Truth Made Simple

What a culture finds to be mysterious says a lot about that culture. For instance, the Ancient Egyptians found the fate of the human soul to be a big mystery, so they built huge stone pyramids and invented duct tape. The Ancient Aztecs found the Gods’ involvement in the climate and agriculture to be mysterious, so they built huge stone pyramids and invented the harsh treatment of Mexicans. The recent Barons of Wall Street found the source of wealth to be mysterious, so they built pyramid schemes and invented the decline of modern capitalism. I have not built or invented anything, but I find it quite mysterious how any sane person could take Sarah Palin seriously. Sometimes the way she pauses during a speech makes me think she is giving the audience time to get the joke, but to no avail.

So anyway, I was surfing the net as I often do to avoid having to deal with any of the real issues in my life when I came upon http://listverse.com/2007/07/20/top-10-unsolved-mysteries/. It is one of maybe 35 trillion unassuming websites which claim to have compiled a list of the top ten something; in this case the “Top 10 Unsolved Mysteries”. I just thought I would run through them, one at a time, and shed some light on the facts:

1) Shroud of Turin – This is that linen cloth that allegedly bears the image of a crucified Christ. It could be real, but only if Christ were crucified by a bunch of second graders during crayon break. The head looks like a Heineken mini-keg. Well, maybe I’m projecting, but only researchers who are affiliated with the Catholic Church or a cable TV network find any potential legitimacy in the cloth. Objective analysts believe it is the result of a 14th Century Republican plot to make a buck off the less astute elements of society.

2) Mary Celeste – This was a ship found floating abandoned in the Atlantic in 1872. It’s not very mysterious to me; the people on the boat got off. Why? Well I’m sure they had a damn good reason being that they were in the middle of the ocean.

3) The Taos Hum – This is a noise that nobody can hear, so it is somewhat difficult to investigate. Taos is in New Mexico, the same state that boasts Roswell. The only noise I can hear is giggling.

4) Black Dahlia – This is the nickname given to a young lady murdered in Los Angeles in 1947. The killer was never brought to justice. The only mystery here is where on the list are the other 17,283 unsolved murders of young ladies in Los Angeles? I guess it is because she was cut in half, which has also recently happened to my household income. Spooky, huh?

5) Comte de Saint Germain – This dude was an Eighteenth Century snake oil salesman. There is absolutely no mystery about exploiting people’s ignorance for profit. What is mysterious is how 225 years later people can still be ignorant enough to think there is some mystery.

6) Voynich Manuscript – Nobody can read this document and nobody knows what it means. Sort of like a high-school math textbook or anything James Joyce wrote.

7) Jack the Ripper - No mystery here. Jack the Ripper is the name given to a killer (or killers) who gruesomely murdered and mutilated at least six prostitutes in London in the late 1800’s. For disappointed teenagers in the audience, there are no flatulence jokes forthcoming. A lot of people think they know who Jack the Ripper was, and, for all we know, one or more of them may be correct. As an aside, anybody want to guess how many prostitutes were murdered in London in the 1800’s? See #4 above.

8) Bermuda Triangle – This area, which comprises about half of the Atlantic Ocean, is the area where about half the disappearances of ships and planes in the Atlantic Ocean occur. Often nobody knows what happened to them. That’s why they are said to have “disappeared”. Most of these disappearances occurred before the development of modern credit reporting bureaus. Coincidence?

9) The Zodiac Killer – Some nut killed some people in California in the 1960’s; and got away with it! Pretty mysterious. Many believe he may still be hiding at an undisclosed location, perhaps with Dick Cheney. In fact, where was Dick Cheney when the killings occurred? Inquiring minds want to know.

10) The Babushka Lady – Apparently some mysterious woman was photographed photographing something during President Kennedy’s visit to Dallas when he was assassinated. I imagine she was one of, say, several thousand people viewing the motorcade, some of whom might have been taking pictures. I must say, it is truly mysterious, certainly one of the top 10 unsolved mysteries of all human history.

The author has generously provided yet another list here, http://listverse.com/2007/07/27/another-10-unsolved-mysteries/, which has even more spine-tingling mysteries, to be sure. I haven’t looked yet; I don’t want to spoil the mystery.

Boys Pants, Half Off

The King is dead. Michael Jackson, the putative King of Pop, or King of the confused, depending on your point of view, died yesterday at the age of 50. His death occurred, how else, under confusing and “mysterious” circumstances with rumors of drug abuse rife, although actual science has not yet had the opportunity to establish the facts. There was an immediate outpouring of grief from virtually every corner of the globe, with intellectual luminaries like Madonna, Elizabeth Taylor and Imelda Marcos expressing shock and grief at the performer’s passing. There was no word how the 12 year-old boys of the world were receiving the news.

Before I proceed, I must disclose that I may be one of the few people in the world who does not actually possess any of Michael Jackson’s music, having neither purchased nor pirated any of it over the years. I do not deny having sometimes listened to it at parties or in other people’s cars, or perhaps having watched the videos on MTV from time to time, and I am not disputing Michael Jacksons’ talent. He and his family’s music were just never my cup of tea, just like Slayer and Toby Keith are not in my collection. However, I do think that the idea that the world has lost the greatness of a Mozart or Enrico Caruso is a bit overblown. The truest enjoyment I got from Michael Jackson’s music ironically came from Weird Al’s parodies of songs like Beat It and Bad.

