Hollywood vs. reality

As you've probably heard, Richard Matt, one of the two escaped killers from Dannemora Prison in upstate New York who have received so much publicity since, was shot and killed by police in the woods about 50 miles west of the prison.

Much of the initial coverage likened their escape to that of the Tim Robbins character in The Shawshank Redemption. Matt and David Sweat,  the other killer, had an accomplice on the inside. But even so, their escape took a lot of planning and ingenuity.

There's one crucial difference between the the movie and the recent escape though. In Shawshank, the mild-mannered character played by Tim Robbins is innocent of the murder of his wife, for which he was convicted. Richard Matt and David Sweat, were far from innocent. Sweat was convicted, along with two others, of the murder of a New York State Trooper, and was serving life without parole.

Of the two men, however, Matt was definitely the scarier one. A few excerpts from the NY Times article about him which came out a couple weeks ago, A Convicted Murderer's Escape Alarms Investigators From His Past:

It was 1997, and when investigators identified the remains as those of William L. Rickerson, they zeroed in on Richard W. Matt, a former convict who had been hired by Mr. Rickerson, and whose name was familiar to law enforcement officials in and around this town north of Buffalo.

Eventually convicted of killing his boss, Mr. Matt is now at the center of the biggest manhunt in the nation after and he and another inmate, David Sweat, escaped from a maximum-security prison in Dannemora, on the northeastern edge of the state. Mr. Matt was serving a sentence of 25 years to life with no chance of parole before 2032.

For the authorities who investigated the murder of Mr. Rickerson, who was beaten and dismembered, news of the escape was an alarming reminder of Mr. Matt and his brazen efforts to elude the police.

In 1986, he had escaped from a jail in Erie County. About a decade later, after Mr. Rickerson’s death, Mr. Matt fled to Mexico, where he killed an American man at a bar and served several years in prison before being brought back in 2007 to stand trial here in Niagara County.

“You can never have enough security with him,” said Gabriel DiBernardo, a retired captain with the North Tonawanda Police Department who was the chief of detectives leading the investigation into Mr. Rickerson’s death. “You can never trust him. You can never turn your back on him.”

Mr. DiBernardo, who retired in 1998, offered a sentiment echoed by others in law enforcement here: “He is the most vicious, evil person I’ve ever come across in 38 years as a police officer….”

Mr. Matt was someone to be regarded as “extremely dangerous,” said one retired law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, not wishing to remind Mr. Matt of his name. “A lot of people get killed,” he said. “Not many killers take the time to dismember the body...”

When Mr. Matt returned to the United States to face trial in Mr. Rickerson’s death, officials took extraordinary security measures: A sniper watched over the outside of the courthouse. Double the usual number of deputies were posted inside the courtroom. The defendant was required to wear an electric stun belt.

And the glass that covered the wood counsel tables was removed, out of concern that Mr. Matt could break the glass and used the shards as weapons, according to the retired law enforcement official.

At the time, Mr. Matt’s lawyer argued that the security measures were excessive and would negatively influence the jury. But the precautions reflected just how wary he made the authorities. “It can never be overdone with Rick Matt,” Mr. DiBernardo, 78, said, pointing to Mr. Matt’s unusual physical and mental abilities. “He’s certainly not a dumb individual,” he said. “He’s a cunning individual, and a strong individual, physically strong. There’s no question he can handle himself.”

David Bentley, a retired detective who was with the City of Tonawanda Police Department for 29 years, said he had known Mr. Matt for nearly three decades. In the 1980s, he used him as a criminal informant, he said.

Mr. Matt had long been willing to flout the rules. Mr. Bentley recalled a story his informant had shared: When Mr. Matt was 14, he ran away from a youth home and stole a horse to make his escape. Over time, Mr. Bentley said he saw him spiral down, becoming more violent and unpredictable.

“I’m very concerned that people are going to get hurt the longer he’s out,” Mr. Bentley, 67, said. “I’ve seen him inflict wounds on himself, cut himself; break his collarbone and not seek any treatment. He’s just totally, totally fearless, and doesn’t respond to pain.”

Here is the picture the Times ran with the article: 

Here is his more recent, widely circulated mugshot: 

In both pictures he exudes a certain glowering malevolence. It goes without saying that Matt was a sociopath. There is much about him beyond the two murders that screamed sociopathy. For instance, that he didn't just kill Rickerson, but tortured him first. 

Matt he escaped from his "youth home" when he was 14 by stealing a horse. That sounds dramatic and daring -- like something out of a movie. And it shows the kind of resourcefulness and nerve that we like our cinematic protagonists to have. But in real life, the people who show that kind of recklessness are far more likely to be sociopathic.

