History – Page 9 – HystericallyBored

1999-05-242022-04-12

“Into Thin Air”: on Climbing Your Ego

For a while, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the only two persons to have set foot on the top of the world’s tallest peak. They did it on June 2, 1953, just before coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The news electrified the world in a way we can hardly imagine today. The North Pole had been found, and the South Pole, and almost every other remote location in the world had been explored and conquered and claimed. British climbers had been trying to ascend Everest for at least 25 years before Hillary and Norgay, using bottled oxygen, finally succeeded.

Since then, there have been more than 615 successful ascents of Mount Everest– and 142 deaths. In 1996 alone, there were 30 expeditions, all up there during the same two-week period in May, the only safe– if you could call it that– time to climb Everest, between the winter snows and the spring typhoons.

So it’s not a very exclusive club any more. Nor is this club confined to extraordinary athletes: in 1985, climber David Breashears escorted a wealthy but fit 55-year-old Texan to the top, proving, so it seemed, that almost any reasonably healthy person could do it. Everest lost some of its lustre and soon serious mountain climbers were going after more exotic records, like “first person to climb the highest mountain on all seven continents” and “first person to climb a mountain on a bicycle” and “first person to actually camp on the summit”, and so on.

Every year now, dozens of climbers make the attempt, and a good number of them make it. It’s become big business, for the guides, for the Sherpas (12 or more required for each expedition), for the climbers (witness the glut of books and films), and for the governments of Nepal and Tibet, the two nations bordering on Everest. These governments charge up to $70,000 for permits for each expedition. Legitimate expenses? Right. Because the government has to cover some costs involved in these expeditions. Do they? So how come volunteers from around the world have to clean up the cast-off oxygen bottles and torn tents? Cash grab? Probably.

Still, it would be a mistake to underestimate the resolve, discipline, courage, and determination required to plant your foot on the highest spot on the planet. One out of five never come back.

It’s not as if you can just take a bus to the base of the mountain and then give it your best shot. The journey to “Base Camp” itself (at 17,500 feet, the starting point for all expeditions to the top) requires a flight to Katmandu, a ride in a battered, aging Soviet helicopter to the town of Lukla, 9,200 feet up, and then a long trek, usually about 3 or 4 days, through mountainous passes and wobbly foot-bridges over winding rivers. There are no Holiday Inns on this journey: you stay overnight in rambling, leaky stone lodges. You may pick up a dangerous parasite if you are not careful about what you eat and drink. And if you do get the runs, you’ll have to relieve yourself in an outhouse– if they’re not overflowing.

All of the supplies necessary for a summit attempt– food, water, oxygen bottles, medical equipment, and radios, and so on, must be laboriously hauled up narrow, winding mountain paths by yaks.

There is only about 1/2 as much oxygen in the air at base camp as there is at sea level. Above 25,000 feet, there is only 1/3 as much. Climbers must slowly acclimatize themselves to the thin air, a process than can take up to eight weeks, of grueling excursions up and down the lower ranges of the mountain.

The ascent begins with a harrowing trip through the Khumbu Icefall, a unstable white maze of fractured glacier and towering seracs that has taken more lives than any other part of the mountain, including the summit. In some places, climbers must walk across three or more rickety aluminum ladders strapped together over a crevasse hundreds of feet deep. The glacier itself moves 3 to 4 feet every day, and is covered with a thin layer of snow and ice that can conceal treacherous gaps.

After a few trial runs, you camp above the glacier in temperatures that can descend to -20 C. Then climbers ascend the Lhotse Face, a sheer icy wall of 3000 feet, and camp about halfway to the top of it, at 24,000 feet.

When someone says “mountain climber” to us, we tend to picture a blonde yodeling alpinist ascending a steep rock face with ropes and pick axe. Most of Everest, however, including the Lhotse Face, is more like a very steep walk. Most climbers attach themselves to ropes strung along the face for safety, but they basically walk up a very steep, hard, icy incline of about 30 degrees. It is the incredible cold, the wind, the snow and ice, and that thin oxygen that makes it so fearsome.

The tents are nestled into little ledges carved out of the ice by the Sherpas. The Sherpas don’t carve out ledges for themselves, though: they prefer to go on up to the South Col at the top of the Lhotse Face and camp where it’s safer.

The film version of “Into Thin Air” (a dramatization– not a documentary) shows Chen Yu-Nan, a Taiwanese climber, coming out of his tent on the Lhotse face clad only in his boot liners. He slips and falls down a hundred feet or so and then drops into a crevasse. In the film, he died then and there, but in real life, he died a few days later, while trying to make his way back to base camp. The Taiwanese team proceeded without him.

Above 20,000 feet, the adventurers travel very slowly, resting every few steps. Many climbers develop a hacking cough, dizziness, and insomnia. If you ascend too fast, you can develop altitude sickness– your body fails to produce enough red blood cells to keep your brain fed. This can also lead to High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE) or High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE). Blood vessels in the brain, starved for oxygen, swell up, causing disorientation, loss of motor functions, and even coma. Climbers lose weight quickly, making them more vulnerable to the cold.

As if that isn’t enough to deal with, the sun and snow combine to create unbearable heat and light during the day, giving climbers splitting headaches and dehydration. Once the sun has gone down, the temperature can drop to 20 or 30 below zero or worse. If you were to spend the night near the summit itself, you might encounter a wind-chill of well below -50. Few of the climbers who have been stranded near the top overnight in a blizzard live to tell the tale or make the talk show circuit.

Keep in mind that, even in this day and age of phenomenal technological breakthroughs, Everest remains one of the most remote places on earth. Helicopters cannot ascend higher than 20,000 feet (the air is too thin to provide thrust to the rotors), so there is no rescue possible for climbers trapped near the summit in a raging blizzard, other than the assistance of your depleted and exhausted fellow climbers.

