Veteran's Day Story

Last year I came to Brandeis via carpool. This year, since my carpool driver left, I've depended on public transportation. Sadly, I've noticed that the quality of the buses has gone down serverly over the past few months. I blame the recession - more people riding and, I believe, budget cuts that have made busses more unreliable (and possibly the drivers as well). Whatever the cause, I have missed connecting buses many times because my main route (the 52) is never on time.

This is a problem especially when I have a 9am class - because rush-hour makes the bus errors even worse. So this morning, like many a Wednesday, the buses just decided not to run, and I needed to take the emergency route, which involves a taxi.

Note, it is 22 miles from my house to Brandeis. By car, direct route, it should take 20 minutes (17 according to Google Maps). By public transport, if I'm lucky, it's an hour door to door. Many of the "direct" routes (meaning that from the start of the first bus to then end of the last bus, barring schedule mishmash or missing connections) it can take 90 minutes or more. This is nuts. Brandeis is so close to Newton, yet in can take as long to get there as it did to go from New Haven to New York City! Public transportation should not suck! It's better for poor people, better for the environment, better for traffic etc to have good, reliable, common public transport. Rant, rave.

Anyhoo, if I want to go lickity split, then I take the train to the end of the line (Riverside) and then hop a cab to campus. Were there a shuttle bus to campus from Riverside - an idea that's too logical and cost effective to be implemented, this would validate the whole public-travel enterprise. But, as you pessimists have already determined, it don't happen that way.

A main taxi provider in my area is Veteran's Taxi. I once asked where the name comes from and I was told, by the non-vet driver, that the company was founded by veterans. But, luck would have it, the driver I had was an honest-to-goodness vet. USArmy, 1958-1963; good years - he avoided 'Nam (but he was assigned to guard missile silos in Alaska... I wonder who he annoyed to get that assignment). I took extra time allowing him to regale me with his war stories (minus, of course, the war) and I gave him a big tip as a recognition of karma and collective guilt/recompense.

Bad Gun Argument

For those who oppose gun-control, there's a frequently stated concept that these psycho handgun mass-murderers would be prevented were everyone else allowed to be armed. This came up with the Virginia Tech case and in the few hours after the Ft. Hood massacre some gun-control partisans exposed their ignorance by using this argument ironically/mockingly (the fact is that army bases are quite gun-free). The Styx would like to inject some rationality in this debate.

Primary Point: Evolution and Crime

First of all: there may be a fancy sociology-deviance-criminology term for this, I don't know yet, but I'll call it the Adaptability argument (or the Better Mousetrap, Better Mouse argument): that antagonistic agents will adapt to the expected environment. Put in simpler terms: if a psycho gunman knows his future victims will be armed, he will arm himself better. So instead of bringing a handgun, he'll bring dynamite.

I think Gladwell wrote about this with the anti-hijack tactics in the 1960s-70s. There were a high quantity of airplane hijackings in that era; then the law-enforcement tactics got better at eliminating the easy hijacking, which resulted in fewer attempts, but those that were attempted had a much higher casualty result.

Now one can plausibly argue that having a highly armed populace would be the equivalent of the better law-enforcement in the hijacking case. More guns = fewer mass murders. True, if you buy the analogy, then instead of using guns the murderers will use explosives, lets say, but that may be desirable to the gun defender. The fewer number of possible mass-murderers means, probabilistically, that in such a large country, I'll be less likely to be randomly shot. It's sorta why we say that air-travel is better than car-travel - the car accidents are smaller in body counts but far more frequent, while the air crashes are quite rare, but when they happen, they take out hundreds.

Analogies can be fun, you say. But here's the problem with using hijacking as a pro-gun (air-crash) case: ease of access. What does it take for a guy to go on a gun rampage? Uh, a gun. What does it take for a guy to hijack a plane? Much more planning.

In fact, speaking as a social scientist, it would behoove us to analyze why the gun violence occurs and how the crimes are committed. I'd predict, from what I remember reading about the data, that the murderers are often either (a) insane, or (b) on drugs/alcohol. Which means that their brains aren't working right at the time of the crime. Which means that logic & deterrence will have less of an effect than we'd like. If a person kills because the voices in his head tell him to, then he's going to try to kill. And, as I said above, if the voices warn him that everyone will have a gun, then he won't use his gun, he'll use his legally modified sub-machine gun or explosives.

Therefore, when dealing with nutjobs/addicts, the best defense won't be deterrence, it will be arms control. Ipso facto and QED.

