I wouldn't know where to fence 5 million dollars worth of gems. So there is that.
Unless the bag was clearly labeled, I couldn't be sure how much it was worth.
Gems I'd turn in, cash it depends.
Well, my family has a nice set of sterling silver silverware with my grandmother's maiden name initials on it. Except it isn't an heirloom, my grandmother's brother (Milo Minderbi der) looted it during WWII. So it's stolen, but probably from some Nazi, so that's OK. But where did the Nazi get it? Probably from some Jewish family. I doubt that it would be possible to trace it at this date, we'd need two levels of looting records.
But you know, my family has bad luck. Maybe that's it.
re 2: you'd think of something. fly many thousands of miles away and go to a perfectly respectable dealer in estate jewelry. take out the stones and get them re-set in platinum-pave art-deco-style, and then sell them. talk to that israeli jeweler who's always dealing with those terrifying sketchy israeli/russian mafia dudes, or a dubious mercenary guy, or that italian guy designing jewelry in thailand. I mean, assuming you know people like that. ooh, or my corrupt italian friend in the south african legislature! why do I know all those guys?
OT, where "O" stand for "on", I am getting an incredible piece of jewelry for, honestly, a really ridiculously low price from my thai jeweler friend. I guess he's hitting on me long distance, but wev. no, I guess he's definintely hitting on me. it's a prototype. so awesome. it's the size of my palm, basically, in the shape of a bow, with all the back honeycombed out so that light gets to the gems from the back. argento dorato with pink gold, and then all these different shades of topaz. it's large enough that my husband will actually notice it, though. I can just say it's fake. when would that turn bad on me? never, right, until it's stolen, in which case I already have other problems? fuck it, I'll lie. or tell the truth, but lie about the price? just bust it out later and pretend I've had it for ages but never wear it? that's highly plausible. hang on, what do y'all think? advise me up in this bitch.
I, like ttaM, would have no idea how to dispose of the jewels.
But, umm, I really am a goody two shoes and would turn in cash too.
Heh at 6.last. I have friends who have this dilemma with guitars or cameras. Where they have to find a way to slip the item past their partner, or somehow misdirect them on the price/value. I've sort of been there myself, although the issue there is mainly the taking up of space rather than finance.
6: Tell the truth, and figure that Husband X is probably not all that up on what jewelry should cost? Tell the truth, including that you suspect that the jeweler is hitting on/planning to hit on you, and that you're slightly worried about taking advantage of him, but you decided it wasn't your problem if he wants to undercharge you for stuff?
There's a good chance I'd try to find the legitimate owner of gems, because I'd worry about sentimental value. I have a vague belief that if you turn over found property to the police, they're supposed to give it back to you legitimately if they can't find out who it belongs to. This probably fails to work in practice.
talk to that israeli jeweler who's always dealing with those terrifying sketchy israeli/russian mafia dudes, or a dubious mercenary guy, or that italian guy designing jewelry in thailand. I mean, assuming you know people like that.
So, talk to the guy who is most likely to be in business with the people you've stolen them from? What could go wrong?
That was our folk-belief as children. My sister and I both handed in various things. My sister, iirc, got a small reward from someone whose wedding ring she found.
Come to think of it, I found a wallet in Waitrose car park before Christmas with a fairly solid wad of notes in it. I handed it.
2. Check.
3. Check.
Plus the bit about the bad guys coming after it. So I'd turn it in.
Now, was there an ethical question somewhere?
Duffel bag full of (almost certainly stolen) jewels: hell yeah I'm turning that in. Goody goody aside, if the police track the jewels to me, at best I'm going to jail for possession of stolen goods, at worst they pin the burglary on me. Single piece of jewelry dropped on the ground? if it's the train station or some other place where the owner is likely to check the lost and found, I turn it in. somewhere random lying I have the street? Can't say I'd know how to get it back to its owner (I'm doubtful bringing something like that to the police would help), so then I probably keep it. Finder's keeper's.
No
1) Someone will come looking for it, and I don't have a bunch of killer elite friends who will die for me without wanting all the goods. And I don't want to move out of my chair, let alone to Costa Rica or Portugal or NZ
2) IRS; banking regulations etc
3) Not enough fun shopping at all to be worth any stress. I hate shopping. I hate buying having and then looking at it and thinking it whatever is such a fucking millstone.
4) I have way too much already.Too many books to read, too many movies, too much music I don't listen to well enough. I want fifty more years. Nothing else.
But I know this is just something to do. I don't really care.
5) The partner is an impulse shopper, small stuff really. Since I don't want anything I begrudge her nothing. She just bought an oh thingamajiggy for $49.95 and now after 8 days she doesn't turn it on and looks at it with resentment. Why didn't you make me happy, possession? Over and over. Give her a billion she will want more something, and make me move out of my chair to rearrange the stuff.
When you define yourself as one who wants stuff the world has conspired to deny you you will always be miserable. Stuff can be bling love wisdom travel laughs orgasms health peace on earth whatever. The problem is the wanting.
The OP harks back to sophomore dorm-room discussions about whether or not you'd free your slaves in the antebellum south. As I recall, I was one of the indignant sophomores who knew he'd turn 'em loose.
Nowadays, I tend to reflect on questions like: Would I eat meat if I knew animals were tortured in its production? The answer, like the whole topic, depresses me.
I resolve this by being sanctimonious about the tests I could pass, and ignoring the other ones.
Here's Louis CK's take on this.
Did anyone else notice that A Simple Plan and Waking Ned Devine have the same basic plot? I, alas, live in the Simple Plan universe, and like Di, would probably turn the jewels in out of fear of being busted.
If you know that you're in an idiotic crime show, you should definitely turn it in, thus ensuring you will be merely a bit part player who will survive rather than the hapless but greedy guest star who will certainly end up in a barrel full of petrol courtesy of the Lithuanian Mob or whoever it is this week. As for random suitcases of cash, I am a middle-class Edinburgh boy and I know perfectly well what happens to middle-class Edinburgh boys who decide to keep random suitcases of cash, because I've seen "Shallow Grave".
If it's real life, I'd hand it in. You get to keep lost stuff if no one claims it within six weeks and it's not stolen. If it's stolen, there'll be a reward.
Yeah, a lot of my moral decisions are based on the fact that I know that I, personally, am never going to get away with anything shady. If I had more confidence in my ability to be dishonest, I'd probably be a much worse person.
In Switzerland owners are required to pay out a certain percentage of the value of any returned property to the finder. IIRC, and this may have changed over the past thirty years, it's twenty percent. So if you're in CH, I'd strongly recommend turning it in - $1M in cash beats $5M in possibly dodgy jewels that need to be fenced well below par plus potential issues with the cops and evil mob dudes.
I would use the found riches to buy puppies for the homeless.
11: Wasn't there a post a few years ago about some sting operation the NYPD set up where they would leave a purse or wallet lying on the ground, then film people picking it up and if they didn't turn it in right away they arrested them? Except that NY state law was that you have 30 days to deliver found property to the police and they were busting people the same day or whatever?
Ever since watching that episode of Good Times where the dad finds a bag of cash from a grocery store robbery and gets a stupid little trophy and $50, but then it turns out he knew the white people would screw him over, so he had already kept back some of the loot, I've been confirmed in the opinion that you should always hold onto found cash unless there's too high a risk of being caught. Because later the dad on Good Times died.
16: I really think material possessions are underrated in genuine, philosophical discussions of happiness (while being overrated everywhere else in ordinary life). mmm, stuff.
the advice in 6 sounds terrible. not being up on how much jewelry will cost (so true), husband x will only see the cost and say why are you buying expensive jewelry from sketchy italian guys who are hitting on you? I don't see how "it's really good value for money" is going to be impressive here. OK, for the sake of accuracy in this discussion we will go sifu-style: the brooch will cost me $550 USD and should normally sell at about $2,000. I wouldn't be astounded to see it at $2500 in the right store. so, not all the money in the world. OTOH not nothing and we are allegedly on a family-wide austerity plan.
I am tempted to give it to my sister for belated christmas because she probably will never be able to accept my gift of help having children with her own eggs. it occurs to me, no one picks elderly women like myself to donate eggs when they have all the choices in the world, but what if they don't have choices (i.e. don't want a stranger's eggs)? could I still donate eggs to her with the knowledge that a much higher percentage would be fucked up? there was always going to be a bunch of sorting: no boys, no ehlers-danlos, etc. mightn't my eggs, while on the whole stale, yield acceptable l'il zygotes though at a much lower level of success?
TBH, I'm captain super-ego/goody-two-shoes about most things anyway. I wouldn't grass up friends doing shady things, and think that it's fine to break stupid/immoral laws. I don't lose much sleep over people taking rich-people's shit. But in terms of personal behaviour, I'm a long way over the other side of the criminality/moral-shadiness curve from Alameida's self-description in the OP.
I'm certainly a goody-goody nowadays on a sort-of tactical, low-input level. For instance I have called the city helpline several times to report problems with traffic signals. And if I see some hazard in the middle of the street or sidewalk, I generally try to remove it so that people won't run into it with their cars or bikes. And if I saw someone's wallet fall out of their pocket, I would endeavor to return it to them right away. But a bag of cash? I would probably keep it (well, hide it) if it looked like easy pickin's. Also I'd commit pretty much any crime if I thought it would further important revolutionary goals, but that situation arises so rarely.
27.last: Obviously not crimes of sexual violence or squishing puppies or something nasty like that.
I, on the other hand, have come to realize I am a fearful person. I would be too afraid of nameless, low probability, bad things happening to keep it.
in the crime show, yes, you get killed. IRL you dispose of the bag immediately in the tampon/sanitary pad disposer in the women's handicapped bathroom, where you likewise wash the gems quite thoroughly, and you stick them all under the bottom of your purse inside, and you buy new clothes and a hat in the mall, and off you go. get creative, people!
I'm on Team LB: Not fundamentally driven by the goody-goodyness of turning in the stolen goods, but totally sure that I wouldn't get away doing the wrong thing.
There's an interesting question of personal development here. I was never much for trying to do things I wasn't supposed to, so I have little or no experience doing so, and thus think that I can't. People who have spent more of their youth trying and sometimes getting away with shit, minor or major, probably have a different outlook.