Much of the current fascination with Everest can be traced to the media coverage of the disaster in 1996, when 12 climbers died over a three-day period. Writer Jon Krakauer was on one of those expeditions and wrote a searing, compelling book on it called “Into Thin Air”. This unusually honest and self-examining account of the many lapses in judgment that led to the disaster unleashed a storm of controversy that continues to simmer today.

Krakauer claims that some of the guides behaved irresponsibly, rushing ahead of their clients to the summit and then descending before their clients were safe. One of the key Sherpas wore himself out carrying 80 pounds of useless communications gear for writer Sandy Pittman so she could send “live” dispatches from the summit. Lines were not strung over the difficult Hillary Step until climbers had been waiting in the freezing cold for 90 minutes– a delay that may have cost several lives. It is clear that all of these problems were aggravated by the fact that there were 39 people trying to summit on the same morning. Bottlenecks formed. Climbers in difficulty were lost in the crowd. Guides lost track of who was where.

When a storm struck late in the day, two of the expedition leaders, Rob Hall from New Zeeland, and Scott Fisher from the U.S., were trapped on the mountain, along with several exhausted clients. Doug Hansen, a client with the Hall group and a postal worker from Washington State, disappeared and was never found. Andy Harris, a guide with Rob Hall’s group, probably slipped over one of the sheer cliff’s that surround the peak while trying to assist Hall. A group of climbers barely made it back to the South Col, the location of their advanced base camp, but couldn’t locate the tents in the howling wind and snow. They huddled in the cold growing weaker and weaker until ace climber Anatoli Boukreev (who had descended early, ahead of his charges) found them. Beck Weathers and Yasuko Namba (the oldest woman to ever summit Everest) were left for dead. The others were almost carried back to the camp.

The next day, to the utter astonishment of Krakauer and the others, Beck Weathers walked into camp under his own power. He was put into a tent and made as comfortable as possible, but it was expected that he would not last the night. The next day, he was found lying in the open– his tent had collapsed and torn away in the night and his sleeping bag was half off. He had been shouting for help for hours but nobody had been able to hear him. He ultimately lost his hand and nose to frostbite.

Ed Viesturs and David Breashears, who were waiting at the base camp to make their own summit bid, helped rescue Weathers, an action that became a bit of a sub-plot of the IMAX film. Viesturs and Breashears did a good thing, but the film plays coy with the facts. You are left with the impression that Beck Weathers got into trouble and Viesturs and Breashears heroically rescued him, and that was that. The IMAX film glosses over the rest of the disaster, partly because real disasters don’t sell very well, are complicated to explain, and raise questions about the whole idea of celebrating a summit of Everest.

A few days after Weathers was helicoptered to Katmandu from base camp, Viesturs, Breashears, a Spanish woman named Aracelli Segarra, and Jamling Norgay, the son of Tenseng Norgay, the first Sherpa to summit Everest, made their own successful summit.

The Viesturs team made a film of the trip for IMAX. It’s a big disappointment. For one thing, Viesturs got ahead of the team and reached the summit without benefit of cameraman. So what was supposed to be the climax of the film ends up being a verbal footnote. And when Segarra and Norgay make the top with the camera-man, you are left with the absurd impression that they filmed themselves. They celebrate, embrace, look out over the world, while the narrator trills their accomplishment… and you wonder who the heck is filming this, and why haven’t they said anything about him? How did he get there? Wasn’t that remarkable? Why are you pretending he isn’t there?

* * *

Many people don’t think much of the idea of climbing Everest. Why risk your life for an achievement that is completely symbolic, and of no scientific or humanitarian value whatsoever? Why should we feel sorry for climbers who die on Everest, when it is plain that their goals are entirely ego-centric?

The Viesturs expedition tried to patch a gloss of scientific necessity to the risk they took, much the way Robert Ballard tried to make his efforts to find the Titanic look useful and valuable, and NASA tried to make manned space missions seem necessary. But it is clear that there are really only two reasons people climb Everest. Firstly, to gratify one’s ego: I climbed Everest. Wow. Secondly, (and less dubiously), for the sense of personal accomplishment.

I have some respect for those who climb for the sense of personal accomplishment. It is still a remarkable achievement, of endurance, determination, and mental stamina. As I read through Krakauer’s book, I found myself experiencing an odd sense of longing for that bleak, windswept, arctic landscape near the top of Everest.

But I found that sense diminished when I considered that there would probably be another two dozen climbers up there at the same time.

Krakauer’s book is a powerful antidote to any illusions you might have about mountain climbing. It is a very rare little gem: an honest, intelligent book about sports– for that is what mountain-climbing really is– competition. Who got there first? Who did it the fastest? Who did it the most? Krakauer’s book has soul.

1999-05-202022-04-12

George Leigh Mallory

George Mallory was the mountain climber who, when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, replied, “Because it is there.” This has generally been taken to mean– “because it exists, because it is a challenge, because it has been put before us as something we must conquer!” In fact, he may have simply been expressing his exasperation at hearing the same question over and over again. “Because it’s there… Stupid.”

Mallory was lost somewhere high on the North side of Everest on June 8, 1924. A few weeks ago, his body was found by an expedition filming a tv special for PBS’s NOVA. It is remarkably well-preserved. The exposed skin is ivory white, smooth, and hard. He appears to have fallen: one leg is broken, and there is a shoulder injury, and he is facing down, his arms spread out as if he was trying to stop himself from sliding down the mountain. It looks like he fell, injured himself, and then just lay there for some time, waiting for the inevitable end. It was a sad, lonely way to die.

There was no sign of Irvine. Another intriguing mystery: did his climbing partner Sandy Irvine, see the fall? Did they both fall (they were likely tethered) and end up in different locations? Did Irvine survive the fall and set off on his own to descend only to become lost?