Secondary Point

And, as I said in the earlier post, the key point the gun-advocates miss is that we don't know which citizen, when he buys his weapon, is a (potential) criminal or a (potential) whacko or a (potential) hero. Sadly, most of the pro-gun websites I've visited (when looking for good blog-pics) are also disturbingly racist. That means that these pro-gun people are often the same people who will use their guns not against criminals or varmints, but against their fellow citizens! And my Jewish tush will be on the their top 3 hit list.

Sadly, that means that most of the people who are most forceful about their gun rights may precisely be the people I want most to keep guns from.
The best argument for the pro-gun crowd is one that is nearly unassailable: it's in the Constitution. This means that all my logic, or statistics (if I find 'em), or their cries about freedom and crime-control, are meaningless. Because it's the law of the land.

Top pic from here, second pic is frequently seen on the intertubes. Third pic from here.

Happy 234th Birthday USMC!

Say Happy Birthday to your friendly neighborhood Marine, he/she'll appreciate it.

Today's Backposts

1. Comparing Kevin Smith and George Lucas (April 2008)
2. A poem of the day (Jan 2009)
3. Disagreeing with Nathan Rabin over movies (Dec 2008)
4. George W. Bush and pardons. (Dec 2008)

Is Sullivan an Anti-Zionist? Part 2

As I asked below, here, Sullivan's swipes against Israel have been getting more frequent and irritating. It's like he's gone enough to the left because of Bush-Cheney that he now has to hate Israel like a J-Streeter.

So thank goodness Jeff Goldberg has been on top of the case. First here in August 2008 he gives Sullivan some pro-Zion backing:

I know Andrew as a supporter of Israel, a Zionist, even,

Fine, but just a few days later he notices the glimmering of a problem:

But "unregistered Israeli lobbyist"? This is vile, like Pat Buchanan-vile. Robert Wexler is pro-Israel, too. Is he an unregistered Israeli lobbyist? What about Rahm Emanuel, and Barbara Boxer, and Frank Lautenberg, and Henry Waxman, and Howard Berman? Are they dual-loyalists as well? Or is their tribal-based treason excused because they're Obama supporters? I wish Andrew would go back to bashing the Jew-baiters, rather than reveling in their smears.

I'd say that it's one of the early signs that Sullivan is equating the GOP with Israel (a problem that I warned about back in 2001 with the stupid frummie love of the evil GWBush) and thus to repudiate the GOP (like Sullivan's been doing) means also attacking Israel.

But in the year since, Sullivan has gotten worse. 'Goldblog' is still defending him, be in doing so we brings up some disturbing counter-proof:

I've gotten a fair number of hostile e-mails for stating that Andrew, in my understanding, is a Zionist. Here's Andrew on his own understanding of what "pro-Israel," or "Zionist," means:

My own definition of pro-Israel would simply be, I think: support for the existence of a secure Jewish state in Palestine. That's my position, and it is as deeply held as it is open to all sorts of arguments about what is best for its security and the interests of the US. I think it should easily be enough to earn one's credentials as a Zionist, as I proudly and passionately remain.

I would make only two points about this. One is small (but actually consequential); the word "Palestine" was invented by the Romans as a deliberate attempt to erase the word "Judea" from the map. So I wouldn't say that Israel is a Jewish home in Palestine; if anything, the future state of Palestine could be called the Arab state in Judea. I know this sounds like a nitpick, but names matter, and chronology matters.

The second, larger point: Zionists generally hold Israel to the same standard they hold every other country. People who don't like Israel very much hold it to a special standard, created for one scapegoated country alone. On this count -- and only this count, so far as I can tell -- Andrew sometimes fails the test. There are times lately when he seems to single out Israel for special excoriation, and times when he holds Israel to a double-standard. By the way, this doesn't make him an anti-Semite, as some marginal figures claim he is. It makes him, if anything, normal. Most of the world holds Israel to a higher standard than it does other countries. Many Jews do, as well. One of our specialties is self-criticism. But even when it comes from Jews, it isn't fair. Context is everything. I'll continue with these profound thoughts on Andrew later on.

I'm not as charitable as Jeff here. Just off-the-bat anybody who casually uses 'Palestine' like Sullivan does is the first strike (he also does a related strike by constantly referring to an 'Israel Lobby' as if it exists as the bogeyman the Looney Left desires it to be). Sullivan's well-known friendship with the scummy anti-Semite Christopher Hitchens is strike two.

And while I have growing respect for Goldberg, I definitely break with him about self-hating Jewish anti-Zionism (J-streetism, for now, until they redeem themselves). Jstreeters hate Israel because it makes them look bad to their imagined goyish friends and neighbors. It's not OK when they do it and definitely not when it's done by goyim.