12: you pick the ones from the other country. so in the US you go with the south african guy, and in thailand with the american one, and so forth. you take time and when you initially approach them it's with, say, the fourth-best stone, made into an entirely different style of ring. you'd have to be patient to get all the cash, but you would eventually. also, free jewelry!
24.2 went in a direction I really wasn't expecting from the OP.
27.last: Obviously not crimes of sexual violence or squishing puppies or something nasty like that.
What if they're counter-revolutionary puppies?
IRL you dispose of the bag immediately in the tampon/sanitary pad disposer in the women's handicapped bathroom,
Might be the worst possible course of action for 50% of the population.
I am not even a good person and I would turn it in immediately. Obviously it's stole, and obviously its owners would like it back. It's objectively shitty to keep it. (And not because of jewel thieves coming after you or even Johnny Law.)
My cousin found a bag filled with a metric shit-ton(ne) of cash and a gun. That seems pretty fucking identifiable and I would turn that shit in, as did my cousin. In her case, the owner not only rewarded her with cash, but also with permanent guest-list/backstage pass status at his venue.
My wife was running down to me the other day, one of the scams a shoplifter is currently running on her company. It's quite impressive how much cash a persistent, half-way smart individual can generate if they are prepared to take a bit of risk, and put a lot of time in.
...if they are prepared to take a bit of risk, and put a lot of time in.
May as well get a job at some point.
(I'm also kind of no fun on the "Would you do for $10M" kind of hypothetical questions. Why would you pay me $10M for that? There's probably some lowlife who will do it for $10k. Also, how would I ever believe I'll get paid? What am I going to do, sue?)
And why would Sue give you good advice?
re: 38
Well, yeah. I've certainly known more than a few people who've been involved in low-level shadiness who could easily have made more money for less effort if they'd just worked for a living. But some people think working is for squares.*
* one of my oldest friends made a living in the music business, and via various minor scams, frauds, and drugs. He'd certainly have made more money just working for a living, but that would have threatened his self-image as cool and dangerous.**
** rather than the son of an accountant, who was as much a rip-off-ee as a rip-off-er, that he actually was.
I would thoroughly loot through the jewelry and if there was something I adored I would remove it and take a photo of it, and put the photo in the bag. Then I would take it to the police. I'd say that I removed this one piece in case the real owner is never recovered. But if they do find the real owner, I'm happy to turn it over. (I really would. That's how my mind works.)(Presumably, they would read me the riot act about possession of stolen property, and then I'd hand it over. But maybe I could charm my way into hanging onto it for the time being. I would not want to lie to them.)
That's a highly individual thought process you've got there.
Yep, another turner-innerer here. An unidentified bag of money - if it were a small amount of random bank notes, I'd keep it. Anything that looked identifiable I'd hand it in.
When I was a kid I found £40 (two twenty pound notes) at Kings Cross tube station, coming home from my grandparents. All the way home my brother and I planned what we would do with the money (a Simon, which were 20 quid at the time. 2 Simons!). Got off at our station and were walking home when a woman asked us where the nearest phone box was. Whilst explaining to her, my dad noticed that her arm was bandaged, and asked if she was okay, Turned out she had left her violent husband and was trying to phone a refuge. I gave her the money.
(And then the next day thought I should have split it and bought just one Simon.)
41: Sometimes I just want to go up to the cleverer hoodlums I meet on the bus and shake them and yell "DON'T YOU REALIZE YOU COULD MAKE MORE MONEY IF YOU WENT INTO THE FINANCIAL INDUSTRY?!?!" But they probably wouldn't listen.
Even in the 1920s, Jack Black could quote the adage that, when you figure in prison time, the average professional criminal would do much better to get some kind of menial job and work his way up while saving. This does not account for financial panics and stuff, of course.
35, 36: the maintenance cocked it, but it was STOLE!
My siblings and I found about $50 in small bills while swimming in Lake Michigan. I assume a hitman forgot to check the pockets.
34: oh, c'mon. then go to the drugstore and get scissors and a series of other small bags, split up the cut bits into different bags and discard them in various different trashcans as you walk about, wash the jewelry in the men's handicapped bathroom stall, where you can also dye your hair. you take the most devious route home conceivable, one which involves multiple means of transport, plenty of transfers, hours spent going in the totally wrong direction, etc. unless they've got some kind of nano-RFID chip or something, you'll be fine.
if the police track the jewels to me, at best I'm going to jail for possession of stolen goods, at worst they pin the burglary on me.
Hypothetically of course, if one told nobody and was patient and just stashed them somewhere for four years, the statute of limitations would be up.
I found a baggie of cocaine on a city bus (not a school bus) when I was in elementary school. It was crammed between the seat and the seatback.
I dutifully turned it in to the principal's office, feeling like I was totally overreacting and everyone was humoring me. About a decade later it dawned on me that, no, it was probably really coke, and everyone was keeping a light-hearted face because I was so young.
What if you had reason to suspect the jewels had been stolen from Callista Gingrich?
52: Then there is a very low probability that I found anything that I adored.
39. Agreed. My answer to "What would you do for £1M?" is pretty much, "Get paid up front and then think about it."
I knew somebody who made a living added to his unemployment benefit briefly by shoplifting textbooks to order for impecunious students who paid him half price. He found quite a market. On the ethics, I can only say that I'd have been more comfortable with it if he'd restricted himself to E******r publications.
My 4 in line with various others: never mistake for morality what can be explained by pragmatism.
Rationale for my 4 in line with various others: never mistake for morality what can be explained by pragmatism.
I found an ounce of Afghan hash once behind a drainpipe outside a friend's flat while I was minding her kids. (Actually one of the kids' friends found it, but I intervened as a responsible adult.) I asked my friend if it was hers and she was shocked, shocked I say, that I would suggest she would own such a thing.
So I kept it. It was excellent.
Hmm... Shorter 55 and 56, laws and a vague threat of vengeance work for lazy, timid people.
57: The best dope I ever had I found under the mattress of an apartment I had rented.
||
Very good points here:
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/25-11
||>
In high school, I got out an old jacket of my dad's and found a baggie of ancient, dried out, blackish pot. So I teased my dad about it a lot.
Then my oldest brother came home from college and said "You found dad's old jacket! I used to wear that in high school!"
Hee hee.
I'm suspicious as hell of found property calls on the job because those types of calls have been used as stings for guys they think are on the take or drug addicts. Like, guy gets sent a call on a found case containing 5k, a gun, and bunch of coke and the only thing he books into evidence is a gun.
(And then the next day thought I should have split it and bought just one Simon.)
What's a Simon?
53: I'd have been more comfortable with it if he'd restricted himself to E******r publications
I didn't realize there was a big market for purloined train tables.
What's a Simon?
Presumably this bloke she really fancied at the time, but who was a bit mercenary.
re: 63
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_(game)
OT: Let's say that where one went to graduate school there was a crazy person. I know, there are always crazy people in graduate school, including oneself, but I mean really fucking nuts and won't take her meds and screams during classes and threatens random people she chooses to be her victims. Once she starts harassing them, it goes for months and months. She tries to get them fired, throws away their things, writes comments about them in public places using their full names and declaring them to be evil people who have raped her, etc. I knew such a person during her first year in the program, immediately recognized that she was a basket of nutso, and never spoke to her again--was fairly polite, but wouldn't friend her on FB and just smiled cluelessly when I saw her.
So now she's decided I'm her new target, and she claims to have done something to me already because I am "a fucking kiss ass." I don't even know what that means. That's actually just completely inaccurate. I wish I were a kiss ass; people would like me better and maybe even help me to get a job. So the other side of this is that she is working at the school where I would most like to be hired.
She also mentioned a faculty member's name in her message as someone else she's done something to, so I wrote to him about it, despite the fact that my only relationship with this faculty member comes from when an emeritus professor with dementia began harassing me and threatening to "ruin" my career, so I'm going to come off sounding paranoid. What would you do?
Is she on the hiring committee?
Keep up your pleasantly clueless, distant facade with her. With the committee, present yourself as meticulously concerned that they received all of your materials, etc, in case she's throwing things away.
Is this her first year at the institution? I guarantee she's had other targets at that institution, and sane people's spidy senses are tingling about her. So your job is to be the most calm, reasonable, sensible person ever.
I would hand things in, pretty much whatever they were. This probably surprises no one.
In the general arena of returning, I just found out that Val and Alex will probably be moving back to their family two weeks from tomorrow, the day before my birthday. I expect the transition to be weird but good. The harder part will probably be on the other end as they settle in at their new school. We get to just do a lot of celebrating. The house is so quiet when they're not there, and taking care of one child is nothing after three.
Also, I hate to say it since this is your career option, but if they don't recognize her crazy, that school may be a snake's nest.
A lot of people go into crime because they're fuckups and think crime is easier than working, but you still have to do things right so they get caught. These guys wouldn't do a lot better in a legit job except if very closely supervised.
It's also probably true that most smart law abiding people overestimate the risks of crime.
One crime rule too often forgotten is "Don't phone your mom or your girlfriend if you know they're looking for you". Another is "Don't brag about what you did to people you don't know very well."
Fuck, you really do live in a Joanne Dobson novel, don't you?
If she's done this to other people in the past, contact them and see if they have anything useful to contribute. Also, the usual: keep everything as evidence, consider a diary if it's frequent harassment, tell lots of people.
Even in the 1920s, Jack Black could quote the adage that, when you figure in prison time, the average professional criminal would do much better to get some kind of menial job and work his way up while saving.
Freakonomics went into this a fair bit, in one of the few sections where it didn't feel like they were stretching tiny data points to make huge arguments.
It's also probably true that most smart law abiding people overestimate the risks of crime.
Not true! The risk of committing a crime is that I'd have to live with my own anxiety about being caught. The anxiety is very real and guaranteed.
Crimes that don't cause me anxiety, I'm happy to commit.
66, 72: Oh, lord, me too. And a . . . "pocket Simon" or something? I am now getting that awful neurotic/compulsive feeling I would get from playing that thing.
68/70: Oh, I don't think she's ever finished her degree, but she adjuncts at the school where I applied. Or at least she has adjuncted there, and she goes around all the time telling stories about how the chair (on the committee) is in love with her but he's married and it's so tragic because he wants to fuck her so much. I mean she's really nuts. If she said something to someone, I'm not worried because everyone knows she's crazy. Throwing materials away I'm more concerned about.