But this reflection is not about me; although of course it is about me and the fact that Michael Jackson was an ineffable part of my world from Cub Scouts on. He was born just two years before I was and was a national pop icon well before I made it out of grade school. My friends had his posters on their walls, even in cracker racist Georgia, and everybody was unconsciously singing “ABC, 1-2-3, Do, Re, Mi” under their breath for months in 1970. Being a Zombie movie addict, I have secretly enjoyed the Thriller music video for over two decades now. The video was made by prominent Hollywood director John Landis who, by the way, directed Innocent Blood (one of the most under-rated vampire movies of the modern era) as well as The Blues Brothers, Animal House and An American Werewolf in London. Michael Jackson was, I am somewhat pained to say, bigger than the Beatles when the Beatles were big.

Of course, as time went on things slowly started to get weird and Michael began to mutate into Greta Garbo. I have read all sorts of speculation about what exactly was going on with his appearance, and what was going on in his head, but there can be no doubt that there was a deliberate and significant effort to alter his looks which went well beyond the typical Hollywood vanity surgery. Then there were all the tabloid reports about sleeping in oxygen tents and buying The Elephant Man’s skeleton and a hundred other really odd things for a popular R&B singer to be doing. Then came accusations of child molestation on an industrial scale, some even supported by his sister La Toya, for what that’s worth, and then civil lawsuits and criminal trials. While Jackson was never convicted of any crimes, he did pay one of his accusers 22 million dollars in a legal settlement with no admission of guilt, as if you could pay anybody 22 million dollars and still have anybody believe you hadn’t done anything wrong.

Whatever the facts are, it became clear to any normal person that Michael Jackson was no normal person. At an absolute minimum, he exercised abysmal judgment, inappropriately sought companionship from the emotionally immature and failed to understand how vulnerable he was making himself through his behavior. At worst, he was a calculating, manipulative serial child molester who bought his way out of the consequences of his behavior. Either way, his life was not the fairytale in Neverland that fame and fortune are supposed to be. All of his talent and musical accomplishments and all the truly good things he did for the less fortunate are eclipsed in the minds of many by the public parody of himself that he ultimately became, and, as the facts surrounding his death become clearer by the minute, it appears that his life may have been cut dramatically short by his on-going, desperate struggle to never grow up.

Perhaps I should leave it there; I am, after all, just a humble wormhole repairman and no expert on Michael Jackson, nor really even a big fan, but I must concede that news of his death has affected me in a fundamental way. It occurs to me that if fame and fortune and the adulation of billions are not enough to guarantee happiness, what is? If the best selling record album of all time cannot protect you against persistent ridicule, what can? If expensive security and virtual isolation cannot keep descriptions of your penis from being broadcast on the evening news, what does? If perhaps the most universally popular entertainer in the history of the world can die at the age of 50, emaciated and looking like a disfigured ghoul while demented and full of pain killers, what hope is there for the rest of us?

I have reached the point in my life where people that have always been there are beginning to disappear. Michael Jackson is like that famous third cousin I never actually met but everyone would talk about at family reunions; he is one of the people that have accompanied me to this point. The thought of how and when I will join the legions of the passed is impossible to completely escape and it begs a more urgent consideration of what the hell I am doing here, and, perhaps more importantly, what I should be doing here, while I am still here. It appears that Michael Jackson may still have been struggling with those very same questions when oblivion overtook him. May he rest in peace.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

Once again a self-proclaimed paragon of virtue bites the dust. This time it is Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a particularly self-righteous Republican who refused, as a matter of principle, to accept any of President Obama’s stimulus money and who, as a U.S. Congressman, repeatedly suggested that President Clinton should resign when his affair with Monica Lewinsky was revealed. Governor Sanford is a big promoter of State’s Rights, which generally means he is opposed to the states having to honor the U.S. Bill of Rights, but that’s just my opinion.

Sanford, who is something of a Southern political anomaly, being an Episcopalian in a Baptist world, only just today held a press conference at which he admitted that he had been engaged in an extramarital affair with an Argentinean woman for the past year. His wife had tossed him out of the house a couple of weeks ago after months of counseling apparently failed and the Governor promptly flew to Argentina to commiserate with his mistress. Unfortunately he failed to advise anybody official that he was leaving the country, which resulted in some confusion. His staff compounded the problem by telling the media he was “hiking the Appalachian Trail”. I can envision this phrase now becoming a popular euphemism for illicit sexual activity.

I have to admit that I feel some tacky, juvenile pleasure in seeing a sanctimonious douche-bag publicly disgraced, but I know that is just the devil whispering in my ear. The reality is that it is a personal tragedy for several innocent people, including the Governor’s wife and four sons, and enjoying the suffering of others is really bad karma. However, there is a lesson to be learned when a person who has made a career of impugning other folk’s character is suddenly publicly confronted with their own moral failure.

The Bible, which Governor Sanford has a lot of faith in, says in the Book of Job, Chapter 15, Verse 34, “For the congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate”. There are plenty more verses that decry hypocrisy as being really un-Christian and Jesus himself pretty clearly said you can’t go to Heaven if you are a hypocrite. This is not to mention all the admonitions against adultery in the Bible, but it is surprisingly clear that hypocrisy is by far the greater sin. Christian theology designates those who do not hold themselves to the same moral standard they impose on others as the very lowest of the low. This analysis is not to be considered any sort of endorsement of Christianity, but there is a great deal of wisdom in the Bible, most of which Governor Sanford seems to have missed.