A "youth home" can refer to either a foster home or a facility for juvenile delinquents. If it was the former, it means his own background was dysfunctional; if the latter, that he exhibited his criminal tendencies from a young age. 

The best criminal informants are, of course, people who are absolutely without loyalty -- sociopaths.

Perhaps the scariest thing about Matt was how scared the law enforcement officers themselves seemed to be of him. Those extra security measures -- the snipers, that electronic stun belt, and the removal of glass from the tables -- were evocative of Hannibal Lecter. 

Matt was scary because he was, like Lecter, so capable. He was strong, crafty, and impervious to pain. A weak, dumb, fey little sociopath simply wouldn't inspire the same fear. 

According to a NY Post article about his accomplice:

Sources said the worker may have been wooed by one of the escaped cons, Richard Matt, 48, an infamous lady killer.

“He has a way with the ladies,” the source said.

Another source, retired Detective David Bentley, who helped put away Matt for the 1997 murder of a North Tonawanda businessman, added, “When [Matt’s] cleaned up, he’s very handsome and, in all frankness, very well endowed. He gets girlfriends any place he goes.”

Charm is, of course, another sociopathic trait. And it just makes Matt all the more scary. (A far as I know, penis size is independent of character.) 

But when he couldn't charm women, Matt was not averse to raping them, according to the Daily Mail, a crime for which he was also convicted.

He also attacked a nurse in 1991 with a knife.

Cool Hand Luke, played by Paul Newman, was a decorated Korean War vet who was arrested for cutting the heads off parking meters one drunken night. He never hurt anybody to get into jail, and once  there, he adhered to a strict code of honor.

Papillon (Steve McQueen) was framed for the murder of a pimp. 

When George Clooney escapes from the Glades prison in Out of Sight, he acts like a perfect gentleman to Jennifer Lopez even after semi-accidentally taking her hostage.

None of these movie characters is a truly bad guy, so we root for them to escape from their prisons, which are usually run by evil wardens. 

But that's Hollywood. Richard Matt was real life. Don't ever mistake the two.

Unless you're watching Silence of the Lambs.

All that said, I have to admit, I can't help but feel a certain admiration for Matt. He was strong, smart, charming, resourceful, and impervious to pain. The world is better off without him, but he was unquestionably a formidable guy. 

Ben Affleck's moral vanity

It was announced today that PBS has suspended the Finding Your Roots series because of Ben Affleck's having put undue pressure on Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., the show's host, to delete a reference to his slave-owning ancestors.

When I first heard about this controversy a year ago, it struck me as silly. Does something that happened in your family several generations ago reflect on you? No one is held responsible for his parents' sins, let alone his great great great grandparents'. And even those distant ancestors were merely creatures of their time.

The fact is, we're all swayed by whatever's currently fashionable to think. The Puritans, for instance, didn't just happen to be a bunch of people who all happened, just coincidentally, at the same time to have similar values. They were simply molded by the culture they grew up in to think of certain things -- such as premarital sex -- as sinful. And other things -- such as killing Indians -- as not. Had any of us grown up in that era, we would likely have felt the same.

People who claim that they would have had their current values had they grown up in another era are simply self-deluding. In fact, they tend to be the very types so heavily influenced by fashionable thought that they would have almost undoubtedly would have shown equally mindless acceptance of the status quo 100, or 300, years ago.

So, while slaveowners were participating in a system that was inherently unfair, mostly, they were merely creatures of their time. Their individual characters were expressed by how they treated their slaves, not whether they were for or against slavery.

In any case, my first reaction to hearing about Affleck's request was that he was evidently unable to see this, and had an overdeveloped sense of guilt. Why should he feel responsible for something he had absolutely no control over?

But then it hit me that it was probably more a matter of vanity. Affleck didn't want his otherwise impeccably liberal credentials to be tarnished by any association -- however remote -- with the institution of slavery.

The ironic thing, of course, is that by making a stink about it, Affleck drew far more attention to his slave-owning ancestors than he would have gotten had he merely let the program air. (How many people actually watch Finding Your Roots?)

When Affleck made his demand, Professor Gates was too intimidated by this huge Hollywood star to stick to his principles and face him down. So, he asked his producers at PBS for guidance; in the end, they acquiesced and deleted the reference.

Gates had no such doubts about how to behave with the Cambridge cop who arrested him for disorderly conduct back in 2009: he screamed at him hysterically.

It would have been far more appropriate if Gates had shown a little more forbearance with that Cambridge cop, and screamed at Affleck instead.

Wimps with guns

One striking thing about many of these recent mass shooters is that they seem to be very wimpy physical specimens. The latest in what is unfortunately a long line, Dylann Roof, is no exception:

He looks both short and slight, and has a somewhat girlish face.

