The hot button issue, other than Mark Foley's appropriately poor grammar and spelling on IM, is the results of a John Hopkins study of the number of deaths directly attributable to the US-led war in Iraq. Their figure:
654,965 Iraqis
The precision of this figure is a bit misleading since the margin of error in the study (at the 95% confidence level) is plus or minus 250,000 people! But I'll be damned if 645,965 doesn't lend itself to a much more convincing argument. If these guys are right on the money, we've wiped out 2.5% of the population, which is not no mention those injured, maimed, blinded, sterilized, and otherwise damaged but living.
As for American troops - 2753 have lost their lives while an additional 20,687 were wounded. That's more than 7 wounded for each fatality. Let's use this to estimate the wounded Iraqis...7 times 650,000 is...4.5 million. Not exactly sound science here, but that means 1 in 5 Iraqis walks with a limp.
In any case, the number presented by the study has not been accepted by the Bush administration, the Blair administration, the CIA World Factbook (who refuses to update its population figures), Iraqbodycount.org, or anyone living south of Socorro. Why not embrace these numbers? If these guys are right, then we're kicking a lot more ass over there than previously thought. So much ass, in fact, that for every dead American soldier there are 236 dead Iraqis.
Conclusion: Every Marine and Army grunt over there is a freakin' superhero. Let's give these guys some credit! At this rate even if Rumsfeld gets rehired by Jeb in 2008, we could still be out of Iraq by 2016 when 15% of Iraq's population is gone and there are no able bodied men left to serve in the Insurgency because every last one of them has already been injured.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Saturday, May 20, 2006
The Energy Scorecard
ENERGY CRISIS!
American geophysicist Marion Hubbert proposed a theory in 1956 that postulates oil production follows an eponymous curve. One of the predictions of this theory is that oil production will or already has peaked, and there is a lot of debate concerning whether the Hubbert peak has passed.
Debate no more.
A little known fact is that the term oil reserves refers to the amount of oil recoverable under current economic restraint, and not the physical quantity of it in the ground. Hence technological improvements and the sky-high price per barrel of conventional petroleum actually increase the world oil reserves.
More importantly are the newly viable petroleum sources - tar sands and oil shale. In the past, it has been unfeasable to obtain petroleum from tar sands and oil shale simply because extraction can cost up to $30 a barrel while crude oil is closer to $10 a barrel. Recently, as crude oil shot to over $70 a barrel on world markets, it suddenly looked like a grand idea to head over to politically stable Canada and dig up some sandy oil. So much so that $100 billion is being pumped in the Fort McMurray area to build the necessary infrastructure.
Below I'm going to provide you with a list of the estimated total amount of oil in all its possible forms, just to prove that we are nowhere near the end of fossil fuels:
Exhibit A) Crude Oil
Estimated world resources: 1.7 trillion barrels
Exhibit B) Oil Shale
Estimated world resources: 1.6 trillion barrels
Exhibit C) Tar Sands (bitumen)
Estimated world resources: 3.6 trillion barrels
These figures are begging the question - so how much oil do we actually use? Currently, annual petroleum consumption is 28 billion barrels which of course is expected to rise steadily as Indians and Chinese start buying Hummers by the boatload. If we make the assumption that annual world oil consumption is steady at 50 billion barrels, we've got 138 years left. Just for giggles 'n grins, we could include coal in our bag of fossil fuels:
Exhibit D) Coal
Estimated world resources: one exagram (1 followed by 15 zeros grams)
This coal will last at 300 years if population doesn't increase and an estimated 164 years if it does. In addition to coal, there are still other hydrocarbon fuels to be included such as natural gas and alternative fuels like ethanol which is extracted from corn or biodiesel which is extracted from the grease pit out back of McDonald's.
Think we've reached the Hubbert peak? Not likely - from the looks of things we've got over 300 years of carbon monoxide and dioxide huffing left to perfect nuclear fusion.
American geophysicist Marion Hubbert proposed a theory in 1956 that postulates oil production follows an eponymous curve. One of the predictions of this theory is that oil production will or already has peaked, and there is a lot of debate concerning whether the Hubbert peak has passed.
Debate no more.
A little known fact is that the term oil reserves refers to the amount of oil recoverable under current economic restraint, and not the physical quantity of it in the ground. Hence technological improvements and the sky-high price per barrel of conventional petroleum actually increase the world oil reserves.
More importantly are the newly viable petroleum sources - tar sands and oil shale. In the past, it has been unfeasable to obtain petroleum from tar sands and oil shale simply because extraction can cost up to $30 a barrel while crude oil is closer to $10 a barrel. Recently, as crude oil shot to over $70 a barrel on world markets, it suddenly looked like a grand idea to head over to politically stable Canada and dig up some sandy oil. So much so that $100 billion is being pumped in the Fort McMurray area to build the necessary infrastructure.
Below I'm going to provide you with a list of the estimated total amount of oil in all its possible forms, just to prove that we are nowhere near the end of fossil fuels:
Exhibit A) Crude Oil
Estimated world resources: 1.7 trillion barrels
Exhibit B) Oil Shale
Estimated world resources: 1.6 trillion barrels
Exhibit C) Tar Sands (bitumen)
Estimated world resources: 3.6 trillion barrels
These figures are begging the question - so how much oil do we actually use? Currently, annual petroleum consumption is 28 billion barrels which of course is expected to rise steadily as Indians and Chinese start buying Hummers by the boatload. If we make the assumption that annual world oil consumption is steady at 50 billion barrels, we've got 138 years left. Just for giggles 'n grins, we could include coal in our bag of fossil fuels:
Exhibit D) Coal
Estimated world resources: one exagram (1 followed by 15 zeros grams)
This coal will last at 300 years if population doesn't increase and an estimated 164 years if it does. In addition to coal, there are still other hydrocarbon fuels to be included such as natural gas and alternative fuels like ethanol which is extracted from corn or biodiesel which is extracted from the grease pit out back of McDonald's.
Think we've reached the Hubbert peak? Not likely - from the looks of things we've got over 300 years of carbon monoxide and dioxide huffing left to perfect nuclear fusion.
The Holy Qur'an - Now Dolphin Free!
Christians beware: the days of Jesus appearing on a tortilla or a urine stain out back of Burger King are giving way to a new breed of religious incarnation.
A fisherman in the small village of Vanga in Kenya last week came home with more than his typical piscine haul. Said Ali, the lucky Muslim to directly receive the words of Allah, discovered that one of his tuna fish had Arabic writing on its side. Further inspection revealed that it wasn't just any Arabic, this fish was carrying around a passage from the Qur'an which translated says, "You are the best provider." Read for yourself (remember, right to left!):
Now if you only had an infinite number of tuna, an infinite number of monkeys with digital cameras to photograph them, and one damn good color printer, you're guaranteed the entire text of the Qur'an. Who needs Mohammed?
A fisherman in the small village of Vanga in Kenya last week came home with more than his typical piscine haul. Said Ali, the lucky Muslim to directly receive the words of Allah, discovered that one of his tuna fish had Arabic writing on its side. Further inspection revealed that it wasn't just any Arabic, this fish was carrying around a passage from the Qur'an which translated says, "You are the best provider." Read for yourself (remember, right to left!):
Now if you only had an infinite number of tuna, an infinite number of monkeys with digital cameras to photograph them, and one damn good color printer, you're guaranteed the entire text of the Qur'an. Who needs Mohammed?
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Libya or Bust!
An unprecedented step in America's War on Terror was taken on Monday, as the Secretary of State issued a statement revealing that the US will restore full diplomatic relations with Libya. This move serves both as a historic triumph over past US-Libyan tensions and as another example of the Bush administration's enigmatic foreign policy.
What is surprising is that this decision was made despite the fact that Muammar al-Quadhafi remains the country's leader. It was under his despotic government that the US broke ties with Libya in 1980 after Quadhafi ordered hit squads to eliminate Libyan dissidents who had fled the country and were living abroad. Soon after, in 1986, a bomb exploded in a Berlin nightclub killing 3 and wounding 200, an act widely attributed to Libyan-sponsored terrorism. In response, Reagan bombed the town of Libyan Benghazi and several military outposts.
The conundrum exists not in America's decision to get friendly with Libya once again, but that the decision clearly violates the administration's policy of dealing with known terrorist states. And just when they were convinced Quadhafi had changed, he gave this statement during an interview on al-Jazeera TV on April 10:
"We have fifty million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe - without swords, without guns, without conquests. The fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades. Europe is in a predicament, and so is America. They should agree to become Islamic in the course of time, or else declare war on the Muslims." (interview on Al-Jazeera TV. Qatar - April 10, 2006)"
What is surprising is that this decision was made despite the fact that Muammar al-Quadhafi remains the country's leader. It was under his despotic government that the US broke ties with Libya in 1980 after Quadhafi ordered hit squads to eliminate Libyan dissidents who had fled the country and were living abroad. Soon after, in 1986, a bomb exploded in a Berlin nightclub killing 3 and wounding 200, an act widely attributed to Libyan-sponsored terrorism. In response, Reagan bombed the town of Libyan Benghazi and several military outposts.
The conundrum exists not in America's decision to get friendly with Libya once again, but that the decision clearly violates the administration's policy of dealing with known terrorist states. And just when they were convinced Quadhafi had changed, he gave this statement during an interview on al-Jazeera TV on April 10:
"We have fifty million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe - without swords, without guns, without conquests. The fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades. Europe is in a predicament, and so is America. They should agree to become Islamic in the course of time, or else declare war on the Muslims." (interview on Al-Jazeera TV. Qatar - April 10, 2006)"
Friday, April 14, 2006
American Tattletale & Treason
The alarming allegations by former technician Mark Klein that AT&T was helping the NSA spy domestically have blossomed into a full fledged lawsuit. Citing violation of state and federal laws, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of AT&T customers in January.
Klein's claim, which could be lifted straight from the pages of a Philip K. Dick future dystopia novel, alleges that internet and phone traffic was routed from a switching station in San Francisco to the NSA via a secret room filled with dubious spy equipment. According to his statements, Klein witnessed the construction of the secret room in January 2003 and a special NSA-approved technician installed a splitting cabinet to redirect phone and internet traffic into the secret room.
According to the lawsuit, an AT&T program called Hawkeye maintains a database of over 312 terabytes of data, nearly every domestic phone call made on its network since 2001. As long as AT&T is willing to cooperate, the NSA can get its black-budget hands on anything you and I have said on the telephone for the past 5 years. Dredging through all this data for the all-important terrorist conversations or the ones detailing plans for an upcoming WTO protest is no simple task. The NSA is up to it, though. Although its official ranks are unknown, its headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland has 18,000 parking spaces and an annual electricity bill of over $21 million which makes it the state's second largest consumer of electricity. Unless every employee has his own microwave, a freezer full of hot pockets, and the insatiable urge to constantly stuff one into his mouth, that electricity is powering a large network of hardware designed specifically to invade the public's legal privacy.
Inside the secret room was a piece of equipment known as a Narus STA 6400, used for highly sophisticated data-mining. The company offers a variety of products, including the NarusIntercept Suite, which includes something called the Lawful Intercept Module. According to the website, this module gives its owner the ability to track in real time "Internet, VoIP, PTT, e-mail, etc. all in one platform."
No doubt the NSA has their hands on a souped-up version of this product as well, which puts them in the internet game as well. Since Voice-over IP calling is growing quickly and is much more vulnerable to spying thanks to the fact it may pass through many different networks, this eavesdropping tool is bound to become the bane of Skype users everywhere.
Conclusion: it's almost inevitable that the NSA has got their hands in your personal cookie jar of communication, so you should probably reserve the conversations about allegiance to Al-Qaeda, GreenPeace, or the Democratic Party for your local Starbucks.
Klein's claim, which could be lifted straight from the pages of a Philip K. Dick future dystopia novel, alleges that internet and phone traffic was routed from a switching station in San Francisco to the NSA via a secret room filled with dubious spy equipment. According to his statements, Klein witnessed the construction of the secret room in January 2003 and a special NSA-approved technician installed a splitting cabinet to redirect phone and internet traffic into the secret room.