Anybody who has talked to me for more than two minutes knows I have a less than stellar opinion of the current Republican Party, most especially its leadership. They all seem to be snake-oil salesmen or supercilious pricks. Governor Sanford is a prime example; he seems to have overlooked the fact that he is just one of several billion flawed humans and that there is a huge difference between supporting principled behavior and personally attacking those who fall short of it. Clearly my beloved Democrats are just as morally challenged as everybody else, but they spend way less time condemning the rest of mankind.

I have way too many personal and moral failures to sit in judgement of anybody but perhaps John Wayne Gacy, so I’m not going to excoriate the Governor for making the same mistakes that many otherwise decent human beings have made; love, after all, is a most pernicious form of insanity, and Governor Sanford, while an odd sort of fellow in many ways, is not the typical trailer park Bible thumper. When the South Carolina General Assembly was considering approving religiously themed automobile license plates, he opposed the legislation and said "It is my personal view that the largest proclamation of one's faith ought to be in how one lives his life." He was dead on the money with that one, unfortunately.

The Treaty of Tordesillas

At 3:15 this morning it was exactly 68 years ago that “The Leader”, Adolph Hitler, sent over three million men (and perhaps even a few women) into the territory of the Soviet Union in the single greatest, and ultimately most costly, military action ever undertaken. The attack took place over a 1,800 mile front and involved thousands upon thousands of planes, tanks, artillery pieces and soiled drawers. The Russians, woefully unprepared for the attack, received a complete ass-whooping for the first six months at every turn. Germany and its allies would eventually go on to capture over three million Soviet soldiers and over 500,000 square miles of Russian territory before their advance was halted in December, 1941 on the outskirts of Moscow by the ironic combination of crappy weather and Mongols from the Soviet Union’s Asiatic holdings.

There is a wealth of analysis regarding the underlying rationale for what turned out to be a spectacularly unsuccessful real estate venture, but Hitler himself wrote as early as 1925 about the need for the German people to expand to the east, take the resources of the “inferior” Russian people and drive their “Jewish-Bolshevik” masters from power. While there is a pretty universal consensus that Hitler and his Nazi regime were about as sick and evil as humans come, there is a certain refreshing honesty that sometimes accompanies madness; the Nazis made no secret of their objective of enslaving and murdering the Russians and taking all their land and livestock. By 1941 the German people were so hypnotized by their own arrogance and consumed by the ethical numbness of easy victory that the Nazis no longer needed to cloak their poisonous rhetoric in metaphor and code. They just came right out and said it.

The namesake of this invasion of Russia was Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, who was unflatteringly nicknamed Barbarossa, or red beard, by the Italians upon whom he frequently waged war. Ironically, Frederick had no problems with the Russians, probably because they were too busy slugging it out with the Turks who were trying to find a place to settle after being run out of town by the Mongols, who would a century later establish the world’s largest protection racket on the back of the Russians. Frederick did, however, participate in a couple of crusades and died, of all things, by accidentally drowning in a river in what is now Turkey. Frederick was the subject of a familiar mediaeval German legend that he was just sleeping in a cave somewhere and that he would return at some unspecified point in the future to restore Germany to its former greatness. Unfortunately for Hitler, that point didn’t happen to be 1941.

For all the amazing initial success of Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet Union ultimately took every punch the Germans and their Romanian, Hungarian, Slovakian, Croatian, Italian and Finnish allies could throw. Though the invaders encircled entire Russian armies at a turn throughout the summer and fall of 1941, more kept coming, often faster than the fake orgasms in a Jenna Jameson flick. Brave Stalin fretted and became increasingly paranoid as he wandered the Kremlin basement, but the average Russian citizen, who had for many centuries received nothing but the short end of whatever stick he was being beaten with, overcame the incompetence of the leadership and the industrial retardation of Communism and slowly drove the Germans back to Berlin. While casualty estimates for the Second World War vary widely, it is generally accepted that over 20,000,000 Soviet soldiers and citizens died and destruction and devastation resulted on an unimaginable scale. Stalin, who had probably killed almost as many of his own countrymen as the Nazis eventually did, survived and, depending on which theory you subscribe to, either died of a stroke at the age of 74, or died as the result a political assassination by rat poison. I know which position my sense of justice endorses.

History is a wonderful mentor if you pay attention. Hitler, who fancied himself something of a military genius, was a huge fan of Napoleon and was giddy as a school girl when he visited his hero’s tomb after pounding France into submission in 1940. Napoleon, as we know, was also a victim of Russia’s siren call, returning to Paris one step ahead of a coalition of angry former conquests in 1812 after his army of 700,000 men dissolved under the pressure of Russian stubbornness and sub-freezing temperatures. Had Napoleon been anything other than a moldering corpse in 1940, he might have exhorted his young fan to beware the hubris that whispers the iron will of the righteous is superior to the tepid resolve of the heathen and that others are weak because they are different. Napoleon could have told Hitler that a nation’s delusion of moral superiority is nothing that the blood of a few million young men can’t easily wash away.

