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| author | luxagraf <sng@luxagraf.net> | 2023-06-02 08:29:19 -0500 |
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| committer | luxagraf <sng@luxagraf.net> | 2023-06-02 08:29:19 -0500 |
| commit | 5e7f8d345e0f2592ee84e5170426bf27fd6810f0 (patch) | |
| tree | 1223c8fe656e33d5194a4eaf68edf50767c18d5f | |
| parent | 6719403fbfd07489cdc3d2c298d95adb80415af7 (diff) | |
added all my saved articles from the web and some reading notes
71 files changed, 9092 insertions, 628 deletions
diff --git a/reading/a field guide to getting lost.txt b/reading/a field guide to getting lost.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..93bf4cc --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/a field guide to getting lost.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +--- +tags: refx, #readingnotes +book: A Field Guide to Getting Lost +author: Rebecca Solnit +date: August 08, 2013 03:47:50 PM + +--- + +p89 + +Cities are built by men (and to a lesser extent, women), but they decay by nature, from earthquakes and hurricanes to the incremental processes of rot, erosion, rust, the microbial breakdown of concrete, stone, wood, and brick, the return of plants and animals making their own complex order that further dismantles the simple order of men. This nature is allowed to take over when, for economic or political reasons, maintenance is withdrawn. Ruins are also created by the vandalism, arson, and war in which humans run wild. Cities in Europe and the American South have been consciously ruined by war, but this country's North and West have fallen into ruin only for other reasons. Ruins were the symbolic home of much of the art of the time, some photography and painting, much music, the science fiction movies of the time, even the backdrops for rock videos and fashion photographs, for clothes that looked ancient, worn, combat and cobweb stuff. They were landscapes of abandon, the abandon of neglect and violence that came first and the abandon of passion that moved into the ruins. + +A city is built to resemble a conscious mind, a network that can calculate, administrate, manufacture. Ruins become the unconscious of a city, its memory, unknown, darkness, lost lands, and in this truly bring it + + diff --git a/reading/estuary time.txt b/reading/estuary time.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..299d933 --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/estuary time.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +In nature, an estuary is the wide mouth of a river into which the tides flow, an area where the fresh water of the river and the salt water of the sea mix together. “In an estuary,” Lopez observes, “nature creates a set of organisms which are not from one side or the other, but completely different. In the same way, people who live on the Tijuana border have this kind of estuarian time. It’s not a Mexican time. It’s not an American time. It’s a different time. + +from geography of time, robert levine p206 note: [[rn The Geography of Time]]
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/reading/geography of time.txt b/reading/geography of time.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..c9bf6bd --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/geography of time.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +The work reported in subsequent chapters begins with the assumption that places, like people, have their own personalities. I fully concur with sociologist Anselm Strauss that “the entire complex of urban life can be thought of as a person rather than a distinctive place, and the city can be endowed with a personality of its own.” Places are marked by their own cultures and sub-cultures, each with their unique temporal fingerprints. +-- preface xvii + diff --git a/reading/how i found freedom in an unfree world.txt b/reading/how i found freedom in an unfree world.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..c222f28 --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/how i found freedom in an unfree world.txt @@ -0,0 +1,91 @@ +rn- How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World + +tags: refx, #readingnotes +book: How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World +author: Harry Browne +date: September 29, 2013 12:56:31 PM +--- + +p22: + +No one can tell you what identity you *should* have. But we can discuss some ways to look inside yourself to discover the identity that's naturally yours. Only then can you act consistently, purposefully, and in ways that will bring happiness to you. And every artificial identity that you cast off will bring more freedom to you. + +Instead of taking for granted assumptions about what you "should" be, start from the inside -- from inside of *you*. Find out who *you* are -- that unique collection of feelings, desires, perceptions, and understanding. Respect what you see in yourself. + +Then look at the world and decide what you can have that would ignite your nature into real happiness. And then figure out how you can make it happen. + +We'll discuss later some techniques of this self-exploration. If done with energy and honesty, it can be one of the most important, rewarding, and exciting tasks you can undertake. Let it all come from within you. Don't try to identify with an ideal person, a label, or a code that others think is best for you. They aren't you; they can't make your decisions for you. + +THE IDENTITIES OF OTHERS + +At the same time, you can waste precious time when you ignore the