The innocent beauty of the scam artist

     I have never been to Nigeria. But I imagine, beneath the poverty and the desperate scramble to scrape a living out of scarce resources, there is a certain sweetness there, which I can gleam even through its scam attempts to rob me via email.
     Now, I have no idea whether email scams are all from Nigeria, or even if most are. That's supposedly a center, but who knows? That's where I imagine them as originating, in windowless cinderblock warehouses with corrugated metal roofs, tapped out on cast-off computers by lanky, glassy-eyed teenagers, in tattered cast-off t-shirts that arrive in massive bundles in the holds of container ships. Particularly this one.

     I don't spend my days reading scam emails. Just hit "empty trash" and be done with it. , But I will scan my spam filter, though this one somehow slid around the filter and actually showed up in my "Inbox" a few Sundays ago. It reads, in its entirety: 

Dearest Friend,
How are you today, am sure you are doing well? I was wondering if I can know you better?
I am Colonel Marcus Luthan, of the U.S.Army presently working in Afghanistan. I saw your profile and sincerely wished to know you better and would like to have a good relationship with you..I have great plans for both of us, if you are interested please reply for more future communication and details. Also tell me more about yourself and your nationality
I will tell you more about my intentions when I receive your reply. Have a nice time and remain blessed. I will be happy to read from you, you can write me with my following email address: marcusslut@gmail.com , for more secured communication.
Thanks

      If I were teaching writing, I might save it for a lesson on "voice." Because the writing is not  so much incorrect, grammatically, as it is totally wrong in tone. No U.S. Army colonel could write three paragraphs like that if he tried for a day. 

      Even before you get to the give-away emails: marcusslut@gmail.com -- which is either "Marcus" misspelled, or with a middle initial, to make it look even more real, not knowing that it would scan, to an American eye, as "Marcus Slut" -- unless of course that reveals a side business, for days when nobody's biting on your email lures.

    Someone must fall for these scams -- you send out enough, and nibbles come in, and eventually money is being sent to you through Western Union or Paypal or Bitcoin or whatever the savvy scammer uses nowadays. The very aged, perhaps, or those whose greed far outstrips their intelligence. And I don't want to romanticize or apologize for them—real people are hurt, stripped of their savings, and the attempt reflects a desperate need that is neither sweet nor funny. 
    But the naïveté, the innocence of it, if you can be an innocent scam artist. It's almost beautiful.  I had to share it. I actually had to write him back, and see where it went, but the subsequent form letter attempts to extract more data from me didn't share the perfection of the original message. 

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     You know what I think has been tripping me up?
     The concept of fairness.
     A number of times I've look at the above photo and thought, "this'll stump 'em."
    And then, a qualm pops up its tiny little head and squeaks.
    That wouldn't be fair.
    Too hard. Too much of a challenge. 
    Which has stayed my hand.
    Until now.  
    Since nothing has proven too much of a challenge for you guys.
    So far.
    Today I'm saying, "Screw fairness." 
    I've been too nice.
    Which is why I always lose.
    Actually, I'm saying "fuck fairness."
    Which is what I said initially.
    A pleasing alliteration. 
    But then I yanked back.
    See? Nice. 
    No more.
    You know what Leo Durocher said about nice guys. 
    They finish last.
    Actually, he didn't say that.
    He said that nice guys finish in seventh place.
    Or nice guys don't win pennants.
    Or something negative about nice guys.  
    And it was transformed into the more famous line.
    Anyway, where is this orange-vested gentleman? Bonus points if you know what he's doing. 
     The winner—not that there will be a winner—will receive, should he win, which he won't, one of my super-exclusive 2015 blog posters.
     Good luck. Place your guesses below. 
     For all the good it'll do. 

How are the cameras changing us?

