Wednesday, September 16. 2009
Second in a series:
Rocky Marciano (Born 1 Sept. 1923), heavyweight boxing champion, was born Rocco Francis Marchegiano in Brockton, Massachusetts, the son of Pierino Marchegiano, a shoe-factory worker, and Pasqualena Picciuto. He was considered the roughest kid in the neighborhood, although he was not overly pugnacious. A star athlete who hoped to become a major league baseball catcher, he dropped out of school at age sixteen…Marciano then became a manual laborer while playing baseball on local semiprofessional teams. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943 and was honorably discharged in 1946. Marciano kept his baseball dream alive until the spring of 1947, when a tryout with a Chicago Cubs minor league affiliate revealed that he lacked foot speed and a strong throwing arm.
Marciano had begun boxing competitively while in the army, mainly to avoid KP duty…. In 1948 Rocky participated in the Golden Gloves and advanced to the All-East championship tournament. He had aspirations to box in the Olympics, but he broke a thumb in winning a New England AAU (Amateur Athletic Union)tournament that served as a trial for the Olympics. He then decided to turn professional and gave up his job as a digger for the gas company. Experts considered Marciano too old, too short, and too light, at 5' 10" and 190 pounds, to become a successful heavyweight prizefighter….Marciano was [then] extremely well trained and took care of his diet.
Photo Courtesy of Michael N. Varveris, author of "Rocky Marciano The 13th Candle"
An out-and-out killer in the ring, instinctively swinging for blood on every punch, he is the mildest, friendliest and most loyal of men outside it.
Rocky's amazing record of 49 consecutive professional wins will probably never be exceeded, nor his KO percentage of 87.76%.
Marciano was the first and last champion in the heavyweight ranks to retire undefeated. And he only lost once in a 12-fight amateur career.
Marciano enjoyed life in the fast lane ("If you want to live a full life then live dangerously"), disliked routine, and was fascinated by the mobsters with whom he socialized and did business, such as Vito Genovese. He was a great hero to Italian Americans. Friends and acquaintances customarily gave him spending money, bought him dinner, and paid for his clothes. Parsimonious, Marciano never picked up checks. However, he was a poor businessman who made several bad decisions…
In the mid-1960s Marciano turned down $2 million to fight Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) when he could not get into fighting shape. In 1969 he participated in a computer tournament involving former champions that grossed about $1.7 million. For this endeavor he lost nearly 50 pounds, wore a toupee, and sparred eight hours of one-minute rounds with Ali to produce a marketable conclusion. Seven different endings were prepared, with the computer giving the victory to Marciano.
One day before his 46th birthday, on August 31, 1969, Marciano died tragically in a plane crash near Newton, Iowa, while on the way to a birthday party.
From the American Council of Learned Societies, Sport (January 1953), and the National Italian-American Sports Hall Of Fame
Rescuing types, and loyal, good-hearted - if somewhat tolerant and often obsessional Boy Scout types of guys are often attracted to Borderline and Narcissistic women. These gals are often sexy, smart, exciting and romantic, and will idealize a fellow - until they don't anymore. That's when the s hits the f, and their hero begins to look like either a monster or a poisonous worm to them.
They split, project, and externalize in order to maintain some sort of acceptable and coherent sense of themselves. Broken and destructive people with lots of anger, through no fault of their own. Bad genes, bad life, bad luck, or whatever.
From Dr. Helen's post, her excellent interview with the author of Walking on Eggshells: Advice on how to cope with the Borderline in your life.
One of the most common consultations I see with men is about marriages with women with significant personality disorders. My usual first impulse is to say "Save yourself." My second is to want them to not take any sh-t from them. Then things get more complicated - especially when there are young kids.
My general advice to young men: Feel free to date them, but do not marry a Borderline or pathologically Narcissistic woman, unless you plan on its being only a temporary connection, because they will crush you and your spirit (unless they get good help - and learn to love instead of to idealize and split, destroy, and hate. It is tough, though, for anybody to acknowledge their grievous flaws).
Thanks to Dr. H for this good and useful (I will use it) video.
Borderline men are a whole different topic, which I will not get into now.
Tuesday, September 15. 2009
Nothing at all against eggheads. There is a place for them, but not in roles of power.
