can make your point by merely repeating your opponents' words. One time on Fox News Coulter looked straight at the camera and calmly -- and unflinchingly -- suggested, "If you want to hear what my opponents have to say about me, just go to the website 'Ann Coulter is a cunt dot com'." That was all she said, and that was all she needed to say. The name of the website told you everything you needed to know about the character and snarkiness of the opposition.

If you want to make someone look foolish, first listen to him.  
 
I got an email from my son's friend yesterday saying that my advice had helped and that his project was well received.

I'm glad I was able to help him despite my lack of, uh, height.

Voodoo

An article in this morning's NY Post featured Penelope Zannikos, above, who evidently visits dying patients at various hospitals:

Penelope Zannikos, 44, charges $125 for hospital "transition sessions" with seriously ill people who want to know who's behind the white light.

"Sometimes the information surprises people -- it's not always who you think will be waiting for you," said Zannikos, who believes she inherited her gift from her Puerto Rican mother -- although it could also be from her dad, who was born in Romania to Greek parents.

Her father probably named Penelope after Odysseus's steadfast wife, who stayed true to him throughout his many travels. Judging from his daughter's occupation (and her exquisite looks), however, he might more appropriately have named her Cassandra, or Circe.

Zannikos does look the part she is playing. She's perhaps a bit too beautiful, a touch too light-skinned, and looks a few years too young. But with her straightened hair and generally exotic, Creole look, she is what a voodoo queen should look like. Actually, she looks a touch too healthy, especially at 44: someone with her claimed powers really ought to have a little more of a haunted, queen-of-the-undead look. ("An ordinary mortal like you has no idea what hell these demonic possession hangovers are.")

If they ever make a movie about Marie Laveau, the famous voodoo queen of New Orleans, they ought to cast Zannikos in the title role, even though there's no actual resemblance. This oil painting shows what Laveau actually looked like: 

As you can see, Laveau herself was a bit more matronly-looking, as befits someone who evidently had fifteen children. (No wonder so many claim to be a descendant.) Laveau lived to be 79, and it is unclear how old she was when this picture was painted.

What Laveau and Zannikos have in common is that both practice occupations that bespeak a certain charlatanism.

Personally, I've always believed in voodoo -- at least as far as its powers of suggestion go. For a true believer, voodoo, and that voodoo-ized form of Catholicism known as Santeria, can be very heady stuff. We've all heard stories about the supposed effects that hexes and curses can have. Call it the placebo effect if you wish, but they can work.

There are certainly times I wish I could believe that cutting the head off a chicken would solve my problems. If only it were that simple. For some people, it is.

When you think about it, Santeria is really not all that dissimilar from other religions. The people who believe in them are simpletons, and their leaders (priests, shamans and the like) are charlatans. I don't know enough to judge whether Zannikos is a sociopath; but what she is doing, which is essentially fortune-telling, is generally the province of con artists. And con artists are usually sociopaths.

Give Zannikos a little more time and her character should eventually emerge on her face.

It seems a pity, though, as she is still good-looking enough to cast a different kind of spell, albeit a more normal one.

In case you talk to a high schooler....

 












My sixteen year old daughter informed me today that Harry Potter fans really look down on Twilight fans. When I asked why, she explained, "Well, if you like Twilight, it's sort of like admitting that you're romantic and pathetic and you want to believe all that -- I don't know. It's just not cool, that's all."

I replied, "But isn't Harry Potter a little silly, with all that talk of Wizards and Muggles? I'm surprised high schoolers don't think it's beneath them."

My daughter replied, "Well, it's got magic too, but it's -- I don't know, it's different. And Twilight is getting sort of old."

"But Harry Potter has been around for even longer. And anyway, I thought you liked Twilight."

"Dad -- no! I didn't even read the last Twilight book!"

"And I thought you had a crush on Robert Pattinson."

"No!! Dad -- you're so stupid!"

This was a public service announcement for all adults not cool enough to know what's considered cool in high school these days.