     After more than a century, the photograph still shocks.
     There is New York Mayor William Jay Gaynor, natty in his bowler hat and shiny shoes, the right lapel of his wool suit sprayed with blood. Urban planner Benjamin C. Marsh clutches his left arm and stares, in something like reproach, at the photographer, William Warnecke of the New York World, who snapped the shutter for what he thought would be an ordinary photo of a politician about to set sail for Europe and ended up with a picture of a man who had just been shot in the throat.
     The date was Aug. 9, 1910.
     Photography was past its infancy, but cameras were still bulky affairs often made of brass and wood and usually perched on tripods. News events such as this assassination — technically, though Gaynor lived three years until the bullet lodged in his throat killed him — were caught only by the merest happenstance. When the Hindenburg blew up before the newsreel cameras and radio microphones at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937, the tragedy took on an epic scale and was seared into memory. Not because it was particularly deadly (36 people died in the zeppelin explosion — 13 passengers, 22 crew and a worker on the ground) but because it was so dramatic.
      Now we live in an era of cheap, high-quality, omnipresent video technology in the form of the camera built into every blessed cellphone. This permits us to see somebody shot every day, nearly, and another big fiery disaster or epic crash every, what, week or two? We are immediately moved by these images’ drama, only later puzzling over the true meaning of what we just saw.
     We’re also so busy processing each new crime and drama as it occurs, we never step back and wonder how having so much more life recorded is affecting us.
     Where are we going with this?
     Maybe it isn’t affecting us much. People still rob banks, still inadequately disguise themselves and get a bag of cash ready to explode into red dye despite seeing photos of the guy who tried it last week. Cops commit the most heinous over-reactions, not only caught by passersby, but in front of their own dashboard cameras that they know are there.
     Maybe they just don’t think. There’s a lot of that going around. You get the sense when a police officer puts 16 bullets into a suspect, he’s reacting to the situation in a way that, at that moment, feels right. It’s only later that they realize — and the world realizes, thanks to the damning video — what they’ve done.
      Or they don’t realize, lacking a video. One of the most worrisome risks from this spate of captured crimes is that, without damning images, the perpetrator easily walks as we saw this week with cop Dante Servin, a jaw-dropping case of justice shrugged away.
      Change comes fast and slow. For a long time, anyone who whipped out a phone and made a call in a public place was by definition a pretentious jerk. Now any given group of 7-year-olds furiously consult their phones and it’s strange to see one who isn’t. In some realms, the cellphone videos should affect our thinking but don’t. People still believe in UFOs, for instance, based on those blurry black-and-white photographs of pie pans, never for a moment wondering where are the phone videos we should have if these things were really here.
      Video cameras were an Orwellian intrusion that would be used by totalitarian regimes to restrict our rights. I’m sure some people still worry about that, failing to notice that, in practice, it is the evidence shot by cellphones that provides a bulwark against abused authority, security that we’ve lacked and obviously need. Maybe asking the police to wear body cameras is, again, giving them too much faith, putting too much responsibility into their hands. Maybe it’s us citizens who should wear the body cameras. For our own safety.

