Of Masks and Men

So, what? We’re just supposed to take everyone’s word for it?

Finally, after more than a year, the Centers for Disease Control has (have? Can we get a grammar ruling here?), now declared that we—the not so few, the smug, the vaccinated—may now venture forth without masks. Science has spoken!  

I don’t feel as celebratory as I thought I would, though.

For one thing, for me, it’s a minor victory. I never minded the mask much. As a somewhat chin-deprived individual, I took comfort in covering up. And now, I admit that the thought of going outside without a mask now feels. . . uncomfortable. It’s the same kind of feeling you get when you try a drastically new hairstyle: You feel like everyone’s going to be staring at you, judging you.

And, yeah, judgment: I live in a very blue part of a very blue state. If I walk around without my mask, I feel like I also need to wear a t-shirt declaring, in large font, my vaccinated status, lest I be mistaken for an anti-mask, anti-vaccine moron.

I also question the idea that this new mandate will inspire more people to get vaccinated. This presumes a large group of people who don’t particularly want to get vaccinated, but who also dislike wearing a mask, and who are avoiding vaccination in large part because they have been thinking, “Why bother? I’ll still have to wear my mask anyway.” People, in other words, for whom the primary benefit of vaccination is not being protected from a dangerous virus, nor of protecting others, but rather that they won’t have to strap a thin piece of fabric across their faces when they go down to Safeway.

How big is this population? 

And of course, these would also have to be people who are unwilling to lie about their vaccination status. It’s not like anyone is going to be checking medical records of the unmasked (or, indeed, issuing t-shirts like the one I propose above). 

All right, you’ve talked me into it! I’m going into the t-shirt business. Want to invest?

Rockin’ Out with My Quokka Out

 Has anyone ever thought that maybe, deep down, quokkas are really monumentally pissed off?

*****

2021 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions were announced today. Artists become eligible for the Hall 25 years after their debut. Jay-Z is going into the Hall, continuing the tradition of honoring artists who, whatever their relative merit, are not what you would call “Rock and Roll” artists. I am not making any judgments—good, bad, or indifferent—on the musical talent of Jay-Z or such other inductees as NWA or Run-DMC, but I still don’t think they belong in a Rock Hall of Fame, any more than Bruce Springsteen belongs in a Hip-Hop Hall of Fame or Ted Nugent belongs in polite society.

Another inductee, Tina Turner. How is Tina Turner only NOW being inducted? Granted, she was previously honored as the better half of Ike and Tina Turner, but still, it’s been way more than 25 years since she burst onto the scene as a soloist. And a world where Run-DMC is apparently considered more rock and roll than Tina Turner is not a world I want to live in.

Drumlines

Watched “Sound of Metal” the other night, and I stand by my earlier assertion that Riz Ahmed should have won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Let’s appreciate the degree of difficulty of his performance: He had to learn American Sign Language and drumming, in addition to the more prosaic suppression of his British accent to portray the American Ruben. All Anthony Hopkins had to do was convince audiences that he was an elderly Brit—some stretch that! And Hopkins’ character suffers from dementia, so even if he forgot his lines, who would know?

*****

Ruben, in “Sound of Metal,” maintains his drumming skills despite deafness. The Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen has only one arm—hasn’t slowed him down. And in “Whiplash,” the main character, Andrew, excels in the cutthroat world of jazz drumming despite being Miles Teller. 

All of which is to say that I think being an excellent drummer may be a lot easier than it’s sometimes made out to be.

Tales from the Crypto

Somebody really has to explain cryptocurrency.

As far as I understand it, "crypto"--things like Bitcoin and Ether and Dogecoin and Mallomar--I might have made up one of those—is essentially computer-generated money.  And it's expensive: One bitcoin is currently worth nearly $56,000.  But crypto doesn't exactly retain its value: If you have one bitcoin today, you have something worth about $56,000, but tomorrow that same bitcoin could be worth $57,000. Or $50,000.  Or $1.98.  In other words, crypto behaves more like a stock than a currency.

And I know, I know: Currency behaves like stock, too.  Just as a bitcoin is worth ~$56,000 US, a euro is currently worth about $1.21US, and the euro, too, will fluctuate from day to day.

I also get that crypto, being a "currency" has slightly more--or at any rate, different--utility than stock.  To wit, I can buy something with a bitcoin--if a seller accepts it--that I cannot buy with stock.  Five shares of Boeing won't buy me a ten-dollar toaster, but one bitcoin could.  And I'd get a helluva lot of change.

