Ted Olson

这两天我一直在关注FBI和Apple的对峙。几个月前加州一对恐怖分子夫妻打死了十几个人，最后被打死。FBI在现场找到了他们的iPhone5c，可是没有密码打不开，又不能随便试密码。因为iPhone设计就是：如果你乱试密码，电话里的data就会被删掉。总之，这是Apple特设的保密功能。FBI要求Apple写个程序把这个功能去掉，他们可以检查电话里的信息。

Apple的CEOTim Cook坚决不干，他说这样一来就会将Apple的设计完全破坏了，iPhone用户的security就会被遭到攻击。今天是Apple要回答法庭的日子。Apple索性将FBI告了。

Apple的律师是Ted Olson。这人在美国是个大牌律师。当年布什和高尔争谁该当总统时，他代表布什，结果赢了，小布什当了8年的总统。他曾是布什政府的内务律师。是个铁杆的共和党吧。

几年前加州通过了一项法律，不承认加州的同性恋有结婚的权力。可是Olson虽然在很多问题上持保守立场，却认为宪法实际上允许同性恋有结婚的权力。他联合David Boies将加州告到了联邦法院。谁是David Boies？就是他当年的对手，代表高尔的律师。两人这次倒是观点一致了。最高法院后来承认了同性婚姻，他们也得到了American Bar Association最高奖章。

可是FBI这样做也是为了保护美国人民的安全，如果恐怖分子的电话有许多信息呢？偏偏他的太太死于9．11的恐怖分子的劫机。他太太本来要在前一天飞到洛杉矶的，可是九月十一号是他生日，他太太为了在他生日时和他说早安，特地将飞机推迟到911的一早，结果⋯

人们问他既然他太太死于恐怖主义之手，他为什么还要替Apple辨护呢？他说：

"We care very, very much, and I do personally, about any instance of terrorism or an effort to prevent it or redress it," Olson said. "But we have to balance our constitutional rights and make sure that we protect what America is all about. So we can't cross the line of giving up protections that are built into our Constitution — terrorists want to tear that down. We can't give in to that."

Milton Friedman and George Stigler

在芝大网站上看到这张照片，萌死了。两个背影，一高一矮，在校园里散步。两个人可是做了60年的朋友，一个死后，另一个写的悼词。可也曾经是竞争对手⋯

George Joseph Stigler，那个矮老头⋯1946年是很重要的一年，这一年斯蒂格勒得知母校芝加哥大学希望他参加教授征选的面试，跟他同一天前来应征的另一位教授候选人是米尔顿·弗里德曼。结果是：由弗里德曼获得了这仅有一个的教授缺。落选的斯蒂格勒来到布朗大学短暂地任教一年至1947年。1947年至1958年任教于哥伦比亚大学，1958年芝加哥大学再度有一个教授缺额，斯蒂格勒终于得偿所愿被聘为正教授，其后在芝加哥大学里经历了芝加哥经济学派引领风骚的二十年多个年头。他是1982年诺贝尔经济学奖的得主。

当经济学的研究者将弗里德曼与斯蒂格勒这两位芝加哥经济学派第二代人物做比较时，多会注意到弗里德曼的好辩、争胜跟辩才无碍，相较之下斯蒂格勒则显得幽默、温和与实事求是。因此斯蒂格勒偶尔会赢得来自不同阵营者的赏识。可是高大的，雄辨的Milton Friedman 被誉为20世纪最重要的经济学家之一。1976年取得诺贝尔经济学奖，以表扬他在消费分析、货币供应理论及历史、和稳定政策复杂性等范畴的贡献。

那天他们俩在聊什么？

索尔．贝娄的洪堡园

我每次去纽约，不是住在华尔街就是布鲁克林，都离water street 很近。Water Street上有个Russian bathhouse，非常不起眼的小门脸。我每次经过那里，就想起了索尔．贝娄在《洪堡的礼物》〈Humboldt’s Gift）里写的芝加哥Humboldt Park的俄国浴室。

贝娄9岁的时候就随父母从加拿大移民到芝加哥。他们家在西边的洪堡园。我一直在想他的《洪堡的礼物》是否出自于此。那个时候，洪堡园大都是东欧移民，而现在，这里的居民大却是黑人和墨西哥人。

在他晩年的时候，他是这样回忆洪堡园的：

“on the back porch, your neighbors on their back porches all down the line, the graceless cottonwoods reaching toward you and you listened to the accordions and player pianos and harmonicas below, across the way, down the street, playing mazurkas ... One of the children was sent to the corner to bring home a pitcherful of soda pop (the druggist called it a phosphate). Over every drugstore in Chicago there swung a large mortar and pestle outlined in electric bulbs and every summer the sandflies with green light transparent wings covered the windows.”

而他在《洪堡的礼物》里，是这样描写那个俄国浴室里的景象：

“The patrons of the Russian Bath are cast in an antique form. They have swelling buttocks and fatty breasts as yellow as buttermilk. They stand on thick pillar legs affected with a sort of creeping verdigris or blue-cheese mottling of the ankles. After steaming, these old fellows eat enormous snacks of bread and salt herring or large ovals of salami and dripping skirt-steak and they drink schnapps. They could knock down walls with their hard stout old-fashioned bellies. Things are very elementary here. You feel that these people are almost conscious of obsolescence, of a line of evolution abandoned by nature and culture. So down in the super-heated subcellars all these Slavonic cavemen and wood demons with hanging laps of fat and legs of stone and lichen boil themselves and splash ice water on their heads by the bucket. Upstairs, on the television screen in the locker room, little dudes and grinning broads make smart talk or leap up and down. They are unheeded ... There may be no village in the Carpathians where such practices still prevail.”