Wikileaks

(Julian Assange)

Most of us talk about other people behind their backs at least a little. And when we do so, we are generally confident that our opinions will not be passed along to whomever we're talking about. Sociopaths will often violate this trust. They love to tell people what others have said about them behind their backs. Many of the sociopaths I've known personally have taken great delight in sowing discord this way. They absolutely thrive on dissension.

Julian Assange of Wikileaks is essentially just doing this on a larger scale.

In a former post --

http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2010/08/julian-assange.html

-- I said that he was "probably" a sociopath. Now that we can add "rapist" to his resume, that "probably" has morphed into "almost certainly."

Most Americans -- of every political stripe -- have reacted to the recent Wikileaks dumps with varying amounts of outrage. And understandably so: after all, the revelations have hurt the entire country.

But at a certain level, people should be responsible for their own words. When Barack Obama tells an effete San Francisco audience that the poor folks "cling to their guns and their religion and their dislike of people who aren't like them" he deserves to have those words exposed to the people he was talking about. Of course, that was said to an audience while he was campaigning for President, not in private to an aide; but it was still gratifying to see his words exposed to a wider audience.

When you think about it, wouldn't you want to know what others say about you behind your back? The answer to that question for most of us, is, of course, both yes and no. But if someone offered to tell us, we probably wouldn't turn it down.

None of this excuses Wikileaks. They are essentially doing what spies have done for ages: passing along secret information. The only difference is, instead of passing that information on to an enemy government, they are passing it along to the entire world. (That doesn't change the fact that they should be treated as spies, especially when you consider the fact that some Afghans have now likely been killed because their cooperation with us has been made public.)

The world basically wouldn't work if there were no such thing as secrets. (See the Jim Carrey movie Liar, Liar for reference.)

But imagine for a moment that the leaks were coming from the other side. Let's say Assange had access to al Qaeda's inner communications. Wouldn't it be gratifying to have them exposed? Wouldn't we appreciate the help? And wouldn't most of the domestic editorials be taking a different tone?

Or let's use an example involving someone we're not in direct confrontation with at the moment. Let's say Assange had access to all of the emails and cables -- and, for argument's sake, phone calls -- that passed between Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev. Wouldn't you want to see or hear them? The Soviet Union has disbanded, the Cold War is over, but Russia, while no longer our bitter enemy, is not exactly our friend. (And Putin spent his "formative years," if you will, growing up in the KGB; it's hard to imagine his instincts towards us have changed all that much.) Wouldn't it be interesting to know what Putin was really thinking when he sent troops into Chechnya? Or when he invaded Georgia? Or what he really thought of Bush, and Obama?

Or imagine WikiLeaks had access to all of the internal correspondence of the current White House. Wouldn't it be gratifying to find out exactly what discussions went on between Obama and Holder before Holder decided to drop the New Black Panther case? Or to hear what David Axelrod said to Obama after Obama called the Cambridge police stupid for having arrested Professor Henry Gates? Wouldn't it be illuminating to hear exactly what conversations took place between Nancy Pelosi and Henry Reid and Barack Obama as they twisted arms to get ObamaCare passed?

My sympathy for Assange has not increased one whit. And I continue to hope that WikiLeaks disappears. But I understand the glee with which some have greeted these exposures.

Not a good idea

(Kristopher Rendon and Rob van der Hoek, emerging from Manhattan Criminal Court after getting into a fight with some police officers)


There was an article in the NY Post this morning about a group of young men who work at the Dutch embassy who refused to pay their bar tab in Greenwich Village and subsequently got into a fight with some police officers.

What are people who start a fistfight with police officers thinking? Do they think that afterwards the cop is just going to get up, dust himself off, extend his hand, and say, "Hey, good fight there fella. I have to admit, you got the best of me."

That's not quite the way it works. Even if you were to get a lucky punch in, the officer has a nightstick. And a gun. And, usually, a partner. And if they are in any sort of trouble, they call for backup.

Most cops are decent guys. But every major city is going to have at least a few sociopaths on the payroll; what happens if you happen to meet up with one of them?

My usual reaction when I see a cop car is to feel a slight start, and immediately look at my speedometer to make sure I'm not driving too fast. In fact, before I even check my dashboard, my foot has automatically moved to the brake.

