Gongol.com Archives: December 2023
December 15, 2023
If Rudy Giuliani had always been an obvious crook, a jury's decision to award $148 million in damages to two election workers as compensation for his defamatory words would still be a huge sum, but it wouldn't also be a tragedy. Giuliani, though, was a man who once obviously knew better. ■ For as clownish as the former New York mayor's behavior has become, it's easy to forget that he forged his place in the public eye as a crusading prosecutor who ruthlessly went after the mob and innovated the legal means of taking down organized crime. It was a record of which he could be proud, even before he took his place in the spotlight as a steady leader during the crisis of 9/11. ■ That he now behaves in such a way that his own defense attorneys plead that he "shouldn't be defined by what's happened in recent times" forces thoughtful people to reflect on a difficult question: Was he always the kind of person who would lie about decent ordinary people just to win a temporary political advantage? Or did something about him change? ■ If it was the former, why didn't the public see it before? If it was the latter, are the rest of us susceptible to the same kinds of changes? One calls into question the quality of long-standing public opinion. The other forces us to ask how much we control and determine the quality of our own character. Both are uncomfortable challenges. ■ The philosopher Maimonides counseled that "Man is created in such a way that his character traits and actions are influenced by his neighbors and friends, and he follows the custom of the people in his country. Therefore a man needs to associate with the just and be with the wise continually in order to learn [from] their actions, and to keep away from the wicked, who walk in darkness, so that he avoids learning from their actions." ■ While it's possible that the world could have been very wrong about Giuliani for a very long time, he certainly put himself at considerable personal risk in going after the mafia (and corrupt cops, upon whom he set his sights as well). It's hard to imagine that he could have accepted that kind of risk without being driven, at least in part, by some moral sensibility; thus, we ought to take seriously the problem of a change in character. ■ It's no mystery in whose orbit Giuliani has been traveling in recent years. Anyone who considers joining the same circles ought to beware that their character is unlikely to hold up any better than his.
The notion of "cloud" computing tends to anchor a perception that computing is ethereal -- that it doesn't exist in physical space. But while the metaphor is appropriate in the sense that computing by accessing data centers over the Internet permits users to get big work done on small devices that are "as light as a cloud", it breaks down when we are forced to acknowledge that cloud computing requires real physical resources. Energy is the most obvious of those resources, and it's needed not just for the computer processing, but also for the storage. And we may well be creating a feedback loop thanks to cloud computing: The easier it is to process cheaply and quickly, the more likely we are to create outputs we don't necessarily need. But then they get stored -- perhaps indefinitely. That, in turn, ends up demanding yet more energy. (Though it's worth noting that data centers also take up physical space, often in spaces on the periphery of urban areas.)
North Dakota narrowly edges out Iowa for the state with the largest number of acres of oats harvested in 2023: 105,000 to 95,000. The competition would have been fiercer back before the age of tractors. The two states together account for a quarter of all such harvested acres in the country.
"Friendly fire" kills three Israelis being held hostage in Gaza
A cruel reminder that 137 people are still being held hostage by Hamas.
