Your face is your passport

Boarding commenced.  I gathered my backpack, re-adjusted the mask, and kept my boarding pass handy.  I slowly walked up to the line.

I noticed that passengers who were way ahead of me in the line were stepping in front of a machine when it was their turn at the gate.  "Perhaps it is a temperature check" I thought to myself.  A thermal scanner?

During the Swine Flu pandemic--remember that?--many airports in Asia had thermal scanners that automatically checked the temperatures of passengers walking past.  That was also the first time that I noticed many Asian travelers rushing around with facial masks.  Those masks seemed so bizarre then.  Ah, such innocent days!

I was now much closer to the boarding gate and the machine.  I could see that it was not a temperature scanner because passengers were not merely stepping in front of it, but were also pointedly looking into the machine with their masks lowered.

I then heard the staff at the gate tell a passenger that the boarding pass will not be needed, and that the facial scanning was the boarding check.

With my iPhone, I have intentionally not opted for the machine to validate me through my thumb print or my face.  Remember the movie The Big Sick, in which the young woman is in a coma and her (ex) boyfriend grabs her finger in order to unlock her iPhone in order to contact her parents?  That can't happen with me and my iPhone!

But, at this boarding gate I had no say in the matter.  It was now my turn.  I lowered the mask and looked into the eye of the soulless machine.  It flashed a green light and I joined the line in the jet bridge.

That was not my first encounter with looking into cameras at airports.  My first was in 2014, when returning to the US.  But, the machines merely recorded the image and did not analyze them.  Over the years, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.) has implemented a new facial recognition system.

In April, the C.B.P. quietly reached its goal of installing cameras next to customs officers in every international airport in the United States, with the goal of verifying virtually all incoming travelers by face, and building a related tool intended to spot foreign nationals lacking proper visas when they depart the country.

“By and large, almost all travelers are going through some sort of biometric process on entry,” said Larry Panetta, the director of the biometric entry/exit program transformation.

(Panetta?  Related to the old political hand Leon Panetta?)

Should we be concerned about facial recognition?

Of course, yes.

At the hearing in July, Jeramie D. Scott, the senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit focused on privacy, called Simplified Arrival a “powerful and dangerous tool” that requires more federal oversight. In an interview, he argued that by using facial recognition on U.S. citizens and filling the database with Americans’ passport photos, the program is already overstepping, given that the underlying legislation focuses on foreign nationals. (C.B.P. officials noted that most passport fraud involves U.S. passports and that Americans can opt out.)

Perhaps you are thinking that this is a problem only for international travelers.  Well, you know that old saw: First they came for the socialists, and I said nothing ... The large scale employment of biometric technology should worry everybody:

Facial recognition is distinctly dangerous because it is a keystone technology in 21st century mass surveillance. Facial recognition uses algorithms to match a picture of an unknown individual to a gallery of identified images based on facial features like the distance between a person’s eyes. The proliferation of available digital images created by security cameras, added online via social media, or collected by the government for routine purposes (e.g. passport photo) has created a wealth of data to use for face surveillance. And there is a lack of legal protections against the use of images for facial recognition. The result is that the images used to create the underlying algorithms and databases are often collected surreptitiously and without consent.

Facial recognition makes it easy to identify anyone at any time without their consent and even without their knowledge to track the movements of that person or connect that person to the copious amounts of information collected by the government and private sector. The technology also greatly increases the ability to conduct mass surveillance of large crowds. The dangers of facial recognition are growing as its uses expand.

During my recent lengthy stay in the old country, I was chatting with a guy whose daughter lives in the US after having completed her Phd in Seoul.  Yes, she earned her doctoral degree in South Korea, after all her life in Chennai.  When she was a student in Seoul, he went there a couple of times.  He loved the city, especially because it was so clean and safe.  "There are cameras everywhere, and if anything happens they immediately catch the culprit," he said.

I didn't want to tell him how much I hate such a big-brother society.  When I am out in public, I don't want cameras watching me all the time.  Don't even get me started about cameras outside homes!

But, he is not an outlier when it comes to appreciation of cameras and facial recognition.  In a survey by Pew, only "39% say people should have a right to privacy when they are in public spaces."

Only 39%!

I guess I shouldn't pick my nose anymore in public!

If the spirit moves you ...

In the highly commercialized America--well, the entire world--retailers always want to promote some holiday or other, even if those special days are far, far away.  

In my early years in America, there was nothing said about Halloween until the last week or so of October.  Those were the old days.

Now, right after Labor Day, people start talking about pumpkin spice latte.  Stores begin to promote Halloween.  A few homes already have Halloween decorations all over the houses and front yards!

(No, there weren't any Rosh Hashanah sales.  I don't expect to see Diwali deals either.)

It is not like I look forward to Halloween.  Or Diwali, for that matter.  I stay in character as General Malaise!

In the old country, there was no Halloween.  Maybe things have changed now, like how many aspects of life have changed: "Some forever, not for better | Some have gone and some remain."

I suppose the "fancy dress" parties in the old country were the closest to wearing strange costumes at Halloween.  From the colonizers, the elites picked up the idea of high tea and fancy dress (costume party.)  The wannabe elites in the township too had to have these.  Of course, I did not participate in any fancy dress competition.

Until I came to the US, I had no idea about Halloween when kids go trick or treating and load up on candies.  Strangely enough, I don't recall any of the fictional works that I read referring to Halloween.  But then Steinbeck and Saroyan had weightier issues to write about.

The Hindu life in which I was born and raised offered plenty of "fancy dress" and ghosts throughout the year.  No special day was ever needed. 

