A Guy Walks Into A Bar

A guy walks into a bar and applies for a job mopping the floors. The bartender, a loyal NRA member, says, "Okay, pal, I have to ask you a few questions to see if you fit in. First, do you favor the overthrow of the United States' government by force, subversion or violence?" "Violence," the man says. It was a lucky guess.

Mister Ed

Long ago, Mister Ed walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Why the long face?" In fact he is a little spooked by Mister Ed, a talking horse on TV, whose smile seems unconnected to his eyes, which stare blankly. He's a odd one, Mister Ed. You might think, given his ability to speak English, he would ask for more oats or comment on the position of women in society (definitely second class in those days). Instead he talks like a car salesman.

The Queen and Alan Turing

This morning the Press Democrat ran a story from London. Queen Elizabeth II has "exercised  her royal prerogative of mercy" (gag me) and pardoned Alan Turing, who committed suicide in 1954.  Alan Turing was the British scientist who, in World War II, led the breaking of the German code system called Enigma. No one made a larger contribution to winning that war. A former student of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Turning is credited by many as being the father of artificial intelligence and the age of the computer. In 1952 he was convicted of having sex with a man and chemically castrated. His security clearance was cancelled. He took his own life at age 41. To which I will add this: the Duck Dynasty can kiss my ass.

Latino vs. White

On the front page of THE PRESS DEMOCRAT this morning the newspaper printed a category mistake made by Associated Press. "A category mistake arises when things of one kind are presented as if they belong to another kind."  The newspaper, in its own words, set out to show "the racial and ethnic composition" of California. So the error was built in.  The figures turned out to be White 36.6%, Latino 40.8%, Black 5.6% and Asian 13.4%. Yet on my block seven Latinos have lived, all of them White. And it's not hard to find Black or Asian Latinos.

You can sort Californians by skin color or by culture, but if you mix these categories, you get misleading results. For example, I have known Latinos for whom English is their first language; and their Spanish is no better than mine (not good).

Ideology

When Albert Camus visited the United States, he gave a talk at Columbia University in French that was attended by 1200 people. One of his topics was an exploration of what had made Hitler's rise to power possible.  Camus argued that the most significant factor had been an emphasis on ideology at the expense of human dignity. What he meant was that Fascism rose out black and white thinking, out of ideological rigidity, out of a refusal to compromise, out of a total rejection of the other side's ideas, out of a rejection of some people's humanity.

President Obama came into office determined to listen to all sides on important issues. In theory that is what a good leader does. In practice things may not go well if you are faced with rigid ideology, whether it comes from the right or left. Obama's own humanity has come under constant fire, including attempts to deny he was born in this country and attempts to blame him for matters over which a President has no control.

(Also on FaceBook) 

The Shocking Khobragade

 India has been deeply shocked by the arrest and cavity search of Devyani Khobragade, an Indian deputy consul general, in New York. From what I read she was arrested for lying on a visa application about her housekeeper's wages, which turned out to be less than $3 per hour. Khobragade was treated, she claims, like a common criminal.

We have plenty of underpaid workers already. The last thing we need is a lying fool from India's 1% cheating a housekeeper. The plain lack of decency to a worker is the part I find shocking. India wants this creep back. As far as I am concerned, they can have her.

The Problem of Job from Uz

The problem of evil is familiar to us in one form or another.  Really bad things occur--why does a perfect God allow evil in the world? In the Old Testament the problem of evil was memorably presented in the story of Job, written about 2700 years ago.  God permits Satan to torture Job--and to kill Job's children, servants and livestock--to test the faith of a blameless man. In other words, God allows innocents to be killed. In the end, Job's God makes a kind of point. He tells Job that God has a mighty arm, that He can do as He likes and that humans can't begin to understand Him. 

I'm incompetent in theological matters, but I became interested in Job while reading an article by Joan Acocella in THE NEW YORKER, December 16, 2013.

Who is Job? That's what caught my attention. The Bible says that Job is from Uz, an unknown land no other source has ever mentioned (although Frank Baum came close). Job's lineage is unknown. Job is not a Jewish name. No one in the story has a Jewish name. The author or authors of the story are unknown.  So who the hell is this Job? And which God is he worshipping?

Ask For An Attorney

I have sometimes wondered about a fairly common sequence of events. A terrible murder takes place. The police arrest a likely suspect, and he confesses. At his trial, the suspect retracts his confession, but that impresses nobody and the jury convicts him. The judge gives him 50 years. Ten years later DNA evidence proves the convict innocent. Why did he confess? Why does that keep happening?

In the December 9, 2013, NEW YORKER, Douglas Starr explains why it occurs, enlightening people like me. Back in the 1950s a polygraph expert named John Reid invented a system of questioning that relentlessly pushes a suspect into confessing. That method has been adopted around the world. If you would like to learn this carefully structured and effective method, you can, today, sign up with Reid & Associates in Boston for the basic training course.