According to the lawsuit, an AT&T program called Hawkeye maintains a database of over 312 terabytes of data, nearly every domestic phone call made on its network since 2001. As long as AT&T is willing to cooperate, the NSA can get its black-budget hands on anything you and I have said on the telephone for the past 5 years. Dredging through all this data for the all-important terrorist conversations or the ones detailing plans for an upcoming WTO protest is no simple task. The NSA is up to it, though. Although its official ranks are unknown, its headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland has 18,000 parking spaces and an annual electricity bill of over $21 million which makes it the state's second largest consumer of electricity. Unless every employee has his own microwave, a freezer full of hot pockets, and the insatiable urge to constantly stuff one into his mouth, that electricity is powering a large network of hardware designed specifically to invade the public's legal privacy.
Inside the secret room was a piece of equipment known as a Narus STA 6400, used for highly sophisticated data-mining. The company offers a variety of products, including the NarusIntercept Suite, which includes something called the Lawful Intercept Module. According to the website, this module gives its owner the ability to track in real time "Internet, VoIP, PTT, e-mail, etc. all in one platform."
No doubt the NSA has their hands on a souped-up version of this product as well, which puts them in the internet game as well. Since Voice-over IP calling is growing quickly and is much more vulnerable to spying thanks to the fact it may pass through many different networks, this eavesdropping tool is bound to become the bane of Skype users everywhere.
Conclusion: it's almost inevitable that the NSA has got their hands in your personal cookie jar of communication, so you should probably reserve the conversations about allegiance to Al-Qaeda, GreenPeace, or the Democratic Party for your local Starbucks.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Scandal vs. Scandal
Two frantic and concise text messages raced to my phone about noon a few days back as I was rolling the final patches of primed wall with a wonderfully warm shade of paint known as Rainier white. At times like these, when I'm covered with construction materials of any sort, it's not unlike me to completely ignore the goings-on of my little Samsung. This time I was compelled, if not by curiosity then by the possibility of breaking the listless drudgery of the task at hand, to check my phone. Both texts said the same thing:
Lewis Libby testifies that Bush authorized leak of the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame.
Although this turned out to be severely untrue - Libby's claim is that Bush approved the leak of sensitive information about Iraq - it still qualifies as a bona fide scandal. After all, the disclosure of classified information for political means should not come as a surprise, but the fact that it has been revealed under oath by a former White House staffer should. This also points to the idea that Libby was the clandestine mouth of the White House and defamed New York Times reporter Judith Miller was the inside ear of the media. The Iraq information and Valerie Plame leaks occurred under nearly identical circumstances and were just months apart.
If a connection is made between Bush and the Valerie Plame leak, this will call for some serious takedowns in the White House, but it is bordering on dangerous speculation at this point.
Just days before, the engine of the Republican juggernaut that successfully hijacked Congress over the past 10 years, Tom DeLay, put in his two weeks. He cited as his official reason the looming possibility of losing the election later this year to a Democrat rival. Notwithstanding future information, the chances of that happening are as low More likely was his fear that two of his former top aides, Michael Scanlon and Tony Rudy who recently pleaded guilty to various charges in the Jack Abramoff scandal, are in the midst of a plea bargain and intend to implicate DeLay.
After all, DeLay and Abramoff were more than just friends. DeLay's K Street Project, an organized effort by the Republican Party aimed at forcing lobbying firms to hire only Republicans to their top positions, was masterminded in 1995. This was the same year that Abramoff began to represent Indian gaming interests and with DeLay's help defeated a bill intended to levy taxes on Indian casinos. Later in his career DeLay took a trip to Scotland charged to Abramoff's American Express card, which recently served as one of the major catalysts for his political downfall. The connections between DeLay and Abramoff over a 10-year period are not only too numerous to list, but also widely known and unfortunately for DeLay, well documented.
Abramoff recently pled guilty to a handful of felony chages - conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion. On March 29, Abramoff was sentenced to 70 months in prison and ordered to pay a restitution of over $21 million. He is still awaiting sentencing for another charge and is still cooperating with federal prosecutors.
It has become a distracting case of Scandal vs. Scandal. With so many outlets for public outrage, chances are the people simply can't keep track of the dubious practices of their elected officials. Techniques of distraction have always been a mainstay of any political entity, but nurturing an overload of scandals to draw the public's attention away from the impeachable act of green-lighting an outright illegal NSA domestic spying program? That's why Karl Rove is really the head of the Republican Party.
The cards have not all been revealed, however. Libby is still speaking to prosecutors and may have further information that could implicate Cheney or Bush, and Abramoff has yet to speak about the scores of Congressional legislators he had personal and financial relationships with. And in light of the fact he's still awaiting another sentencing and being investigated for a murder, chances are whatever he knows will become public sooner or later.
Lewis Libby testifies that Bush authorized leak of the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame.
Although this turned out to be severely untrue - Libby's claim is that Bush approved the leak of sensitive information about Iraq - it still qualifies as a bona fide scandal. After all, the disclosure of classified information for political means should not come as a surprise, but the fact that it has been revealed under oath by a former White House staffer should. This also points to the idea that Libby was the clandestine mouth of the White House and defamed New York Times reporter Judith Miller was the inside ear of the media. The Iraq information and Valerie Plame leaks occurred under nearly identical circumstances and were just months apart.
If a connection is made between Bush and the Valerie Plame leak, this will call for some serious takedowns in the White House, but it is bordering on dangerous speculation at this point.
Just days before, the engine of the Republican juggernaut that successfully hijacked Congress over the past 10 years, Tom DeLay, put in his two weeks. He cited as his official reason the looming possibility of losing the election later this year to a Democrat rival. Notwithstanding future information, the chances of that happening are as low More likely was his fear that two of his former top aides, Michael Scanlon and Tony Rudy who recently pleaded guilty to various charges in the Jack Abramoff scandal, are in the midst of a plea bargain and intend to implicate DeLay.
After all, DeLay and Abramoff were more than just friends. DeLay's K Street Project, an organized effort by the Republican Party aimed at forcing lobbying firms to hire only Republicans to their top positions, was masterminded in 1995. This was the same year that Abramoff began to represent Indian gaming interests and with DeLay's help defeated a bill intended to levy taxes on Indian casinos. Later in his career DeLay took a trip to Scotland charged to Abramoff's American Express card, which recently served as one of the major catalysts for his political downfall. The connections between DeLay and Abramoff over a 10-year period are not only too numerous to list, but also widely known and unfortunately for DeLay, well documented.
Abramoff recently pled guilty to a handful of felony chages - conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion. On March 29, Abramoff was sentenced to 70 months in prison and ordered to pay a restitution of over $21 million. He is still awaiting sentencing for another charge and is still cooperating with federal prosecutors.
It has become a distracting case of Scandal vs. Scandal. With so many outlets for public outrage, chances are the people simply can't keep track of the dubious practices of their elected officials. Techniques of distraction have always been a mainstay of any political entity, but nurturing an overload of scandals to draw the public's attention away from the impeachable act of green-lighting an outright illegal NSA domestic spying program? That's why Karl Rove is really the head of the Republican Party.
The cards have not all been revealed, however. Libby is still speaking to prosecutors and may have further information that could implicate Cheney or Bush, and Abramoff has yet to speak about the scores of Congressional legislators he had personal and financial relationships with. And in light of the fact he's still awaiting another sentencing and being investigated for a murder, chances are whatever he knows will become public sooner or later.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
New Age, Old Tricks
What has happened to critical analysis? We need to look a little closer:
The most obvious question to be answered before any progress can be made is simple: what is energy? In the last 40 years, the term has been hijacked by philosphers, new agers, religions, cults to serve whatever purpose. There is nothing inherently wrong with the adoption of new meanings for a word with its scientific origins in the 300-year old writing of Newton, who gives it a very specific physical meaning. The problem that arises is there becomes a confusion when energy is considered across disciplines, and in this case it seems as though it is being used to evoke some sort of spiritual meaning that supposedly we should already understand.
According to your admittedly brief synopsis of Castenada's work, he states that the universe and everything in it is either energy or the absence of it. Thanks to the Special Theory of Relativity we can wholeheartedly agree with that from a physical standpoint and contention from within the scientific community would be few and far between. If, though, he argues that this is the same energy that one gains from eliminating unnecessaries from life then that is a striking fallacy and he is preying upon a symantic weakness of the English language. In other words, without a clear definition of terms, axioms, and premises, deductive syllogistic reasoning fails to lead anywhere.
So what is energy?
Perhaps in this case energy represents a greater hold on our intrinstic physical senses. I agree that withdrawal from unnecessary interactions would and does heighten personal awareness and the acuteness of the senses. To assume, however, that at some point they become so finely tuned as to allow them to operate in an entirely different fashion, ie omniscient perception of time, space, and other living organisms does not readily derive from anything. It is mere speculation, and in fact speculation is far too honorable a term for something without any basis whatsoever.
So take that, man with disputed doctorate in anthropology.
The most obvious question to be answered before any progress can be made is simple: what is energy? In the last 40 years, the term has been hijacked by philosphers, new agers, religions, cults to serve whatever purpose. There is nothing inherently wrong with the adoption of new meanings for a word with its scientific origins in the 300-year old writing of Newton, who gives it a very specific physical meaning. The problem that arises is there becomes a confusion when energy is considered across disciplines, and in this case it seems as though it is being used to evoke some sort of spiritual meaning that supposedly we should already understand.
According to your admittedly brief synopsis of Castenada's work, he states that the universe and everything in it is either energy or the absence of it. Thanks to the Special Theory of Relativity we can wholeheartedly agree with that from a physical standpoint and contention from within the scientific community would be few and far between. If, though, he argues that this is the same energy that one gains from eliminating unnecessaries from life then that is a striking fallacy and he is preying upon a symantic weakness of the English language. In other words, without a clear definition of terms, axioms, and premises, deductive syllogistic reasoning fails to lead anywhere.
So what is energy?
Perhaps in this case energy represents a greater hold on our intrinstic physical senses. I agree that withdrawal from unnecessary interactions would and does heighten personal awareness and the acuteness of the senses. To assume, however, that at some point they become so finely tuned as to allow them to operate in an entirely different fashion, ie omniscient perception of time, space, and other living organisms does not readily derive from anything. It is mere speculation, and in fact speculation is far too honorable a term for something without any basis whatsoever.
So take that, man with disputed doctorate in anthropology.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Conflict of Interest
As a result of the fire, we had a professional clean up company come in and give an estimate for cleaning the furniture in the house. The disaster clean-up specialist showed up several hours late with the simplest of explanations:
- Sorry I'm late. There was an emergency at UNM we had to take care of.
Did he say emergency? That can only mean one thing - excitement! And when you're crammed into a smoky closet for several hours swabbing the walls repeatedly with a paint roller, there's nothing you crave more than a little excitement. I asked him about it.
- You know the steps at Onate Hall? They were covered with blood. I mean completely soaked, and then there was this blood trail leading off that disappeared into the alley. Looks like a stabbing.
A stabbing. This is Albuquerque - annually, there are 3 stabbings for every resident. Stabbing someone is the equivalent of saying hello or "Hey, you up for a cup of coffee?" In other words, my interest was not piqued, but he did get me thinking about his business. For the family-owned disaster and crime-scene cleanup company, there seems to exist a moral conflict of interest based on two diametrically opposed interests:
First, living with their relatives and children, it's not a stretch to assume that contract employees and the owners would love the community to become a safer place. Fewer fires, fewer floods, fewer mutilations would be progress that everyone would appreciate.
On the other hand, as crime rates drop so does business. If crime dries up completely the crime scene cleaners are going to find themselves working at Merry Maids, which pays a hell of a lot less. Does that mean if they were ever posed the underlying question here, they would respond with "The key is finding a healthy balance between safety and profits?" It seems unlikely, which leads to another question - what does it feel like to be deeply involved in a profession that morally you wished did not exist?
Although this position isn't unique to the crime scene clean-up industry, it's quite rare. The case of a soldier or a policeman is different. Those jobs exist before the conflicts and help to prevent them, crime scene cleanup exists as a result.
In any case, he wanted to charge $1200 to wipe down a table and deodorize a couch so maybe he deserves a little moral dilemma to keep him awake at night in his 275-thread count Egyptian hand-woven sheets.
- Sorry I'm late. There was an emergency at UNM we had to take care of.
Did he say emergency? That can only mean one thing - excitement! And when you're crammed into a smoky closet for several hours swabbing the walls repeatedly with a paint roller, there's nothing you crave more than a little excitement. I asked him about it.
- You know the steps at Onate Hall? They were covered with blood. I mean completely soaked, and then there was this blood trail leading off that disappeared into the alley. Looks like a stabbing.
