What, me worry?
Crazy markets in the past few weeks. The unflappable Alfred E. Neumann, late of Mad Magazine, could take it in his stride, but money managers and the ordinary investor with cash stashed away in markets for a snowy day are nervous.
Speculative tech stocks took big hits; take Docusign— technology that lets you sign documents over the Internet— it opened down 30% on Friday and is off 50% over four months. Bitcoin took a huge hit, down 20%, trading at $49,000 on Saturday.
Take a look at Zoom; straight down. Talk is cheap and the stock is cheaper. It was down 4% just on Friday. That chart is pretty scary if you own any.
Apple and Alphabet (Google, and I own some) make real money and Apple hit a new high this year. Apple’s sales were up 29% in its latest quarter: $83.4-billion.
One Apple problem: it is short of parts for its new iPhone 13, the most expensive smartphone ever from Apple. Some of its laptops are a couple of hundred $ cheaper.
New Subscribers:
There were a lot of new free subscribers this week. To become a paying subscriber, click here:
Pay is rising
No one is quite sure why, probably the pandemic, but there is a shortage of workers and pay is getting higher for the first time in a long time. I think I have mentioned this before, but a hamburger outlet in Quebec is offering $17 an hour.
Here are the US stats on jobs from the latest Economist:
Catcalls, public sexual harassment to be a crime in Britain
This is a famous photograph taken in 1951 shows men in Florence ogling American tourist Ninalee Allen Craig. You can see one man grabbing his crotch. This sort of macho behaviour will soon be a crime in Britain. It follows the murder of Sarah Everard by a man who was never prosecuted even though he flashed women in public.
The photo above was taken by Ruth Orkin. It was controversial because the woman actually walked through this crowd twice, to get the photo right. Ms. Craig was outraged when a museum said it was a staged photograph. She died in 2018.
Economist obituary of Ninalee Allen Craig
Cars are safer than they used to be; not so guns.
About 38,000 Americans die every year in car crashes. That’s about the same number as those who die from guns, with about two thirds being suicide, the rest murders.
As you can see from the chart below driving used to be a lot more dangerous. Seat belts, headrests— to stop whiplash— and air bags made things a lot safer.
On the other hand, deaths from guns are on the rise, according this chart from Wikipedia.
Essay of the Week, guest essay and podcast.
This is the story of a war criminal who escaped capture and moved to Canada. It appeared in the Globe and Mail in early 2004. I made two changes: the Globe insists that people be called Mr.; I didn’t want to give him the honour, so I took them out. I also used to write under a nom-de-plume, James McCready — my great grandfather’s brother-in-law- so I changed the byline. McCready’s name is on our family stone in the Cote des Neiges cemetery in Montreal. Only my close relatives caught the irony.
Here is the story of an evil man, who in many ways, got away with it.
'The lord of life and death'
Hungarian police captain accused of sending 8,617 Jews to their deaths in the Holocaust ran restaurants in Toronto
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Fred Langan
Special to The Globe and Mail
TORONTO -- Imre Finta was a captain in the Hungarian police force in the Second World War who was charged with rounding up Jews for deportation to death camps. Witnesses at his trial 13 years ago said he even identified people he had worked with in a theatrical troupe before the war.
As one of the officers who did the dirty work of collecting Jews for transportation to camps, Imre Finta was charged with sending 8,617 people to their deaths. Almost all of the 700,000 Hungarian Jews shipped out in 1944 died in the death camps run by Nazi Germany.
Finta, who died in Toronto last month at the age of 91, was the first person to be tried under Canada's war-crimes legislation. He was acquitted at his 1990 trial by Ontario Supreme Court Judge Archie Campbell. Because of the failure to convict in so complex a case, with most of the witnesses dead, the government did not prosecute many more war criminals. Instead, it preferred to try and strip them of citizenship and then deport them.
Finta's acquittal came in spite of people such as Joesepha Vardi, an Auschwitz survivor, who said Finta loaded Jews onto waiting freight cars and remembered that "Finta was the lord of life and death at the time."
Finta said he was only moving Jews to new locations, not murdering them. Using a Canadian example, he said in his defence that he was doing little more than what the RCMP did in interning Japanese Canadians during the war.
One survivor described that as a cynical lie.
"Where did he think we were going? Little Red Riding Hood in the forest?" Margit Klein told a CTV reporter in 1983. She identified Imre Finta as one of the officers leading the Hungarian Police. "The guards knew because they shouted to us: 'You don't need water, you're going to die anyway.' So how could they not know?"
People close to the trial say the acquittal was a result of an incompetent police investigation. Others say it was because Canadian law and courts were too lenient, allowing Finta a defence that would have had him convicted in other jurisdictions.
"Canada was one of the only countries that allowed the defence of following orders," said Leo Adler, Canadian director of the Simon Wiesenthal Institute, the organization that still works to track down war criminals. "So we end up with this guy dying peacefully in his sleep."