When I actually do get stopped, I'm always respectful. Sometimes I'm a little angry, knowing that I might be about to get a ticket for some relatively innocuous traffic infraction. But that anger never expresses itself in any way other than a sour expression. I have never, and would never, mouth off.

Granted, these Dutch guys were drinking. But that's hardly an excuse. I've been so drunk I couldn't keep my balance. I've been so drunk that I could only remember what happened afterward when others reminded me. Once in high school I got so stoned on marijuana that I looked at someone else's hand and thought it was my own.

But as unhinged as I've gotten, not once has it ever occurred to me that it might be a good idea to attack a police officer.

Time to bring back Prohibition, at least for those too stupid to handle alcohol.

Something to look forward to

From Forbes Magazine (via Guy Davis):

"Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, told Forbes magazine that his Web site is planning to release tens of thousands of documents from a major American financial firm in early 2011."

I fully agree with those who say that PFC Bradley Manning should be prosecuted for treason. And WikiLeaks is an incredibly destructive force, run by a bunch of nihilists who tell themselves that they are doing good but in fact are creating nothing but havoc. 

But this one time, I'll forgive them.

And even though it could conceivably hurt my (tiny) pension, I hope the firm in question is Goldman Sachs. Anything less would feel like a disappointment, as if we weren't really being made privy to the juiciest and most forbidden of secrets at the very center of the financial universe.

An embarrassing vice

(said after standing up): My name is John Craig and I am an online Scrabble-aholic.

If you're an alcoholic, at least you have a grandly exuberant, stylishly wasteful problem (that is, before your life completely falls apart). The same might be said of a cocaine habit. You can even make a post-addiction career out of going around lecturing others about the evils of substance abuse (all the while harboring a fairly obvious nostalgia for your glory days).

But online Scrabble? It's the nerdiest of vices, the kind of thing you indulge in only if you have neither the courage nor style to become addicted to something that makes more of a, well, statement. You just sit in your room by yourself and peck away at the keyboard, always telling yourself that this is the last game. But then, somehow, you always end up clicking on that "play again" button.

It's like being a masturbaholic.

It's just plain embarrassing.

Insider trading

The recent news about the FBI's current crackdown on insider trading brought to mind what happened to a friend several years ago.

My friend was a very aggressive stock trader, and was always margined to the hilt. In the late 1990's and early 2000's he had done extremely well for himself by staying as leveraged as he could. But eventually he got caught in a short squeeze, and lost most of his money. (Though he still remained quite rich by most standards.)

I'm convinced that he got big enough to attract the attention of a hedge fund, which found out that he was leveraged to the hilt and decided to squeeze him. How would they have obtained this information? They would have bribed a back office employee at one of the brokerages where my friend kept his accounts. If they knew that a large investor was 100% leveraged -- and thus would be forced to buy in if a short position went against him -- they would buy the stock, drive it up, and sell it back to him at the higher prices he would be forced to buy in at.

Put yourself in the position of the person providing the information. Let's say you're a back office employee at Goldman Sachs. Your job is to process the traders' transactions, make sure the (mostly electronic) paperwork gets done the right way, the money gets transferred to the right places, margin calls are met, and all the accounts are in order. Your earn $170,000 a year, a good living by most standards, but you keep reading about how many millions the investment bankers and traders at Goldman are making. You can't help but feel like a second class citizen, and also a little resentful.

You're barely making your mortgage payments as it is, your wife is agitating for a nicer car, and you know your income category will make it hard for your three children to get scholarships to college. But you also know that without those scholarships, you'll be working the rest of your life in order to have a decent retirement. 

Along comes a hedge fund guy who phones you at your home and tells you he wants to meet you, and that it could be very profitable for you. You get the feeling that this may not be completely legit, but the thought of extra money is appealing. You meet the guy, and he tells you that all you have to do is give him a little information: which accounts are 100% margined, and which stocks they are short. He says he'll meet you at a bar in Queens, near where you live, that no phone calls will be involved, and that if the information you give him is worthwhile, he'll pay you a percentage of the profits he makes. In cash. And that it could well run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. He points out that there will be only two people who know about this arrangement -- you and him -- and that he has as much incentive to keep your arrangement secret as you do.