I'll take this up more later, but there's just something very British about Sullivan's take on Israel - it's a combined paternalism and moral hauteur, as if the Europeans (any of them) have taken the proper moral path on anything.

Backpost finished 2009-12-02.

Is Sullivan an Anti-Zionist?

Quick answer: Evidently not, but its complicated. In the past few months, really ever since Cast Lead, he has been getting more an more crazy about Israel. He's bought straight into the canard that the settlements cause Palestinian violence, and he seems to knee-jerk respond *against* Israel. This is bothersome.

But this is sort of the price I pay when I read Sullivan.

So why do I? Why should I care about him? Especially since he does no reporting and holds many ideas I find stupid, annoying, and/or just plain wrong. So, here's something I wrote about him for another blog's comments:

The thing about Sullivan is that when he gets an idea, he clings to it with fierce tenacity. And the tenacity results in massive amounts of near real-time linkage that comes as close to reporting as an opinion blog will get.

Examples: he hates Hillary with a weird rancor, so he was great in links to support Obama; he hates Palin even more than Hillary so he was the go-to guy for that; he hates that the US tortured, so he gave great linkage for that.

So when I agree with his obsession, his website is gold, because he gives me enormous amounts of info. But for all those things that he's wrong about, no matter of facts will sway him, and I just skip those posts.

Caveat: Nothing will sway him - except his own tortured mind. That's why it's hard to predict where he'll wind up on an issue, because of the above-mentioned personality quirkiness (British Catholic Gay HIV-Positive Thatcherite). His load of cognitive dissonance is enormous and it's now cracking into pieces. Somehow, I think he hates being associated for so long with the Democrats...

So I still read him, and send him letters (which he has never, nor will ever, respond to), because I still think he's an important resource. He's the purest form of blogger, and as such, the purest expression of the power of the internet. And so far his weirdness about Israel hasn't undermined that; I just put it in the same category as his worship of Ronald Reagan and his British drag equivalent (Thatcher).

Backpost finished 2009-12-02. Pic from around the 'net.

Backposts Today

1. Redheads and Painkillers
   
2. Obituary, and movie, for Patrick Swayze
   
3. Have an Easy Fast!

New Backpost Policy

This was originally in this post, but I separated them for OCD reasons.

New backpost policy. Rather than file a finished 'draft' (a backpost) as new material, or leave it unstated in its rightful place (i.e. the date when I first started writing the draft), the new policy is to use a mass update (like this) on the publication date, referring you, the treasured reader, to the proper earlier date. Simple.

Update: All of the Backpost Clusters will feature the above blog-pic, which is entitled "Temperal Paradox" by Patrick Hoff.

Styx Unbound?

All you regular readers (both of you?) are likely asking, is this the blogpocalypse? Will there be an unleashed torrent of old Styx posts?

Maybe. I have about 350 blog posts in 'draft' status. There's a lot to write.

From Whom To Learn Ethics?

I said below that I do not look to journalists for ethical lessons. This is not a specific swipe against that profession - even though I do think that journalists, especially in the post-CNN era, have overreached in terms of their claims of knowledge and moral authority. "Ethics" is the applied field of knowing the correct thing to do. In olden days, this was considered the domain of the societal elite - clergy, nobility and the elderly. Emancipation, enlightenment, democracy etc have taken that authority away and transferred it to everybody. But instead of being a meritocracy of access - saying that anybody can be a 'sage' if they met certain universalized criteria - the democratic principle has been exaggerated, so now in 21st Century America, every individual considers him/herself to be the ultimate moral authority.

This democratization of ethics has certain pluses; it may even be an inevitable result of opening access. Moreover, in a anti-clerical, anti-noble age, moral authority doesn't go to the educated or saintly but often to the rich, popular or famous. Yet it is this democratization that makes the title question necessary.

The empirical question 'Who do people turn to for ethics?' while interesting, doesn't answer my prescriptive question of 'who *should* you turn to.' Above, I ruled out journalists as a class (more to why in a moment), but a natural next answer would be professional ethicists.

Ethics as a Profession

Theoretically, that is a field I could go into. But I hope I won't; because it's my experience that the people who go into the field are often clueless, hopeless, and/or unfit for other duties. Note, there are a number of professions like this and it changes through time (e.g. I believe that for decades in the early 20th Century, the men who became Orthodox pulpit rabbis, were just unfit for anything else). I have had scary encounters with these pros... so, no, professional ethicists are not the target.

