High school lawyers

So, do we really need lawyers? That's the question mankind has asked for generations. Could even high school students -- given a year's part-time training -- be qualified to try a lawsuit?

I'm mulling over a fascinating pile of paper that's been prepared for use in an upcoming high school mock trial. Before me, spread out over my dining room table, is a summary of facts, lengthy statements by eight witnesses, some jury instructions, several exhibits, and a federal grand jury indictment of a one-time radical environmental activist.

Because the matter is pending before the court, as we lawyers like to say, I won't go into any detail. I'll just say that the indictment is for an alleged arson committed against a fictional Washington research university, and that it was allegedly motivated by a professor's genetic engineering studies. In general, although not in specifics, the case resembles an actual arson that occurred a few years back in Seattle.

My involvement is fairly low key. I am putting together my version of the federal government's case against the defendant, and will spend two evenings, 2 ½ hours each evening, acting as the U.S. Attorney, opposed by students acting as attorneys for the accused environmentalist. This will be only a "mock" mock trial, one of several the students will put themselves through, intended to help them get ready for the actual interscholastic competitions that will occur in the spring.

I am completely impressed. This particular high school has a middling reputation in the city: not a bad school, but not one of the two or three outstanding schools, either. I asked the moderator this morning how harsh I should be in objecting to improper questions and inadmissible evidence. He told me to forget entirely that these were high school students. He said that the kids have been studying the federal rules of evidence since last spring, and that I should treat them with no more mercy than I would opposing counsel in a real trial. The students want to know every kind of objection and argument that might be thrown at them when they get into the actual competition.

These young people have been giving up an evening of their time, once a week, since last spring. They will continue to do so until the competition. They are doing it not for a class grade, but for fun, glory, excitement, experience -- and perhaps for the résumés accompanying their college applications.

Whenever I hear comments to the effect that "kids nowadays are no damn good," something like this comes along and knocks me off my feet. I'm working like crazy to be a worthy sparring partner when I confront them for my first meeting with them next week. I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing how they perform. I'm happy for them, and with the schools and YMCA organization that have made this learning experience possible.

I'll give you my impressions of the experience later. Meanwhile: "May it please the court ... "

War against language

...Mr. Obama, the man who would reform health care, is also a war president, and one who has not yet proved to Americans that he can be a success at that.
--The Economist (Jan. 9-15, 2010)

Regardless of what Americans may believe about our president's ability to combat terrorism, Obama is not a "war president."

The United States is not, of course, in a formal state of war, but this is not decisive. Congress has not formally declared war since World War II, but no one would doubt that we were at war in Korea and that we were at war in Vietnam.

Our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is more questionable. With whom, exactly are we at war? It would be far more accurate to state that we have intervened in those two countries to maintain order, and/or to chase after a group blamed for 9-11 and/or to take sides in civil insurrections.

But the "war on terrorism" ("terrorism" itself being a loaded term, meaning whatever the politician using it wants it to mean) is no more a "war" in any meaningful sense than is the "war on drugs" or the "war on illiteracy" or the "war on littering." I don't mean to be flippant. Obviously the stakes are high and the risks are deadly. But war, as understood in American and international law, refers to a specific hostile relationship between two sovereign nations. The "war against terrorism," which is not even aimed at any specific geographical area, resembles more closely a form of criminal enforcement, such as the battle against the Mafia or against the drug syndicates.

The reason why the definition is critical, the reason why we can not permit such a "war" -- a use of force against individual persons and their conspiracies that resembles a war only metaphorically -- to be considered war in any legal or constitutional sense, is that sloppy definitions permit sloppy reasoning and sloppy justifications. The Bush regime was able to push through a large number of questionable statutes, regulations, and policies under the mantra "We're at war!" How often did we hear Cheney say, in so many words, "I don't think you understand, sir. This country's fighting a war!"

Since the Bush administration contended that the "war against terrorism" would last years, decades, perhaps forever, it became clear that supposedly temporary infringements on civil rights -- such as the so-called Patriot Act -- were intended to become permanent. (Fortunately, in a narrow 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court in 2008 rejected attempts by Congress and the administration to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction to issue habeas corpus on behalf of terrorist suspects being held at Guantánamo.)

In his novel 1984, Orwell wrote of a despotism that controlled its citizens, in part, by eradicating from the English language all words that would enable them to even think in seditious terms. Language is important. Words are important. The correct use of words is important.

The Nazis, in a nice Orwellian touch, hung that famous sign over Auschwitz: "ARBEIT MACH FREI" -- Work makes you free. It didn't, at least in any way that the inmates might have hoped. We ourselves may be engaged in a critical struggle against terrorism. But we are not "at war" against persons and their organizations that commit so-called terrorist acts. And using the word "war" doesn't make it so.