A stabbing. This is Albuquerque - annually, there are 3 stabbings for every resident. Stabbing someone is the equivalent of saying hello or "Hey, you up for a cup of coffee?" In other words, my interest was not piqued, but he did get me thinking about his business. For the family-owned disaster and crime-scene cleanup company, there seems to exist a moral conflict of interest based on two diametrically opposed interests:
First, living with their relatives and children, it's not a stretch to assume that contract employees and the owners would love the community to become a safer place. Fewer fires, fewer floods, fewer mutilations would be progress that everyone would appreciate.
On the other hand, as crime rates drop so does business. If crime dries up completely the crime scene cleaners are going to find themselves working at Merry Maids, which pays a hell of a lot less. Does that mean if they were ever posed the underlying question here, they would respond with "The key is finding a healthy balance between safety and profits?" It seems unlikely, which leads to another question - what does it feel like to be deeply involved in a profession that morally you wished did not exist?
Although this position isn't unique to the crime scene clean-up industry, it's quite rare. The case of a soldier or a policeman is different. Those jobs exist before the conflicts and help to prevent them, crime scene cleanup exists as a result.
In any case, he wanted to charge $1200 to wipe down a table and deodorize a couch so maybe he deserves a little moral dilemma to keep him awake at night in his 275-thread count Egyptian hand-woven sheets.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Nickeled and Dimed
There is a big plastic jar in my bedroom that used to be filled with a certain type of lollipop called Chupa-Chups (literallly "Sucky-Sucks"). All the candy is gone and has been replaced by US coinage - mostly quarters, no pennies. It's a pretty big jar - coffee cup placed next to it for scale - and it has never been counted, so I decided to do some estimates on how many Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers I could afford with the money inside.First, I borrowed a highly bathroom scale from my mom, and I found it to weigh 13 pounds. Yeah, it's inaccurate, but we're just looking for some rough numbers. Now for some interesting calculations:
Using the weight of any particular coin, we can estimate how much the total would be if the entire jar were comprised of only a single type of coin. This way we can establish upper and lower bounds for the value and then come up with a reasonable in-between.
There are 453.59237 grams in a pound.
A quarter = 5.670 grams. A jar of quarters would be worth $260
A dime = 2.268 grams. A jar of dimes would be worth $260
A nickel = 5.000 grams. A jar of nickels would be worth $59
A penny = 2.50 grams. A jar of pennies would be worth $23.59
...and...
A Sacagewea dollar = 8.1 grams. A jar of Sacageweas would be worth $727
I mentioned that one because there are quite a few Sacas in there. I was surprised that the value of dimes and quarters is exactly the same, which means that a quarter weights exactly 2.5 times what a dime does. Interesting! Using these data, I can get the the highly accurate but highly imprecise conclusion that there is between $59 and $727 in the jar. So I can afford a new CD burner, a ticket to London, or moist likely an Xbox 360.
But wait, aren't there some bills in there? Yes, in fact there are. Just for giggles and grins, let's see how much would be in there if it were ALL bills. All US bills weigh 1 gram, therefore:
A jar of $1 bills would be worth $5896
A jar of $5 bills would be worth $29,480
A jar of $10 bills would be worth $58,960
A jar of $100 bills would be worth $580,900
Yikes! Unfortunately I know undoubtedly that there is not a single Benjamin in there. At most there are two Lincolns and a handful of Washingtons. Ah well, it's all about the Washingtons anyhow.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
There's a Name for People Like Me
It is metrophile.
Until yesterday, I was calling myself a guy who likes subways and rapid transit systems. Colloquially across the world I would be called many things: In New York I'm a railfan or a foamer. In London I'm a trainspotter, a grizzer, or a gricer. In Austrialia I'm a gunzel. Fortunately, someone with a good hold on Greek suffixes created the all-encompassing designation,.
Compared to most, I'm really an amateur. I live in Albuquerque, land of no public transport, a fact which has probably led to my wonder about trains that travel under 70-storey, million ton megabehemoth buildings all day long. It also means that I don't have much experience with them.
Several trips to Europe and one or two in America has given me the opportunity to ride subways in:
London (1st by track length, 7th by annual passengers)
Paris (7th by length, 6th by annual passengers)
Lyon
Rome
Berlin
Munich
Prague
Vienna
Budapest (oldest electrified subway in Europe)
Bucharest
Stockholm
New York (2nd by track length, 5th by annual passengers)
San Francisco
These are all wonderful cities and have decent transport systems, particularly Munich whose subways extend out into suburban residential neighborhoods. I have yet to visit the grand daddy of all subway systems - that of Moscow.
Not only does the Moscow subway system move the most people around the city annually - over 3 billion trips - it is also the most ornate by far. Don't believe me? Take a look at the Kievskaya station, which is representative of all the stations in Moscow's center.
Now try and tell me you don't want to be served beluga caviar and borscht right off the marble bench that's polished daily by thousands of Russian rear ends.
The Moscow Metro also holds an enticing secret for those interested. Although still denied by the Russian government, there is plenty of evidence to support the existence of a second metro system buried much deeper than the public one. Built during Stalin's reign, it was intended to allow high-level officials to travel around escape the city in the event of nuclear war. This Metro 2 is believed to connect the Kremlin, the FSB (successor to the KGB), and other government buildings as well as the aiport Vnukova-2, the Russian State Library, and Moscow University. It is also connected to the civilian metro at at least one station - Sportivnaya station on the Sokolnicheskaya Line. I'd love to scope out that clandestine entrance.
Some day.
In Asia, nothing rivals the Tokyo transit system. It's reputed to be one of the most efficient, punctual, and clean in the world. And, from the looks of the map, one of the most serpentinely complex.
Until yesterday, I was calling myself a guy who likes subways and rapid transit systems. Colloquially across the world I would be called many things: In New York I'm a railfan or a foamer. In London I'm a trainspotter, a grizzer, or a gricer. In Austrialia I'm a gunzel. Fortunately, someone with a good hold on Greek suffixes created the all-encompassing designation,.
Compared to most, I'm really an amateur. I live in Albuquerque, land of no public transport, a fact which has probably led to my wonder about trains that travel under 70-storey, million ton megabehemoth buildings all day long. It also means that I don't have much experience with them.
Several trips to Europe and one or two in America has given me the opportunity to ride subways in:
London (1st by track length, 7th by annual passengers)
Paris (7th by length, 6th by annual passengers)
Lyon
Rome
Berlin
Munich
Prague
Vienna
Budapest (oldest electrified subway in Europe)
Bucharest
Stockholm
New York (2nd by track length, 5th by annual passengers)
San Francisco
These are all wonderful cities and have decent transport systems, particularly Munich whose subways extend out into suburban residential neighborhoods. I have yet to visit the grand daddy of all subway systems - that of Moscow.
Not only does the Moscow subway system move the most people around the city annually - over 3 billion trips - it is also the most ornate by far. Don't believe me? Take a look at the Kievskaya station, which is representative of all the stations in Moscow's center.Now try and tell me you don't want to be served beluga caviar and borscht right off the marble bench that's polished daily by thousands of Russian rear ends.
The Moscow Metro also holds an enticing secret for those interested. Although still denied by the Russian government, there is plenty of evidence to support the existence of a second metro system buried much deeper than the public one. Built during Stalin's reign, it was intended to allow high-level officials to travel around escape the city in the event of nuclear war. This Metro 2 is believed to connect the Kremlin, the FSB (successor to the KGB), and other government buildings as well as the aiport Vnukova-2, the Russian State Library, and Moscow University. It is also connected to the civilian metro at at least one station - Sportivnaya station on the Sokolnicheskaya Line. I'd love to scope out that clandestine entrance.
Some day.
In Asia, nothing rivals the Tokyo transit system. It's reputed to be one of the most efficient, punctual, and clean in the world. And, from the looks of the map, one of the most serpentinely complex.
Monday, March 20, 2006
The Lion and the Mouse
As far as olive branches go, yours was exceptionally leafless and diseased.
However, it did not fail its task, if indeed it was intended to catalyze a reaction. It's early and I'm dead tired, and my myopic eyes barely strained into focus as I was deleting the clutch of worthless email messages that flood this account daily. Only by a stroke of luck, by which I mean fortunate coincidence, did I notice your email. There is nothing I needed more this morning than a kick to the teeth to get me the fuck out of a molasses-thick torpor.
I don't remember you taking your anger out on me. I don't remember your anger at all. As far as I could tell you were on the achingly painful quest to fit in. Whether or not you succeeded is also something I'm ignorant of.
Of course I'm a coward. Overgrown with fears, I've chosen to stagnate. If everyone were as hyper-aware of the tragic fragility of every passing second, they would lock their doors as well. To take a well-rehearsed step forward would require tossing out the admittedly childish notion that the second I leave Albuquerque is the second that my parents drop dead. It's childish not because it's unlikely, it's childish because it's inevitable. I don't need that pointed out, but maybe I do need a reason to accept it.
I know I must have shit on you countless times. Not because you deserved it, or because I enjoyed it; but I was on the same quest as you. It's dictated somewhere that happiness comes only at another's expense. I apologize for all of that, I've never been without deep sympathy for those who suffered on my account. I was never thoughtless and wholeheartedly callous - which in the end only makes me that much more guilty. That particular moment was me at my weakest, don't hold on to it as a indicator of my character. It's not one.
I've got to go, thanks for provoking me.
However, it did not fail its task, if indeed it was intended to catalyze a reaction. It's early and I'm dead tired, and my myopic eyes barely strained into focus as I was deleting the clutch of worthless email messages that flood this account daily. Only by a stroke of luck, by which I mean fortunate coincidence, did I notice your email. There is nothing I needed more this morning than a kick to the teeth to get me the fuck out of a molasses-thick torpor.
I don't remember you taking your anger out on me. I don't remember your anger at all. As far as I could tell you were on the achingly painful quest to fit in. Whether or not you succeeded is also something I'm ignorant of.
Of course I'm a coward. Overgrown with fears, I've chosen to stagnate. If everyone were as hyper-aware of the tragic fragility of every passing second, they would lock their doors as well. To take a well-rehearsed step forward would require tossing out the admittedly childish notion that the second I leave Albuquerque is the second that my parents drop dead. It's childish not because it's unlikely, it's childish because it's inevitable. I don't need that pointed out, but maybe I do need a reason to accept it.
I know I must have shit on you countless times. Not because you deserved it, or because I enjoyed it; but I was on the same quest as you. It's dictated somewhere that happiness comes only at another's expense. I apologize for all of that, I've never been without deep sympathy for those who suffered on my account. I was never thoughtless and wholeheartedly callous - which in the end only makes me that much more guilty. That particular moment was me at my weakest, don't hold on to it as a indicator of my character. It's not one.
I've got to go, thanks for provoking me.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Allah was a Liberace Fan
First order of the day, after the morning cup, was to find out not only what the traditional Muslim greeting As-salaam alaikum means but also how to spell it. Two seconds on the internet and I had a translation - peace be unto you - straight from America's sweetheart, Elijah Muhammed.
That issue was quickly settled, but just as quickly I stumbled upon another.
In a nation that has no qualms about confronting social issues, we have grown accustomed to debates about abortion, the death penalty, and the hot issue of the times - gay marriage. After judges across the country began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2003 and 2004, a clear violation of the Defense of Marriage Act that President Clinton (surprise!) signed into law, the conservative backlash culminated with President Bush calling for a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting the practice. Amendments to our secularly holy gospel of jurisprudence are no light matter; these things are usually reserved for monumental social and legal leaps such as the 19th, which gives women the right to vote or the 22nd, which sets the limit on presidential terms. Amendments to the Constitution have historically proven progressive, giving new rights to people who had been denied them earlier (excepting, of course, the Prohibition debacle of the 20s.) In any case, the precedent that could have been set by Bush's proposed amendment would have been disastrous, but much to the dismay of gay-bashers countrywide, conservative might did not prevail this time; the proposed amendment died peacefully on the Senate floor on July 15, 2004 and never even made it for state consideration. Guess they should have been praying harder.
The issue of gay marriage, however, arguably sent Bush back to the White House for a second term, which begs the question - would you rather have a dead straight son or a living gay one? We'll save that for another time.
What I'm leading to is not a discussion of the Constitution or even the legality of gay marriage, but a glance at a tiny and well-cloaked sector of the gay community that you probably never knew existed. Homosexuality among Christian cultures is no surprise to Americans, thanks in part to the surprisingly high percentage of Catholic priests who have earned many times over their honorary membership cards for NAMBLA. Among other religions it is still a mystery to us.
