Stalking a Stranger - David Loftus

I first saw her when I was waiting for the crosswalk light and she started across the street toward me -- against the light and in front of the cross traffic that had just gotten the green. The cars paused for her to totter to the far side. I looked back a few times before stopping to observe her progress. She was young, and she was weaving.

I don’t think I saw her fall, but I did see her briefly crumpled in the gutter before she got up and continued down the block. I started to follow and watched another couple stop to talk with her briefly before they continued on. She must have told them she was okay, but I didn’t think she was. I was afraid she was going to get hit by a bus, car, or light-rail train, all of which were passing by either next to her curb, across her path, or within a block. Or perhaps a less scrupulous person might take advantage of her in her vulnerable state.

So I continued to backtrack, and caught up with her on the second block where she had stopped to lean against a wall. It’s cold and rainy today, and she was not exactly dressed for the weather: leg warmers on her calves, sure, but a short skirt above her knees, and a thin blouse or tee. She was not wearing her cheap pink imitation fleece jacket against the cold, but had it draped over her head against the rain, and she was lugging a backpack and a shopping bag. I seem to remember a hole in a stocking.

I leaned against the wall next to her and said, can I help you get where you’re going? “I’m fine,” she said, “I’m just resting.” That’s all she ever said. You don’t look like you’re resting, I said, which was not exactly true, but she was so much more. You look like you’re in danger of hurting yourself, I continued, and I’m worried about that, so I’d like to accompany you to a safe place, wherever that may be, but I don’t know where you’re headed. She didn’t say anything or move, so I just continued to stand next to her. Passersby looked at us, perhaps thinking we were together, perhaps even thinking I was bothering this young woman hidden under a pink jacket, but there was no contact between us and no noise of distress from her, so nobody stopped. An older black man was on the other side, almost as close to her as I was and talking on his cell phone, so I kept an eye on him in case he made any sort of move toward her.

She needed a more professional examination. I called home, thinking that Carole would know what to do -- whom to call to get her the proper attention -- but there was no answer. (My wife was out walking the dog, it turned out.) After another moment, I decided to dial 9-1-1. Once she heard me talking and trying to bring more attention, the girl started to move … and I moved with her, keeping the emergency dispatcher apprised of our location for the next 6-1/2 blocks (a right turn, two blocks; a left turn, three blocks; and another left, crossing all the streets in between).

I had a sense of unreality, strolling alongside her, giving a detailed description (dark olive skirt, black blouse, pink jacket, about 5'4", late teens/early 20s, slight build, apparently intoxicated, weaving and walking into traffic, trying to get away from me) on my mobile phone and occasionally moving to block her way and stay between her and the curb.

She walked right into a sidewalk sandwich board on the first block, and would have proceeded into traffic against the light at least once again if I hadn’t stood in her way. At one point I apologized to her, and said I only wanted her to be safe. I remember looking into her eyes and thinking they might be dilated, but I didn't know enough to be sure. I kept expecting her to grab me, shove me, shout at me to leave her alone, but she never did any of those things. She just kept passively moving, weaving, trying to get away from me and whatever else lay behind her.

Finally two police cars pulled up to us and three officers got out to talk to her. I started to walk away, thinking my task was done, then decided I’d better stick around to see what followed, keeping a discreet distance from them, out of hearing range. One of the officers looked over at me, miming a phone call, and I nodded. He came over to note down my name, phone number, and a basic description of why I had called. He instructed me to keep my phone on in case they needed to take her into some sort of protective custody and would require more details. That was two hours ago. They have not called.

I think I did the right thing. Perhaps I’ll phone the police station tomorrow to find out what happened. It’s a hard thing to intervene in a stranger’s life, even a scary one. But what would you have done?

Take Nikki Out to the Ballpark - Nikki Lorenzini

I am currently sitting in my room watching the Phillies getting killed by the Giants. Okay, it is only the fourth inning, but the score is 2-0. I look on Facebook and see people’s status updates on their teams, talk to co-workers and hear how Phillies fans hate Ross, how much they are in love with the Phil’s, how they dress their babies up in the gear in hopes to raise a lifetime fan. I am no different. I posted on Facebook saying how I’ll have to be put on heart meds because of the way that Phil’s work on my heart. 