individual identities of other people. They aren't you- you can't expect them to be. When you misread someone's identity, you expect from him what he can't provide. You can't make a stone catch fire; neither can you make someone be something he isn't. + + + +--- + +3. You have to treat things and people in accordance with their own identities in order to get what you want from them. You don't expect a stone to be a fish. And it's just as unrealistic to expect one person to act as someone else does. You don't control the identities of people, but you can control how you deal with them. + +4. You view the world subjectively—colored by your own experience, interpretation, and limits of perception. **It isn't essential that you know the final truth about everything in the world; and you don't have the resources to discover it**. + +**Instead, the test to be applied to any idea is: does it work?** Does your identification of things lead to the consequences you expect? If it does, what you've perceived was true enough for that situation. But recognize the context of the situation and be skeptical when generalizing from that test to draw broader conclusions. + +These observations can help to keep you out of the Identity Trap. You don't have to try to live a life that isn't yours. What others say you should be is based either upon what they are or upon the way they feel you'd be of more value to them. Neither can be a valid basis for determining how you should live your life. They're doing and saying what makes them happy, and their conclusions are drawn from their own limited, subjective experience. + +You are what you are. And it will be up to you to discover what that is. I'll help you in every way I can in this book, but the decisions will be up to you. The Identity Traps are the belief that you should live in a way determined by others and the assumption that others will react to things as you would. These two traps are the most basic of all traps. They might seem terribly obvious to you. If so, good + +--- + +p46: + +All the answers must come from you—not from a book or a lecture or a sermon. To assume that someone once wrote down the final answers for your morality is to assume that the writer stopped growing the day he wrote the code. Don't treat him unfairly by thinking that he couldn't have discovered more and increased his own understanding after he'd written the code. And don't forget that what he wrote was based upon what he saw. + +No matter how you approach the matter, you are the sovereign authority who makes the final decisions. The more you realize that, the more your decisions will fit realistically with your own life. + +Personal morality is an attempt to consider all the relevant consequences of your acts. If you think out your morality for yourself, it should open up a better life that will be free from the bad consequences that complicate matters. + +And it should lead you more directly to those things that bring you happiness. Along the way, you should be able to act more freely; for once you've looked ahead to recognize potentially troublesome situations, you're free to act more impulsively in pleasant circumstances—knowing there's no danger that bad problems will ensue. + +**When you decide to take matters into your own hands, someone may ask you, "Who do you think you are? Who are you to decide for yourself in the face of society and centuries of moral teachings?"** + +**The answer is simple: You are you, the person who will five with the consequences of what you do. No one else can be re sponsible, because no one else will experience the consequences of your actions as you will.** + +**If you're wrong, you will suffer for it. If you're right, you will find happiness. You have to be the one to decide. "Who are you to know?" It's your future at stake. You have to know.** + +--- + +p63 + +To say "You can do it if you'll just believe you can" is to try to wish away reality. In those situations that involve direct alternatives, your own mental attitude can make quite a difference. But in situations involving indirect alternatives, false confidence can induce you to waste your time futilely trying to change others. + +It's easy to get involved in a group with the assumption that you'll work hard to persuade others of the Tightness of your ideas. But those others are individual human beings—each with his own knowledge, attitude, goals, and plans. Your mental attitude will have no more effect in changing his nature than his mental attitude could change yours. + +A realistic man recognizes the identity of each person he deals with. He knows that he can't change the identity of the other person just by willing it. He takes the identities of others seriously and then decides what direct alternatives exist for him in view of those identities. + +That doesn't mean that no one ever changes his ideas or plans. But the changes occur only when they make sense to the individual—when they are harmonious with his basic nature. **There are occasions when you must sell something to someone else--possibly even sell for a living. But an efficient salesman doesn't approach the world with the idea that his persuasive powers could change anyone.** + +**Rather, he accepts people as they are and relies upon two talents: (1) his ability to locate people whose self-interests would be satisfied by his product or service; and (2) his ability to demonstrate to those people the connection between his product and their self-interest.