Here's James Holmes, the Aurora Colorado shooter from July of 2012:

Here is Elliot Rodger, the Santa Barbara shooter from May of 2014:

And here is Adam Lanza, of Newtown  CT fame:

What do they all have in common? They're small, even frail, and appear to have low testosterone levels. It's pretty obvious that before they took a bunch of lives, nobody took much notice of them except perhaps to note what losers they were. None were athletic, and most were probably virgins. They were all disappointments to their parents, and unpopular with their peers.

And, wimps that they were, they all needed guns as equalizers.

In a way it makes sense that these guys would turn out to be killers, because they had nothing to lose. And they were all resentful, so they wanted to take others with them. Roof's bitterness was focused on black people; but his basic psychology was undoubtedly the same.

I wrote a sample article once before, about Adam Lanza, as an example of what a responsible media would say about these guys: emphasize what dweebs and losers they are. If these potential killers knew beforehand that their actions would cause them to be held up to public ridicule, most would just take their own lives, and leave the rest of us alone.

The new $10 bill

News has just come out that Alexander Hamilton will be replaced as the figure on the $10 bill. The new bill will feature a woman. According to the NY Post:

Just which woman will wind up gracing the sawbuck will be decided later this year, after officials take input from citizens online and at local discussions.

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew hailed the move.

“America’s currency is a way for our nation to make a statement about who we are and what we stand for,” he said.

Some might say that Lew has already accomplished that goal, merely by announcing that the next picture will be chosen on the basis of gender. But it will still be interesting to see who is eventually picked.

Harriet Tubman has been mentioned as a possibility. Susan B. Anthony may be another. Perhaps they'll consider Amelia Earhart, or Sally Ride.

My guess is they'll go with Tubman, since she's a twofer.

But since it hasn't been decided yet who the woman will be, I'd like to propose a few candidates, with an eye to Lew's statement about "who we are and what we stand for."

My first candidate is Kim Kardashian. Is there anybody who represents modern American culture better than her? She is rich, successful, and -- in some people's opinion -- beautiful.

My only hesitation in proposing Kardashian is that using her image on a mere ten dollar bill doesn't really do her justice, considering how she has been so successful at that uniquely American form of alchemy, transforming mere shamelessness into an empire worth millions.

My second candidate is Jackie Coakley, the woman behind the University of Virginia rape hoax. Is there a better example of political correctness run amok, the current atmosphere on campus, the power of the media, and crowd psychology? She, too, is a perfect symbol of who we have become and what we stand for.

My final -- and strongest -- candidate is a woman who started with none of the natural advantages that the other women did: Caitlyn Jenner. She is a groundbreaker in a way that none of the other women ever even dreamed of, having had to work for her femininity.

Think about her accomplishment this way: how many women do you know who could put a shot 15.35 meters, run 400 meters in 47.51 seconds, high jump 6' 8", pole vault 15' 8", throw a discus 169' 7" -- and then, 39 years later, look this glamorous?

Looks can be deceiving, but….

…..really, would you want to have to look at this face for four whole years?

Jeb Bush just looks too soft to be President. There ought to be, along with a threshold IQ requirement, some sort of toughness quotient that all Presidents have to meet. Maybe an oldster's version of a two week boot camp, something like that.

Jeb looks more as if he belongs at fat boy camp.

This just isn't a visage which would command fear or respect from our adversaries. Vladimir Putin would look at that Porky Pig Face and laugh.

I know, you can't judge a book by its cover, etc etc. And this is not an entirely serious post. And for all I know, Jeb Bush may be the toughest hombre around. ("Hombre" being the applicable word here, given that in 2009 Bush actually listed his ethnicity as Hispanic.)

But in truth, people do react to others' appearances. And Jeb looks like the kind of guy who would….actually enjoy attending a corporate retreat. The kind who'd bore you to tears at a party.

Michelle Malkin recently anointed Jeb the US Chamber of Commerce's Waterboy, which seems accurate. He certainly looks the part.

In fact, while writing this, I realized who Bush reminds me of: the Ned Beatty character in Deliverance:

Call me superficial, but Squeal-like-a-pig-boy with the eminently punchable face isn't getting my vote.

Fitness, now vs. then

You see a lot more people in their 20's and 30's who look fit than you did 40 years ago. It's not surprising, given the proliferation of various fitness routines.

There's CrossFit. Pilates. P90X "muscle confusion" workouts. Boxercise. Taebo. TRX suspension exercises. Kettlebells. Spinning. Yoga. Zumba and other "dancercise" classes. Various "boot camps." The Navy Seal workout (running interspersed with various calisthenics).

Triathletes have their own culture, as do runners and swimmers.

Forrty years ago, most of these forms of exercise hadn't been dreamed up yet. Forty years ago, guys used to actually be proud of their beer bellies. You'd see a guy put his hand on his belly, say something about his beer consumption, and look as if he thought he'd done something manly.