You think about it. Then you do what most people in your situation would do. You succumb.

I'm quite sure this is what happened to my friend, though I would never be able to prove it. I would also be surprised if this kind of thing does not go on all the time. It's a fairly obvious scam, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has thought of it.

And employees at non-financial firms who are privy to information about takeovers, or new products, or FDA test results, must be sorely tempted to cash in on that information.

People will do all sorts of things for money, especially if they perceive the risk to be negligible. And hedge funds will do anything for money. Anything at all.

I'm not trying to sound morally superior here. If I were that back office guy, I'd probably do the same.

(Though maybe I'm slightly superior to those hedge fund guys.)

So I'm glad to see them brought in.

Seal training

There were a group of six Navy Seal candidates being trained at my local pool yesterday by a former Marine drill instructor.

They would do calisthenics by the side of the pool while being sprayed with cold water from a hose, then jump into the pool to swim 100 meters, and then run barefoot outside in their wet bathing suits into the 39 degree air to lie down in six inches of 42 degree water in a wading pool for a two minutes. They kept repeating this cycle the entire time I was there, and were still doing it when I left.

All six of the guys looked quite fit, and I didn't hear any of them complain. And these guys are just Seal candidates, who will go to San Diego with a number of similar guys, all of whom will try to make it through Hell Week in order to become Navy Seals. Less than ten percent of them will qualify.

Thank goodness there are guys like these to defend our country.

I'd like to be able to say that when I was young I would have been able to endure that kind of training, and that kind of cold.

As I said: I'd like to be able to say it.

I chatted with a police officer there who was a friend of the drill instructor. Evidently the instructor holds the world record (for heavyweights) for the number of pull-ups done in a 24 hour period: 2101. Those are real pull ups, too: all the way down with no kipping up.

This is not a number I can really relate to.

But neither can I relate to lying in 42 degree water for a couple minutes.

How America reacted

The news of Mohamed Osman Mohamud's attempt to explode a large bomb at a crowded Christmas tree lighting in Portland, Oregon, was all over the internet yesterday, and will be all over the newspapers today. The picture above was featured in all the stories.

Virtually every person who saw the story probably had some version of the following train of thought:

Wow, he's sorta pretty.....He looks a little like David Bowie's wife Imam.....That bomb woulda killed a shitload of people.......Thank God the FBI caught onto him......That guy was a naturalized American citizen, too. We gotta stop letting in all these goddamn terrorists into the country. It's so incredibly stupid not to profile.

Can't say I disagree.

Sociopath alert: Lance Armstrong

The public loves nothing more than a comeback story, and Lance Armstrong's is one of the greatest: he survived testicular, lung, abdomen, and brain cancer, then went on to win the Tour de France a record seven times. Americans have a tendency to confuse victims with heroes, but Armstrong's triumphs have made him both.   

Yet I've long had the impression that he is one of the most contradictory figures on the public scene, with an unblemished public persona which is hugely at odds with his real personality.

People will often excuse the bad behavior of champion athletes by saying, oh, that's just his competitive nature coming out. But it is one thing to be competitive, another to have a narcissistic personality.

Armstrong is evidently happy to hang with famous guys and romance famous women. But when it comes to his family, his fans, and eventually, even his famous girlfriends, they all just become secondary adjuncts to The Lance Show, minor moons orbiting his greatness. Time after time former friends and teammates say that when they were around Lance, they were effectively expected to scrape and bow, and run errands for him.

Only extreme narcissists will try to create a cult of personality around themselves. Armstrong has even named his foundation (Livestrong) partially after himself. (The really greedy narcissists want a reputation for goodness as well as greatness.) And he guards that reputation jealously. Anybody who dares to criticize him in any way immediately becomes his enemy.