** + +**I realize that most salesmen waste their time trying futilely to persuade anyone and everyone they meet. But that's why most salesmen make poor livings for the amount of time they spend at it.** + +The most successful salesmen, consciously or intuitively recognize and accept the identities of the people they deal with! They take seriously their prospects' attitudes and objections. And they don't waste their time with inappropriate prospects. Because they realize that they can't sell everyone, they're more selective in picking the people they'll try to sell. + + + +--- + +p67 + +From a libertarian point of view you rarely see a victim. To borrow Harry Browne's words: + +>If you think that someone or some group of people is unjustly poor, your opinion implies that someone else should be giving them more money—through jobs or charity. That "someone else" is the person whose happinessseeking methods disturb you. In the same way, if you feel that certain people are being repressed politically, it implies that someone has the power to keep them from doing what they want to do. + + +In other words you get to the source of the problem much faster and without necessarily focusing on the victims at all because they are not the concern, the concern is solving their problem , in this case eliminating the individual whose happiness seeking is causing them to be "victims" + +Extrapolating you also could save that the key to solving most problems is fine ding out how people seek happiness and helping them optimize how they do that, which is just a stones throw from Buddhism. + +But what if an individuals method of maximizing happiness is to minimize the happiness of others? + + + diff --git a/reading/mans-search-for-meaning.txt b/reading/mans-search-for-meaning.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..db04e67 --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/mans-search-for-meaning.txt @@ -0,0 +1,86 @@ +rn- Man's Search for Meaning + +tags: #readingnotes, refx +book: Man's Search for Meaning +author: Viktor Frankl +date: October 30, 2013 4:02:15 PM +--- + +p60: + +Seen from this point of view, the metal reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him — mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom — which cannot be taken away — that makes life meaningful and purposeful. + +An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. + +--- + +p77: + +We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. + +These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way. Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. "Life" does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life's tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man's destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situation in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. At other times it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross. Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand. + +--- + +p80: + +As we said before, any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal. **Nietzsche's words, "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how,"** could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners. Whenever there was an opportunity for it, one had to give them a why — an aim — for their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible how of their existence. Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost. The typical reply with which such a man rejected all encouraging arguments was, "I have nothing to expect from life any more." What sort of answer can one give to that? + +--- + +p91: + +Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them. We had to strive to lead them back to this truth, or the consequences would have been much worse than the loss of a few thousand stalks of oats. I can still see the prisoner who rolled up his shirt sleeves, thrust his right hand under my nose and shouted, "May this hand be cut off if I don't stain it with blood on the day when I get home!" I want to emphasize that the man who said these words was not a bad fellow. He had been the best of comrades in camp and afterwards. + +Apart from the moral deformity resulting from the sudden release of mental pressure, there were two other fundamental experiences which threatened to damage the character of the liberated prisoner: bitterness and disillusionment when he returned to his former life. + +Bitterness was caused by a number of things he came up against in his former home town. When, on his return, a man found that in many places he was met only with a shrug of the shoulders and with hackneyed phrases, he tended to become bitter and to ask himself why he had gone through all that he had. When he heard the same phrases nearly everywhere— "We did not know about it," and "We, too, have suffered," then he asked himself, have they really nothing better to say to me? + +The experience of disillusionment is different. Here it was not one's fellow man (whose superficiality and lack of feeling was so disgusting that one finally felt like creeping into a hole and neither hearing nor seeing human beings any more) but fate itself which seemed so cruel. A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible + +--- + +p105: + +gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being, We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill. It is only thus that we evoke his will to meaning from its state of latency. I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, "homeostasis," i.e., a tensionless state. **What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him, What man needs is not homeostasis but what I call "noodynamics," i.e., the existential dynamics in a polar field of tension where one pole is represented by a meaning that is to be fulfilled and the other pole by the man who has to fulfill it.