The Deadly Computer

The danger with computers is not that Amazon knows I like to read mysteries. Who cares? The problem is Kronos and related computer programs, according to Esther Kaplan in the March HARPER'S.

Today 62% of retail jobs are part-time. The great majority of these workers have no set days off or any regular schedule. What companies do today is put all their part-timers on call. If you want to keep your job, you can be called in to work at any time. It's two hours one day, four hours the next night. Where possible, computer programs measure each second and clock how fast you work. The faster workers survive. The work then speeds up. To keep their jobs the workers learn shortcuts, some of them counterproductive. Meantime, the worker can't schedule child care because her hours of work shift day by day, maximizing investor profits by cutting labor costs.

To keep their own jobs, managers (also measured by a computer program) force workers to finish tasks off the books. If managers can show that certain jobs get done and took almost no official worker time, the managers will survive the speed-up. In fast food joints, for example, employees may be required to work as much as 10 hours a week without pay, off the computer. 

This system exists because we allow it to exist. Because we don't support unions, the part-time employees are, for the most part, helpless.    

The Child Obama

Larry Wilmore put his finger on what is wrong with President Obama. Wilmore quoted America's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, who had pointed out earlier that he had lived through 9/11 and  Obama had not.  
That fact can be read two ways, of course. Giuliani might have meant that Obama was killed in the events of 9/11. The President we see on television might be a body double. But that interpretation is far-fetched. I dismiss it. Giuliani obviously meant that Obama was born after 9/11, in which case, when he was elected President in 2008, he was at most six years old.

I'm not a Confederate or even a conservative, but the Confederate Republicans got this right. Obama was not eligible to run or serve as President in 2008, and I suspect that he's still too young today.

Masterpiece

When you encounter a masterpiece, you know it. That's a problem for aesthetics. What makes the broken lines that Jackson Pollock gestured down onto a painting compelling? We can't say. They point to nothing. They aren't edges.

Last night NBC replayed the opening show of SNL from 40 years ago. One of the singers was Janis Ian performing her song "At Seventeen." I hope I never hear it again--it's crushing--and a masterpiece. Then this morning I got a copy of  Bunny Berrigan's standard, "I Can't Get Started."

The Sorbonne

Pat:  My guidance counselor says that tuition at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, costs each student less than two hundred euros a year.

Mike: The Sorbonne is subsidized by the rich French nation. We could never afford to do that in California. We just scrape by, dude. We don't have the tax dollars.

Pat: We might raise taxes.

Mike:  Right-- tax oil companies the way they do in Texas? They'll move to Kansas, man, and frack for oil there.

Pat: Anyway, the Sorbonne is located in the Latin Quarter. How fluent are you in Latin?

Mike: Not at all. We might apply as a safety school, but I'm telling you the Sorbonne ranks near the bottom when it comes to beer busts and cheese whoppers. We'd better hope we get into Pepperdine.

Pat: Hey, At Pepperdine you can see the beach from the campus, almost.
   

Bill Maher, Lawrence O'Donnell and Hate Crimes

It's too early to know much, but three young Muslims (two of them covered women) were murdered by a neighbor in North Carolina yesterday. Supposedly there was a dispute over a parking spot, but I doubt if that was the only motive. Ridding the world of three members of a "broken religion," as Bill Maher and Lawrence O'Donnell have put it, would that be the right thing to do?

I doubt if the killer watches Maher or O'Donnell. He's a slob with a gun and a car he'd like to park. But what if his crime was exactly what President Obama was trying to head off when he said Americans are not at war with Muslims?

I'm an atheist, but I believe that the enemy is extremism, not one religion or the other.  

Visiting Pico

In 1840 Pico wasn't a boulevard in L.A. He was one of two brothers destined to serve as governors of Alta California. Andres Pico would be the dude who led the Californios in battle, clobbering the invading American army that had marched from Texas. Pio Pico claimed to be the ugliest man in Los Angeles, but Andres made the same claim. They used to ride around town, at that  time the largest settlement in Alta California, stopping women and asking them to settle the family dispute.

Let's say that it's 1840, and you live in Monterey. You decide to visit your cousin Pio Pico. How would you get there?