It makes me think why there are so many die heard sports fans. I understand getting involved in a TV show, a book, a movie. It’s more easy to relate to. But sports? With sports, there is so much drama. If you’re a fair weather fan, you’ll love “your” team when they’re doing well and hate them when they’re doing badly. For the die-hard fans, you’ll show up for the games despite what’s going on around (I’ve been to my fair share of games in the rain, including thunderstorms underneath metal). We have promoted sports players on a special level, almost like mini-gods. We go to sporting events early to tailgate, spend $7 on a beer, $5 on a hot dog, $25 on the cheapest ticket possible. Then we complain that everything is so expensive, and wonder why they are getting paid that much, yet we still come out.

But what is the special love affair with sports? Is it because we only wish we could play like them? Or is it because we’re in a day and age that is obsessed with fitness and being active that we are amazed with the people who almost embody that? Up until recently, it only seems that we only started getting involved with sports player’s lives, with the help on Tiger Woods. Is it because sports are relatively drama free we get so involved with them? 

While I ponder this, I’ll be sitting on the edge of my bed, fingers crossed, that the Phils make it to the World Series for the third year in a row. 

Early to rise not necessarily wise - David Loftus

For the past few weeks, news sources have reported on a study that suggests people may live longer lives on less sleep than has previously been thought most healthy. I first read about it in my local paper on Wednesday, but a Google News search turned up stories that were nearly two weeks old. However, as many news reports or their headlines about scientific studies can so often be, some of them may be misleading at best, and at worst utterly wrong.

“Sleeping as little as 5 hours a night might be good for you,” reads a representative Oct. 2 headline on the Web site for a Fox News station in New York City, myfoxny. According to the story, an article in the journal Sleep Medicine by Dr. Daniel F. Kripke and a team at the University of California at San Diego did a follow-up on a study of 459 women who participated in a sleep and mortality study 14 years ago. At the time, they were between the ages of 50 and 81. This year, researchers found that survivors were much more likely to have been getting less than the recommended eight hours of nightly sleep -- considerably less. Women who got less than five hours of sleep a night and women who got more than six-and-a-half had two to four times the mortality rate of women in between … the ones who slept from five to six-and-a-half hours per night.

Those are the bare, factual findings. In some places, though, they were sloppily reported. Few newspaper reporters or editors have been trained in the sciences, or in proper interpretation of statistics (even a decent course of logic would help), so what they write about scientific studies often goes overboard. I recall one twenty years ago, that found a correlation between coffee drinking and frequency of sex, which gave rise to lots of jokes and commentary that we should all drink more coffee.

That this study may have found a correlation between less than eight or seven hours of sleep a night and the longevity of some people does not mean everyone should automatically switch to sleeping fewer hours. One of the mantras of science students is (or should be) CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION. In other words, just because two phenomena happen to coincide or coexist, it does not follow that one causes the other, or that there’s any meaningful relationship between them at all. By that logic, if I notice that over the past few weeks the sun has risen shortly after my alarm clock has rung, that does not mean I can reset my alarm an hour ahead and expect the sun to rise an hour earlier.

In this case, the women who sleep only five to six-and-a-half hours may also be inherently more sturdy (genetics) or lead generally more healthy lifestyles (no smoking, lots of exercise, etc.) than the women who get what has traditionally been regarded as the healthiest eight hours. Perhaps the women who have been getting eight hours of sleep a night find it hard to get out of bed because they’re exhausted from stress.

The report in my local paper was more careful than Fox News NY: “Longer lives linked with getting 5-6½ hours of sleep” the headline reads, and the text included the critical caveat “Kripke says more study is needed, especially to find whether deliberately sleeping less might help you live longer.” The phrase “more study is needed” is always a good thing for a researcher to say, and in this case it’s especially true, since nobody has any idea why the mid-level sleepers showed a surprising longevity. The best (and most) that many scientific studies find, when they establish a possible correlation, is where further study should be focused.

Unfortunately, the Fox News NY story not only omits that caveat but ends with a more dicey proposition, supposedly from the scientific report itself: “The study concluded, ‘People who sleep five or six hours may be reassured.’ ” And in fact, I saw at least one of my Facebook friends say as much yesterday after reading the story in the local paper. But the crucial word there is may, because there’s no reassurance to be had if you’re getting less sleep due to an overstressed lifestyle and you fail to achieve balance with good nutrition and exercise.

Misinterpretation of scientific studies can occur at any level: a simple-minded reporter may overinterpret the results; or the reporter may get it right, but an editor may slap on a simplified headline that is misleading; or readers may misinterpret accurately reported stories and heads. The last is probably the most common, since it is not difficult to find misreadings and overblown interpretations in the electronic comments that follow news stories online.

It’s important to read everything in the news with a critical eye, not with your prejudices and hopes intact.