(Young people will hear this with disbelief, but old people will remember.)

Forty years ago, anybody who worked on his physique was regarded as either abnormally macho or a likely homosexual.

Today, it's just normal.

Forty years ago, people would talk about becoming "musclebound" as if it meant being placed into a cage, never to be able to move freely again.

Today, people understand the correlation between strength and athletic performance.

Forty years ago, the jogging craze was just getting started. Triathlons hadn't yet been invented, and athletes who competed for their schools were expected to give up their sport the moment they graduated.

Today, every other adult you talk to has some athletic goal in mind.

Forty years ago, you could aspire to either be a freakish body builder, or a skinny runner.

Today, you have a plethora of choices.

Forty years ago, the YMCA was, as the Village People suggested in 1978, often just a place to hook up with other guys.

Today, young people hear the song and don't really get the reference.

Forty years ago, for the few guys who did pursue strength and fitness as a goal in itself, the standard measure of how good you were was your bench press. These days, you rarely hear one guy ask another, "How much you bench?"

Forty years ago, you never heard anyone talk about "core strength."

Today, people are far more sophisticated.

Of course, part of the reason you see more guys who are really jacked these days is because of the prevalence of steroids. Forty years ago, a lean, muscular physique was a marvel of nature. Today, if you see one, it's likely there's something unnatural involved.

But even without the steroids, fitness -- in some form or other -- is pretty much a universal goal these days. Forty years ago, that was definitely not the case.

Again, young people will have a hard time believing this, but this post is only a slight exaggeration.

"Spy"

It's just a silly comedy, but it's well done and surprisingly enjoyable. You won't regret seeing it.

Why domestic violence is more common among lesbians

I mentioned on May 23rd that the rate of women who've been abused in lesbian households is 35.4%, compared to only 20.4% of those living with a male partner.

Women, in general, know that if they hit a man, it probably won't cause much damage, so develop fewer inhibitions about lashing out that way.

If a woman hits a man, it's simply not taken that seriously. A woman who, say, punches a man in the arm is probably not going to be strong enough to cause any real damage, even if she hits him as hard as she can. In fact, she's likely to be laughed at.

So if she does hit the man she lives with, chances are that act won't feed into the statistics on domestic violence. (If men did report such incidents, the statistics would look much different.)

On the other hand, if a man hits a woman, that is taken much more seriously. So normal men develop inhibitions against that sort of thing.

When two lesbians set up house, they will each have a lifetime of not being seen as physical threats, and therefore don't see themselves that way. Yet, eventually, they will get on each other's nerves just like any housemates do. And, when they do, they are less likely to have inhibitions about hitting each other. And sometimes hitting can escalate.

Thus, the higher rate of domestic violence among lesbians.

That's the only theory I can come up with, anyway.

Christine Jorgensen

The overwhelmingly positive reception Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner has gotten from her Vanity Fair photo spread has reminded me of Christine Jorgensen and the morbid curiosity which greeted her after her sex change operation.

Christine was born George Jorgensen in 1926 to a Danish-American carpenter and his wife in the Bronx. He was drafted into the US Army in 1945, attended a few schools, and felt increasingly uncomfortable with his male identity. In 1951, in Copenhagen, Jorgensen had an orchiectomy (had her testicles removed). In 1952, also in Copenhagen, Jorgensen had a penectomy (which is what it sounds like). And she later had a vaginoplasty in the US.

When the NY Daily News obtained a three page letter Christine had written her parents, and wrote a front page article on her in 1952, she became an instant celebrity. She later capitalized on this with a career as a singer and a nightclub act.

Here's George Jorgensen, circa 1951:

And here are two pictures of Christine in her later incarnation:

I have to admit, if I didn't know who she was, I'd have found her attractive, at least at first glance. And even if I didn't know who Caitlyn used to be, I would never have found her attractive.

The difference between the receptions each got was striking. All of the public pronouncements about Jenner have been supportive, even if much of the private commentary has not. Even President Obama weighed in by saying that Jenner showed "tremendous courage" in sharing her story.

Back in 1952, nobody felt obliged to be so supportive to Jorgensen. She was universally viewed as something sick, twisted, and unhealthy, an object of horrified fascination. She immediately became a cautionary tale, a walking punchline.

Are we a better society for welcoming -- or at least pretending to welcome -- Jenner with open arms?

I don't know.

One thing I do know: it took a lot more courage to be Christine Jorgensen than it took to be Caitlyn Jenner.

Richard Fuld

Dick Fuld, the former head of Lehman Brothers, was in the news a couple days ago for having given a speech in New York City, his first public appearance in six years. Ever since 2008, Fuld has been regarded as one of the bad actors of the financial crisis.

