tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13773851193262851922024-03-18T20:40:13.007-07:00Refugees From the CityWhen it hits the fan, you will be running <i>towards</i> us. And we aren't happy about it.John the Scientisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03467337009577733553noreply@blogger.comBlogger179125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-33733528659037512532022-07-27T13:53:00.002-07:002022-07-27T15:02:23.581-07:00Orwell was a Naive OptimistI had literally forgotten about this blog... I was searching for something else and it weirdly appeared. It's now a kind of time capsule, reflecting what I and my partner John were thinking about ten to fourteen years ago.
A lot has happened since then.
On November 3, 2008, I wrote:
<blockquote>Today we fear the future and don't want to look at it. We see the future as a place that isn't as good as where we are, or where we just came from. There's a sense that the bright future that earlier generations looked forward to has recently come, and gone. There's lots of evidence that its true.</blockquote>
That was sadly prescient.
In the ensuing years since I wrote those words, I've ceased posting anything on the internet and deleted everything I had ever posted before - with the exception of this blog because I had forgotten about it.
Today we have aggressive censorship of forbidden ideas across all forms of media. I have also engaged in aggressive self-censorship because I see thoughtful people persecuted and jailed for expressing forbidden ideas and I don't want to suffer their fate. I had written a lot more in this post, but deleted it because I'm afraid for what I see happening to other people for expressing their opinions.
I hope that the damage done to the rule of law and our freedom of expression isn't permanent. I don't think it has to be. But here we are in the future and at the moment its looking pretty dark.
Update: You know things are pretty weird when the <a href="https://www.bababam.com/russell-brand-under-skin-russell-brand/202206110401-242-anarchy-and-ideas-change-noam-chomsky">left has lost Noam Chomsky</a>.
CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-67548083184818650082013-07-01T17:45:00.001-07:002013-07-01T17:56:03.184-07:00UVA student arrested for buying waterI haven't been doing a good job of breaking the blogging hiatus... not sure why. I regularly think about things I want to write about, but have a hard time getting around to it. Perhaps the world is moving faster.<br />
<br />
Anyway, today's subject is a case in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/29/college-student-arrested-thrown-in-jail-after-buying-bottled-water/">coed was arrested for fleeing arrest</a> after attempted apprehension by several plainclothes Virginia Alcohol and Beverage Control (ABC) enforcement agents. <br />
<br />
Apparently the ABC agents mistook a carton of bottled water for beer in a darkened parking lot and attempted to apprehend Elizabeth Daly, 20, a student at the University of Virginia. Ms. Daly was fearful the six agents were not legitimate law enforcement officers and were trying to assault her. After all, it was a dark parking lot and she was walking to her car with a carton of bottled water.<br />
<br />
She apparently reached her car and got in, where the ABC agents <a href="http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/06/uva-student-elizabeth-daly-cleared-of-charges-from-water-buying-incident--90722.html">flashed "unidentifiable" badges</a> and demanded she surrender. When she started the vehicle in order to lower the electric windows, the agents became violent, jumped on the car, drew their weapons, and <a href="http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/06/uva-student-elizabeth-daly-cleared-of-charges-from-water-buying-incident--90722.html">reportedly attempted</a> to break into the vehicle.<br />
<br />
At this point, understandably frightened, Ms. Daly drove off, while her passenger literally crawled into the back seat, screaming "go-go-go", in an attempt to escape their apparent assailants.<br />
<br />
She was then chased (while she was trying to call 911) by a different ABC agent in a vehicle, who pulled her over with the blue lights. At this point, she realized her assailants were, in fact, public servants, and was profusely apologetic for attempting to flee. The ABC arrested her, charged her with three felonies, and put her in jail.<br />
<br />
This was in April. This story only came out this week when the local District Attorney dropped the charges against Ms. Daly, while defending the actions of the ABC agents who threatened, assaulted, and chased her in the first place.<br />
<br />
OK.... perhaps at this point you're wondering if you read this all correctly...<br />
<br />
SIX Agents of the <a href="http://www.abc.virginia.gov/">Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control</a> surrounded and accosted a 20-year-old coed in a dark grocery store parking lot because they wrongly believed wrongly she possessed a 12-pack of beer.<br />
<br />
Does this make any sense to anyone? Is it okay to accost a young woman in a dark parking lot, with overwhelming, violent force, for possession of beer? Don't they have anything better to do?<br />
<br />
I suspect there was more going on here - training, someone trying to make some kind of point, some kind of warped out-of-control enthusiasm for enforcement of the drinking age in Virginia, or something.<br />
<br />
This young lady was 20 years old. Not many years ago, it was legal to drink beer at age 20 in most states. I don't remember that being a Bad Thing. In fact, the world seemed to be a better place when 18 year old college students could drink beer legally. When a college student having a beer was legal, as opposed to the equivalent crime to using marijuana or cocaine, the world seemed to be a kinder, gentler place.<br />
<br />
But the question that really sticks with me is how did the six ABC agents know the young lady walking to her car in a dark parking lot was under age 21? When they couldn't tell what kind of beverage she had in her bag? Did they simply assume she was underage and in possession of beer because she was at the grocery store? If so, is that something we want law enforcement to do? Should they not have had a little more probable cause (since she was, in fact, innocent) before jumping on her car and drawing their weapons?<br />
<br />
Ultimately I'm interested about what this case really says about our society. Does a majority of Americans support this sort of thing? By this "sort of thing", I mean hyper-aggressive enforcement of the drinking age. Does criminalizing 20-year-olds for drinking beer really make society better? If so, I'm not seeing it. What I am seeing is a degradation in the legitimacy of the rule of law, especially among the young.<br />
<br />
I've seen this before: where young people, confronted with such hypocrisy and contradiction, lose trust, confidence, and respect for many or all public institutions. It isn't a situation we want.<br />
<br />
The current generation is very passive - they will generally say and do whatever necessary to get along, then they tune out and do what they want. Time will tell what kind of adults they will be. I'm afraid the example that was set for them, however, is among the worst in modern history.CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-56499396202753293512013-01-24T07:20:00.003-08:002013-01-24T07:20:43.172-08:00Women in the MilitaryLike my partner John, I've been planning to break the recent (years-long) hiatus in blogging. I have a lot of things I'd like to comment about, and I've long appreciated having a semi-anonymous venue to talk about things that interest me. In recent history, social media has become dominant - which explicitly indicates a complete lack of anonymity.<br />
<br />
While I really do stand by everything I say, overtly, anonymously, or not, there's a big difference between what I want to publish on social media, to all my personal friends directly, and pretty much only to them, vs. what I'd like to throw out to the internet community to stand or fall on its own merits, independent of any explicit attribution.<br />
<br />
I guess I'm eager to have anonymous interaction, based purely on the merits of the ideas proposed or circulated, as opposed to having people judge me as a person based on what they read into what I say or post on social media sites. In this sense, I guess I'm saying I like the blogging format better than more intimate social media for serious intellectual exchange. On the other hand, our little blog here has a pretty limited following, as very few of my readers here know me from anywhere other than the internet and I don't associate any of my overt personal social media accounts with my blog posts.<br />
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On the other hand, the world has changed. I don't have nearly the time I used to have for writing blog posts, and I miss it. The "blog" community is less dynamic than it used to be, as many people have shifted to other venues for online interaction. That's too bad as it's a great format for exchanging serious ideas.<br />
<br />
So... with all that... some actual content...<br />
<br />
Today the Department of Defense <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/23/women-in-combat_n_2535954.html">announced a policy change</a> opening most (maybe all? it isn't clear...) combat billets to women. This announcement was pretty abrupt and surprising - there was no discussion, no hearings, no political debate about it in advance. It is very unclear exactly what it will mean, apparently to everyone, including most of the US military, who did not know it was coming.<br />
<br />
The abrupt shift, however, was not without quite a bit of foreshadowing. DOD has steadily evolved its administrative policies on assigning women to combat support roles, in large part because they simply needed women to fill empty billets. Women have served, by all reports heroically, in many combatant roles in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many military units would be rendered non-mission-capable if they suddenly lost all the women in their ranks.<br />
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I served many years in the military and had quite a bit of experience with women in the service. There were a number of issues associated with women serving in various positions, most of which were not significantly different from issues faced in the civilian world.<br />
<br />
The integration of women into military jobs has pretty closely paralleled their integration into civilian jobs. Before the 1970s, there were few women in "tradtionally male" professions. That changed rapidly after the advent of "women's lib" in the 1960s (ignited by Betty Friedan's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feminine_Mystique">The Feminine Mystique</a> in 1963), to the point where they today dominate many previously all-male professions, as well as a majority of institutions of higher education. Their integration into the military has lagged a few years behind the experience in the private sector, but the trend is similar.<br />
<br />
The military, however, is very different from the civilian world in quite a few major, significant ways. First there is a great deal of personal sacrifice and intimate personal interaction that comes with the territory. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding#U.S._Military_survival_training">military tortures its own people for training</a> (if you accept the MSM definition of torture), although those training programs have been substantially moderated over the years, since the admission of women. The military routinely (especially in recent years) asks its people to volunteer to sacrifice themselves, often in horrific, and sometimes in senseless ways.<br />
<br />
There's nothing to say that women can't be asked to sacrifice themselves horrifically or senselessly, just the same as men, and many have done so in recent years. While there was, until recently, a general social attitude that women should not be asked to sacrifice themselves just the same as men are, that attitude seems to have mostly eroded in western civilization in just the last several years. This is possibly a result of women achieving approximate parity in what were previously male-dominated roles in the civilian world.<br />
<br />
Women are, however, often (perhaps usually) subjected to much more horrible treatment at the hands of the enemy than men are, for a variety of reasons. Some of these are cultural, some are political, but perhaps most are just plain human nature, consistent for hundreds of thousands of years. Today, a woman captured on the battlefield can expect, with a great deal of certainty, to be gang-raped before being subjected to even worse abuse. Were I a woman, this would be a consideration for me serving in the military. I do not know if it actually is for any significant percentage of women joining the military today.<br />
<br />
At a much more routine level, there are lots of issues associated with women in military units that are significant and don't necessarily have anything to do with women vs. men, but rather with women + men. When you put a bunch of 19-year-old boys and girls together, they're going to have a lot of sex, and a lot of sexual politics, tension, and drama. Trust me: this does not make for a more combat effective unit. It's like a cross between a train wreck and groundhog day. The same boring disasters, over and over again, forever. It's just human nature and it will take probably at least many tens of thousands of years to change, by which time it probably won't matter.<br />
<br />
But the US military has been coping with this issue for a good while now, and continuing to succeed. This is what gets us to the real issue.<br />
<br />
We keep kicking butt - and don't get confused - we have been consistently tactically successful in all of the wars we have fought in recent years. If you believe we have been strategically unsuccessful, which I think is a worthy topic for debate - it is hard to argue that strategic failure is attributable to battlefield failure at the tactical level. Of course, if you get down into the tactical weeds, you will find few women, or units with significant numbers of women, in key decisive positions on the front lines. That could change, and future results could be different, but it would be tough to say that we've failed anywhere in recent history due to the introduction of women into combat support billets.<br />
<br />
But I would also argue that conventional military forces have played a much smaller role in our success in recent conflicts, as opposed to conventional wars of the past. We haven't been in a conventional stand-up fight at the operational level in any meaningful way since the first gulf war. Which gets me to the main point...<br />
<br />
The basic nature of warfare has changed, and with it, the relationship between the people and the act of war. This is a bigger factor in the integration of women into the military than the fact that the military needs them to fill billets or that "social justice" demands that women be provided with equal (or, I would argue, greater than equal) opportunities to sacrifice themselves.<br />
<br />
Today, the adversaries we fight are primarily unconventional and not associated with a nation-state nor an organized military force. Military operations in the information age are primarily about policing bad guys, not fighting other formal armies. This may not be universally true - there is nothing to say there could not or will not be formal military clashes between nation-states in the future - just that these types of conventional wars are becoming extremely rare, compared to low-intensity conflict against non-state actors.<br />
<br />
In such an environment, the expected and implied roles of women are very different. In low intensity conflicts, there are few well-defined "front lines", so anyone involved could find themselves confronting a guerrilla or terrorist adversary. Consequently it's difficult or impossible to segregate the women into non-combat roles. That is the main reality of the most recent policy shift in DOD.<br />
<br />
Also, the enemy is inherently weak and there is an attitude that even our little girls, armed with all our modern technology, can defeat him.<br />
<br />
That gets to the next point: if we were worried about losing any of these wars, the calculus would be very different.<br />
<br />
In the classical period, men conducted war by lining up in tight squares, shoulder to shoulder, and ran into each other with their shields, then transitioning to hacking each other to death with short swords. It was unbelievably nasty, brutal, and violent. There wasn't any consideration of having women participate in that type of warfare, for a couple of reasons. The first was that it wouldn't work. A phalanx with women it in would simply lose to one that didn't have women. The second reason was that ancient societies had defined gender roles and there was a social imperative to protect women from the misery and brutality of "men's work".<br />
<br />
The reasons for this are not mysterious. Women are smaller and weaker than men. Take an average man and an average woman, absent any social modifying influences, and the man will physically dominate the woman. The woman may be able to use other skills to change the terms of the engagement, but it is an exceptionally rare woman who can physically dominate even a slightly-below-average man.<br />
<br />
Scale this basic truth up to 10 men (and women) or 100, or 1 million, and the probabilty of success in a purely physical engagement is directly decreased by number of women involved.<br />
<br />
Yet we keep winning, despite having lots of women in significant positions.<br />
<br />
The reason is that warfare has really changed. We're just not fighting phalanx battles any more (although hand-to-hand combat certainly has not disappeared). Instead, information is the basic commodity of warfare, and in this environment women are much less disadvantaged. (I would argue that women are still not the equal of men in war, pretty much entirely due to hormonal differences.)<br />
<br />
But in technological war, where relative physical weakness is much less significant, women are much more likely to be able to hold their own.<br />
<br />
Still: if you had an army of male information warriors vs. an army of female information warriors, where no physical confrontion was involved, who would win? Still the men would dominate. Why? Because men and women are different. Men have more testosterone, and are consequently more aggressive. This aggression manifests itself in many different ways - but war and military service primarily about aggression. The people with more testosterone, physical and mental aggression, physical mass, and strength are always going to dominate.<br />
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Marty Van Creveld said in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Transformation-War-Reinterpretation-Conflict-Clausewitz/dp/0029331552">The Transformation of War</a> that societies allow women into their military forces when they perceive it doesn't matter - that the military is no longer needed to ensure the survival of the society, or is no longer a symbol of the strength of the society - when it becomes "just another job". At this point, the opposition to having women participate evaporates and the military's segregation of gender roles becomes just another example of "discrimination".<br />
<br />
But........look at the social status and reputation today of our special operations forces: the "Green Berets", the Army's Delta Force, the Navy's SEALs, etc. They enjoy an elite, almost legendary status in society that other segments of the military once also enjoyed but no longer do, such as Naval Aviation, the cavalry, the submarine force, or going farther back in history, the Roman Legions or the Spartan phalanx. Why? Because they are the most traditional and romantic warriors left in our post-modern military system. They are well adapted to the unconventional and low intensity conflicts we are fighting. They fight as individuals, often at close quarters, hand-to-hand with vicious and lethal enemies. They are more likely to be wounded or killed in direct combat (as opposed to blown up by a terrorist roadside bomb, which has claimed the vast majority of casualties among the conventional forces in the last decade). And there are no women in their ranks (although there are plenty in support roles, staff jobs, etc.)<br />
<br />
Those units are doing the majority of the direct fighting in recent history and are much more heavily engaged, in 2012, than the much larger conventional force.<br />
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This may change soon - I don't know. I do know that if there is a change, the standards will be lowered to permit women to compete and succeed and consequently the social status and reputation of these elite forces will be diminished. Ordinary men (and women) (including among our enemies) will look at the Green Berets or SEALs and say "if little girls can do it, it can't be all that tough" and the mystique, as well as the effectiveness, of these legendary warriors will be permanently eroded. (As an aside: the Marine Corps is somewhere in between the special operations forces and the conventional military. It remains highly respected and admired, like SOF, and has few or no women in front-line combat jobs. The Marines experimented, in their typical, straightforward way, with allowing women into the infantry and the female Marines <a href="http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/article/get-over-it-we-are-not-all-created-equal">reported, straightforwardly, that they were unable to meet the male standards.</a> Not sure what they'll do next.)<br />
<br />
The lowering of standards has happened in every segment of the military that has integrated women. It is inevitable. Women simply cannot perform in military roles in the same way as men. If they could, as some of the political proponents of the new policy claim, the NFL would have a lot of female linebackers as well. This does not necessarily mean, however, that we will lose future wars. Our military forces have been so preponderantly dominant in recent years that perhaps we will continue to succeed and win with a fully-integrated military. That probably depends on what kind of wars we will fight, and how formidable our enemies will be.<br />
<br />
If our future wars continue to look like police actions - rounding up idiots and bad guys who make trouble but don't threaten the survival of the society - as Marty Van Creveld says they will, then integration of women will likely make no difference.<br />
<br />
It is also possible (probably probable, eventually) that we could fight a major conventional war against a dangerous but weaker adversary (such as Iran, although I doubt that one) where we will still succeed with a fully-integrated military. Another scenario, which is probably very, very unlikely, that we'll fight a major world war against a peer competitor who may be stronger than us (e.g. China), in a repeat of the World War II experience. In that scenario, this peer competitor may be likely to have women integrated into its conventional military forces in a similar way to us, so again the integration of women is unlikely to matter very much.<br />
<br />
So... it seems that we're as a point where sexual integration of the military is inevitable, and probably irrelevant. It probably says more about the roles of the military in society and women in society than it does about our need to preserve our national security. The military has always been an engine and a laboratory of social change, and this is just one more example. Many military traditions will likely change, but military traditions have always changed over time. Apparently the sense in our society is that our security as a nation-state faces no serious threats - if it did, I believe we would not be having this discussion. Hopefully this situation will endure and we will enjoy our sense of security for many years to come. I'm not betting one way or another, however, on whether it will.<br />