As a kid, I was terrified of the image of Bhadrakali.  I had yet to learn that those were not photos of the god but were artistic renderings of vivid imaginations.  I was sure that Bhadrakali would make my young life miserable if I did anything wrong.  Yes, I have always been a wuss; thanks for asking.

According to people, ghosts were everywhere, especially in tamarind trees.  For whatever reasons, some believed--yes, believed--that tamarind trees were the favorite "haunts" for ghosts. 

One of the many charming aspects to our home in the township was the number of trees in the compound.  I forget the precise count, but, as I recall now, there were six tamarind trees, eight mango trees, one cashew nut tree, and a couple of trees that did not yield any edible fruits.  It was a jungle out there, come to think of it.  By the gate was a giant tamarind tree.  It was the biggest of them all. 

Even in the best of the lighting, the compound was in semi-darkness after the sun set, and some of the trees were in utter darkness.  Most of this huge tamarind tree by the gate was in the dark.  It is, therefore, easy to imagine that some of the school friends coming over wanted to get past the tree as fast as they could.

But, my siblings and I were never afraid of that tamarind tree.  The tree was always there from the time we remembered the world.  We didn't think about any spirits there.

Every single night was Halloween spooky only to those who saw the tamarind tree differently!

And then there were those times when ghosts presented themselves through people.  Like how my dead  grandmother "appeared" through my cousin.  I watched the spectacle, which is what it was to me.  I was convinced then, as I am now, that dead people don't re-appear.  The cousin was putting on one hell of a Halloween show, and had his fifteen minutes of fame in the family lore.

A couple of decades ago, a middle-aged friend died after an unsuccessful battle with cancer.  He and his wife talked about and sorted out the practical issues, especially dealing with their two young girls.  The wife also told him that if there was a way that he could communicate with her after his death, well, he should.  He agreed.  But, she never heard from him.

The older I get, there are times when I wonder, like my father recently did, if what I recall are events that happened or whether they are merely figments of my wild imagination. 

Aging is one hell of a strange experience and is the ultimate trick-or-treat event in life, with different costumes and make-up at every stage!

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything

Did the university do me a favor by pink-slipping me?

In the second year of graduate school, I was a teaching assistant to Tridib Banerjee.  (It was through him that I got hooked on to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books.  I am certain that he has no idea about this.) 

The midterms arrived, and we assistants met with him to get instructions on grading.  At one point during that meeting, Banerjee looked at me and said that grading in the US was a total contrast to how exams were graded in India.  Here in the US, Banerjee explained, it is almost as if grading begins with every paper having a 100% and then points are taken away for the mistakes made or the important issues that were not addressed.  On the other hand, in India, students earn points and the score starts with zero.

And there is always a bonus for simply having tried.  For the effort, he said.

All these were new to me.  But, he was the boss and I was in a new context, and I graded papers as per the instructions.

A few years and professional detours later, I returned to academia to teach economic geography.  Now, I was my own boss in the classroom.  I was also in a university where students were not as prepared for college as the undergraduate students in Banerjee's class were.  Many students couldn't compose even one grammatically correct paragraph, leave alone articulate their understanding of the content.  I knew that I had to loosen up the standards a lot, which is what I did.

Despite what I believed to be a highly relaxed grading system, students thought otherwise.  One student loudly complained in class that I was expecting students to think and behave as if they were at Berkeley and not in Bakersfield.

At a faculty gathering, a math professor (Lee Webb?) chatted with me and had a piece of advice that was weighty.  It was more of a warning.  He said that my high expectations were all good as long as students enrolled in my classes.  But, I would end up in trouble, he said, if students stayed away from my classes, especially when they are not mandatory but electives.

Of course, I laughed it off.

A winter term ended.  I submitted the grades.  I received an email from a student who was unhappy with her grade and asked to meet with me over the spring break.  She needed to sort it out before spring term began.  So, I did.

I went over the grade components--assignments and papers.  I explained again the grading criteria.  At the end of it all she asked me a question that was memorable: "I was in class everyday.  Doesn't that count?"

At the end of the academic year, I think it was then, there was a faculty gathering hosted by the president.  I narrated the student's question to a few colleagues.  A political scientist, a veteran of teaching, replied that she (Kaye Bragg?) had heard that line a lot, for which she always had a stock answer.  With a huge smile, she shared her response: "The chairs are in the classroom every day, but they don't get any grade either."

All those happened almost 25 years ago.  It was a different world, when college was supposed to be hard. Yet, year after year, I kept lowering the bar in order to deal with under-prepared students for whom I submitted inflated grades so that the numbers with "F" grades would not catch the attention of the university's money managers.  I reminded students that if they thought university classes and professors were demanding, they would be unprepared for the real world in which employers would not have the patience that professors have for poor performance.

Thankfully, unhappy students did not start petition drives urging the university president to fire me from teaching, which is what happened to a professor of organic chemistry at New York University:

In the field of organic chemistry, Maitland Jones Jr. has a storied reputation. He taught the subject for decades, first at Princeton and then at New York University, and wrote an influential textbook. He received awards for his teaching, as well as recognition as one of N.Y.U.’s coolest professors.

But last spring, as the campus emerged from pandemic restrictions, 82 of his 350 students signed a petition against him.

Students said the high-stakes course — notorious for ending many a dream of medical school — was too hard, blaming Dr. Jones for their poor test scores.

The professor defended his standards. But just before the start of the fall semester, university deans terminated Dr. Jones’s contract.

Customers are always right, especially when they pay exorbitant tuition and fees at a private university!  "The entire controversy seems to illustrate a sea change in teaching, from an era when professors set the bar and expected the class to meet it, to the current more supportive, student-centered approach."

I am relieved that my former employer laid me off before students called for my head!