Mallory, as noted, was lost on the North side. Most expeditions to Everest nowadays (and the first successful expedition in 1953) follow a route up the South side, considered more accessible, but back in 1924, foreigners were generally not permitted into Nepal.

The location of the body raises the intriguing question of whether Mallory and his partner Andrew Irvine may have summitted before disaster struck on the way down. Nobody knows. The last person to see them alive, Noel Odell, reported that they were within a few hours of the summit at about 1:00 p.m. When his body was found, his sun-goggles were stuffed into his shirt pocket. That suggests that it was past daylight at the time he fell. And the location of the body, well below where he was last seen, suggests that he was on his way down, not up, at the time of the accident.

There is a very difficult notch in the summit ridge just below the peak, an almost vertical climb of 80 feet or so. The problem with the theory that Mallory summitted is the question of how he got over that notch. In the early 1960’s, the Chinese finally got over the notch by pushing a man up through a crevice, but he had to use his bare hands to make it and suffered some frostbite. Once they got a man up there, they tied a ladder in place, and almost all climbers since have used the ladder. (How does that play with your perception of just how athletic mountain climbers are?) However, the team that found Mallory’s body is incorrect in saying that nobody else has ever climbed the North Ridge without the ladder: last year, another expedition, finding the ladder damaged, did manage to climb it, as did a member of the expedition sent to find Mallory’s body. So he could have done it.

If he had not been able to climb the step, then he would probably have turned around well before daylight expired, and thus would not have tucked his goggles away into his pocket before reaching the slope where his body was found. It’s an intriguing mystery. History may yet be rewritten.

On the other hand, as some, including his son, have pointed out, it’s getting back down alive that counts.

The answer may be contained in Mallory’s camera, if they can find it. Kodak says they can probably develop the film, even after 75 years.

Mallory’s body was left on Everest. That is a tradition among climbers that is the product of necessity: it is very difficult to recover bodies from the unforgiving mountain. He is among the first of 142 bodies currently residing on the majestic mountain.

2013-06-21

Let’s dust a bit of the blather about nobility and honor and class off this story, shall we? At least one excellent climber (Richard B. Graham) was excluded from the team because he was a Quaker and hadn’t participated in the slaughter of World War I. Another was excluded because he was Australian (George Ingle Finch) and, ho ho, pip pip, I say, we can’t have a bloody Australian on the summit along with an Englishman! It’s just not British!

Wikipedia describes how Mallory and Irvine, after failing to climb Everest or to return, were acclaimed as “national heroes”. That’s really quite fascinating. It certainly isn’t the result of a great achievement, because many other men ascended as far as they did without conquering the summit and none of them have been acknowledged as heroes. I think it is a rationalization. They died. Their lives must not have been wasted in a frivolous attempt at personal or national glory. Therefore, they are “heroes”. To say otherwise makes you disloyal and disrespectful.

1999-05-102022-04-12

Quagmire

The U.S. likes to call itself the “World’s Only Superpower”. Superpowers, of course, have responsibilities. Right now, for example, there is a disastrous civil war taking place in Sierra Leone, the poorest nation on the face of the earth. At least 100,000 civilians have been driven into refugee camps and are facing starvation or cold-blooded murder. Where is the world’s cop? At home debating a stained dress.

A few years ago, a civil war broke out in Rwanda, which led to the deaths of more than 200,000 people. Where was Uncle Sam?

When civil war broke out in Bosnia, George Bush took one look, heard the word “quagmire” whispered somewhere softly in the wings, and ran for cover. Not only did he not support military intervention—he actually tried to prevent the Bosnian Moslems from acquiring weapons with which to defend themselves against Serb aggression. But, hey, Bush had “character”, whatever that was.

Every time the U.S. considers military intervention in some far-flung part of the globe, a chorus of nay-sayers (including Colin Powell generally) raises their voices and squawks the one magic word that stops the Pentagon dead in their tracks every time: QUAGMIRE.

The application of the word “quagmire” to Viet Nam first occurred, as near as I can tell, in the title of David Halberstam’s excellent book on the subject, “The Making of a Quagmire”, which was published—get this – in 1965. Yes, eight years before the U.S. began its exit. That is a remarkable piece of foresight.

Unfortunately, contemporary journalists don’t understand what the problem with Viet Nam really was. They think the problem was that most Americans didn’t really, heartily support the war. They think the Viet Cong were so unrelentingly savage that our “good” boys, with their innate decency and “character”, were corrupted by their involvement.

The real problem was that we chose, as usual, the wrong side to support. In 1954, the remnants of post WW II Viet Nam, were partitioned by the United Nations into a North and South, under two different governments. The keystone of this agreement was a promised election in 1956 which would be fair and open and involve all opposition groups, and which would reunite the two partitions into one nation under one government.

Unfortunately, the regime of President Diem, which ruled the South with the support of the French, realized that it could not control the results of the election and postponed it. Diem also began to systematically repress all opposition political leaders and parties. When it became clear that he had no intention of giving up power, the remnants of the army that had liberated Viet Nam from the Japanese (the Vietminh) began organized opposition to the regime. The French were unable to dislodge the Vietminh so the Americans thought they would give it a try. They believed that the Chinese and Russians were aiding the Vietminh, and that if Viet Nam fell to the communists, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, and the rest of Asia would be sure to follow: the infamous Domino Theory.

At first, the Vietminh included a diverse coalition of political forces, including socialists, Catholics, and other democratic movements. But the corruption of the Diem government and the intensity of the fighting soon polarized the competing forces until the Vietminh, under the umbrella of the National Liberation Front led by Nguyen Huu Tho, was dominated by communists.

The Diem regime never did control the countryside around Saigon. South Viet Nam’s army, the ARVN, was commanded by political appointees more loyal to Diem than to their own generals or the war effort itself. They were arrogant and oppressive and they alienated the peasants who lived in the small villages around the Mekong Delta. As a result, the Viet Cong were easily able to operate, hide, and control large areas of the countryside.