73: Thanks. I don't want to overreact to a single message, but it's really ominous. It just starts with "Because you are a fucking kiss ass" and doesn't have an independent clause. WHAT'S THE INDEPENDENT CLAUSE? I'm hoping the person I emailed, who was also implied as a victim, responds soon and tells me what to do. I hate to bother him. He used to be the chair of my program and all I ever did was come to him with drama. On the other hand, he had to deal with her the whole time, so maybe I was a treat by comparison. But it's pretty clear he doesn't like me.
||
NMM Nicol Williamson. So sad. Fuck, he was good when he was.
|>
I mean my application materials, since she works, or worked, where I'm applying. I'm not particularly worried about her talking shit about me because everyone knows she does this pretty much all the time, and she is sort of hilariously bad at talking shit. She thought a friend of ours was getting hired to teach at a fashion school--she wasn't, it was a different school entirely--so she forged letters from Tommy Hilfiger, who she claimed was a friend of hers, saying that this friend was too fat and ugly and poorly dressed to work at any respectable fashion school, and sent them to the school, which had never heard of the applicant.
It doesn't sound as if she has the kind of access that would let her mess with your application materials other than by some odd happenstance. Heebie's tactic (be very fussy about calling or emailing to confirm that things got there, be ready to resend anything that got 'lost') covers you there. Other than that, what can she do to you?
What kind of help are you envisioning from the other victim? I can't think of much other than commiseration that he might be good for -- I guess, if anything happens that might turn into a 'which of these two people is crazy' swearing contest, he could be a character witness?
81: so she forged letters from Tommy Hilfiger, who she claimed was a friend of hers, saying that this friend was too fat and ugly and poorly dressed to work at any respectable fashion school
That is pretty hilarious. I wonder if Tommy Hilfiger ever writes that sort of letter in real life?
I'm sort of gob-smacked that this person remains employed.
A (female) friend/supervisor went through something similar with a crazy graduate student, including accusations of sexual assault and harassment. There was stalking involved, as well, and it took a long time to resolve.
Hopefully this person's eye will move on to another target, AWB.
81 -- The story of how you came to know about the Hilfiger letter is surely entertaining. She told you about it? The school who'd never heard of the applicant found the applicant and told her they'd gotten the strangest letter?
I'd hand that shit in mostly for the satisfaction of validating my self image as a good guy and partly because of fear of the consequences. The good guy thing falls apart when I think about the smugness I'd feel at finding out that someone in a similar situation kept the goodies and then got tuned up by the real owner.
85: She reports all of her doings on her public FB pages, which allows all of us spectators to watch the flames while not being friends with her. Then she went private and I have one friend who stays friends with her to report on her doings. But it's like 30 updates over a few coked-out hours, with scans of the letters and pictures of herself mailing them to the wrong school. Another time she went out on a date with a guy in another program whose dad is sort of a big deal in theory, and it didn't go well (obviously), so she started posting repeated updates about how she knows he's worth millions of dollars (probably not) and she's going to blackmail him by saying he raped her and ruin the family name. Good to report shit like that in public, definitely! Or the time she got taken out of a classroom position because she's nutballs but kept on as some kind of paper-pusher, so she gave herself the title "The First Annual [Famous Poet] Research Fellow." It goes on and on.
In my program, we strongly believe that mental illness should not exclude one from care and support during the difficult years of study. All of us have had breakdowns and done and said unforgivable things in public. And no one can force someone not in their guardianship to take their meds. And she does seem to pass her courses, though I doubt anyone will ever write a letter for her, even if she's still studying. But holy shit she is making everyone's lives miserable.
Surely once someone starts making other people's lives actively miserable, all bets are off when it comes to the 'care and support' angle?
It sounds like academics are now in a job situation like that of undocumented restaurant dishwashers. There's tons of demand for them in entry-level positions that neither require nor provide any training, but there's no possibility of advancing beyond that level. Therefore people who are incompetent, insane, and even unbearable to be around experience similar success to people who are none of those things.
I have to admit that "Tommy Hilfiger thinks this person doesn't dress well" is right up there with "Boris Johnson thinks this person comes across as a bit of an idiot" and "Vladimir Putin says this person gives him the creeps".
OK, the good news is that your mutual friend can be on the look-out for attempts to disrupt your candidacy. You're so obviously evil -- or a mindless conformist, is it? -- that bragging about stopping you may be difficult to resist.
Doesn't almeida have contacts who could solve this problem? Mercenary dude must know someone. Other than that, what everyone else said.
The one crazy person in my program, or at least creepy antisemitic, conspiracy minded Hitler worshipping guy, got weeded out at the end of the first year. Otherwise craziness just tended to be of the depression variety.
I think I have better grounds for saying I would turn it in in RL: on reading the OP, my furtive, wicked, private thought was to keep one or two of the items, and turn the rest in.
al, I'm sure there's a way to get all of them safely with tradecraft, but none of us (or very few) have actual experience with that sort of thing, so I'd be cribbing from fiction and very likely mess up something basic you have to have real experience to know.
Skimming would also be a lot safer if it turns out to be a caper film with gangsters scenario, since if they're all stuffed in a bag and left where some schmo can find them, the would-be possessors are probably not the type to take inventory.
Nor would I assume it's ill-gotten just because it's in a bag; it could be some bank-shy senior's life savings.
77 she adjuncts at the school where I applied. Or at least she has adjuncted there, .... Throwing materials away I'm more concerned about.
I don't understand. She wouldn't be on the hiring committee. You're worried that she's going to go through other people's files and throw out your application? Do people not lock their office doors when they're out?
The other thing that's just occurred to me is that two weeks ago I sent a package to my graduate school with a rare book in it for a professor's personal collection. It's not worth anything, but it's a curiosity that I've owned for years, and this professor has been extremely kind and generous to me, despite not having been my adviser in any official capacity. This professor is long retired now, but he said I should send him mail at the school, so it may have been sitting in his box unattended.
SEE? PARANOIA.
1. Moving the ice (thanks, late '70s Batman comics!) is not the only task; there is also the matter of laundering the liquidation proceeds. Each of those stages will reduce your nominal profit substantially. I'd be surprised if you could turn $5M of hot rocks into $1M in the Caymans.
2. I think that jeweler guy has already done a little time in connection with taking too many, and report ing too few, cash transactions.
3. Still, we can probably work something out.
||
I liked NW, but I knew I never saw his work.
42 movie credits in 50+ years, Williamson was one of the finest stage actors of his age. All lost, all gone.
I saw just a snippet once of young Ian McKellan doing Hamlet and said why can't I fucking have that.
Just put a camera in the tenth row and store the film on a hard drive. Save this art.
|>
Do people not lock their office doors when they're out?
I have no fucking clue! I'm just trying to figure out why someone I haven't spoken to in at least five years is suddenly, as of today, threatening me. I heard back from the other threatened person, and he's teaching out of state for the semester, and says he hasn't heard from her in years, so he doesn't know what's going on either.
You're worried that she's going to go through other people's files and throw out your application? Do people not lock their office doors when they're out?
Aren't documents submitted online these days? They are at Heebie U, and I'm pretty sure we are the last to find out about technology.
Yeah, that too. Doesn't sound like they can hurt you. Why not just ignore them?
Moving the ice (thanks, late '70s Batman comics!)
"Ice" is a frequent synonym for "diamonds" in cryptic crosswords, too.
98. I saw Williamson as Hamlet before he blew it off, and it was certainly the finest stage performance of anything I've seen in half a century. Alas, it was so long ago they probably couldn't have filmed it on set without re-doing it as a movie.
102: That strikes me as tactically the right thing to do. Be careful about checking receipt of anything you send out, keep records of any contacts with her, snoop on her FB page if possible, but there's not much else preemptive you can do: bringing it up before anything strange has happened is just going to confuse and worry people.
It's got to be maddening, but there's not much you can do.
It's only a matter of time before that insane woman goes to somebody's house to strike up the crazy band on some cringing, passive academic and gets a face full of angry wife instead. Or kidnaps Liam Neeson's daughter or something.
103: cryptic crosswords
As opposed to 'obvious crosswords':
ACROSS:
1: Print the word "bucket"
3: Print the word "rainier"
4: Print the word "summer"
...
I've reported it to the current chair, as suggested by the former chair who was threatened in the message. I will now commence ignoring it.
107: It's a real British thing with more difficult clues than you see here. Not that "ice" for "diamonds" isn't something you wouldn't see in a U.S. puzzle.
104:Well, I think they did film it, or a Williamson Hamlet
Hopkins as Claudius? He was a little kid.
This One from 1969 is apparently gone. Guy has spent two decades trying to find a copy. Nabokov, Tony Richardson, Williamson, Anna Karina.
Fuck that industry. Novels, literature, music doesn't disappear a decade after it's made. Fuck that industry all to hell.
|>
107: It's a real British thing with more difficult clues than you see here.
They're not really "more difficult clues". They just have different rules.
111: I'm not a comparative puzzle anthropologist, so I don't get into that level of detail.
"Ice" is a frequent synonym for "diamonds" in cryptic crosswords, too.
"Crystal" comes from the same root as "cryogenic" - the Greek word kryos, meaning frost or ice.
Cryptic crossword clues are things like:
[taken from the Guardian, and only because it's one where I understand the relationship between the answer and the clue]*
Warlike, they are not extremely transparent (4 letters)
* both hopeless at doing them, and not interested in getting better.
The answer to 115 to be revealed in a bit.
Not that "ice" for "diamonds" isn't something you wouldn't see in a U.S. puzzle.
Of course, but cryptic crosswords involve lots of synonyms that turn up frequently because they make useful short letter strings. For instance, "ant" or "hand" for "worker". One of the many rules of thumb a cryptic crossword solver has to keep in their heads is to convert these words to their synonyms when they show up, though of course the setter may be trying to throw you off the scent. Anyway, "ice" for "diamonds" is one of the more common of these.
I'm awful at them, but I feel so clever when I occasionally get one that I try occasionally. The Nation has one in the back that I have sometimes gotten almost half done.