Note, for example on both categories, probably the worst person to ask ethical questions is a professional ethicist journalist. Best proof: Randy "The NYTimes Ethicist" Cohen. Why is this guy considered an authority on anything? He's a freakin' comedy writer!! (Letterman, OK, props for that, but...)

Criteria for Ethics Mastery

In fact, I believe that there is no class of people who can be given this type of moral authority. Heck, not even my favorite go-to group, rabbis. Sorry to say, not every rabbi - not even every posek - can be counted on to know correct ethics. So no class category. What does that leave us? Well, we need to judge case-by-case and use empirical qualities.

Some could say specific training in ethics is key. Hence Randy Cohen is disqualified because - I mean c'mon. But, what is this training? Reading philosophers? Or would law be better? Rather, I have a more functional formula for who qualifies.

Moral Authority Comes from Wisdom

The key criterion is wisdom and that is a function of perception times experience. Your ideal ethical authority should be someone who's:

1. Benevolent (i.e. a good person) - this is determined as wanting to maximize mitzvot; and if you don't like the mitzvah system as a universal ethical matrix, tough luck - it's the best there is, on purpose, sez God. Harumph).
   
2. Perceptive - this is what rules most ethicists out; cluelessness in fact leads to a high quantity of evil; more on that later.
   
3. Experienced - Age is an important determining factor but it will undermined by being evil, clueless or a bigot.
   
4. Educated - As the blue collar slob will attest, book learning is no substitute for life-knowledge/school-of-hard-knocks. Indeed. But they're not mutually exclusive. And book learning is an experience multiplier. How will you know what has happened in the past or all over the globe? You need to read, go to museums, travel, or just talk to many many people.
   
5. Intelligent - just as being 'experienced' requires 'perceptive,' education requires intelligence. And, again, it is certainly not enough. When I was in college (Princeton), I met many smart people who were ethical dunces. In fact, I claimed that the term 'idiot' should be specifically applied to an intelligent person who lacks wisdom. And that's often how I use the term 'til this day.


6. Diligence- this is a catch-all term for the need to be concerned with ethical questions; to have these issues constantly in one's mind. An ethicist who 'takes a break' from ethics is disqualified. The best ethicisits are the ones who dwell on these problems constantly; look for a person who is critical and unsatisfied with their own behavior, as well as the state of the world.

What does this matrix leave us with? How useful is it to just say "it's case by case" especially when most people lack the inclination or ability to come up with this conclusion on their own - which in turn means that they may be incapable of knowing who has these traits!

The Torah's Answer

All of this verbiage can actually be distilled to a simple answer (which, yeah, I should have said from the beginning): Asei lecha rav. Avot 1:6:

יהושע בן פרחיה אומר: עשה לך רב

You need to embark on a long process of testing (and I advise that these tests use the criteria above). It's an important task. Everyone needs to have a 'rav' - in this case, a moral authority - who can give them guidance.

And, as a final, crucial caveat, never ever trust a person who does not have a separate person as a moral authority. A person who is their own moral authority is amoral and often dangerous.

Who Advises the Styx?

Who's my moral authority? My mentors. Plural. I ask different mentors different questions. I made these people my mentors after a long process of determining whether they had the above criteria. But, I admit, that I also spend enormous time on these problems as well (hence why I'm both clergy with a Masters in philosophy and in a doctoral program in social science). You don't have to accept me as a moral authority - even though I believe I know every reader of the Styx personally - but I understand the criteria of wisdom because I believe that they are universally plausible standards.

Warning Signs? What Warning Signs?

Sigh. "No warning signs"...

See the NY Times story: Fort Hood Gunman Gave Signals Before His Rampage. Or these 2 via Sullivan, from the Telegraph, and NPR.

NPR reported:

The psychiatrist [who worked alongside Hasan] says that he was very proud and upfront about being Muslim. And the psychiatrist hastened to say, and nobody minded that. But he seemed almost belligerent about being Muslim, and he gave a lecture one day that really freaked a lot of doctors out.

They have grand rounds, right? They, you know, dozens of medical staff come into an auditorium, and somebody stands at the podium at the front and gives a lecture about some academic issue, you know, what drugs to prescribe for what condition. But instead of that, he - Hasan apparently gave a long lecture on the Koran and talked about how if you don't believe, you are condemned to hell. Your head is cut off. You're set on fire. Burning oil is burned down your throat.