现在这里己翻修一新，改名为＂红场＂day spa，还附带一个酒吧和餐馆，比起纽约水街上的那个要高级多了，可水街上的那个却更接近巜洪堡的礼物》里面的。

Emily

Emily

Robles Wilson

Once in a great while, Death

Crosses my mind一the way

A stranger passes the door

Of my office and an instant

Later takes a backward step

To look in on me. Then he 

Is gone again: I put him

Out of my thoughts; One more

Strange guy, I tell myself.

Other times一though rarely一

It's a woman who stops, rests

The palm of one pale hand

On the doorframe, who tilts

Her head as if trying hard

To place me一Don't we meet

One day at New Sunyrna, drink

Martinis? Didn't the waitress

Claim to know both our names?

In the end who can manage

To keep the entrances locked?

Everyone uses this corridor

As shortcut：parking lot to

Patio bar. I'm nothing like

Emily Dickinson. Her door

Was kept tight shut; she so

Valued privacy: Death outside,

Emily waiting for the knock.

Still Alice

《Still Alice》是根据Lisa Genova所写的2007年同名畅销小说改编的。讲的是哥伦比亚大学语言学教授Dr. Alice Howland在患上早发性阿兹海默症后，如何挣扎于疾病、工作和家庭之中。早就知道茱莉安·摩尔因这个角色得了很多奖，却一直没找时间看，这次在飞机上连看了两遍。小说的作者Dr. Lisa Genova是哈佛神经学的博士，一直在研究这些神经性的疾病，比如阿兹海默症，帕金森症⋯她每天都看着这些疾病如何影响患者的生活，工作和家庭。她说：

“In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.” 

Alice在50岁时患上了家族遗传的早发性阿兹海默症，她的记忆迅速失去：

“And I have no control over which yesterdays I keep and which ones get deleted. This disease will not be bargained with. I can't offer it the names of the US presidents in exchange for the names of my children. I can't give it the names of state capitals and keep the memories of my husband.

My yesterdays are disappearing, and my tomorrows are uncertain, so what do I live for? I live for each day. I live in the moment. Some tomorrow soon, I'll forget that I stood before you and gave this speech. But just because I'll forget it some tomorrow doesn't mean that I didn't live every second of it today. I will forget today, but that doesn't mean that today doesn't matter.” 

一一一

她和女儿有一段对话：

“You're so beautiful," said Alice. "I'm afraid of looking at you and not knowing who you are."

"I think that even if you don't know who I am someday, you'll still know that I love you."

"What if I see you, and I don't know that you're my daughter, and I don't know that you love me?"

"Then, I'll tell you that I do, and you'll believe me.” 是的! The mother in her believed that the love she had for her daughter was safe from the mayhem of her mind, because it lived in her heart.” 

她对丈夫说：

Alice: I miss myself.

John: I miss you too, Ali, so much.” 

尽管死亡将是我们每个人的终点，可谁又不是

“... just because [butterflies'] lives were short didn't mean they were tragic... See, they have a beautiful life.”

大法官Scalia

大概几个月前，听NPR讲了一个故事：Scalia V. Ginsburg: Supreme Court Sparring, Put To Music。有一个学法律的学生，本身是个作曲家，念书念烦了，突然想干脆写个歌曲，把这两个大法官当男女主角，歌词完全用他们自己的话。Scalia代表着最高法院的保守派，Ginsburg是自由派，两人在每个决定上都针锋相对。但私下却是好朋友，尤其都喜爱歌剧，经常一起去看歌剧。他写信去问两个大法官他是否可以这么做，两个法官都回信说根据宪法第一条，他完全可以。于是，男高音Scalia就唱到：

Oh, Ruth, can you read? You're aware of the text. Yet so proudly you've failed to derive its true meaning.

当然，这个时代的Diva也不示弱的：

How many times must I tell you, dear Mister Justice Scalia, You'd spare us such pain if you'd just entertain this idea. You are searching in vain for a bright-line solution, To a problem that isn't so easy to solve. But the beautiful thing about our Constitution is that Like our society, it can evolve. 

大法官Scalia前几天心脏病突发去逝了。昨天，他的遗体回到了最高法院的大厅里。当年林肯被暗杀后，遗体也放在这里和公众告别，所以也叫Lincoln Catafalque 。可惜在DC，要不然我一定去和他道别。

虽然他是一个地地道道的保守派，但特别喜欢他的写作风格，雄辩，尖刻，准确：

Glossip v. Gross, 2015

Concurrence in ruling that upheld states' use of a controversial form of lethal injection in death penalty cases:

"A vocal minority of the Court, waving over their heads a ream of the most recent abolitionist studies (a superabundant genre) as though they have discovered the lost folios of Shakespeare, insist that now, at long last, the death penalty must be abolished for good."

Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015

Dissent from ruling that struck down state bans on same-sex marriage:

"The world does not expect logic and precision in poetry or inspirational pop-philosophy; it demands them in the law. The stuff contained in today’s opinion has to diminish this Court’s reputation for clear thinking and sober analysis."

Catherine Opie

'I Do Like To Stare': Catherine Opie On Her Portraits Of Modern America

她是当今非常有名的摄影家。非常喜欢她的摄影：非常的美国，非常的现代，也非常的真实。她只是以一种不讨好的方式来表达她自己，却是诚实而客观的。