New year gloom

January, the month of beginnings. The hopeful New Year baby, cheerfully pushing aside the tired Old Year graybeard. A time to be enthusiastic, optimistic.

And yet, I'm depressed. Not for my own life, which is purring along quite smoothly, thank you. But for the civilization in which I live.

Is it just me? Don't you have the feeling that nothing is working out right? That we're not just going through a downbeat phase, but that we are well advanced into a long-term era of secular decline? That we -- you and me, the folks apt to be reading this post -- resemble those reasonably well-off Romans in the Late Empire, nice folks who went about worrying about getting promotions and helping their kids get into good schools, not noticing what was happening around them? That the economic foundations of their civilization had already collapsed and that they were living off the assets of the past, that their culture was increasingly debased, that the barbarians were storming the gates -- maybe not yet gates close at hand, but Roman gates they had never stormed before?

I don't mean by all this just that I'm perturbed that the Pac-10 and Big Ten did so poorly against the SEC and other boorish, no-account conferences, although that hasn't improved my mood any. No, my thoughts turn to even weightier matters.

For example, in yesterday's New York Times, columnist David Brooks argues that the average American has lost confidence in our political institutions, in our scientists, in our foreign policy, and in our business leaders. Most of all, the average American has totally lost confidence in what Brooks calls "our educated classes." "Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year," he claims.

I've spent too much time watching football this past week, which has given me an exposure to the world of television that I usually lack. The commercials! Ad after ad glorifies an image of the American citizen, and especially the adult American male, as an idiotic, loud-mouthed adolescent -- an ersatz teenager, with all of a teenager's understandable immaturity and gross behaviors, but with none of a true teenager's hopes of growing up and becoming educated into a more intelligent and sensitive human being.

I especially marvel at the televised trailers for upcoming movies, movie after movie displaying an obsession with bleak post-apocalyptic dystopias, cops gone wrong, autos consumed by fireballs, and heroes (or are they villains? who knows?) shooting, slugging, slicing, blowing up, vaporizing and otherwise eliminating everyone who gets in their way, as though human beings were disposable adversaries in a computer game.

Look at the films by major studios opening in January alone: Daybreakers (plague has changed most citizens into vampires); Book of Eli (father and son try to survive in a bleak post-apocalyptic world); Legion (God's fed up and has sent angels to terminate his experiment); Dread (college student taking part in case study uses it to play on the fears of his peers); Edge of Darkness (cop on rampage -- supposedly a good cop, but I didn't like the looks of the trailer); Bitch Slap (no comment). Some of these may be artistically sound movies, and some may be movies I'll actually decide to watch, but that's not my point. The point is that similarly themed movies come at us month after month -- and that movies with these violent and grossly pessimistic themes tend to be the films that best succeed commercially. That fact, I submit, shows something disturbing about our popular culture -- and our popular culture is the measure of our civilization.

I'm worried and I'm depressed. But I'll try to look on the bright side: we still don't entertain ourselves by watching humans being fed to the lions, although Texas's obsession with the dealth penalty does give me pause. Someone will write me that I should just not watch movies or TV if it's going to disturb me all that much. You're right, I'm free to choose my own amusements, just as the more finicky citizens of Rome were free to write poetry and play the lyre and ignore what was going on downtown in the Coliseum -- but shutting their eyes to what was happening to their own civilization didn't save the Empire, did it?

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to check my local newspaper and see which theaters are showing Avatar this weekend.

What's in a name?

Humbug or not, Happy New Year! everybody. In fact, Happy New Decade.

Not strictly, of course. Just as the twentieth century didn't end until the last day of 2000, so the first decade of the twenty-first century won't end until the last day of 2010. But only clueless geeks care about nitpicking stuff like that. (Which is why I myself point out the technically correct date to everyone at every opportunity.)

Whatever the technicalities, we all "know" that we are now beginning a new decade, just as we all "knew" on January 1, 2000, that we were beginning a new century. But what shall we call these first two decades? From the last century, we know all about the roaring 20's, the depression 30's, the apathetic 50's, the hippy 60's, etc. But what simple word can be used to describe decades beginning with "0" and "1."

Actually -- I have on good authority -- a century ago most people called the 1900-09 decade the "aughts." "Aught" being a word synonymous with zero, and familiar from old stories where some elderly geezer leans back in his chair and reminisces: "That was a bad one, it was. Yes sir. The Great Blizzard of 19-aught-6." Parenthetically, "naught" means exactly the same thing as "aught," although one might suppose it a contraction of "not aught." And yet you never hear of an old fool ranting on and on about the great blizzard of 19-"naught"-6. This, my friends, is attributable to "fashion," and no rational explanation should be sought.