The American “advisors” sent by Kennedy were efficient and sensible, but some of the most important early military initiatives were hamstrung by ineffective local leadership and corruption. U.S. ambassador Nolting continued to send cheery reports back to Kennedy, while reporters (including legendary figures like Peter Arnett, David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, and Francois Sully), who actually traveled into the battle zones, were accused of disloyalty for reporting what they saw. What they saw were villagers who were hostile to government forces, ARVN battle groups that avoided fighting whenever they could, incompetent commanders, and bad planning. They saw an insurgent force that was quick, efficient, and brutal, and which commanded the respect and loyalty of the general population. They saw, at the battle of Ap Bac, 200 guerrillas defeat a combined force of U.S. and ARVN regulars ten times their number. Halberstam was one of the first to realize that the combination of domestic politics (Kennedy couldn’t afford to look “soft” on communism) and local corruption, including the dependency of the Diem government on U.S. military support, could lead to a unresolvable situation. It was not necessarily in the best interests of the Diem regime to bring an end to the war.

America was pouring in aid at the rate of $1.5 million a day. A lot of this money lined the pockets of Ngo Dinh Diem and his brothers, Can, Luyen, Thuc, and Nhu, and his sister-in-law, Madame Nhu, and his other cronies. It is quite possible that Diem never was interested in defeating the Viet Cong, thereby removing the incentive for lucrative American aid. It would be hard, otherwise, to comprehend the massive stupidity of the South Viet Namese government.

In June 1963, a Buddhist monk, protesting political and social discrimination against Buddhists by the Catholic Diem and his brothers, doused himself with gasoline and set himself ablaze in a public square in Saigon. This signaled the beginning of a summer of protest by Buddhists that gained increasing popular support. Diem’s response? His soldiers broke into Buddhist temples, looted their treasuries, and arrested Buddhist monks and nuns. A move more calculated to incite mass protests and rioting could not be imagined. On November 1, 1963, with tacit U.S. approval, a group of conspirators under the leadership of General Duong Van “Big” Minh turned their troops on Saigon and drove towards the Presidential palace. Diem was captured and killed. Seven more coups or attempted coups would follow. The quagmire was in full tilt. The U.S., blindly, foolishly, willfully plunged into the greatest debacle of its history.

When General Colin Powell talks about Bosnia, he tries to sound like some wizened old war horse who’s seen it all and can’t be fooled into risking the valuable lives of his young, well-trained killers on some frivolous mission to merely save people’s lives. He talks about Viet Nam, as if he thinks he understands all there is to learn from that experience, but experience doesn’t teach you right from wrong. Sometimes, he merely sounds resentful of the military disgrace. One senses, beyond the petulance, a fundamental commitment to the selfsame principles that caused the Viet Nam debacle in the first place, namely, that the guiding principle of foreign policy should be military strategy. At times he sounds like the living embodiment of Metternich’s dictum: “War is too important to be left to the politicians.”

The failure of the U.S.’s involvement in Viet Nam was entirely due to the social, cultural, and political realities of South East Asia. The U.S. made only sporadic and half-hearted attempts to force the South Vietnamese government to try to develop some kind of popular support. When Diem refused to fight corruption in his own government, reform his armies, and win the loyalty of the hamlets and villages in the Vietminh dominated areas of the countryside, the U.S. should have walked away, with the realization that victory was not only unlikely, but impossible.

What does “quagmire” mean in terms of current realities? The key difference between Viet Nam and Rwanda and Bosnia and Sierra Leone is that the latter three nations are not proxies for a world superpower conflict. They do not require the U.S. to make an alliance with unsavory dictators, and pour in military aid to prevent some expansionist foe from gaining the upper hand. And Russia is not only not interested in manipulating the crisis, but incapable of financing proxies. Cuba is out of the picture. China cares only about internal security. The U.S. is free to intervene on behalf of freedom, peace, and justice for all. They are free to be the good guys. How ironic that they no longer want to play.

March 22, 1999

Well, NATO has finally decided to try to stop the Serbs from “cleansing” Kosovo. And some critics, like Senator John McCain—future Republican presidential candidate– are already complaining that the U.S. does not have a credible exit strategy. Look, folks, we just got here!

A more interesting question is this: will the NATO attacks lead to peace? Will the Serbs be more willing to negotiate now? If bombs and missiles are so effective, why is Saddam Hussein still ruling Iraq? Won’t this lead to intransigence, and a brooding hatred for all things American, and an intensified desire to defy NATO, knowing full-well how unlikely it is that we will ever see ground troops?

The inherent absurdity of bombing Serbia into submission is that bombing does not threaten the interests of the ruling class. Ruling classes everywhere know how to ride disaster: you reinforce the troops, barricade the palaces, and control the distribution of scarce goods—ensuring that you yourself will never suffer the slightest privation. The war footing ensures the success and acceptance of martial law. The crisis justifies harsher repression than usual. Milosevic cannot be threatened unless bombing reduces his country to total ruins and the people rise up in rebellion against him. But NATO cannot go that far, for it would be charged with committing atrocities against civilians, and it would almost eliminate the possibility of any kind of peaceful coexistence afterwards, between the Serbs and the Kosovars. So NATO must be content to strike military targets.

Slobodan Milosevic will be unmoved by the destruction of military installations and buildings as long as he can maintain his control over the army and government. I suspect that the only way he can be prevented from carrying out further atrocities is for NATO to invade with ground troops. At this point, NATO seems extremely reluctant to make that step.

March 31, 1999

And now they have hostages. Three American soldiers captured in Albania. And Bill Clinton goes on TV and announces that that is why he doesn’t want to bring in ground troops. He might as well say to Milosevic, “if you can tolerate the bombing for a few more weeks, we’ll eventually get frightened and go home.”