You could go by ship, but that would cost money. There is almost no money in Alta California. Instead you walk out in the field near your adobe and catch up a horse. That's not hard. Horses were worth little, maybe four bucks, and the Californios let them loose to graze--but with long ropes hanging from their necks. If you walk up to a loose horse, it will likely shy away from you, but if you walk over to a trailing rope, the horse pays no attention. You saddle your horse and ride all day. Then you find a fresh mount and turn the old one loose. Repeat five or six times and you will be eating huevos rancheros with the Picos, each of whom insists he is uglier than his brother. 

The Results from Gettysburg

After the battle of Gettysburg, many of the rebels wrote home that they had won. Consider for a moment what that might mean about the ability of our species to process information. 

That explains a lot about American politics. 

For example, our leaders rightfully condemn ISIS for burning people alive in the name of God. In my lifetime Americans burned black people alive in the name of God. They did that until they were stopped by Big Government. So if you hear someone say that Big Government is the problem, hide the matches.

Fabian

Fabian is 72 years old today. I don't care.

Like many people, I support some of the things that Pope Francis is doing. He has a genuine connection to helping those in need. On the other hand, Archbishop Cordileone of San Francisco. despite his auspicious name, reminds me of Father Serra. Both men enjoyed vast power trips. They used the Church to gain control over other people. Father Serra whipped many hundreds of California Indians in whose sex lives he meddled. He whipped more slaves than Robert E. Lee. Bishop Cordileone busies himself trying to keep gays from getting married and attempting to control the private lives and free speech of Catholic teachers. His need to make others obey him gives piety a bad name.

Herbal Supplements?

The Associated Press has reported that four out of five bottles of the herbal supplements we buy do not contain a trace of the herb on their labels. Instead they contain cheap fillers like dirt and chopped-up weeds. But is this really a good thing?

My economic analysis shows that the sale of herbal supplements moves money from educated and thoughtful suckers to more canny types of capitalists. In the long run, that must work for everyone's benefit. It puts billions of dollars in the right hands.

Genuine herbs can be dangerous. Almost no one is harmed by swallowing small amounts of dirt and weeds. Some of our greatest athletes, football players, do this daily. Many of them live deep into their fifties.

In general herbal supplements attract and reinforce the optimists among us, people who plan to live forever, people who hope that Asian grandmothers know more about health than Western science.  I might not be among those people, but no one has rubbed more Tiger Balm on tummies than my family. 

Why Father Serra?

 I've been doing some reading and attending a lecture series on California history by Chris O'Sullivan. He is not to blame for what I write below.

Spain (and later Mexico) had no interest in early California, which they called Alta California. Spain settled Baja California, after a fashion, but it ignored the California that today stretches from San Diego to Crescent City. No one lived there but 300,000 apparently contented Indians, about 25% of the Indians in what is now the United States.

Then, in 1770, Spain finally put together a military and religious expedition to take control of its California territory. A Franciscan, Father Serra, led the religious contingent. It was his job to turn the Indians from contented hunter/gatherers into Christians who ate corn and could be whipped into control. A few decades later, about 90% of the Indians had died of European diseases, but Serra had erected a string of missions that eventually ended in the new town of Sonoma. Today the Catholic Church is considering making Serra a saint.

The reason for the Spanish burst of energy was that the Russians had come down the coast from Alaska, hunting sea lions and sea otters. They'd installed cannon at Fort Ross. The Spanish decided that the Russians had to be stopped. No one thought Alta California was worth fighting over, but the Spanish had silver mines in Northern Mexico. They suspected the Russians wanted those mines. The Russians had to be pushed away.

The Spanish and Mexicans who settled in Alta California soon found themselves forgotten. The Russians sold their cannon to John Sutter and left. This purchase by Sutter ruined him financially. Mexico became independent of Spain and lost interest in California, to the point where the Californios decided to shake loose of Mexico and find some other arrangement, maybe with France, a Catholic nation. Meanwhile, in the 1840s, citizens of the United States began to sidle into California through the Sierras, entering a foreign country without permission and without passports. They were unwanted illegal aliens. The rest is history.