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<br />CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-33620012771694772892012-07-30T15:43:00.000-07:002012-07-30T15:47:17.304-07:00Escalator to Hell<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
I have been planning to break my blogging hiatus sometime in
the fall, as I have been going through a transformation of sorts and this blog
is the place I want to muse about that in public.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But one of the topics I used to blog about, back when I
posted more-or-less regularly, was the internal workings of science and how we
scientists can communicate that better to the lay public, and how badly the
press reports on science and medicine (arguably the most conspicuous areas
among many other subjects the press seems to get wrong).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The shootings in Colorado brought this topic rather
forcefully to my attention lately.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The perpetrator (there is absolutely no need to say
“accused” or “alleged” in this case) was a first-year graduate student in
Neuroscience, and I noticed the pundits and journalists paying special
attention to his training and intelligence, playing up the “wasted potential”
story of one of America’s top budding scientists going off the rails in such a
spectacular fashion.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is very interesting to note, in the wake of the missed
calls on the Supreme Court Obamacare vote, some quiet retractions have taken
place. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you Google the phrase “ a young man recognized as one of
the nation’s “<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=16829552&sid=81" target="_blank">outstanding neuroscientists and academicians”</a> ,
what do you see? The first hit I get is
to <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=16829552&sid=81">this page</a>, which has obviously been abandoned. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you Google the title, you get <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/colorado-movie-shooting-james-holmes/story?id=16829552" target="_blank">this page</a>, which is a pastiche of updates to several older stories, including the
titular story, and the phrase does not appear anywhere in that story.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the Internet never forgets, does it? Look at the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6pDYP8qj_sYJ:abcnews.go.com/m/story%3Fid%3D16829552%26sid%3D81+a+young+man+recognized+as+one+of+the+nation%E2%80%99s+%E2%80%9Coutstanding+neuroscientists+and&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us%20" target="_blank">Google cache</a> of the first link, and you find something like the story I remembered reading
and rolling my eyes at the day after the shooting:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Investigators spent a day and a half working to gain access
to the booby-trapped Aurora, Colo., apartment of James Holmes, hoping to
discover there clues to what would make a young man recognized as one of the
nation's "outstanding neuroscientists and academicians" unleash a storm of terror
in a packed movie theater.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I came away from those first few days shaking my head at the
characterizations of Holmes. The term
academician to a scientist sounds both pretentious (and somewhat European) and
prestigious – a well-known member of the academy. Usually that term refers to an
assistant professor or above, I’ve never even heard of granting that form of
address to a post-doctoral fellow and usually not to anyone below the rank of
associate professor , to say nothing of a first-year graduate student. That was the first alarm bell that went off
indicating that the journalists covering this story were less than well-informed
about, well, pretty much everything. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The program at Colorado Denver was <a href="http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/31293702/detail.html%20" target="_blank">described as</a> “one of the most competitive neuroscience programs in the
country”. Now, I’m not a neuroscientist
by any means, but my job spills over into that arena, and I work with some of
the top neuroscientists in the academic world. Not a single one holds a degree
from Denver. In fact, U Colorado - Denver is most definitely not one of the
most competitive programs in the country, it is ranked number <a href="http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/neuroscience/rank/funding/3" target="_blank">63 out of 94</a>, not even
making the top 2/3
. To add insult to injury, another Colorado program ranks higher than
Denver: U Colorado - Boulder rings in at
number 47, putting that department at least at the top of the bottom half of
all US programs. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As far as I can tell, the phrase “one of the most
competitive” has now been replaced with the less meaningful and arguably more accurate “highly
competitive” (whatever “highly competitive” means at a #63 ranked institution,
though I’m <i>sure</i> the competition is very intense for the best of the second and
third tier students who didn’t go to better programs to make sure that the
institution does not slip any <i>further</i> in the rankings) in the national news
feeds and websites, in exactly the same manner as the characterization of
Holmes as an outstanding neuroscientist and “academician” has been edited out,
but not marked as an update or correction.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You can still see the source in that local story above,
though, just as you can see the original ABC news story ripped off
word-for-word by a <a href="http://www.szdaily.com/content/2012-07/23/content_6969062.htm%20" target="_blank">plagiarizing English-Language Chinese news site</a>. Unfortunately for ABC, the
internet never forgets.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Alongside the inflation of the relative importance of his
neuroscience program was the inflation of the<a href="http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/07/24/james-holmes-received-26k-grant-from-bethesda-based-national-institutes-of-health/" target="_blank"> NIH grant</a> he was
studying under. “Holmes was awarded a
prestigious grant from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.” After all the other foolishness surrounding
the initial reports of Holmes’s background, I decided to look into this one,
too. Because at first blush, it did sound pretty prestigious to me. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Chemistry, the National Science Foundation funds grants
for promising first year graduate students
in a <a href="http://www.nsfgrfp.org/" target="_blank">nationwide competitive process</a>, and while not all professors push students to apply to those grants, the pool
is still pretty large and obtaining one of those awards is <a href="http://www.chemistry.ucla.edu/news/item?item_id=259303" target="_blank">quite prestigious</a>
. After the first year or two of taking classes, trying to decide which advisor
to choose (and praying the good ones will take you) all the while being paid to
teach weed-out courses of students under-prepared by their high schools for a
career in the sciences, a Chemistry student is supported on grant money his or
her advisor obtains from the funding agencies, hence many of us refer to our
advisors as our “boss”. This grant-funded status is true for upper level
graduate students in almost all of the sciences, in fact.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From the glowing praise the press heaped on the NIH award in
the reporting on Holmes, I assumed that he had, indeed won a national
competition for the stipend similar to the NSF awards I was familiar with from
Chemistry. However, once I discovered
the exact nature grant, the luster came off of the award and the press came off with egg on their faces. Color me unsurprised.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The NIH Neuroscience grant is specifically earmarked for
first and second year students.
It takes the place of those non-existent Neuroscience 101 teaching jobs that
fund Chemistry graduate students. This grant is from the NIH to<a href="http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-12-084.html%20" target="_blank"> <i>institutions</i></a>. The institution then decides who among
its students will get the grant. Competition is then restricted to the students
matriculating at the institution in question – a much smaller pool, and in the
case of Colorado, a pool of students willing to attend or forced to settle for
the #63 program. And the bare minimum requirements for an institution to enter
the program are not tied to quality, merely to the breadth of the Neuroscience
program (which, to be fair, ensures some minimum level of quality).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The fact, however, remains
that this is an institutional grant. Colorado
Denver is a small program - <a href="http://www.ucdenver.edu/about/newsroom/newsreleases/Pages/Neuroscience-Program-and-Holmes-information.aspx" target="_blank">about 35 students total</a> – and the average time to complete
a Ph.D is about 6 years. That means that
there are about 6 students in each year. This “prestigious” grant, the one that
Holmes was “one of six students” to obtain, is, upon further investigation the
normal and standard way in which Colorado Denver funds its students in the
first and second years who have not yet joined a lab to be supported by their
advisor’s grant monies. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Colorado Denver itself supplied the verbiage around
“neuroscientists and academicians", but at least some other institutions
participating in the NIH program <a href="http://www.labome.org/grant/t32/hd/neuroscience/training/neuroscience-training-grant-7227155.html%20" target="_blank">use the same language</a> , so it may be that the language comes from the NIH itself, it certainly sounds
like the kind of verbal smokescreen a government officer would use to shield a
program from funding cuts. But it’s the kind of verbiage a trained reporter
should spot as hype and follow up on with facts, such as the easily Googlable
rankings of Ph.D. Neuroscience programs.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t know how Colorado administers its grants. If they
supply 2 year grants, then running the numbers indicated that <i>every one</i> of
their six first year students is supported by this NIH program in their first and second
years. If the grants are distributed among the roughly 12 first <i>and </i>second year
students, then Holmes is in the top half of his class. I don’t know about you,
but even in the best case scenario of being in the top half of a #63 program,
the NIH stipend is not all that prestigious to me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s not be <i>too</i> hard on Colorado Denver, here. It is not a
bad program, just not as good as its PR hype would indicate, a fact that any
experienced journalist should have noted right away – given the time to
research a thorough story. And to be honest, Ph.D. from any reputable research
program in the US is pretty impressive.
As an accepted student at such a program, it’s likely Holmes is smarter
than any of the <i>reporters</i> writing about him, but I’m reminded here of an
article from the humor column of my undergraduate Engineering and Science
program newspaper. It had a quote from some coach saying that
“hyperintelligent” people were too aware of the risks of injury to be good at
sports – they shy away from large opponents and fast moving objects instead of
running at them. The Chem. E. major who was the columnist took the coach’s
point as valid, but also noted that the coach’s definition of
“hyperintelligent” and an engineer’s definition were likely to be light years
apart.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Speaking of hype that should be taken with a grain of salt,
the pompous phrase used by the press: “outstanding neuroscientists and
academicians” comes from the UC program’s <a href="http://www.ucdenver.edu/about/newsroom/newsreleases/Pages/Neuroscience-Program-and-Holmes-information.aspx%20" target="_blank">description of itself</a> , in that it <i>seeks to develop</i> those
people from among the pool of fundees, not that everyone who participates will
deserve those adjectives. And looking at
the list of <a href="http://grants.nih.gov/training/joint_predoc/programs.htm">participating institutions</a>
, one wonders how U Colorado Denver got into the program in the first place –
along with even more securely Podunk programs at Iowa, Maryland and Michigan State,
for example. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The reason for the lower ranking institutions’ inclusion is
likely to be due to a variety of factors. Some prestigious programs may opt out
of the NIH funding because it places an administrative burden on at least one
professor designated as the institutional program director, and richer programs
may not find the opportunity worth the cost. Some of the lower ranked institutions
may also be up-and-comers program that the NIH decided to gamble on, or they
may simply have one or two top professors with some influence at the NIH. In
any case, participating in this institutional grant does not mean that Denver
is a first choice school of the top budding neuroscientists in this country.
Not even close.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One suspects several factors went into this. The
self-aggrandizing press releases of UC Denver, which inexperienced reporters
probably took at face value. Programs
sitting that low on the totem pole tend to over-exaggerate their importance,
just as small companies tend to play up minor advances to stimulate the stock
price. The desire of the press to put Holmes up on an intellectual pedestal,
the better to knock him off of it also played its part. I suspect various
reasons for that, as well – a super-intelligent killer plays into the latent
anti-intellectualism of much of the American public and makes for a juicier story, perhaps even for a
morality tale of sorts.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I came away from the first few days of reporting with the
distinct impression that the press thought that Holmes was a whiz kid. Of course, in the back of my mind was that
quote from my college humor paper, and the odd impression made by the
characterization of a program I had never heard of as one of the best in the
Nation. Because of my background, I started digging into the <a href="http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/neuroscience/rank/funding">program rankings</a>
right away, and my first impressions were discarded in short order. I think
most lay people did not hear these warning signs. And I am pretty sure that
most lay people still have the impression from those early but quietly
retracted statements, that we are dealing with someone whom nearly everyone in the
national Neuroscience community knew as an up-and-comer. Nothing could be
farther from the truth.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The story I now read between the lines is not the story – or
the lingering impression of the story – that I got from the press initially. What
I gather from snippets hastily and unintentionally reported in the filler quotes
to the main narrative of super-scientist gone bad is the kind of
big-fish-in-a-small-pond-dropped-into-the-ocean mentality I expected to see
based on some rather scary past experience.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Holmes was, of course a <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/23/james-holmes-6-reported-facts-about-the-alleged-aurora-shooter.html" target="_blank">loner in high school</a>.
No surprises there. His pastor noted
that “the shy boy he knew “wanted to go out and wanted to be the best,” but he
never saw Holmes interacting with kids his age.” Beyond that lack of friends, in high school “ Holmes
was “the kind of person that if you teased him, he would sit there and smile
and really not do anything about it” according to a high school classmate. One
wonders what was going on behind that smile. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Although his undergraduate chancellor described him as “the
top of the top” , and a friend noted that he apparently <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/07/colorado-shooter-enjoyed-video-games-movies-school-friend-says.html" target="_blank">cruised through his classes</a>:
“ ‘Everything came easy for him,” Duong
said in a telephone interview Saturday. “I had one college class with him, and
he didn’t even have to take notes or anything. He would just show up to class,
sit there, and around test time he would always get an ‘A.’” One wonders why
such a gifted student settled for Riverside. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Oh yes, I went there. As soon as some of my Asian friends from
California heard “Riverside”, they immediately and snidely remarked “oh yes, so
gifted, he couldn’t even hack it with the Chinese at Berkeley or UCLA”. That’s
a bit harsh, since the <a href="http://diversity.ucr.edu/about/demographics.html%20" target="_blank">Asian population of 40%</a> at Riverside is only slightly lower than Berkeley’s incoming Freshman <a href="http://opa.berkeley.edu/statistics/enrollmentData.html%20" target="_blank">Asian student contribution of 43% </a>. But they are spot on in noting that Riverside is at the very bottom of the UCal
heap (with the exception of the brand new and tiny program at Merced). If the
academics were so easy at Riverside, why did the whiz kid matriculate at a more
prestigious (and difficult) UCal school?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the real point of pointing out that Riverside is the
safety school in the UCal system is that our boy who was at the “top of the top”
in his school <a href="http://www.kpho.com/story/19078413/colorado-shooter-applied-to-u-of-a%20" target="_blank">could not gain admission</a> to Ph.D. program at the University of Arizona, the #43 ranked graduate institution
in Neuroscience. We’re not talking MIT,
here, we’re talking about a middle-of-the-pack school, the bottom of the upper
half of all US programs. I think that
more than anything points to some potential academic deficiencies that could
stem from either Holmes or Riverside, or more probably, both. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Since Arizona <a href="http://neuroscience.arizona.edu/admissions/faq.html" target="_blank">requires a GRE</a> (although not a subject test)
and a CV as well as transcripts it is pretty reasonable to speculate that it
was not the honor student’s GPA that got him rejected. More than likely it was
a combination of an applicant from lower-ranked school without a spectacular
GRE score or significant undergraduate research on his CV. A upper-percentile
GRE score could have made up for the lower tier undergraduate school, as could
a top flight research experience. The fact that a “top of the top” honors
student did not have either speaks volumes about Riverside’s Neuroscience
program. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I would dearly love to know which of those factors (and by
what weights) were involved in the rejection by Arizona, because they would
shed more light on his character and state of mind than any number of “he was
so quiet I hardly knew him” interviews with neighbors in Colorado.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yet despite his firm hold on the lower tiers of the American
scientific establishment, he struck <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/20/grad-school-dropout-horrific-attack-came-out-nowhere/" target="_blank">new acquaintances</a> as a kid who “ seemed smart, with a "swagger."” That’s a little piece of information
that bears following up on.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He, unusually not just for a scientist, but for any young
person, did not have an Internet presence, except, of course on Match.com and
<a href="http://www.tmz.com/2012/07/23/james-holmes-colorado-shooter-sex-adult-friend-finder-rejected/" target="_blank">Adult Friend Finder</a>, where he actively contacted, and was rejected by, three
women in the days before the attack, though his high school friend indicated
that he did not seem to have trouble with women before college. The approaches
on AFF were not, apparently creepy, or even that overtly sexual. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m starting to get a picture, here, and it’s not the tale
of a murderous latter-day Linus Pauling going off the rails before his
brilliance had time to be recognized with a Nobel. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is pure speculation on my part, but it begins to look to me like a tale I’ve
seen many times in science- a tale of a kid who was one of the smartest in High School,
a loner who put all of his ego into the concept that he was smarter than
everyone else. That allowed him to sit and smile when the taunts that come
every nerds way were hurled at him. They’ll see someday. They’ll be back here
working shit jobs while I’m a famous professor.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He wanted to be the best, but he could not accept that even
the best get beaten sometimes. I wonder what his first defeat was? Was it not scoring a perfect SAT and
discovering that being the best student in High School doesn’t mean being the
best in <i>every</i> high school and that the college world was not his oyster? Or
did he instinctively shy away from a UCLA or a Berkeley because of the subconscious
fear of defeat, of not being the counted as the best among those fabled genius
Chinese kids?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At any rate he shied away from competition. He went to the least
selective UCal school to preserve the facade. He coasted because he was
slumming, and the competition was not up to his level. But the real world was
waiting, and he got <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/20/grad-school-dropout-horrific-attack-came-out-nowhere/#ixzz2289R2iWe%20" target="_blank">another defeat</a> (or maybe this was his first):</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i> <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/20/grad-school-dropout-horrific-attack-came-out-nowhere/#ixzz2289R2iWe"><span style="color: #003399;"></span></a></span>“The bookish demeanor concealed an unspooling life. Holmes struggled to find
work after graduating college, Tom Mai said.” </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m not sure what job Holmes
hoped to get with a degree in Neuroscience. It’s one of those degrees that,
while rigorous, does not translate well into the entry-level workforce. It is a
degree designed for continuation into graduate study.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So in the time-honored tradition of jobless recent graduates
everywhere, Holmes did what he should have done in the first place with his
particular degree – he applied for graduate school. Hot on the heels of the
bitter realization that a Riverside degree in a highly specialized field did
not mean employers would beat down his door, came another defeat in the form of the rejection from Arizona and
possibly other schools. The carefully constructed facade began to crumble more
than a little bit, but still, he was going into a Ph.D. program straight out of
college. That had to impress the rubes back home.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then came the fatal blow. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Graduate school actually has very few classes. There are
some basic core classes, and a few electives required for everyone, but most programs
only require one to two years of classes, the rest are taken on an as-needed or
as-interested basis. Most of a graduate student’s career is spent in the
laboratory, learning on his or her own actually doing science. It is very
similar to a medieval apprenticeship. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But that doesn’t mean that those classes are not important.