Obviously, then, it thus makes perfect sense -- and is in full accord with precedent -- to call the decade just completed the "aughts." The "Awesome Aughts"? Or "Awful Aughts"? Take your pick, depending on your own temperament, but I'm not aware of any such adjective attached by our twentieth century forebears to "aughts." They may just have been on to something. And if "aughts" sounds too archaic or hard to spell, let's just call them "the Bush-Cheney years" (or maybe "Cheney-Bush years"), and leave it at that. Which is to say "awful," and which is what I suspect we'll end up calling them anyway.

But I digress. I really meant to discuss the upcoming decade, the one we've just started (although you and I can secretly agree that it doesn't really start until 2011). Here I find no precedents. I've never read or heard of anyone calling the years 1910-19 the "teens"¹ or the "tens." And I suspect I know why.

World War I began about half-way through the decade. The war ended one era and introduced a new one. It sharply divided the decade into two segments: the pre-war years, which in America were really part of Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Era that that began at the outset of the "aughts," and the war years which ended Progressivism in this country and pushed our society down a slippery slope into the infamous "Roaring 20's." In Britain, the pre-war years were just a continuation of the Edwardian era (on that side of the pond, they do tend to identify eras more with reigns than with decades); and the war years -- which began in 1914 in Britain, rather than 1917 as here -- which led directly into that unpleasantly messy transitional period that Britain experienced in the 20's and 30's. So to both the British and the American publics, the "teens" didn't really exist as an independent decade, but as the tail end of one decade and the introduction to another.

Barring an unforeseen disaster, the coming decade will not be so bifurcated. So what should we call it? And what will future generations call it? I suppose, most logically, simply the "teens," but our society has ways of spontaneously coming up with terms that no one could have predicted, so who knows? And that's my answer to the question posed by this essay: Who knows?²

I will stick my neck out with an unrelated prediction, however. I'll bet that by 2013, we will stop using the awkward term "two thousand thirteen," and will simply say "twenty thirteen." (Remember, you read it here first.)
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¹(1-2-10) Although, embarassingly, I read such a reference to the upcoming decade in this morning's New York Times financial section!

²(1-2-10) Even more embarrassingly, this afternoon's mail brings the 1-4-10 issue of The New Yorker, whose lead comment under "Talk of the Town" is entitled "What Do You Call It." The comment discusses the issue of the "aughts," but of course does so far more eruditely than could I. The writer (Rebecca Mead) observes that "aught" is a nineteenth century corruption of "naught," summarizes the highs and the lows of the past decade, and concludes that to call the past decade the "aughts" pleases no one, and that the decade remains "an orphaned era that no one quite wants to own, or own up to.

So I'm not The New Yorker. So screw it. Sure, you're far better off reading their writers. But then, I don't charge you $5.99 per copy either.

Humbug!

Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you're forced to.
--Bill Vaughn

Except for kids still intoxicated by their first drinks and their first kisses, everyone agrees that New Year's Eve is our most overrated holiday. For a while, I was afraid it was just me -- that everyone except, pathetically, myself was having an hilarious time. But I finally looked around and realized that the only folks having an hilarious time were the sorts who also had hilarious times on Arbor Day and John Quincy Adams's Birthday.

But this year, for maybe the first time, I've also wondered if the entire week between Christmas and New Year's is also overrated. Looking around at happy people on the street, however, this time I'm sure it really is just me.

As a kid, the week following Christmas was a riotous exercise in the joys of consumption -- playing with every toy, building with every building set, challenging friends and siblings to play every game -- riding new bikes, blowing myself up with new chemistry sets, causing catastrophic collisions with new electric train sets¹ -- all in the dreamy illusion that vacation from school would last forever. Finally, I'd wake up dazed on New Year's Day, put on the funny hats my folks brought home from a dance or party, gaze around at the demolished remnants of my Christmas presents -- and face the cold reality that school began in the next day or so.

But while it lasted, Christmas week was the veritable Mardi Gras of childhood.

As the years passed, the orgiastic aspects of the week were left behind, but there remained the satisfaction of hanging out with relatives I didn't see the rest of the year, lots of good things to eat, Christmas decorations to enjoy, and general good humor all around.

This year, I had a very enjoyable Christmas with relatives in Sonoma, but unaccountably had made reservations to return to Seattle the night of December 27. I returned home to a quiet, chilly, undecorated house -- a dark and austerely Cromwellian outpost in a dazzling world still celebrating the feasts and festivals of Merry Olde England -- greeted only by my two loving but somewhat prim feline companions.

Where did Christmas disappear to so suddenly? Surely, even Cromwell must have had his moments of doubt, moments when he felt he'd gone too far? That he'd thrown the baby out with the bath?