And I said to the psychiatrist, but this could be a very interesting informational session, right? Where he's educating everybody about the Koran. He said but what disturbed everybody was that Hasan seemed to believe these things. And actually, a Muslim in the audience, a psychiatrist, raised his hand and said, excuse me. But I'm a Muslim and I do not believe these things in the Koran, and then I don't believe what you say the Koran says. And then Hasan didn't say, well, I'm just giving you one point of view. He basically just stared the guy down.

Note, this may not be true (why would the Feds investigate some things Hasan said online but not when he gave an unprecedented religious rant about the Joy of Murder?), but hey, when you need to reduce the 'warning signs' to zero, some evidence gets thrown out.

Yet, back on The Styx's planet, it's predictable: every time there's some massive disaster or mass murder, the news agencies are quick to say that there were no warning signs. Besides the problem of retrojecting warning signs (Hasan was quiet! Killers are quiet!) there happen to be in almost every case huge red flags. As we saw with the VTech killer (a psychotic off his meds who published videos and stories about mass murder) Hasan gave numerous signals. Sure, most people seem to be dense, and it would have been nice had he told people explicitly - like John David Stutts - that he was about to go nuts. But honestly, what more do we need?

New Rule of Debate

I guess one step is to make it harder to buy a gun, but that would be unconstitutional. And guns don't kill people - nutjobs who easily buy guns do. And anyway, the media people - including most blogs I read - have emphasized that it is unseemly to use a mass murder (using handguns) to advance my partisan position of gun control.

Except, uh, two things: (1) In general, I don't take ethical lessons from journalists, and more importantly, (2) I am not a partisan on gun control. Were I to have an emotional connection to guns (e.g. an innocent loved one was gunned down, or I was saved by a gun) then you can say that I am partisan. But when do the Grand Ethicists allow a neutral person, like me, use evidence to make a decision about gun control?

In fact, the only people who demand that an incident not be used as evidence are the partisans themselves. So, OK - you can accuse me of being a partisan, but when that can be demonstrably gainsaid, then I claim that the incident is fair game.

Application of this Rule

So here goes: (1) I am neutral about guns. I happen to like them and would love to own one, shoot one every day, and if the opportunity presents itself, to kill someone who - if allowed - would have killed me or someone I care about.

(2) Yet, as an intelligent, judicious, and educated person, I have determined that the chances of my using a gun correctly is low while the possibility of inadvertent tragedy is high. I have three kids.

(3) It appears, from numerous major tragedies, that easy access to firearms has led to mass murder. As such, I believe that our gun rules are more likely to hurt me than to help me.

(4) When a new mass murder occurs, I see ways to prevent another one. Hence in this case, I want to bring up - as it is very relevant - that the killer used a handgun to destroy innocent people.

Conclusions?

To be honest, I think - beyond the gun control issue - the real 'cause' of this - and the reason why the warning signs were ignored - is from the breakdown of resources in the military. If we weren't stretched to our limit, it's more likely that this guy would have been stopped earlier. But, IRONY ALERT, because we needed mental health professionals to help with crazy soldiers, this crazy solider was forced to keep his crazy.

Quick Update

A quick clarification, and prediction: I predict that we'll discover (and if not, then it's a probable coverup) that Hasan would have been diagnosed as a security risk had it not been for our insane need for active-duty retention. The army paid a lot of money to make this psycho a doctor and they were not going to allow his being psycho make them lose their money. Even if we find out that he was convinced to go on a suicide mission by a Crazy Cleric, all that will show is that the crazy clerics could recognize the warning signs. As such, if we *was* recruited, it will show that his psychosis was even more evident. Take it from me, there are always warning signs. I'll expand on this with my long-awaited "Jaws" Essay.

First pic was self-made, second from this site.

Thoughts on the Ft. Hood Massacre

As you've heard, a nutjob shot up 50 people in 3 minutes in Ft. Hood, Texas. A few thoughts:

1. The moment I read he was a Psychiatrist, not just a guy with a Muslim name, I thought that this is another Baruch Goldstein. The pattern is familiar. Two motives of BG (yimach shemo) were (a) as a doctor he was driven nuts by the trauma of his patients, and/or (b) he was nationalist scum going for a big score via 'collective punishment.
   
2. I'm not a pure mental health professional (despite being on the front-lines, as it were, of the nutjob world as a pulpit rabbi), but I am training to be a behavioral scientist; and I've been fascinated, for years, on how most people don't know the warning signs of these mass murderers. I claim, and we'll see what we find about yesterday's (and now today's) mass murdering mamzers (MMM), but I'm certain there were warning signs. Remember Virgina Tech.
   