He insists to this day that the Fed and the Treasury Department allowed Lehman Brothers to collapse for doing what everyone else was doing, and that they could have saved Lehman the same way they saved Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch.

I suspect Fuld is right about this, though I'm not sure Lehman deserved to be saved -- any more than Bear Stearns or Merrill Lynch did. All of these firms allowed themselves to get way too leveraged in the midst of an overheated housing market, ignoring fiscal prudence in an attempt to maximize short term profits.

In any case, Fuld was widely reviled after the Lehman bankruptcy, not only by the public but also by many of his former employees at Lehman.

I met Fuld once, in 1984, when he interviewed me for a job at Lehman. It was the most memorable interview I ever had. He was already widely known on Wall Street (at that point he was head of fixed income at Lehman), and had a somewhat scary reputation, which his intense manner gave credence to.

Fuld asked me three questions at the beginning of the interview. The first was, "What's one point on a million?" I wasn't sure what he meant, and asked, "Point?"

"A percent, one percent," he replied impatiently.

"Ten thousand," I replied.

He then asked me another mathematical question, which I answered correctly.

Then he asked, in a somewhat pretentious tone, "What is the relationship between math and music?"

This question completely befuddled me. I stumbled, "Math and music? Uh, let me see….um, is it that the timing between the beats in music can be measured mathematically?"

I looked at him for some sort of response, but he remained stone-faced. I shrugged and said, "Honestly, I don't know, I'm just guessing." I then furrowed my brow and asked, "What is the relationship?"

He ignored my question, and the interview proceeded. At the end, he asked me, "What were the three questions I asked you at the beginning?"

I was able to repeat them back to him.

I left the interview feeling unsure about how I'd done, especially given the way I'd stumbled over that third question. It wasn't until the next day that it hit me why he had asked that: he wanted to know if I was a bullshitter. There is no relationship between math and music, so any sort of glib response would have been a wrong answer.

(Wall Street bond departments don't want someone who pretends to know more than he does; people like that can cause a lot of damage.)

I later got a message from Fuld through an intermediary: "Tell him to give me a call if he wants to come work for me." The intermediary explained that that was Fuld's way of offering a job.

I didn't take the job, and went to Goldman instead, though, given my mediocre career there, that was probably the wrong decision. Then again, who knows how a career at Lehman would have turned out.

Anyway, as a result, I've always had a soft spot for Dick Fuld. (If Ted Bundy had offered me a job, I'd probably stick up for him, too.) I was grateful for the offer, but mostly I was impressed by how clever his interviewing technique was.

Fuld was testing me, in a way I didn't even realize I was being tested. He was a smart guy, with good insight into human nature. In the end, he may not have had enough insight into his own nature, and that was his -- and his firm's -- downfall. But the little snapshot I got of him was very impressive.

The two Chicago cops

Cops are in the doghouse at the moment, and this recently released Polaroid photo from 1999 which The NY Post ran an article about yesterday will probably not help matters:

These two cowboys from the Chicago PD posing with their "trophy," a young black man who's playing along with the staged photograph, symbolize everything that the cop-haters hate.

The comical expression on the young black guy's face makes it apparent that there was no serious abuse going on. Still, it was two white guys humiliating a black guy, not exactly the PR that police departments need at the moment.

The cop holding the antlers, Jerome Finnigan, has an enthusiastic, aggressive cast to his face; he looks like the kind of guy who likes to get in your face.

The one on the right, Timothy McDermott, looks awkward and uncomfortable.

McDermott was fired when this picture came to light last year. He apologized, said he was young and trying to fit in with the department. He said Finnigan had called him over to pose in the picture with him, and he had done as asked, then gone back to his work.

It turns out that Finnigan was sentenced to 12 years in prison for having "masterminded" a crew of cops who staged home invasions and robberies and the like. It doesn't take a genius to break into a house or pull off a robbery, so "mastermind" in this case means simply that he was the ringleader, who cajoled and prodded and bullied the other cops until they bent to his will and went along with him.

Anybody who makes a practice of committing home invasions is a likely sociopath; a cop who does so is almost certainly so. And the kind of cop who manipulates other cops into joining him is undoubtedly a sociopath.

Anyway, this photo will only add more fuel to the fire. Although, if the recent pattern holds, this incident will quickly fade away.

Strangely, police officers who have behaved defensibly in difficult conditions have been the biggest focus of public ire, whereas the genuinely bad ones get almost no publicity.

The Cambridge cop who arrested Harvard Professor Gates received a lot of publicity, culminating in that pathetic "beer summit."

Wannabe cop George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin after Martin attacked him, to great public dismay. (I was in favor of acquittal in that case, though Zimmerman's track record since makes one wonder.)