BTW, does anyone know if Tedra was deliberately referencing Jonathan Swift here?
Because it got all up in the dark corners of my head. And now there's this guy! Maybe he saw her post too.
For instance, "ant" or "hand" for "worker".
Are there any cryptics that require one to match both of two (or more) potential answers per clue? Because that would be cool.
A cubed crossword would look neat but take a terribly long time to prepare, much less solve.
121.2: it would also make the newspaper rather bulky. I suppose you could print one level on each page and flip between them like one of those notebook animations.
119: I would assume so, but not in any particularly subtle way -- just "Here's a proposal, and it struck me as amusing, so I'll pull the words 'modest proposal' out of the pile of random stuff in my head." If there's a literally satirical element to it, it got past me.
Are there any cryptics that require one to match both of two (or more) potential answers per clue? Because that would be cool.
Not entirely sure what you're describing. At the end of the day, you can only put one letter in a square.
A frequent thing with cryptics, though, is for some clues to depend on the answer to another clue, or for clues to seemingly run on from another (though they are logically independent).
123: I'm eating an Irish baby, just in case.
121 again: Unless you mean something like & lit clues, where the clues operate on both a cryptic and a literal level (hence the name).
124: At its simplest, having to get both "black" and "baseball" from a clue like "pitch."
From wiki, a worked example of a crossword clue:
Here is an example (taken from The Guardian crossword of Aug 6 2002, set by "Shed").
15D Very sad unfinished story about rising smoke (8)
is a clue for TRAGICAL. This breaks down as follows.
15D indicates the location and direction (down) of the solution in the grid
"Very sad" is the definition
"unfinished story" gives "tal" ("tale" with one letter missing; i.e., unfinished)
"rising smoke" gives "ragic" (a "cigar" is a smoke and this is a down clue so "rising" indicates that "cigar" should be written up the page; i.e., backwards)
"about" means that the letters of "tal" should be put either side of "ragic", giving "tragical"
"(8)" says that the answer is a single word of eight letters.
119.2: I'm concerned that the proposed statute contains a glaring loophole that would still allow the use of aborted fetuses in animal feed. Against the Big Ag lobby in Oklahoma, God himself struggles in vain.
128: Hmmm. You might seem some wordplay around that in a clue, but the double usage it would ordinarily have to be indicated in some way (to give an obvious but ugly example: "pitch twice").
Fundamental rules of setting, according to one of the most famous and revered of setters:
A good cryptic clue contains three elements:
1.a precise definition
2.a fair subsidiary indication
3.nothing else
Requiring the solver to infer two synonyms without some indicator would generally breach the "fair" part.
I'd like to see cryptic crosswords in the US layout, so solving one would give more clues to solving its neighbors.
Oh, and now that I think about it, you probably couldn't get "baseball" from "pitch".
I started doing the Nation puzzle by reading four completed puzzles in a row before I made my first attempt. Recommended. It's lots of fun.
To ttaM's clue my first guess would be that "Warlike" means "anagram 'like'", presumably into something non-transparent. But that doesn't get me anywhere.
A good cryptic clue you may be familiar with starts here.
I've only read the first 40 comments, but I would absolutely turn in the bag.
In addition to the reasons previously mentioned (generally far too law-abiding for my own good and lacking confidence in my ability to pull off anything shady) I would say that the cost/benefit calculation depends a bit on one's discount rate for future anxiety.
I tend to be an anxious person anyway but I would look at the situation and think, "if I did try to take this, how long would I worry about it? For how long would there be some part of me that would be wondering if somebody would contact me to ask, 'did you find a bag full of cash in January 2012 . . .'? For me the answer would be at least a couple of years, and that just doesn't seem worth it."
Warlike, they are not extremely transparent.
Of course, it might also be the the synonym is "warlike" and the textual clue is in the second half. (My half-shut cryptic eye reveals that "text" is hidden in "not extremely" but that doesn't help either.)
maybe there's a four-letter synonym for "extremely transparent" that can be anagrammed into a synonym for "warlike."
re: 134
As I read it, the 'not extremely transparent' is asking you to take a word for 'transparent' and drop the first and final letters.
Does that help?
110. Oh they filmed it. And you should see it if you haven't. But they couldn't and didn't film the ambience of a small, intimate theatre with the stage in among the audience and Williamson just owning the whole thing all night.
1 across: What you would do if you found a bag full of stolen crossword clues.
123: I'm eating an Irish baby, just in case.
better make that a fetus... do it quick, too, if you live in oklahoma. that shit's gonna be illegal soon.
Spoilers for ttaM's clue (which is from the Guardian crossword 25,535 by Enigmatist).
Nafjre: VZCV. Qrsvavgvba: "jneyvxr, gurl ner". Jbeqcynl: "abg rkgerzryl genafcnerag", gung vf, YVZCVQ zvahf vgf rkgerzrf.
Shockingly, I was just being facetious. As an avid reader of GAMES magazine in my youth, I am quite familiar with all crossword puzzle traditions.
118. The Daily Telegraph is a good beginner's cryptic, if you can get that on line. Difficulty level: my mother kept books of them to do while sitting on the toilet.
I found the puzzle and the answer. It depends on knowing a Zulu word I've never heard of, and knowing that a word I'm vaguely familiar from vague poetic usage is a synonym for "transparent".
137: "not extremely"! Hadn't seen or had forgotten that one. Heh.
While I'm thinking, I'm going to turn the bag of gems in. Who needs the tsuris?
134: Wasn't I the first person to refer to old Commenter as "UPETGI(9)"?
I've never successfully done cryptics, but a friend tried to teach me last year. I think to distract me from a deathly hangover. She left me with at least a vague sense of the process, but that's about it. Enough to more often understand why a clue has a particular answer, but not enough to do them without a lot of anguish.
Having seen the spoilers, I will admit that I arrived at that answer, then discarded it having never heard of that word.
re: 145
I'd guess knowing the Zulu word would be a cultural thing, and more likely here. Not because we are all amazingly proficient in African languages, but because it's one of those colonial words one might know from films/books/boys-own-stories.
I recommend my cryptic-learning method of cheating all the way through a pile of puzzles before striking out on your own.
I'm guessing the average cryptic crossword aficionado is someone of a demographic that would have personal memories of the Boer War.
I am not even a good person and I would turn it in immediately. Obviously it's stole, and obviously its owners would like it back. It's objectively shitty to keep it.
Oudemia exhibiting the virtue of particular justice, concerned for the good of another!
118, 144: Yeah, the Torygraph is the best regular crossword for the beginner. The Observer's Everyman crossword is pretty easy as well, but that's just once a week. The Times and Indy are pretty hard, at least for me. The Grauniad varies a lot depending on the setter - some are fiendish (infamously Araucaria's), while others are much simpler. Funnily enough, Araucaria's other regular beat, as Cinephile in the FT, is on the easier end of the spectrum.
re: 152
Or of the films 'Zulu!' and 'Zulu Dawn'.
152. By no means. Cuts across all demographics. I quite enjoy them, but I rarely have the patience. This is a good access point for the uninitiated.
In 3 weeks it will be time to celebrate Araucaria's 91st birthday!
So has anyone watched Shaka Zulu? Made by SATV. I like telenovelas, Rockford Files, and Life on Mars. My name has 12 letters.
Absolutely keep the jewels, take months to figure out how to sell them as loose stones.
I think not on 156. Find me one single tumblr reference to these things, or a clue whose answer requires knowing even house music much less dubstep.
152: Famously, Britain's cryptic crossword champions were called up en masse in 1939 and sent to Bletchley Park etc for the duration.
153: What if the gem's previous owners stole them? And their victims had stolen them in turn, and so on? What if you were the only person in the history of such treasures ever to come into their possession without intent or culpability? Don't you have a responsibility to break the last link in that chain of avarice and exploitation? By giving the gems to me so I can buy a super-cool party house to which I will assuredly invite you all, once things are, you know, organized?
Soylent Baby Blue Is Fetal!
160: En masse? It looks like just six.
163: There were fewer Britons back then.
161: Then give them to the descendants of the Indian miners or whoever was first in the chain.
161: Sorta the inverse of The Bottle Imp then?
En masse? It looks like just six.
Champions - people who could do the Times crossword in 5-10 minutes every day, not just punters.
I thought a "punter" in Teabagland-sprach was a gambler, turf or otherwise?
But, umm, I really am a goody two shoes and would turn in cash too.
I tried to return a $20 bill I found in the ATM, figuring that the credit union would know who had used the ATM right before me and could contact them, but they said all they could do is wait to see if someone contacted them and otherwise I should keep it.
And then I found 20 dollars.
I thought a "punter" in Teabagland-sprach was a gambler, turf or otherwise?
It can mean that, but it also means "ordinary member of the public".
See here for a lengthy discussion of punter in BrE and AmE.
Once the ATM gave me two $100 bills when I requested $40. I quit while I was ahead, but I certainly did not bring the matter to the attention of the Bank of America.
The goody two-shoes in 169 was I.
Champions - people who could do the Times crossword in 5-10 minutes every day, not just punters
Presumably they were the ones who busted this guy.
Sure, there won't be many such champions, but therefore the phrase still seems ill-suited.
169, 172: I once got back an extra $100 from a teller. I would never have noticed but Lee was in the car with me and nagged me to count the money, which I never otherwise do. And so I sent it back through the series of tubes since I didn't know what would happen to the teller if her numbers were off by that much at the end of the day and she didn't even thank us! (I think she was in shock, so I don't hold that against her. And Lee's rationale for returning the money was that doing good deeds will bring you good luck or some shit. Lee does not do good deeds as much as I do, but she does have luck.)
If your crosswords were so easy that you could call up 500-1,000 10-minute types, would they be all that useful at Bletchley?
Cast some shit upon the waters and it will return to you a thousandfold.
The origin of "goody two-shoes" per Wikipedia:
Goody Two-Shoes is a variation of the Cinderella story. The fable tells of Goody Two-Shoes, the nickname of a poor orphan girl named Margery Meanwell, who goes through life with only one shoe. When she is given a complete pair by a rich gentleman, she is so happy that she tells everyone that she has "two shoes". Later, Margery becomes a teacher and marries a rich widower. This earning of wealth serves as proof that her virtuousness has been rewarded, a popular theme in children's literature of the era.