Academics and eggheads spend their professional lives insulated from the realities that most of us deal with every day. They play with ideas, and are not familiar with running a business and making a payroll, for example, while most normal folks spend their days dealing with tough realities and unsecure, demanding, worrisome, and often unpleasant jobs.
This from Why eggheads shouldn't be running things:
Making government policy from radical, unfiltered, untested ideas turns citizens into guinea pigs and puts the country at high risk for destabilization and other unpredictable consequences.
Part of what allows academia to produce radical ideas is the absence of failure. Their ideas are rarely applied to real world problems. You don't have to "go back to the drawing board" unless you have a reason to do so.
Academia isn't a mill for practical solutions. It is intended as an environment for expanding thought to open the mind to new possibilities unbridled by law, ethics, morality, practicality and other elements of civilized society. "Eggheads" in academia are on the far side of the spectrum from those who should make policy to govern.
Editor's comment/addendum:
This discussion reminds me of a recent conversation with the Dylanologist about the history of cartography. In Medieval times, there were two sorts of maps of the known world: academic schematic maps with Jerusalem in the center, all circled by an ocean, and there were maps made by sailors. The former category represented an idealized view of the world, and were useless for travel. Idea-driven, not even intended to be fully realistic. The Hereford map is one of many examples:
The(se) maps were not used as navigation tools but instead served as visual histories, teaching objects, and illustrations of religious or philosophic ways of understanding the world and what was seen as God’s creation.
In fact, they were pursuing a "narrative" about the world.
At the same time, European sailors were producing practical Portolan maps to go from port to port. These maps, presumably ignored by, or a matter of of indifference to, the ivory towers, were useful and accurate. Here's a well-developed medieval Portolan map:
Monday, September 14. 2009
That rhetorical question from Barry Goldwater still haunts us today. Many of us who supported the US being in Vietnam found ourselves in the uncomfortable posture of, in effect, backing President Johnson’s floundering, painful, costly half-way measures. Instead of early on going deep and hard to close Haiphong, punish Hanoi, and cut the infiltration routes, the US dribbled in and hesitated. What earlier forcefulness would have yielded is indicated by the more compliant reaction from North Vietnam immediately following our major Linebacker pummeling of it in 1972.
Analogies can be misleading. Rather, the question of why not victory is to open readers’ minds to wider possibilities than appear in most of the discussions of what to do about Afghanistan. The very concept of victory seems to have disappeared from our vocabulary and consciousness.
Victory is the accomplishment of the objective of a reasonably lasting situation in which Afghanistan is not a threat to its neighbors nor ourselves in the West. Pakistan’s nukes cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of foes. Iran cannot be allowed to extend its influence, or coercion, upon others. India’s security interests must be respected.
The arguments against a perimeter containment are compelling, as ineffective. The arguments against complete or hasty withdrawal are compelling, as worsening the threats. The arguments against solely counter-insurgency without enough securing forces are compelling, as inadequate.
Democratization, modernization, social services, etc. may be tactics toward the objective, but are insufficient without trusted security. Security requires seriously reduced cross-border sanctuaries and support together with seriously diminished internal capabilities of Taliban, Al Quaeda and drug lords.
For Afghanistan’s sake, as well as other corollary objectives, that means several measures: 1. Surgically take out Pakistan’s nuclear capability, combined with India’s open pledge and actions to reduce its arming, presence and targeting of Pakistan, recognizing that India’s fears of Pakistan are real; 2. Substantially take out Iran’s nuclear capability, and embargo its critical gas imports; 3. Buy Afghanistan’s opium production while simultaneously training and supplying Afghans who cooperate with viable replacement crops and businesses, to reduce the funds flow to drug lords; 4. With vote of Congress, commit 100,000 more primarily combat troops to Afghanistan to clear and hold, while energetically pursuing longer (2-3 years, at least) building up of competent Afghan security forces, us and they pursuing forward counter-insurgency.
In 1964, Goldwater lost by a landslide. The rest is history, or commentary. President Obama, like President Johnson, deserves respect and support for not bugging out. However, experts judge both’s half-way courses result in long drawn out losses.