Thoughts on Ryan Clementi and the Rutgers Tragedy - Ryan John

 

 

When freshman Dharun Ravi and his lady friend set up the web cam on Tyler Clementi's laptop in Rutgers this month, I'm sure they didn't anticipate Clementi jumping off the GW Bridge.  But, what did they expect?  They expected to extremely expose Clementi's most hidden secret to willing viewers in an effort to achieve some short lived Internet fame that would increase their popularity around a very large and intimating college campus. 

 

Ravi probably assumed maybe a few Rutgers students would take his Twitter advice and log into iChat to view the video and like wild fire the video would spread to hundreds of Rutgers students before making it's way to the rest of the world. Ravi's name would be attached to this video as the funnyman prankster who caught his roommate in the act. How hilarious, right? A great way to kick off his freshman year!

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is scouring Youtube watching the widest range of videos the site has to offer.  And I figured out why.  I am obsessed with reality.  I'm obsessed with figuring out the world through analyzing real people and situations... what people are really thinking or what happens when someone is caught off guard.  That is the type of video I really enjoy- Basically people's candid reactions when they believe no one is watching.   

 

The barrier to this is that most people put on a show in front of other people. They go by the character that they want the world to know them by and their lines are almost rehearsed like that of an actor. But when individuals are given an opportunity to watch other peoples real selves in action, it reminds us of our own imperfect selves and we feel comforted to know that we are not alone in our human imperfection.  

 

Hence the unquenchable thirst for reality television. But lets not get it confused.  The reality television of 2010 isn't what first caught our eye back in the days of America's Funniest Video's and Cops.  It has turned into a scripted reality that shows what people might do for money, but I guess the majority of people fall for it. 

 

If I could have one wish, it would probably be to be invisible so that I could figure out the world little by little. The Internet is a gateway to figuring out the world.  I think we all have that desire to be invisible and a computer screen is often the projection of what that invisible eye picks up.

 

These moments of candor expose other peoples humanity.  Ravi probably felt better about himself and his human flaw because he was exposing something he thought was humiliating about another.  It just so happens we all have that personal need for comfort and when someone or something can make us feel better about it, we'll entertain it. There is strength in numbers.  The people watching that video are the equivalent to the kids on the playground laughing and pointing when a bully beats up a "wimp."

With the internet, the bully doesn't have to be the biggest kid on the playground.  With the internet, Ravi was able to bully Clementi to this extent.  But without the internet, this story probably wouldn't have the reach that is has and perhaps the lesson learned wouldn't be to so many people.

Pride and Carnage - David Loftus

[Note: this is part three of a commentary on a guerilla protest mounted by Veterans for Peace on Friday; if you haven't read part 1, obscenity as protest, and part 2, the tactical use of obscenity, you should read those first.]

I’ve never understood the phrase “I’m proud to be an American.” For most of us, U.S. citizenship is something over which we have had no control. We were born here; to be proud of that fact makes no more sense than to say “I’m proud I have brown eyes,” or “I’m proud that I’m five feet nine inches tall.”

You can be proud of an achievement -- something that took effort, determination, and the decisive use of your talents -- like running a 4:25 mile or writing and delivering an effective speech -- but the happenstance of where you were born? That’s incomprehensible to me. It makes as much sense as saying “I’m proud that I won the lottery.”

Now, I’m pleased to be an American. Sometimes (such as when I was traveling for three months in West Africa) I feel pretty darn lucky to have been born here; it’s about as good as having won the lottery, when you consider the many theoretical alternatives of historic time or geographic place in which one might have found oneself. I’m often proud of my country’s attempts to live up to her great ideals and laws, but just as often ashamed and disgusted by her failures to do so.

These wars are one example. Seven and a half years ago, as war appeared imminent in Iraq, my book discussion group read The Threatening Storm, by former CIA intelligence analyst Kenneth Pollack who laid out the arguments for war with Iraq. At the end of our discussion, the members of my book group voted on whether we thought the U.S. should go to war. With roughly half the room I voted firmly against it, and subsequent events have convinced me that I was right.

One comment about the VFP banner posted to my discussion list said: “wars are a necessary evil, because there are people out there who would dearly love to kill you and everyone you love.” To respond that “wars are a necessary evil” is no answer at all to the question of whether this or that particular war is necessary or whether it is being fought in an effective way … rather in the same way that objecting to the word “Fuck” in a public banner simply avoids the more critical issue of the purpose for which it was flown.