When she is given a complete pair by a rich gentleman....
[Grinding teeth to keep from tasting low-hanging fruit.]
En masse? It looks like just six.
Six from the Daily Telegraph. They did the same thing with other newspapers too.
I thought a "punter" in Teabagland-sprach was a gambler
I thought Teabagland was South Carolina.
182: I thought it was a gay bar, and then thought it meant something different than gambler.
I would run to the popo just b/c I have lost a bag of jewels. Not $5M worth, but enough to make me cry like a 4-year old on BART.
||
Food stamp action alert for Pennsylvanians..
|>
I am capable of the the most sly cons as long as I'm not aware of it.
I was sent on an errand to return a smart card which didn't work with our camera. I was reluctant to even try because the packaging had been torn open, and I didn't have a receipt. My understanding of Targ-t policy was that they would tell me to suck it. Instead the gentleman gave me a store credit for the full price of the item and I was able to purchase a smart card that worked with our camera with the store credit. All this was apparently on the up and up, except when I got home I discovered the original smart card was still on my dresser, and I realized that I had successfully returned the smart card package without the smart card.
I'm with Al on this, I'd keep a big haul and then spend some time figuring out how to clean it.
Small stuff I return; I find phones(3), wallets(1) , and diaries(2) in parking decks and on the street, have fun playing detective, and don't gain anything significant from keep that stuff.
"Rational sociopath" is the label the DE pinned on me, that's close to correct.
185: We have a really stupid state and it's getting stupider. Leaving aside the moral and practical considerations, it's federal money.
186 Someone was just arrested for that con in my area. I'd find the link but I'm supposed to be working.
189: In this case, the packaging really seemed designed to enable this con. It looked like the smart card was there when it wasn't.
Pennsylvania trivia: Pennsylvania was the only state where Lincoln and Breckenridge (the Confederate-to-be) finished #1 and #2 in 1860. Most states were Lincoln v. Douglas, or else Breckenridge v. Bell (Unionist), with a few four-way fights (Missouri, California, and Oregon).
No one's ever been able to tell me why, but PA must have been a hairy place to be.
One guess was that Eastern PA was Lincoln and Appalachian PA Breckenridge, but Appalachia tended to be Unionist nationwide.
Comparing Pennsylvania to Ohio is weird. In Ohio Douglas gets 90% of the non-Lincoln vote and Breckenridge 10%. In PA it's reversed. In New York Breckenridge doesn't have any votes at all.
This must have something to do with Thaddeus Stevens.
193: The wikipedia page for the election mentions something called a "fusion ticket" to explain New York and others.
Here's 1860 results by county. It's not really big enough, but if I squint, it looks like the counties that Breckenridge carried were Clarion, Elk, Clearfield, Fulton, York, Berks, Northumberland, Lycoming, Northampton, Monroe, and maybe Pike (or that last might be Douglas, who carried some neighboring counties in New York).
In response to the OP: I would certainly turn over anything that would need to be fenced: gold, diamonds, the Lost Ark et cetera. Not out of saintliness, but because I don't know jack shit about fencing stolen goods except what I've seen in the movies (which is: don't hire John Voight-in-a-mullet as your fence. Or at least don't listen to him when he suggests fencing the stolen goods back to the owner).
Money: large amounts would alarm me. Someone would miss it. I don't think I'd turn it in a No Country for Old Men-style bag of money without skimming a little off the top, but I'd turn it in. Smaller amounts up to a thousand, no, I probably wouldn't turn it in.
Also in the "Curative" thread below:
OT: A friend is making noises about (i) estate planning and (ii) endowing a chair and/or student scholarship at his college or graduate school and has asked me about gift terms/description (i.e., how specifically can he describe the research focus of the chair holder or the subject of the scholarship winner). If any of you academic reprobates is familiar with the pains of university development, I'd much appreciate a quick note about what can and cannot be obtained by a donor.
Hand in. I wouldn't grass someone who kept, but it's pretty obviously the wrong thing to do, and I would definitely worry that doing something that bad would spoil my luck. Obviously, some people would count finding a big bag of untraceable jewellery as in itself a piece of sufficient luck to justify the risk, but IMO that's thinking small.
Would turn in anthing I found cause that's the right thing to do.
Legally, in the UK, if it's lost property, finders have a right to it against all but the actual owner. (Parker v British Airways Board is a pretty good modern summation, as well as containing some rather adorable legal philosophising.) Armory v Delamirie is also solid. If you do hand it over, then the other party must either give it back or recompense you if the true owner doesn't show --- and you don't have any legal obligation to search for the owner*. However, there's obviously a moral duty to try and find the owner etc, and more so if you suspect foul play.
Mislaid property is different, then I think you have a duty to hand it in to someone, because the owner might be able to find it.
But then, you might not think it is actually lost property if it was at some point stolen property. Still, I doubt that most bundles of cash found are actually stolen property.
* Seemingly. I think that it's slightly misleading, in that the cases tend to be cases where finding the owner was improbable & obviously if the owner turns up he's got a better claim but until then there's no one that can bring an action.
What's the difference between lost and merely mislaid property?
I would turn it in for a different reason. First off, I am totally comfortable now, which I think is an important baseline. A huge haul (on the order of millions) would introduce a series of new problems that I would have to work through. Besides laundering the money/jewels, there'd be the questions of what to do with the windfall, how to introduce it into my life, buying larger property vs. investing, acclimating to a different level of wealth which I would probably only enjoy as much as I enjoy my current lifestyle. There's a whole lot of thought I'd have to work through (what is an appropriate bank account for someone with orders of magnitude more money than I handle now? Do I need a stockbroker?) that doesn't interest me.
The find would come with more effort than novel enjoyment and returning it would let me absolutely wallow in smugness and sanctimony. Since I am already comfortable, I don't want it.
202: It depends on whether somebody threw it from the ship before it sank and whether it washed ashore or not.
R v Catherine West 169 E.R. 780 basically puts it that mislaid property is property intentionally put down, and then left by mistake. This means that the owner could find it very easily: merely by inquiring at the place it was mislaid, basically.
However, it is reasonably hard to find English authority to suppose that the finder of mislaid property (in a shop, say) should give it to the owner of the premises.* The finder doesn't own mislaid property and if they appropriate it they act larcenously**: R v Catherine West, R v Henry Moore 169 E.R. 1278.
Of course, important to distinguish civil and criminal issue: just because someone didn't commit a crime doesn't mean they mightn't be liable civilly.
* Just because I can't find it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist!
** Well, all these occurred well before the Theft Act.
Not-really-imaginary not-really-dilemma:
Got an email from someone on a hiring committee saying "I'm out of town for your interview in [small US city], but would you happen to be free to meet in [European city] in weeks X and Y or in [major US city] in weeks Z and W?"
This strikes me as a fairly bizarre request -- why would I be in those places? What are the odds? But then I realized I am passing through one of the places for precisely one night (between flights) and could meet in the morning, before my flight. But I'm going to say no anyway, because... this just seems like a ridiculous imposition, doesn't it?
206: How much would you like to work there?
Say you can meet at the Sbarro at the airport.
christ you guys! is no one but flip in 161 with me? I return lost wallets, and the money when the person running the register screws up; I've never found an iphone on the ground but I'd certainly return that; I'm not some kind of monster. I admit I'd share a little in dsquared's bad luck theory, but I think that'd be negated by the sheer implausibility of the situation. I admit there's lots of movie problems to work out, but I think as long as you kept your head and just waited a while you'd be OK. it's not like finding a kilo of coke; there you really would have nothing to do but call the cops.
Avarice just doesn't go over very well, Alameida.
209: Sorry. I know I'm just not as evolved. I'm okay with that, though. I am all about embracing my mediocrity wherever I find it right now.
christ you guys! is no one but flip in 161 with me?
You forgot biohazard in 187, and I'd probably be similarly tempted.
Oh, the fencing and laundering I could do, easy. I know a guy on 45th St. But I couldn't keep it, because there would be a person sad about their lost stuff. If we're positing "fell off the back of a Harry Winston truck," I'd have less of a problem. But, eh, I'd still turn it in.
209: I'm busy sorting through the money, jewels, and guns, Al. Got to get rid of the guns for sure, too traceable and not cleanable.
213: I have a (creepy, by-marriage, maybe-reformed-racist) uncle who used to do runs on Harry Winston trucks, but he's out of that business and so I don't have any options for you there anymore.
Oh, I could do that fencing and laundering shit easy, too. The book business, well, you know. We have ways, and means. But you gotta keep it all under the table, see? You keep it quiet, like, none of this blabbing hither and yon on a blog, for fuck's sake.
(I'm vaguely wondering whether people think 216 was serious. I mean, I can talk tough as well as the next gal, but it sounds just as stupid.)
I'd return the jewels cuz I'd have no clue, although I guess one could get a job at a jeweler's and work oneself into the shady side of the business, but that's seems like it would take years and just be a pain in the ass.
But a bag full of $5 million? I would be all over that shit, on the the theory that anyone who has $5 million in cash deserves to lose it, absent any news reports of money lost from the Widows and Orphans Trust. No need to bank it, just stash it someplace safe and pull a hundred K or so a year. Pay for everything with cash, let all money from career stack up in investments spread over multiple houses, and live the life of Riley without giving a shit about career advancement or anything else. Good to go for retirement, Wagyu steak or lobster every night, what's not to like? Hand out hundos to the homeless if you feel guilty.
sorry I forgot you bio, and thanks for the helpful information about the mumble of limit mumbles, gswift.
210: I'm aware it's a character defect, parsimon, I'm just surprised that everyone's so free of it.
my avarice is circumstantial too: "old lady weeps over beloved mother's diamond-encrusted locket" strikes me differently than "police department acquires new tank for SWAT unit."
I've actually had expensive jewelry returned to me by a chain of honest people, so in the moment I might quail before the mighty power of karma.
I doubt I could fence or launder anything to save my own life. I don't know that guy on 45th St.
I would turn it in, just because I think that's the right thing to do, and also because I consider myself unsuited to a life of crime (not because I'm o so moral, but because I'm clueless and cowardly). I guess I don't really believe Alameida when she says she'd keep the stash, though.