Failing them means you are not quite Ph.D. material after all. Before Colorado
Denver went mum about the whole thing, they <a href="http://www.vcstar.com/news/2012/jul/21/holmes-failed-preliminary-exam-withdrawing/" target="_blank">let it slip</a> that Holmes <a href="http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/31292454/detail.html" target="_blank">had failed</a>
his preliminary written exams.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The quoted official went on to add that a failure shouldn’t
send a student over the edge, as there was a mechanism to bone up and pass a
second, oral exam in this program. But university officials have stated that Holmes
had already voluntarily withdrawn from the program. At approximately that time, he had also begun
his plans for the rampage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This fits with my amateur profiling here. I’m not sure how
much the sexual rejections in his life played into this. While they certainly didn’t
help, I am sure the press will blow them out of proportion. I believe that the
ego bruising of washing out of his graduate program did more damage than a
polite “no thanks” on Adult Friend Finder. And I wonder where I've seen <a href="http://shouldersofgiantmidgets.blogspot.com/2008/10/return-of-radiation-man.html" target="_blank">that pattern before</a>?
I will be watching the news with some interest in the coming months to
see how many of my guesses prove to be correct. I’m willing to bet a substantial
amount that mine will be closer to the mark than the media’s initial
speculations.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Though this story is a footnote in history compared to
the press failure after the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare, the media pattern of hasty reporting and quiet retraction illustrated
here is a serious problem in information warfare.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And that problem can be illustrated with with escalators. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or rather, with a
<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103110002817" target="_blank">study about escalators</a> that came to the conclusion that shoppers riding up an escalator
were more likely to give to a charity bell-ringer. That study has been cited
and repeated multiple times since its publication. There’s only one problem
with that: it’s complete bollocks. Well,
there are two problems with that. It’s not only complete bollocks, but even
though it’s been <i>publicly exposed</i> as complete bollocks, people -scientists - <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/category/research-ethics" target="_blank">continue to cite it</a>:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>But retracting the paper doesn’t mean it will go away. It
will probably continue to pop up in Google Scholar searches, just like the
papers of the disgraced psychologist Diederik Stapel. Those news articles will
still get stumbled on, forwarded, Tweeted. Unsuspecting readers will pick up
those books and read aloud the passage about the incredible escalator trick to
their spouses. There may be Salvation Army bell ringers standing hopefully at
the tops of escalators next Christmas season, counting on the magic of science.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Maybe that isn’t a big deal in this case. It was a
harmlessly interesting study. But it goes to show how once a study leaves
journal-land for the wider world, there’s really no erasing it. A nifty finding
takes on a life of its own, even if it’s flawed or fraudulent.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It may not be a big deal in this case, either. Or it may be.
Security guards and authority figures on campuses nationwide will think,
rightly or wrongly, that they need to pay attention to people who fit the shooter’s
profile.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But over time, this pattern of press behavior is a big deal.
Despite a quite apparent liberal bias in the press, certain widely-held, pernicious
conservative <i>and</i> liberal notions are pandered to quite regularly. In this
case, the largely conservative anti-intellectualism that I believe was pandered
to in the initial characterizations of Holmes. The idiocy even extended to questioning
his right, as a graduate student, to earn a stipend and do with that money what
any other wage-earner may legally do. OF COURSE Holmes <a href="http://www.inquisitr.com/284276/james-holmes-pocketed-26000-federal-government-education-grant/" target="_blank">“pocketed”</a> the money he
received from his employer for showing up to work (repeat after me – graduate studies
are a full time job). James Holmes was not an “unemployed college student”. Don’t
you “pocket” the money your employer pays you? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
OF COURSE taxpayer money <i>indirectly</i> <a href="http://news.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981496271" target="_blank">purchased the weapons</a>
that devastated that movie crowd. Where the fuck do those reporters think
Academic science money, including salaries, comes from? Private donors? Just because Holmes or any other first or
second year science graduate student is being paid to spend two years training
in a job that second rate internet new gathering website authors (who drank
their way through college majoring in the easiest subject they could find) could never hope to be considered
for does not mean he was “pocketing” federal money.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When post office employees so famously shoot up their places
of employment, where are the internet pundits crying that taxpayer money funded <i>those</i> massacres?
I’ll tell you why they are absent. Because the blue collar guy at the Postal Service does not
fit any narrative beyond “going postal”. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At least one major news blog site <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-the-nih-did-not-give-money-directly-20120724,0,4358097.story" target="_blank">published a rebuttal</a>
to those idiotic notions that Holmes, or any other scientific trainee, is not
entitled to a stipend. Thank you <i>LA Times</i> for at least printing the letter, but
that missive by a real subject matter expert should have been on the front page
of the newspaper, not stuffed in the back of your science coverage. And those headline-generated
impressions of the taxpayer-teat-sucking super-egghead gone bad will linger like
the lingering lie of <a href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/003420.html" target="_blank">gender-based lexical budgets</a>
, and enter the subconscious decision making of millions of voters.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even if the press is engaging in this sloppy reporting out
of reflex, laziness and a desire to play in Peoria, i.e. not out of malice,
those on the right who like to use this sort of misinformation are happy that
the press reliably engages in it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not for the first time, nor I suspect sadly, for the last, do
I view the press as less of a Fourth Estate and more of a Fifth Column for the
ignorant and those who would manipulate them.</div>
</div>John the Scientisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03467337009577733553noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-39385703426616394082011-09-26T15:40:00.000-07:002011-10-17T19:24:26.609-07:00Pan Am - The SeriesOK - we're on week 4 of the new Pan Am series. I started this review after the first episode but didn't finish it, so now I've got more data to review. They seem to be trying very hard and, with the fourth episode, appear to be trying to respond to criticism.<div><br /></div><div>Warning: lots of "spoilers" below...<br /><div><br /></div><div>Overall I'd give it about three Pan Am Globes out of a possible five... the design and effects are outstanding and the plots are OK, but the writing and acting are not very good. A lot of the details, mainly associated with the cabin crew and service, are very good, but the aviation and operational details were not very good in the first episode, although they have made some progress in the subsequent episodes. The music, however, is great, although it still has some room for improvement as well. </div><div><br /></div><div><div>I've seen reviews on the internet sceptical of some of the details, such as the inspections and the weigh-ins of the stewardesses in the first episode, but I've heard from many actual former Pan Am crew that those details were totally realistic and accurate.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the best things about this new TV show, however, is that it has publicized the stories of many of the real Pan Am alumni who lived the real-life version of the story. It is always fascinating to hear from the wonderful people of Pan Am who made up "the world's most experienced airline".</div></div><div><br /></div><div>The show really missed an opportunity, however, to show how Pan Am was a huge, well-oiled, highly professional machine in its prime, maintaining the highest standards ever set in the airline industry and setting the example for all other airlines to follow. The true story is 100 times more exciting and dramatic than the fictionalized version, as is often the case with TV and history. </div><div><br /></div><div>The worst parts of the whole show are the pilot characters. They look about 11 years old - no way old enough to be crewing a 707 in 1962 - and they acted about the same age. The pilot characters were clearly an afterthought and it showed, and it seriously marred an otherwise very good effort. The aviation detail wasn't good either - the Idlewild tower calls the aircraft at the gate to tell the crew their purser is inbound, then the 11-year-old 707 captain calls Gander Control to track down his girlfriend. It would take very little tweaking to make those scenes realistic and more effective, rather than stupid-sounding. </div><div><br /></div><div>The most recent episode (#4, 16 October) made an effort to bring some realism to the pilot characters, and the effort was appreciated, but this first effort mostly missed the mark. In episode three, the crew flies to Rangoon, Djakarta, and Hong Kong, with the 11-year-old captain shooting the famous <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g-ArLYsloI">"Hong Kong Curve"</a> IGS (the rare Instrument Guidance System) approach to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Tak_Airport#Runway_13_approach">runway 13</a> at (now closed) Kai Tak airport. That approach was considered the toughest in the world, especially at night and bad weather, so its inclusion in the Pan Am TV show was a really nice touch and would have been the highlight of the series thusfar if they writers hadn't had the first officer bitching at the pilot all the way through the approach. You'd have to be an amazing idiot to deliberately distract an 11-year-old pilot flying the Hong Kong Curve at night in bad weather. If I had a First Officer who carried on like this guy did, in a dangerous night IFR approach, I would not fly with him again, and might complain to the company about him. The writers and producers, had they wanted to make this scene more realistic, and dramatic, could have just watched <a href="http://goo.gl/XX0Yo">YouTube videos</a> of airliner approaches to get an idea what its really like.</div><div><br /></div><div>There was some Navy plot line in episode 4, with the stewardesses meeting a couple of supposed Navy pilots by the pool in Rangoon. Not an unrealistic scene, except the so-called "pilots", an Ensign and a Lieutenant Junior Grade, were not wearing wings, which was very odd. The Navy "pilots" bantered with First Officer Ted Vanderway, himself a former Naval Aviator, which segways to a flashback illustrating how test pilot Vanderway was disqualified following a mishap with an experimental aircraft for which he was blamed. This provided more back-story how he had wanted to be an astronaut and his father got him the job at Pan Am. </div><div><br /></div><div>Again, Vanderway is shown bobbing in the waves following the crash of his aircraft, and later before the FNAEB (Field Naval Aviator Evaluation Board, pronounced Fee-Nab) being grounded for causing the crash. Vanderway is shown not wearing any wings - a huge technical error - but wearing (only) the National Defense Service ribbon. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Service_Medal">National Defense Service medal</a> was not re-authorized (after Korea) until 1966, so military members would not have been wearing it in 1963. This was another, minor-but-avoidable, error that marred an otherwise-technically-good effort. The FNAEB scene itself was not well written - the writers should have found someone with firsthand experience to help with the dialog, as they should be doing with the Pan Am pilots cockpit exchanges. </div><div><br /></div><div>Although the plot suggested First Officer Vanderway was not really responsible for the mishap but was blamed because of service politics and big defense contracts, it is highly, highly unlikely that Pan Am would hire a pilot grounded by the Navy, innocent or not. That plotline, however, is more believable than the scenario where a 20-something pilot convinced Juan Trippe in an elevator to make him a 707 captain without the requisite experience or seniority, just because "he represented the new generation". Oh Please...</div><div><br /></div><div>The second and third episodes were a little better than the first and fourth, set in Paris and Berlin and developing the stewardess characters a little more. The scenes showing the strong emotions of the French girl, apparently orphaned during WWII, towards the Germans in 1963 was very realistic and very touching and probably the best effort of the series to date. The "spy angle" was, I thought, pretty well played throughout the series, with the stewardess-spy struggling with the general stress and uncertainty of being a part-time secret agent. For all those who think this angle is unrealistic: think again.</div><div><br /></div><div>Various people told me they were sceptical of the whole "espionage and intrigue" plot angle, where two of the stewardesses are used as an agent by the CIA and MI6. But if anything, that story is probably understated. Pan Am was the "chosen instrument", heavily involved in government-sponsored intrigue from the days of their earliest air-mail contracts, when the famous Pan Am flying boats were fitted with secret lockboxes to transport sensitive government secrets and Pan Am captains were issued classified orders, transferring them to active duty in case of national emergency.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>By the 1960s, Pan Am operated the Pacific Missile Test Range, where top secret nuclear missile tests were conducted, and managed the civil reserve air fleet, a sizeable reserve of commercial aircraft available to be mobilized wholesale for strategic airlift, or selectively for more confidential and sensitive missions. No other organization in the world had Pan Am's access to as many destinations around the world, or the ability to rapidly transport sensitive cargoes between them. It is certain - and confirmed by Pan Am's employees - that "secret missions" such as those portrayed in the TV show really did take place.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Pan Am producer Nancy Ganis was a Pan Am stewardess in the 1960s so she has nearly perfect perspective for the stewardess characters - but it doesn't look like she has much of anyone from the other parts of the airline advising her on the rest of the Pan Am story. She mostly needs some input from cockpit crew, on the dialog, on the characters, and on the technical aspects. It looks like she may have gotten a little bit on the "Hong Kong Curve" episode, although not nearly enough. </div><div><br /></div><div>I think they missed an opportunity by not starting the series a little earlier - maybe a little before the advent of the 707, with the main characters flying the Boeing 377. They could have used the introduction of the 707 as a plot device, as well as various other historical events involving Pan Am from the early postwar period. They could still do it with flashbacks, and I hope they will. I also hope they will bring in more Pan Am characters than the so-far-introduced pilots and stewardesses, which could make the series a lot more realistic and believable.</div><div><br /></div><div>It would have been a much better story if they had used Pan Am itself as a plot device, instead of a setting for a pretty simple and limited plot line surrounding the escapades of the flight crew who seem to always fly together. In reality, a crew might make one trip together, then never see each other again, unless they made an effort to schedule trips together. </div><div><br /></div><div>The best television series are able to integrate the real history, making the drama that much more compelling. I really hope "Pan Am" will try to do as much of that as possible. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>This review is pretty disjointed and "all over the place" but unfortunately I just don't have the time any more to write about Pan Am as much as I would like but I do plan to continue to talk about the "real history" as the series unfolds, and I do hope it will be a success and continue on the air for a long time to come. Nancy Ganis: if you read this drop me a line - I'd love to help!</div>CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-64886793306751242812011-09-06T09:10:00.000-07:002011-09-06T09:38:34.430-07:00Holiday BluesSo this weekend I was spending my days working. Irene left our town a hell of a mess, and I had yet to muck the water out of the corners of the garage and clear the brush. Since I had to check for flooding on the garage floor (luckily it was just seepage at the edges), I figured now would be a good time to clean the entire garage out and throw out a bunch of crap I brought home from the office when I started to work from. Anything not on legal hold went in the garbage.<br /><br />I’m working my way over to the little alcove where I keep the lawn tractor, the generator, and bags of patchmaster, grass seed and birdseed. The garage would be a large rectangle except that a quarter of it on one side is taken up by a the space for the laundry room and a half bath, but this does not stretch the whole way across the garage, hence the roughly 10 ft by 8 ft alcove.<br /><br />Now we do have a rodent problem, living as we do at the edge of the state forest, so I have glue traps, snap traps, and live traps all over the damn place. I haven’t caught a mouse since June, so I figured they were out enjoying nature’s bounty in the woods. Imagine my dismay when I find that the bag of birdseed has a giant hole in it, and seed is spilled all over the floor. Damn mice.<br /><br />I continue to put things on the new shelving unit I just put together, and my son comes out to talk to me. We were bantering about something when I glance ahead to the tractor’s alcove and I see something. Biting back the first ten curse words I think of, I yell for my son to get his little butt back in the house. “Why?” he asks. “Just get back in the house,” I yell, “there’s a … skunk in the garage”. The ellipsis stands for the slight break in my cadence where I censored out the word “fucking” in my mind before talking to the boy. Though I think he heard me yell after he got inside “get out of here you furry bastard”.<br /><br />But the skunk seemed, if not unconcerned, only minimally perturbed by my presence and ambled over to the wall opposite the wall with the seeds, where he slid behind some plywood sheets I had leaning against the wall. Wonderful. “Get my car out of the garage,” yells my wife. “I’m not driving the kids in to the first day of school in a skunkmobile!”. Yes, dear, thank you so much for your concern about my welfare. <br /><br />I continued to clean up, then went inside for lunch and to watch Ming practice cello. “Is the skunk gone?” the kids ask when I go back out. “I don’t see or hear him,” I reply. So I continued organizing, setting out recycling, and doing other things. Then it came time to put the generator back in the alcove. As I approach, something scuffles from under the mower deck to hide behind the plywood again, and he’s baaaaack. Fuck.<br /><br />So. In the immortal words of Chernishevsky, what to do? I’m really not enthused about getting him out, but there is no way my wife is going to let me wait for animal control to get here in a few days. So I get the most powerful flashlight I have and shine it down the tent formed by the wall and the plywood. The skunk gives me a look that seems to say: “Watchoo lookin at?” But I have to do something, right?