I don't have space here to describe the method, but you have seen it on LAW AND ORDER and so forth. It works. The only problem with it is that it leads to a confession, not to the truth. Keep John Reid in mind. If you get arrested, the first thing to do is ask for an attorney. After that, say nothing. 

Cannabis Convention in Santa Rosa

According to the Press Democrat this morning, Sonoma county's Cherry Kola won the Breeder's Cup at our yearly cannabis convention, attended by about 4500 growers and buyers. Kola came in second in the statewide Flower Contest, where victory was snatched away by an upstart bud from Monterey. This shocked the headbands off of competitors from the Emerald Triangle (Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties, the heart of the cannabis empire). Santa Rosa police officers patrolled the event, looking more cheerful than necessary.

Gay, Latino, and He Sells Drugs?

The Press Democrat had an upbeat story on its front page this morning, and I (a frequent critic) should admit it. Matt Brown wrote up newly minted Mayor Robert Jacob of Sebastopol.  Sebastopol is the Paris of the western part of Sonoma County, the area too progressive to brush with fluoride tooth paste. Black Bart, famous stage coach robber, used to hang out nearby. Anyway, Mayor Brown is gay, Latino and the founder of two medical marijuana outlets called Peace in Medicine. That almost makes me like Sebastopol (but no, it has too many one-way streets). 

The Lure of Ayn Rand

Adolescents, particularly weak outsiders, are sometimes fascinated by powerful villains and their cold ruthlessness. That is what Ayn Rand offers, a gross reversal of morality, an admiration for sociopathic evil. An outcaste teenager who adopts Rand moves into a position of secret glamor (she or he believes) and dark superiority to ordinary people with their feeble kindnesses to one another.

The Moderates

In the Dec. 2 New Yorker, Jill Lepore wrote about how divided the two main political parties are at present. "The more you know, the more likely you are to vote in an ideologically consistent way, not just following your party but following a set of constraints dictated by political ideology. . . . What makes a voter a moderate . . . is not knowing very much about politics." (Lepore here is conveying the ideas of someone else.)

That's interesting and a comfort to those of us with strong views, but I'm not sure what "not knowing very much" means here. It might mean that you don't know who your state senator is, or it might mean you don't know that your congressional representative wants to abolish Social Security. There are many kinds of low information voters, including those who argue that there is no difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. There are moderates who understand politics but have values that favor moderation in all things, ranging from ice cream to racism. They work for PBS.

The Question No One Answers

Tom Belton, sage of the Senior Center, left Safeway recently, having purchased a small bag of chips, and found himself near a table in the parking lot. Many of us have seen this table before. It pops up in various sites around the county. The table calls for the impeachment of the President and sports some supportive posters of the President with a Hitler mustache.  Male and female persons stand behind the table, ready to engage the public, which hurries by with faces averted. Tom, of course, stopped to engage in some irony.

I'm not sure where the two people come from, but I suspect that they are followers of Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr., released from prison in 1994. They are the sort of people I like to see keeping busy doing useless work. In any case, the male impeacher told Tom that the President is a Muslim. "Is that right?" Tom asked, very interested. "Is he Shia or Sunni?"

Santa In Chains

Karl Hilgert is a large round man with a white beard, a retired social worker and peaceful activist. For many years he was a regular member of the Healdsburg Peace Project. We all respected him.  A couple of years back, he moved south, only to appear on the Daily Show (Jon Stewart) last night. 

Even in mufti, Karl looks like Santa Claus, and when he puts on the red Santa costume, he's a dead ringer. Stewart ran a clip of Karl dressed as Santa being led away in handcuffs by the police. He had been demonstrating in front of  one of those Wallmart stores that refuses to pay its workers a wage they can live on without adding welfare. At Wallmart they never have a merry Christmas.

The War on the World

It used to be that the worst case of ideology trashing science in my lifetime came out of the USSR. Stalin and Lysenko (a fake biologist) decided, around 1948, that their political doctrines would benefit if plants and animals could inherit acquired characteristics. You could change everything for the better rapidly if that were true. The entire Communist community of leaders around the world was ordered to attack the gene theory of evolution. Some of those leaders were themselves biologists and others were rational. They had a difficult time of it. Around the same time Sartre's version of existentialism became popular--he argued that humans, alone among the mammals, had no essence. If true, then humans could be changed rapidly. As the years went by, the no-essence view was taken up by some feminist factions, looking for quick changes, and some postmodernists. They did not, as far as I know, set out to refute modern gene biology. They ignored it. Science marched on, and you know how all that turned out.

Today we see a related phenomenon at work in the Republican denial of climate change and of the role humans have played in that change. Once again we see ideology triumphing over science in the minds of fanatics. I will quote from a Nobel-winning French biologist, Jacques Monod,  back in 1948, talking about the Communist denial of the gene theory and the practice of severely punishing Russian scientists who disagreed. "All of this is senseless, monstrous, unbelievable. Yet it is true. What has happened?"