** And one should not think that this holds true only for normal conditions; in neurotic individuals, it is even more valid. If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So if therapists wish to foster their patients' mental health, they should not be afraid to create a sound amount of tension through a reorientation toward the meaning of one's life. + +Having shown the beneficial impact of meaning orientation, I turn to the detrimental influence of that feeling of which so many patients complain today, namely, the feeling of the total and ultimate meaninglessness of their lives. + +--- + +p112: + +To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to “be happy.” But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to “be happy.” Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation. + +--- + +p113: + +This need for a reason is similar in another specifically human phenomenon—laughter. If you want anyone to laugh you have to provide him with a reason, e.g., you have to tell him a joke. In no way is it possible to evoke real laughter by urging him, or having him urge himself, to laugh. Doing so would be the same as urging people posed in front of a camera to say “cheese,” only to find that in the finished photographs their faces are frozen in artificial smiles. In logotherapy, such a behavior pattern is called “hyper-intention.” It plays an important role in the causation of sexual neurosis, be it frigidity or impotence. The more a patient, instead of forgetting himself through giving himself, directly strives for orgasm, i.e., sexual pleasure, the more this pursuit of sexual pleasure becomes self-defeating. Indeed, what is called “the pleasure principle” is, rather, a fun-spoiler. + +--- + +p116: + +As for the third issue, addiction, I am reminded of the findings presented by Annemarie von Forstmeyer who noted that, as evidenced by tests and statistics, 90 percent of the alcoholics she studied had suffered from an abysmal feeling of meaninglessness. Of the drug addicts studied by Stanley Krippner, 100 percent believed that “things seemed meaningless.” + +--- + +p117: + +To invoke an analogy, consider a movie: it consists of thousands upon thousands of individual pictures, and each of them makes sense and carries a meaning, yet the meaning of the whole film cannot be seen before its last sequence is shown. However, we cannot understand the whole film without having first understood each of its components, each of the individual pictures. Isn’t it the same with life? Doesn’t the final meaning of life, too, reveal itself, if at all, only at its end, on the verge of death? And doesn’t this final meaning, too, depend on whether or not the potential meaning of each single situation has been actualized to the best of the respective individual’s knowledge and belief? + +--- + +p118: + +As logotherapy teaches, there are three main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life. The first is by creating a work or by doing a deed. The second is by experiencing something or encountering someone; in other words, meaning can be found not only in work but also in love. Edith Weisskopf-Joelson observed in this context that the logotherapeutic "notion that experiencing can be as valuable as achieving is therapeutic because it compensates for our one-sided emphasis on the external world of achievement at the expense of the internal world of experience." + +Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph. + +--- + +p125: + +You may be prone to blame me for invoking examples that are the exceptions to the rule. “Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt” (but everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find) reads the last sentence of the Ethics of Spinoza. You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to “saints.” Wouldn’t it suffice just to refer to decent people? **It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best**. + diff --git a/reading/one-acre-homestead.txt b/reading/one-acre-homestead.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..45c0b28 --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/one-acre-homestead.txt @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +rn- One Acre Homestead (McDonald, Sara Simmons) + +tags: refx, #readingnotes +book: One Acre Homestead +author: Sara Simmons McDonald +date: November 30, 2013 8:44:18 PM +--- + +One Acre Homestead (McDonald, Sara Simmons)
+- Your Highlight Location 1396-1402 | Added on Monday, May 13, 2013 8:59:22 PM
+
+Public education has a mission: to serve public interest. The public interest in our modern society means, above all, a single-minded focus on national economic goals, namely GDP/GNP growth. Young people in school are being trained to contribute to these national economic standards, both as consumers and as potential employees or business owners. To a lesser extent, students are there to boost US ranks in international competitions over who has the smartest kids—another way to boost our world economic standing. This attitude trickles down. Now parents truly seem to believe that their children must measure up to these national standards, first and foremost, or something is wrong. Many parents are afraid to homeschool their children because they fear the requirements they have to meet to prove their children are learning.