Who knew? Kosher pot holders

     Religion is weird. 
     I suppose there is a more polite way to put that.
     Religion is fascinating or religion is complex—both also true. 
     But "weird" sounds right, at the moment. Every religion has its strange stuff—we know that, because when we encounter unfamiliar religions, we easily smirk at their oddities, never pausing to consider that these off-kilter practices are only a slightly different flavor of what we find homey and ordinary. When Mitt Romney was running for president, for instance, and people were plucking out various aspects of his religion to mock, it was almost sad to see how easily they marveled over something they believed too. To see the people who cooked up the whole idea of heaven snickering at Mormons for putting it in Jackson County, Missouri, as if giving their fantasy celestial paradise an earthly address was the outrageous part.  
     Or Judaism, my own creed. I'm always discovering heretofore unimagined practices embraced by believers. When my son was born, my in-laws, who were Orthodox, informed my wife and me that we had to have a pidyon haben--a ceremony to buy him from God for five piece of silver. I shrugged—when in Rome, er, Jerusalem—and trotted off to a Korean coin store to buy five greasy, worn silver dollars. I figured, God wouldn't mind, and He didn't.
     Having Orthodox in-laws put me in closer proximity to the more arcane Jewish practices.  I was at their synagogue, laying into the buffet lunch afterward, when the rabbi came over and informed me that I couldn't have meat and fish together on my plate. I almost blurted out, "You're kidding, right?" That was a new one -- "Isn't fish meat?" I asked, slightly suspecting he was pulling my leg. No, this was one of the sub-cellers of Kosher. No cheeseburgers, no shrimp, no herring and brisket sitting on the same paper plate, just as a person eating dairy and a person eating meat can't sit at the same table.
     Oh. 
     I always like to ask "Why?" in these situations. I didn't then, but a little digging reveals that... and this is why I don't write fiction, because I could never conjure up something as deliciously daft as this... the Talmud suggests that mixing meat and fish causes leprosy.
     Double oh.
     It never stops. Early in the month I was at Hungarian Kosher Foods, on Oakton in Skokie, picking up Kosher chicken for Passover (why, I don't know, since none of us keep Kosher; tastes better, I suppose, though I could argue that it just costs so much more we make ourselves believe it tastes better).  I noticed this rack of products which I didn't think could be Kosher: pot holders, rubber gloves, sink strainers. You don't eat them, what does it matter? As with the fish and meat taboo, I at first thought they were joking. Maybe there was a brand loyalty scam aspect going on — "Kosher" rubber gloves meant gloves to be bought by Jews, probably more expensive too, like Kosher chicken.
    No. The color coding gave it away. Blue for dairy, red for meat. Just as you have different set of pans and dishes for dairy and meat, so you need separate potholders to handle the pans and rubber gloves to wash the dishes. 
     And for Passover—when bread and all its manifestations are forbidden—special Passover rubber gloves, since some rubber gloves have a certain starchy powder in them, a residue of the manufacturing process (you're not supposed to blow up balloons for the same reason). 
      By the way, Orthodox Jews give their pets --- their dogs, cats, fish, whatever -- Kosher pet food, but not for the sake of the animals, who aren't Jewish—that's an unexpected whiff of rationality—and thus can eat whatever they please. It's the owners, who cannot "derive benefit" from unKosher foods. (An issue, I'm sure, deftly surmounted by a bit of rabbinic jujitsu for, oh, Jews who own chains of supermarkets). 
    Enough. Religion is not only weird, it's a bottomless pit of weird. That's sort of the point. You're supposed to fill up your life with this stuff. If you so choose. Myself, I prefer to focus on other stuff—just as meaningless, but not so rigorous. To each his own. 

   

Big data: 'We see you.'

     Jing Shyr is not afraid of big data.
     In fact, the IBM statistician spends her days trying to find better ways to hoover up the personal information that you spread around the Internet like a drunken sailor, and use that information, well, to better know what you're going to do and want next.
     "Every time you try to explain predictive analysis, people think it's 'The Matrix,'' said Shyr, who works for IBM's Analytics division in Chicago.  She said it's closer to weather forecasting. Is there a chance of rain? What does the data suggest? Should I bring an umbrella? That's predictive analysis.
     I wanted to talk to Shyr—pronounced "sheer"—because the description of her field was so obscure, to me. In the announcement last week naming her an IBM Fellow—the company's top technical innovation honor—she is identified as "a widely recognized leader in the field of predictive analytics. Her methodology for end-to-end automation of statistical analysis became the core of IBM SPSS Analytic Catalyst, a tool that enables non-specialist users to derive forward-looking insights from data."
     My hunch was, that means you can fire your middle managers and run your sales stats through an IBM program that tells you whether you'll need to stock more mittens in February. But I wanted to find out.
     "We watch web behavior of all kinds," she said, "listening what you are doing. What do you say on the blog? What do you tweet? Who do you follow? We take the behavior data, we understand you, we see you."
     And to think some find that ominous. She doesn't.
     "Technology is helping humans to articulate their thoughts, to make humans much smarter," she said.
     Two keys I keep in mind when approaching technology. First, every single device we use, bar none, was seen by some as the opening gong of doom when it first appeared. Gas lights were an offense to the night. Cars were fiendish. Computers would "take us over."
     Oh wait, that sort of happened, didn't it? Yet we don't mind. Which leads to the second key: people change along with technology. If the thought of billboards reflecting what TV show you watched last night seems intrusive, so did installing a telephone in your home, once.
     "If you really know how to connect the data, to give you a more clear view," Shyr said. "You get a much more focused and effective type of advertising. Now its still a little bit like junk mail."
     She worries herself about the online world.
     "As an individual, I am very very afraid to let other people know who I am," she said. " I'm very afraid someone will steal my identity. I'm anxious about that.  .... I am very troubled by all types of advertising. It becomes very annoying. "
     I told her a story about Amazon, which, like many writers, I tend to despise. But I ordered three books last Friday, they came--miribile dictu--on Sunday, two days later, via the US Postal Service. But only two books. I hurried online, thinking I would have to wage a private war against Amazon to get credit for the missing third book. The information was all there. The shipment split, the tardy book on its way. I felt more positive about Amazon.
     "The future is about  relationship between vendors and customers," she said. "You give your data, and that is trust. The company knows more about you, they can do the right thing about you. The company holds data and really knows you. How do they know you? They know the data: how often you shop, what is your behavior. Your likes and dislikes, Everything you do and don't do, that 's giving them information."
     So be afraid if you like. But this is happening, and some people are thrilled.
     "I am very very excited by this data," Shyr said. "Once you feel someone is taking the data, and it is for your own sake, predicting what it means, doing the things you want, it's magic. That's what I see. Predictive analysis can help society. I always explain to people: machines don't get tired. You just need to get them data. Then the machine helps humans become more focused and more efficient."