In his own defence, Finta said some of his best friends were Jews. That was true. Before the war he went out with many Jewish women.
"My first fiancé in Szeged [the town where he grew up and worked as a police officer] was a Jewish girl," Finta told a CBC interviewer in October, 1974. "I love the Jewish people and I can't understand why Wiesenthal [wants] after 30 years more trouble and bloodshed."
After the war, Finta slipped through the cracks, like many low-level suspects involved in the Holocaust, and turned up in Canada. He prospered, running a couple of restaurants Toronto and publishing a book on healthy eating for older people that even managed to get an endorsement from Governor-General Roland Michener.
There seemed to be two Imre Fintas. He described himself as "a Bohemian, a show-business man" who, during his trial, would hold the elevator door open for elderly women who were members of the Jewish community and wanted to see him convicted. He was also the courtly Toronto restaurant owner who kissed the hands of his female patrons and had his picture taken with celebrities who dropped by.
Like a story line from a thriller, Imre Finta's whereabouts and history had been discovered by fluke. In 1964, a Hungarian immigrant, then a student at the University of Toronto, walked into Finta's restaurant looking for a summer job as a dishwasher. The name Finta sounded familiar and he wrote to someone who knew Captain Finta in Hungary during the war, but who by then lived in Vienna.
Magda Wagner, who survived and lived in Vienna, had converted to Catholicism to avoid deportation. But her parents had lived in Szeged and she testified that Imre Finta deported them to the camps.
Ms. Wagner contacted the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. On a visit to Ottawa in 1967, Wiesenthal raised the issue of war criminals with cabinet minister Mitchell Sharp and mentioned Imre Finta by name. In October of 1974, Wiesenthal wrote a letter about Finta's past and the story broke in the newspapers.
By the mid-1970's, Finta was a pariah, accused of working with the Nazis. From then on, there were media exposés, lawsuits, payouts and finally the trial, which ended in Finta's acquittal.
There were two bizarre libel actions involving the Finta case. The first involved The Toronto Sun, which ran a story in 1983 with the headline "The Nazi Who Never Was." Sabina Citron of the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association was singled out in the article. She sued both the newspaper and Finta. The Sun settled out of court for $100,000 and an apology. Ms. Citron continued the case against Finta and he was ordered to pay her $30,000 plus costs.
Finta launched a suit against CTV because of a 1983 story on W5. After a long case, the network won a $180,000 judgment against Finta. His house was sold by bailiffs to pay the debt. The prolonged litigation left him penniless. He told reporters after his acquittal that a Hungarian publisher had agreed to publish his autobiography, My Life, My Love, My Fate. He said he expected the book to be translated into English and German and that, anyway, everyone was profiting from the Holocaust. "I lost my home. Everything is gone. Now, I would like to make some money."
Over the years, other Hungarians in Toronto recognized Finta.
"He lived in the same building in Toronto as my mother and would smile at her and be polite, the hypocritical bastard," said George Preger, who survived as a boy in Budapest by pretending to be a Christian. "He was a captain in the gendarmerie. I remember them. They wore feathers in their caps and the sight of one would terrify me as a Jewish child trying to stay alive."
Other witnesses at his trial described him in videotape testimony from Israel and Hungary. One woman, who was once smitten by the good-looking young dandy, said "he called us stinking whores, Jewish whores" when he was at the railway station. Another woman testified he called Jews "a plague on the body" of Hungary.
Some testified that while they were working in the factory, Finta had made daily announcements over the public address system, warning Jews to surrender valuables or face "death punishment." Others talked about the conditions on board the trains. One woman said that 90 people were jammed into her boxcar with no food or water and four pots for toilets. Eight people died, including a lawyer who committed suicide.
The Jews of Hungary were safe for most of the war. Although Hungary was an ally of Nazi Germany and had anti-Semitic laws from 1938 on, it was only when the Nazis took over the country's administration in March, 1944, that the Jews were murdered. Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer in charge of the Final Solution, was outraged when he drove through Budapest and saw what he assumed were Jewish idlers sitting in cafés. Eichmann immediately ordered Hungarian Jews be deported to the camps.
Imre Finta was born on Sept. 2, 1912, in Kolozsvar, then in Hungary, now in Romania. His family moved to Szeged in eastern Hungary after the First World War and Finta attended officer's school and became a member of the police force, or gendarmerie, posted to rural areas of Hungary.
Before the war, he also worked in some travelling theatrical groups. During this period he was described as quite bohemian. He also went out with many Jewish women, although his friendship with Jews ended abruptly when Hungary, encouraged by Germany, brought in anti-Jewish laws in 1938.
When the Russians reached his town on Oct. 11, 1944, Finta disappeared but was later captured by the Allies. From 1946 to 1951, he lived in Germany and was sentenced in absentia to five years in jail for war crimes by the Hungarian People's Court.