+ +--- + +Location 1420-1426 | Added on Monday, May 13, 2013 8:59:52 PM
+
+It is an unquestioned cultural assumption in developed countries that your food will come from the grocery store, and all of your household supplies will be brought in from some distant source. In his essay “Feminism, The Body, and The Machine,” Wendell Berry observes, “The modern household is the place where the consumptive couple do their consuming. Nothing productive is done there. Such work as is done there is done at the expense of the resident couple or family, and to the profit of suppliers of energy and household technology. For entertainment, the inmates consume television or purchase other consumable diversion elsewhere.”
+ +--- + +Location 1428-1432 | Added on Monday, May 13, 2013 9:00:26 PM
+
+I, personally, side with Wendell Berry and other authors, who assert that the home is the basic economic unit—the foundation on which the rest of capitalist society is based. If we cannot invest ourselves in our own homes, then where are we headed as a society? In truth, the concept of home is gender-neutral and universally desirable. The home should function well as a symbol of security. While security is never guaranteed, an insecure home is no good place to be. Home economics is, at its very basis, the study and practice of making a secure and functioning home.
+ +--- + +Location 1450-1455 | Added on Monday, May 13, 2013 9:02:06 PM
+
+In economic terms, declining marginal value means that every extra hour of work provides less benefit than the previous hour. This is especially true if you have other ways to use your time. If the other things you’d do with that 20 surplus hours a week have profit potential, then there is a monetary opportunity cost for working an extra 20 hours per week. The opportunity cost is the lost profit from other ventures, and should be subtracted directly from the monetary compensation for those 20 hours per week.
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/reading/prometheus-rising.txt b/reading/prometheus-rising.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e6a63b --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/prometheus-rising.txt @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ +rn- Prometheus Rising + +tags: #readingnotes +book: Prometheus Rising +author: Robert Anton Wilson
date: August 23, 2013 12:56:31 PM
--- + +p163
+As noted earlier, when the bio-survival circuit flashes danger, *all other mental activity ceases*. + +There is no "time" on the bio-survival circuit; reflexes act without emotional ego, rational mind or adult personality participating: "I just found myself doing it." + +All the martial arts—judo, akido, kung fu, etc.—are reimprinting techniques for the bio-survival circuit. They are intended to ensure that what happens mechanically ("without thought") really does serve bio-survival, since the reflexes imprinted accidentally on this circuit are not that dependable. + +The mechanical nature of the bio-survival circuit is of key importance in brainwashing. *To create a new imprint, reduce the victim to an infantile state, i.e., first-circuit vulnerability.* + +
diff --git a/reading/rocker-rudolf-anarcho-syndicalism.txt b/reading/rocker-rudolf-anarcho-syndicalism.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8bb987c --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/rocker-rudolf-anarcho-syndicalism.txt @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +--- +title: Anarcho-Syndicalism Theory and Practice +author: Rudolf Rocker +pubyear: 1938 +edition: AKPress 6th ed. 2004 +readdate: October 2014 +tags: non-fiction + +--- + +The portentous development of our present economic system, leading to a mighty accumulation of social wealth in the hands of privileged minorities and to a continuous impoverishment of the great masses of the people, prepared the way for the present political and social reaction, and befriended it in every way. It sacrificed the general interests of human society to the private interests of individuals, and thus systematically undermined the relationship between man and man. People forgot that industry is not an end in itself, but should be only a means to insure to man his material subsistence and to make accessible to him the blessings of a higher intellectual culture. Where industry is everything and man is nothing begins the realm of a ruthless economic despotism whose workings are no less disastrous than those of any political despotism. The two mutually augment one another, and they are fed from the same source. +page: 2 + +-- + +Anarchism found a valuable advocate in Peter Kropotkin, who set himself the task of making the achievements of modern natural science available for the development of the sociological concepts of Anarchism. In his ingenious book, *Mutual Aid—A Factor of Evolution*, he entered the lists against so-called *Social Darwinism* whose exponents tried to prove the inevitability of the existing social conditions from the Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence by raising the struggle of the strong against the weak to the status of an iron law