After 9/11 nothing gravitated more attention than Islam. Americans started researching it, converting to and from it, but most importantly becoming aware of the existence of this religion with over 1.2 billion adherents worldwide. What does this religion, with its roots and many of its characters, beliefs, and scriptures coming from the same place as Christianity, think about gays and lesbians? After all, with over a billion people, chances are pretty good that there is at least one Muslim who kisses his boyfriend goodbye before strapping on the homemade explosives and heading off to a crowded bus in Tel Aviv.
And chances are he belongs to an group called al-Fatiha. Founded in 1998 by Pakistani American Faisal Alam, the organization provides social shelter for those who find almost none from their families and religion. "The Muslim community as a whole is in complete and utter denial about homosexuality," he explains. "The conversation hasn’t even begun. We are about 200 years behind Christianity in terms of progress on gay issues. Homosexuality is still seen as a Western disease that infiltrates Muslim minds and societies." Al-Fatiha includes 7 branches in the US and several in England, Canada, and South Africa. Needless to say it's going to be a while before their Mecca and Tehran offices open.
It is a terrible time to be gay and Muslim. Every country that treats homosexuality as a crime punishable by death is Islamic. The current strength of Islamic fundamentalism and its willingness to engage unfavorable social issues with voracious violence poses a clear and present danger to the openly gay. The website for Al-Fatiha has been shut down, perhaps for security reasons. Just today influential Iraqi cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called for a queer jihad, stating that gays should be killed in the "most severe way." This is coming from the man who is considered the highest Shi-ite authority in Iraq, and in the past had advised that Shias not resist the American invasion force and later encouraged Iraqis to vote in the January 2005 election. In other words, he is a moderate. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to imagine what extremists think.
This is not to say your run-of-the-mill everyday Muslim, even in Iraq, is polishing his scimitar for the day when he can run it through the belly of a drag queen. There are huge progressive movements across the board within Islam. From human rights to feminism to non-violence to simply a less traditional interpretation of the Qur'an, there are Muslims hard at work revising their religion. Gay and lesbian rights are still in their infancy, but as more and more Muslims feel comfortable admitting their homosexuality to their families and mosques thanks to organizations like al-Fatiha, the movement will grow.
Until then, even in Western countries gay Muslims will have to contend with leaders such as Dr Muzammil Siddiqi, director of the Islamic Society of North America whose views on the subject are very clearly polarized. "Homosexuality is a moral disease, a sin, a corruption… No person is born homosexual, just as nobody is born a thief, a liar or a murderer. People acquire these evil habits due to a lack of proper guidance and education." At times like these it's important to remember that counterparts have and still exist for Christian gays who have managed to survive, prosper, and laugh it off with a peach bellini in hand. Despite Jerry Falwell blaming gays and lesbians, among others, for the 9/11 attacks, Brokeback Mountain was still a mega-blockbuster.
And of course for every bigot there is always someone willing to help.
That issue was quickly settled, but just as quickly I stumbled upon another.
In a nation that has no qualms about confronting social issues, we have grown accustomed to debates about abortion, the death penalty, and the hot issue of the times - gay marriage. After judges across the country began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2003 and 2004, a clear violation of the Defense of Marriage Act that President Clinton (surprise!) signed into law, the conservative backlash culminated with President Bush calling for a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting the practice. Amendments to our secularly holy gospel of jurisprudence are no light matter; these things are usually reserved for monumental social and legal leaps such as the 19th, which gives women the right to vote or the 22nd, which sets the limit on presidential terms. Amendments to the Constitution have historically proven progressive, giving new rights to people who had been denied them earlier (excepting, of course, the Prohibition debacle of the 20s.) In any case, the precedent that could have been set by Bush's proposed amendment would have been disastrous, but much to the dismay of gay-bashers countrywide, conservative might did not prevail this time; the proposed amendment died peacefully on the Senate floor on July 15, 2004 and never even made it for state consideration. Guess they should have been praying harder.
The issue of gay marriage, however, arguably sent Bush back to the White House for a second term, which begs the question - would you rather have a dead straight son or a living gay one? We'll save that for another time.
What I'm leading to is not a discussion of the Constitution or even the legality of gay marriage, but a glance at a tiny and well-cloaked sector of the gay community that you probably never knew existed. Homosexuality among Christian cultures is no surprise to Americans, thanks in part to the surprisingly high percentage of Catholic priests who have earned many times over their honorary membership cards for NAMBLA. Among other religions it is still a mystery to us.
After 9/11 nothing gravitated more attention than Islam. Americans started researching it, converting to and from it, but most importantly becoming aware of the existence of this religion with over 1.2 billion adherents worldwide. What does this religion, with its roots and many of its characters, beliefs, and scriptures coming from the same place as Christianity, think about gays and lesbians? After all, with over a billion people, chances are pretty good that there is at least one Muslim who kisses his boyfriend goodbye before strapping on the homemade explosives and heading off to a crowded bus in Tel Aviv.
And chances are he belongs to an group called al-Fatiha. Founded in 1998 by Pakistani American Faisal Alam, the organization provides social shelter for those who find almost none from their families and religion. "The Muslim community as a whole is in complete and utter denial about homosexuality," he explains. "The conversation hasn’t even begun. We are about 200 years behind Christianity in terms of progress on gay issues. Homosexuality is still seen as a Western disease that infiltrates Muslim minds and societies." Al-Fatiha includes 7 branches in the US and several in England, Canada, and South Africa. Needless to say it's going to be a while before their Mecca and Tehran offices open.
It is a terrible time to be gay and Muslim. Every country that treats homosexuality as a crime punishable by death is Islamic. The current strength of Islamic fundamentalism and its willingness to engage unfavorable social issues with voracious violence poses a clear and present danger to the openly gay. The website for Al-Fatiha has been shut down, perhaps for security reasons. Just today influential Iraqi cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called for a queer jihad, stating that gays should be killed in the "most severe way." This is coming from the man who is considered the highest Shi-ite authority in Iraq, and in the past had advised that Shias not resist the American invasion force and later encouraged Iraqis to vote in the January 2005 election. In other words, he is a moderate. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to imagine what extremists think.
This is not to say your run-of-the-mill everyday Muslim, even in Iraq, is polishing his scimitar for the day when he can run it through the belly of a drag queen. There are huge progressive movements across the board within Islam. From human rights to feminism to non-violence to simply a less traditional interpretation of the Qur'an, there are Muslims hard at work revising their religion. Gay and lesbian rights are still in their infancy, but as more and more Muslims feel comfortable admitting their homosexuality to their families and mosques thanks to organizations like al-Fatiha, the movement will grow.
Until then, even in Western countries gay Muslims will have to contend with leaders such as Dr Muzammil Siddiqi, director of the Islamic Society of North America whose views on the subject are very clearly polarized. "Homosexuality is a moral disease, a sin, a corruption… No person is born homosexual, just as nobody is born a thief, a liar or a murderer. People acquire these evil habits due to a lack of proper guidance and education." At times like these it's important to remember that counterparts have and still exist for Christian gays who have managed to survive, prosper, and laugh it off with a peach bellini in hand. Despite Jerry Falwell blaming gays and lesbians, among others, for the 9/11 attacks, Brokeback Mountain was still a mega-blockbuster.
And of course for every bigot there is always someone willing to help.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Like Water to a Flame
It's often my intention to avoid talking about the mundane deroulement of a day, but in this case I think at least the final hours merit coverage.Last night I was in the heights eating one of those crispy, delicious ham n' swiss subs at Dion's when I got a call from my dad informing me that the apartment next door (which my parents own) was on fire. The party plans I had were dropped right there and I rushed home to find 7 fire trucks, 2 ambulances, 2 Fire Dept SUVs, a PNM truck, and my bewildered father strewn all over the Coal and Girard intersection. By the time I arrived all flames had been doused and the danger had subsided. As far as I could tel,l the firemen inside were using these last moments to hack up a little more wall, chainsaw another little section of the floor just for the pure absurdity of it all. You know, take out a little of that "I'm so overflowing with existential ressentiment that sliding down the fire pole has lost all meaning."
Asking around I quickly discovered that the middle apartment had ignited, but fortunately no one was hurt. No one human at least; a cat didn't make it in spite of the firemen's best efforts to revive it. One literally attempted interspecies mouth to mouth, which is about as admirable a feat as any I can think of. Apparently, very soon after the blaze had begun neighbors noticed the smoky smell and alerted the fire department. One of the colorful characters from across the alley woke my friend Mario, I would guess from a dream somehow centered around amassing global political power, and he rushed over with a fire extinguisher. Glory was not to be his that night, as the fire had by then spread from the floor furnace and engulfed the entire front closet, making it a wee bit too powerful for a hand extinguisher.I inspected the apartment today, and the damage seems minimal considering how bad it could have been. While everything in the closet was lost, most everything in the rest of the house seems at worst smoke damaged. The whole building is without power, and it was pointed out to me that this means if any of the remaining tenants need to shit at night, it's either going to be in the dark or by candlelight.
Minor in the spectrum of disasters, even this humble tragedy provokes quite a bit of reflection. I'm not about to enter into any sort of introspective soliloquy brimming with the usual cliches about the impermanence of life, liberty, and property, and the fact that every wonderful facet of our gemlike existence should be marveled at every waking moment.
You know why?
Because I don't believe that at all. I've got natural impulses telling me those things, but I also have access to this amazing device known as reason and a whole boatload of inductive proof which leads to just the opposite notion - that importance cannot be ascribed to everything at every time without completely undermining what it is to be important. Feel free to use disasters as the catalyst for profound self-analysis, it's only natural after all; but it's just as natural several weeks later when these reactions have become slowly anesthetized by more immediate and visceral needs, wants, and habits. Like the Six Dollar Jalapeno Burger at Carl's Jr.
There is only one lesson to be learned: Do not, as I am prone to do, fall prey to the guilt that you are underappreciating your life.
Friday, March 03, 2006
Mo' tea, Massa Geronimo?
It was severeal days ago in the car on the way home from the gym with the radio tuned to NPR's All Things Considered that I decided this whole subject needed a little illumination.
What subject? Read on.
Mardi Gras had finally arrived in the Big Easy, and one question weighed heavily on the minds of Americans who watched Katrina swallow New Orleans in 2005 with as much fervor as they did the OJ Simpson trial in 1994. "Have the drunken revelers been returning in droves this year? Their prostitutes haven't worked in weeks. They need this."
NPR reporter Michelle Norris wanders through what sounds like considerable crowds of the raucously drunk and randy while ethereal tribal drumming pours from the back- to the foreground. This particular celebration in the New Orleans district of Tremaine, she explains, is different and somewhat more focused than those on Bourbon St. These partygoers are in search of the "Big Chief" of the Congo Nation as part of a longstanding tradition in which black residents don handmade costumes which resemble ornate and exaggerated Plains Indian headdresses. These Mardi Gras Indians fill neighborhoods all over New Orleans, although the origin of the tradition is somewhat shrouded in myth.
Michelle Norris throws out the possibility that it dates from the time of slavery when native americans harbored runaway slaves. The black residents adopted the tradition as a way of honoring that fact. Elsewhere on the NPR website there is a speculative claim that perhaps the practice stemmed from early Mardi Gras celebrations, from which freed blacks and slaves were prohibited. Those who could circumvented this by dressing as Indians and the tradition stuck.
Whether one of these is the right reason, or there is another shrouded in the haze of history, one thing is certain - for those who currently celebrate the tradition it embodies a brotherhood forged by the mutual suffering of both black and native americans. Fueled by manifest destiny, colonial whites plowed through the continent massacring native tribes, annexing their lands, and erecting on them plantation houses with giant balconies from which to examine the waves of African slave labor they had so inexpensively acquired.
European colonists were privy to advantages that made their murderous quest across America possible. They carried guns and disease to which native peoples had no resistance. They were organized and determined to conquer and convert the pacifistic noble savages that populated the land. Native americans, occupied with their peaceful worship of the earth while peacefully sipping the cool water from the stream, never saw the musketballs coming.
That view is just dead wrong.