In 2006, President Bush changed course in Iraq. The loud bipartisan support from Senators Lieberman and McCain, commanding the center, was critical. They have again come forth. “Only Decisive Force Can Prevail in Afghanistan: A middle path of muddling through is the real recipe for quagmire and loss of public support.”
Barry Goldwater’s words in 1964 are as appropriate now: “Why Not Victory?...I’m convinced that in this year 1964 we must face up to our conscience and make a definite choice. We must decide what sort of people we are and what sort of world we want–now and for our children.”
Managed to find my way to the delightful town of Lucca two weeks ago, the home of the beloved Jack Puccini and his illustrious musical ancestors. More than a tunesmith - but what a tunesmith. Here's his family church in which he first performed:
and here's the house he grew up in (second one in from the right corner):
More Lucca photos later...plus lunch, of course.
Sunday, September 13. 2009
An outdoor souk (the Arabic word for the Turkish "bazaar" - "marketplace" in English) in old Tunis (the new Tunis surrounds the old Tunis):
Lots more below -
Continue reading "My summer vacation: Lots of random photos of Tunis, plus Tunisian lunch"
Saturday, September 12. 2009
 This has the makings of an ongoing series, ethnic firsts in pro sports. If you have ideas with links for me to follow up upon, please add them to the comments.
Photo © Peter S. Horvitz, Inset courtesy of the Jewish Museum in Cyberspace
[A]sk a group of die-hard baseball fans to name the first professional baseball player and you’ll either get blank stares or some good but inaccurate guesses.
Truth is, going by the strict technical definition of what constitutes a professional—being paid for what one does consistently and with a high degree of output and efficiency—then the mystery man is a Jewish guy from Brooklyn. The first salaried player of America’s favorite pastime was a powerful hitter and enormously fast runner named Lipman Pike.
A Dutch-Jewish New Yorker born on May 25, 1845, “Lip” Pike became baseball’s first professional player in 1866 when the Philadelphia Athletics engaged him at $20 a week to play third base. You won’t learn that in most baseball almanacs and other sports reference books…
In July 1866, his first year playing with the Philadelphia Athletics, the left-handed Pike established baseball’s first homerun record, hitting six homers in one game against another Philadelphia team, the Alert club….
Although homers were not common in those early years—the game was very different then, with its soft balls and huge outfields—Pike was still one of the homerun leaders of his day, sporting ten during his six-year National Association tenure. Also impressive was his cumulative .321 batting average.
In one of professional baseball’s earliest publicity stunts, in August 1873 Pike raced a famous trotting horse named Chronicle in a 100-yard dash. Even though Chronicle had a 25-yard head start, Pike is reported to have won the race in ten seconds flat and claimed the $250 prize….
In 1887, Pike retired from the game at the age of forty-two, thereafter living a quiet life working in Brooklyn as a haberdasher and attending his local synagogue, Temple Israel.
Why did we schlepp all the way down to Agrigento last week? To see the Valley of the Temples (and to get a good lunch).
Why they call it "valley" I do not know, because this assembly of Doric Greek temples were built along a ridge - an acropolis, as always - within view of the busy harbor. It must have been quite a sight.
These were built before the Parthenon, around 460 BC - by Carthaginian slaves. The Temple of Zeus was five times the size of the Parthenon. The old Greek-era town was large (200,000 in 500 BC) and prosperous. Empedocles (the four elements, etc) lived there.
Most of the temples are in ruins either from earthquakes or use of the stones for other building purposes. The so-called Temple of Concord is in good shape, and was in use as a Christian church until the 1700s:
That's limestone. No marble around. You cannot really make good sculptures with limestone. To make the temples white, they were covered with a layer of plaster - some of which remains. The proscenia were painted bright colors, as the Greeks always did.
More about Agrigento, and lunch, below:
Continue reading "My summer trip: Agrigento, with almond groves and a fine lunch at Baglio della Luna"
Friday, September 11. 2009
 We spend it because we make it. We spend more on medical care because we can. It's why 75 year-old American men expect to play tennis and ski and climb mountains and chase girls while Euro men that age are hobbling around on canes - if they are still alive.