for all natural processes, to which even man is subject. In reality this conception was strongly influenced by the Malthusian doctrine that life's table is not spread for all and that the unneeded will just have to reconcile themselves to this fact. + +Kropotkin showed that this conception of nature as a field of unrestricted warfare is only a caricature of real life, and that along with the brutal struggle for existence, which is fought out with tooth and claw; there exists in nature also another principle which is expressed in the social combination of the weaker species and the maintenance of races by the evolution of social instincts and mutual aid. +page: 7 + +-- + +Anarchism recognises only the relative significance of ideas, institutions, and social forms. It is, therefore, not a fixed, self-enclosed social system, but rather a definite trend in the historic development of mankind, which, in contrast with the intellectual guardianship of all clerical and governmental institutions, strives for the free unhindered unfolding of the individual and social forces in life. Even freedom is only a relative, not an absolute concept, since it tends constantly to become broader and to affect wider circles in more manifold ways. For the anarchist freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility fo every himan being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities and talents with which nature has endowed him, and turn then to social account. The less this natural development of man is influenced by ecclesiastical or political guardianship, the mere effective and harmonious will human personality become, the more will it become the measure of the intellectual culture of the society in which it has grown. +page: 16 + +-- + +"No one can finally spend more than he has. That holds good for individuals; it holds good for peoples. If one spends oneself for power, for high politics, for husbandry, for commerce, parliamentarism, military interests -- if one gives away that amount of reason, earnestness, will, self-mastery, which constitutes one's real self for one thing, he will not have it for the other. Culture and state -- let no one be deceived about this -- are antagonists: the 'Culture State' is merely a modern idea. The one lives on the other, the one prospers at the expense of the other. All great periods of culture are periods of political decline. Whatever is great in a cultured sense is non-political, is even anti-political. -- Nietzsche (source not given) +page: 17 + +-- + + diff --git a/reading/solnit-rebecca-wanderlust.txt b/reading/solnit-rebecca-wanderlust.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9cb97c2 --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/solnit-rebecca-wanderlust.txt @@ -0,0 +1,63 @@ +--- +title: Wanderlust A History of Walking +author: Rebecca Solnit +pubyear: 2000 +edition: Penguin Books +readdate: September 25, 2014 03:47:50 PM +tags: non-fiction + +--- + +This creates an odd consonance between internal and external passage,one that suggests that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and.that walking is one way to traverse it. A new thought often seems like a feature of the landscape that was there all along, as though thinking were traveling rather than making. And so one aspect of the history of walking is the history of thinking made concrete -- for the motions of the mind cannot be traced, but those of the feet can. Walking can also be imagined as a visual activity, every walk a tour leisurely enough both to see and to think over the sights, to assimilate the new into the known. Perhaps this is where walking's peculiar utility for thinkers comes from. The surprises, liberations, and clarifications of travel can sometimes be garnered by going around the block as well as going around the world, and walking travels both near and far. Or perhaps walking should be called movement, not travel, for one can walk in circles or travel around the world immobilized in a seat and a certain kind of wanderlust can only be assuaged by the acts of the body itself in motion, not the motion of the car, boat, or plane. It is the movement as well as the sights going by that seems to make things happen in the mind and what makes walking ambiguous and endlessly fertile: it is both means and end, travel and destination +page: 6 +notes: I like this passage as the basis for a luxagraf post. That you can travel all around the world without going anywhere at all. This notions that "a certain kind of wanderlust ca only be assuaged by the acts of the body itself in motion, not the motion of a car... etc". Reminiscent of Edward Abbey's advice: "you can't see anything from a car; you've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the...cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you'll see something, maybe." + +-- + +Although I came to think about walking, I couldn't stop thinking about everything else, about the letters I should have been writing, about the conversations I'd been having. At least when my mind strayed to the phone conversation with my friend Sono that morning, I was still on track. Sono's