As always, the most interesting question is why. Why did Armstrong turn out this way? Wikipedia is usually a reliable source for this type of information, and sure enough, the "Family and Personal Life" section of Armstrong's entry was quite illuminating: 

Armstrong was born to Linda Mooneyham, a secretary, and Eddie Charles Gunderson of Norwegian ancestry, a route manager for The Dallas Morning News. He was named after Lance Retzel, a Dallas Cowboys wide receiver. His father left his mother when Lance was two and has two other children from another relationship. His mother later married Terry Keith Armstrong, a wholesale salesman, who adopted Lance in 1974. Linda has married and divorced three times. Armstrong refuses to meet his birth father and has described Terry Armstrong as deceitful.

There's certainly enough dysfunction there to explain Armstrong's personality. He never really knew his own father, and now refuses to speak to him. His mother has married and divorced three times, an indication that she may not have been that easy to deal with herself. Armstrong even describes his adoptive father as deceitful.

Deceit is something that Armstrong knows well. For years it's been obvious that he's been doping, an allegation he denies. But there are too many people who have leveled that charge at him, people who claim to have actually witnessed him doping, or been asked to store his vials of blood, or even been encouraged to dope themselves by him, for there not to be some fire behind all that smoke.

Armstrong continues to deny all of this. This past summer, while competing in the Tour de France, news emerged that federal subpoenas had been issued in connection with the current investigation, in particular allegations that Armstrong had gotten his teammates to dope as well. Armstrong's response: "As long as I live, I will deny it. There was absolutely no way I forced people, encouraged people, told people, helped people, facilitated. Absolutely not. One hundred percent."

For most people, a simple "No I didn't" would have sufficed. But a certain personality type tends to vehemence. Armstrong's denial is reminiscent of OJ Simpson's murder plea: "I plead absolutely, one hundred percent not guilty." It is also reminiscent of the way Bill Clinton wagged his finger at the assembled reporters and angrily declared, "I did not have sex with that woman!" (As Shakespeare once said, "The [gentleman] doth protest too much.")

It's harder to hold doping against an athlete who competes in a sport notorious for it. But at same time, it makes it all the more unlikely that a clean athlete would be head and shoulders above the others in that same sport. The Tour is the toughest of athletic contests; it has been likened to running a marathon every day for twenty straight days. (One would almost need drugs just to survive it.) 

What is easier to hold against Armstrong is the pristine image he has cultivated, and the vehemence of his denials. Armstrong often refers to the number of doping tests he has passed. But dopers always seem to be a step ahead of the sports police. Michelle Smith always passed her tests (until well after the '96 Olympics). Marion Jones always passed her tests. Barry Bonds always passed his. The long list of athletes who've tested clean despite being dirty makes those results seem somewhat irrelevant.

People who believe in Armstrong attribute his success to his work ethic, and there is no denying that he is an extremely hard worker. But most top level cyclists push their bodies as far as they possibly can while training. What is it that allows one cyclist to train that much harder? Desire may be one factor. But an extraneous source of rejuvenating male hormones could easily be another.

It is mere coincidence that Armstrong once rode for the US Postal team, and thus got government funds, which he certainly didn't need. But that taxpayer money will probably prove Armstrong's downfall: it is what has prompted the current federal grand jury investigation into his drug use and possible fraud.

Lying to a grand jury is a serious crime. Martha Stewart didn't get sent to prison for her insider trading, which was minor; she was sent away for having lied about it to a grand jury. Likewise, Marion Jones wasn't sent away for having juiced, but for having lied about it to a grand jury. The Feds don't like it when you lie to them.

The people who have recently been subpoenaed by the grand jury convened for the Armstrong case must be aware of that. Floyd Landis, the recently disgraced and disqualified Tour winner, has already testified against Armstrong. More recently Greg LeMond, a longtime critic, has been called in. Many of the lesser names will undoubtedly sing when it is their turn to testify. And many of these people, who have been ridden roughshod over by Armstrong in the past, will be only too happy to do so.

FDA criminal investigator Jeff Novitzky, who is in charge of this investigation into possible doping conspiracies in cycling, has a reputation as a pit bull: he is the one who led the BALCO probe. This can only have a further tongue-loosening effect among those he questions.