But, see, the attraction of crypto seems to be more about its skyrocketing value (at least, it was skyrocketing for a while) than for its value as legal tender.  So if I have a bitcoin, I'm less interested in the possibility of buying a $56,000 toaster—although that would be fascinating—than in being able to sell the bitcoin for 56,000 real dollars.  Dollars that, unlike bitcoin, are actually backed up by the full faith and credit of the United States Treasury.  (And, OK, that faith and credit ain't what they used to be--but they're still not bad.)

Which brings me to my next question: What, literally, is bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency)? I mean, you actually can get a physical bitcoin:

But, again, you're not going to walk into a 7-11 and plunk down one of these puppies for a Slurpee.  (OK, for 50,000 Slurpees, maybe. . . ) No, the functional bitcoin is a purely virtual, electronic, ethereal whatsit. It exists in the realm of bits and bytes.  And yet, I constantly hear about bitcoin "mining," which, as far as I can tell, represents the actual creation of bitcoin--analogous to the coining of pennies and nickels and dimes or the printing of dollar bills. And this "mining" is apparently an incredibly energy-intensive process, involving massive amounts of real-world electricity at huge server installations.

But what is actually physically happening?  How is the creation of a bitcoin a more intensive process than, say, the addition or subtraction of funds from a bank account?  I understand it's more complicated than that--it must be, right--but exactly how?  And, by the same token, the creation of a bitcoin--no matter how much energy is expended in its creation--still boils down to some . . . guy. . . somewhere. . .  making up a currency and declaring that it has value.  How is this possible?

Can I just declare the existence of "Solipsist Bucks" and make myself a quintillionaire?  Seems just about as legitimate as anything else.

Make the Punishment Fit the Crime?

Should cybercrime be a capital offense? No, wait, hear me out.

 A major pipeline operator had to shut down operations due to an apparent ransomware attack. Details are a bit sketchy, but Colonial Pipeline, which is responsible for transporting a major percentage of the gasoline for the East Coast, apparently got hacked and had to shut things down. No word yet on when service will be restored.

Ransomware and other cyber crimes have been in the news a lot over the last few years. Russian and other international  hackers have managed to install malware on any number of American companies’ and government agencies’ systems. Others have managed to disrupt operations at schools, hospitals, and state and local governments. I see no reason not to expect these kinds of crimes to continue, at least until the white hats in the information technology field figure out consistent ways to thwart them.

This got me thinking about crime and punishment. I mean, cybercrime flourishes at least in part because of relatively small overhead—what does an enterprising hacker really need beyond their own skills and an internet connection?—combined with relative apathy towards the consequences. Sure, if caught, you might go to jail. But getting caught is not guaranteed, and there’s potential to make millions of dollars if you target the right people. The risk-reward calculation seems out of whack.

Now, I’m not really a death-penalty enthusiast. I do think some crimes are so heinous and perpetrators so unrepentant, that the death penalty is appropriate. At the same time, I sympathize with people who argue that the death penalty is barbaric, and I agree that it’s applied in a discriminatory way—and far too prone to error. Just today comes a report that, after Ledell Lee was executed for a 1993 murder, DNA evidence was found that points to another suspect. Personally, I wouldn’t have any major concern if the death penalty were abolished.

Still, if we MUST have the death penalty, we should think about its efficacy less as punishment than as deterrent. And in this sense, I think we’ve made the wrong things into capital offenses. Murder is a capital offense, for example, but fear of the death penalty doesn’t prevent murder. If someone really wants someone else dead, they’re not likely to be swayed by a fear of consequences. Similarly, certain crimes against the state, like treason, are punishable by death—but traitors, whatever else you may say about them, see themselves as pursuing a cause greater than themselves and are often all too happy to embrace martyrdom.

Cyber criminals, though? They’re in it for the money. And with a low-risk/high-reward calculation, why wouldn’t someone with the basic skills to extort deep-pocketed victims take advantage? But what if the consequences of getting caught were exponentially worse? Might this not convince some people that it’s really not worth the effort?

And lest you think this too extreme—that it’s an example of the punishment being wildly disproportionate to the crime—consider that we’re not just talking about a hacker making it impossible to access your email or deleting a few files from your computer. We’re talking about things like potentially shutting down hospitals or knocking a city’s electrical grid offline. The consequences could most definitely be life-threatening.

We are, for better and for worse, so technology dependent as a society, that attacks on internet connections should probably be considered in much the same way as would an attempt to poison a water supply or blow up a bridge. Unless and until authorities start treating these acts as such, we’ll only see more and more of these attacks. Many of them will simply be nuisances, but some of them won’t. And it only takes a few of the worse attacks to cause mayhem.