I am fairly certain that not very many people in Iraq or Afghanistan (or Kosovo or Libya or Vietnam) really did want to kill me or the people I love. The few who might have desired to do so had no way of getting to me or to my loved ones, never mind anyone else within the continental borders of the U.S., so protection of Americans as a justification for those wars is a red herring.

Wars may be a necessary evil, but my reading of history suggests they’ve been an evil to which human beings have turned far too often, unnecessarily; which have caused untold suffering and death, for little or no or false reasons; and which almost never did anyone any good except for the odd arms dealer and his employees.

So I’d say the current wars, like so many others, are an obscenity that far outstrips the tastelessness and shock value of “fuck.”

The Tactical Use of Obscenity - David Loftus

[Note: this is part two of a commentary on a guerilla protest mounted by the Veterans for Peace on Friday. If you haven't read part 1, to there.]


I would imagine the vast majority of people who objected to the banner had seen the four-letter word reproduced on it before. Many of them have probably employed it in their own speech. Why did they object to it here?

The question isn’t whether such a word should be employed in public (after all, it appears often enough in movies, novels, and cable television series -- and I hear it daily on the street), but to what purpose is it being used? Most of the time, the word is used in public entertainment as an illumination of character and/or expression of heightened emotion.

The latter appears to be the point here: veterans wished to declare their extreme frustration over the carnage being done overseas in the name of the United States, and the relative inaction of the American people and a President who had promised in his 2008 election campaign to end it soon. The banner acknowledged its own shock value, and was pointedly hung before a restatement in stone of the American right to free speech.

I hear people complain about nudity in movies or in live theater, but I have seen full frontal nudity (male and female) effectively and appropriately used not only to shock but to express tenderness under fire from an authoritarian government. I find the use of obscenity in this context no less appropriate and effective.

As for addressing Mr. Obama as if he were a fellow citizen, there is nothing disrespectful about that. Presidents are elected out of private life, and they return to it. They are also public servants, just like local school board members or U.S. Senators, and I don’t believe there’s any harm or faux pas in addressing any such officeholders as Mr. or Ms. The Constitution makes it very clear that no special titles apply to holders of the Presidency other than “Mr. President.” He is not “the Honorable,” “Your Highness,” or “Lord” Obama. Certainly, far-right commentators and countless letters to the editor refer to the Chief Executive in far less correct and respectful terms, but I never hear of their fellow citizens correcting them on that point.

Next: U.S. pride and carnage

Obscenity in the Protest of Obscene Military Actions - David Loftus

On Friday, October 1, the activist group Veterans for Peace, who state that they are opposed to wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Palestine, hung the banner pictured here in a prominent place in Washington, D.C. The site was the Newseum, a museum just off the Capitol Mall between the U.S. Capitol and the White House, at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The protestors pointedly hung their banner over a 74-foot marble engraving of the First Amendment.

Someone posted this photo to a discussion list I belong to -- one devoted to professional theater and film work -- and created a mini-uproar. As usually happens when people respond emotionally over a political issue, a lot of ground got covered in a very short time. Comments questioned the taste and appropriateness of the banner and its circulation to our list; objected to the President being addressed as merely “Mr.”; questioned the tactical wisdom of a banner that seemed intended only to “inflame, offend, and spark dissension”; and affirmed that the poster was (or was not) proud to be an American.

First, being offended does not confer any particular moral stature upon the person who takes offense, or express any inherent righteousness. We are all offended by different things, and some emotional responses are more justifiable than others. The reason one can offer for taking offense, if it is persuasive to others, is what confers legitimacy upon one’s complaint.

In this case, some readers in my newsgroup (and undoubtedly elsewhere) were offended by blatant public obscenity. But that was precisely the activists’ point: the banner acknowledges its offensiveness, but makes a comparison to the death and destruction our forces are responsible for overseas.

“The American public should be shocked that we are still killing and crippling thousands of innocent people in these countries as well as our own soldiers – that’s what’s truly obscene,” VFP spokesman Mike Ferner told the media. Ferner is a 59-year-old veteran who served as a navy corpsman during Vietnam. “Blowing people’s arms and legs off, burning, paralyzing them, causing sewage to run through their streets, polluting the water that kills and sickens children, terrorizing and bombing people and their livestock with flying robots -- that defines obscenity. If this banner shocks and offends a single person who hasn’t been shocked and offended by what’s being done in our name, we’ve accomplished our mission.”