"Chiraq, Chiraq, that toddlin' town!"

     This ran in the paper Monday—I had been a little worried that the moment had passed, and was reassured when I noticed my colleague Laura Washington also wrote about the movie, and the Tribune had not one, but two stories in its Monday paper, including a pious editorial hoping that Spike Lee will balance whatever gripping story about violence he ends up telling with ... well, the Trib doesn't quite say. The implication is, with good stuff. Maybe a travelogue of popular tourist spots. Or something about our vibrant convention business. You wonder if they've ever seen a movie.

     Procrastination gets a bad name.
     Such as "foot-dragging." Or "He who hesitates . . ."
     But sometimes waiting can be helpful.
     For instance, last week, a colleague stepped into my office. Would I, he wondered, be taking Rahm Emanuel to the woodshed for his clumsy attempt to pressure Spike Lee into calling his movie about violence in Englewood something other than "Chiraq"?
     I reacted like a child whose ball was snatched away. "But I'm almost done with this!" I pouted, gesturing to my screen, where I was hobby-horsing over risible feminist efforts to put a woman on the $20 bill — sure to be a hot topic on the streets of Chicago. "Maybe Monday."
     The delay provided clarity. On Saturday, Chicago's epidemic of violence flared up again: two dead, 18 wounded in just over 24 hours. With a whole summer to come. (UPDATE: Four killed and 30 wounded in weekend shootings).
     Which drove home the unfairness of "Chiraq," of equating Chicago with the Iraq War. Unfair to the Iraqi war, that is. An average day there wasn't nearly as bloody as Chicago was Saturday.
     Ignoring the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead — an American tradition — U.S. forces suffered 32,223 wounded over eight years of war which, for the math averse, comes out to about 11 a day. That's considered light in Chicago. When it comes to deaths, the city does a little better — 432 murders last year versus 560 soldiers killed every year in Iraq.
     Still, nothing to crow about, and it's strange to see the mayor and his aldermanic stooges try.
     Isn't Rahm the guy who was just on his knees, explaining how he's changed and is now listening to people? And I know there are South Siders who resent "Chiraq." But if you polled people in Englewood and asked where on their list of concerns is whatever Spike Lee might call his new movie, I can't believe it would rank very high. Were I the mayor, I would say, "If this movie can dramatize the toll that gun violence takes in Chicago and spur people to change, Spike Lee can call it, 'Take Your Convention Business to Vegas' for all I care."
     Instead we get the same bullying that Emanuel is known for.
     Believe me, I'm no fan of "Chiraq." It's one of those terms like "Chicagoland" or "Chi-Town" that advertise the speaker's lack of connection. ("Chicagoland" is where car dealerships say they're located; "Chi-Town" is something DJs say). Emanuel telling Spike Lee all the good that happens in Englewood is like the mayor of Verona dragging Shakespeare on the carpet to lecture him over "Romeo & Juliet" being bad for business.      
     "Sure Will, the Capulets and Montagues were at each other's throats. But why focus on them? Why be so negative? Why not write your play about the Bonamini and Redoro families? Their olive business turns a nice profit."
     Not that Spike Lee is Shakespeare. But his movies are serious enough art that even a Midwestern Machiavelli like the mayor should have enough sense to let him do his thing.
     My colleague pointed out something else worth sharing. When people refer to Chicago as "The Windy City," some know-it-all invariably mentions that the term was coined, not due to the lake breezes, but as a comment on the talkativeness of Chicago politicians ballyhooing the 1893 fair. Maybe so. Maybe that's how it began. But people don't still call Chicago the Windy City because of something a 19th century New York newspaper pundit said. People call it the Windy City because — wait for it — it's windy here.
     Facts matter. It isn't all spin. The mayor should not fight Chicago's reputation as a place where people get shot all the time by trying to silence anyone who draws attention to it. The mayor should fight Chicago's reputation as a place where people get shot all the time by — again, wait for it — doing whatever it takes to stop the shootings. Change the facts and the reputation will follow.