The whole point of intervention was to force Milosevic to stop the “ethnic cleansing” of Kosovo. I don’t know why anybody would have thought at any time that bombing alone would achieve this objective, when it has not achieved anything like that anywhere else in the world where it has been used (with the exception of Japan, after Hiroshima and Ngasaki).

And if the Americans are going to panic with every single casualty, they might as well go home right now, and relinquish the title of “World’s sole remaining superpower” because a superpower has a responsibility and a superpower does whatever it takes to stop genocide.

1999-03-312022-04-11

The Expanding Universe and Leonard Cohen

I just have to remark on how interesting it is that the universe is expanding. I know– you think Bill’s off on another one of his pointless tirades here— but think about it. Until about 1918, almost everybody in the world thought that the universe was essentially static and unchanging. Sure, the earth rotated around the sun and the planets circled in their orbits, but this was part of a complex, mechanistic entity that had been devised by God or nature eons ago and could not be altered. It remained only for science to uncover the rules by which this mechanism operated.

Einstein ran into problems with this view. His theory of relativity should have led him to the conclusion that the universe must be expanding, but he found this concept so odious that he postulated the existence of “anti-gravity”– something that kept the stars and planets from collapsing in upon themselves with the force of gravity.

Unfortunately for everyone, Edward Hubble came along and proved that not only were there more galaxies than just ours, but that almost all the other galaxies were high-tailing it out of here as fast as possible. Hubble used something called the Doppler effect to analyze the position of distant stars. Essentially, the Doppler effect means that sound or light waves decrease in frequency the farther away an object is, and increase when an object moves towards you. Think of a police car siren.

Hubble studied the light waves emitted by the stars and was astounded to discover that almost all of the stars are moving away from us.

Don’t you find this alarming? Imagine you are in a big stadium with 100,000 people. You look around with your binoculars for about two-thousand years and make all kinds of charming observations about people’s different heights and weights and hair colours. You notice that they are moving around, but you think that they’re just circulating around the stadium. Suddenly you begin to realize that all of the people, in all directions, are moving away from you. Furthermore, you suddenly realize that they are all leaving rather quickly. Why are they leaving? Where are they going? Why do they hate us so much? What do they know that we don’t know?

Is there a bomb in the stadium? And nobody told you?

“Four o’clock in the afternoon, and I didn’t feel like very much”. Leonard Cohen, Dress Rehearsal Rag (Songs of Love and Hate)

Would such a line have been possible in a static universe? I don’t think so. I think Cohen knows why they’re leaving. Furthermore, I believe that Cohen is aware of the the effects of time-travel: “The rain falls down on last year’s man”. Could it be that he has uncovered the secret, and went back one year to look at himself? Is that why it “seems so long ago/none of us were very strong”– how would he know that, if he hadn’t found a worm hole, probably somewhere on Clinton street? Why does he claim, “I’ve seen the future, brother, it is murder”?

So, what does it all mean? “You’re living for nothing now/I hope you’re keeping some kind of record.”

Some Christians believe that the expanding universe is proof that God created the world. The idea that all the stars and galaxies are flinging themselves off into infinity faster than the speed of light does indeed suggest that God put out his finger and actualized the entire universe in a blinding flash.

After insisting that the world was flat for 2000 years, and then insisting that it was only 5000 years old (if it was 5000 years old, we wouldn’t see the light from stars that are more than 5000 light years away, even though there are a zillion of them), and that Noah took dinosaurs into the ark, (even though he couldn’t possibly even have had room for every species of insects), and that the sun revolved around the earth, one has to take the church’s pronouncements on science with a small degree of skepticism. On the other hand, the Big Bang is about as apt a description of the idea of “creation”, out of nothing, as any.

Well, I find Hawking very edifying, and I think a lot of what he has to say applies to Leonard Cohen’s songs.

1998-11-192022-04-09

The Feminist Critique of Pure Immanuel Kant

There is an ad in the latest New York Times Review of Books (November 20, 1997) that really shook me up. It is for a book called “The Feminist Interpretation of Immanuel Kant”. It is edited by Robin May Schott, in case you want to order it.

Now, hey, I’d be the first person to say that it’s about time someone over-hauled the old transcendental critique of pure reason, I mean, after all, it’s only been out of date since about fifteen minutes after it was printed, but even I would never have guessed that the feminists would be the ones to put the last nail in the coffin. I’m not sure Immanuel would be pleased. I think he said something like “feminism is destroying our society” or something like that at one point in his career, probably just after his wife left him.

But you know, the next time some dark-minded pundit goes on and on about how our society is just falling apart and things have never been so bad and our youth have really lousy manners, and Hollywood sucks, and so on, I’m going to think about those feminists out there reinterpreting Immanuel Kant and breathe a quiet little sigh of relief. If there is one thing more amazing than any other about our society, its our ability to chew up and regurgitate almost any idea, any image, any concept, and spit it out again as lively and ripe as if it were new.

Like Immanuel Kant. It would have been audacious enough if the feminists had taken on Wittgenstein or Popper, but Kant? So what do the feminists have to say? I don’t know. I haven’t read the book yet. But I’ll bet they accuse Kant of building his entire rigid, rational system of thought on some misdirected patriarchal impulse to rule reality with an iron fist. And I’ll bet the feminists believe that a view of reality more harmonious with natural, empathetic impulses would have worked better. If I remember my college philosophy correctly, Kant was trying to rescue Reason with a capital “R” from Descartes’ radical critique, which consisted of declaring that the only thing you could know for sure was that you existed. Both of them sound a little anal retentive to me. The women probably point out that doing the laundry, cooking, and cleaning, require some pretty fundamental ontological conclusions about cause and effect that can’t be justified by going for a walk every day trying to think up new categories of existence.