Armstrong's public image, like Tiger Woods', has been at such a high level for so long that the sound of its crash will reverberate through every publication in the country. But unlike Tiger, Armstrong will be guilty when it comes to his sport, not just sloppy in his personal life. He's undoubtedly got enough money put away to live well for the rest of his life, but he won't be getting the endorsements the way he used to. (Tiger himself may have further to fall should it turn out that his steroid use can be proven as well.)

Sociopaths, when accused of something they are guilty of, react with all the outrage of the unjustly accused innocent; this is exactly how Armstrong has reacted. And it is one thing to dope oneself; it is downright sociopathic to manipulate one's teammates into doing the same. And it is sociopathic to treat those around you as expendable servants. 

(Side note: one thing I've noticed over the years is that a large percentage of sociopaths, at least the Caucasian ones, seem to have thin lips, like Armstrong. I don't know why this would be so, and it's probably just coincidence. But, spurious or not, I have noticed a correlation.)

I have to admit, I've been watching the net close in around Armstrong with some glee. (This is just ordinary schadenfreude, not sociopathy.)

Addendum, 1/20/13: Two more recent posts about Lance's sociopathy, here and here. 

Non-specious correlation

After spending a couple of days at an alumni reunion of sorts this past weekend, I have come to the following conclusion:

The degree to which an alumnus of an "elite" college feels pride that he went there, the amount of nostalgia he feels for his college years, and the extent to which he regards former enemies as current friends, are all inversely correlated with IQ.

A Study in Sociopathy

The headline and first three paragraphs of a NY Post article from this morning:

Cokehead convicted in Pace student slay

by Laura Italiano

A homeless young cokehead was convicted today of strangling a Pace University honor student two years ago -- a senseless slaying the murderer chalked up to burglary and boredom.

Jeromie Cancel, 24, has told cops he was invited up to Kevin Pravia's Chelsea apartment on a pre-dawn October morning to sell the student $300 in cocaine -- and that he later garroted the sleeping stranger in his bed because he'd had nowhere to go at the moment and nothing better to do.

The drifter druggie even boasted of switching to a one-handed grip on the cord once Pravia stopped struggling -- so that he could smoke a cigarette with his other hand, all the while watching a gory horror flick on the victim's DVD.

Most people couldn't even conceive of having "nothing better to do" as a reason to end a human life. So most people who read the above article will assume that Cancel's offhand explanation must be a coverup for some other, more compelling motivation. But it's not. Every now and then you'll hear of a murderer saying that he killed just because he "just wanted to see what it felt like." For a sociopath, that's actually all it takes.

And only a sociopath would "boast" to the police about how he committed his murder. A sociopath's ego always rages full throttle, regardless of how thin its fuel.

Cancel's desire for a cigarette while he was killing Pravia is reminiscent of Joran van der Sloot's desire for a sandwich right after he killed his victim in Peru:

http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2010/06/hungry.html

Most of us, if we ever killed someone, would be be completely overwhelmed by the horror of what we had done: our hearts would be pounding, our minds racing, our senses reeling. But with a sociopath, committing murder doesn't even affect them enough to override their everyday fancies -- like a sponge cake, or a cigarette.

And Cancel didn't even wait until he had finished committing the murder -- he had his smoke while committing it. Then, he was so impressed with his own coolness that he boasted to the police about it.

But even the combination of a murder and a cigarette wasn't enough stimulation for him -- he had to watch a gory horror flick on his victim's DVD at the same time.

That's probably the ultimate metaphor for sociopathy -- smoking a cigarette and watching a movie while committing murder.

After all, murder by itself can be, let's face it, a bit of a yawner.

If New York State delivers appropriate justice, Cancel's cigarette habit will not cut a single minute off his life.

George Madoff

After seeing these pictures, it's hard not to wonder, if Washington were alive today, would he have been, at the very least, perhaps a tad less willing to admit he chopped down that cherry tree?

And how, for that matter, would Bernie Madoff have done leading the Continental Army? He certainly had the requisite nerve.