I once returned a twenty-dollar bill to a cashier at a grocery store in Baltimore, who had accidentally given me that extra 20 in change. She was effusive in her thanks, which embarrassed me, and told me that the twenty would have come out of her wages if I had't returned it. And then said, "I can't believe you gave it back to me. I would have kept it." This shocked me a little bit at the time, but then I considered that she probably had no health insurance, or any real employee benefits.
217: We will keep you in mind. A kindly bookseller with customers in and out with assorted packages all the time would be a great asset. This is firming up nicely.
Avarice is different from pure financial need. Were I truly poverty-stricken -- financially troubled -- I'd keep anything in a moderate amount (viably non-traceable and so on). Given that I'm not, and given that the hypothetical involves amounts of money beyond what I could possibly need (especially if I'm in possession of a trust fund and whatnot), no, then it's greed.
Just come in through the back entrance, Biohazard, will you? And try not to look so shifty-eyed.
I don't know that guy on 45th St.
There are guys on 47th Street who will literally approach you on the street and offer to sell you diamonds. Who knows what that's all about.
My uncle the jeweler might or might not cooperate with the idea of smuggling the ice into Canada and laundering it gradually through the retail store. Product turnover is pretty low; the area doesn't yield diamonds, so inventory would be very easy to trace; it's a damned small town; that side of the family tends toward the secular Puritan. But that would be my easiest hope for moving the stuff. He'd probably be able to set me up with some spectacularly gold nugget-mounted diamond jewelry, if I wanted that.
I'm with alameida. I'd keep the jewels and use them as traveller's cheques over a ten year period. What are the odds that returning them would result in a net benefit to humanity? Marginal utility and all that.
I remember asking my mom why she would return some amount of money, and her response, that it might be that person's last $20, made an impression, so I hope I would do the honest thing. If it fell off the back of the Brink's truck, otoh...
I'm definitely on team RETURN. Who needs the stress?
Actually, I'm on team SANCTIMONIOUS too. I'd return it because of the principle of the thing.
A great-uncle of mine used to run a parking garage in Charlestown (in Boston), and some of the local, um, businessmen used to leave bags there for safekeeping. Kind of like a bank, but without the accounting and regulatory oversight. I don't know if he got anything out of the deal, or if it was just an offer he couldn't refuse.
A big-ass bag of jewelry would strike me as too much trouble not to turn over. Too steep a learning curve, not enough of an interest. Cash I'd probably keep until I'd replayed No Country for Old Men in my mind for a few days instead of sleeping.
I haven't read this thread, but I'd guess that that much jewelry was 1) being searched for, not necessarily by people (theoretically) bound by established laws and procedures, 2) registered and documented somewhere (insurance, inventory, on lists that dealers circulate to warn each other of stolen goods that may come up), and 3) would severely restrict my own movement and peace of mind. So I'd go to some authority. On the other hand, depending on where I was, I'd have to think about whether the local/regional/national authorities are actually honest. No sense in handing things over to crooks who weren't the original thieves.
As for cash, I'd wonder if it was counterfeit. Also, the serial numbers are probably going to be tracked.
I guess this means I would do "the right thing" less for moral reasons (though I'd admit to having those too) than because I assume that criminality is so widespread that there are constant battles between people who are stealing and people who are taking back and I don't want to deal with any of them.
If I found the Ring of Gyges, I wouldn't tell anyone.
221: of course I'd give the $20 back to the hapless cashier. I know because I have, in actual fact, done so. I've also found a $20 on the ground and asked the woman in front of me if it were hers; when she said no and I couldn't come up with anyone else obvious to ask I kept it. I gave a man back his baggie of crack and pipe after he left it on the metro, but that guy looked pretty pressed, and I didn't want to piss him off. plus I was only in 9th grade.
but bag of crazy expensive jewelry? I think it's partly because I regard it as the merely more time-consuming equivalent of cash, and everybody else views it as the kilo of heroin. which I would give to the cops because I wouldn't know who to sell it to who had enough money, and the guys who had enough money would kill me and get it for free. or else you guys would have to stage an intervention.
I've also found a $20 on the ground and asked the woman in front of me if it were hers; when she said no and I couldn't come up with anyone else obvious to ask I kept it.
This happened to me almost exactly. Except I was in line with a friend, we both saw the cash, it was $40, and after no one claimed it we each kept $20.
233:
Why even call the cops? Just walk away. At least, my instinct would be, as soon I go talk to the police about this I am Involved, which means maybe the police question me, maybe I need a lawyer, etc etc. Meanwhile, if some slick movie character con men or for that matter mobster brutes are carrying out some elaborate relay system, who am I to butt in?
I bought a train pass in Canada years ago and when I got back to where I was staying I realized they'd charged me the off-peak price which was over a hundred dollars less than the summer price (it was summer). I would have gone back anyway, but the pass was marked in such a way that a careful ticket inspector could see that the pass cost too little for the time of year. I didn't want to take the risk plus didn't feel right about it, so I went back and got the correct pass.
The ticket agent was shocked, but I got the sense that her shock was more that I knew the ticket rules. I suppose I could have feigned ignorance if someone had checked the pass carefully, which of course no one did.
Yeah, I'm with fake accent on the kilo of heroin. Or the kilo of anything powdery and super-illegal. So just not touching it at all.
As for cash, I'd wonder if it was counterfeit. Also, the serial numbers are probably going to be tracked.
Probably not unless it was part of a sting or something. But if it's bank money from a robbery there might be a GPS tracker in there. My brother ended up in a pursuit a few months back on a suspect who'd been given a tracker by the teller. Suspect tried jumping out of the car during the chase and the lead car (my brother was third car back) ran him over and killed him.
Huh. I hadn't considered specifically a GPS tracker, but I would figure cash in that amount would be outfitted to make tracking easier (if not that easy).
217: I for one did not think 216 was serious. So that's one vote.
OT: Totally missed your comment in the CT thread until just now. Yah, the bowel movement analogy was not so hot, was it? I'd give that sentence a do-over if I could...
how big was the tracker though? was it impossible-to-find tiny and interleaved with the bills or was he being a dumbass and had it in the original bag?
235: good point on the "not bother to tell anyone" front.
scratch buffer
If one was particularly worried about corrupt authorities, one could go all oughties and post lots of video of the find and even of actually returning it. With $5M of jewelry, a sort of Tomb of Tutankhamen return, walking in wearing the gauds and stripping them off for the police.
Of course, the hypothetical baddies would then know exactly who and when, which should add a scene or two to the heist movie. Perhaps the corrupt authorities could abuse SOPA to try and hide the evidence. It is a Moral Tale for Our Times.
I have a sparkly bracelet I found at low tide on Manalapan. Haven't checked to see if it's precious; it seems mass-produced (hence my unscrupulosity, plus some mine-from-Neptune illogic) but I suppose some of those are precious now.
how big was the tracker though? was it impossible-to-find tiny and interleaved with the bills or was he being a dumbass and had it in the original bag?
They have ones now that are in the actual packs of bills. AFAIK not impossible to find tiny but you'd have to actually flip through all the bills to find it rather than just ditch the bag.
Seriously though, I reckon Parsimon probably could launder several million worth of jewels if she had to. After all, you're in the second hand book trade, right? You must know some antique dealers? And the antique and fine arts markets are pretty much a thieves' paradise.
(The main thing is that you don't have as big a market, so you won't get as much money. And all the other problems with smaller markets. But you could deffo shift it without it ever really coming to anyone's attention.)
An eclectic web magazine where sheltered SWPL types learn how to launder money and fence jewels.
do the people who run the endless ads in the NYT about how they can help you get the most money for your estate jewelry really do a lot of checking, if you dress up and look the part? I think not. barely relevant aside: should I take actual action to be in the social register? I used to be a junior whatever but you have to sort of re-apply as an adult--if you do it at 18 it's a formality but I never bothered; now I think I have to have 3 members who vouch for me. my brother did it to appease his first wife (well, there haven't been any more yet, but you get the point. former wife.) would it ever be advantageous to my children? that's my thought. only to mollify a future mother-in-law, as in my bro's case. but someone who cared would be a dick. but, then, we'd be stuck with them. I sort of feel I'm obligated to do it on the girls' behalf. it only costs like $100 a year. it would be a rich source of people to whom one could sell expensive jewelry, at least. #WASProblems
247: indeed. next week it's going to be a guest post from biohazard about what to do with the guns you find in the bag. I'm thinking storm drain or nearby river, but that's too obvious; we need to think outside the box.
248: I had to look that up. What a bizarre idea. Are you even eligible, what with living in Narnia?
Much better idea: just get yourself a Narnian passport and you can drop an email to Garter Principal King of Arms - maybe cc in the Rouge Dragon Pursuivant of Arms in Ordinary and Maltravers Herald of Arms Extraordinary, just to be on the safe side - and get your ass armigerised.
I sort of feel I'm obligated to do it on the girls' behalf.
you could get out of this feeling by replacing it with a vague sense of obligation not to do it on the girls' behalf. To fortify you in this view, the Guardian today is printing a list of all the people who had the common sense and character to turn down a knighthood when offered.
Not sure I like the implication that anyone who doesn't turn down a knighthood when offered is lacking in common sense and/or character.
A close relative of mine turned one down, but that was because he didn't think he deserved it, which is a bit different.
248: Surely you're kidding. $100 for the privilege of advertising dickishness to the world? Why on earth would you do that?
233: 221: of course I'd give the $20 back to the hapless cashier. I know because I have, in actual fact, done so
So have I. And several other things like that besides. I have kept money found on the sidewalk where there was no one to return it to. But if I stumbled upon a bag of diamonds, it wouldn't really occur to me to snag them, since I have had things stolen from me. My evil step-brothers brother once broke into the house and ripped off my amp and guitar, and my chem teacher in high school once stole my expensive calculator (in current economic terms, roughly equivalent of stealing a student's laptop) that had been my Xmas present, and there was the time my mom took my paycheck from working construction and used it to pay the rent but sorta forgot to tell me for a month and never paid me back. (Those are some of the highlights amongst many other incidents.)