Just imagine how people would react if enemy soldiers were in California, doing to American citizens precisely what our soldiers are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan! Yet we passively accept that it’s going on day after day, month after month, and year after year in our name. According to Ferner’s terms, the outraged responses to the banner among my peers in the theater list was precisely what the veterans had sought. Ideally, they might desire to change some minds and get more people to lobby against the wars, but given the state of apathy and helplessness with which most Americans seem to view U.S. foreign policy, in this as in so many other areas, Veterans for Peace surely knew that was too much to hope for.

Next: the tactical use of obscenity, and addressing the President

Sartre and Beauvoir: the arrogance of intellectual celebrity - David Loftus

It’s funny what you run across by chance when you were looking for something else. I was searching the library bookshelves recently for biographies of Francis Bacon and Oliver Cromwell (a recent book about Shakespeare had piqued my interest in both men) when I happened upon a fairly new dual biography of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Carole Seymour-Jones’s 2008 book is titled A Dangerous Liaison: a revelatory new biography. I checked it out and read it quickly. The book prompted some thoughts about honesty -- with oneself and with the public face one offers to others.

I had read two previous books about the existential philosopher and his brainy companion who was a fair country theorist in her own right and became a mother to the feminist movement with her 1949 book The Second Sex. Though never married, Sartre and Beauvoir were lifelong partners. They traveled together, often lived in various hotels and friends’ homes (neither had any interest in owning property), and critiqued each others’ writings before publication. The picture one gets of them changes dramatically from one book to the next.

The first dual biography I read was in the early 1980s, I believe titled Hearts and Minds and authored by Noel Riley Fitch. It depicted a nearly idyllic partnership between intellectual equals who had an open relationship, with an understanding they might occasionally get involved with others, but “never went to bed angry.” That idyllic picture of intellectual and emotional harmony stuck in my memory.

Some years later, Deirdre Bair published a biography of Beauvoir. The subject cooperated to some extent by submitting to interviews with her biographer, and this partly explains the extent to which Beauvoir comes across in Bair’s book as something of a shadow to, even a victim of, Sartre. He seduced a succession of her female students, and late in life adopted one of his young admirers so that the girl became his heir and literary executor, which Bair writes was incredibly painful to Beauvoir. On the other hand, Bair managed to catch her subject out in some of her prevarications, too. Beauvoir made some questionable compromises with the Nazi occupiers of Paris, and hotly denied sexual affairs with other men besides the American novelist Nelson Algren, let alone women. But the questions remained open.

It is in this new book that the depths of the famous couple’s deceptions and self-deceptions are brought to light. Beauvoir not only seduced many of her own female students, but passed them along knowingly to Sartre as a method of holding his attention. Since several were quite young, the author does not scruple to avoid the phrase “child abuse.” Beauvoir also slept with many young men, and tried to seduce tall and handsome Albert Camus but decided she hated him after he turned her down. Both Sartre and Beauvoir seemed casually unaware of the mortal dangers that faced their young Jewish friends, as well as continuing their literary and journalistic careers under the Nazi and collaborationist authorities.

Sartre’s overlong flirtation with Communist governments (his hatred of Western imperialism and capitalism made him turn a blind eye to Stalin's death camps; here, the two of them chat with Castro and Che Guevara in Cuba) is deepened in this book by the revelation of a longtime romantic affair with a Soviet spy, who herself may have been acting under compulsion from her Communist masters. Seymour-Jones also confirms the terrible pain Sartre inflicted on his lifelong partner when he adopted Arlette Elkaïm, a former student and lover 32 years his junior, and suggests Beauvoir retaliated by adopting a student-daughter of her own, Sylvie Le Bon. These disagreements have been carried on long after the deaths of Sartre and Beauvoir, as Elkaïm-Sartre and Le Bon Beauvoir have fought publicly over their mentors’ estates and papers.

What to make of all this? Nearly all of us have secrets that, if paraded in public, would make us appear less noble than we would prefer to be. Fortunately, most of us don’t live our lives in public, serving as spokespersons for political and moral causes the way Sartre and Beauvoir did. So we’re less likely to serve as poor examples, and we don’t have to decide whether to gild the lily in public. The truths that writers write are, to some extent, independent of their lived lives. Each of us must decide for himself whether the scuzziness of a Sinatra or Polanski is enough to make their creative work unworthy of our time.

Sartre and Beauvoir (like Keith Richards, who once famously told a British magistrate during a 1967 hearing for drug possession, “We are not old men; we are not worried about petty morals”) might have earned the right, or at least possessed the ability, to live in a free and open relationship, but they continued to share a world with others who were less able or inclined to live under such conditions. A free mind (more or less) does not confer the right to hurt other human beings.

But that’s what they seem to have done. Repeatedly and sometimes even blithely.