The R-Word

George Carlin had a famous routine about “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television” (cover your ears, kids): “Shit, fuck, piss, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.” This was the 1970’s, but even today, despite the advent of HBO, Showtime, and presidential comments about “shithole countries” and grabbing women by the pussy, these words are still pretty much verboten on broadcast television.

I was thinking about this while playing Boggle online—one of my regular timewasters. Three of Carlin’s forbidden words—shit, piss, and tits—are perfectly acceptable—albeit not particularly high-scoring, worth a measly six, seven, and four points, respectively (which seems unfair to poor little tits). The other four are still off limits.

The administrators of online Boggle, though, have lately begun displaying a strange and arbitrary prudishness. About three months ago, I noticed that I could no longer play the word “ass”—a previously unexceptionable source of three points. Thus, while “shit” remained acceptable, the place from whence it springs—a donkey, that is; what did you think I meant—was suddenly beyond the pale. Even stranger, “asses” is still OK. One donkey is bad, but two or more are. . .adorable, I guess.

And just this week, I noticed that another word seems to have been removed from the active lexicon: “rape.”

Now rape, of course, is horrible, but the word is . . .just a word. Do the game administrators somehow believe that allowing a player to collect seven points for identifying r, a, p, and e tiles in proximity to each other is somehow promoting sexual violence? Are they concerned that the word is “triggering”? Remember, the only person who “sees” the word is the player who types it in: If someone is traumatized by the word, then not allowing the word won’t obviate someone’s ability to “see” it. If “rape” is censored, why not “murder,” “molest,” “torture”?

I confess, I am somewhat uncomfortable about this whole discussion. I feel like one of those bigots complaining about not being allowed to use the N-word: “But, they call each other ‘N——‘! Why can’t I say it?!?” Obviously, I’ll get over the trauma of not being able to use “rape” in an online game of Boggle. But any form of arbitrary censorship—no matter how trivial—should be questioned. Why is it happening? What’s the reasoning?

What’s next?

The False Fire This Time

Look, Facebook can ban whomever they want.  People screaming about First Amendment violations are either missing the point, ignorant about what the First Amendment is, or both.  The First Amendment just keeps the government from restricting free speech--except when it doesn't.  The First Amendment says nothing about whether private businesses can limit their customers' ability to express themselves.  Indeed, if someone stood on a table at a bowling alley and started screaming about how the leaders of the worldwide Jewish conspiracy were abducting and murdering children to drink their blood and gain immortality, then the owner of the bowling alley would be within his rights to toss the guy out on his ass--no matter how many frames he had left to roll.

OK, Facebook isn't a bowling alley (I checked). And sure, one could argue that it's a bit disconcerting for a platform whose whole raison d'etre is to promote conversation--stated raison d'etre, at any rate; we know it's whole purpose it to sell users' attention spans to advertisers, but let that go for now--for a service whose purpose is to allow people to connect, to enforce restrictions on people's ability to do so.

But even the government--which isn't "allowed" to restrict free speech--has imposed limits on what people can legally say.  Something about fires and crowded theaters comes to mind.  So how much more allowable, then, from a strictly legal standpoint, is it for a private company to impose limits?

A lot more.

While anyone with a shred of sanity or sense of civic responsibility can applaud Facebook's decision to join Twitter and YouTube in banning The Former Guy, however, one can still feel unease at the power of unelected billionaires to serve as gatekeepers for the limits of public discourse.  Still, I don't think this case is quite as complex as people have made it out to be.

Let's go back to the idea of falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater. (That "falsely" is often left out when people reference Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous analogy, but it's pretty important.  After all, if the theater really is on fire, YELL AWAY!)  Holmes was arguing that the government can restrict dangerous speech, speech that presents a clear and present danger to public safety.  So the government can prosecute dangerous speech, but that doesn't forbid non-governmental actors from intervening and stopping dangerous speech.  If some lunatic tries to start a panic by falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater, you don't need the cops to  make him stop.  The usher or the popcorn guy or even just a concerned fellow audience member could get up and hit the guy with a stick.  Or, you know, just tell him to shut the fuck up.  Facebook is the popcorn guy in this analogy.

So, yeah, if The Former Guy is going to continue to spread lies and whip his followers into bloodlust--and he's shown no inclination that he won't continue to do so--then all these social media platforms are well within their rights to continue to block him.  Some would say they have an obligation to do so.