The president's shoes

     Yesterday's post on my uncharacteristic purchase of a pair of ostentatious shoes, and a visit to the Wisconsin factory that made them, left it up to the readers whether to post the second part, or to hurry on to other topics. To my gratification, everyone was unanimous in wanting to see it. So here it is.

     When George Washington pressed his lips against the Bible after being sworn in as this nation's first president on April 30, 1789, he was wearing a suit of brown broadcloth, donated by proud Hartford weavers. John Adams was wearing the same suit, cut from the same cloth donated by the same weavers. "They might have been dressed as twins," wrote David McCullough, "except that Washington's metal buttons had eagles on them."
     The history of commerce coveting the limelight of the presidency is lengthy. Hatters sent stovepipes to President-elect Abraham Lincoln.
     With this in mind, during a visit to the Allen Edmonds shoe factory in Wisconsin, my attention was drawn to letters and photos of recent Republican presidents.
     "Reagan's father was a shoe salesman," said spokesman Colin Hall. "And sold our shoes, loved our shoes."
     "In Chicago," I interjected.
     "President Reagan was a huge fan and wore our shoes all the time," Hall continued. "He convinced Bush Senior to wear our shoes, and they started a neat little thing where every inauguration they wore Allen Edmonds. It carried on with Clinton and Bush Junior. The only man not to wear our shoes at his inauguration was Obama. He wore shoes made in China—Cole-Haans."
     "No!" I gasped.
     "They asked us for shoes, so we sent them shoes," said Hall. "But we looked at all the pictures, and he's not wearing our shoes. The reasons we decided not to say anything about it is the world was falling apart at the time, the last thing he needed was this company in Wisconsin throwing shoes at him."
     Everything about Obama spawns a conspiracy theory, and this is no different.
     "Made in China," mused Hall. "Why would he do that?" The obvious answer, Hall said, is that a favor was owed to Nike founder Phil Knight, whose company owns Cole-Haan.
     "Look at Obama as another athlete being paid by Nike," he said.
     In fairness, I couldn't find any evidence that Obama is indebted to Knight or would feel compelled to wear his shoes. But what chance has truth compared with a good story?

DO THEY SMELL?
     Had Obama worn out his Allen Edmonds shoes working the corridors of power, he could have shipped them back to the factory for refurbishing—buying a quality shoe is like buying a car, in that they service it.
     Every day, up to 100 pairs of old, shabby, scuffed, soaked, moldy, broken-down Allen Edmonds shoes arrive in the mail ("Do they smell?" I asked a worker, who emitted a rueful laugh. "Especially in summer," she said).
     The company does something very high-tech— it first takes a digital photo of the battered footwear, posed fetchingly against a white background—then, after the sole is stripped off and the shoe rebuilt, it takes another of the finished product and e-mails it to customers, to say their reborn shoes are on the way. "Remember these?" the e-mail asks.
     One customer, sending in his departed father's Allen Edmonds to be refurbished, asked that his ashes be blended into the hot cork mixture applied between the sole and the shoe. The company complied.
     One last thing, before we bid adieu to the world of shoe manufacture. The company owns a specialty lumber mill, in one of those odd business connections one sometimes finds (My favorite: Coors brewery once owned a large toilet bowl factory, not due to the usual beer/toilet dynamic, but because they made their own beer kegs, and the kegs were lined in porcelain).
     So Allen Edmonds owns Woodlore, a nearby lumber mill because . . . ready? . . . they were having trouble getting a reliable source of cedar shoe trees, so they went into the business in order to guarantee supply.
     And here I thought nature was the only source of wonder.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times March 28, 2010