Since I did not like having those things done to me, I don't care to do them to anyone else. But If I was going to be lazy and/or selfish, I wouldn't mess with the diamonds at all since these days, given our semi-police state, getting the police involved is not recommended.
(Bonus: lots of diamonds these days are laser etched with tiny serial numbers, so these diamonds probably wouldn't just be hot, they'd be radioactive.)
max
['But it was an interesting thought experiment.']
Not sure I like the implication that anyone who doesn't turn down a knighthood when offered is lacking in common sense and/or character.
No such implication implied - after all, a lot of people are either in favour of, or indifferent to, the implied system of social hierarchy (I would guess that nearly all recipients of the OBE/MBE/CBE family of awards haven't really thought all that much about the nature of the Empire that they're identifying themselves with). But if you're actually opposed to the system of knights and lords, you shouldn't take one yourself. I had this discussion with the one (new labour) Lord who is among my mates. We are still friends but I can't not think less of him for taking the peerage.
Oddly enough, I think I make an exception for the Labour Peers, if they you actual work at it, if you know what I mean.
(And I guess strictly speaking for other life peers that go along and work at it.)
I would make an exception for Labour life peers who were previously elected politicians and who accepted the peerage in order to carry on their political career after losing an election or being deselected or something (ie, Lords Prescott and Mandelson). My guy was a former Special Advisor; ie, as well as taking a title of nobility he didn't believe in, he was taking a seat in the legislature that he hadn't been elected to.
I would guess that nearly all recipients of the OBE/MBE/CBE family of awards haven't really thought all that much about the nature of the Empire that they're identifying themselves with
The only really objectionable aspect of the British Empire that I can think of is the treatment of the BIOT islanders, and a fair amount of offshore tax avoidance and money laundering. Other than that it's just a collection of very small islands and a big chunk of Antarctica.
If you're Spanish or Argentinian, of course, your main objection to the British Empire is that you want to own certain bits of it.
248: My grandmother was in it, but my Mom dropped it. My Dad was not from that sort of background. I think that they check harder who the husband is whereas a wife who marries someone in it is kind of elevated to his rank or whatever.
I would guess that nearly all recipients of the OBE/MBE/CBE family of awards haven't really thought all that much about the nature of the Empire that they're identifying themselves with
I know a couple of such people, and I'd say that was dead right. One is a retired senior civil servant who regards it as a sort of virtual carriage clock, and the other is a fairly left wing guy who sees it as a reflection on the organisation he leads. My genuinely right wing uncle hung his OBE citation on the wall next to his commission as a Kentucky Colonel and thought the were amusing.
If I were obliged to design an honours system (for example, if they said they'd torture my wife if I didn't), I'd model it on the Legion d'Honneur, which was how the OBE thing was originally conceived, but that was sabotaged. I'd also have a way of recognising organisations that didn't involve hading out gongs to prominent individuals in them.
If I was offered a life peerage, I think I'd just write back saying that I was past the point in my career where I was interested in entry-level positions like knighthoods or baronetcies, and that I saw myself more likely to come in at the Marquess level, with clear assurances about my promotion path to Duke.
260: So, my grandma got promoted from Sicilian to regular Italian when she married grandpa and my mom got promoted from Italian to Irish when she married dad but I didn't get promoted to 1/2 WASP when I married.
If they don't do 1/2 WASPs you could go for a 1/2 BEE as compensation.
263 -- Over the last century, it's been decided that both Italians and Irish may claim to be white after all. What more do you people want?
Ironic, that story, given that the Finns were probably the population in which the genetic mutations for blondness originated.
Oh, good grief. The "guy on 45th St." is my friend's husband, a Chasidic diamond merchant who operates in a cash-only economy. Parsi's doxy routine would only work in Yiddish.
265: Not me! I disavow any claim to whiteness!
269: Jersey Shore-style orange is still "white."
269 CC said you may claim it; didn't say you had to.
262: All the life peers these days are barons and baronesses, I am afraid. It's a bland, unobjectionable, mid-level, Ford Focus sort of peerage.
I don't know if there are any recent cases of being promoted from one level to another. I know it happened several times to Wellington - pretty much every time he beat another Marshal of France he went up a level, which has a nice computer game feel to it. But if you're a life peer, you have to be a baron.
Legion of Honour, on the other hand, promotes people regularly.
@68: Racist. Al Sharpton's very words.
If Alameida has her kids registered and they have all their shots they'll be easier to place and will be able to start their own little puppy mills if they want to.
271 -- Oh no, they have to. It's a gift that can't be refused. Along with the wan smile we are obliged to give in response.
If we let in the Italians, next people will be promoting the taller sorts with Hispanic ancestors and those from East Asia.
Wow, I had never known that such a thing as the Social Register exists.
Thomas Lee Jones, a spokesman for the advisory committee, defends the admittance criteria. ''In truth, the register is run in a very wholesome way,'' he said. ''A 25-member advisory board simply asks themselves this question when evaluating a candidate: Would one want to have dinner with this person on a regular basis?''
Sounds like alameida should have no problems.
But if you're a life peer, you have to be a baron
This is what makes the whole system incomprehensible to me why anyone would want to join it. If you're Peter Mandelson, for example, then you could be dealing with the Duke of Westminster on a fairly equal basis - he would think "well, this chap's a commoner, but he's clearly got a lot going for him and so I ought to treat him with quite a bit of respect". But once you're Baron Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool, then there's a definite hierarchy containing the two of you, and Duke is the equivalent of Managing Director, while Baron is the equivalent of Vice-President. Why would you do that to yourself? If you were the kind of person who was capable of reaching the point at which someone offered you a life peerage, why would you take it?
Wow, I had never known that such a thing as the Social Register exists.
my grandmother used it instead of the phone book. dsquared is probably right, but they can always dump it themselves later if they to. who am I to deny them the pleasures of ostentatiously renouncing it? because it's racist. no, really though, pretty racist.
"if they do" s/b "if they want to."
Drugs are the one thing I'd almost certainly not turn in. Unless it was meth or something similarly nasty. A kilo of heroin could last a really long time and opiates are fun. You'd have to dry out at the end of it or commit fully to the junky lifestyle, but I've always wanted to be a little dissolute and finding a kilo of heroin just sounds like a sign from god. I'd take my chances on being able to clean up at the end of the stash. Maybe not the smartest idea ever, but I'm getting a little sick of being a good boy.
Unlimited opportunities for spin-offs -
Stoner Register:
Would one want to have dinner get high with this person on a regular basis?
Hookup Register:
Would one want to have dinner breakfast with this person on a regular basis?
Political Register:
Would one want to have dinner with listen to this person on a regular basis TV?
If you're Peter Mandelson, for example, then you could be dealing with the Duke of Westminster on a fairly equal basis - he would think "well, this chap's a commoner, but he's clearly got a lot going for him and so I ought to treat him with quite a bit of respect".
I am somewhat sceptical that the Duke of Westminster would deal with a gay Jewish Labour politician whose father was an advertising salesman "on a fairly equal basis".
I've never really heard any gossip that the Duke is a homophobe, anti-Semite or snob, and would guess that he probably isn't. Since he's got a large property business and charitable foundation to run, I would guess he's enough of a man of the world to realise that the 20th century happened and that most people (except those who take titles) aren't interested in pretending that there's an aristocracy any more.
283: well, having met him, I'd say he comes across as two out of those three. In fairness to him, I have no way of knowing whether he's an anti-semite or not.
But I do like the argument that very rich men are just obviously not going to be bigoted snobs.
If you were the kind of person who was capable of reaching the point at which someone offered you a life peerage, why would you take it?
Judging from the House of Lords, to abuse the expense/allowance system.
But I do like the argument that very rich men are just obviously not going to be bigoted snobs.
I particularly like the argument that people in the property business are cosmopolitan.
Alright, substitute the next Earl Cairns and current Viscount Garmoyle, who I've met and was (presumably still is) a top bloke in the 1990s.
I particularly like the argument that people in the property business are cosmopolitan
If you're in the property business in London and you've got a problem with Jews, Russians or Arabs, you're likely going to have to be quite the long term buy-and-hold investors.
The main problem with Daniel's argument is that the only point of accepting any kind of peerage is to sit in the House of Lords and annoy the government. And Marquises and Dukes can't do that any more, unless there's a vacancy in the list of representative hereditaries and you can persuade a few hundred descendents of the Georgian rentier class that you're the man for the job. Whereas as a life peer, you're straight in, unless Cleggeron get round to changing it again.
re: 288.last
When they start charging people to sit in the House?
'Yes, I know you've been a stalwart of the trade-union movement for decades, and are a much loved national treasure, but you haven't paid your £500 a day democracy-fee ...'
289. At the moment you get paid a tidy sum just for turning up, signing the book and sitting in the bar, so that'd be a change.
But both the Tories and the Para-Tories have been bleating about reforming the whole thing since before the election. Trouble is, they can't agree what to do with it, so I'm not holding my breath.
Yeah, I know, re: getting paid for turning up.
I've only ever known one member, to speak to:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/23/lord-windlesham-obituary
I expect that means I didn't make proper arsehole networking use of my time at Oxford.
The main problem with Daniel's argument is that the only point of accepting any kind of peerage is to sit in the House of Lords and annoy the government.
sadly, there is another option - to sit around and make up the numbers so that the ones trying to annoy the government are outvoted.
I was hearing about someone named "Baroness Warsi" being part of the new government, and thought "This is probably unfair, but I'm guessing this is a random rich Indian or Pakistani woman who has been given the title of "Baroness" purely to be a transparent token among an otherwise all-Old Etonian Cabinet". This seems to be even more true than I had speculated. She's Minister Without Portfolio! What could her responsibilities possibly be?
Yeah, she's chair of the party, so they give her a cabinet seat. Standard practice in British politics. She's a millionaire herself and I'm sure her kids will go to Eton.
Since she doesn't have to carry a briefcase, she can get the tea tray.
sadly, there is another option - to sit around and make up the numbers so that the ones trying to annoy the government are outvoted.
Well, we need to get you in there then, by hook or by crook.
re: 293
That's not that far off, with Warsi. She failed to get elected as an MP so got parachuted into the Lords.
The first Indian member of the House of Lords was nearly 100 years ago. 1919. Although the first MP of Indian descent was nearly 30 years before that. Bit depressing to look on wiki as there was a small number of mostly Indian MPs, and peers at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, and then getting on for 60 years before there was another non-white peer or MP.