Then along comes Sartre who believed we don’t exist in a static sense at all. We are constantly in the state of becoming, and that’s why we are free, unless, of course, your wife expects you home for supper. I’ll bet Simone De Beauvoir had a few precious thoughts about this herself.

Wittgenstein thought we basically constructed a reality in our language, and so our society is really nothing more than a construct of the words we imagine to describe it with. I think the feminists might find a home there. You know how they love to get together and talk. Then there was Martin Heidegger. He believed that mankind had forgotten something very, very important about existence, but what it was we had forgotten he couldn’t seem to remember either, so he joined the Nazi party and continued to teach at a university in Germany throughout World War II. Nothing like a philosophy that stimulates you into positive action! I think the feminists wouldn’t like him. They would think that it’s not that hard to remember the important things, as long as you care about people.

Microsoft Philosophy 1.01

You can tell what philosophy Bill Gates believes in by running a spell check on little known recent philosophers in Microsoft Word and then analyzing the results. Watch:

Philosopher	Result	Meaning
(Martin) Heidegger	headgear	groovy
(Imre) Lakatos	lactose	milk for the mind
(Paul) Feyerabend	no suggestions	vacant
(Albert) Camus	cameos	we only see reality in hazy profile
(Dan) Quayle	quarrel	don’t go into politics
(Hannah) Arendt	aren’t	we don’t exist, unless we’re banal and evil

Hannah Arendt is the only woman on the list, and I don’t think most philosophers would place her next to Heidegger or even Imre Lakatos in terms of importance, but she did come up with one great idea. While in Jerusalem covering the Eichmann trial (Jewish agents had kidnapped Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal, from Argentina and spirited him away to Jerusalem for a show trial), she found herself at a loss for words to describe the utter mediocrity of this minor functionary who was partly responsible for the deaths of six million Jews, so she coined the phrase “banality of evil”*. Later on, she was sorry that she became so well known for that phrase alone. I have to admit, that’s about the only thing I know about Hannah Arendt myself, but I like the phrase, because it captures the idea that incredibly evil things can result from the actions or inactions of people who perceive themselves as being only minor cogs in a big machine. Raul Wallenberg was a minor functionary, but he saved hundreds of lives. Eichmann claimed that he was only following orders. The crew of the Enola Gay were only following orders when they dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima (victors get to write history so we don’t seem to regard them as villains the way we regard the Germans, Italians, or Japanese). The crew of the Titanic sent lifeboats away half-filled because their orders were “women and children first” and the third-class women and children were still below decks, and the only other people present were men.

That’s the way most people behave– just following orders–and that may be the tragedy of the human race.

So if the feminists find a new way of thinking about reality that can convince most people that they should always do the right thing, even when it goes against orders or policy or whatever, then, hey, I’m all in favour of it.

* It appears that Hannah Arendt was wrong. The discover of more information about Adolf Eichmann revealed that he was, in fact, virulently anti-Semitic, and fully on board with the plans to exterminate the Jews.

1998-11-162022-04-11

The Guayaki Indians of Paraguay

In a remote corner of Paraguay, in the 1960’s, lived a tribe of Indians known as the Guayaki. They lived among jaguars, coatis, vultures, peccaries, tree snakes, howler monkeys. The Guayaki abandoned their elderly. They beat menstruating girls with tapir penises in order to make them insanely ardent. Seriously. They practice polyandry (the female has more than one male sexual partner).

A French anthropologist named Pierre Clastres wrote a book about them, “Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians”. Clastres died at the age of 43 in a car crash.

The Guayaki are almost gone now. They numbered a hundred when the Paraguayan government moved them to a remote, uninhabited part of the country. Then 75. Then 40.

When an unusually dark child is born– the grandmother strangles it.

February 2007: thanks to international pressure, including a plea from Elie Wiesel, the Paraguayan government has amended some of its policies and the Guayaki have recovered to a population of about 1500.

Just part of that wonderful panoply of our wonderful species.

1998-09-202022-04-10

The “Heroic” Captain Smith

Almost every movie version of the Titanic renders Captain Smith the same way. Grey-bearded and reserved, dignified, and ineffably tragic. Pictures of the real guy, in uniform, seem to confirm the impression. He had a sparkling career until the Titanic disaster. He ran his ship into an ice berg in the dead of night in calm seas. A small blemish, to be sure.

We prefer J. Bruce Ismay, President of the White Star Line, as the villain of this story. Writers and movie-makers have moved heaven and earth to make it appear as though he was responsible for the disaster, by urging the Captain to go faster. The Cameron movie version blithely sidesteps one precious little detail: the Titanic was not capable of going faster than the “crack” Cunard ships. The Titanic was built for luxury, not speed. There was no chance of it setting any records. Cameron knows that, so he merely leaves Ismay to impress upon Captain Smith that it would be nice if they could arrive a day early. At least some movie-goers, however, are easily confused, and I’ve heard people say, after seeing the movie, that it was Ismay’s fault, for trying to break “the record”.

So, we can put that to rest. Ismay may have urged speed, but the Titanic had no dreams of breaking the record.

That leaves Captain Smith. On the high seas, the Captain has absolute authority. Ismay or no Ismay, it was Smith’s decision to proceed into an area known to be inhabited by large ice bergs at the Titanic’s top speed of about 22 knots. The Titanic had received numerous warnings during the preceding days, from other other ships in the area. Smith’s precautions consisted of posting two look-outs, usual practice on White Star ships. The look-outs did not have binoculars– they had been lost before the ship even reached Cherbourg– but then, binoculars were considered an accessory, not a necessity, at the time. A good look-out was simply supposed to have good eyes.

