Compassionate Curmudgeon

Leopold Bush

One of the most notorious murder cases in the early decades of the 20th century was the "thrill killing" of fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks by Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold. When it came to trial, the two defendants were represented by noted defense attorney Clarence Darrow, and it was one of several cases that were referred to as the "Trial of the Century." Since Richard Loeb was widely regarded as the more dominant of the two killers, contemporary reports generally referred to it as the "Loeb-Leopold Case."

Both men were sentenced to life in prison, but Loeb had the misfortune to be killed by a fellow prisoner just a few years into his sentence. Henceforward, the case came to be called the "Leopold-Loeb" case.

I was thinking of this recently and one thing led to another, and well, I started wondering how the Georges Bush might be treated by history. I don't like to make predictions, but here's an exception: I think that history will end up calling them Bush Senior and Bush Junior.

The distinction between "H.W." and "W." just doesn't do enough to differentiate them. Nor, for that matter does using the numbers 41 and 43.

I'm not sure how it will happen. Perhaps the media will start the habit once Junior leaves office, or perhaps some author more sympathetic to Senior will write a book using that nomenclature. But happen it will.

Either that or they'll go down as the Good Bush and the Bad Bush.

Young Skeptics

Was just listening to the latest podcast of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe in which the gang talks to Spencer Weart about global warming, among other topics. They also raised a question about young skeptics, so I sent them the following message:

I've been enjoying your Skeptic's Guide podcasts for several months now. They remind me of the bull sessions I used to have during my college days, except you guys don't have a Resident Idiot or three like we had back then. Keep up the good work.

You asked for examples of skeptical children, so I thought I'd offer up my little story. While I don't claim to have been a full-fledged skeptic as a child, I was trying to ask questions at a pretty early age. In fact, I remember being about six, or possibly seven, when I first started asking the question to which I've still never heard a satisfactory answer (at least from religious people): If god created the world and the universe, where did god come from? Whenever, I raised that question, I was told not to ask such dumb questions.

So I largely went through my childhood and teenage years with a lot of questions that I soon learned not to talk about. You see, I grew up in a very small town (population 1300) in central Pennsylvania, and well, there just weren't any godless people around to serve as role models. Actually, around the age of fourteen, I went through a period of taking a lot of paranormal claims very seriously, but that was chiefly due to the influence of a teacher, Mrs. Messerchmidt, who was perhaps the first adult who treated me like an adult. But I digress...

By the time I went to college in the fall of 1967, I probably would have had a hard time defining exactly what I believed in, but then a life-changing event occurred: I read an essay by Isaac Asimov.

I had long been a fan of Asimov's science fact and science fiction writings, but this particular article really made a deep impression on me. He enumerated a list of "Security Beliefs" that were prevalent in our society and discussed his reasons for rejecting each of them. At last I had a solid role model for rejecting superstitious beliefs, and I've been happily godless ever since.

For the record, here they are:

1) There exist supernatural forces that can be cajoled or forced into protecting mankind.

2) There is no such thing, really, as death.

3) There is some purpose to the Universe.

4) Individuals have special powers that will enable them to get something for nothing.

5) You are better than the next fellow.

6) If anything goes wrong, it's not one's own fault.

The essay was entitled "Knock Plastic!" and was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and was republished in the book Magic--The Final Fantasy Collection, a book which sadly seems to be out of print.

It's worth tracking it down because it's just as relevant today as it was then.

--JT

Quinceañera

I was dubious at first. I knew I had rented the DVD based upon a recommendation of Leonard Maltin, but I wasn't sure whether I was in the mood for a coming of age story about a 14-year-old Hispanic girl getting ready to celebrate her Quinceañera (literally "fifteen years", it's something like a Hispanic Bar Mitzvah). So I told myself I'd give it ten minutes or so, but if it didn't grab me by then, I'd just move on to something else.

The opening credits didn't give me much hope--a bunch of extremely formally dressed young people promenading around to the strains of Verdi's Grand March from Aïda. It could only go up from there. And it did.