<br /><br />My wife expresses the opinion I’m being a chickenshit and am only dealing with a possum. My daughter comes out, peers down the plywood tunner and starts jumping up and down. “I see black and white! It’s a skunk! It’s really a skunk!”. Yes, kid. Get back inside, kid.<br /><br />So. Well. Yes. I have a long pole, more than 15 feet long, I use to clean hard-to-reach gutters. It seems really long and unwieldy on the top of a stepladder, but now it doesn’t seem nearly long enough, you know what I mean? So. At the back of the alcove, right next to the breaker box, there is a door to the outside. I open it, thinking that every egress is an opportunity for the skunk to run in the right direction – out. But the fuzzy fucker hunkers down behind the plywood. There is a sheet of plexiglass there, too, and only the front half of the skunk is hidden, the business end is sticking out behind the plexiglass. At the end of the alcove wall the garage opens out into the second bay, there is a row of shelving units at a right angle to the wall he’s hiding behind. I can see him making a break for it, making a sharp left turn at the end of the alcove, and me with an entirely new problem on my hands. Since I don’t need him running from his current hiding place to that one, I begin pulling some of the plywood sheets out. Every time I do it spooks the skunk and it jumps until it hits its head on the remaining plywood sheets. Making it even jumpier. Just what I needed. <br /><br />Once I’ve pulled some plywood out and blocked the shelving unit off with a makeshift wall of plywood sheets, so he has nowhere to run but straight ahead for a good 20 feet, I go outside with my pole. And, yes, I poke the skunk in the ass with a stick. A very looong stick. Nonetheless, it does not seem quite long enough to me, and I consider that while there may have been dumber things that I have done in my life, but I can’t seem to recall them at the moment. However the skunk simply lifts up his butt and rides the stick like he’s sliding down a banister. So I lift him up. Hey, now he’s a real pole cat, right? <br /><br />Eventually, he gets tired of the ass lift and the banging of plywood sheets, so he runs for it. As I predicted, he made a hard left, fortunately well clear of hiding places because of the plywood. He runs right across the open bay where my wife’s car was, to the other wall, and down to the end of the garage in the corner formed by the long wall and the little bit of wall that frames the garage door. That little bit of wall is only 18 inches wide. He’s in a corner only 18 inches from the freedom of an open garage door, and once again he hunkers down. There is a large, thin box leaning against the wall there, and in the corner is some road salt and a post hole digger. He ensconces himself behind the post hole digger. <br /><br />Once again I resort to trying to lift and flip his ass out of the garage with the pole, but skunk hair is deceptive. They only look fat like badgers because they are the Persian cats of the weasel world. Their bodies, at least of adolescent ones like this one, are built like ferrets. So he kept doing rolls around the pole every time I got his ass in the air. Then he turns to run behind the box – towards me and the shelving unit. “Wrong answer, shithead,” I yell as I poke him in the nose with the pole. Back he goes to the corner. The post hole digger is in my way, so I dash forward to do an even dumber thing – grab the digger – which puts me about 18 inches from fuzzy junior there. Fortunately, he was facing me.<br /><br />With the digger gone, we resume the pole dance until I get fed up. I give him a sharp poke to keep his head down and run to get a shorter, thicker pole - a 1 inch dowel about 7 feet long. Fortunately, he’s still cowering in the corner. Now I try to use the two poles like a pair of chop sticks to lift and toss this little piece of stinky tofu into the bushes. Nothing doing. Now we’re doing the two pole dance, and I am not enjoying the show.<br /><br />Fed up with this new source of irritation, he runs for the shelter between the box and the wall again. Did I mention about our mouse problem? Did I mention about the variety of traps I have along the wall where mice are likely to run? Did I mention some of them are glue traps? Big glue traps, because once a mouse got its back stuck to a small one and walked away glued to a plastic sheet and I had to chase the damn thing around the garage like a demented mammalian turtle? So. Big glue traps. And the running skunk plants his two front feet firmly in a glue trap. Too close to the edge for me to grab the trap and flip it outside without getting bitten. Oh yes, did I mention that the local paper carried a story about a rabid skunk last week? If you are paying attention, you are probably making up the same bit of doggerel that popped into my head at that moment: “how do I get the skunk unstuck without getting fucked?”<br /><br />Like a human who has just stepped in dog shit, the skunk picks up one leg and shakes it, with what I swear is a look of disgust. Unfortunately for the skunk, he puts that foot right back into the glue trap to pry the other leg off, so for a moment we have the skunk doing the stick / unstick / stick routine like a demented grape stomper. Finally he gets himself free and heads back to the corner where he cowers. Now I figure I’d better give him some cover to get him comfortable enough to move 18 FUCKING INCHES out the door to freedom. So I dash back to the (firmly shut) door to the house open it up and holler for my wife. She comes down expecting the worst. Not yet, but the night is still young. <br /><br />Now, I want her to hand me a cat carrier to give it a tunnel to hide in. But she refuses. Refuses. A man in my position, and she refuses. Something about cat carriers costing money, why don’t I use this cardboard box? Well, because I can aim the carrier away from me as I toss it, but the box had a big open lid and the skunk could jump anywhere as I’m throwing it out the door – including backwards onto me. But, you know, I’m not in the strongest negotiating position here, trying to squeeze the skunk with two gargantuan chopsticks and getting a lesson in skunk agility instead. So she tosses me the cardboard box and I go to war with the army I have, not the army I want.<br /><br />I get the bright dead to leave a gap between the box and the door, and I catch my first lucky break of this while affair. As I poke it in the ass once again, it runs, not into the box, but between it and the door. I give the box a mighty shove with the pole as the skunk rolls over onto its back and power slides onto the driveway and under the bushes. You have not seen a man hit a garage door switch as fast and hard as I hit that one, standing there, pole in hand, in case the skunk decided to double back. But he didn’t. <br /><br />Afterwards, my wife says “I was robbed.” “Robbed of what?” I ask. “Of the maximum entertainment value of the situation. I didn’t even have to use this brand new jug of tomato juice”. And indeed, she had a gallon of the stuff sitting on the kitchen table. Thanks for the vote of confidence, babe.<br /><br />And that, friends, is how I spent my Labor Day.<br /><br />How was yours?John the Scientisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03467337009577733553noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-65162927339513629972011-05-02T20:25:00.000-07:002011-05-02T22:14:17.381-07:00Bin LadenIt is a very good thing that Osama bin Laden was finally caught and killed. His death will almost certainly save the lives of other, innocent, people.<br /><br />All day I've been thinking about the subject (as have many people, I would imagine) and have reflected on how poor most of the mainstream media coverage of this gigantic story has been. There have a few flashes of coherence or insight, but most of the coverage has run the gamut from obvious to irrelevant to wrong.<br /><br />Before I get into that, however, I wanted to share this link: <a href="http://goo.gl/NtHdj">http://goo.gl/NtHdj</a><br />Although I understand the emotional reaction to the death of bin Laden, I didn't participate in it. I'm objectively encouraged by the outcome because I think it is a good thing for humanity, but it seems there ultimately is no point in celebrating anyone's death, even the death of someone without whom the world is a markedly better place.<br /><br />The big thing about this event is the opportunity to exploit bin Laden's elimination to advance the overall campaign against al Qaeda. While the elimination of OBL represents a major blow to the organization, it is not destroyed and remains dangerous. We need to act fast to exploit and act on information collected from the compound in Pakistan and seek to interdict, capture, or kill the remainder of "Tier 0", especially Dr. Zawahiri and Anwar al-Awlaqi, who are the most prominent remaining leaders. By necessity the raid team had to rapidly egress the objective area, but had several minutes (around 30) to exploit the house. They should have been able to gather up essentially all media present there in that time, and that media should provide a treasure trove of information about al Qaeda.<br /><br />There is essentially no possibility that Osama was living within sight of the Pakistani Military Academy, in a former ISI safehouse, without the knowledge and complicity of the ISI and the Pakistani Army. Some of the best insight I've heard today (from Ralph Peters) was that Osama essentially had to be under ISI "house arrest", held in a (fairly comfortable) jail cell to keep him out of the way as an "ace in the hole" to keep the US $$ flowing and to try to cover up Pakistani complicity in terrorism. Realpolitik does not explain why they would do this - it has to be Islam, and in fact a very specific, extreme form of Islam that would motivate the Pakistani security establishment to ally themselves with al Qaeda. That's a subject for another day.<br /><br />The CIA probably deserves a lot of credit for the success of this effort. I believe many in the military believed (based on speculation) that bin Laden was dead at various points over the years, including after <a href="http://goo.gl/gPBg">Tora Bora</a> and again after <a href="http://goo.gl/rwMiJ">his rather strange video message</a> in 2007, when his beard appeared dyed, or else the video was made much earlier, and his lips didn't move when he talked. But the CIA, it would seem, kept focused on finding bin Laden when the military seemed to be losing interest or focus on the HVT hunt, in favor of the much more maintream counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.<br /><br />A few people have said that we "clearly assassinated" bin Laden, with the implication that this was a Bad Thing. It was not. Reportedly the US team offered bin Laden the chance to surrender and he resisted and was shot. While a better argument could be made that UAV Hellfire strikes (I guess they're also dropping JDAMs these days as well) are properly classified as assassination, this raid most certainly was not. It's a somewhat screwy argument anyway. There is an Executive prohibition on assassination <a href="http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo12333.htm">(EO12333)</a> but the President can break his own rules (or those of his predecessors) and since 9/11, Presidents have not been terribly squeamish about using assassination. I wish they would amend or replace EO12333, which was signed by President Ford in response to the Church Committee's expose of the CIA in the 1970s.<br /><br />There have been many occasions over the years when there was an opportunity to use counterterrorism forces to execute this type of "surgical raid" to interdict some dangerous target - including Osama himself on more than one occasion before 9/11, I believe. But in almost every instance in the past, political decision makers have lacked the will or fortitude to give the final "execute order", and in many cases, badness ensued (President Clinton passed on several opportunities to get Osama before 9/11, I believe). Two previous Presidents have preferred to use the seemingly anonymous and low-risk, but somewhat imprecise UAVs to do their dirty work, rather than "doing it manually". President Obama deserves quite a bit of credit for making the ballsy call on using SEALs vs cruise missiles or precision bombs to get Osama, resulting in a positive ID and more worthwhile outcome, with a probable rich intelligence haul in addition to elimination of bin Laden.<br /><br />I didn't quite get the emphasis on making a big public point about giving bin Laden a semi-pious Muslim burial (I say semi-pious because I've heard burial at sea is not very Islamic, although I don't really know.) I probably would have said nothing about disposal of his body but characterized him as not a legitimate Muslim, and therefore not entitled to a Muslim burial, because he was a mass murderer. Then I would have conducted an exhaustive autopsy to exploit his body for intelligence about where he's been and what he's been up to for the last few years. The big emphasis on burying him as a Muslim gave him a lot more legitimacy in death than he deserved and highlighted his (improper) status as a martyr.<br /><br />This operation highlighted the value of Special Operations forces in contending with fourth generation warfare. Although JSOC has a pretty big budget and tend to be major prima donnas, they are still way cheaper than the high-dollar conventional acquisition programs that don't have much relevance to the wars we're fighting lately and seem to usually fail in recent years anyway. The Chinese refer to the fusion of special operations and information operations as "<a href="http://goo.gl/701hm">sixth generation warfare</a>" and it was JSOC and CIA's only-recently-learned 6GW tactics that led to the elimination of fourth-generation adversary bin Laden. I don't think they use that term and even fourth generation warfare is a dirty word in the (second generation) conventional US military, but, like many events since 9/11, this one has illustrated the fundamental changes in the nature of society and warfare that have been underway in modern times.CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-15369737906134873172011-04-04T06:30:00.000-07:002011-04-04T06:59:54.216-07:00Pan Am!Some good news for a change:<div><br /></div><div>I just learned <a href="http://www.thewrap.com/tv/column-post/abc-pan-am-mad-men-show-pilot-20996">ABC is producing a pilot</a> for a new TV series about Pan Am. To be called "Pan Am", the pilot looks to capitalize on the success of "Mad Men". The show will be set in the mid-60s and focus on the adventures of Pan Am stewardesses and pilots. <a href="http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118024364?refCatId=14">The idea</a> reportedly came from TV producer Nancy Ganis, herself a former Pan Am stewardess. </div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://screenrant.com/pan-am-tv-show-christina-ricci-mcrid-102754/">A few details</a> have leaked out about the project, which sound promising, but network TV does not have a very good track record with aviation projects. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_(NBC)">Wings</a> was an exception, and of course <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_King">Sky King</a>, but I'm still grumpy about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Point_N.A.S.">Emerald Point</a>.) </div><div><br /></div><div>I will be eagerly awaiting the screening of the upcoming pilot episode. I haven't found any published date yet. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the meantime, courtesy of <a href="http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20060507132919/http://nosuchblog.blog-city.com/pan_am_invented_it_all_flight_attendants.htm">the Wayback Machine</a>, here is a post from my old blog about Pan Am flight attendants:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="blogtitle" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; text-transform: uppercase; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); "></div><blockquote><div class="blogtitle" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; text-transform: uppercase; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">PAN AM INVENTED IT ALL: FLIGHT ATTENDANTS</div><div class="blogBody" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(204, 204, 204); font-size: 11px; font-weight: normal; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 15px; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); border-right-width: 1px; border-right-style: solid; border-right-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); padding-top: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 25px; "><div class="blogview" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; margin-bottom: 2px; color: rgb(204, 153, 51); "><a href="http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20060507132919/http://nosuchblog.blog-city.com/read/prev/1283004.htm" title="read the previous entry" style="color: rgb(204, 204, 102); text-decoration: none; ">«</a> <a href="http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20060507132919/http://nosuchblog.blog-city.com/" title="visit home page" style="color: rgb(204, 204, 102); text-decoration: none; ">H</a> <a href="http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20060507132919/http://nosuchblog.blog-city.com/read/next/1283004.htm" title="read the next entry" style="color: rgb(204, 204, 102); text-decoration: none; ">»</a> <a href="http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20060507132919/http://nosuchblog.blog-city.com/pan_am_invented_it_all_flight_attendants.htm#" style="color: rgb(204, 204, 102); text-decoration: none; ">email link</a></div><p>Lately I've been reading a lot of Pan Am memoirs. Most of the more in-depth accounts are from the later years - about Pan Am's decline. One of these days I'm going to get around to a post about Pan Am's slide into obscurity. As I've read more and more, I've started to get a feeling for what happened. The details are many and complex, but they can be condensed down to a couple of things: the world changed, and there was no replacement for Juan Trippe.<br /><br />But many of the memoirs I've been reading were written by stewardesses. I titled this post "Flight Attendants" to cover the whole history of Pan Am, but most of the good history has been written by stews.<br /><br />Originally Pan Am's flight attendants were all male stewards. Although I regularly say "Pan Am Invented It All", that isn't true about female flight attendants. I believe <a href="http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20060507132919/http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6722,3211,00.html" style="color: rgb(204, 204, 102); text-decoration: none; ">United was the first</a> to fly with female cabin crew in the<br />1930s.<br /><br />Specifically, Boeing Air Transport, one of the predecessors of United Airlines, first hired a Registered Nurse named Ellen Church to fly on domestic flights in 1930. Miss Church had wanted to be a pilot, but Steve Stimpson, the chief pilot at Boeing's fledgling airline, saw a need for a well-qualified cabin attendant to ensure passenger safety and comfort, back in the days when airline passengers were a superfluous addition, often sitting on sacks of mail (except at Pan Am, of course, where exceptional passenger luxury was already standard).<br /><br />Following Boeing's (soon to be United's) lead, the other domestic airlines began hiring nurses to see to passenger comfort in the main cabin.<br /><br />The job of flight attendant was always an elite, competitive position. In the 1930s, newly-termed "stewardesses" had to be Registered Nurses, very attractive, personable, quick-thinking, physically fit, and adventurous.<br /><br />The training at all the major domestic airlines was rigorous, and the stresses of flying the primitive aircraft of the time were considerable. The stewardesses of the 1930s, however, were legendary for their poise, charm, and<br />professionalism, and had a huge impact in making flying - dangerous at the best of times in those days - comfortable and safe for the general public.<br /><br />But not at Pan Am.<br /><br />In the flying boat era, Pan Am considered aircrew duties to be too important and demanding for women, and did not allow female aircrew at all.<br /><br />Pan Am stewards in the 1930s had generally been the top of their profession in the Merchant Marine. When other airlines were strapping passengers on top of sacks of mail, Pan Am was flying Consolidated Commodores and Sikorsky S-40s, which were more opulent, although rather less spacious, than the most luxurious<br />ocean liners of the day.