Maybe if the Indians hadn't been so determined on that "independence" thing.
re: 298
Well, there's close to a 30 year gap between the end of the mini-flurry [4? 5? over 30 years] and Indian independence.
Right, but the modal subject of Queen Victoria was South Asian. That wasn't the case after indepedence.
I get that. Independence was in the late 1940s, though. I'm curious as to why there were several Indian MPs and one government minister in the period from about 1890 to 1920 and then none. It's easy to understand why not in the period from the late 40s until the 70s, as you have independence and then a longish period before immigration happens in sufficient numbers to build a substantial immigrant community in the UK [within a single constituency boundary].
I'm curious as to why there were several Indian MPs and one government minister in the period from about 1890 to 1920 and then none.
I suspect Moby's half right here. In the earlier period it made sense for a member of the Indian elite to make a career within the imperial parameters. After the Great War, anybody with any gumption had joined the Congress (or the Muslim League) and were essentially waiting for the British to fuck off.
Considering how little I actually know about this topic, I'll take 'half right' as a compliment.
re: 302
Yeah, that might be the explanation. Not the fact of independence but the future possibility of independence changing the game for ambitious political types.
It's a source of constant annoyance that I can't speak to my grandfather about this [died 25 years ago], as he was in India at the time [independence] and served in the post-independence Indian army.
Back to Warsi; she is annoying as shit whenever she crops up on telly doing her down-to-earth-and-Northern schtick. Although I suppose it's a fairly standard child-of-the-factory-owner trope.
304: And probably changing the game for English politicians/votes evaluating Indian politicians: someone who in 1890 might have looked like a reasonable representative of a significant part of the Empire after 1920 started looking more presumptively like a seditious foreigner, even leaving racial prejudice, which probably hadn't changed much, aside.
Can't remember works, but it's often claimed that the earlier British empire *power structure* was less racist and more classist, and the switch to straight-up racism was something of a sop to the sulky home folks. And possibly to Kaiser Billy, not that that worked.
And possibly to Kaiser Billy, not that that worked.
And to America, also originator ow global racism
A intrawar Japanese perspective I just read surprised me a little by saying that the century of 1840-1940 was an era of German/Prussian and American ideological world dominance, with Britain and France near irrelevancies.
Think manufacturing systems, neo-mercantilist Friedrich List/American/National system economics, general staff militarism, Prussian general education, etc.
I might think the important historical ignorance Americans have, and I share it, is the insane importance of the United States in 19th century global geo-politics.
Clipper and whaling ships.
Cotton, gold, silver, copper, timber, coal, iron ore, the oil. A certain frame of mind in Europe, one of a competitive cast and "realist" cast, has to look at America circa 1825-1850 (1875) and say: "Oh my fucking God above"
Where is Britain's copper and oil?
IOW, it is my thesis that (fear of) the United States is a/the cause of the vicious late 19th century Imperialism, and its particular racist tone.
Crimean War 1956 total both sides
1.7 million men
Britain 250,000
America Civil War total both sides
3.1 million men
If we had wanted Great Britain in 1870 the US probably could have taken it without breaking a sweat.
And the world knew it, could see us, what we were, what we were capable of in cannabalism and cruelty and sheer power.
And something I read this week, about the breakdown of the manufacturing chain for the Ipad, all overseas, all the profit going to America...
...it was after the Civil War that the British started sending their capital to America to invest in cattle ranches and copper mines. Just as China and the world are buying our t-bills in bucketloads.
Tribute, the world has been paying tribute to the American suzerain for 150 years.
And importing our genocidal racism.
Could somebody go smack bob with a history book?
Sounds like he's already been smacked with a few too many.
I'm too tired to smack Bob. Plus, I'm a lover not a fighter. But I am curious what 3.1 million men means.
Also, I have an OT bleg about the best style for acknowledgements, but I'm too tired to write it up now. Off to sleep.
Book acknowledgements, that is. Zzzzzzzz.
Make sure to blame any errors on a colleague you don't like.
yes, say, "any errors that remain are the fault of colleague x."
Use profanity. Do you have any fucking idea how many people helped me out with this book? I'd have to write a whole fucking other book just to list their names.
Also, the blurb needs someone talking about the deft job you do discussing some truly fucked up shit.
I guess this comment might be out of character for me, but fuck that.
Maruyama Masao says the tennosei:
purely pragmatic and opportunistic in that it avoided the attempt to establish itself on the basis of a fixed dogma such as is found in Christianity or Confucianism. At the same time, it took as its highest purpose the preservation of the system of authority with the emperor at the apex; and on this basis made it a taboo to question the legitimacy of its authority.
Andrew Barshay continues (Social Sciences in Modern Japan)
The tennosei in this sense was the most powerful and consequential "invented" tradition of modern Japan. It provided the institutional and linguistic frame through which all other "inventions" received their official imprimatur. ... Surveying the contemporary scene, Maruyama seems uncertain. In an enduring metaphor, he noted the tendency of organizations of all kinds in Japan to form themselves into "octopus pots" (takotsubo), in which the group's activities, ideas, and values become largely self-referential, the authority of the group self-justifying, and socially isolating. This includes "modern" organizations--political, business, and technical as well. Parallel to this is the increasing sophistication, centralization, and uniformity of the mass media. The result of their interaction is a society in which lateral ties between groups of all kinds are weak; groups form images of themselves and the "world" that go unchallenged and "walk on their own." In the absence of such ties and of genuine feedback throughout society, critical and democratic consciousness is fragmented and blunted. It is precisely in this mix of hypermodernity in one sector with premodernity in another that Maruyama sees functional continuity with tennosei, albeit sans tenno in the prewar mode.
America, liberals and conservatives, I'm looking at ya.
the insane importance of the United States in 19th century global geo-politics.
Clipper and whaling ships.
Cotton, gold, silver, copper, timber, coal, iron ore, the oil. A certain frame of mind in Europe, one of a competitive cast and "realist" cast, has to look at America circa 1825-1850 (1875) and say: "Oh my fucking God above"
Where is Britain's copper and oil?
bob, no one in 1825 or 1850 or 1875 gave a damn about American oil reserves, because a) no one knew what to do with oil - ships were sail-powered and coal-powered - and b) no one had discovered American oil reserves yet. Spindletop was discovered in 1900. Coal was the thing, and Britain had and has plenty of coal.
And Britain's oil, when it became necessary to have oil, was in the Middle East, of course.
Also, thinking that you rule the world because other people are sending you stuff all the time is a mistake that the Escurial made in the 16th century.
Britain's copper, of course, was located in South Africa and Rhodesia.
I think Bob might be referring to whale oil, in which case, fair enough but I think you overestimate this commodity's geostrategic significance.
Of course, the really strategic animal product of the late 1800s was guano.
If we had wanted Great Britain in 1870 the US probably could have taken it without breaking a sweat.
Because a dip in the North Atlantic is so cooling. Also, the Crimean War wasn't in 1956.
293 etc: The political structure of British India changed in a big way at the end of WW1 with the Montagu reforms and the GoI Act 1919, which meant that the provincial level governments became half elected Indians and half officials and the central government (which moved from Calcutta to New Delhi about the same time) also got Indian members, who tended to be the sort of people you'd find in the House of Lords.
Typically, one or two of them would also be appointed into the UK government as junior ministers in the India Office. So you have a ministerial lineup with Careerist MP 1, Lord Party Donor 2, Maharajah Sir What's His Face 3 (who might well also be a substantial party funder as some of them were insanely rich).
In many ways, there's an argument that the Indian empire was a deal between the British and Indian aristocracies.
....going for the loon triple post...
Bob isn't entirely wrong about fear/fascination with the US, he's just projecting from Germany in the 1920s to everyone else in the 18(not sure whats - perhaps it would help to decide that).
Also, the idea that British industry was irrelevant and declining in the high 20th century is a bullshit trope invented by Corelli Barnett based on not much that really needs to die. I mean, Frank Whittle took leave from the RAF to invent the jet engine - i.e. the RAF let him just take a sabbatical to launch a high-tech startup - and he got venture capital funding without much trouble - and he could just walk round a trade fair and randomly run into a company that was capable of designing and making the first ever gas turbine combustion chamber, plus also find someone who could reliably machine the weird alloys he needed for the blades.
re: 326.1
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!
And yes, to 327.last.
If we had wanted Great Britain in 1870 the US probably could have taken it without breaking a sweat.
bob, here's the US navy in 1870.
http://bluejacket.com/usn_ship_list_1870.htm
In 1870 the largest ship the US had - and its only operational first-rate ship of the line - was the wooden screw frigate Franklin. The whole fleet was only 180-odd ships, half of which were out of service.
And you think that could have taken on the Royal Navy? You want to put that tub up against a Channel Fleet of ironclad battleships twice its size with rifled guns?
325 has it about right.
Further to 327, my Dad has this minor obsession with the idea that the key to understanding Britain during WWII isn't anything to do with the 'Blitz spirit', or 'the few', or anything, but rather the integration between the supply chain, R&D, and mass manufacturing. Hardly a new thought, but he bangs on about it a lot.
I think Bob might be referring to whale oil, in which case, fair enough
Well, no, because the answer to that is "in the sea swimming around, exactly the same place as America's oil". America had a big whaling fleet but it wasn't the only one. Dundee has produced more than jute, jam and journalism in its day.
331: When you start correcting people's jokes, it's time to step away from the Internet.
I'm willing to join with the gentlemen from the UK in rejecting bob's historical speculations. I would note, though, contra 322, the importance of the oil discovery in Pennsylvania in 1859.
Attempting to infer the actual referents in bob's "musings" is probably an exercise best left to future generations.
(334 -- Point taken. An ancestor of mine was a merchant, and supported 11 kids with his shop on the New Bedford waterfront in the 1840s and 50s. The fates of the 11 kids tells quite the tale of dispersion and decline.)
The British contingent are adorable when they argue that my great-grandpa could beat up your great-grandpa.
I don't think any of us were actually arguing that. But don't let that stop you.
Talkin' 'bout hey now, hey now! Hey now, hey now!
Iko, iko unday