It comes as a near-fatal blow to those who still have romantic liaisons with the idea of the noble savage, ignorant of the evil lying dormant within him that was released by contact with corrupt and malicious European colonists, that before Christopher Columbus ever made contact with the first Island Arawak, American Indians were constantly at war. Pre-colonial America was not a unified collective of tribes living humbly off the virgin land, it was a hotbed of regional conflict, bloodshed, and - quiet, please - slavery.
Not to be confused with what was to come, the humane slavery practiced by nearly every tribe in pre-colonial America was that of war captives, who were used for "small-scale labor and in ritual sacrifice" according to www.slaveryinamerica.org. In Aztec society, the treatment of slaves was quite different from the European style. Slavery was not hereditary, so a slave's children were free and could indulge themselves in the right of owning property, which included having slaves of their own. Now that sounds a little more capitalistic, doesn't it?
When European colonists came and wiped and their asses with every treaty they forced Native Americans to sign, they also taught them some useful lessons in human degradation. The colonists needed throngs of hands and feet and were paying top dollar ($27 bucks a head!). Even the halcyon natives could not resist the urge to sell off their slaves to the Europeans. This represented a fundamental change in the nature of the slave for Native American tribes; the evolution of slave from person to commodity.
The colonists could not satisfy their colossal desire for labor from native peoples alone and began importing slaves from Africa. By 1750, the Indian slave trade all but collapsed thanks to the saturation of the market by inexpensive African labor. Here's where the lightbulb went on in the minds of the tribal chiefs who realized, "Wow, if they're that cheap, might as well pick up a few myself!" That's right, Native American tribes owned African slaves.
After the Revolutionary War, it was George Washington himself who encouraged the Cherokees to grow cotton and flax and sent agents to aid in the setup of a plantation complete with looms, spinning wheels, plows, and black slaves. It worked so well that in 1824 the Cherokee had over 1200 black slaves. The Cherokee weren't the only tribe who owned black slaves, as evidenced by the forced march in the 1830s and 1840s of southeastern Indians to present-day Oklahoma - the Trail of Tears - by the American government. The various tribes brought with them as many as 15,000 black slaves.
The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution officially outlawed slavery in 1865, although as we all know outright racism and bigotry was well within the law until, well, the early 21st century. A year later the Cherokee nation signed the Treaty of 1866, which abolished slavery in their lands, which of course were not their lands at all but some arid plot of useless land in Middle America.
How are we supposed to deal with all this? Should we create a Heirarchy of Immorality with white Europeans at the top, Native Americans in the middle, and black Africans at the bottom? But wait, black African entrepreneurs in Guinea made fortunes selling their countrymen to the Europeans. At the peak of the slave trade, Guinea's market of slaves, gold, and ivory was bringing in 3.5 million pounds sterling per year, which is no paltry sum in the 19th century. The process of choosing who goes where in this Heirarchy is riddled with historical caveats. Are we resigned to come to the appalling conclusion that well within all of us is the willingness to abandon our moral convictions when it comes to making a quick buck?
Aut more importantly, who are the Black Indian revelers at Mardi Gras supposed to listen to now?
What subject? Read on.
Mardi Gras had finally arrived in the Big Easy, and one question weighed heavily on the minds of Americans who watched Katrina swallow New Orleans in 2005 with as much fervor as they did the OJ Simpson trial in 1994. "Have the drunken revelers been returning in droves this year? Their prostitutes haven't worked in weeks. They need this."
NPR reporter Michelle Norris wanders through what sounds like considerable crowds of the raucously drunk and randy while ethereal tribal drumming pours from the back- to the foreground. This particular celebration in the New Orleans district of Tremaine, she explains, is different and somewhat more focused than those on Bourbon St. These partygoers are in search of the "Big Chief" of the Congo Nation as part of a longstanding tradition in which black residents don handmade costumes which resemble ornate and exaggerated Plains Indian headdresses. These Mardi Gras Indians fill neighborhoods all over New Orleans, although the origin of the tradition is somewhat shrouded in myth.
Michelle Norris throws out the possibility that it dates from the time of slavery when native americans harbored runaway slaves. The black residents adopted the tradition as a way of honoring that fact. Elsewhere on the NPR website there is a speculative claim that perhaps the practice stemmed from early Mardi Gras celebrations, from which freed blacks and slaves were prohibited. Those who could circumvented this by dressing as Indians and the tradition stuck.
Whether one of these is the right reason, or there is another shrouded in the haze of history, one thing is certain - for those who currently celebrate the tradition it embodies a brotherhood forged by the mutual suffering of both black and native americans. Fueled by manifest destiny, colonial whites plowed through the continent massacring native tribes, annexing their lands, and erecting on them plantation houses with giant balconies from which to examine the waves of African slave labor they had so inexpensively acquired.
European colonists were privy to advantages that made their murderous quest across America possible. They carried guns and disease to which native peoples had no resistance. They were organized and determined to conquer and convert the pacifistic noble savages that populated the land. Native americans, occupied with their peaceful worship of the earth while peacefully sipping the cool water from the stream, never saw the musketballs coming.
That view is just dead wrong.
It comes as a near-fatal blow to those who still have romantic liaisons with the idea of the noble savage, ignorant of the evil lying dormant within him that was released by contact with corrupt and malicious European colonists, that before Christopher Columbus ever made contact with the first Island Arawak, American Indians were constantly at war. Pre-colonial America was not a unified collective of tribes living humbly off the virgin land, it was a hotbed of regional conflict, bloodshed, and - quiet, please - slavery.
Not to be confused with what was to come, the humane slavery practiced by nearly every tribe in pre-colonial America was that of war captives, who were used for "small-scale labor and in ritual sacrifice" according to www.slaveryinamerica.org. In Aztec society, the treatment of slaves was quite different from the European style. Slavery was not hereditary, so a slave's children were free and could indulge themselves in the right of owning property, which included having slaves of their own. Now that sounds a little more capitalistic, doesn't it?
When European colonists came and wiped and their asses with every treaty they forced Native Americans to sign, they also taught them some useful lessons in human degradation. The colonists needed throngs of hands and feet and were paying top dollar ($27 bucks a head!). Even the halcyon natives could not resist the urge to sell off their slaves to the Europeans. This represented a fundamental change in the nature of the slave for Native American tribes; the evolution of slave from person to commodity.
The colonists could not satisfy their colossal desire for labor from native peoples alone and began importing slaves from Africa. By 1750, the Indian slave trade all but collapsed thanks to the saturation of the market by inexpensive African labor. Here's where the lightbulb went on in the minds of the tribal chiefs who realized, "Wow, if they're that cheap, might as well pick up a few myself!" That's right, Native American tribes owned African slaves.
After the Revolutionary War, it was George Washington himself who encouraged the Cherokees to grow cotton and flax and sent agents to aid in the setup of a plantation complete with looms, spinning wheels, plows, and black slaves. It worked so well that in 1824 the Cherokee had over 1200 black slaves. The Cherokee weren't the only tribe who owned black slaves, as evidenced by the forced march in the 1830s and 1840s of southeastern Indians to present-day Oklahoma - the Trail of Tears - by the American government. The various tribes brought with them as many as 15,000 black slaves.
The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution officially outlawed slavery in 1865, although as we all know outright racism and bigotry was well within the law until, well, the early 21st century. A year later the Cherokee nation signed the Treaty of 1866, which abolished slavery in their lands, which of course were not their lands at all but some arid plot of useless land in Middle America.
How are we supposed to deal with all this? Should we create a Heirarchy of Immorality with white Europeans at the top, Native Americans in the middle, and black Africans at the bottom? But wait, black African entrepreneurs in Guinea made fortunes selling their countrymen to the Europeans. At the peak of the slave trade, Guinea's market of slaves, gold, and ivory was bringing in 3.5 million pounds sterling per year, which is no paltry sum in the 19th century. The process of choosing who goes where in this Heirarchy is riddled with historical caveats. Are we resigned to come to the appalling conclusion that well within all of us is the willingness to abandon our moral convictions when it comes to making a quick buck?
Aut more importantly, who are the Black Indian revelers at Mardi Gras supposed to listen to now?
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Chicken and Beef
While preparing a tuna sandwich today, I started thinking about chicken fried chicken.
Why does it have such a strange name? The answer of course is that originally there was fried chicken which someone upgraded by using steak, and thus the new moniker chicken fried steak was invented. Chicken came back into fashion thanks to its relative healthiness, and the name underwent another transformation to chicken fried chicken.
Who cares?
I started wondering why there never existed chicken fried pork or chicken fried turkey or chicken fried cornish game hen. Western cultures have grown to adore only two meats, beef and chicken, above all else, which begs the question - why? History could just as well have seen the hind flanks of the gazelle processed oh-so-carefully into a Big Mac and forget Chicken McNuggets, we could have been dipping Pigeon McNuggets into that tasty honey mustard sauce.
The most likely reason we love the cow and the chicken is they are slow and witless animals. Nothing is easier to run down and spear than a 1500 lb heifer. Killing a gazelle requires, well, cheetah-like speed and agility. We're just not up to it. Even turkeys are pretty hard to catch, they can fly and roost in trees, unlike the sedentary, earth-loving chicken.
Maybe if we'd never developed into bipeds and could hunt on all fours? Things could have been different, but we're probably better off - imagine having to pay twice as much for shoes.
Why does it have such a strange name? The answer of course is that originally there was fried chicken which someone upgraded by using steak, and thus the new moniker chicken fried steak was invented. Chicken came back into fashion thanks to its relative healthiness, and the name underwent another transformation to chicken fried chicken.
Who cares?
I started wondering why there never existed chicken fried pork or chicken fried turkey or chicken fried cornish game hen. Western cultures have grown to adore only two meats, beef and chicken, above all else, which begs the question - why? History could just as well have seen the hind flanks of the gazelle processed oh-so-carefully into a Big Mac and forget Chicken McNuggets, we could have been dipping Pigeon McNuggets into that tasty honey mustard sauce.
The most likely reason we love the cow and the chicken is they are slow and witless animals. Nothing is easier to run down and spear than a 1500 lb heifer. Killing a gazelle requires, well, cheetah-like speed and agility. We're just not up to it. Even turkeys are pretty hard to catch, they can fly and roost in trees, unlike the sedentary, earth-loving chicken.
Maybe if we'd never developed into bipeds and could hunt on all fours? Things could have been different, but we're probably better off - imagine having to pay twice as much for shoes.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Dr. Finley
Once I was taking a class recreationally, which is simply a synonym for stupidly, at least when it comes to physics. Electrodynamics I was the name of the course, and it was taught by a man well into his 100's as far as I could tell. I think he was a close friend of Mark Twain and talked exactly how I imagine he might. In addition to assigning crippling workloads and his penchant for ridiculing students at the chalkboard, his tests were designed to be passed by only three people - Paul Dirac, Richard Feynman, and Albert Einstein. I imagine if Jesus were present, he probably would have gotten a "C" even if his Father smuggled him in a divine cheat sheet.
It's no stretch to say I did poorly, which is out of character for me. My saving grace was the fact that I changed the grading option to credit/no credit. The goal was to prevent weeks of mental anguish, which of course did not happen. Being a perfectionist means perfecting the art of failing sometimes, and in extreme cases perfecting the art of transferring mental pain to the physical realm. By the end of the semester I was suffering not only from panic attacks but also the associated physical symptom - what I called "stab wounds." A debilitating and precise pain erupted deep in the left side of my chest with increasing frequency as the course progressed.
From electric potential to Legendre polynomials to multipole expansions to linear dielectrics, I struggled on working long hours on problems that could be stated in one line but whose solutions could take up pages. The whole time I had the feeling that it wasn't difficult material, which only exacerbated my frustration. The semester dragged on and finally spit me out exhausted and yet relieved. It was my last semester as an undergrad; it was amazing to have finally finished.
8 months later I still had not received my diploma. I had assumed that UNM was functioning as it typically does, in some sort of time vortex where one of their minutes is equal to 16 of ours. Finally beginning to get worried, I made the trip over to Arts + Sciences to state my case.
Coincidentally, just that morning the whole office had been working "my case." It seemed that although I had gone through the ceremony - being awarded Outstanding Senior in Applied Mathematics - I was missing one little thing and never should have been allowed to graduate...a grade in my Electrodynamics I class. Turns out it wasn't an elective at all, I had fooled myself unconsciously into thinking that just to give myself the option of credit/no credit.
Nothing tears me up more than knowning I made a mistake simply because I was not paying attention.