Utter Nonsense

Here we are on Friday, another productive week of work gone by, so much accomplished, so much progress made. Now for the weekend! Here are a few things I will not be doing this weekend:

1) Watching Fox News. I accept that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, but your opinions should not make smart people laugh at you. Perhaps the only place one might find a more detestable gaggle of ignoramuses is hosting a Klan rally. I have pinched turds with more intellectual substance than the entire aggregation of “journalists” and “analysts” employed by Rupert Murdock. I must admit that from time to time I have succumbed to the prurient allure of Fox’s busty spokes-models while channel surfing, but only if the No Pants Dance wasn’t on G4,

2) A 20-mile bike ride. I have recently been riding my bike a bit more often hoping to hit a pothole and jar some of my arterial plaque loose. While my cardiovascular stamina has surprisingly been more than up to the task, my aged posterior cannot endure the protracted abuse. Feeling the wind in one’s face is a wonderful thing, but not at the expense of my ass feeling like I’ve just completed a six-month prison term.

3) Eating sushi. I have several eating rules, such as never eating anything larger than my head, and I also never eat anything that used to be capable of independent movement without first subjecting it to extreme heat. I might compromise this rule if I survived an isolated plane crash in the Andes or became a reanimated corpse during the zombie apocalypse, but it ain’t happening this weekend.

4) Sleeping late. I have to get up early on Saturday to put out the garbage. I can’t put it out the night before because the raccoons have figured out how to take the lid off the trash cans. Often they will also vandalize the landscaping in protest over the poor quality trash we put out. I can’t make my teenage children do it because I would have to get up to wake them up and then argue for half an hour. Sunday morning I have a 7:00 AM tee-time. In Florida in June, if you don’t finish your round of golf before noon, you run the risk of your sweat dissolving your underwear.

5) Watching CNN all day to see what is happening in Iran. CNN doesn’t have the slightest idea what is happening in Iran. My dog knows more about what is happening in Iran than CNN does. I have watched hours of “breaking news” on CNN during the past week, only to realize that it was the same three video clips repeated in an endless loop with an assortment of talking heads speculating on when they might get some more video clips.

6) Going to the movies to watch “The Proposal”. Whoever heard of a Canadian getting deported? If Sandra Bullock doesn’t get a decent role soon, she’ll be hosting the Comedy Central roast of Kathy Griffin. Anne Fletcher, who also directed “Step Up and 27 Dresses”, directs the movie. Wow. I will probably go see “Dead Snow”, which tells the story of a group of vacationing medical students who must face a horde of Nazi zombies; sort of like what often happens at reproductive health clinics in America.

Iran, Iran So Far Away

As long ago as 728 B.C.E. there was a Supreme Leader in Iran. That particular leader, Cyaxares, was based in Ecbatana, near the modern Iranian city of Hamedan in West-Central Iran. Nebuchadnezzar married one of Cyaxares’ daughters (apparently Babylonians did fun stuff other than tormenting the Jews). Cyaxares smacked down an assortment of Syrians, Armenians, Mesopotamians and Philistines on the way to establishing an empire that stretched from modern-day central Turkey to northwest Pakistan. There is no record of any elections being held during Cyaxares’s reign, but one could well imagine that they probably wouldn’t have been democratic, primarily since Democritus hadn’t been born yet.

The Persians have had a whole bunch of Supreme Leaders since then, a lot of them with really cool names like Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes. Alexander the Great ran the joint for a while, but he died from a hangover in Nebuchadnezzar II’s palace less than three years after he spanked the Achaemenid Emperor Darius into retirement. The Persians were subsequently overrun by, in no particular order, Arabs, Turks, Mongols and Ayhotollahs. Ultimately, Iran rid itself of out-of-town Supreme Leaders and installed the home-grown version.

It is almost unavoidable that the people of Iran now find themselves in a state of political turmoil. They have a political system that is only slightly less complex than hiding three girlfriends from each other. The organizational chart looks like the schematics for the Enterprise’s transporters and even the Supreme Leader doesn’t really understand what it is that he is leader of. It is so confusing, that many Iranians have found themselves smashing their own heads during their protests in the streets of Tehran.

As near as I can determine, it goes something like this; the Supreme Leader is appointed by the Assembly of Experts. The Supreme Leader appoints the heads of the military, the judiciary, domestic security and the Guardian Council. The Supreme leader serves until he quits, dies or is chased into exile by bearded militants. He wears a boss-looking turban and robes, which could hide all sorts of contraband. There have only been two Supreme leaders since the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in 1979, neither of which was named Bush or Clinton. The Assembly of Experts is comprised of 86 “learned” religious leaders who are elected in established districts by popular vote. However, the Guardian Council, which, as we already know, is appointed by the Supreme Leader, gets to decide who can run for the Assembly of Experts. The Assembly also decides issues related to the application of Islamic law, which have some significance in Iran, being that it is an Islamic Republic.

The Guardian Council, in fact, gets to decide who can run for all national offices, including Parliament and the Presidency. They also have the authority to void any law passed by the Parliament if it is judged to be contrary to the principles of Islam or the Iranian Constitution. The 280 members of the Parliament are responsible for drafting legislation and establishing the budget, if anybody will let them. The President, who is elected by popular vote, if the Guardian Council lets him run, appoints Cabinet Ministers and bickers with the Parliament. He has no control over the military and apparently cannot be more than 5’4” tall.

In summary, the Supreme Leader appoints the people that decide if the people who appoint him can be elected by the people, but only after he is already appointed. The Assembly of Experts has all the power, but only if the people appointed by the Supreme Leader allow them to run for the powerful position. The Guardian Council, who are appointed by the guy who is appointed by the people who they get to decide are acceptable to seek the authority to make the appointment also gets to tell the Parliament whether or not it can do what it already did. Meanwhile, the President, the guy causing all the current turmoil, can’t order the military to do anything and can only politely ask the Parliament to pass a bill which will then be reviewed by the Guardian Council which is appointed by the Supreme Leader who is elected by the Assembly of Experts who were approved by the Guardian Council who were appointed by the Supreme Leader.