The film opens with Eileen's Quinceañera, and it rapidly develops that her cousin Magdalena will be celebrating hers in a few months. By re-using Eileen's gown, Magdalena hopes she can save enough money to afford a limo, though her preacher father is dubious. But a problem develops when the gown doesn't fit, and Magdalena's waistline keeps growing, though she swears she's still a virgin. Nevertheless her father shouts at her for bringing disgrace to the family, so she runs away to live with her uncle (Tio Tomas), a non-judgmental 85-year-old with plenty of stories to tell. Also sharing the uncle's small apartment is Magdalena's cousin Carlos, who has the Spanish word for troublemaker tattooed on his abdomen. Yes, he has issues.

The setting is the Echo Park district of Los Angeles which is undergoing a wave of gentrification. There are conflicts aplenty between the older generation and the younger generation, between the longtime residents of the neighborhood and the new arrivals.

It's a great story, and one of the things that I really liked about it was that although it reaches a satisfying conclusion, not all the loose ends are tied up at the end (sort of like real life).

Quinceañera is a keeper. BTW, it won two awards at the 2006 Sundance Festival.

Lola rennt

Just caught up with the 1998 German film Run Lola Run or Lola rennt in the original. It's a wonderfully inventive, fast-paced comedy-thriller that lasts only about 75 minutes.

The situation is this: a very resourceful young woman named Lola has 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 deutschmarks in order to save her boyfriend Manni from the mob bosses. Manni had the misfortune to leave the money on a subway train where it was found by a homeless man. During Lola's frantic efforts to obtain the money, she encounters various people with whom she interacts very briefly; a woman pushing a baby stroller, a man almost hits her with his car, etc. The fun of the movie is that we get to see the events three times, each time some little detail is altered at the start of her run, which in turn cascades through the events leading to very different outcomes.

The director Tom Tykwer has lots of fun with inventive editing effects, animation, and even split screen action (this was years before 24, remember). At key moments he even pauses the action for a few seconds to give a quick 5-second montage of the consequences of the actions for the very minor characters.

Don't let the German dialog and subtitles scare you away; once the exposition is over, there is very little dialog. Although I greatly enjoyed the scene where Lola enters a casino and asks the cashier how it works. "You pay for chips and then you gamble them away," replies the cashier.

Memories

The other week, while digging into some old boxes that I've been dragging around for years, I came across some fascinating discoveries.

Item: one $25 U.S. Savings Bond given to me in 1966 by my uncle Curtis. A quick check of the Treasury's Savings Bond site revealed that this 40-year-old bond had stopped earning interest after 30 years in 1996 and that it is currently worth about $125. Nice!

Item: one transcript of the June 13, 1965, broadcast of Meet the Press, which featured Barry Goldwater as guest. Told you I was a big Goldwater fan in those days.

Item: one 1967 survey on values from Colorado State College with all my answers marked. This is fascinating in so many ways, as it gives me a handy way to see what I actually believed in those days without having to rely on sometimes unreliable memory. The questions cover issues like attitudes toward science, voting rights, war, education, race relations, crime, sex, and religion. I hope to write about this some more, so suffice it to say that in some areas my opinions have changed somewhat, but in other areas I still think the same way my 18-year-old self did.

Item: letters. Several dozen letters. Covering the latter years of high school and the first couple years of college. These are letters written to me by relatives and friends, usually (though not always) in response to letters that I had written to them. So it's sort of like eavesdropping on one side of a phone conversation, since in many cases I no longer recall the details of what I had written. For example, a couple folks mention a funny story I told during my first year at Penn State about my misadventures with a television set; I have only a vague recollection of those events. It sure would be nice to get a look at the letters that I wrote. Pity that I didn't think to keep copies of them. BTW, one of the amusing things revealed in those letters is the difference in prices between then and today. One letter-writer decided not to shell out $3.50 for a ticket to see Louis Armstrong, while another one refers to the exorbitant prices of Broadway shows--nine dollars for the best tickets!

Item: one telegram. This is the only telegram that I have ever received. The occasion was the opening night of Janus, the play produced by the Lebanon Community Theatre and featuring me in a lead role. The telegram was sent by Debbie, a friend of mine who also used to be active in the community theatre but whose family had moved to New York City the previous year. It reads: "WISH I COULD SEE YOU BREAK A LEG LOVE --DEBBIE"

Item: one photograph of me. I have totally forgotten any details of this photo--who took it, where, when. I'd guess that it was probably taken sometime in the early 1970's somewhere near State College, PA. But I really can't remember.