Darren Wilson did everything by the book -- and in fact showed great restraint at first, but his shooting of Michael Brown caused widespread rioting.

On the other hand, the South Carolina cop who shot the black man in the back and then lied about it almost immediately fell off the radar.

It may be that the controversial incidents caused the most unrest because it looked, to some, as if the police officers might escape justice. But those also happen to be the cases where they were generally justified in their actions. The South Carolina cop, who would have made a far better poster boy for police misbehavior, went straight to jail.

These two Chicago cops, unfortunately, now have an actual poster. How much play that gets has yet to be determined.

Famous "fat shamers"

Now that the concept of "fat-shaming" has gained currency, it's worth taking a look to see who some of the worst thought criminals have been.

Socialite Babe Paley: "You can never be too rich or too thin."

Actress Elizabeth Hurley: "If I were as fat as Marilyn Monroe, I'd kill myself."

Joan Rivers: "Is Elizabeth Taylor fat? Her favorite food is seconds….She needs a bookmark just to keep track of which one is her real chin."

Jesse Ventura: "I love fat people. Every fat person says it's not their fault, that they have gland trouble. You know which gland? The saliva gland."

Pamela Anderson: "People who wear fur smell like a wet dog if they're in the rain. And they look fat and gross."

Padma Lakshmi: "You don't want your jewelry to make you look fat."

Canadian television personality Hannah Simone: "'Curvy' is just a polite way of saying 'fat'."

Arnold Schwarzenegger: "It's simple. If it jiggles, it's fat."

Jimmy Fallon: "Thank you…fat dude with giant headphones on the subway, for looking like what would've happened if Jabba the Hutt mated with Princess Leia."

Paul McCartney: "None of us wanted to be the bass player. In our minds he was the fat guy who always played at the back."

All of the people listed above were involved in show business in some way, so maybe we can dismiss some of them as overly superficial.

But, it seems that if you dig a bit further, the ranks of those who disapproved of fat -- fat shamers, in the current lingo -- include some pretty surprising figures.

Gloria Steinem: "In my own mind, I am still a fat brunette from Toledo, and I always will be." (Steinem's implication that not only fatness but brown hair are undesirable traits would hardly meet with approval from today's feminists.)

George Orwell: "I'm fat, but I'm thin inside…there's a thin man inside every fat man."

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: "Everything that goes into my mouth seems to make me fat, everything that comes out of my mouth embarrasses me."

Albert Einstein: "The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat."

Benjamin Franklin: "I guess I don't so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old."

Geoffrey Chaucer: "Whoso will pray, he must fast and be clean. And fat his soul, and make his body lean."

St. Jerome: "A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts."

Hearing that someone who was actually canonized said that fatties are incapable of elevated sentiments certainly drives home what "enlightened" times we live in today.

Fat acceptance

On Monday, Lena Dunham put this picture of herself in lingerie on social media:

These days, "fat acceptance" is in vogue, and we hear quotes like, "There is no such thing as a fat girl. Every girl is beautiful in her own way." (This from Niall Horan, of One Direction, who evidently wants to promote his record sales.)

I certainly agree that as long as people are fat, they ought to be at peace with themselves.

But redefining beauty is a tricky thing. We're all told it's in the eye of the beholder, blah blah blah. But the fact is, very few guys are attracted to obese women. That's just human nature, and that can't be changed, anymore than someone's sexuality can.

The same people who say that homosexuals can't be blamed for their sexuality -- which I completely agree with -- will often imply that men who prefer slender women are somehow morally wanting. But heterosexual men can't help what they desire any more than gays can.

As far as the peace of mind goes, I'm certainly all for that. But for fat women to achieve this, they have to come to terms with being ignored by most men. And they should understand that blaming men for ignoring them is as silly as blaming gay men for not being attracted to them.

This logic seems to escape the more vocal feminists.

All things to all people

For an investor, the picture at the top of the tech ranks is pretty confusing. The great internet/tech gold rush is still going on, and all the behemoths are trying to stake a claim to each other's businesses.

Apple has been talking about an Apple TV for a while, though that hasn't happened yet. But now the rumor is that they're looking into manufacturing cars.

Google is now reformulating Youtube so it can compete with the streaming services. They've been working on their own (driverless) car for a while, and are also busy trying to encroach on Amazon's Etail turf.

Even Uber is now reportedly considering making cars. Evidently all of these companies looked at GM and salivated.

Amazon recently came up with their own phone, the FirePhone, which was a bust. But their attempt to muscle in on Netflix's territory with a streaming video service appears to be off to a better start.

Netflix wasn't content to just stream others' movies and TV shows, so started producing their own shows, in competition with the Hollywood studios.

EBay is starting its own version of Amazon Prime.

Even stodgy old Microsoft started its own search engine to compete with Google's.