Nobody will ever know whether the look-outs should have seen the ice berg sooner. The ocean was extremely calm, the sky was very bright. Under those conditions, ironically, ice bergs are a greater hazard, because there is almost no wash at their edges, to make them more visible. Anyway, no one knows if Frederick Fleet was really paying attention or not. We do know that he eventually saw the ice berg, signaled the bridge, and the bridge immediately ordered the engines reversed and the helm brought about. Fleet’s testimony (he survived the disaster) about how far the berg was from the ship when he first spotted it is inconsistent.

He didn’t have a happy life, by the way, after the disaster, and he committed suicide in the 1960’s.

The Titanic was poorly designed. It was a long, cigar-shaped ship, with an undersized rudder. It didn’t respond very quickly to sharp turns. It responded enough to avoid a head-on crash, but then it grazed the ice berg under the water line. The first five compartments of the ship were breeched. Within minutes, Mr. Thomas Andrews, the ship’s designer, knew that it was doomed. The rest is history.

It is here, however, that we are able to take the true measure of Captain Smith. But before we assess Captain Smith’s performance, it is worth, for comparison’s sake, taking a quick look at the actions of Captain Arthur Rostron, of the Carpathia, the ship that picked up the survivors of the Titanic disaster.

Captain Rostron received word of the Titanic disaster around midnight, long before the Titanic sunk. He immediately issued numerous orders. First, to the engine room, to stoke up the boilers and get under way immediately in the direction of the Titanic. Secondly, to the stewards, to roust blankets and supplies. Thirdly, to his officers, to ensure space for the survivors, and calm aboard his own ship, and to prepare for receiving the lifeboats. Fourth, to the wireless operator, to signal Titanic that they were under way. He followed up on his orders to see that they were carried out efficiently. The Carpathia steamed towards the disaster site at full speed, well-prepared to deal with whatever awaited it.

Onboard the Titanic, it was a different story. Smith seemed bewildered, lost, inadequate. His officers came up to him one at a time and asked permission to send flares, prepare the life boats, roust the passengers. He seemed to have no particular views on what should be done. According to testimony at both the British and American inquiries, he generally seemed to nod his head and go, “yes, yes, good idea.”

What should he have done? He should have immediately summoned all of his officers and staff. He should have emphatically specified that each life-boat was to be filled to capacity. He should have dispatched stewards to the third class compartments to arrange for the women and children to reach the boat deck. He should have instructed the officers to ensure that at least four men with some ability or experience were dispatched to each life boat. He should have declared the bar open with free drinks for all the men. Well, just kidding. Maybe. You see, at least one drunk survived a few hours in the sea, probably because the alcohol had thinned his blood.

If he had taken decisive steps, at least 500 more people could have survived the disaster. As it was, only 705 survived out of 2200. The official capacity of the 16 lifeboats was 65 each, or 1040 total. In addition, there were four “collapsible” boats, with a capacity of 24 each, making 96, or 1136 total. With calm seas– and the seas were calm– and a some ingenuity, they could easily have squeezed in an additional 100 above that.

So why do directors and writers continue to portray him as something of a hero? One reason and one reason alone: he went down with his ship, like all good captains do. Going down with the ship is the Captain’s way of saying “Ooops. I made a mistake. I’m really very sorry.” A captain who survives is basically saying, like Ismay, “What? I suppose you’re going to blame me for this?”

We are always willing to forgive those who say I’m sorry. But we also have this blather, from passenger Roger Williams Daniel:

“I saw Captain Smith on the bridge. My eyes seemingly clung to him. The deck from which I had leapt was immersed. The water had risen slowly, and was now to the floor of the bridge. Then it was to Captain Smith’s waist. I saw him no more. He died a hero.”

He died a what?

I think what Daniel is actually saying is, “having contributed nothing in a moment of great crisis, he made up for it by at least not taking up space in a half-filled lifeboat that wasn’t lowered until it was almost too late.”

1998-08-192022-04-10

What a Karacter!

Robert Sibley, a columnist with the Ottawa Citizen, tries, as many Republican and conservative Christian leaders have tried, to argue that President Clinton has significant character flaws that make him unfit to govern.

Aside from this rather brazen snub of the electoral process– the voters have consistently indicated that they approve of his job performance– his argument is seriously flawed in one other significant respect: the greatest presidents of the 20th century all possessed character flaws similar to those of Bill Clinton. If you asked most American voters, and most American historians, who the most effective presidents of the 20th century were, they would almost certainly include Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy (though his term was cut short). They might also include Ronald Reagan, though he left the office after quadrupling the deficit, and Lyndon Johnson, who, in spite of his unpopularity in 1968, had the most aggressive and successful legislative agenda since FDR. All of these five are known to have been unfaithful to their wives.

Who were the worst presidents? Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and George Bush. Unfortunately for Mr. Sibley’s argument, these four were probably, by his definition, the ones with the most “character”, and are believed to have honored their marital vows. Too bad they couldn’t lead.

Sibley goes on to blame Clinton for the nightly news reports on stained dresses and adulterous liaisons. The fact is that the media in Canada rightly regard such activities by Canadian politicians as outside of the public interest and do not report them. It is Kenneth Starr who has decided that the President’s private life should be invaded, and the U.S. media, especially CNN, dutifully– and gleefully– report the salacious details. The Canadian media, rightly and honorably, respects the fact that even politicians are entitled to private lives.

And by the way, isn’t righteous CNN host Larry King working on wife #5?

Neither Newt Gingrich nor Bob Dole, the leaders of the Republican Party, are married to their first wives. But hey, Mr. Sibley, Dan Quayle is! And he is reportedly optimistic that a Republican candidate can defeat Bill Clinton in the year 2000. That would be remarkable indeed, since Bill Clinton can’t run in 2000, having already served two terms.