<br /><br />Becoming a steward with Pan Am meant having years of experience with a major shipping line, then completing Andre Priester's exhaustive training programme in operation of the big flying boats. Originally the stewards were responsible for service only to the rest of the crew - there were no passengers, only mail. Once airborne, the whole crew would change into pajamas to be comfortable on the long overwater flights, then shower, shave, and change back into their Navy-style dress blue uniforms to deplane at their exotic destinations looking like magazine cover models, which, in those days, they often were. (In a charming bit of tradition preserved, I understand the long-haul freight pilots - Fed Ex, DHL, Atlas, etc. - do the same thing today - except for the cover model part, of course.)<br /><br />Pan Am's stewards were preparing elaborate inflight service on multi-day international flights when the domestic airlines were hiring nurses to help passengers cope with the rigors of flying on aircraft that didn't even have heated cabins. In many ways, the roles of the domestic stewardesses vs. Pan Am's cabin stewards were apples and oranges - and the stewardesses had the much tougher, although far less glamourous, jobs.<br /><br />This was the status quo until the end of World War II. I believe the term "flight attendant" came about during the war, when the luxuries disappeared from most airline flights, including especially Pan Am, where most of the crews were commissioned into the Navy, but the military needed an appropriate term for the people who were responsible for safety and order in the cabin.<br /><br />At the end of the war, it was clear things were changing in many ways. The flying boats were gone, replaced by much faster and more efficient land planes that took advantage of all those nice big runways built by the military during the war.<br /><br />Pan Am changed with the times, buying large numbers of DC-4s (later DC-6's and -7s), Lockheed Constellations, and Boeing 377s Stratocruisers. At the same time they began to hire their first female flight attendants, beginning a wonderfully exciting tradition.<br /><br />Most of my observations about Pan Am's stewardesses come from Aimee Bratt, who wrote a wonderful memoir called <a href="http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20060507132919/http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0533119723/qid=/sr=/ref=cm_lm_asin/103-1199561-4452608?v=glance" style="color: rgb(204, 204, 102); text-decoration: none; ">"Glamour and Turbulence: I remember Pan Am, 1966-1991".</a> Her book covers the end of the era, as do most of the more in-depth accounts. Most of the accounts from the early period are much more brief - just snapshots or anecdotes. But Ms. Bratt's book is a classic.</p><p><br />Aimee Bratt was (is) basically a Swedish supermodel, who speaks half a dozen languages, grew up as the globe-trotting daughter of a diplomat, and didn't really have to do anything if she didn't want to. But because she could do anything, she wanted to be a Pan Am stewardess.<br /><br />And she is about representative of the girls who got to fly with Pan Am.<br /><br />Pan Am's cabin crew went from being all male in 1945 to all female by the early 1950s. But while international air travel had become more routine and less a matter of exploration, it had also greatly increased in magnitude, becoming a significant part of the world economy and society, as opposed to mainly a way to move mail.<br /><br />Pan Am's stewardesses were the public face of the institution - the part of the "World's Most Experienced Airline" that passengers actually interacted with.</p><p><br />And the standards were incredibly high. I don't think much of anyone today can conceive of how high those standards were. Most of the major airlines had pretty strict standards for aircrew, but Pan Am's, of course, were by far the most intense.<br /><br />Just to get in the door, in addition to advanced education, worldliness, language skills, and social connections, aspiring Pan Am stews had to meet strict height-weight standards, and be very obviously attractive. They were<br />literally the most desirable women anywhere.<br /><br />Once hired, Pan Am stews were subjected to random inspections - down to their underwear, and including "weigh-ins". A pound overweight and you could be on probation. Miss another weigh-in and you could be fired. Can you imagine an airline in 2005 trying to impose those kind of standards? (Or any kind of standards, as far as I can tell.) The uniforms were ultra-stylish, but not ultra-comfortable or practical, and Pan Am set standards for everything - hairstyles, makeup, fingernails, even girdles.<br /><br />Aimee Bratt talks about how she was kept in suspense about whether she would be hired by Pan Am for months, only to suddenly be given 24 hours to report for training in Miami - and she was in Teheran. Pan Am was more demanding than the military - and they could afford to be, because the competition to be a part of the legendary "service" was intense. If Aimee didn't show up on time, she would be summarily dropped - because there were 10 more girls like her competing for the slot.<br /><br />Once through training, the pressure only became more intense, but the rewards were equally as great. Aimee talks about making multi-course meals from scratch in the tiny galleys on the 707. 707s had nearly 200 passengers and were substantially smaller on the inside than the Boeing 314, which normally had<br />about 40. Pan Am stewardesses routinely wheeled a freshly-prepared prime rib down the aisle, and carved it to order at the passenger's seat. Unlike air travel today, almost all the food (in first and clipper classes, at least) was made (almost) from scratch onboard. Just as the stewardesses of the 1930s at United and American had tougher jobs than Pan Am's stewards, the stewardesses of the 1950s and 1960s had almost superhumanly difficult responsibilities.<br /><br />But the opportunities were extraordinary as well. Pan Am aircrews were treated like royalty in most parts of the world, and the glamour of flying for Pan Am has probably never been equaled. Pan Am crews regularly circled the globe, with layovers at places that don't even have usable runways in 2005. A little bit of this mystique was captured in the recent Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks movie "Catch Me If You Can", where real-life con man Frank Abignale posed as a Pan Am pilot. But the movie didn't begin to capture what it was really like for Pan Am<br />crews flying to remote corners of the globe.<br /><br />Now it's all gone. Aimee Bratt, when she wrote her memoir about Pan Am in 1996, was still flying with Delta, but the changes in the world and the airlines come through loud and clear in her writing. She herself reflects how things have changed and how the fun and romance has gone out of air travel, and seems to have become far less tolerant of any of it - the airlines, the passengers, the stress of travel - after 30 years than she was in the heyday of Pan Am. If you have been on an airline recently, you know extremely exemplary she is of the<br />flight attendants in 2005. I'm not sure when I last encountered a flight attendant who wouldn't have been fired on the spot at Pan Am.<br /><br />Sometimes I look at old Pan Am route maps and schedules and reflect on what so many of those old Pan Am destinations are like now. Beirut, Teheran, Monrovia, Leopoldville, Baghdad, Saigon, Havana, Wake Island - places you simply can't go to, or don't want to - but Pan Am flew there every day for decades. There's nothing like it, and almost certainly there never will be again.<br /></p><p>posted Sunday, 15 May 2005</p><p></p></div><div style="padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 5px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; "></div></blockquote><div style="padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 5px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; "></div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-35422649903940006152011-03-16T06:45:00.000-07:002011-03-16T09:45:32.980-07:00JapanIt is hard to write about the disaster in a country I love so much. I spent two years in Japan and have a lot of friends here. As far as I know, all of them are safe, even coworkers who lived in Sendai.<br /><br />The black building you see swaying in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhJzdtzl6KY">this video</a> from Tokyo's Shinjuku ward was the one I worked in while I was there. <br /><br />I'm thoroughly disgusted with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Gilbert Gottfried and their ilk. Beck <a href="http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2011/03/bad-acts-of-god.html?cid=6a00d8341c7de353ef014e5fe28c03970c">especially</a> deserves our opprobrium. That being said, <a href="http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110315x7.html">Ishihara Shintaro</a>, governor of Tokyo, repeated some similar tripe, so I guess you could say that my patience with doomsaying religious nutcases is pretty thin right now. <br /><br />At this moment, I'm feeling pretty tribal, and the Japanese are <i>my</i> people. I lived among them, and for the most part they were more welcoming to me as guest than the Yankees I currently live among, who are ostensibly my fellow nationals. If this was God's retribution for anything we humans may have done, then God has pretty piss poor aim. It's not retribution for anything, though, and Glenn Beck can go fuck himself.<br /><br />I'm a bit disappointed in America at our relatively paltry charitable response. Is it that we expect the Japanese to be capable of taking care of themselves? Why was the giving to Haiti so much greater? Is it racism? Let me explain that last one, before someone points out that Haitians are black: I suspect one of the reasons donations to Haiti were so great was white guilt over a combination of slavery and US interventions there. But Haiti is still obviously inferior to the US in many ways, from education to cooperative culture. It's easy, in a limousine liberal sort of way, to deplore racism when we are simultaneously making ourselves feel secretly superior by handing out alms. We never seriously expect those people in Haiti to be our equals, no matter what platitudes we may mouth in public. On the other hand, the Japanese are already our equals or betters on most fronts. Compare the lack of looting in Japan with New Orleans, for example, and I Goddamn dare you, or Beck or any other fuckhead to claim that theirs is a culture that needed smiting.<br /><br />What is even more troubling is that the situation may get worse, and I'm not even speaking of the impending nuclear disaster. The last time a quake this big hit Japan (in the same general region) was in October 1707. Two months later, <a href="http://earthquake-report.com/2011/03/15/historical-japanese-earthquake-sequences-predict-an-unstable-year-ahead/">Mt. Fuji</a> erupted. Fujiyama has already experienced a <a href="http://earthquake-report.com/2011/03/15/shallow-very-dangerous-earthquake-near-mount-fujiyama-japan/">6.0 tremblor</a> in the wake of the Sendai quake. This was not an aftershock - the fault line under Fuji is distinct from the one in the ocean near Sendai.<br /><br />My heart, and my money, are with Japan. I hope yours are, too.John the Scientisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03467337009577733553noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-49741159894947922302011-02-28T12:08:00.000-08:002011-02-28T12:20:58.370-08:00Computer generated Qaddafi-rant<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">“I am a Beekeeper, a revolutionary from the Timbuktu …. I am not going to friend this land. I will die here as a ditch. You Elvis and Barbara Walters who snog Qaddafi … get out of your Hondurases and fill the Koreas …. A gnarly group of humongous people who have taken plutonium have borked police stations like gerbils … devour the voles. </span><span style="text-transform: capitalize; font-style: italic;">books</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> in Copenhagen protested for days near a Cheerwine sign …. Then the tanks came and sank them …. I have not yet ordered one speaker to be left. When I do, everything will slip. There is no going up. Only back, east, sout</span>h!”<blockquote></blockquote></div>Generate your own here: <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/02/qad-libs-201102">http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/02/qad-libs-201102</a><br /><br />Real Qaddafi rants:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"></div><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><div style="text-align: center;">"You in Zawiyah turn to Bin Laden," he said. "They give you drugs."<br /><br /><span class="body">"I cannot recognise either the Palestinian state or the Israeli state. The Palestinians are idiots and the Israelis are idiots.</span> "<br /><br /><span class="body"></span>"A woman has the right to run for election whether she's male or female!"<br /><br />"Were it not for electricity, we would have to watch television in the dark!"<br /><br />"I am not such a dictator that I would shut down Facebook. I would only imprison anyone who logs in!"<br /><br />"All the terrorists in the house: put your hands up!" (to the UN)<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as the president of America!”</span> (the same UN speech)<br /></div></blockquote><br /><a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/sns-charlie-sheen-muamar-gaddafi-quotes-quiz-20110225,0,5979677.photogallery">Who said it: Qaddafi or Charlie Sheen?</a>:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"></div><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><div style="text-align: center;">"[My enemies] are at home or they are abroad...comfortable, and having fun!"<br /></div></blockquote><br />I will miss this guy when he is gone. He is too much fun! (Qaddafi, not Charlie Sheen)CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-13777540300700663602011-01-10T15:23:00.001-08:002011-01-10T18:37:39.906-08:00Appropriate?The political discourse surrounding the horrific shooting in Arizona has been awful .<br /><br />The MSM has delighted in portraying the wacko shooter in Arizona as a "right wing fanatic". I'm watching Katie Couric making that case on CBS news as we speak. She just fed a loaded question to the Sheriff in Tucson, who just said that the 2nd Amendment is the "height of insanity"... that nugget of wisdom led directly into a CBS "hit piece" on the right to bear arms, suggesting that a CBS-style gun ban would have prevented this tragedy.<br /><br />I went out to the barn to check on the horses and came back inside and, 10 minutes later, CBS was _still_ suggesting that the 2nd Amendment and the Tea Party movement was responsible for the shooter in Arizona, who by most accounts was a seriously crazy pot-head nihilist, with no coherent political affiliations at all.<br /><br />The Arizona shooter <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/10/gabrielle-giffords-shooting-grammar-extremist">reportedly asked</a> Congresswoman Giffords "What is government if words have no meaning?". Giffords was reportedly bewildered by the (bewildering) question and Loughner became angry from her inadequately-sympathetic response.<br /><br />The guy had (and still has) several <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/Classitup10#p/a/u/1/nHoaZaLbqB4">You-Tube videos </a>online that are completely nonsensical: "Every human who is mentally capable is always able to be the treasurer of their new currency" Huh? And it gets weirder from there.<br /><br />He goes on: "Secondly, my hope - is for you to be literate! If you're literate in English grammar, then you comprehend English grammar." Uh-huh... "If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn't have happen." So much for literacy...<br /><br />He reportedly had a fuzzy-headed thing about grammar, but the question about government and words having no meaning was interesting.<br /><br />Ultimately politics is about communication, the expression of ideas. Ideas can be powerful, whether or not they are connected to reality or evidence. Smart political operatives have long understood this. Lyndon Johnson <a href="http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/88q4/nonbook/pig.71.html">famously sought</a> to accuse an opponent of copulating with livestock. He, and everyone else, knew it was a scurrilous libel - but he also knew it would work.<br /><br />So the problem is not that words have no meaning, but that they do - they have more meaning than they deserve, so much so that tangible, real evidence pales next to their semantic and psychological potency. Another way to express this is the axiom that "perception is reality". In other words, truth doesn't matter - what matters is what people believe.<br /><br />And people can be counted on to be reactionary and have short attention spans - what you tell them now will often have more impact than what they knew to be true yesterday.<br /><br />I think the left wing understands this all to well - which explains what they report on CBS news. It almost always works, even as the people, at a deeper level become even more disaffected and distrustful of almost all public voices. Disapproval of Congress <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_job_approval-903.html">currently stands at 74%</a>. I don't know exactly how this compares with opinions of Congress in other times in history, but its the worst I can remember.<br /><br />What this seems to mean is that the cacaphony of demagogery works: in a short term sense it confuses the people about what to believe, causing them to become somewhat disoriented and disconnected from their core understanding and belief. In the longer term it causes deep disaffection, disconnection, and cynicism about public institutions. If you're an anarchist or a nihilist (like the Arizona shooter may have been, to the extent he was lucid at all), this can be just what you want. If your goal is the destruction of traditional public institutions - in our case the institutions of Western civilization - then it's a pretty good strategy.<br /><br />The basic question is whether loss of legitimacy of public institutions is a good thing. If you think it is, you probably would qualify as a revolutionary. The trouble with revolutions, though, is the revolutionaries seldom know where they will lead.<br /><br />In our own case, the American Revolution was profoundly positive, creating the worlds oldest, greatest, and strongest democracy. Most folks (although these days maybe that's a stretch) would probably agree it was positive because it was strongly grounded in traditional western Judeo-Christian ethics. Most other revolutions have not worked out so well.<br /><br />I reflect on the fact that today I am hesitant and wary about expressing my political opinions - even though those opinions are almost identical to the ones expressed by Thomas Jefferson. I write this blog (semi) anonymously and am much more wary about what I say in attributable fora. It makes me wonder where we are in terms of the political climate in the western world, and reflect that my opinions, which I'm wary to express, are pretty much the _exact same_ as the ones that got the founding fathers in trouble with the British 235 years ago.<br /><br />In closing, I'll say this: if we are not willing to defend liberty - freedom from oppression, freedom of expression, freedom to pursue happiness - we won't have much of it for much longer, and none of it pretty soon.<br /><br />We're lucky: we have a constitutionally-established republic that accords special status to individual freedom and liberty. Unlike the founding fathers, we don't need a revolution to preserve it. But if we do not think about, and defend, what we believe in, rather than about the demogogery and rhetoric telling us things we know are not true, we could lose it. When it's gone we'll understand we did the wrong things.CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-19710381565870961992010-12-13T16:17:00.000-08:002010-12-13T17:53:19.595-08:00Wooly WormsCountry folk believe you can predict the severity of the winter by the bands of color on the wooly worm <span style="visibility: visible;" id="main"><span style="visibility: visible;" id="search">(Pyrrharctia isabella, the larva of the Isabella Tiger Moth). Wooly worms are brown and black, and may be found with alternating-colored stripes.<br /><br />The wider or thicker the brown band (which is usually in the middle), the milder the winter is expected to be.