It's not just medical care than we spend more on. We spend more on charity, churches, furniture, research, houses and vacation houses, food, gyms, bass boats, trips, lawn care, gardening, psychotherapy, marriage counseling, cars and F-150s, recreation, clothes, tools, guns, lawyers, starting new businesses, electric guitars, magic crystals, massage, booze, laser-vision, hair transplants, new knees, hips, shoulders and heart valves, sports, education - everything, including rockets to the moon.
We are a prosperous nation, but it is not because of good luck. It's because of a culture of work ethic, freedom, the value of free choice, and personal independence. Each person pursuing his own vision of what this brief life ought to be, while constantly contending with hard realities and tough choices.
Via Shrinkwrapped, if Italy, France or Germany joined the US, they would be the poorest states in the country.
(I always remind myself that, in Europe, it's the mega-wealthy and the fishermen who own boats. In the US, it seems like every cop and fireman has a more expensive one than I do. Well, actually, I managed to sell all of our darn boats last year. What a relief.)
Barrister addendum: If we just spent as much on health care as Mexico, think how happy we would be.
Dylanologist addendum: The average, middle class person in Europe lives at about the material level of an American on welfare, if not slightly below. I know: I have lived over there.
Wednesday, September 9. 2009
Most of Roman Carthage (which was the third largest Roman metropolis in the 200-400 era, after Rome and Alexandria - the population was around 300,000) is buried beneath the modern town of Carthage, but some that is accessible has been excavated.
After the Third Punic War in 146 BC, very little remained of the old Phoenician Carthage - except things like these boxes. The Phoenicians worshipped Baal, who required that everybody's first-born be sacrificed. The ashes of these kids were buried in these sad little stone boxes.
More of my photos of cool Roman Carthage ruins below -
Continue reading "My summer vacation: Carthage"
Tuesday, September 8. 2009
Some snaps of a glove shop in Rome. Mrs. BD thought our readers of the feminine persuasion might like these top-notch gloves, soft as a baby's bottom. It's Sermoneta Gloves.
Cool colors, I must admit.
More glove photos below -
Continue reading "My summer vacation: Gloves in Rome"
Sunday, September 6. 2009
It recently came to my attention that not everybody knows what I am talking about when I refer to the famously eccentric Collyer brothers.
Get educated!
There are people out there, similar to these guys, in almost every town. Probably quietly psychotic, or with folie a deux, or some personality disorder or dysfunction, or, maybe, just messy people. OCD? I doubt it. Eccentric is the best word.
Cleaning up is a hassle, isn't it?
Hoarders, whether of money or of things, miss out on all of the joys and adventures of life. They "plan" for a future which will never arrive, and then they die. Very sad to waste a life that way - a life which is a gift of God. God invited us to trust Him, and to accept His abundance. Hoarders (and I do not mean ordinary, wholesome, prudent folks) reject His offer of "life in abundance," and thus reject Him. It's a big mistake.
And I know I will get to that Aug 2008 New Yorker one of these days, when I get the chance. A photo of the Collyer brothers' house in NYC:
 When it comes to the possibility of life on other worlds, there are three categories to consider:
- Life of any type
- Intelligent life of any type
- Intelligent carbon-based life forms
For practical purposes, the third category is really the only one that concerns us. The first type might be nothing more than a colony of microbes. Sure, it's "life"... but so what?
The second type might be 'intelligent', but most likely we'll never find out. It could be anything from some parachute-shaped beings floating around in an atmosphere of pure methane to some formless creature living 10,000 feet below a sea of hydrochloric acid.
We've been so brainwashed by Hollywood that I'm sure the first impulse of a great number of people would be, "Just build a voice translator and we'll be able to understand them perfectly!"
Sorry, it just doesn't work that way.
Nor, after such a long journey, are we going to be equipped to fly through an atmosphere of pure methane or dive 10,000 feet beneath an ocean of hydrochloric acid.
Again, it just doesn't work that way.
No, for our purposes, we really have to be talking about carbon-based life forms similar to us, and from a world similar to ours, if we want to have a real chance of communicating with them.
And that's really what it's all about. If we sent back a signal to Earth declaring, "We've found alien life forms floating around in an atmosphere of pure methane!", well, everyone's going to find that pretty exciting for a minute or two, then it's back to the daily grind.