There is little wonder the citizens of Iran have taken to the streets. The only real question is whether they even know what city they are in.

In Memoriam

A sad event transpired yesterday at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. when a security officer at the museum, Stephen Johns, was killed by a delusional old man who had spent most of a life-time being twisted and deformed by irrational and poisonous hatred. I won’t bother to mention the name of the pathetic wretch who apparently thought he could ease his own pain by inflicting that pain on others, but he was a well known adherent of the type of self-indulgent paranoia that paints anyone “different” as hostile and threatening and subscribes to the almost occultist fantasy that there is something akin to Biblical literacy in our country’s founding documents which can only be divined by those who are ideologically pure. To call someone crazy is perhaps too exculpatory for a man who had willfully cultivated his own madness through practiced years, but he definitely wasn’t right in the head.

There has, of course, been a great deal of public dialog about this as average Americans seek to put the event in context and determine its meaning and significance, while others with specific objectives attempt to influence interpretation of the event. The range of perspectives presented is a panorama of the American political spectrum with every possible view from outrage to satisfaction being expressed by somebody, somewhere. The usual suspects of television and radio political commentary of every stripe have weighed in with their own learned assessments and insight into the causes of Stephen Johns’ murder and its implications. America is truly a wonderful place. Speaking of which, in the United States of America, there have been an average of over 40 murders each and every day of the past ten years. Each of these thousands of murders is its own story of tragedy and failure which has left devastation and loss in its wake. This does not diminish the import of Mr. John’s death, nor does it minimize the danger represented by the philosophy which resulted in Mr. John’s death, but it does suggest to me that metaphysical panic and frenzied introspection resulting in finger pointing and the hysterical prognostication of civil Armageddon may not be justified.

Our nation and most of the world are in the grip of a serious economic dysfunction which has resulted in widespread loss of wealth, employment and confidence in the future. None of this is in any way unprecedented and most rational people believe the situation will correct itself eventually, but it is well documented that in times of economic hardship modern societies tend towards fear-mongering, blame-fixing and violence. There are not more nuts in America today than there were last year or the year before, they are just a little more broke and a little more desperate, like most of the rest of us. I offer this as a counterpoint to the idea that Right-Wing extremism is on the rise in America. Strident voices of intolerance and hate are certainly more vocal than they have been in some time, but I believe this is principally because they greatly fear that the application of reason and equity will put them out of business; the leaders of the disaffected must have a flock in order to turn a profit and if peace and prosperity break out, they might have to get a real job.

I have listened with both amusement and revulsion (which often go hand in hand for me) to voices on the left who say that the blather of vacuous con men on the right is provoking violence, and the voices on the right who claim that President Obama’s leftist ruination of America is resulting in hopeless frustration and violence by people who love their country too much. I don’t subscribe to either view; I don’t think anybody can get whipped into frenzy by AM radio, the reception is too crappy. Nobody with extreme views really much listens to what anybody else says anyway; they are consumed by their own internal dialog and they would hear a reinforcing message from the elderberry bushes or the neighbor’s dog if the cynical self-promoters of hate radio weren’t available. For my friends on the left, however, I would admonish you not to fall into the pattern of Dick Chaney’s thoughts and believe all our problems will be solved if we can just identify and quarantine the corrupting influences in society. Hate speech is as fundamentally American as a three-day drunk, and we will not be stronger, freer or safer by silencing anyone. Acerbic wit and public ridicule are much more potent than censorship.

And finally, the real story here is that we have missed the real story here. Some nut went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. with the intent of perpetrating an act of violence to send a pointed message of hate against Jews and blacks and liberals and pretty much anybody decent. This act is not special or noteworthy; the Jews of the world will certainly tell you that this was just a tiny sliver of a more massive and unfathomable tragedy, which is unhappily and endlessly repeated by we who bear the mark of Cain. The real story is that a guy named Stephen Johns, a guy who before yesterday very few of us knew existed, a guy who surely had hopes and aspirations and a million reasons to live, became a guy who stepped forward and accepted responsibility, put aside his own selfish fear and shielded the innocent from chaos, destruction and death and, in that moment, became infinitely more than the pale, creaking evil that took his life.

Political Potpourri

While I have been contemplating hagfish, amphibious assaults and jury duty for the past couple of weeks, the political life of the nation has rolled on in its usual inimitable fashion. I actually spend a lot of time trying to find things to occupy my mind other than my frustration and disappointment at our failure to live up to the ideals of our founding fathers, and the sadness of how often those ideals are twisted into unrecognizable distortions by selfish and ignorant people, but my therapy is writing down my thoughts for the whole world to ignore, so, at random, here:

Dr. George Tiller was recently murdered by some douche-bag moron. Dr. Tiller was one of the few physicians remaining in America willing to perform late-term abortions. These abortions were, based upon court review, legal, and were sanctioned by the medical profession based upon a set of criteria for necessity which were consistently met by Dr. Tiller’s patients. Whatever a person’s opinion of the morality of such procedures may be, if you respect the law, you have to operate within the law. If you don’t respect the law, you are a scum-bag. Period. The implied natural right to revolution against authority for just cause does not extent to imposing your own individual morally arguable views by force. Revolutions, like all things in a democratic society, must be democratic; one man does not get to decide who lives and who dies, no matter how strongly held their beliefs are. God knows there are plenty of people in this world that I would like to take a chainsaw to, but that would be surrender to primitivism, which is unacceptable. Fortunately, the leaders of the national anti-abortion movement distanced themselves from the cowardly act by saying “we didn’t have the guts to do it ourselves, but we aren’t unhappy it happened”.