3. Connected to the 'warning signs,' I've also hoped that one day we'd catch one of the MMMs alive, and it looks like we've done that for both shootings. This is good - because, especially with the Hood shooter, who's was not only a psychiatrist, but he's also a client! Who better to give insight as to why these crazy men (and it's almost always men) snap and decide to kill random strangers.
   
4. Related to that, maybe by talking with Hassan Hassan Hassan, we can find out the best way to convince these budding MMM to just straight out commit suicide, first, before the rampage. Because, as I claim, these guys are usually giving off many warning signs. Yet since there is, as a guest teacher confirmed for me in pastoral psychology, a "license to be crazy" in America, we can't do anything for the MMM before he takes out his family/coworkers/random innocents. So my idea is to create a stress kit for mental health professionals who can convince the pre-MMM that suicide is the best option. In the long run, we'll save many lives. I'm only slightly joking.

Nice line about movies

By Zack Handlen in the November 2, 2009 Onion AV Club review of The Seventh Seal:

"I’m coming to realize that the difference between a good movie and a great one are those moments of intense personal connection where it seems like the filmmaker is reaching out to you through the screen and whispering (or yelling, or cajoling, or demanding, or pleading) in your ear. As if there is no real distance between you and the director, time has changed nothing, and the moment remains as pure as it was on the day it was filmed."

Note, the same can be said for any of the narrative arts (books, theater, uh, tweets).

Backpost, finished on 11-20-2009.

Evidently the Yankees Won

So I hear the Yankees won the World Series. [Insert 30 second long yawn here]. While I am the mildest possible Mets fan (Let's Go Mets! Or Not!), I don't hate the Yankees. I know I'm supposed to; I know they are the baseball cognate to the Dallas Cowboys; but I would need to care more about baseball as a sport to muster the emotional will to hate a particular team. I just find them, and the sport that houses them, filled with meh.

Pic from here. Note, the pic was made by a Yankee *fan.* This is a backpost, finished on 11-20-2009.

Area Code 770

Someone called me a few weeks (months) ago from Atlanta, area code 770. I wonder, as a modern sociologist of Orthodox Jewry and Associated Oddness, whether the Lubavitch community will start buying cell-phone plans from Atlanta? Has it already happened?

Pic from here.

Claude Levi-Strauss, Anthropologist, Dies at 100

The newest winner of my Vance Packard Award - named for the journalist who died in 1996, many years after I thought he was already dead - is enormously influential anthropologist: Claude Levi-Strauss - who died at 100 years old. When I read his stuff in college, he'd long since been elevated into the Zodiac of "important thinkers in our history that we don't consider in any way correct anymore". It's amazing that he was still alive.

Note, he did not invent the jeans, but who knows, the time frame was right!

I Just Lost US$4.7 Million!

An email arrived, entitled "Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection..." in it, I learned this (verbatim):

We hereby bring to your notice that a consignment been delivered at your residence by two diplomats.

They had been stopped by us. There is a security measure put in place by United States of America, check terrorism and money laundry through the sale of illegal drugs locally and internationally.

After examination, we found out that the consignment contained the sum of US$4.7 Million, which upon further investigation revealed that the fund was your inheritance.

Consequently, the diplomats will deliver your consignment at your residence after all protocols have been observed.

However, in order to proceed we need you to reconfirm the following information,

Full Name: ....
Residential Address:....
Date of Birth: ....
Occupation: ....
Telephone/Mobile Numbers: ....

We await your response.
Regards,
Jason Ahern.

This is so tragic. I just missed my inheritance money! Note, this implies that someone just died, and it's pretty mean of this spammer (and, uh, I assume it is) to assert that 4.7 million dollars worth of loved ones have just died in some poorly translated accident.

Anyway, I recall this excellent New Yorker article on spam (August 6, 2007, by Michael Specter, found here) which stated that "Spammers usually need to send a million e-mails to get fifteen positive responses..." This was eye-opening - that there actually are people who respond to these things! 15 from a million is a very small number (0.0015%!) but that still means that there are 15 people too stupid to understand spam yet smart enough to type.

Pic from here. Backpost finished 2009-11-30.

Fun: Television Tropes & Idioms

This is a very nice resource: Television Tropes & Idioms. An example, some of the tropes in the awesome Evil Dead (e.g. Army of Darkness) movie series (just the 'A's):

• Animate Dead: Subverted when Ash accidentally summons the titular Army of Darkness when he mispronounces a spell.
• Apocalyptic Log
• Arm Cannon
• Arrow Cam
• Artificial Limbs: When his hand is chopped off, Ash replaces it with a chainsaw. Later, he replaces that with a clockwork gauntlet.
  • And in the extended media beyond the films, he'll frequently swap out his gauntlet with the saw.
• Ax Crazy: How Ash copes with the events of the first two movies. By the third, he's turned it into Crazy Awesome.