Anyway, Christmas week ends Friday, after which the festive Yule coach turns back into stale pumpkin pie for everyone, and we can all join together in putting our noses to the workaday grindstone.

At least, before it's over, there'll still be some hella good bowl games to re-warm my icy heart.

But next Christmas, I'm going to plan things out better!

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¹When I got bored creating devastating railway accidents, I found I could amuse myself by connecting my transformer's power pole to the ground pole with a piece of wiring. Observation: (1) Sparks fly; (2) the wire vibrates frantically, making a satisfying buzzing noise; (3) the wire begins to smoke; and (4) the insulation melts and burns off the wire. The short circuit fortunately could not draw enough power through the transformer to blow a fuse out in the garage (which would have resulted in my father's blowing his own fuse).

Merry Christmas!

© The New Yorker

Merry Christmas to my thousands of readers. I'm heading south by Amtrak tomorrow, spending Christmas week with relatives in Sonoma. May your holidays be happy, and every bit as warm as the WPIX-TV Yule log!

Rail to air

At 10:00 a.m. this morning, the final link was added to Seattle's light rail route between downtown and the airport -- the 1.7 mile link between Tukwila station and Sea-Tac Airport. By 11:15 a.m., your roving correspondent and irrationally exuberant rapid transit fanatic was riding the rails. I wouldn't have waited so long, but I wanted to make sure that the first few trains made the trip uneventfully, with no untoward collapses of the elevated tracks en route.

I'm pleased to announce that the trip went smashingly, and all seems in order. I timed the trip at 39 minutes from airport departure to Westlake (downtown) arrival. The fare is $2.50. If you ride out and come back within the two-hour transfer period, your return trip is treated as a free transfer. Because I took the bus downtown from my home ($1.75), the computer subtracted only another 75 cents from my fare card for the light rail ride to the airport, and zero for the return. Gaming the system is cool, even when you love -- with your whole heart and your whole mind -- the system that you're gaming!

My only criticism is that the airport station is not incorporated into the terminal building, as are rail connections at most airports. Instead, you have about a quarter-mile walk, most of it on a dedicated path through the pre-existing parking garage, to reach the transit station. But you could easily walk this same distance at other airports, such as Chicago or San Francisco -- you would just be less aware of the distance because you would be walking within the terminal building.

Lots of sightseers with small kids making the ride on the first day, but also a lot of flyers with their rolling luggage, many of them coming on board at stations along the route. Light rail is going to be a nice amenity for flyers, especially those headed for hotels or business offices downtown.

Next development will be tunneling the route from Westlake to Husky Stadium at the University, with a single intermediate station constructed under Capitol Hill. That extension's already under construction, and due for completion in 2016.

Dark matter

While you and I are obsessing over our Christmas gift list or, on a grander scale, hating Joe Lieberman for his antics in the U.S. Senate, some of our fellow humans are pondering the nature and future of the universe.

News comes this week from the Soudan Mine in the chilly iron mining country of northern Minnesota. After two years of reading sensors located in an old mine 2,000 feet underground, chilled almost to absolute zero (0.01° K.), scientists have observed two tiny blips of heat, which they suspect are the result of the sensors being hit by a couple of WIMPS. No, the WIMPS aren't the scientists; they are Weakly Interacting Massive Particles -- a form of "dark matter." The odds are about 75-80 percent that the detectors have detected WIMPS, rather than simply picking up some form of background radiation. Because of the small possibility of background "noise," however, no claim is being made at this time of a conclusive "dark matter" detection. But scientists are optimistic.

Dark matter particles are dark because -- although heavy -- they do not emit light, they have no electrical charge, and they virtually never interact with other particles. They just hang around space being heavy. Apparently, however, they do interact with the germanium/silicon detectors that the scientists have installed under the Mesabi Range, thus permitting the reported detection.

Dark matter, until now, has been a theoretical construct, hypothesized to explain why the universe, once created in the Big Bang, hasn't flown apart like scraps of an exploded firecracker. The universe is expanding, yes, but in a controlled expansion. The mutual gravitational attraction among all particles is the accepted explanation for the limited speed of expansion, but there's nowhere near enough visible matter to provide the graviational pull that would explain the observed data. Therefore, scientists have for some time suggested the existence of "dark matter" -- matter massive enough to provide the required gravitational tug to keep the stars from flying apart much faster than they do, but matter so "dark" that we can't detect it by our senses and instruments.

Until now. Maybe.

If dark matter exists, there's a lot of it around. Scientists calculate that 25 percent of the mass of the universe is dark matter, as compared with only 4 percent being found in atoms (including visible matter composed of atoms). (The rest of the universe's mass -- an incredible 70 percent or so -- is believed to be "dark energy," mass/energy that the predominant theory suggests is inherent in the nature of space itself).