Speaking of scum-bags, Newt Gingrich, the moral and intellectual light-house of the Republican Party, recently said that the idea of being a “citizen of the world” is “intellectual nonsense and stunningly dangerous”. I am tempted to simply say that such a statement stands on its own and needs no commentary from me, but it occurred to me that Dr. Gingrich has been living in some other world for quite some time now, so maybe he already has citizenship there. I’m not going to bother bemoaning the arrogance and xenophobia represented by such clever remarks; I will just point out that Hammurabi and Rousseau were not Americans; Martin Luther and General Lafayette were not Americans, and Jesus Christ was not an American. Oswald Spengler and Benito Mussolini were also not Americans, but they sure seem to permeate Dr. Gingrich’s philosophical musings. I guess we will have to wait for the next meeting of the American Liberty League for more of the wisdom emanating from Dr. Gingrich’s bloated ego.

Our President (the one I actually voted for) recently gave a speech in Egypt were he espoused principles of fairness, accountability, practical realism, managed co-existence and compromise. These horribly anti-American ideas were roundly criticized by people like “The Dick” Cheney, who noted that calls for fairness and reason were tantamount to surrender to our enemies; which, from his perspective, must certainly be so, since Mr. Cheney’s principle enemies have always been fairness and reason. Many Americans expressed concern on how Blackwater would make its payroll if people started following President Obama’s dangerous ideas and quit killing each other. Fortunately, there is not much probability of that.

The controversy over President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court continued to simmer, much to the apparent disinterest of most everybody but Republican Senators and the news media. Sotomayor, who once had the almost comical temerity to suggest that a diversity of backgrounds and views might enhance the quality of a public policy debate, has a documented history of trying to make sense of the law, which should disqualify her from any responsible position in the American justice system. She will, however, probably be confirmed by the Senate, because they can’t get the very popular autographed pictures of the President for their constituents if they don’t.

Most everybody has forgotten that the people of Minnesota are still being taxed without equitable representation since they only have one Senator an almost full seven months since the disputed election between Norm Coleman, the incumbent and the well-known intellectual Al Franken. I have to confess that I will support anybody that writes a book about how lame Rush Limbaugh is, so I am hardly an objective observer of the process, but I do know that Al Gore had the class to put the interest of the nation above his own, something Mr. Coleman apparently didn’t notice. Doesn’t anybody in America know when they are making an ass of themselves anymore?

Adlai Stevenson was once quoted as saying “I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends; that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them”. While I certainly endorse the sentiment, I cannot honor such an agreement. As I approach half a century on the divine planet Earth, I have less and less tolerance for the greed, ignorance, indifference and foolishness of people. I know that the reality is much more complex than just Republican versus Democrat and I know that Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi are no alter-boys; I am pretty imperfect myself, but we can no longer afford, as a nation or a planet, philosophies rooted in fear, arrogance and mediaeval thinking. I’m not sure if there is a God, but I do know payback is a bitch and my children, all of our children, are now going to have to deal with the thing that is scratching at the door.

Twelve Angry Men

I recently had the enlightening experience of being called for Federal jury duty. The process struck me with awe at the fact that in out nation regular, average ordinary every-day run-of-the-mill people get to actually decide what is right and wrong and who is guilty or innocent, not a bunch of obtuse government lackeys. At the same time, the process disappointed me with the extent to which the system was manipulated by attorneys representing all sides in order to empanel the most insipid group of know-nothings available. I guess you can tell I didn’t get chosen to serve.

Before I continue with my tirade, I have to offer several disclaimers in case anybody who was actually selected to serve traces this back to me. I freely concede that being a stay at home mother or childless homemaker doesn’t mean you are stupid. I recognize that being a retired blue-collar worker does not imply you are ignorant or incapable of proper reasoning and that having spent your entire professional career as an administrative assistant doesn’t define you as slow-witted or subject to being manipulated by cynical, tricky lawyers. I freely concede all this and more, but I still reserve the right to assign some value to education and training and practical experience with complex analysis and the application of standards, statutes, codes, policies or processes.

This was the fourth time in my life that I was called for jury duty and I have yet to be selected. I have no recent criminal record, to speak of, am not hideously disfigured, bathe regularly, enunciate clearly, have a stable record of professional employment, have a graduate education, don’t willingly associate with most attorneys, take all my medications regularly, and don’t intermittently suffer from inappropriate verbal outbursts or uncontrollable jerking motions. I would go so far as to say that if you are innocent of the accusations or have been treated unfairly in a business deal, I am the one person you would absolutely want on your jury. On the other hand, if you are really guilty or are some sort of douche-bag, you don’t want me anywhere near the courtroom (unless you are Salma Hayek, in which case I will never find you at fault).

In this particular case, which was a civil matter involving a debt collection, there were 18 perspective jurors selected for interrogation by the judge and the attorneys involved; eight were ultimately empanelled, six jurors and two alternates. These eight individuals represented the least educated, least professionally accomplished and least knowledgeable possible aggregation of the initial 18 candidates. I am sure they were all lovely people who pay their taxes and treat animals and small children well, but I would not have wanted them passing judgment on any claim I might make under a U.S. statute. This selection would, of course, not be completely unexpected if the plaintiff’s attorney felt that they had a weak case or if the defendant’s attorney thought their client had violated the applicable statute, but they couldn’t both simultaneously be seeking the most vapid and malleable jurors, could they? Why resort to sophistry and obfuscation when the facts are on your side?