I have absolutely no feel for how all these attempts to elbow each other aside will shake out.

Weirdly, although this is the computer age, about the only thing that the behemoths aren't plunging into are computers; none of them seem to want to compete with the iPad or Macbook at the high end, or Acer on the low end.

It can't be long before some of these companies start making form-fitting clothes whose temperature can be regulated, or airplanes which don't require pilots, or modular houses with built-in electronic equipment.

I'm not much of a techie, but I think I'd like living in one of those houses.

Brainiacs by default

A young guy casually said to me the other day, "Smart is what you settle for when you're too much of a wimp to be macho. Seriously, all those guys back in high school who prided themselves on their brains, they were all wusses. If any of them had been tough, or strong, or even good-looking, they would never have positioned themselves as brains.

"Plus, most of them aren't actually any smarter than anybody else. Talk to them and you find they're not  witty, or charming, or quick on their feet. You'll also find that most of them have no real intellectual interests, and no original way of looking at things. They're just grinds.

"They're nerds because they have no choice."

I'd never thought of it in quite those terms before, but once the young man said it, I realized he was right.

The phantom punch

The New York Times sports section ran a long article today about the Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston rematch, on its 50th anniversary. Their focus was on the town of Lewiston, Maine, where it took place. But at the time of the fight, most of the focus was on the fight's controversial ending.

Ali hit Liston in the first round with what many ringside observers thought was a glancing blow, the famous "phantom punch," and Liston collapsed to the canvas. Liston was known to be mobbed up, and many thought he threw the fight.

There have also been many who have claimed that Ali legitimately knocked Liston out, that he was so fast that many of the observers couldn't appreciate how hard he had hit Liston.

I often got the impression that those who held it was a legitimate knockout did so mostly because they liked Ali and all he represented, and didn't want to think he had won his first defense of the title in such a tainted fashion.

In any case, most of the arguments would end with people saying something to the effect of, well, only Ali and Liston know how hard that punch was, so we'll never know for sure.

That is exactly right, and therein lies the answer to the question.

The most famous picture of the fight is this one:

When this photograph was snapped, Ali was famously yelling at Liston, "Get up and fight, sucker!"

If Ali had felt that his punch had truly connected, why in the world would he do that? Ali never had another fight in his entire career in which he yelled at a fighter lying on the canvas to get back up.

Yet he did this to Liston, and he seemed angry when he did it, too. In all of the arguments I've heard over the years about whether the punch really connected, Ali's own spontaneous reaction is, strangely, never mentioned.

That is the proof that Liston threw the fight.

Beauty is in the eye of the camera lens

Saw Ex Machina last night, about a robot whose maker tries to imbue it with human qualities. It was as good as advertised, cleverly written, well cast, sort of sexy, and maybe a little predictable. It didn't have a lot of laughs, so I can't say it was all that enjoyable, but it held my attention.

What I was mostly struck by was the delicate beauty of the actress who plays the robot, Alicia Viskander:

But when I got home and Google-imaged her, that beauty was a little more elusive. What I found were a bunch of shots that looked like this:

Still pretty, but hardly the shimmeringly beautiful, exquisitely delicate, ethereal creature of the movie.

This evening, I stumbled across this picture of the character Cersei Lannister (with her brother) from Game of Thrones.

I've never seen the show, but was really struck by that picture. Here's another shot of her:

She's pretty much….perfection.

After finding out that the character was played by actress Lena Headey, I Google-imaged her and saw a lot of shots that looked like this:

And this:

Unquestionably beautiful, yes, but not really recognizable from one set of photos to the other. And here's another picture of her where she's doing that thing that good-looking girls do, making a face when their picture is taken. It's really a form of showing off: look-how-beautiful-I-still-am-even-when-I'm-making-this-face:

I've written about women who represent physical perfection before, here and here. What I said was that the difference between a nine and a ten is that a ten must at least seem to have good character reflected in her features.

And both Vikander and Headey, at least in their better photographs, radiate goodness. Both look like sensitive, soulful, gentle, kind, intelligent creatures.

(Who knows what they're actually like.)

As Tolstoy said, how striking the illusion that beauty is goodness.

Anyway, my point here is that there is a lot of variance between different photographs, and, uh…..I dunno, I guess I just wanted to post some shots of exquisite women.

"I'm not saying I'm any better, I'm just different, that's all."

There's no clearer way of saying you think you're better than to utter the above words.

I know of two people who've said this. The first was when I was in business school. The fellow who said it was a former futures trader who for some reason had gone back to business school. He carried himself as if he thought he was incredibly hot stuff, and when I heard him say those words, he was describing his former lifestyle of trading during the day, and then taking cocaine and having sex with his girlfriend every night.

He obviously thought this made him just incredibly cool.