After living in France for two years, where he claimed to have gone to a cordon-bleu cooking school (like many other details of his life, that turned out to be a lie) he came to Canada and in 1953 bought the Candelight restaurant in Toronto. It closed and he then opened the Moulin Rouge restaurant at Avenue Road and Dupont Street as well as a catering business. He gained citizenship in 1956.
He lived in obscurity after his trial, although in 1999 the Crown appealed his acquittal. In its decision to uphold the acquittal, the Supreme Court approved a defence based on following orders and on harbouring an honest belief that one's actions were legal at the time.
Even where the orders are manifestly unlawful, the defence of obedience to superior orders and the peace-officer defence will be available in those circumstances where the accused had no moral choice as to whether to follow the order," Justice Peter Cory wrote.
The Supreme Court also ruled unanimously that the legislation was itself constitutional. Enacted in 1987, the war-crimes law was a response to a royal commission that examined the extent to which Nazi war criminals might be present in Canada and recommended methods of dealing with them.
Imre Finta's final lie was the paid death notice that appeared in newspapers. It described him as a poet, writer and man of culture. It left out 8,617 dead Jews.
Guest essay
It's all about love, sex and (e)robots for Concordia Public scholar Simon Dubé
The doctoral candidate in psychology is studying the future of human sexuality and new erotic technologies
By Alexander Hackett for Concordia Univeristy
No, we're not living inside a Blade Runner-like world with replicant partners - yet.
But public scholar Simon Dubé is helping society head in a decidedly futuristic direction.
The Phd candidate in psychology is researching what some might consider the final frontier: sextech, space sexology and erobotics.
In other words, how humans are interacting erotically with machines and new technologies, including robots and virtual reality, and what the potential benefits and applications might be.
Dubé is a student representative of the International Academy of Sex Research and a general co-chair of the International Congress of Love and Sex with Robots.
His research is supported by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec Santé (FRQS).
'The future of erobots includes movel, ever more realistic, interactive and immersive erotic experiences with and through technology'
You must get a lot of raised eyebrows when you tell people about your research. How do people react?
Simon Dubé: Aside from those who pray for my sinful soul’s redemption, I typically get three main reactions: surprise, laughter, and curiosity. In all cases, it usually leads to an interesting discussion.
How does a doctoral student in psychology become involved in studying sex with robots?
SD: I began by exploring the development and psychophysiology of sexual preferences, and I realized that emerging technologies – such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and robotics – are occupying an ever-increasing place in our intimate spheres and affecting who and what we could erotically connect to. This lead me down the rabbit-hole question: How do new erotic technologies influence our intimacy and sexuality?
Are there any moral conundrums involved with studying robot-human interactions? Do people view this as something perverse or morally questionable?
SD: I think the answer is in your question. Sexuality and technology are filled with taboos and fears. So, when new phenomena related to our eroticism emerge, it always generates strong reactions, including negative reactions from people with traditionally conservative sexual views who may think that exploring erobotics – the study of human-machine erotic interaction and co-evolution – is wrong.
But sexuality is central to human life and understanding its relationships with technology is primordial if we aim to favor human well-being, and harmoniously integrate new erotic systems into our sexual and intimate lives.
Part of your research focuses on long-term space exploration and/or settlement. Are you primarily interested in the psychology of human/non-humans interaction, or is there a more practical application for your work?
SD: My primary doctoral work focuses on erobotics. Specifically, I examine the motivation to engage erotically with machines, and the social (e.g., stigma) and psychophysiological factors that may influence the motivation to have sex or intimate relationships with robots (e.g., personality and response to a state of sexual arousal).
In recent years, I have also developed a research axis on space sexology, where my colleagues and I explore how we can integrate sex research into space programs and exploration, as well as design solutions to facilitate safe intimacy and sexuality during space travel (e.g., research methods, training programs, and sextech products).
What does the future of erobots look like? Will we eventually accept it as completely normal?
SD: I think the future of erobots includes novel, evermore realistic, interactive, and immersive erotic experience with and through technology which will allow us to discover the true depth of human eroticism. It also includes an ever-expanding array of possible applications in research, education, therapy, and pleasure.
While the elaboration of sex toys goes back to the dawn of civilization, are there any other examples of technological aids to human sexuality that people might not be aware of?
SD: There are so many new erotic products coming out each day that it is very difficult to keep track of all the ways that we can now achieve pleasure and build intimate connections. But if people are interested in spicing things up or simply exploring new (or perhaps more adapted) ways of enjoying themselves and/or their partners, I think they should look into recent innovations in connected and/or AI-powered sex toys, which can sometimes be used remotely or in tandem with games and virtual reality pornography.
Can a human fall in love with a robot?
SD: Yes, and some people already have.
Podcast
This week I was interviewed for a podcast for Canadaland by its host and founder, Jesse Brown. The opening segment is about how families fudge paid death notices in newspapers. This example is of a man from a prominent Montreal family who allegedly murdered a prostitute and then committed suicide. No mention of that in the death notice in the Montreal Gazette. Is that wrong? Find out.