Resolving the problem was not as painful as it could have been, my diploma was officially awarded, and I've subsequently forgotten everything I learned. After all, a mathematics degree does not mean you actually learned any math, just that you have the capacity to learn it.
It's no stretch to say I did poorly, which is out of character for me. My saving grace was the fact that I changed the grading option to credit/no credit. The goal was to prevent weeks of mental anguish, which of course did not happen. Being a perfectionist means perfecting the art of failing sometimes, and in extreme cases perfecting the art of transferring mental pain to the physical realm. By the end of the semester I was suffering not only from panic attacks but also the associated physical symptom - what I called "stab wounds." A debilitating and precise pain erupted deep in the left side of my chest with increasing frequency as the course progressed.
From electric potential to Legendre polynomials to multipole expansions to linear dielectrics, I struggled on working long hours on problems that could be stated in one line but whose solutions could take up pages. The whole time I had the feeling that it wasn't difficult material, which only exacerbated my frustration. The semester dragged on and finally spit me out exhausted and yet relieved. It was my last semester as an undergrad; it was amazing to have finally finished.
8 months later I still had not received my diploma. I had assumed that UNM was functioning as it typically does, in some sort of time vortex where one of their minutes is equal to 16 of ours. Finally beginning to get worried, I made the trip over to Arts + Sciences to state my case.
Coincidentally, just that morning the whole office had been working "my case." It seemed that although I had gone through the ceremony - being awarded Outstanding Senior in Applied Mathematics - I was missing one little thing and never should have been allowed to graduate...a grade in my Electrodynamics I class. Turns out it wasn't an elective at all, I had fooled myself unconsciously into thinking that just to give myself the option of credit/no credit.
Nothing tears me up more than knowning I made a mistake simply because I was not paying attention.
Resolving the problem was not as painful as it could have been, my diploma was officially awarded, and I've subsequently forgotten everything I learned. After all, a mathematics degree does not mean you actually learned any math, just that you have the capacity to learn it.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Comment On Se Comprend
Anna,
You're wrong about me. I have the same tendencies as dad, which is to surround myself with distraction so there is just barely not enough time in the day to get around to doing the emotionally important things that weigh so heavily.
I have lived elsewhere, one of my most poignant memories is staring through a chain-link fence at the Mediterranean on a cold night. With nothing around me but a dilapidating French resort town and palm trees that months before had lost their lustre, I was sucked into a point on the horizon. The limit of where I could see, though probably only 30 miles away, stretched into an impassable infinity between myself - alone and weary from so much introspection - and my home.
I was alone. I understand it.
We've never known each other, Anna. From the very beginning we were in competition, which is why I tormented you and why you ran to mom and dad afterwards. We turned out very different people, and now that adolescence is finally waning we have to find out how to connect with one another.
I'm sorry when my dislike for talking on the phone is misinterpreted as a lack of interest in who you are. I talk about you all the time now, in fact last night I was explaining how quickly you'd qualified for SAG membership. The whole world you entered in LA isn't something I understand very well, nor is it something I would have gone up against myself. I'm a coward, I live at home with mom and dad avoiding and sort of movement that isn't lateral.
You were lucky in one instance, something that I've realized is still a very strong force on me emotionally. When I was in France, mom and dad were going to come visit me. Mom showed up without him, and I had not been told about the debilitating depression. Little did I realize it would be his failure to complete one of my fantasies at the time - to show my parents how much I had learned and knew about life in France - that would lead to my own downward spiral. I have a 5-page journal entry that is nothing but the words "It's all my fault" repeated over and over. These problems are cyclic, from father to son and from son to sister.
I'm doing the same thing to you.
love - I promise,
your brother,
Ben
You're wrong about me. I have the same tendencies as dad, which is to surround myself with distraction so there is just barely not enough time in the day to get around to doing the emotionally important things that weigh so heavily.
I have lived elsewhere, one of my most poignant memories is staring through a chain-link fence at the Mediterranean on a cold night. With nothing around me but a dilapidating French resort town and palm trees that months before had lost their lustre, I was sucked into a point on the horizon. The limit of where I could see, though probably only 30 miles away, stretched into an impassable infinity between myself - alone and weary from so much introspection - and my home.
I was alone. I understand it.
We've never known each other, Anna. From the very beginning we were in competition, which is why I tormented you and why you ran to mom and dad afterwards. We turned out very different people, and now that adolescence is finally waning we have to find out how to connect with one another.
I'm sorry when my dislike for talking on the phone is misinterpreted as a lack of interest in who you are. I talk about you all the time now, in fact last night I was explaining how quickly you'd qualified for SAG membership. The whole world you entered in LA isn't something I understand very well, nor is it something I would have gone up against myself. I'm a coward, I live at home with mom and dad avoiding and sort of movement that isn't lateral.
You were lucky in one instance, something that I've realized is still a very strong force on me emotionally. When I was in France, mom and dad were going to come visit me. Mom showed up without him, and I had not been told about the debilitating depression. Little did I realize it would be his failure to complete one of my fantasies at the time - to show my parents how much I had learned and knew about life in France - that would lead to my own downward spiral. I have a 5-page journal entry that is nothing but the words "It's all my fault" repeated over and over. These problems are cyclic, from father to son and from son to sister.
I'm doing the same thing to you.
love - I promise,
your brother,
Ben
Where Vigilante Justice Goes Wrong
What single act qualifies as both the firmest fist of justice and the most heinously unrighteous airing of grievances on another person? That's right, the keying of a car.
There are countless people every morning taking those last few naive steps toward their cars thinking this was a morning like any other. As the distance between man and vehicle is sufficiently small to allow for close inspection, the gory details engraved by a midnight vandal are resolved and the panic sets in. In terms of damage, it's amazing how 5 seconds can be worth $500. A hundred dollars per second? If I were in the auto body business I would probably have a team of thugs armed with titanium keys out every night ensuring my prosperity.
Often, though, it's not a random occurrence at all. Just like murder, car keying is linked most frequently to someone known to the victim - or at least in some how connected.
Take the case of a friend of mine. Recently, she moved into a cozy little apartment near campus, one of those places where students late for class will inevitably park regardless of consequences just this once. What that means for the residents is the constant irritation of finding the lot they paid for completely full. Sounds frustrating, which is why there exists a perfectly reasonable punishment for these social transgressors - the common tow truck.
Having your car towed is terrible and shocking and can be expensive, but it is not the personal and moral violation that a keying is. It's like the physical damage to a paint job is akin to seeing someone kick your dog in the ribs.
Anyway, soon after she moved in she discovered a long deep key gash in her hood. A few days later, it was accompanied by the words "Don't park here" gouged in permanently. Aghast, she flew off the handle and raged to the apartment manager, which was pretty much all she could do. No matter how many experts in handwriting analysis she consulted, no one could match the perp to the crime, which was, of course, some fed up resident who had voiced her frustration with what was intended to be a punishment for someone who didn't live there.
Too bad it just ended up undermining the whole vigilante judicial process.
This anecdotal story serves as a perfect analogy for the death penalty. In the US, the ongoing debate about what purpose capital punishment serves. Arguments against it attack from many different angles.
Pragmatically speaking, it is quite expensive to execute someone thanks to lengthy appeals processes and extended jail time before the execution. In addition, there is little evidence that capital punishment deters the sorts of crimes for which it is the sentence. One could counter-argue that the execution of a murderer prevents any future murders he might commit, but then again so does life in prison. The majority of murders are committed by first-timers anyway.
There are those who consider killing morally wrong, for personal or religious reasons.
Most poignant, from the State's position at least, is the possibility of executing an innocent person. The death penalty, unlike a prison term, cannot be overturned if new evidence presents itself which exonerates the criminal. It is the State's primary obligation to protect and more importantly not to harm its citizens. Once there is even the remotest possibility of an innocent person's execution, the whole process should be re-evaluated.
Just as the person who keyed my friend's car should have considered the possibility that just maybe it belonged to someone paying the $500 a month to live there.
Let's take a quick look at the world. No country in Europe has the death penalty, except lone Belarus, and I bet you 100:1 you can't locate it on a map without Google. Japan doesn't have it, neither do Australia, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Colombia, and Turkey just to name a few. Don't get too worried yet, we have some brothers-in-arms. The list of our fellow executioners includes Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, Cuba, and the mother of all killers - China. Note that these are all countries with which the US has spic-n-span political relations, whose governments are democratically elected, and whose people enjoy the freedom we champion every time we buy a Hummer or chomp down on some deliciously unhealthy freedom fries.
Within our community of state executioners, though, we are pretty pathetic. The US killed only 60 people in 2005, which pales in comparison to the over 3400 China performed. Chinese is unequivocally the least desirable citizenship to hold, at least in terms of fear that your own government will line you up against a cinderblock wall and pump you full of Kalashnikov rounds. But don't worry, all is not lost - we still have Texas. It's encouraging to those of us on the pro-death lobby that 2% (1/50) of the country can make up 38% of its executions. Yee haw!
There are countless people every morning taking those last few naive steps toward their cars thinking this was a morning like any other. As the distance between man and vehicle is sufficiently small to allow for close inspection, the gory details engraved by a midnight vandal are resolved and the panic sets in. In terms of damage, it's amazing how 5 seconds can be worth $500. A hundred dollars per second? If I were in the auto body business I would probably have a team of thugs armed with titanium keys out every night ensuring my prosperity.
Often, though, it's not a random occurrence at all. Just like murder, car keying is linked most frequently to someone known to the victim - or at least in some how connected.
Take the case of a friend of mine. Recently, she moved into a cozy little apartment near campus, one of those places where students late for class will inevitably park regardless of consequences just this once. What that means for the residents is the constant irritation of finding the lot they paid for completely full. Sounds frustrating, which is why there exists a perfectly reasonable punishment for these social transgressors - the common tow truck.
Having your car towed is terrible and shocking and can be expensive, but it is not the personal and moral violation that a keying is. It's like the physical damage to a paint job is akin to seeing someone kick your dog in the ribs.
Anyway, soon after she moved in she discovered a long deep key gash in her hood. A few days later, it was accompanied by the words "Don't park here" gouged in permanently. Aghast, she flew off the handle and raged to the apartment manager, which was pretty much all she could do. No matter how many experts in handwriting analysis she consulted, no one could match the perp to the crime, which was, of course, some fed up resident who had voiced her frustration with what was intended to be a punishment for someone who didn't live there.
Too bad it just ended up undermining the whole vigilante judicial process.
This anecdotal story serves as a perfect analogy for the death penalty. In the US, the ongoing debate about what purpose capital punishment serves. Arguments against it attack from many different angles.
Pragmatically speaking, it is quite expensive to execute someone thanks to lengthy appeals processes and extended jail time before the execution. In addition, there is little evidence that capital punishment deters the sorts of crimes for which it is the sentence. One could counter-argue that the execution of a murderer prevents any future murders he might commit, but then again so does life in prison. The majority of murders are committed by first-timers anyway.
There are those who consider killing morally wrong, for personal or religious reasons.
Most poignant, from the State's position at least, is the possibility of executing an innocent person. The death penalty, unlike a prison term, cannot be overturned if new evidence presents itself which exonerates the criminal. It is the State's primary obligation to protect and more importantly not to harm its citizens. Once there is even the remotest possibility of an innocent person's execution, the whole process should be re-evaluated.
Just as the person who keyed my friend's car should have considered the possibility that just maybe it belonged to someone paying the $500 a month to live there.
Let's take a quick look at the world. No country in Europe has the death penalty, except lone Belarus, and I bet you 100:1 you can't locate it on a map without Google. Japan doesn't have it, neither do Australia, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Colombia, and Turkey just to name a few. Don't get too worried yet, we have some brothers-in-arms. The list of our fellow executioners includes Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, Cuba, and the mother of all killers - China. Note that these are all countries with which the US has spic-n-span political relations, whose governments are democratically elected, and whose people enjoy the freedom we champion every time we buy a Hummer or chomp down on some deliciously unhealthy freedom fries.
Within our community of state executioners, though, we are pretty pathetic. The US killed only 60 people in 2005, which pales in comparison to the over 3400 China performed. Chinese is unequivocally the least desirable citizenship to hold, at least in terms of fear that your own government will line you up against a cinderblock wall and pump you full of Kalashnikov rounds. But don't worry, all is not lost - we still have Texas. It's encouraging to those of us on the pro-death lobby that 2% (1/50) of the country can make up 38% of its executions. Yee haw!