Other scientific teams are working to confirm the Minnesota identification of dark matter, including an American team working in the Italian Alps, and the CERN team operating the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) near Geneva (the collider I've discussed in earlier posts).

Pretty cool stuff. Pondering these matters should calm us and diminish the usual irritation caused by the elevated mass and energy of frenzied Christmas shoppers at the local Wal-Mart.

GOP hot air

Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), has demanded that the clerk read a proposed 767-page amendment to the Health Care Reform bill now being considered by the Senate. The reading of bills and amendments is virtually always waived as a waste of time. No one listens, of course, despite Sen. Coburn's disingenuous claim that the marathon reading will bring "a dose of transparency" to the debate.

Coburn's demand is just one more tactic in the Republican effort ("No, no, a thousand times NO -- whatever you propose, we'll say NO!!") to stall any health care reform bill into oblivion. The Republicans estimate it will take until midnight tonight before the amendment has been completely read.

"If we need to lay [sic] down in traffic to stop the bill we would," according to Republican sources.

The Republicans say that polls show that the Senate bill is not popular, and they are thus justified in filibustering the measure to death.

It wasn't long ago that right-wing bumper strips reminded us that "America is a republic, not a democracy," meaning that the public elects legislative and executive branches, and expects them to use their sound judgment in legislating -- as opposed to enacting legislation directly by some form of polling. But that was then, apparently, and this is now.

President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress were elected barely a year ago on a platform that strongly endorsed health care reform. The issue was discussed repeatedly in the presidential debates. I would think that the only poll that counts was the one taken of the voters in November 2008. Congress and the administration are now attempting to do precisely what they were elected to do.

My advice to the good senator from Oklahoma would be -- were I not such a gentleman -- the same as that once delivered famously to a Democratic senator on the floor of the Senate by Vice President Dick Cheney.

My advice to the Democratic leadership is to keep the Senate in session through Christmas, if necessary, to keep the bill moving. Let Sen. Coburn explain to his family back in Oklahoma that he can't celebrate Christmas with him this year, because he needs to read the phone book into the record on the floor of the Senate.

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1:45 p.m. -- The senator offering the amendment withdrew it after 139 pages had been read, denouncing the Republican maneuver: "People can have honest disagreements, but in this moment of crisis it is wrong to bring the United States government to a halt."

Christmas magic

This afternoon, downtown Seattle was dark and gloomy. No longer freezing, as it's been for the last fortnight, but not much warmer. A typical Seattle drizzle -- wet enough to keep me damp, but not enough to make me run for cover or -- God forbid -- use an umbrella.

I was a man on a mission -- trying to find a Christmas present for the most recent addition to the family. My mission led me deep into Pioneer Square, the area where Seattle all began. An odd district of old stone buildings, none over about three stories high. At Christmas, huddled in the gloom of winter, their exteriors forbidding but lit up warmly from within, it all felt very much like the London of Charles Dickens.

A rusticated stone building contained what appeared -- from the outside -- to be a small toy store. I entered. I was delighted. Although the street entrance was unimpressive and easy to miss, once inside I found myself wandering about in a magic world of children's toys, a maze of small rooms, each brightly lit, with a hidden stairway near the rear leading down to an even richer offering of toys on a lower level.

I looked about me, half expecting to see the jolly toymaker himself, hard at work at his craft.

And the toys were wonderful. Not the kind of toys you see advertised on kids' TV shows. These were the kinds of toys you see in photos from yesteryear. Only better. A whole room of jigsaw puzzles in various shapes and sizes. A room of stuffed animals, from baby teddy bears to giagantic giraffes. Stacks of hardwood blocks and building toys. An entire corner, its shelves filled with wonderful chemistry sets (the best of which was priced at a pricey $269!), telescopes, microscopes, and other encouragements for the young scientist. Games of all types, from this year's most advertised models all the way back to classics such as Risk and Monopoly. Miniature toy cars and trucks --sturdily built from cast metal (not plastic!).

Adding to the magic -- or to the confusion, which may be the same thing -- were plastic balls, balls the size of croquet balls, rolling around the store underfoot, rolling under their own power, untended, changing direction each time they hit an obstacle -- such as my feet. They must have contained batteries and some internal mechanism that made them roll, but the effect on the unsuspecting visitor, already transfixed by the magic of the toys of Christmas, was unnervingly Hogswartian.

This is a child's Christmas as it should be presented, I felt. These are the kinds of presents I want to give. Heck, these are the kinds of presents I want to receive. Does Santa know?