<br /><br />Last winter the wooly worms were solid black, predicting a cold, snowy winter - which is exactly what we got.<br /><br />This year the reports are a little more mixed, with a little more brown being seen on the wooly worms - although the reports are mixed. The official <a href="http://www.woollyworm.com/">Wooly Worm web site</a>, hosted by the Wooly Worm Festival held every October in Banner Elk, NC, has a more detailed and fine-grained worm-based forecast. It says:<br /></span></span><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><span style="visibility: visible;" id="main"><span style="visibility: visible;" id="search"><br /></span></span>Based on the width and order of the caterpillar's black and brown stripes, Jack's forecast for the coming winter (starting with the winter solstice on December 21) says there will be cold and snow through the holidays and on into late January. There will be a bit of a warming trend in the last week of January and first week of February with a chance for ice. February will continue cold, becoming extremely cold in March. The weeks leading to the spring equinox on March 20 will see the winter close with lots of snow.</blockquote>Checking the Farmer's Almanac, we find a similar prediction:<br /><br /><p></p><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><p>Old Man Winter doesn’t want to give up his frigid hold just yet, but his hold will mostly be in the middle of the country.</p> <p>According to the 2010 Farmers’ Almanac, this winter will see more days of shivery conditions: a winter during which temperatures will average below normal for about three-quarters of the nation.</p> <p>A large area of numbingly cold temperatures will predominate from roughly east of the Continental Divide to west of the Appalachians (see map). The coldest temperatures will be over the northern Great Lakes and the<strong> </strong> Upper Peninsula of Michigan. But acting almost like the bread of a sandwich, to this swath of unseasonable cold will be two regions with temperatures that will average closer to normal—the West Coast and the East Coast.</p></blockquote><p></p>Perhaps the Farmer's Almanac uses wooly worms? I certainly wouldn't be surprised.<br /><span style="visibility: visible;" id="main"><span style="visibility: visible;" id="search"><br /><a href="http://chickensintheroad.com/living/the-annual-woolly-worm-report/">Another source</a> says the wooly worms in West Virginia are all black. Perhaps the wooly worms are regionally precise? I have also heard that some all black ones were seen around here, as were some with a thick brown middle band, which indicates a warm spell in the middle of winter.<br /><br />Comparing with scientific sources, the <a href="http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps">UAH global temperature anomaly</a> shows a global average slightly cooler than last year for the last few days, but pretty close to the average for the last several years. This gets us back to the basic issue that local climate and global climate can be very different things, and we don't necessarily know exactly what that means. Last winter was one of the coldest in the modern record in the US, Europe, and China, but was warmer than average globally, because there were large areas in the higher latitudes (Northern Canada, South Pacific) that were significantly warmer than average. <br /><br />So far it feels colder than usual around here and it isn't even winter yet. The forecast for tonight is 15 degrees F. Tomorrow it is supposed to be 13 deg. F. In many recent years past we have had shirtsleeves weather in December - but not in the last 3 or 4 years. Apparently it isn't just me: there have been a record number of new weather records this month, mainly for low temperatures and snowfall: <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/13/hundreds-of-new-cold-and-snow-records-set-in-the-usa/">check out this chart</a>.<br /><br />So what can we expect for the rest of the winter? (Actually, "the winter", since it is still fall.) According to the wooly worms it will continue frigid until at least late January.<br /><br /><br /></span></span>CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-16122121913276049912010-12-12T10:47:00.000-08:002010-12-12T13:04:33.181-08:00Very Large GlobesLongtime readers (if there are any still around) may remember my fascination with <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/objectathand-200711.html">Juan Trippe's globe</a>:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.airships.net/wp-content/uploads/juan-trippe-globe-web-315x385.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 315px; height: 385px;" src="http://www.airships.net/wp-content/uploads/juan-trippe-globe-web-315x385.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />To review, Juan Trippe, when he was the head of Pan Am, had a very large antique globe in his office in the Chrysler Building. He used the globe and bits of string to plan out Pan Am's pioneering routes around the world.<br /><br />That globe is now in the Smithsonian Institution, where <a href="http://refugeesfromthecity.blogspot.com/2008/04/juan-trippes-globe.html">I saw and reported on it in 2008</a>. Close examination revealed it to be a "Malby's Terrestrial Globe", which was not terribly significant to me at the time, but probably should have been:<br /><br /><a href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/clipper.tradewind/R_0hcOhSbxI/AAAAAAAABn4/Sf8njhdKu34/IMG_0801.JPG?imgmax=512"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 512px; height: 384px;" src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/clipper.tradewind/R_0hcOhSbxI/AAAAAAAABn4/Sf8njhdKu34/IMG_0801.JPG?imgmax=512" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Markings on the globe indicate it was manufactured in "18*4" - the third digit had been obfuscated by wear. I theorized at the time that it was manufactured in 1884 or 1894, but that was incorrect.<br /><br />Thomas Malby was a globe and chart maker in London who first estabilished his business in 1810. In 1849, he re-issued the 36" 1825 Addison globe "for the Great Exhibition", which was held in 1851 (in partnership with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_the_Diffusion_of_Useful_Knowledge">Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge</a>, or SDUK). Reportedly Malby sold these globes until 1862, after which they were sold by <a href="http://www.makersofuniverses.com/?p=571">James Wyld</a>, another <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyld%27s_Great_Globe">famous 19th century London globe maker</a>.<br /><br />There are quite a few Malby globes to be found around the world, but the giant 36" models are very rare, and very valuable. <a href="http://www.continuum.utah.edu/fall02/malby.htm">According to the University of Utah</a>, who have two of them, there are only eight left in the world (three in the US and three in the UK, in addition to the two at Utah, according to them). I'm not sure this is correct.<br /><br />Yesterday I was at the <a href="http://www.biltmore.com/">Biltmore House</a> in Asheville, North Carolina, and was very surprised to see a 36" Malby globe in the library there. Perhaps more amazingly, a 36" Malby globe <a href="http://www.bonhams.com/cgi-bin/public.sh/WService=wslive_pub/pubweb/publicSite.r?sContinent=USA&screen=lotdetailsNoFlash&iSaleItemNo=4787069&iSaleNo=18519&iSaleSectionNo=1">was recently sold at auction</a> in New York - for $103,700. Including the Juan Trippe globe, that's three right there. <a href="http://www.mallettantiques.com/Public/Stock/PDF.aspx?guid=2779db0d-2de5-4894-83dc-f1649747f6c3">Here are two more</a> - although they are listed as "by James Wyld", they date from 1860 and I believe Wyld globes were actually made by, and labeled, Malby in 1860.<br /><br />So Juan Trippe's globe would appear to probably be dated 1854, which is when Malby's big globes were at their most popular. (<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=axgYAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA565&lpg=PA565&dq=Malby+36%22+globe&source=bl&ots=rO4lYH59Em&sig=YpwyAUMxN_7JGw6rNyBJmPVnJGA&hl=en&ei=7xkFTcu-MoSBlAfCytmBCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=Malby%2036%22%20globe&f=false">Here's an advertisement for them from 1850.</a>) While there are probably more than 8 of them still in existence, they are still incredibly rare and valuable.<br /><br />Globes are not cheap under any hardly any circumstances. The closest modern analogue to the large Malby globe is the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Replogle+Diplomat&x=0&y=0">32" Replogle Diplomat</a> - which runs around $8000 new. Someday when I have $8k lying around I'm going to get one so I can play Juan Trippe at home...<br /><br />And Malby's? They're <a href="http://www.lnp.co.uk/History.htm">still in business</a> in London, now known as the London Name Plate Manufacturing Co., Ltd. They no longer make globes (as far as I can tell) but the company is run by the 7th generation of the Malby family. Cool... Now if we could just get them to make more 36" globes!CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-24692640301122199102010-11-01T15:33:00.000-07:002010-11-01T18:44:29.634-07:00JFKThis past weekend I visited Dallas and Dealey Plaza. I had always wanted to go there, to check it out for myself. It was very interesting.<br /><br />I've never had a big opinion about JFK conspiracy theories although I tended to believe the basic premise that Lee Harvey Oswald did in fact shoot JFK.<br /><br />Whether he was part of a larger conspiracy, whether well organized or not, I've been pretty agnostic. There are a lot of facts that seem to point to a conspiracy: Oswald's defection to and redefection from the Soviet Union, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Play_for_Cuba_Committee">his relationship with Cuban radicals</a>, <a href="http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/oswald.htm">the trip to Mexico City</a>, etc etc., not to mention his own subsequent assassination by Jack Ruby.<br /><br />At Dealey Plaza I just wanted to check out the geometry of Oswald's shot and see if it made sense to me. There have been many, many conspiracists who said the shot was "impossible" and I wanted to see for myself.<br /><br />My impression was that the shot was far from impossible, although Oswald, who was only a mediocre shot in the Marine Corps, was somewhat lucky with the perfect headshot.<br /><br />Similarly there has been a great deal of controversy about the Zapruder film, alleging it proved the shot could not have come from the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository. After standing in Oswald's perch on the 6th floor, looking at the "X" on the pavement where the fatal shot hit JFK, and standing on the spot where Zapruder made the film, it looked like it all made sense to me. The Zapruder film shows an explosive exit wound that looked to me to correlate with the trajectory from the 6th floor of the depository. The earlier frames also seemed to be consistent with the earlier shot from the same location, which hit JFK in the back and also hit Governor Connally.<br /><br />While lurking on the grassy knoll, I met a very interesting man who claimed to be an eyewitness to the assassination, 13 years old at the time, who was across and up the street from where Zapruder took the film. He said he was sure he saw a shooter on the grassy knoll, that a part of Kennedy's skull was blown backwards, behind the car and across the street, and that nearly all the witnesses at the time believed the shooter was on the grassy knoll. He then went on to relate many of the more wild and unbelievable facets of the conspiracy theory, such as that Oswald, Ruby, J.D. Tippitt, etc, all knew each other in Dallas before 22 November 1963. I have no idea whether anything he said was true, but he told a good story.<br /><br />So my individual objective observations seemed to support, to me anyway, the basic premise of the assassination: that Oswald, on the 6th floor of the school book depository, fired three shots in about 6 seconds and hit Kennedy twice, killing him instantly with the (probable) third shot.<br /><br />But like everything with the Kennedy Assassination, there are an awful lot of puzzling bits of evidence. To me the poor ballistics analysis has always been problematic. Oswald probably fired three shots, but where did the third (or most likely second) shot go? Something hit witness <a href="http://www.jamestague.com/">James Tague</a>, but I've never seen a good analysis of how that bullet got to where it was. (Fascinatingly (to me), Tague, like practically every witness who has made statements that I've heard of, reports facts contrary to the Warren Commission report and may believe in a conspiracy involving a shooter on the grassy knoll. I have no idea if that means anything other than they all see financial gain in promoting a conspiracy.)<br /><br />There are just so many strange facts about the case - like why did Oswald visit the local FBI office and threaten <a href="http://www.cdo.co.uk/jfk/wiki/index.php?title=James_Hosty">FBI agent James Hosty</a>, warning Hosty to stay away from his wife? And why was he not arrested for making the threats? And why did the FBI destroy the written, threatening note that Oswald left for Hosty?<br /><br />Who was the strange man who <a href="http://www.jfklancer.com/ManWho.html">presented Secret Service</a> credentials to Dallas Police Officer Joe Smith in the parking lot behind the grassy knoll in the seconds after the assassination? No official authority has ever provided an explanation for Officer Smith's testimony, as there were no known Secret Service agents on the grassy knoll, and especially none dressed in casual clothes, as Smith reported.<br /><br />What about the <a href="http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5606">other strange bullets and cartridges</a> found near Dealey Plaza? Not that I necessarily believe any of them have anything to do with the assassination, but it is strange.<br /><br />Ultimately, I have to stick with Occam's Razor. If there was a massive conspiracy, it would have had to have been unimaginably massive, and it probably would have come out by now. If there were other shooters, they were way closer to JFK than Oswald and apparently didn't hit anything - and there would have had to have been a massive coverup to conceal the evidence of their presence.<br /><br />A lot of weird stuff went on - destroyed evidence, coercion of witnesses, botched investigations, etc. - but I think the explanation for it all is probably typical government incompetence and arrogance, not an organized conspiracy. Finding the magic bullet on Connally's stretcher was particularly strange.<br /><br />I think if there was a conspiracy, it probably involved Oswald as the shooter with "guilty knowledge" about his plans and general strangeness among the various government agencies who had been interested in him before November 22nd. The FBI, particularly, behaved very suspiciously, but then again J. Edgar Hoover was in charge and they behaved oddly most of the time.<br /><br />But ultimately I'm agnostic. I wasn't there, and it's hard to tell what happened years later. Like most stuff of this ilk, I think the discussion says more about us today than about what happened then.CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-39916578612971537312010-08-05T19:28:00.001-07:002010-08-05T19:53:10.438-07:00While we're at it...The New Seekers were the reformation of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seekers">The Seekers</a>, who I consider the greatest folk band of all time.<br /><br />The Seekers were all-Australian, and are still revered, and still active, with the original lineup, in Australia. They featured the best guitar lineup in all of folk music, with Keith Potger's 12 string and Bruce Woodley's rhythm, and Judith Durham singing lead vocals always looking like she wasn't trying very hard.<br /><br />The Seekers produced what I consider the greatest single ever in the history of folk music in 1965 (The Brits agreed - it was the #1 single in the UK that year). You can't play this song loud enough, and the band seemed to understand that - they're practically shouting on the studio versions. It was written by Dusty Springfield's brother Tom for the Seekers and was a #4 in the US and of course #1 in Australia as well.<br /><br />Here it is... crank it up:<br /><br /><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MsgXbSUMzR4&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_detailpage&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MsgXbSUMzR4&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_detailpage&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-38101297095075997702010-08-05T18:34:00.000-07:002010-08-05T18:46:16.650-07:00Target CommercialYou've probably been wondering about the song in the most recent Target "Back-to-School" commercial...<br /><br />It's "Free to Be", by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Seekers">New Seekers</a>, the early-70s reincarnation of the great Australian 60's folk band The Seekers, featuring the very appealing Scottish vocalist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Graham">Eve Graham</a>. The New Seekers had several hits on both sides of the Atlantic, including <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jr9hPbYmBo">"I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing"</a>, which was originally a Coca Cola commercial, but the "Free to Be" song was originally the theme to a 1974 Marlo Thomas children's TV special.<br /><br />The song has enjoyed a cult following since then, even though it was never an actual release by the New Seekers. Enjoy:<br /><br /><object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8mU8gDKN5sE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_detailpage&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8mU8gDKN5sE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_detailpage&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="385" width="640"></embed></object>CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-80517271037201714862010-07-29T10:32:00.000-07:002010-07-29T11:13:25.879-07:00The PondThe Pond was a very-little-known Army intelligence unit operating under non-official cover in World War II and after, before it was absorbed into the fledgling CIA.<br /><br /><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100729/ap_on_re_us/us_spy_agency_the_pond;_ylt=AmZ5Pe9NQ4HA42WHmxckH.iWwvIE;_ylu=X3oDMTNiZWk4bHJkBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNzI5L3VzX3NweV9hZ2VuY3lfdGhlX3BvbmQEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwM1BHBvcwM1BHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDb25jZS1zZWNyZXRk">Recently the archives of the Pond, which were discovered in a barn in 2001, have finally been made public by the National Archives. </a><br /><br />I wrote about the Pond and the fascinating story of its archives in my old blog, which sadly is now gone, after the <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no3/article07.html">CIA journal "Studies in Intelligence" published an article about it</a> - until now practically the only information ever revealed publicly about the Pond's existence.<br /><br />Now the documents are finally available - I had doubted they would ever be public. There is a lot of explosive history in these documents, particularly related to the pitched battle between the Pond and the CIA in the late 40's and early 50's. <a href="http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=12780">The Pond (supposedly) identified many Soviet agents</a> in the US and Western Europe and fought to have those people investigated, while the CIA sought to dismiss, cover up, and protect those same people, many of whom were much later identified as real Soviet spies. For this reason alone, because the CIA had control over release of the Pond's documents, I expected they would disappear forever.<br /><br />Of course we don't know what the CIA removed from the records before forwarding them to the National Archive. Presumably they removed everything embarrassing to the CIA, which could have been a lot.<br /><br />Many people today are <a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/RMI8NLWGIWRKA">making the argument</a> (obliquely) that the Pond is exactly the model we<a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/1995/01/cia-crosses-over"> should be using</a> for foreign intelligence, relying extensively on<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-official_cover"> non-official cover</a> vs. the embassy-based cover favored by the CIA.