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Chances Are You Don't Have HIV
In early February 2006, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that out of the 300,000,000 Americans out there, a million or so are HIV-positive. That's 1 in 300, or 0.3%.
How they came up with this figure, I have no idea. What I'm going to show you in the next 3 minutes is that if you test positive for HIV in America, you still probably don't have it. It's all in the numbers, and it's all very well known to the medical community.
Initial HIV tests are done using the Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) test. If a person tests positive, another more accurate test known as the Western blot is performed. Together these tests are claimed to have an accuracy of 99.5% - which is astoundingly precise for medical testing. But let's not count our chickens before they hatch. What this really means is that among people who do not have HIV, the test will yield 0.05% false positive.
Now I know this might scare you, but take a look at the diagram below.
In spite of what you're now thinking, this diagram is intended to clarify the statistics behind the shocking conclusion I'm going to reveal in just a few sentences. Let me explain. The first set of divergent arrows represent the population, and the numbers along these arrows are percentages. We know that 99.7% of Americans are HIV-negative and 0.3% are HIV-positive. The second set of arrows orginating at HIV negative represent the test with its corresponding percentages. Now remember, every single one of these people is HIV-free, so any positives represent a mistake on the part of the test and someone who is told he has HIV and in reality is perfectly healthy aside from any number of other terrifying diseases, conditions, mutations, and disabilities not mentioned here.
This means that 0.5% of those healthy people will falesly test positive. So the total number of positives will be the false-positives and the actual positives. The important thing to remember is that there are far more people in the healthy group, which means that even though only a tiny percentage of healthy people test positive, it's still going to be quite a large number. How large?
Let's say we test 10,000 people. We know that 30 people have HIV and 9,970 do not, but the important question is how many will test positive? Calculator time, folks, and don't hate me for saying that. Multiplying the number of healthy people - 9,970 - by the probability they will test positive - 0.005 (0.5%) gives us just about 50.
If you're not shocked and amazed by this number, you probably zoned out right about the time I said the word "multiplying." What this means is that while only 30 people had HIV, there were a total of 80 who tested positive! So even with 99.5% accuracy, if you test positive for HIV there is a 62.5% chance you don't have it at all - that's almost 2 out of 3! Better hope your doctor knows this or you could end up paying for a lot more highly-active anti-retroviral therapy than you really need.
But wait a second, if you're not American you better look again. These conclusions are very dependent on the actual percentage of the population that has the disease. Thanks to 16 years of political isolationism under dictator Robert Mugabe, which has led to ignorance about the spread and severity of HIV/AIDS in its population of 12.5 million, the country of Zimbabwe has an estimated adult HIV infection rate of to have a 30% or more. With the same accuracy, out of 10,000 Zimbabweans tested 35 will be false-positive but 3000 will actually have HIV. The likelihood, then, that you don't have HIV if you test positive in Zimbabwe drops to a staggeringly low 1.2%.
So now it must be fairly evident that when you get the results of a medical test back, it's very important to know as much as possible because if for some odd reason your doctor doesn't, things can get out of hand. This analysis did not even include the much more frightening possibility of a false-negative; that is, someone who has the disease but tests negative.
How they came up with this figure, I have no idea. What I'm going to show you in the next 3 minutes is that if you test positive for HIV in America, you still probably don't have it. It's all in the numbers, and it's all very well known to the medical community.
Initial HIV tests are done using the Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) test. If a person tests positive, another more accurate test known as the Western blot is performed. Together these tests are claimed to have an accuracy of 99.5% - which is astoundingly precise for medical testing. But let's not count our chickens before they hatch. What this really means is that among people who do not have HIV, the test will yield 0.05% false positive.
Now I know this might scare you, but take a look at the diagram below.
In spite of what you're now thinking, this diagram is intended to clarify the statistics behind the shocking conclusion I'm going to reveal in just a few sentences. Let me explain. The first set of divergent arrows represent the population, and the numbers along these arrows are percentages. We know that 99.7% of Americans are HIV-negative and 0.3% are HIV-positive. The second set of arrows orginating at HIV negative represent the test with its corresponding percentages. Now remember, every single one of these people is HIV-free, so any positives represent a mistake on the part of the test and someone who is told he has HIV and in reality is perfectly healthy aside from any number of other terrifying diseases, conditions, mutations, and disabilities not mentioned here.This means that 0.5% of those healthy people will falesly test positive. So the total number of positives will be the false-positives and the actual positives. The important thing to remember is that there are far more people in the healthy group, which means that even though only a tiny percentage of healthy people test positive, it's still going to be quite a large number. How large?
Let's say we test 10,000 people. We know that 30 people have HIV and 9,970 do not, but the important question is how many will test positive? Calculator time, folks, and don't hate me for saying that. Multiplying the number of healthy people - 9,970 - by the probability they will test positive - 0.005 (0.5%) gives us just about 50.
If you're not shocked and amazed by this number, you probably zoned out right about the time I said the word "multiplying." What this means is that while only 30 people had HIV, there were a total of 80 who tested positive! So even with 99.5% accuracy, if you test positive for HIV there is a 62.5% chance you don't have it at all - that's almost 2 out of 3! Better hope your doctor knows this or you could end up paying for a lot more highly-active anti-retroviral therapy than you really need.
But wait a second, if you're not American you better look again. These conclusions are very dependent on the actual percentage of the population that has the disease. Thanks to 16 years of political isolationism under dictator Robert Mugabe, which has led to ignorance about the spread and severity of HIV/AIDS in its population of 12.5 million, the country of Zimbabwe has an estimated adult HIV infection rate of to have a 30% or more. With the same accuracy, out of 10,000 Zimbabweans tested 35 will be false-positive but 3000 will actually have HIV. The likelihood, then, that you don't have HIV if you test positive in Zimbabwe drops to a staggeringly low 1.2%.
So now it must be fairly evident that when you get the results of a medical test back, it's very important to know as much as possible because if for some odd reason your doctor doesn't, things can get out of hand. This analysis did not even include the much more frightening possibility of a false-negative; that is, someone who has the disease but tests negative.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Ever Cheat on Your Boss?
As far as employment goes, I'm a monogamist. Long-term relationship describes the few jobs that I have had.
Cashier at the local yuppie/hippie grocery store - 4 years
Server at faux 50s diner - 2 years
Event planner at Univeristy of NM - 3 years
None of those are one night stands, unless I include a very short stint doing promo for Camel cigarettes at the Journal Pavilion. My simple job was to pass out 2 free packs of smoke sticks to anyone willing to fill out a 3-line form. At 12 bucks an hour it was hard to pass up at the time, and I learned quickly why Camel puts so much money into their ad campaigns here - Albuquerque is Marlboro country. Never before have I encountered this level of brand loyalty, which resulted in countless refusals to accept free cigarettes. Even at the Stevie Nicks concert, where you would expect the hillbilly crowd to jump on the chance for free anything, seeing as their liquor store holdup money had been obviously squandered on leather jackets, tattoos, meth, motorcycles, pistols, and PBR leaving not a penny for dental visits or trips to the barber. But once again the ubiquitous anthem "No thanks, I'm a Marlboro Man" took precedence over white trash frugality.
More recently, I did cave in to the lure of one day's work - cheating on my day job as my father's grunt peon laborer. Thanks to Governor Bill Richardson's newly enacted incentives for the movie industry, more and more films have been produced right here in 'Burque. This had led to a sort of Hollywood hysteria among the 20-something set whose brushes with fame formerly only went as far as standing in line behind local anchorman Dick Knipfing at Starbucks. (His takes a Cafe Americano in case you were wondering.)
Getting on set as a background "actor" has become everyone's favorite past time. Since there is no competition, at least compared thespian slurry of Los Angeles, getting to work background is not a difficult task. Not to mention we get paid better than extras out there do, and this information comes to me from a very reputable source - my sister Anna.
In production right now is a film titled Beerfest, which by its name only tickles quite a few college fancies. Cast as a "party-goer" in a "college party" scene, it sounded like to good bit. The first sign that things weren't going quite as planned was the disparity between the info I'd gotten beforehand - this is going to be a very Western European party - and the fact they were pasting prop Colorado license plates onto the cars out front.
The details are lengthy and comparable to a chapter out of Angela's Ashes, so I'm going to indulge myself by not remembering any of them. All except the one lesson that I imagine no one before me has ever learned - non-alcoholic beer gives you one hell of a hangover. Perplexing, isn't it?
This all leads me to my present situation. Only half-employed, considering re-entry into the academic world towards some unknown pursuit, or truding forward in search of gobs and gobs of green paper with a million and one uses. Only one of these two options will send me to Europe again, but then again only one of the two will give me intellectual bragging rights over those who chose to rest on their Bachelor of Arts laurels.
I should know by Friday.
Cashier at the local yuppie/hippie grocery store - 4 years
Server at faux 50s diner - 2 years
Event planner at Univeristy of NM - 3 years
None of those are one night stands, unless I include a very short stint doing promo for Camel cigarettes at the Journal Pavilion. My simple job was to pass out 2 free packs of smoke sticks to anyone willing to fill out a 3-line form. At 12 bucks an hour it was hard to pass up at the time, and I learned quickly why Camel puts so much money into their ad campaigns here - Albuquerque is Marlboro country. Never before have I encountered this level of brand loyalty, which resulted in countless refusals to accept free cigarettes. Even at the Stevie Nicks concert, where you would expect the hillbilly crowd to jump on the chance for free anything, seeing as their liquor store holdup money had been obviously squandered on leather jackets, tattoos, meth, motorcycles, pistols, and PBR leaving not a penny for dental visits or trips to the barber. But once again the ubiquitous anthem "No thanks, I'm a Marlboro Man" took precedence over white trash frugality.
More recently, I did cave in to the lure of one day's work - cheating on my day job as my father's grunt peon laborer. Thanks to Governor Bill Richardson's newly enacted incentives for the movie industry, more and more films have been produced right here in 'Burque. This had led to a sort of Hollywood hysteria among the 20-something set whose brushes with fame formerly only went as far as standing in line behind local anchorman Dick Knipfing at Starbucks. (His takes a Cafe Americano in case you were wondering.)
Getting on set as a background "actor" has become everyone's favorite past time. Since there is no competition, at least compared thespian slurry of Los Angeles, getting to work background is not a difficult task. Not to mention we get paid better than extras out there do, and this information comes to me from a very reputable source - my sister Anna.
In production right now is a film titled Beerfest, which by its name only tickles quite a few college fancies. Cast as a "party-goer" in a "college party" scene, it sounded like to good bit. The first sign that things weren't going quite as planned was the disparity between the info I'd gotten beforehand - this is going to be a very Western European party - and the fact they were pasting prop Colorado license plates onto the cars out front.
The details are lengthy and comparable to a chapter out of Angela's Ashes, so I'm going to indulge myself by not remembering any of them. All except the one lesson that I imagine no one before me has ever learned - non-alcoholic beer gives you one hell of a hangover. Perplexing, isn't it?
This all leads me to my present situation. Only half-employed, considering re-entry into the academic world towards some unknown pursuit, or truding forward in search of gobs and gobs of green paper with a million and one uses. Only one of these two options will send me to Europe again, but then again only one of the two will give me intellectual bragging rights over those who chose to rest on their Bachelor of Arts laurels.
I should know by Friday.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Those Freeport-Wheeling Capitalists
Did you know that Indonesia has a population, according to the CIA world factbook, of over 240 million, making it the world's fourth most populous country?
And were you aware that 90% of Indonesians are Muslim? That's over 200 million Muslims - which means there are more future terrorists lounging around in Indonesia than Iran, Iraq, Saudia Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria combined! The Middle East is nothing compared to the Malay Archipelago. Lucky they're so far away, because if news of this Jihad reaches the Far East, we're screwed for sure. With that many people running around, US intelligence is having as hard a time tracking Al-Qaeda cells as Cheney is tracking a quail.
Lucky for us, we've got an ally in this battle. Known as Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc, or FCX on the New York Stock Exchange, these badboys have been fighting back against Islam for decades now. How? By operating the Grasberg Mine, located in eastern Indonesia, which just happens to be the world's largest gold mine and third largest copper mine.
In 1967, an agreement was signed between Freeport-McMoRan and the Indonesian government awarding mining rights to some rich deposits of copper and gold until 2011. Originally, the agreement covered 30 square kilometers, hardly enough to dig up the gold for a single Rolex. Luckily, in 1989 the mining license was extended to include another 25,000 square kilometers. Now that's a lot of bullion! For years now, Freeport-McMoRan has been rifling through this land and selling all the goodies they find inside. Guess where all the profits went? Right into the bank accounts of CEOs and shareholders right here in the good old US of A.