I stumbled, intoxicated, out of the little shop, out into the gloomy, Dickensian drizzle. Now at home, sober, I look back on it all and mull over the cruel reality -- I'll probably get a tie for Christmas.

Progress

The cynics among you -- among whom I'd certainly consider myself, were I in your shoes -- probably suspected, after reading last month's posting about my efforts to master the Pathétique, that in another year I'd shamefacedly stand before you, scuffing the ground with my foot, confessing that once more I'd made little progress.

Well, in the past month I haven't made a lot of progress, perhaps, and I can't seem to force myself to practice anywhere near as much as I should, but I have made progress. (No matter how lazy you are, if you play a piece even a couple of times a day, you're bound to improve!) I still miss notes, I still fumble over fingering on some of the chords, and I definitely have my problems with the trills -- I have no intention of inviting you to a recital! -- but it's getting there, and it's increasingly fun to play.

But the disparity between the recording of the sonata to which I linked you in my November 12 post and the sounds that come out of my own piano is disheartening. Hitting the right notes is only an initial step, as I can hear only too well. But -- the upside of my distance from my goal is that it reinforces my conviction that I need lessons. I'm still planning to look for the proper teacher, once we're into January.

I'm excited at the prospect. Further details as events warrant.

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

An autistic boy stares off into the distance when you try to talk to him. A victim of stroke needs constant encouragement to perform exhausting and boring physical exercises. A lonely elderly woman is becoming vegetative through lack of any social ties.

These are just three examples of people who desperately need person-to-person interaction -- not just casual social friends, but someone who will work with them intensely, hour after hour. Someone constantly encouraging, constantly engaged, constantly attentive; someone who never shows boredom, discouragement, frustration. Someone a bit like a saint.

Or maybe a robot.

In a recent New Yorker article, medical professor Jerome Groopman discusses the emerging field -- and developing technology -- of "socially assistive robots." These are machines designed to interface with human beings. Whether the robots move or are stationary, speak or make noises, appear human or remain simply machine-like, they are all designed to work with patients, often tirelessly doing or saying the same thing over and over, giving the patient the non-ending support and encouragement that he or she needs. The robot ideally performs the same tasks that human therapists can do now, but does them indefinitely, beyond normal human endurance.

The simpler robots, such as some used in physical therapy, simply measure the effort exerted by the patient, and offer pre-recorded verbal encouragements. More sophisticated robots, working with children suffering from autism, use their half-machine, half-human characteristics to lure kids -- kids often comfortable with machines but who have difficulty sharing interests and information with other humans -- into child-robot relationships that, it's hoped, will evolve into improved relationships with other children. Similarly, robots working with the elderly are designed to fill a vacuum in their lives, giving them someone with whom to bond, a bonding that may also encourage them to bond among themselves (a function that animal pets often perform as well.)

Dr. Groopman notes that while some of these robots may be fairly simple in their intellectual attributes, others are being designed with the ability to learn from experience and, based on that learning, to modify their own behavior and responses. For example, some who work with recovering stroke victims are able to determine to what extent a particular patient is introverted or extroverted. The more introverted the patient, the more physical distance the robot maintains between robot and patient, the lower the pitch of its "voice," the more slowly it speaks, and the more encouragement it offers.

We have obviously reached in real life the first, halting steps toward the artificial intelligence (A.I.) that we have been reading about in science fiction for decades. In many ways, these developments seem miraculous and wonderful, but science fiction has trained our minds to suspect that it will all go wrong in the end.

Groopman mentions the "uncanny valley" effect: the uneasiness or revulsion people feel when a robot seems too human, but not entirely human. At present, designers avoid this effect by designing deliberately non-human characteristics into their robots. But this effect may not always be a problem. Already, elderly patients have been observed looking forward eagerly to spending time with their robots. One researcher observed a woman who called a robot her "grandchild."

'Others said that they would like to arrange their schedule around singing to the robot ... it's the high point of their day.' ... 'One woman spun quite a yarn,' Mataric said. 'They had whole internal stories about how the robot fit into their lives, however unreal those stories may be.'

Here, the robot is not just a tool that facilitates amused interaction among elderly women; interaction with the robot itself appears to have become their prime social objective. "We were wired through evolution to feel that when something looks us in the eye, then someone is at home in it." These women find their robots better company than their own peers.

And can we blame them? Isn't this really what we all would like? A totally non-judgmental friend who is constantly encouraging and forever patient, who has only our best interests at heart? One to whom we can tell the same story over and over, and get the same appreciative laugh every time? One who always gives, and demands nothing from us in return?

In other words, aren't these robots way too good to be enjoyed only by the disabled, the elderly, the autistic? As they develop further, as they are made ever more human, as they become ever more skilled at being the kind of buddies we always craved, surely -- human nature being what it is -- there will develop black markets in robots, robots obtained without a prescription, dubious claims of a medical need for robots. In the end, doesn't the battle over marijuana shows that sooner or later we'll get what we crave, robots on demand?