If we can communicate with them, however, then there's a real chance that we'll learn something that will vastly improve mankind, such as a new, pure form of energy or a transgalactic space drive.
So, what are the odds of there being intelligent carbon-based life forms out there living on a world similar to ours? Let us construct such a scenario step by step and see.
Continue reading "Life On Other Worlds: By The Numbers"
 Here they are. (h/t, Smart Christian) Examples:
Resolved, That I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God's glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration.
Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty, and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general.
Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many and how great soever.
Resolved, Never to lose one moment of time, but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.
Resolved, Never to do any thing, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.
Resolved, To be endeavoring to find out fit objects of charity and liberality.
Resolved, To maintain the strictest temperance in eating and drinking.
Do we find Edwards' life fascinating? Yes, as we have noted previously. We view him as the link between the Pilgrims and the Founding Fathers.
Besides writing and thinking and preaching and raising ten kids, Edwards loved to take a boat down from MA to NYC for lobsters, oysters, and good conversation with the Presbyterians. Probably also to get a break from all of the kids.
Except for a brief stint in a Presbyterian church in NYC after graduating from college, Edwards spent most of his life in western MA, which in the 1730s and 40s was frontier. He was fired as Pastor of Northampton (actually, voted out by the town government, which hired and paid the pastors in those days) because they felt he was overly harsh about morality. So he moved west to become the pastor of the Indian mission town of Stockbridge.
He ended his career with a brief Presidency of The College of New Jersey (now Princeton), where he died after a smallpox inoculation at age 54. A Yale grad who had excelled in the sciences, Edwards followed fellow Yale grad Aaron Burr Sr, of Fairfield, CT, in that job.
Friday, September 4. 2009
(Photo is flocking blackbirds. I do not know where BD found that image.)
A while ago, we posted some throw-away comment about human tribalism and the relative comfort most people fell, most of the time, with their own peeps. Ah, here is was:
Skin and ethnic diversity damages "social capital," harms society. Yes, OK, but it's not the skin or the ethnic: it is the different cultures that cause the issues with trust, familiarity, and comfort. Everybody is more comfortable around their own peeps, because they know what to expect and know where they're coming from. We consider that to be wholesome, natural, and intelligent tribalism.
Birds of a feather flock because they can interpret and understand what is going on - mainly the non-verbal messages. I participated in a medical conference in Japan about ten years ago, and I found it uncomfortable. The translators were excellent (I think) but I could not gauge the Japanese docs' reactions. Were they bored? Amused? Interested? Did they get my little jokes? Most of them spoke some or a lot of English, but the verbal is just one piece of communication and signaling - and verbal communication is the most dishonest.
Knowing how and what to trust in others may be the most important interpersonal issue. Of course, one cannot automatically trust one's own peeps, but one can at least take their measure. That's what made me think about IFF.
IFF is the technological version of Stranger Anxiety. Clearly some stranger anxiety and wariness is necessary in life, unless one wants to go through life like Candide.
I remember once being told by somebody who "interviewed" kids for Kindergarten for a fancy private school that the kids who jumped right into the class (they brought them into a pre-K classroom) were the lower IQ, overly-social kids. The bright kids held back, watched, got the lay of the land beore they made a move. (There is probably a bell curve distribution of such traits, as in most things.)
Survival is difficult, but social interactions are maybe even more difficult. Early humans, we know, were not only violently territorial but also cannibals.
Here's some hard evidence for the idea that the human brain grew powerful in order to deal with other human brains. It reminds me of how computerized trading programs which use automated arbitrage tactics to compete with the programs from other companies, seek constantly improving advantages in speed and subtlety. Brain vs. brain and, indeed, a form of virtual cannibalism.
Thursday, September 3. 2009
 When I was coming up, "Ask Andy" was the first thing I read in the afternoon papers after school, even before the funny pages.
Along with my Dad's interests, Andy was the one who got me interested in science. He even used one of my questions once. I think it was about animal camouflage, but I cannot swear to that. I eventually went on to love chemistry and biochem and geology and every miraculous thing in Creation - as a dilettante, of course.
I was delighted to find this piece on Ask Andy. Good memories from an innocent time.
Do any of our readers remember him?
