No one cries like a bully

   
     Should the cows rise up against their human overlords, and turn carnivorous in their rebellion, sating their hunger for vengeance on human flesh, I hope that, even if cornered by a bovine killing squads, as they close in around me, their long-lashed eyes brown and angry, their cud-flecked muzzles dripping foam, I still wouldn't, in the moment before their hooves come crashing down upon my head, blurt out something like, "How can you kill and eat an innocent living being!"
     Sigh.
     Because—I hate when I have to explain—people eat cows all the time. So if the cows turned the table and ate us, well, we wouldn't be happy about it, but we sure couldn't say it it wasn't fair, or condemn the act of eating other living entities. 
     Well, okay, we not only could say that, we would, because people are oblivious, and hypocrites. They're against all government handouts but their own. They discover the beauty of tolerance—for themselves—only after they're asked to accept someone they'd rather be kicking to death out behind the bar.
     Yesterday I wrote a fairly straightforward reaction to Bobby Jindal's execrable op-ed piece on why the religious notions of small businessmen should trump the basic civil rights of certain American citizens. I was more interested in why the battle should center on the statistically meaningless act of buying wedding cakes.
    Because really, wedding cakes? Wedding cakes! I had a big, hotel wedding. We ordered a big ass, multi-tiered cake. It was about the 20th most expensive thing related to the wedding. I'd hate to try to figure out the percentage of the American economy taken up by wedding cakes, but it would have a whole lot of zeros after the decimal point, somewhere between money spent on motorcycle sidecars and the market for fine bowler hats.
     The reaction was to be expected. But even with my lowered expectation, I noticed an extra strong dose of grievance. Religion, like meat-eaters, is so used to running our lives unquestioned, that even a tiny correction makes it feel that it is being pushed around. They  don't like it.
    "Bobby Jindal is correct that the gay militants are bullies," writes Albert Felker. He doesn't quite say why—I assume they're pushing people around by wanting to get married and have cake (the whole issue is a canard, like prayer in school. You are free to pray whenever you like, quietly, to yourself. But that isn't the big fucking me-me-me display that religion demands.. So hence the battle. Ditto for bakers. Being pressed to bake wedding cakes for gays is not actually a real life issue; this might be the first time that has actually been pointed out. A handful of occurrences, maybe. But really just a notional wedge dreamed up by the geniuses who brought us abstinence education).
     My favorite email from Monday, perhaps my favorite email of all time, came from Mike Zintak. It's sort of a greatest hits collection of the current thinking of the Far American Right, to stretch the term "thinking," and really needs no commentary. It is self-explanatory.
     Though, I can't resist pointing out his line about how gays "push their agenda down everyone's throat." That's what conjured up the cow revolt. Because really, look at religion. As with carnivores, faith had a lock on society. For centuries, millennia, the church had the whip hand. Wrong faith, they'd pack you in your synagogue and set it on fire. Women, well, God intended them to be scrubwomen and moms. Talk about pushing their agenda. 
     You can't expect them to see it. But that doesn't mean we can't look at it, blinking in wonder. A Mount Everest of hypocrisy.
     And then gays, after only a few decades of trying, get the chance to marry like normal human being do. And rather than give up that rather small shift--can't do that, can't give an inch—we get this insane stink over wedding cakes. (Mine came from House of Fine Chocolates, by the way, praised be its memory, a Broadway institution. They didn't give us any crap for being Jewish, which I didn't think to appreciate at the time).
     But enough commentary. You need to read this email. Because it is a Whitman Sampler of revanchist nuttery. Notice how he drags in Muslims at the end—the classic, wiggle your-fingers-over-your-sputtering-lips intellectual parry by the Tea Party, part of the ooo-we're-victims pathology, the daft notion that the Muslims "get" to do all these vile things, cutting people's heads off and such, without having as many liberal columnists point out that it's wrong, as if that's necessary. I call it "Terrorism Envy."
     He mentions "marching orders" twice—first capitalized, then not. He doesn't say where my orders are supposed to be from. Moscow—that's the traditional source. Or San Francisco. Anyway, for your reading enjoyment:

I find it interesting with those on the Left when they try to make a point against the Conservative line of view. You seem to follow the Marching Orders to the line with your article today. Comparing Gettysburg with the Gay movement. I would guess that you don't practice a "Religion", based on your dialog? Personally, I have no problem with a Gay or Lesbian life style...that is if their own choosing. I do how every have an issue when they (the gay movement), push their agenda down everyone's throat. There are a lot of Conservative Gays..that would agree with this...but you never mention those gay people...why? The fact that a gay couple can have a child defies logic. Yes they do adopt, but what does that do for the psychic of those children later into their life? Sure you agree that is not Normal? Many gay men and women would agree with that. Secondly, the whole aspect of "Gay Marriage", Marriage was set aside for a Man and a Women, for reproduction purposes....with Christian and Religious beliefs as stated in the Bible. And that includes the Muslim Faith. Funny though, how you don't detract the Muslim Faith about Gays....oh I forgot, within the Muslim Religion...they execute the gay people. Why have you not talked about that aspect? Must not be in your marching orders...huh?

What are you holding firm, Bobby?

     "Pick your battles," the saying goes. Which is odd, because more often than not, battles pick you. Actual hostilities break out for odd, non-strategic reasons that mock the deliberation implied by "pick." "Mere chance" is more like it.
     Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was in Pennsylvania in late June of 1863. He wanted to fight, hoping to inspire peace parties he imagined flourishing in the North. And the Union armies were looking for him.
     So there was going to be a battle, somewhere. Maybe at Chambersburg, or Harrisburg, or Cashtown.
     But an army needs shoes. So a unit of Southern troops was sent to forage for footwear at a nearby town, known for its tanneries and cobblers. And they found them, after a fashion. "Boots and saddles were there," Samuel Eliot Morison wryly notes. "on one brigade of General John Buford's cavalry division." So the great three-day battle erupted at Gettysburg and not down the road.
     In the same manner, someday historians will look back at America's epic social and legal struggle over gays joining society and wonder, "Why here?" Why did the forces of ossified religion, put to flight by much of modern life, turn and make a stand over whether a bakery must bake a frosted tower of sugar and flour—to channel Natalie Merchant—for any gay couple who walks through the door?
     Why here?
     That question bubbled up last week, while reading Louisian Gov. Bobby Jindal's op-ed in the Times, "I'm Holding Firm Against Gay Marriage" (Jindal must have written that headline himself. No Times copy editor would have dared.)
     Prejudice is about dehumanization. People of faith, to Jindal, are individuals: "a priest, minster or rabbi." They are "musicians, caterers, photographers and others should be immune from government coercion" Specific trades, like characters in a Richard Scarry story.
     And who is doing the coercing? They are "left-wing activists" "the radical left" "radical liberals" "left-wing ideologues who oppose religious freedom" "Hollywood and the media elite" Shady, faceless forces. Once, he does mention "gay men or lesbians." A typo perhaps.
     And what do these anonymous hordes do? They "bully," and "shriek" The idea that they might be regular folks too, individuals who, though gay, want to get married and have cake, and should be able to buy cake in a free society, well, that's not an issue to Jindal.
     "They will not deter me," he vows, standing like a stone wall, surveying the battlefield.
     Jindal uses the words "liberty" "freedom" or "free" 17 times, part of the right wing delusion that if the right buzzword is found, they'll fool people. Heck, it worked with abortion.
     As with many battles, the clash over balky bakers and phobic photographers was half luck, half opportunity. A weakness in the line of advancing rights. Hoteliers couldn't refuse to rent rooms to gay couples, since adultery is banned in the Bible too. They couldn't draw the line at baking birthday cakes for children of gay unions. That would recognize forming families is what marriage, gay or straight, is all about, and be too cruel, even for religious conservatives.
     This is a skirmish, a small battle in a losing war. They have to lose, since winning would unravel society. If a baker doesn't have to make a cake for a gay weddings, then the county clerk doesn't have to record the paperwork and the fire department doesn't have to keep the hall where one's scheduled from burning down. People whose faith keeps them from participating in the modern world should retire into enclaves, like the Amish.
     That won't happen. This is just the hidebound wheeling about and charging, again, before falling back to the next defensive line. A momentarily successful rally, like Pickett's Charge -- the last gasp of Confederate hopes at Gettsyburg. The Rebs breached the Union line at Cemetery Ridge. And then overpowering numbers of the boys in blue crushed them.      

     Whatever victories Republican revanchists win or lose, whatever the Supreme Court decides, they've already lost. History will continue to roll over them, past them, around them, and they'll be left only with bitter memories of their glorious lost cause.

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."