Everyone will have his own personal robot or robots. Where the economy demands interpersonal cooperation, cooperation and empathy we no longer have the patience or skills to develop ourselves, we will gladly delegate to our robots the task of working things out among themselves on our behalf.

At the end of his article, Groopman quotes an MIT psychology professor who expresses fear that patients now being helped by robots will find it too easy to limit their social life to interaction with their robots. Look at email, he argues. Has email facilitated human contact, or replaced it? What the professor sees as a threat, however, mankind may well find a blessing. Human relations are messy. Robot relations will be tidy and warm and fulfilling. If there are conflicts between persons, between nations, let the robots sort it out -- we trust them.

Hey, I read sci-fi! I go to movies! I already know the ending to this story!

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Jerome Groopman, Robots That Care, The New Yorker (Nov. 2, 2009)

Crime and Punishment

A frosty but sunny day in Seattle. Trees, still yellow-leafed, shine golden against the blue sky as I traipse across the UW campus. The "mountain is out," as we say in our quaint local patois. Excited students, purple-clad, drift toward the stadium, hoping against hope to watch the Golden Bears be vanquished in this afternoon's game. Life is good, and in times like these my fancy lightly turns to thoughts of, well ... murder, punishment, ruined lives.

Three recent news items:

• Item. An Italian court in Perugia has found Amanda Knox, age 22, a former honors student at the University of Washington, guilty of knifing to death a fellow exchange student, and has sentenced her to 26 years in prison.
  
• Item. An Indiana boy, 17, reportedly has admitted that, while wrestling with his 10-year-old brother, he killed him with a chokehold. His brother's last words were, "Andrew, stop." He then further strangled his brother and hit his head against a rock to make sure he was dead. The defendant, a good student and apparently well-liked at school, says he'd been wanting to kill someone ever since eighth grade.
  
• Item. A Missouri girl, 15, a lazy but gifted student, reportedly has admitted killing a 9-year-old neighbor by strangling and stabbing her, and then slitting her throat. The defendant says she killed the girl because "she wanted to know what it felt like."
  

Three promising lives, ended practically before they began. Three more promising lives, essentially ended or soon to be ended by the judicial system.

Assuming all three defendants are, in fact, guilty¹, it's hard to dispute the lengthy sentences they will receive. And yet, whenever I read of a young person sentenced to life imprisonment, or to a term ensuring that they will not be released until late middle age, my mind rebels at the waste involved.

I recall myself at age 17, say, or 15 -- and I remember stupid things I may have done at that age. Nothing that would have brought me into the criminal justice system, thank God, but just dumb decisions that make me wonder now who that dumb kid was and what I could have been thinking of. What would it be like to reach the age of 40, say, having spent over half of your life in jail, and know that you were in prison, and would stay in prison, because of some act committed by a 15-year-old idiot who you could hardly recognize as even being yourself. But that's the fate reserved for these kids.

We learn in law school that criminal punishment has four principal objectives: retribution, protection of society, deterrence, and rehabilitation. As modern Americans, we like to believe that our principal goal is at least to attempt rehabilitation. But in murders as egregious as these three (and especially the latter two), where the murders are so willful and the pain to the survivors so devastating, we recall the original reason the criminal justice system was created: to grant the sovereign the exclusive right of retribution, in order to prevent private retribution and self-perpetuating family feuds.

None of the three defendants will be subject to the death penalty. We are thus spared the spectacle of the state killing in order to deter and punish killing. But the deliberate waste of the obvious gifts and talents these three young people might someday have brought to society may be a price we have to pay to preserve domestic peace and order.

A dark cloud seems to pass over the sun as I continue on my walk across the beautiful campus -- the beautiful campus that Amanda Knox once called home.

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¹Ms. Knox will appeal her conviction. Under Italian law, her appeal apparently results in a de novo trial by a higher court. Her conviction is not considered final until the appeal runs its course.

On your left!

Ok, gang. I'll try to make this post, short and to the point.

First, my disclaimer: (1) Seattle is one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the country, and I'm proud of that fact; (2) although I'm no fanatic, I enjoy biking myself, for both fun and exercise.

Now, here's the meat. Too many of you bicyclists are reckless, insane and arrogant. Forget about the messengers downtown, the ones who swerve their way through traffic-congested streets, treating red lights as mere warnings as they dash into the intersection. Not talking about them. They live a different life by different rules, dedicated to a higher cause, and I of course appreciate their prompt deliveries. They risk only their own lives.