It is true that I am not an expert in civil or criminal procedure and that I don’t really understand the dynamics of the jury selection process with its myriad of preemptory and for cause challenges, and I have not examined the empirical data correlating juror demographics and jury voting behavior, so maybe I am the insipid one in this equation, but I cannot think of a single line of reasoning that dictates that the less education and professional accomplishment one has, the better able one is to draw a logical conclusion from a given set of facts. I don’t believe this line of reasoning constitutes intellectual elitism; after all, almost every one of us runs to the doctor when we have a lump on the side of our neck; we don’t ask the administrative assistant to examine it.

The loquacious Roman lawyer Cicero is quoted as postulating that “the foundation of justice is good faith”. I can’t really see where trying to exclude the people from a jury who are least likely to be baffled by bullshit is acting in good faith, but then I am gravely ambivalent about the entire expanse of issues related to an attorney’s obligation to their client versus their obligation to the abstract ideal of “justice”. On the other hand, Clarence Darrow said that “justice has nothing to do with what goes on in a courtroom; justice is what comes out of a courtroom”, so maybe I am making a big deal out of nothing and just magnifying my own petty resentment into a public policy issue; of course, that would make me a Republican, wouldn’t it?

Global Cooling

Jonah Berger from the University of Pennsylvania and Gaël Le Mens from Stanford University and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona have recently published a study that examines the dynamics of unpopularity. Having myself periodically experienced unpopularity throughout my life; I am nonetheless generally clueless about its dynamics, which is perhaps why I continue to experience it. Messrs. Burger and Le Mens have ironically determined that unpopularity is the result of a rebellious streak in Homo sapiens and reflects the desire to distinguish one’s own preferences from those of the rest of the ignorant jamokes that populate the earth.

Now that I think about it, I may have completely mischaracterized the nature and findings of the study, perhaps in an effort to elicit sympathy for myself; the reality is that the study actually addresses how and why things loose popularity, which in general doesn’t apply to people like me because you usually have to have something in order to loose it, except perhaps virginity, which is another blog entirely. Burger and Le Mens postulate that there is a correlation between the process by which something gains popularity and the speed and extent to which it loses popularity.

To completely over-simplify, things which gain popularity slowly over a long period of time, like Tony Bennett for example, tend to have greater staying power. Things like Pokémon and pointy shoes, which rocket to popularity, tend to fade more quickly. This is not entirely counter-intuitive, but the interesting thing is the underlying mechanism for this loss of popularity. It appears, surprisingly, that people have a natural aversion to being “trendy”. The more something is perceived as being of temporary popularity, the more people will try to disassociate themselves from it. The subsequent rapid loss of popularity is the product of this self-fulfilling prophecy; if people believe something “is just a trend”, it is likely to be just a trend. Burger and Le Mens principally analyzed data for the popularity of baby names to reach their conclusions. They found that nobody names their kids Brittany and Tyler anymore, but I also notice that nobody names their kids Jebediah or Mortimer anymore either, unless they really hate them, but perhaps this just indicates that things that were never popular remain unpopular indefinitely, no matter how cool they might be in the abstract.

What this all says to me is that people tend to surf the popularity wave seeking to jump off at the apogee of public absorption, so that they can at all costs avoid being “so five minutes ago”. What I find interesting about this from a sociological perspective is that it seems that it is more of a trend sin to stick with the fading trend too long than it is to never have adopted the trend to begin with. There are apparently two choices in being cool; you can either actually be cool, in the sense that you have your own unique identity which is not subject to irrelevant social influence or you can stay absolutely current with the latest fads so long as you never ever wear your Crocs one single day too long. Unfortunately, the second method requires so much time, attention and effort that there is no time to try and utilize the first method. Poor Paris Hilton; if only there were 36 hours in a day.

Without any empirical data or supporting analysis of any kind, I would postulate that the work of Burger and Le Mens demonstrates that shallowness and vanity are integral parts of the process of establishing status in the tribe and are vestiges of the point in human societal development when social leadership was more important for what it represented than for what it did; a sense of unity and common purpose were more important than actual competence and a defined line of authority was better than brilliant, but paralyzing, debate.

Sadly, we no longer live in such times; the complexity of society’s dilemmas necessitates a triumph of substance over form and makes mindless conformity an evolutionary dead end. Simply put, human beings continue to suck because by sucking we were able to spread all over the planet, but we have reached the point in the process where continuing to suck will result in being screwed. Like Paris Hilton, sort of.

Rollo's Beaches

Today is the 65th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy in the Second World War. Normandy, by the way, is named for its 9th Century Viking conquerors (aka “North Men”). The Frankish King Charles the Simple ceded the land to Rollo (Robert of Normandy) by treaty in 911 A.D. in exchange for a promise of good behavior. Perhaps that is how Charles achieved the moniker “simple”. The “D Day” invasions began at 6:30 in the morning (British Double Summer Time, whatever that is) and before the day was out over 160,000 American, British, Canadian and Free French troops had established a beachhead which would grow to a deployment of over 1,000,000 men in less than a month. The first day cost 10,000 men killed, wounded or missing, and this was just the first installment of the sacrifice that would be necessary to liberate Western Europe from the grip of ignorance, fear and hatred.