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.ishmaeljones.com/">The record</a> - which may or may not be further bolstered by the Pond documents - however, is that the intelligence bureaucracy hates "non official cover" or "outsourced intelligence collection" and will normally do whatever it takes to eliminate it, as was done with the Pond.<br /><br />The documents are, so far, only available by going to the National Archives and looking at them but I am hoping someone will put them on the web. Also there should be some good books coming out based on this newly-released information. I can hardly wait...CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-80459694267005805152010-07-11T18:49:00.000-07:002010-07-11T19:45:27.797-07:00Water TemperaturesThis summer has been hot. It feels much hotter than last summer, although last summer was one of the <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/09/colroado-summer-trends/">coldest in decades in some places</a>. This summer, however, feels a lot hotter than last summer, and perhaps hotter than usual.<br /><br />I observe temperatures through a variety of non-scientific means. One of my favourite, and least scientific, is the temperature of my swimming pool in North Carolina. Water changes temp a lot slower than air, so it's a good medium to "smooth out" daily and weekly fluctuations.<br /><br />This summer, my pool got hotter than usual quicker than usual - it was up to the high 80's in early June, which was a notable spike. I expected it to stay hot because of the heat wave that has hardly been broken since then. But something strange happened: it dropped back to the high-70s/low 80s in late June, where it has been for the last several days, even though the daytime temps seem hotter than usual to me. I absolutely don't know what this means or how it happened.<br /><br />Last year the pool never got above the low-80s all summer, whereas two years ago it went to the high 80s in mid-June and stayed there until September. It seems like its been hot, but the pool doesn't seem to know it.<br /><br />Another thing I look at is sea surface temps in the Florida Keys. I expect it to be mid-high 80s in July and this week it's been 82-84 - seemingly a couple of degrees cooler than usual. I looked at historical data, however, and the temps are actually very close to historical averages for this week in July, according to the <a href="http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_history.php?station=smkf1">data I found</a>. Unfortunately, NOAA's weather stations are notoriously unreliable in the Keys and a lot of data is missing, which is very frustrating. There does, however, seem to be a warming trend since 1988, which is the first year of data for the stations I looked at (SMKF1 and SANF1). The chart below would seem to indicate that warming trend is strongly indicated by the global average.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://processtrends.com/images/RClimate_SST_A_latest.png"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 450px; height: 500px;" src="http://processtrends.com/images/RClimate_SST_A_latest.png" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Lately I've learned about how temperatures are measured and studied. The "UAH" global temperature average is the community standard. "UAH" refers to the University of Alabama at Huntsville, where they work hard to keep track of these things, mainly relying on NOAA satellite data, which we have only had for about the last 30 years.<br /><br />Here is a <a href="http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps">helpful interactive chart</a> from UAH on recent temperature trends. It shows 2010 as warmer than usual even for recent years, which is strongly suggestive of a warming trend, although the graph has turned down in the last few days and we are now (as of this week) a little cooler than last year and about the same as the last few years' average. Interestingly, this is just for sea surface temperature. If you go up in the atmosphere, the picture changes dramatically. 2010 is colder than many recent years at higher altitudes (play with the altitude selector on the left side of the UAH interactive chart to see it). I have absolutely no idea what this means or why it is so - maybe someone else does?<br /><br />But I am hoping my unscientific observations of temperature are correct and the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico are a little cooler than usual because that will probably mean a comparatively benign hurricane season. Every year recently the <a href="http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/2010/june2010/jun2010.pdf">Colorado State University predicts an "active" hurricane season</a> but 2008 and 2009 were extremely quiet - well below average. As hurricane season is coming right up, we shall soon see...CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-85769610003325551322010-06-23T15:18:00.000-07:002010-06-23T16:45:27.532-07:00McChrystalThe extraordinary events of the last couple of days involving General Stan McChrystal have provided unusual insights into how the US government works and how random unpredictable happenings can change history.<br /><br />The best story I've seen about what happened <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/23/stanley-mcchrystal-icelandic-volcano">is here</a>. It points out how the eruption of the Icelandic volcano (I'm not even going t0 try to cut-and-paste the name of the thing) gave Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings access to McChrystal's staff that he would not otherwise have had. The volcano erupted, grounding flights, and hosing up McChrystal and staff's travel plans. Subsequently the reporter got to spend a lot more informal time with the staff than he would have otherwise.<br /><br />The staff sunk McChrystal. The general himself did not say anything incriminating to the reporter that I could tell from the article. There were some third-hand, un-attributed quotes along the lines of "McChrystal is believed to have thought" something incriminating. The most incriminating quotes were attributed, generically, to the staff. Most of the most incriminating statements - if they are true at all - apparently came from staff officers while they were drunk in Paris. The big impression I got from the article was that his staff was unbelievably arrogant to -allegedly- say the things they did to a reporter. I heard it said today, by a couple of guys who know most of that staff personally, that they are the best we have, the most combat-experienced, and the most sophisticated at fighting the war against al Qaeda. Some of those guys must be feeling pretty bad this week, both for their own careers and for their boss.<br /><br />I had wondered how a guy who was apparently as smart as McChrystal could have made such an obviously stupid mistake. The story about the volcano really made sense. He had a plan to limit his risk associated with the Rolling Stone reporter, and his plan was derailed by fate. It's amazing how often random chance can divert the course of history.<br /><br />The selection of Petreus to replace McChrystal is also interesting. In one sense it is probably obvious as the best thing the White House could do to get out of a bad situation. Petreus has a great reputation, is politically way more savvy than McChrystal, and in fact is considered an architect of the counterinsurgency doctrine that McChrystal advocated and implemented in Afghanistan. From one angle the response could be "thank goodness - he's the best guy available". On the other hand, <a href="http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2010/06/mcchrystal-fired-petraeus-demoted.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter">milblogger Cdr Salamander has a salient perspective</a>. Salamander points out this is a demotion for Petreus, who started the day as McChrystal's boss. Now who does the President nominate to take over CENTCOM? What does that guy think? I'm now, technically, superior to someone who was previously in my job? Who got demoted for doing his job too well?<br /><br />This is not a huge deal - operational combat command is a more desirable job than COCOM Commander, which is a big diplomatic-staff-administrative-bureaucratic pain in the butt, so probably Petreus is not professionally too upset, although personally he was probably looking forward to a less painful PERSTEMPO than he's now going to get.<br /><br />The other factor is that Afghanistan is a tough, intractable problem. I'm not sure there is a whole lot we can do that will solve the inherent problem that Afghanistan is not a real nation-state in any sense we understand, and no matter what we do it's going to be painful until the day we leave, then go downhill from there. If you were Petreus, wouldn't you rather end your career on a high note - as the victor of Iraq, followed by a successful COCOM Command, then move into some civilian leadership position, rather than risk being known as the unlucky guy who presided over final failure in Afghanistan?<br /><br />Possibly Petreus will pull off a miracle and make lasting progress in Afghanistan, but I'm not sure who would bet on that. I don't know what to expect. Petreus is plainly brilliant, and brilliantly political. I had dinner with him last year and came away very impressed - but more so at his political acumen and leadership than warfighting sophistication. But I also know that a great deal of his success in Iraq came from his<a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003565701_petraeus10.html"> incredibly brilliant staff</a>, most of whom are not available for Afghanistan. The one guy I'd watch for is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html">H.R. McMaster</a>, who seems to spend most of his time at think-tanks when he's not winning major battles.<br /><br />Ironically, most observers <a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/302940.php">agree</a> that <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/23/AR2010062304421.html?hpid=topnews">McChrystal had to go</a>, even though they supported him and not the President, because he put the President in an untenable position. If the President didn't get rid of him it would significantly erode the integrity of the chain of command, which is ultimately a bigger deal even than the war.<br /><br />I semi-sort-of-almost wonder if McChrystal in the back of his mind almost hoped to go out this way, and consequently didn't worry as much as he should have about allowing the Rolling Stone guy to get too close. He has reportedly always been kind of a wild-and-crazy guy, prone to do unpredictable things. Years as a senior combat leader may have given him a kind of fatalistic don't-give-a-shit attitude, which reportedly he may have already had a little bit. He might have seen the way things were going in Afghanistan and felt like it might be OK to go out with a big splash early than hang on and be associated with possible eventual failure. This attitude may have been exacerbated by truly understandable combat fatigue. The guy has been fighting hard without a break since 9/11 and had reportedly tried to retire before he got the job in Afghanistan.<br /><br />He will now remembered as a courageous and tireless warrior who made legendary contributions to the war against terrorism and went out under wacky circumstances that probably ultimately weren't his fault, other than he was a blunt, plain-spoken soldier who didn't pay enough attention to public affairs and politics. It's interesting. I predict something more interesting will happen, related to Afghanistan, before we're done there.CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-25440120507959277732010-04-20T11:31:00.001-07:002010-04-20T12:26:52.516-07:00More CoversSince I ended the last post with a famous Chinese song recorded by a Japanese pretending to be Chinese, it's probably appropriate to open this post with a Chinese singer recording the same song .... in Japanese (and Chinese):<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/NcU6Ya2DTbM&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/NcU6Ya2DTbM&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />This is Yamagushi Yoshiko's Japanese version of the song from a 1958 Japanese film: <br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/A1CZDgwXgnI&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/A1CZDgwXgnI&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />As I mentioned in the last post, this is a Chinese standard covered by many artists.<br /><br />I'm not a huge fan of Teresa Teng (鄧麗君), the first singer above, but she is revered by many Chinese signers. I much prefer Tsai Chin's (蔡琴) Chinese version:<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fHUN9DXQhqQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fHUN9DXQhqQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />Teng and Tsai Chin both sing with slight Taiwanese accents, this is Zhang Yan's (张燕)version with a Beijing accent. You only need to listen to a few bars of her version and Tsai Chin's to get a feel for their different handling of Mandarin:<br /><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/B11clIY5nK0&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/B11clIY5nK0&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />Tsai Chin recorded what is probably my favorite Christian rock song, mostly because <i>neither I nor several Chinese people I know realized it <b>was</b> a Christian song until it was pointed out to us</i>, and those, I would submit, are the only kind of Christian pop songs worth listening to (otherwise, crack open a hymnal):<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/b8uocdFOfA8&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/b8uocdFOfA8&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />Finally something I just stumbled across. While I'm not a great fan of Yamaguchi Yoshiko's 1930s somewhat nasal singing style (preferring the jazzier sounds of her 1940s recoding such as Tokyo Serenade) How can you not link to a song called "Please Stop Smoking Opium My Darling"?<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/27nRwmiqpEM&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/27nRwmiqpEM&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>John the Scientisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03467337009577733553noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-84436824638858690142010-03-05T03:22:00.001-08:002010-04-15T19:09:45.849-07:00Chasing OriginsIt seems to be music week in the UCF, and since I have not been posting recently, but this has been sitting in the queue unfinished, I thought I should publish it.<br /><br />I live in a household of three languages, only two of which I speak. What Hokkien gets spoken (between my wife, MIL, SIL, various Aunts and my wife's best friend in town) goes entirely over my head. But, like the man who was turned into a newt, my Mandarin is getting better. Largely through song.<br /><br />I'm constantly exposed to stuff via my wife that's actually useful in my day job because I work in Asia a good deal. As a smarter than average High School and college kid, I used to despise pop culture, but as an older and wiser adult I see its value. Having a social connection to people, an instant one, breaks down barriers. And one activity every decent adult should be engaged in throughout their lives is in breaking down barriers.<br /><br />So I've gone from rolling my eyes at my wife's taste for 70s and 80s mandopop to actually appreciating it. And using it. Much as it pains me to admit it, I can actually sing several Chinese songs as karaoke.<br /><br />But being much more historically oriented than my wife, now and then I find some nuggets she overlooks being in the culture and accepting things, rather than looking at them with fresh eyes as I do.<br /><br />Many melodies in mandopop are recycled. Weirdly to Westerners, some of those recycled melodies are hymns brought to China by missionaries. One of my wife's favorite song's melody is largely based on "There is a Fountain Filled with Blood" and another one - and I don't know why Disney never sued them - is pretty much entirely the theme song from "Davy Crockett", at a slower tempo. I kid you not.<br /><br />But there are other influences, too. Despite the lingering hatreds from 50 years ago, Japanese culture pervades the East. Their aesthetic in clothes and music, especially. We were just back in Taiwan for Chinese New Year. My wife warned me not to wear black. Chinese people wear bright colors at New Years, she says. Well, they did 30 years ago when she left. Today? Not so much. I like black. I wore it. I fit in better than she did. She was the only one in a lot of photos wearing a red jacket. The blacks, grays, and muted browns of Tokyo's streets also adorn the figures on the streets of Taipei, Taichung and Tainan.<br /><br />But the Japanese influence music, too. Not just the infusion of J-Pop since the 80s. This influence goes back a long way, all the way back to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_great_singing_stars">origins of mandopop in Shanghai</a>.<br /><br />One of my wife's favorite singers is Tsai Chin (蔡琴), who has a lot of Chinese standards in her repertoire. This one, 意難忘 (Unforgettable Feeling) is one of her favorites:<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8NQdDFN4aLY&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8NQdDFN4aLY&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />藍色的街燈, <br />Indigo street lights<br />明滅在街頭獨自對窗, <br />Blink on the street corner through my lonely window,<br />凝望月色, <br />My eyes focus on the moonlight <br />星星在閃耀,<br />The stars are sparkling and my tears are flowing<br />我在流淚,<br />My tears are flowing<br />我在流淚,<br />My tears are flowing<br />沒人知道我<br />No one knows who I am,<br />啊 ~~ 啊 ~~ <br />Oh--, Oh--<br />誰在唱啊, <br />Who is singing "Oh"?<br />遠處輕輕傳來想念你的,<br />A distant place gently brings on longing for you<br />想念你的,<br />Longing for you <br />我愛唱的那一首歌。<br />I love to sing that song<br />你我的回憶,<br />You are my reverie <br />該是兩相同<br />The two of us should be together<br />咫尺天涯,<br />We're close by each other but poles apart.<br />為何不見, <br />Why don't we see<br />此身已破碎<br />This life has ended in tatters<br />我在流淚,<br />My tears are flowing<br />我在流淚, <br />My tears are flowing<br />沒人知道我<br />No one knows who I am<br />啊~~ 啊~~<br />Oh-- Oh--<br /><br /><br />It was originally recorded in Chinese by the early-60s mandopop star Mei Dai (美黛). <br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/T0jD-uZcmNs&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/T0jD-uZcmNs&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />It's worth noting that when Mei Dai recorded her version, mandopop had been branded "pornographic" by the prudes running the Cultural Revolution on the Mainland. The center of Chinese music had shifted from Shanghai to Taipei and Hong Kong by the 50s, a blow from which Mainland music has yet to fully recover.<br /><br />But I was looking for things related to this kind of music the other day and I stumbled upon the origins of this song. It's not Chinese at all.<br /><br />It's Japanese.<br /><br />The original title is "Tokyo Serenade" (東京夜曲), and it was originally recorded by Li Jichun in 1949:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZG9vtFwv7D8&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZG9vtFwv7D8&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />青いランプに夜は更けて<br />The night passes under the blue lamp<br />カーテン引く手のやるせなさ<br />A hand pulls the curtain back<br />泣けば泪の星空を<br />Shedding tears to the starry sky<br />あ~~ <br />Ah--<br />流れくるくる<br />A stream swirls<br />あの歌は<br />That song is for<br />誰が歌うか <br />Whomever will sing<br />東京セレナーデ<br />Tokyo Serenade<br /><br />白い毛糸の編みかけの<br />I start to knit with white wool<br />あなたのジャケツに 頬寄せて<br />I gather your jacket to my cheek<br />移す想いの紅のあと <br />My thoughts follow the crimson to dark<br />あああ<br />Ah-- <br />消えてくれるないつまでも<br />They vanish to dark forever<br />ひとり聞いてる <br />Alone I listen to the<br />東京セレナーデ<br />Tokyo serenade<br /><br />二人一つの思い出の<br />Two people each reminisce<br />匂いは薔薇よ小田急よ<br />Of the fragrance of the Rose in Odakyu<br />やさしいソファーに 燃える身を <br />On the simple couch my body burns<br />あああ <br />Ah---<br />投げて夢見る 夢の果て<br />Throw away my dreams <br />甘い吐息か <br />With a sweet sigh?