truck had been stolen from her West Oakland studio, and she told me that though everyone responded to it as a disaster, she wasn't all that sorry it was gone, or in a hurry to replace it. There was a joy, she said, to finding that her body was adequate to get her Where she was going, and it was a gift to develop a more tangible, Concrete relationship to her neighborhood and its residents. We talked about the more stately sense of time one has afoot and on public transit, where things must be planned and scheduled beforehand, rather than rushed through at the last minute, and about the sense of place that can only be gained on foot. Many people nowadays live in a series of interiors -- home, car, gym, office, shops -- disconnected from each other. On foot everything stays connected, for while walking one occupies the spaces between those interiors in the same way one occupies those interiors. One lives in the while world rather than in interiors built up against it. +page: 9 +notes: I like the point about walking and public transit requiring more planning and that that can be better than "rushing" through. usually i think of it as the opposite, that the necessary planning and leaving early is a disadvantage of walking and public transit. also love the disconnected spaces. fits with the other idea below that to never arrive is just as half-a-journey as rushing through the journey without looking around. + +-- + +Four-legged animals are as stable as a table when all four feet are on the ground, but humans are already precariously balanced on two be-fore they begin to move. Even standing still is a feat of balance, as anyone who has watched or been a drunk knows. +page: 32-33 + +-- + +Reading the accounts of human walking, it is easy to begin to think of the Fall in terms of the falls, the innumerable spills, possible for a suddenly upright creature that must balance all its shifting weight on a single foot as it moves:, John 2Napier, in an essay on the ancient origins of walking, wrote, "Human walking is a unique activity during which the body, step by step, teeters on the edge of catastrophe... Man's bipedal mode of walking seems potentially catastrophic because only the rhythmic forward movement of first one leg and then the other keeps him from falling flat on his face." This is easiest to see in small children for whom the many aspects that will later unite seamlessly into walking are still distinct and awkward. They learn to walk by flirting with falling—they lean forward with their body and then rush to keep their legs under that body. Their plump bowed legs always seem to be lagging behind or catching up, and they often tumble into frustration before they master the art. Children begin to walk to chase desires no one will fulfill for them: the desire for that which is out of reach,for freedom, for independence from the secure confines of the maternal Eden. And so walking begins as delayed falling, and the fall meets with the Fall. Genesis may seem out of place in a discussion of science, but it is often the scientists who have dragged it in with them, unwittingly or otherwise. The scientific stories are as much an attempt to account for who we are as any creation myth and some of them seem to hark back to the central creation myth of Western culture, that business of Adam and Eve in the Garden. +page: 33 +notes: connected to the quote above. really like the bit about children, which is 100 percent true with my experience watching the girls grow up and learn to walk. it's a controlled fall for some time and it always starts with the desire to get something that no one will get for them. Walking is autonomy at this point, or if you will, the first steps toward autonomy. + +-- + +There is a symbiosis between journey and arrival in Christian pilgrimage as there is in mountaineering. To travel without arriving would be as incomplete as to arrive without having traveled. To walk there is to earn it, through laboriousness and through the transformation that comes during a journey. Pilgrimages make it possible to move physically, through the exertions of one's body, step by step, toward those intangible spiritual goals that are otherwise so hard to grasp. We are eternally perplexed by how to move toward forgiveness or healing or truth, but we know how to walk from here to there, however arduous the journey. Too, we tend to imagine life as a journey, and going on an actual expedition takes hold of that image and makes it concrete, acts it out with the imagination in a world whose geography has become spiritualized. The walker toiling along a road toward some distant place is one of the most compelling universal images of what it means to be human, depicting the individual as small and solitary in a large world, reliant on the strength of body and will. +page: 50 +notes: + +-- + +the children's books that I loved best were full of characters falling into books and pictures that became real, wandering through gardens where the statues came to life and, most famously, crossing over to the other side of the mirror, where chess pieces, flowers, and animals all were alive and