Nobody likes what Clinton did, but most Americans at least have the good sense to tell pollsters over and over again that they don’t believe they need to hear about it. Maybe they believe that real character includes other attributes, such as respect for privacy, concern for the environment, sound fiscal management (Clinton has the deficit under control), and respect for the expressed wishes of the electorate. Rome is burning while Starr and his Republican satyrs play their twisted fiddles, hoping and praying that what they could not achieve in a fair election or honest discourse can be won with devious snitches and brazen hypocrisy.

1998-06-012022-04-09

Our Enemy, Iraq, Straddles the Globe

And we shall have a mighty victory which the world will celebrate with trumpets and cake.

Here is the map of Iraq published recently in Time Magazine, to get you all excited about the coming victory:

iraq.jpg (10466 bytes)

And here is a more objective rendering of the same area:

world2.jpg (9547 bytes)

Notice something?

Yes, Time Magazine has made Iraq much, much bigger than it should be. That is Time Magazine, my friend, tireless cheerleader for the American military.

1998-06-012022-04-09

The Contrary Bible

Some people believe that the bible is “literally” inerrant– every word is true, no matter what it says. Then they’ll tell you that, as good Christians, we have to reduce immigration and lower the minimum wage. They also believe that if you question even one word of scripture, you thereby call into question everything the bible says. I dispute that. I believe most people with common sense will find the bible more believable if we all acknowledge that some verses just don’t jive.

Another Website on Contradictory Bible Passages

God stops the sun from continuing it’s “orbit” long enough so Joshua can win the battle. I’ll look it up when I get the chance.

Can rabbits chew their cud? Nope. But the author of Leviticus and Deuteronomy thinks they do. Lev 11:4, Deut 14:7

Exodus 20:5 says that children, unto the third and fourth generation, will be punished for the sins of the father. Ezekiel 18 says “the son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son.”

Matthew 20:20 The mother of James and John asked Jesus to reserve a place of honor for her sons. Mark, however, says James and John didn’t need their mom’s help.

Luke 4:31ff Jesus, after preaching in Capernaum, asked his disciples if they were willing to follow him. Mark 1:16-21 says he asked this question before preaching in Capernaum.

Matthew 10:10, Luke 9:3 Did Jesus tell his disciples to take nothing with them on their journey, or a rod?

Who killed Goliath?

You thought it was David? Check 2 Samuel 21:19.

Numbers 18:22 “You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination”

Numbers 19:16: “you shall not go around as a slanderer”.

In regard to illegal aliens (Mexicans):

Numbers 19:33 “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as a citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

Gee, I hope Pat Robertson is out there campaigning for reformed immigration laws.

Appropriate punishment for adultery:

Numbers 20:10 “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.” Did you read that Mike Warnke and Bob Larson? I’ll bet you did.

On Mules

Numbers 19:19: “You shall not let your animals breed with a different kind.” (Mules are a cross-breed.)

On Haircuts

Numbers 19:27: “You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard.”

On counting accurately:

Judges 7.12: “The Midianites and the Amalekites and all the people of the East lay along the valley as thick as locusts; and their camels were without number, countless as the sand on the seashore.”

On Monogamy

Judges 9:30 “Now Gideon had seventy sons, his own offspring, for he had many wives. His concubine who was in Shechem also bore him a son, and he named him Abimelech.”

On Mass Murder and War Crimes

Joshua 11:20 “For it was the Lord’s doing to harden their hearts so that they would come against Israel in battle, in order that they might be utterly destroyed, and might receive no mercy, but be exterminated, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.”

On wearing clothes while you work:

John 21: 7 “When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea.”

On the evils of communism.

The next time someone tells you that the Bible supports free enterprise, ask them to explain this verse. Of course, you shouldn’t be explaining anything in the Bible, right? Isn’t this rather clear all by itself?

Acts 2: 44 “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” and Acts 4:32: “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.”

To the next big donor:

“May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain God’s gift with money!” (Acts 8:21)

On women in church office:

“I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints…(Romans 16:1) Greet Prisca and Aquila, who work with me in Christ Jesus, and who risked their necks for my life…”

On Losers

“God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” (Corinthians 1:27)

On masturbation

“To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.” (I Corinthians 7:8)

On the future:

I Corinthians 7:29ff implies that the world will end shortly.

On compromising with culture

“I have become all things to all people that that I might by all means save some.” (I Cor. 9:22)

On slavery.

“Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. Even if you can gain your freedom, make use of your present condition now more than ever.” (I Corinthians 7:21)

On hats.

“For this reason a woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels” (I Cor. 11:10)

On uncompromising spiritual leaders:

“Love… does not insist on its own way.”(I Cor. 13:5)

On speaking in tongues.

“If no one is there to interpret, let them be silent in church and speak to themselves and to God.”

On women in church:

“Women are to be silent in church. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says”. (I Cor. 14:34)

On Faith vs. Works

“Just as Abraham ‘believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham.” (Galatians 3:6)

Was not Abraham, our ancestor, justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the alter?” James 2:21 “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” (James 2:24)

“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?” (James 2:14)

On the gospel of wealth:

“Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court?” (James 2:6)

and…

“Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted and their rust will bve evidence against you and it will eat your flesh like fire….”

On the minimum wage…

Listen, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.” (James 5:1-5)

On huge expensive churches and office buildings…

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (James 1:27)

On Respect for Bill Clinton

“For the Lord’s sake accept the authority of every human institution, whether of the emperor as supreme or of governors, as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right.” Peter 2:13

On Slavery and Matrimony

“Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle, but also those who are harsh.” Peter 2:18 … wives, in the same way, accept the authority of your husbands… (Peter 3:1)

On the Second Coming, the Last Judgment:

“The end of all things is near…” Peter 4:7

“Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that anti-christ is coming, so now many antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour.” 1 John 18.

For they (the apostles) said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, indulging their own ungodly lusts.” It is these worldly people devoid of the spirit, who are causing divisions. Jude 13:18

On alcohol

“No longer drink only water, but take a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.” 1 Timothy 5:23