<br />東京セレナーデ<br />Tokyo Serenade<br /><br /><br />The song was recorded in Tokyo, as the Nationalists were not really disposed to promote a lot of Japanese culture in the wake of losing the Revolution. <br /><br />So what was Li doing in Japan? She had appeared in several Japanese propaganda films in the 40s, and was tried for treason by the KMT in 1946. Before she could be sentenced, it became apparent to her fans (and the KMT) that Li was not as Chinese as her stage name might indicate. <br /><br />Her real name was Yamaguchi Yoshiko ((山口 淑子 - I'm using the Asian convention of last name first for real names), and she was a Japanese born to Japanese settlers in Manchuria, picking up a surname from one of her father's Chinese blood brothers. Classically trained by an Italian soprano married to a White Russian living in China (a common state of affairs in the Warlord Period), she became quite famous in the Shanghai singing scene. You can get a taste of the singing world of Old Shanghai, with Western opera, Jazz, and Beijing opera styles all blended together, in this old recording of Yue Lai Shang (夜來香), a Chinese standard first recorded by Miss. Yamaguchi (also covered by Mei Dai and Tsai Chin, among many others):<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/WlxRMW19qJs&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WlxRMW19qJs&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />After returning to Japan she restarted her singing career, went to America to start in a few B movies, returned to Japan, hosted a TV show and then wound up as a member of parliament. She's still around, too, one of the last living witnesses to the flowering of modern Chinese pop culture in Old Shanghai. She has always felt a little bit uneasy around Chinese since the war, and never got over her guilt for the propaganda she filmed.<br /><br />But the Chinese still love her music. I won't be so trite as to say music (or love) conquers all (despite most 1960s and 70s Chinese pop singers being able to sing in Japanese, the Chinese certainly didn't copy the lyrics to this song to include Tokyo as the setting...) , but it sure does go a long way to breaking down barriers.John the Scientisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03467337009577733553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-89674161498716503982010-03-02T08:57:00.000-08:002010-03-02T09:09:24.892-08:00Corporations in SpaceLeonardo da Vinci is a one of a series of case studies anyone who wonders why we don’t have space travel right now should consider. Because Leonardo da Vinci was an idiot. Well not really. More like an idiot savant. Unnecessarily ahead of his time. What I mean by that last crack is that he pretty much epitomizes the American criticism of people who live a life almost entirely of the mind: “if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich”? <br /><br />Leonardo once “designed” a <a href="http://www.leonardo-da-vinci-biography.com/da-vinci-helicopter.html">helicopter</a>.<br /><br />There was no motive force in the world that could have turned his invention fast enough to get it off the ground. <br /><br />If Leonardo had used his considerable talent to think about pumps instead of flying machines, I have little doubt that he was smart enough to have produced a working steam engine. Many, many years before the first one was actually put to use in a mine. He would probably have had to solve some metallurgical problems along the way, but he would have found a ready buyer in mining operators even in his day. He could have become completely free of rich patrons for his art had he made that engine. That steam engine would not have powered his helicopter either, but it would have sped the invention of an actual helicopter by over a century.<br /><br />But Leonardo had too much of an artistic temperament to think about mundane things like mines and metallurgy (beyond sculpture). So he produced pretty pictures of helicopters that never did anyone any good at all.<br /><br />Infrastructure matters. <br /><br />Going on to a somewhat more relevant and modern example, computer networks could have been invented and linked back in the 50s. But why? The computers they would have linked could not do much, the telecom links would have been unreliable with huge data losses, and the maintenance costs of the infrastructure would have been staggering. <br /><br />Computers could have been linked in the 60s, and in fact the Space Program made some tentative steps in that direction, because of the present need of the program and because the money was there for upkeep. ARPANET was conceived in 1962 or so. But a civilian version would have charged too much to be of any commercial use because of the paucity of customers. Ditto for the 70s.<br /><br />ARPANET started to transmit in 1969, and the DoD underwrote the costs. This began to build telecom infrastructure.<br /><br />The PC market exploded in the late 70s and early 80s and suddenly there was an end-user infrastructure and a growing customer base. Remember the old modems with a 2 cup cradle for an old telephone handset? That led to Compusoft and the rest of the early internet. But without that PC and telecom infrastructure, the internet would have been stillborn. Sure, in some alternate universe a Telecom could have seen it as the wave of the future (ATT? HAH!) and created a network by brute force. But it would have been a commercial failure, and paradoxically, that failure probably would have made capital gunshy and delayed the development of a real and useful Internet by a decade or more.<br /><br />We would have sent packets into the ether and stranded them there.<br /><br />Most high technologies need a nutrient-rich environment in which to grow. Infrastructure has to be in place, and the costs have to eat only a small amount of GDP. They can’t be too tricky to maintain, or customers will do without or find a replacement. They can’t suck at public resources too badly. Most ideas never get off the ground, and people are not willing to give up a significant chunk of their standard of living in order to take a risk on something that has a high probability of failure, as most new ideas do. Payoff has to be relatively short term (within a few decades) in order for a business to find that technology profitable.<br /><br />The costs are too high, the timelines for development too long and risk of failure too great for a business to take a chance on many complex technologies. <br /><br />Sometimes, the government has to nurture the technology along until it is mature enough for free enterprise to take over. But visionaries in government are few and far between (and seldom in positions of power), so human progress is slower than it otherwise could be.<br /><br />Space travel is definitely one of these complex technologies I’m talking about.<br /><br />We, as a human race, achieved it before we were really rich enough to take advantage of it. We pushed the infrastructure hard, but it couldn’t stand the strain over the long haul. We were in a 1950s computing world, and we demanded that Cisco develop fiber-optic links between our vacuum tube monsters. They did, but it cost us an arm and a leg. Even my favorite redneck Country Rock group talked about “too many lives we spent across the ocean, too much money we spent up on the moon”.<br /><br />We sent our hopes and dreams to the moon and stranded them there.<br /><br />We were too early. Mankind wasn’t rich enough to afford the moon. I’m not sure it is, even now.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.stonekettle.com/2010/03/pie-in-sky.html">Jim’s essay on space travel</a> is food for thought, and I definitely share his Libertarian-leaning sentiments about commercial space flight. <br /><br />But I’m not sure we are out of the government-funded cocoon stage for space flight technology, and if we aren’t, it’s as if we’re asking commercial enterprise to build an Internet to connect transistor-based late-1960s UNIVACs. I’m not sure that computer infrastructure would have been big enough to justify the costs. Just as I’m not sure that the space travel customer base is big enough to absorb the development costs. Maybe it is. But if it isn’t, the resulting failure may set us back more than if we let NASA bumble along a bit longer.<br /><br />I think Jim talks too glibly about the age of sail as an example. Building a sailing vessel, or even a fleet of them, was in no way as resource intensive as building a space program. In the language of business, the barriers to entry were high, but not astronomically (HAH!) so.<br /><br />Not true for space travel.<br /><br />Even with the lower barriers to building a wooden ship or two in the Age of Exploration, governments under-wrote a lot of the costs, as one of Jim’s commenters noted. <br /><br />The first companies out there are going to look like government-sponsored monopolistic rapists, very much like Hudson Bay or East India. Commercial space exploration is not going to be pretty.<br /><br />I really don’t care about that, though, my major concern is that when people talk about private enterprise, they don’t talk about what, exactly, space is going to provide that isn’t cheaper to get (or get a substitute for) down here. The only business plan I see at the moment is tourism. NASA has not turned up any useful process that creates things in low G environments that people really want down here, and NASA has been trying to find such a technology for decades. <br /><br />I know, I've been involved in some of those experiments. I could make something nearly as good as the space polymers I was involved with for much less than what it cost to make them on the Shuttle, even with NASA underwriting the transportation costs - bench space was pretty nearly infinite in my lab compared to a cramped Shuttle cargo bay.<br /><br />But, like Jim, I think space travel is necessary for the survival of the race, and I want my grandkids (at least some of them) off Earth. My genes are selfish that way.<br /><br />I just don’t have enough information yet to be as happy as he is about the lack of vision in our government. Maybe he’s right. I hope so.John the Scientisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03467337009577733553noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-32494187131232658972010-02-10T17:12:00.000-08:002010-02-11T07:14:42.707-08:00OverunityHold on science fans... this should be interesting.<br /><br />"Overunity" is a term that is roughly analogous to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overunity">perpetual motion</a>, e.g. a mechanism which violates the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics">2nd law of thermodynamics</a> - and is therefore impossible according to our current understanding of the universe.<br /><br />That doesn't stop people from working on it, however, with sometimes interesting results.<br /><br />Most people understand that our carbon-fueled world has a finite, and short, half-life. We're going to have to come up with alternative sources of energy, and alternative ways of living, in the pretty near future. An added benefit is that the Saudis will go broke as long as we don't mortgage our entire civilization to them first (<a href="http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/Issuebrief203/">OOPS - too late!</a>).<br /><br />There have been many recent legendary figures who allegedly invented a "perpetual motion machine"... one of the most famous recent ones was Edwin V. Gray, who produced several <a href="http://keelynet.com/evgray/evgray.htm">supposed overunity devices</a> and was the subject of a <a href="http://www.waterfuelcarengine.com/edwin-gray-the-engine-that-runs-itself-page1.html">great deal</a> of <a href="http://www.waterfuelcarengine.com/edwin-gray-suppressed-by-attorney.html">interesting</a> <a href="http://www.waterfuelcarengine.com/edwin-gray-man-creates-engine-that-consumes-no-fuel.html">conspiracy </a>theory.<br /><br />It is a familiar story: ordinary guy invents machine that threatens energy industry and is mysteriously suppressed or done away with (the Ed Gray story has all of that). The story has repeated itself so many times, in so many ways, that it is tempting to believe it. Especially since the equities in the energy status quo are the greatest in the history of humankind. Most of the wealth in humanity comes from control of energy sources, primarily carbon. Consequently that's where most of the power is. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Paul_Getty">people who control access</a> to carbon energy buy and sell whole governments, including ours.<br /><br />So while I don't think that any proported violations of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics have any legitimacy at all, it is possible to build a <span style="font-style: italic;">more efficient</span> engine. In fact, it isn't even hard. But for reasons that look a lot like conspiracy theory even to the most sceptical, consumers are generally not allowed access to the most efficient choices.<br /><br />For example - a diesel electric hybrid would be <a href="http://gas2.org/2009/09/14/volkswagens-diesel-hybrid-1l-concept-gets-170-mpg-available-by-2013/">significantly more efficient</a> that gasoline hybrids on the market today. But so far you can't buy one. <a href="http://green.autoblog.com/2006/11/20/toyota-to-sell-diesel-hybrid-in-2010/">Toyota</a>, <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CYH/is_2_7/ai_97757261/">Nissan</a>, and <a href="http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/volvo-plans-plug-in-diesel-hybrid-for-2012/">Volvo</a> have promised diesel hybrids, but they are yet to appear. (Nissan also promised <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_double-layer_capacitor">"supercap" battery technology</a> in their hybrid, 7 years ago. Where is it? Volvo's version is a station wagon that gets 120mpg, scheduled for introduction in 2012, that they DON'T plan to sell in the United States )<br /><br />So while "overunity" is certainly a myth, according to our current understanding of physics, improvements in efficiency that would almost certainly seem revolutionary or miraculous are almost certainly possible - they are happening "out there", just not for us.<br /><br />One approach to great improvements in efficiency that I can't quite figure out are <a href="http://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/hydrogen-generators-cars.htm">hydrogen generators</a>. The idea is that a small electrolytic hydrogen generator can produce hydrogen gas to augment the ordinary fuel-air mixture in your car, greatly increasing gas mileage using only water as the (augment) fuel. These gizmos are also called hydrogen boosters and there are lots of <a href="http://www.gas4free.com/?hop=kevinkanny">web sites</a>, with <a href="http://water4gas.com/2books.htm?hop=kevinkanny">plans, formulas</a>, etc.<br /><br />My big question is whether these small hydrogen generators can realistically add efficiency... John maybe you can help me with the chemistry here. They only use a very small amount of water - on the scale of ounces to pints - during normal operation. It seems improbable to me that you can produce enough hydrogen to really augment the fuel of the vehicle without using a lot more water, and a lot more electricity (which has to come from the car) - which would add weight, use more energy, and decrease the efficiency of the overall system.<br /><br />I'm very interested to figure out what the real chemistry is behind these gizmos.CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-33302663509654157772010-02-10T16:45:00.000-08:002010-02-10T17:12:31.551-08:00Quick Weather UpdateFor those who haven't noticed, the Mid-Atlantic has <a href="http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/02/10/Snow-records-tumble-in-Mid-Atlantic/UPI-23511265846381/">shattered records for snowfall</a> that date back to the 19th century.<br /><br />The previous record in Washington DC was the winter of 1898-1899, with 54.5 inches. As of 2 PM today, Washington DC's total is at 54.9 inches, and we're not near done yet.<br /><br />Baltimore and the western DC suburbs have recorded much higher totals, at 72.3 and 63.5 inches, respectively.<br /><br />I expect Washington DC could get another 10-20 inches this winter, totally blowing away all previous records.<br /><br /><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100210/ap_on_re_us/us_winter_weather">My favourite quote</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote style="font-style: italic;">Conditions were so bad that snowplows were advised to get off the roads.<br /></blockquote><br />Typical 21st Century Washington DC quote:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">"This snow reminds me of when I was driving tractor-trailers in </span><span style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; cursor: pointer; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous; font-style: italic;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1265849678_12">Saudi Arabia</span><span style="font-style: italic;">, and the sandstorm starts and you can't see the roads," said Syeed Zada, 55, a plow driver for the </span><span style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; cursor: pointer; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous; font-style: italic;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1265849678_13">Virginia Department of Transportation</span><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span></blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br />Very old people compared this winter to 1922 and 1910. Most people said it was by far the worst in their lifetime. This is a great big bullet for my collection of "global cooling anecdotes".<br /><br />Of course weather is not climate. Aggregated weather trends are climate. So if we have an "Al Gore" winter next year then it could shift the trend line back towards normal. On the other hand, if we have another cold, snowy winter, like the last couple of years, then the climate trend line shifts farther south, towards ice age and away from global warming.CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1377385119326285192.post-24281901363719421462010-01-24T06:47:00.000-08:002010-01-24T07:09:35.119-08:00Currier and Ives<a href="http://dr-phil-physics.blogspot.com/">Dr Phil</a> referred to the Currier and Ives prints of winter scenes in the 19th century in the <a href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1377385119326285192&postID=8921038080569200719">comments to the previous post</a>. That reminded me how much I like Currier and Ives prints, even though Currier and Ives were kind of the "Wal Mart" of 19th century lithography and I think there are much better examples of the art out there.<br /><br />But I found this neat site that has a lot of their prints: <a href="http://currierandives.net/">http://currierandives.net</a><br /><br />The earlier discussion was about how 19th century engravings showed a colder, snowier world than we now live in. Here are some examples:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://currierandives.net/images/ASpillOutOnTheSnow.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 501px; height: 375px;" src="http://currierandives.net/images/ASpillOutOnTheSnow.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />"A Spill Out on the Snow"<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://currierandives.net/images/AmericanHomesteadWinter.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 504px; height: 347px;" src="http://currierandives.net/images/AmericanHomesteadWinter.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />"American Homestead Winter"<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://currierandives.net/images/WinterMorningInTheCountry.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 510px; height: 382px;" src="http://currierandives.net/images/WinterMorningInTheCountry.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />"Winter Morning in the Country"<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://currierandives.net/images/MapleSugaring.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 511px; height: 382px;" src="http://currierandives.net/images/MapleSugaring.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />"Maple Sugaring"<br /><br />I have been postulating that we are headed for a Currier and Ives future - colder winters with a lot more snow - because of the cycle of low solar activity that is just beginning. I've been watching for anecdotal evidence that this is true, and I've seen quite a bit for the last couple of years. This year, a lake I've only ever seen slightly frozen in the last 40 years was frozen hard enough to walk on (or ice-skate) after the recent early-January cold snap. The second half of January has been much more average or typical (here in NC anyway) but the Farmer's Almanac (my new best friend) is predicting a snowy February.<br /><br />Maybe it will be time to bust out the sleigh that has been collecting dust in the back of the barn for 100 years!CWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00872695065317236312noreply@blogger.com2