A further explanation, using the last entry, the difference between Ax Crazy and Crazy Awesome:

[Pic of Jack Nicholson's character in the Shining] An "ax crazy" character is someone who is psychologically unstable and presents a clear danger to others. Ax crazies are capable of extreme violence, whether carried out with a Slasher Smile, a Creepy Monotone, or out and out murderous rage, and they're not too picky about their victims, which makes them extremely frightening to deal with. This mainly differentiates them from other eccentric characters who may themselves be obsessive, weird or seemingly crazy, but use this condition hand in hand with doing good, or at least not being in the way. However, some formerly established heroes can go through an episode of ax-craziness and still retain their heroic mantle.

vs.

Someone who is Crazy Awesome is someone who's nucking futs, in an amusing way, and is effective at what he does because of that craziness. In real life he'd get fired from whatever job he has/would have, or even arrested — at the very least, the things he does just plain wouldn't work. But somehow, he manages to be both effective and a character that the audience likes or even loves.

Like any good internet resource (especially those made by My GenX Brethren), each entry is hyperlinked to a bunch of other concepts. I declare this website, fun.

Pic from the website. Backpost finished 2009-12-02.

Eisenhower and the Shoah

An interesting source (and website); this is a letter from General D. Eisenhower, "
Letters of Note: The things I saw beggar description."

A description of the letter from the website:

The concentration camp in Ohrdruf was the first to be liberated by U.S. forces during World War II, and just a week later, General Dwight D. Eisenhower paid a visit in order to survey the scene. The following letter, in which Eisenhower describes said experience, was written by the future President three days later and sent to General George C. Marshall in Washington. Although the entire letter is interesting and worth reading, the now famous description by Eisenhower can be seen in the image below and found in the transcript's 6th paragraph.

h/t Sullivan; pic from the website; backpost - finished on 11-20-2009.

Wexler Stepping Down

Robert Wexler is (one of?) the only Orthodox Jews in the House of Representatives and he just announced that he's stepping down to join a Middle East Think Tank. This is very disturbing.

I have tenedentious contacts with Wexler; he's a member of my parent's shul in Maryland and he's my aunt's (father's sister) rep down in Florida. When I was trying to contact the Obama campaign last year - to volunteer as a speechwriter - Wexler was the guy I was trying to use (it came to naught; long story). I had great hopes for him in the Obama administration since he was an early supporter and was important in convincing the mad Florida Jews to think of Obama as a viable Democrat (and president).

Why is he leaving? I sure hope it's not a scandal. I really want him to have a future.

Pic from his new job's website; backpost finished on 2009-11-20.

Lobbying Mashiach: Thank You Cards

When Mashiach finally arrives (any moment now, or so I believe with complete faith), he will convene a court in order to (1) determine who is a Jew/Cohen and from which tribe, (2) who owes exculpatory sacrifices, and (3) undo the crazy crazy chumras (this is my addition, but it's a logical extension of his salvation powers). There are many chumras that need undoing; one thing you learn in rabbi school is just how much of halakha is comprised of guesswork and fences to make up for everything we've forgotten and muddled as a result of the exile. Damn Romans. So mashiach will be there to tell us, finally and unequivocally, that we need to only wait a few minutes between meat and milk, that chicken isn't fleishix, that women can learn Torah, science is OK, and there's only one day of Yuntif.

Recently, I've begun imagining other, extra-halakhic, things that Mashiach is going to do when he convenes the court. So the first item that I will lobby for, when there's a lull in the chumra-smashing, is: eliminate thank you cards.

I'm not sure why, in 2009, we still require these. They are a paper-ink-snailmail contrivance in an era when most people use email exclusively (saving snailmail for items that have been purchased online) and almost nothing normal is done in real paper and ink. Case in point: newspapers. They're "dying" - but only their physical being. If the paper-ink version were to die, and the online version stays, only geezer troglodytes will notice or care.

I detest thank you notes. It is expensive to own the stationary, expensive in time spent writing by hand the stupid things, expensive to mail, and - here's the kicker - THEY ARE IMMEDIATELY THROWN AWAY. What is the effing point?!

I have a blanket rule for anyone who receives a gift from me: you are allowed to email or call me to say thanks. Seriously. You *do* have to say thank you - otherwise you're an ungrateful leech - but what is wrong with using email in the 21st Century? Show some respect for the earthly resources, and I'll show respect for your time and money. I'm sure mashiach, if he's what I think he'll be, would manifestly agree.