I'm not talking peanuts, either. FCX has risen almost 500% since the beginning of 2002. Just this year, Freeport-McMoRan announced a record financial result for 2005 - reducing debt by $700 million, paying stock dividends of $500 million, and ending the year with $750 million in cash. In 2004, the mine's proven gold reserves were estimated at 46 million ounces. At an average price of $500 an ounce, that's $23 billion worth of gold sitting there waiting for democracy to dig it up. The problem with all that gold and copper is that it is embedded in tons of rock in a mine on top of a mountain. Even worse, the native Amungme people were living there and you know how natives can be when you're trying to rape their sacred grounds. Lucky for Jim Bob Moffett, CEO of Freeport-McMoRan, all you have to do is slip some Benjamins into the pockets of some high-level military officials and you've got the entire might of the Indonesian military whooping ass on its own native people. It also didn't hurt having former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on the board to give former Indonesian president Suharto backrubs whenever he felt a little stressed.
In addition to pilfering Indonesia's natural resources and sending all the sweet profits across the Pacific so shareholders in America can afford those much-needed chrome 24-inch rims for their Cadillac Escalades, Freeport-McMoRan is also hitting them where it hurts most - below the belt. Or above it in this case - the excavation of countless tons of earth from the mountaintop where the mine is located has led to a crater that can be seen from space. This is how Moffett describes it: "We have a volcano that's been decapitated by nature, and we're mining the esophagus, if you will." If those aren't the words of a hero, why did UT Austin name their molecular biology building after the guy?
So what happens to all the useless rock that's left after all the goodies are taken out? The inevitable side-effect of this huge mining operation is the production of massive amounts of tailings which can contain toxic heavy metals and byproducts of the ore-extraction process. But who cares? This ain't Canada, over there in Indonesia you can just dump it in the river. Since 1995, the Grasberg mine has dumped 650 million metric tons of untreated tailings into this river, the Aikwa, which now has such high deposits of copper that the fish in it have been completely wiped out. In other words, the ecosystem has been devastated and there is a lot more to come, as the mine produces over 200,000 tons of tailings every single day.
Back in 1995 it got to the point where the Overseas Private Investment Corporation revoked Freeport-McMoRan's $100 million environmental insurance policy, something never before done. Reason cited: the mine posed "unreasonable or major environmental, health or safety hazards." Then in 1996 Freeport-McMoRan was awarded the honor of one of the world's top 10 worst corporations by Multinational Monitor magazine. Once again, these analysts have failed to note that Freeport-McMoRan has been doing all of us in the US a mighty big favor in terms of national security. Without them, Indonesians might be mining the gold themselves and you know that all the profits would be going straight into Osama's Swiss bank account.
And just in case some environmentally-minded and civil-liberty championing left-wingers come marching in to tell them that life would be better if they just packed up and came home, Freeport-McMoRan has got an ace up its sleeve - they are based in New Orleans. This means that they place an integral part in the rebuilding of the city that won all of our hearts by winning the 2005 Western Hemisphere Worst Disaster gold medal (Pakistan, of course, took the World Title). Now you've got these bleeding-heart liberals trapped in a paradox of born of their own benevolence, after all - who would want to hinder economic regrowth in the Big Easy? Mardi Gras 2007 had better kick as much ass as Burning Man.
So in the end turning international relations over to an ethically-challenged, multinational corporation is a hell of a lot better than putting Indonesia on the Axis of Evil list and coming in with a whole bunch of Marines and maybe a cruise missle or two to blow the place up. As long as your typical Indonesian is scrambling to make ends meet and worrying about whether their drinking water contains high levels of sulfuric acid, he won't have time to make it to the late night Al-Qaeda poker games. And we don't want to step in there with the military and screw up the status quo anyway. Why? Because Indonesia's most populous island is Java, and we all know that homeland security and freedom means nothing without a venti triple shot latte from Starbucks.
And were you aware that 90% of Indonesians are Muslim? That's over 200 million Muslims - which means there are more future terrorists lounging around in Indonesia than Iran, Iraq, Saudia Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria combined! The Middle East is nothing compared to the Malay Archipelago. Lucky they're so far away, because if news of this Jihad reaches the Far East, we're screwed for sure. With that many people running around, US intelligence is having as hard a time tracking Al-Qaeda cells as Cheney is tracking a quail.
Lucky for us, we've got an ally in this battle. Known as Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc, or FCX on the New York Stock Exchange, these badboys have been fighting back against Islam for decades now. How? By operating the Grasberg Mine, located in eastern Indonesia, which just happens to be the world's largest gold mine and third largest copper mine.
In 1967, an agreement was signed between Freeport-McMoRan and the Indonesian government awarding mining rights to some rich deposits of copper and gold until 2011. Originally, the agreement covered 30 square kilometers, hardly enough to dig up the gold for a single Rolex. Luckily, in 1989 the mining license was extended to include another 25,000 square kilometers. Now that's a lot of bullion! For years now, Freeport-McMoRan has been rifling through this land and selling all the goodies they find inside. Guess where all the profits went? Right into the bank accounts of CEOs and shareholders right here in the good old US of A.
I'm not talking peanuts, either. FCX has risen almost 500% since the beginning of 2002. Just this year, Freeport-McMoRan announced a record financial result for 2005 - reducing debt by $700 million, paying stock dividends of $500 million, and ending the year with $750 million in cash. In 2004, the mine's proven gold reserves were estimated at 46 million ounces. At an average price of $500 an ounce, that's $23 billion worth of gold sitting there waiting for democracy to dig it up. The problem with all that gold and copper is that it is embedded in tons of rock in a mine on top of a mountain. Even worse, the native Amungme people were living there and you know how natives can be when you're trying to rape their sacred grounds. Lucky for Jim Bob Moffett, CEO of Freeport-McMoRan, all you have to do is slip some Benjamins into the pockets of some high-level military officials and you've got the entire might of the Indonesian military whooping ass on its own native people. It also didn't hurt having former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on the board to give former Indonesian president Suharto backrubs whenever he felt a little stressed.
In addition to pilfering Indonesia's natural resources and sending all the sweet profits across the Pacific so shareholders in America can afford those much-needed chrome 24-inch rims for their Cadillac Escalades, Freeport-McMoRan is also hitting them where it hurts most - below the belt. Or above it in this case - the excavation of countless tons of earth from the mountaintop where the mine is located has led to a crater that can be seen from space. This is how Moffett describes it: "We have a volcano that's been decapitated by nature, and we're mining the esophagus, if you will." If those aren't the words of a hero, why did UT Austin name their molecular biology building after the guy?
So what happens to all the useless rock that's left after all the goodies are taken out? The inevitable side-effect of this huge mining operation is the production of massive amounts of tailings which can contain toxic heavy metals and byproducts of the ore-extraction process. But who cares? This ain't Canada, over there in Indonesia you can just dump it in the river. Since 1995, the Grasberg mine has dumped 650 million metric tons of untreated tailings into this river, the Aikwa, which now has such high deposits of copper that the fish in it have been completely wiped out. In other words, the ecosystem has been devastated and there is a lot more to come, as the mine produces over 200,000 tons of tailings every single day.
Back in 1995 it got to the point where the Overseas Private Investment Corporation revoked Freeport-McMoRan's $100 million environmental insurance policy, something never before done. Reason cited: the mine posed "unreasonable or major environmental, health or safety hazards." Then in 1996 Freeport-McMoRan was awarded the honor of one of the world's top 10 worst corporations by Multinational Monitor magazine. Once again, these analysts have failed to note that Freeport-McMoRan has been doing all of us in the US a mighty big favor in terms of national security. Without them, Indonesians might be mining the gold themselves and you know that all the profits would be going straight into Osama's Swiss bank account.
And just in case some environmentally-minded and civil-liberty championing left-wingers come marching in to tell them that life would be better if they just packed up and came home, Freeport-McMoRan has got an ace up its sleeve - they are based in New Orleans. This means that they place an integral part in the rebuilding of the city that won all of our hearts by winning the 2005 Western Hemisphere Worst Disaster gold medal (Pakistan, of course, took the World Title). Now you've got these bleeding-heart liberals trapped in a paradox of born of their own benevolence, after all - who would want to hinder economic regrowth in the Big Easy? Mardi Gras 2007 had better kick as much ass as Burning Man.
So in the end turning international relations over to an ethically-challenged, multinational corporation is a hell of a lot better than putting Indonesia on the Axis of Evil list and coming in with a whole bunch of Marines and maybe a cruise missle or two to blow the place up. As long as your typical Indonesian is scrambling to make ends meet and worrying about whether their drinking water contains high levels of sulfuric acid, he won't have time to make it to the late night Al-Qaeda poker games. And we don't want to step in there with the military and screw up the status quo anyway. Why? Because Indonesia's most populous island is Java, and we all know that homeland security and freedom means nothing without a venti triple shot latte from Starbucks.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Enter: The Copacetic Life
Welcome, world of web-logging.
I have finally entered the world of online publishing, slightly behind schedule. And when I say slightly, take that to mean monumentally. Fortunately, there are hereditary reasons why I wasn't the first person to pioneer the digital recounting of his mundane quotidien tales. My family has always been hesitant to step into the inviting yet unknown waters at the shallow end of the modern age.
For instance, my parents received their first microwave when I was in high school in the mid 90's. Note the active word there - received. By no means would they have gone out and paid the 100 dollars or so to buy one, it took a miraculous technophile to force it into our home. Ironically, this philanthropist was also host to the same parsimonious genetic material that led to our familial frugality - I call him Grandpa.
It's embarrassing when a 68 year old man has ventured further into the modern world than you have. After all, this was the 90s - I should have been knee deep in pagers, 2400 baud modems, and Hypercolor t-shirts.
And then there was cable TV. The other kids were watching Madonna get half-naked on MTV or learning about Chester B. Arthur on the History Channel while I was trying to squint through the broadcast static to figure out what Matlock was up to. The technique I developed was similar to that for those Magic Eye posters. Slowly let your eyes relax and cross until something pops out of nowhere. I imagine this is something like Zen spiritual enlightenment, without the half-lotus.
Finally, though, the day arrived. The magic white box found itself a spot near the sink and settled there slowly. With caution, I approached. At a time when most people already knew the pleasures of nuking their hot pockets and toaster pastries in mere seconds, I was filled with whimsical discovery.
Not long after, I realized why those households who did have one hardly seemed to care. Microwaved food is mushy. If you happen to leave it in there 10 seconds too long it becomes just the opposite, condensing into a flavorless rock. In both cases it is hardly edible.
I'm back to the toaster oven.
I have finally entered the world of online publishing, slightly behind schedule. And when I say slightly, take that to mean monumentally. Fortunately, there are hereditary reasons why I wasn't the first person to pioneer the digital recounting of his mundane quotidien tales. My family has always been hesitant to step into the inviting yet unknown waters at the shallow end of the modern age.
For instance, my parents received their first microwave when I was in high school in the mid 90's. Note the active word there - received. By no means would they have gone out and paid the 100 dollars or so to buy one, it took a miraculous technophile to force it into our home. Ironically, this philanthropist was also host to the same parsimonious genetic material that led to our familial frugality - I call him Grandpa.
It's embarrassing when a 68 year old man has ventured further into the modern world than you have. After all, this was the 90s - I should have been knee deep in pagers, 2400 baud modems, and Hypercolor t-shirts.
And then there was cable TV. The other kids were watching Madonna get half-naked on MTV or learning about Chester B. Arthur on the History Channel while I was trying to squint through the broadcast static to figure out what Matlock was up to. The technique I developed was similar to that for those Magic Eye posters. Slowly let your eyes relax and cross until something pops out of nowhere. I imagine this is something like Zen spiritual enlightenment, without the half-lotus.
Finally, though, the day arrived. The magic white box found itself a spot near the sink and settled there slowly. With caution, I approached. At a time when most people already knew the pleasures of nuking their hot pockets and toaster pastries in mere seconds, I was filled with whimsical discovery.
Not long after, I realized why those households who did have one hardly seemed to care. Microwaved food is mushy. If you happen to leave it in there 10 seconds too long it becomes just the opposite, condensing into a flavorless rock. In both cases it is hardly edible.
I'm back to the toaster oven.
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