No, my concerns are aimed at those riders who choose to share my sidewalk while I'm out in running or walking mode. Look, guys, have fun, ok? Dress up in flashy lycra, colored so you look like a Harlequin at a Venetian masked ball, if you choose. God knows, that's your own business. But here's my request. No, my demand: Seattle has richly supplied you cyclists -- us cyclists -- with bike trails and bike lanes. Seattle also permits you to ride on the sidewalks, asking only that you exercise caution and yield the right of way to pedestrians.

But you gotta do your part.

My point? Let's assume -- just as hypothetical -- that I was out briskly walking across Montlake bridge an hour or so ago, enjoying the late autumn sunshine. And let's suppose that a biker came up behind me on the narrow sidewalk at about 20 mph. Let's suppose he bellows as he begins his pass -- at about the same time that the sonic boom from his approach hits my eardrums -- "On your left!" And finally, let's suppose that, having brushed by me so closely that I'm nearly knocked off my feet, he speeds off obliviously.

I submit that this constitutes neither cautious driving nor yielding the right of way. And yet this happens over and over and over. And over.

Listen up, bikers. "On your left" is a warning to a pedestrian that you are approaching from behind. Its purpose is to avoid undue surprise, so that the pedestrian doesn't suddenly change direction into your bike's path. You, the bicyclist, on whom the law imposes the duty of caution, need not puff yourself up with an attitude of great superiority while calling out the phrase. You need not suppose that you are a magnificent athlete, merely because your little machine allows you to move faster than a runner or walker. Got that?

Call out the phrase early, call it out politely, and ride slowly. And don't pass within inches of me as you go by. I'm no toreador, showing off how close I can stand before a rampaging bull as it charges past me.

Looks of arrogance are unwarranted, it goes without saying. No sneering. No hauteur, no condescension, no disdain -- you're not driving a freaking Porsche, after all, just a simple vehicle that even 7-year-olds own and know how to ride. Nothing about your demeanor should suggest that pedestrians are mere irritants, like ruts in a road, impeding your swift progress on your appointed rounds.

Your "On your left" should not suggest the diesel horn on a 15-axle semi. Nor is it the equivalent of "Make way, knaves!" shouted by a mounted knight, sword in hand, as he thunders through a herd of scattering peasants. The phrase establishes no right of way, no empowerment to commit mayhem. It is a simple courtesy, a warning to help prevent injury to either biker or pedestrian.

I simply bring these basic principles to your attention, dudes, because I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it any more.

Happy cycling.

Advent

The guests have gone home, the turkey bones have hit the trash, the last of the pumpkin pie has disappeared from the refrigerator. The Christmas catalogs are stacking up precariously on the dining room table. The season is upon us. The countdown has begun.

For kids, the next 25 days are going to be sheer agony. Maybe you and I never actually begged our parents for a "Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot Range Model air rifle," but we all begged for something. As we watch the famous Christmas movie, we empathize fully with Ralphie's agonies of uncertainty and anticipation. Whether it was a BB gun or an electric train or a dollhouse or an Xbox or a Wii, most of us, at one time or another, had some Christmas present that we longed for desperately, some dazzling possession without which happiness in this life seemed well nigh impossible.

Sometimes we got it, sometimes we didn't. And even when we got it, we later admitted to ourselves that -- once we got it -- it never quite justified all the hopes and fantasies we had invested in it. Such disappointments, we gradually discovered, make up one of the ironic little tragedies of human life -- a childhood disappointment that was to have plenty of adult counterparts.

But our minds nevertheless seem hard-wired to dream and to anticipate, to look beyond the dreary present to a magically joyful future. At times, such bright dreams may seem the only road of escape from the darkness of our present. Just as primitive man, hunkered down in the cold and dark of winter, looked forward with hope to the solstice, to the date when days would once more start growing longer. Just as we in our own time, hunkered down in the throes of a recession, watch hopefully for signs that the economy is reviving, that good times are returning.

And just as men and women in every century, their own lives mired in poverty and hopelessness, have been able to survive the present by dreaming of better lives for their children, better lives that would give meaning to their own suffering.

So we look forward. We await the light, we await better times. We await a child in whom we can place our hopes. Throughout history, not only individuals have longed for a better world, a more meaningful life, but entire nations. And perhaps even all of humanity.

And so, like a bunch of kids ourselves, we eagerly anticipate the coming of Christmas. But, sadder now (and also wiser) than we were as kids, we long for a sturdier form of happiness, something with a lot more legs than the excitement of getting a BB gun. Or of finding a job, or winning a war.

A Christmas gift that gives us a different kind of joy, a gift that won't disappoint us as soon as we receive it. Twenty-five days to ponder such a gift, to ask Santa for it. Twenty-five days to Christmas!