For those of us who view war as one of the more idiotic features of human civilization, the Second World War presents something of a conundrum; it serves as a prime example of a war of moral obligation with a very clear distinction between the good guys and the bad guys. Whatever the historical narrative is that leads to the conflict and however morally ambiguous the actions of every nation, including our own, may have been in the years preceding the conflict, it is difficult to deny that a malignant philosophy of society arose in Germany that was antithetical to every principle of decency and fairness that free nations espouse.

I have often commented on the historical stains on our nation’s character that we have failed to properly acknowledge or address, including slavery, the callous eradication of the Native Americans and our selfish manipulation of the affairs of other nations, but America’s history is a history of moral progress, albeit inconsistent, with each succeeding generation being slightly more humane and enlightened that those that preceded. There are, of course, those who see what I define as moral progress as moral decline, but the fact that we can disagree and still buy Chinese products together at Wal-Mart says a lot about the strength of our commitment to freedom, and that’s why I don’t have my normal reservation about claiming the moral high ground for America in our struggle against European Fascism.

As a veteran of military service who was fortunately spared the violence of war, I have a difficult time imagining the state of mind of those young men filling the landing craft as they made their torturously slow approach to Normandy’s deserted beaches. I don’t know to what extent they even considered the nature of the evil they were confronting or if they felt the weight of the hopes of a continent (including a whole lot of Germans) pressing down on the bodies already burdened by 70 pounds of equipment. I think that Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan did the best job of realistically portraying the horrific nature of the assault, but there is no way that anyone who wasn’t there could ever truly understand what it took to struggle across that beach hand in hand with death.

Of all the animals in God’s creation, perhaps the one we understand the least is ourselves. Our impulse to morality has been dissected by philosophers and neuro-biologists alike, and as a species we have been obsessed with defining and understanding the difference between good and evil in the origins of our own behavior. Sociologists and political scientists have analyzed the dynamics of societies’ actions and the relationships between nations and the conflicts that arise between cultures, but none of this provides much insight into the mind of an eighteen year-old boy who is betting every girl he will ever kiss, every rollercoaster he will ever ride, every 4th of July hotdog, every warm spring day, every ice cold beer, every silent prayer and every life he will ever touch on a roll of the dice on a cold, grey beach in France, and why his soul could never rest if he didn’t.

Inside Game

And now, the hagfish. Despite its less than flattering name, the hagfish may not even be a true fish, being of such ancient lineage that only the lamprey and Ann Coulter can claim close relation. With a face that only H.P. Lovecraft could love, it is one of the few living creatures less appealing than Madonna, and is just as sexually confused. It is, however, a disgustingly fascinating evolutionary success story, and even has a rock band named after it (which allegedly “rocks your lame ass”). Fossils of the hagfish have been found dating back over 330 million years, so its pretty good at its revolting business, unlike Nancy Grace and Michael Steele.

The typical adult hagfish is about 18 inches long, but species range from six inches to four feet in length. Hagfish have elongated bodies, like eels, with no fins. They are functionally blind, with only rudimentary light sensing eyespots rather than compound eyes with focusing lenses. Their vision is similar to Keifer Sutherland’s after a night out in L.A., but since they wallow around in the muck at the bottom of the ocean (as opposed to Ocean Boulevard) they really don’t have much use for baby blues.

Hagfish have a primitive physiology that is more analogous to a worm than a fish. They have four hearts (just one short of a flush) that optimize blood flow to specific organs. The brain is actually located outside of the skull proper and is encased in a fibrous sheath similar to a cornhusk. Their skeletal structure is composed almost entirely of cartilage, with only the primitive notochord being boney. Sadly, this is more backbone than the average elected Democrat has.

The hagfish mouth has no jaws but has two tongue-like structures with embedded teeth that move side to side to scrape flesh from the dinner guest, which is pretty gruesome, but to make up for it they have six to eight tentacle-like appendages surrounding the mouth to assist in grasping the victim. The most notorious feeding habit of the hagfish is its ability to burrow into the body of a wounded host and consume the internal organs while the prey writhes in agony, much like several of my former girlfriends. Hagfish sex tends to be something of a mystery, much like with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Many species are hermaphroditic and basically reproduce asexually. Other species have a female to male ratio of up to 100 to 1, which could be a dream or a nightmare, depending on how honest the males are with themselves.

The great thing about hagfish is that they are prodigious producers of slime. The RNC has nothing on these guys; they secrete a fibrous substance that combines with water to form a viscous, sticky goo that apparently impairs the ability of gills to absorb oxygen, making potential predators rather uncomfortable, and hagfish have a neat trick that would make a Thai prostitute envious; they can actually tie themselves into an overhand knot and pull their body through the knot scraping off the goo as they go. Scientists who dress poorly and live in small apartments are researching the protein component of the goo to see how it might be used to get their freak on, or in other commercial applications.

Usually this closing paragraph is used to make some evocative observation about the pathos or irony of the subject, but there is little whimsy in the hagfish; it is a tough, uncompromising survivor that fills an environmental niche nobody else wants. Humans don’t eat it (except the Japanese, go figure), although it is harvested for its hide, which is deceptively sold as eel skin for wallets and bondage paraphernalia. The most poignant thing that can be said about our friend the hagfish is that they kill each other neither for love nor money, a claim we cannot make.