Wednesday, September 2. 2009
Another reminiscence from our buddy Nathan (now a prominent Psychoanalyst living and working in Israel) from his years working for the Indian Health Service -
 A crushed chest, bolo tie and porcupine quill earrings marked my exit from Eagle Butte, Lakota Sioux Reservation. Only tie and earrings were planned; the crushed chest was almost preordained, however. Mrs. Alpren was the organizer, the mover of my goodbye bash. A sheet cake smeared heavily with white frosting, a Sioux warrior astride his horse dressed the top. The regular docs were covering the floor and E.R. so that I and La femme de ma vie - of the moment (LFDMV) were feted. The nurses filled the doctors’ lounge, as did former patients and their family members. I recognized some of the women who had snaked around my first clinic, waiting quietly, somberly, with some embarrassment for their first Birth Control Prescriptions, the plastic rings marking each day of the cycle. John Running Horse, still limping, but without a cast. Before many words were spoken, before I had to face that awkwardness of how to say goodbye, mean sincerely how moved I was by these people, yet leaving them, the call came.
Being flown in by Tim, the cropduster, was John Captured Alive (how these names endured, I never learned), who was found after being run over by a truck. He had fallen asleep beneath the truck after a heavy drunk. John was known for the heavy drunks, but this was his first doze beneath a truck. He arrived with his chest flailing, both sides: he had a crushed chest. This flailing is a desperate movement, like the mad fluttering of a damaged moth, while the person strains to get air into his chest: it won’t expand. For this, I recalled, one needs to “inflate” the chest, stabilize the fractured ribs, by negative pressure. Then, he could be evacuated to a bigger hospital, perhaps Mobridge. But, Mrs. Alpern said that there was no modern vacuum to reinflate. I knew he would not survive without this. I remembered my old professor of anesthesiology once taught us to care for the patient before worrying about the respirator. He also told us of the “old days” when they had to make do. When babies in Africa were dying of cholera and it was too difficult to place IV’s in their veins, he would sluice fluids subcutaneously under the skin of their backs; most revived within hours and many survived. And for crushed chests, old vacuum bottles. Big, gallon-sized, thick-walled vessels whose wavey glass revealed its faults and heftiness. Such bottles my mother had used to brew sweet wine in the kitchen, lined up along the wall, rags stuffed in their mouths, emitting a sweet, almost vinegary fragrance.
Mrs. Alpren remembered these; had used them years back; got two and hooked them together with heavy rubber tubes, one in, one out between the bottles. From the first bottle a tube went to the patient; from the second, to a vacuum in the O.R. wall. While she assembled, I quickly draped and prepped the chest with Betadine. As I swiveled left to repeat, the hospital priest, truly named Father Casper, had tip-toed behind and to my right: while giving last rights, sprinkled water on my sterile site. I said, a bit too sharply, “He’s not yours yet,” and re-prepped. A sharp incision between the ribs, a tube inserted, a few stitches to make a tight skin seal, the vacuum turned on, Captured Alive’s chest stopped flailing and rose, and filled. The O2 into his nose now could flow into his lungs.
We called Mobridge; an ambulance arrived with a diminutive electric-powered pump to take over our bottle-array. Dr. L. agreed to ride shot-gun with Captured Alive and I returned to my goodbye party. LFDMV was styling the porcupine quilled pierced earrings. Mrs. A. explained that the needles were flattened by the artist’s teeth. LFDMV slipped the noose of the beaded bolo tie over my head. The knot itself was beaded and she slid that snugly to my throat. I felt a bit hybrid: cowboyish and Indianer.
I try to say something felt: how warmly I was received by the Sioux, how they trusted me with their children’s well-being, how appreciative they were. But, when I say that it would be hard to leave, Mrs. Alpern – reliably honest Mrs. Alpern – asks, “So, why are you leaving?” To this, I am speechless.
This was the tribe Erik Erikson had studied in the 1930’s, this German-Jewish refuge to America, learning about childhoods. He described the quiet despair of the Sioux versus the robust resilience of the Yurok after the White man arrived. The despair I still saw. The people I left. The bolo? Gone with the earrings and the LFDMV.
But, not the memories. Not gone.
A re-post -
 In a comment on our piece about clear-cutting, a reader let us know about this book: 1491: New Revelations about the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles Mann.