First pic from here, and you really should check out the link, hee hee. Second pic was homemade via this site.

Onion's Silent Mockery

It's disturbing how the Onion can write an article that silently mocks my secret dreams: Tow-Truck Driver Has Great Idea For Tow-Truck Movie; except, naturally, my movie idea involves a vampire-hunting rabbi. Just like my real life.

Pic from this amazon mini-book - an even more disturbing development for my movie idea...

Fun - Starship Dimensions

This is a fun link, for you sci-fi geekers: Jeff Russell's Starship Dimensions. Ya gotta see it to understand the coolness.

More Videos

My search for the Swayze obit video uncovered these two great, hall of fame, skits from SNL - (1) The debut of Chris Farley's "Matt Foley", (2) the commercial for "Bad Idea Jeans" (look how young, and/or alive, those guys were! [tear]):







Backpost finished on 2009-11-20.

Patrick Swayze a'h

Patrick Swayze died over the chagim and I didn't hear about it til now. He seemed like a nice fellow. And he showed that you could be a tough ballet dancer. In any case, here's a tribute video from his one and only SNL hosting gig, a stone-cold classic with the heilige Chris Farley.




Backpost. Finally written on Nov 9, 2009

Meaningful vs. Easy Fast

When did it become both vogue to say "meaningful fast" and assur to say "easy fast." The Hebrew phrase "Tzom Kal" (easy fast) is an idiom, I have no idea what 'meaningful fast' would be in halakhic language.

And that's the signal right there: 'easy' is something one halakhic person says to another; 'meaningful' is new-age spiritual nonsense. You have my permission to say 'easy fast.'

Yet Another Reason to Avoid Gefilte Fish

I put gefilte fish in the same culinary category as organ meat, bone marrow, borscht, and schmaltz: Old World Poverty Desperation Eats (OWPDE, pronounced "barf"). All o' them were on the alta-bubbie's table because the old country - besides having 100% Frumkeit and miracle-making mystics - was dirt poor. Our collective Ashkenazic grandparents lived in third-world countries and were below the poverty line.

Gefilte Fish, case in point, was not invented because (as I think some NCSY clown told me) people couldn't take fish bones out on Shabbat, so a food was invented that ground up the fish, bones and all. This is fish-poo. You absolutely can take bones out of your fish on Shabbat; as a general rule of thumb, something that if you didn't do it would kill you, is always allowed. Put another way, the Old Country Rabbis may have been starving to the point of eating animal skin and bone interiors, but they also made it OK not to die by choking/tearing holes in your esophagus. Naturally, that means that they're not as frum as our food-stamp-grubbing frummies of today. So be it.

Gefilte Fish was created because by grinding up a fish, bones and all, and adding equal proportions of week-old challah, you were able to have one fish feed 5 people. Give a man an intact fish, and he can eat only 40%, give a man a ground up fish, and he eats 95% of it (maybe even the eyeballs? was that part of the recipe? yet another reason to skirt the gefilte).

Anyway, a recent story from UK Jewish Chronicle gives yet another reason to avoid the gefilte: sometimes a normal batch will glow in the dark.

Then again, I can actually see that as a plus.

[h/t VIN, pic from the orig. story]

Razzle Dazzle

Gettin' into Football season...

Dummies Update

As mentioned here and here, I find the Dummies Books - and their co-morons, the Idiots Books - to be an unnecessary insult on the reading public. I'm sure it started out as irony ("Boy, I am such an idiot that I will go out and educate myself, as idiots often do") but it adds a demeaning layer of condensation to our discourse. And surely it affects business: like Cliff's Notes, the books are brightly colored, instantly recognizable, and they broadcast the message: "please mock me for trying to learn something!"

My solution - and if I ever own a printing press, this is what I'll do - is to have the same type of books and call them either "Primers" or "Handbooks" and have nice covers. Ah well, they're laughing all the way to the First Dummies Bank while I'm still in grad school.

That ranted, here's the latest entry for my ire: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Verbal Self-Defense" My guess? The first chapter is to apologize for the book title.

First Day of Kindergarten

My oldest child, codename "Big B," started kindergarten today! A milestone in his life, and my life, simultaneously.

He has many friends there already, and, I'm told that BigB did something his father was unable to do on *first* day of kindergarten. He was brave enough to ask the teacher to go to the bathroom. Many 5 year olds are too anxious to do that (ahem ahem) but BigB did. Yay him.

[Pic from here.]