His every word, his every movement, the expression on his face, all exuded unbridled ego. So while he claimed he wasn't saying he was any better than other people, his body language -- and really, his words -- made a liar out of him.

The second person I heard about secondhand. He was a mixed martial artist who was at a party in New York City with a typical cross section of New Yorkers. He happened to run into another MMA guy there, who later told me the story. After chatting with him a while, he told him, "Most of these guys" -- waving his hand and vaguely gesturing at the others in the room -- "couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag. You and I, we're different. I'm not saying we're any better…..Just different, that's all."

No explanation necessary.

Maybe both of these guys were better. But by denying that they thought so before anybody had even accused them of thinking so, they proved one of the primary rules of human nature: nobody ever voluntarily denies something they haven't even been accused of unless it's true.

Celebrity Jeopardy

This past week Jeopardy had its annual Celebrity Jeopardy tournament, where they invite three actors on to play for their favorite charities. The game is dumbed down to the point where the difficulty level is about the same as when they have the elementary school kids on to play. A few sample questions from Thursday's and Friday's shows:

Babe Paley once said, You can never be too rich or too this.

This coach said, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing" [with a picture of Vince Lombardi being shown].

James Fenimore Cooper wrote this book, The Last of the ____.

In the category "Bull___": a word for the circle in the center of a dartboard.

In the same category: This mascot of Yale University is recognized by the American Kennel Club

This Secretary of State in the 1970's said, "Power is the great aphrodisiac."

In the category "Future Presidents": at Eureka College, he was an actor as well as student body president [with a picture of the young Ronald Reagan being shown].

In the same category: in 1925, he graduated from his Texas high school, then worked for a while picking grapes. (None of the actors got this one.)

The airport in this city is located at 5757 Wayne Newton Boulevard.

The airport in Pisa is named for this famous astronomer.

In this country, the airport in Gdansk is named for Lech Walesa.

In New York City, if you fly into this airport, your bags are marked "LGA."

In the category Best Pictures Oscars: in 1976, Sylvester Stallone won for this picture.

Yesterday, the contestants were asked to name a Swiss city where some event occurred (I can't remember the exact question). Two of the actors gave answers. The first replied "Vienna," and the second replied "Stockholm."

My favorite Celebrity Jeopardy answer of all time was from years ago, when the panel was asked which state bordered only one other state, New Hampshire. Actor Jay Thomas, who played Rhea Perlman's boyfriend on Cheers, immediately buzzed in and replied, 'Delaware!"

Watching Celebrity Jeopardy tells you everything you need to know about actors' political opinions.

What nice girls do, Part II

After the recent post What nice girls do, in response to a comment from Remnant, I wrote:  

...One trend I've noticed is that there are a lot of people -- especially women -- who are sort of natural liberal types (soft, sensitive, full of maternal instinct, and not particularly logical) who embrace the causes of the environment and also the cause of gay rights. And they are outspoken about these causes. But they are strangely silent on the topic of race. And I can't help but suspect that many of them don't really believe in that "cause," whether because they see through its essential dishonesty or because of their personal experiences with blacks. They don't come out and say so, of course, because they've been brainwashed like everybody else into thinking that being realistic about race makes one evil. But, they don't espouse the cause, either.

I'd like to expand on this.

Among the young "nice girl" set these days, almost all seem to support environmental causes. Very few of them would actually consider refraining from taking a plane to some exotic locale, or from driving their car to the countryside, or from turning the heat up in their apartments. But many are willing to lecture the rest of us on how global warming is a reality and how we have to conserve resources. 

Most of them tend to express their personal commitment to the cause by buying slightly more expensive "eco-friendly" products, or taking part in Earth Day celebrations and the like. 

The young "nice girl" set also tends to support gay rights these days. Most of them have gay friends whom they like and feel comfortable with, and the idea that those friends should be prohibited from something -- like marriage -- that the rest of us can participate in does not seem fair. So they will attend rallies for gay marriage, etc. 

But if you look at the rallies led by people like Al Sharpton, the nice young girl set is almost completely absent. You'll occasionally see somewhat crazed-looking, middle aged white women there. And you'll occasionally see fat young white women with purple hair and nose rings, and their ilk. But you almost never see the "nice girl" crowd.

And when you talk to the nice girls, the vast majority are silent when it comes to racial politics. I sometimes wonder why this is so. Is it because they sense that what the media and academia feed us on the subject is misleading? Is it because of what they've noticed at college about the effects of affirmative action? Is is because of their personal experiences with blacks who've been rude to them? Is it because they feel personally threatened by blacks?

I just don't know.

None of these nice young girls are even remotely white nationalists. But, they're not passionate about racial egalitarianism the way are about other liberal causes, and rarely broach the subject.

And it's a deafening silence.