Human fantasies about the Garden of Eden, like human utopian fantasies, just never give up. You might almost think we all wish we were back in the womb.
I ordered the book, but here's a quote from Charles Mann's 2002 essay in The Atlantic on the subject:
Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought—an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe. New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact.
It's a fascinating subject to me. Here's the whole essay.
Image: An early version of Edward Hicks' Peaceable Kingdom
Tuesday, September 1. 2009
 If my teeth were not half-rotten, I would still be a regular Lifesaver consumer.
Regarding the 5-flavor packs, I always appreciated the person who observed that "The orange ones don't taste like oranges -they taste like orange color." That guy understood the magic of Lifesavers.
Here's one fact you don't know about them: The candy was invented in 1912 by the poet Hart Crane's father, Clarence Crane of Garrettsville, Ohio. He was a chocolate manufacturer who, in the resourceful American way, was looking to invent a summertime candy - one which wouldn't get soft or melt in the heat.
Here's another factoid: Their first flavor was Pep-O-Mint.
From 1920-1985, Lifesavers were manufactured in the handsome Lifesaver Building below on Main St. in Port Chester, NY. Now condos, it is still known as the Lifesaver Building. For a few generations, anyone riding the New Haven Line would see those giant, cheerful, colorful Lifesaver models on the grass in front of the copper-green trimmed building.
Do you remember John F. Kennedy, Jr. dying in an airplane crash a few years ago? I confess, I didn't know much about the guy. About the last thing I remember, little John-John was at his father's funeral in 1963:
Then I remember seeing him on the cover of People Mag:
But that's about it. The next thing I know, the TV's breaking in with news that his plane's missing and he's presumed dead, which, sadly, turned out to be true. In brief, he was flying with his wife and her sister to the Kennedy house in Massachusetts. He was flying a Piper Saratoga, a 6-seat high-performance airplane. He was flying at night, in hazy conditions, over water, and without an instrument rating.
Without ground lights or a horizon to act as reference points, inexperienced pilots can suffer from 'spatial disorientation.' Basically, your inner ear is telling you the plane is turning when it's not. Obviously very dangerous. That's one of the things you learn for your instrument rating; to trust the gauges, not your own senses.
Furthermore, spatial disorientation has varying degrees. Being slightly disoriented from something else, such as waking from sleep, will lead to even greater spatial disorientation.
Oddly, in all the articles and TV shows I saw afterward, no one mentioned what really might have happened that dark and fateful night, and who, ultimately, was to blame. And yet what happened seemed so obvious to me at the time.
Continue reading "Who Killed JFK, Jr.?"
Monday, August 31. 2009
 People hate it when I burst their bubbles about eating habits, but facts are facts. Everybody likes to imagine that they can control their health by what they eat, but there is no real evidence for that unless you are starving to death or fat as a pig. (Ordinary American fatness has minimal health effects, but major aesthetic effects).
Here are some real facts for readers who fuss about their food. In my view, unless you are on a serious diet, anybody who fusses overly much about what and when they eat has an eating symptom. Harmless enough, but a symptom.
(Everybody has his share of neurotic symptoms. It's human.)
I will say it again: the only reason to fuss with your food is to make it taste good - and to stay skinny and fit so you look good, have endurance, and do not offend others with your unpleasant appearance.
Hey, honey. Get that beer man over here. I need a cold one or two to go with my Sabrett's.
Sunday, August 30. 2009
 Two food posts; a new one and an oldie.
If you like fast-food burgers, you have got to get by a McDuck's and chow down on their Angus burger before they disappear. (McDonald's has a long and honorable history of putting some really great foods out there — only to remove them a few months later because they didn't meet sales expectations. People still talk about their McRibs.)
I've yakked with five or six people about the Angus burger, and they all have a similar opinion. You take your first bite, not knowing what to expect, and you think...
"Oh! It's like a restaurant hamburger!"
I was at a local restaurant a few nights later and confirmed with the waitress that most normal restaurants use Angus beef for their burgers. I'd certainly heard the term before, but had never associated it with a distinct taste until now.
Although they have three pre-set meals (pictured above), you can order them however you like. The usual 'trick' to fast-food burgers is to order them a special way so they'll cook it fresh. Personally, when it comes to fast-food burgers, I'm a Wendy's fan, but the Angus burger has gone right to the top of the list. Get 'em while you can.
And from my own site:
 The Secret of Subway Sandwiches
Subway Sandwiches has a really great sandwich — and it's not even on the menu. It's called a "Club sandwich with vinaigrette dressing," and, I'm tellin' ya, it's a slice o' Heaven. The vinaigrette dressing is somewhat like an Italian salad dressing, although French, if that makes sense. It's vinegar-y and garlic-y, tart, tangy and tasty.
I get mine with just meat, lettuce and onions; no cheese or other fixings. So, if you get yours with cheese and a bunch of fixings, and it just doesn't go with the vinaigrette dressing, oh well.
I'd suggest the following:
- Get the vinaigrette dressing 'to go' in a little cup so you can put it on yourself. I've had them ruin sandwiches by putting on too much.
- Get it on their "honey oat" bread. If you already have a favorite Subway bread, go ahead and try it on that, but if something seems off, try it on the honey oat. I've had it on three or four types, but the second I tried it on honey oat, I said, 'That's it!"
- Have it toasted after the meat goes on, but before the fixings. This really brings out the bread flavor.
- If you take part of it home and want to re-heat it later, heat it at 300 degrees for about 20 minutes from a cold start. You just want it warm, not cooked. Take the fixings off first.
- If you like BBQ chips, you'll dig how they go with the vinaigrette dressing. Great combo.
Bon appétit!
A re-post from a year ago-
Delightful sail with friends. Couple of nice boats to look at in their CT harbor on the way out.
First, Nefertiti, the 1960s 12-meter Boston Yacht Club's America's Cup contender:
Second, the famous racing boat Ticonderoga, built in 1936, and many-time winner of the San Francisco to Honolulu race in the 50s:
I have heard the story that Jimmy Buffet tried to buy her at auction, but lost to another bidder, who graciously now allows Jimmy The Pirate to borrow her every year. A bit closer:
This one is a little different...Two Different Versions! .................Two Different Morals!
OLD VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
MODERN VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.' Acorn stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.'
Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake. Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share. Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ants food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.
Saturday, August 29. 2009
A re-post from 2007 -
A quote from a piece by Shrinkwrapped entitled The Mental Health Industry's Dirty Little Secret, with which I entirely agree (my bold):
The primary misunderstanding of Freud and Psychoanalysis, a misunderstanding that continues to be propagated by the forces of Therapism, concerns the locus of responsibility for our behavior. Freud's greatest insight was that to a large extent our manifest behavior is the outcome of compromises among many impulses and inhibitions, most of them unconscious, which sum and move us to action. As such, the goal of Psychoanalysis has always been to make us more aware of our hitherto unconscious motivations so that we can take more responsibility for our behavior. Therapism does the exact opposite; it attempts to relieve us of responsibility by assigning motivation and blame to all sorts of agencies (parents, society, brain chemistry) which are by definition outside the realm of our moral agency.
It is a small step from such thinking to enabling and encouraging the government to tell people how to live, how to raise their children, and how to think. As Neuroscience enlarges our understanding of the biochemical and physiological underpinnings of behavior, those who have done so much to diminish moral responsibility will be in a powerful position to mandate proper thought. The dangers are real and growing.
He goes on to quote Christina Hoff Summer and Sally Satel's Therapy Nation:
We reject the presumption of fragility and challenge the dogma of self-revelation; it exposes the folly of replacing ethical judgment with psychological and medical diagnosis, save for instances where individuals are severely mentally ill. We believe, in other words, that human beings, including children, are best regarded as self-reliant, resilient, psychically sound moral agents responsible for their behavior. For, with few exceptions, that is what we are.
Read the whole thing. Also, good comments on that essay at Dr. X.
As for myself, I have grown weary of trying to explain how psychoanalytic theories have been misunderstood, and how superficial understandings of analytic theories have been misapplied. Yes, psychotherapy can be a very useful tool - sometimes a life-saving tool - but it is neither a religion nor a cure-all.
On the same topic, SC&A asks whether we are all nuts in discussing One nation, Under Therapy.
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