temperamental. These books suggested that the boundaries between the real and the represented were not particularly fixed, and magic happened when one crossed over. +page: 70 +notes: had never really thought about it, but the books i loved as a child also fit this pattern, the narnia books fall into a picture, alice and wonderland obviously, others as well. + +-- + +Climbing is about climbing. Mountaineering, on the other hand, is still amount mountains +page: 134 + +-- + +as the great surveyor and mountaineer Clarence King recounts, when in 1871 he got to the top of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous forty-eight states, he found that "a small mound of rock was piled on the peak, and solidly built into it an arrow-shaft, pointing due west." Mountains attracted attention and long before romanticism spawned mountaineering. +page: 135 + +-- + +Though Europeans led to world in the development of modern mountaineering, that mountaineering came out of romanticism's recovery of an appreciation for natural places that much of the rest of the world had never lost +page: 135 +notes: of course it did, only white people are so fucked up as to believe that mountains would "high and hideous", "rubbish of the earth" and so on. The rest of the world wasn't so stupid. Wish that Solnit had citations for those quotes. + +-- + +the mountains so frequently portrayed in Chinese poetry and paintings were a contemplative retreat from politics and society. In China, wandering was celebrated -- "To 'wander' is the Taoist code word for becoming ecstatic," writes a scholar -- but arriving was sometimes regarded with ambiguity. One of the eighth-century poet Li Po's compositions is titled "On Visiting a Taoist Master in the Tai-T'ien Mountains and Not Finding Him," a common theme in Chinese poetry then. +page: 144 diff --git a/reading/the-diamond-age.txt b/reading/the-diamond-age.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..839d267 --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/the-diamond-age.txt @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +rn- The Diamond Age + +tags: refx, #readingnotes +book: The Diamond Age +author: Neal Stephenson +date: November 30, 2013 8:39:32 PM +--- + +Page 78 | Location 1188-1192 | Added on Thursday, July 25, 2013 5:09:41 AM
+
+"Common as the air" meant something worthless, but Hackworth knew that every breath of air that Fiona drew, lying in her little bed at night, just a silver glow in the moonlight, was used by her body to make skin and hair and bones. The air became Fiona, and deserving- no, demanding- of love. Ordering matter was the sole endeavor of Life, whether it was a jumble of self-replicating molecules in the primordial ocean, or a steam-powered English mill turning weeds into clothing, or Fiona lying in her bed turning air into Fiona.
+ +--- +
+Page 295 | Location 4517-4522 | Added on Friday, July 26, 2013 11:20:10 PM
+
+The ancients who wished to demonstrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things. From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides.
+ +--- + +Page 338 | Location 5166-5169 | Added on Saturday, July 27, 2013 1:47:17 PM
+
+"the difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people-and this is true whether or not they are well-educated-is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations-in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.
+ +--- + +Page 453 | Location 6932-6944 | Added on Monday, July 29, 2013 11:47:44 PM
+
+"Precisely. The names are pulled out of a hat. The participants have only a few hours' warning. Here, the ritual is done with a cliff and a rope, because there happened to be a cliff in the vicinity. In other R.D.R. nodes, the mechanism might be different. For example, person A might go into a room, take a pistol out of a box, load it with live ammunition, put it back in the box, and then leave the room for ten minutes. During that time, person B is supposed to enter the room and replace the live ammunition with a dummy clip having the same weight. Then person A comes back into the room, puts the gun to his head, and pulls the trigger." "But person A has no way of knowing whether person B has done his job?" "Exactly." "What is the role of the third person?" "A proctor. An official of the R.D.R. who sees to it that the two participants don't try to communicate." "How frequently must they undergo this ritual?" "As frequently as their name comes up at random, perhaps once every couple of years," Hackworth said. "It's a way of creating mutual dependency. These people know they can trust each other. In a tribe such as the F.D.R., whose view of the universe contains no absolutes, this ritual creates an artificial absolute."
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/reading/the-geography-of-time.txt b/reading/the-geography-of-time.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3368a27 --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/the-geography-of-time.txt @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +tags: refx, #readingnotes +book: The Geography of Time +author: Robert Levin +date: 2014-07-25 22:15 +--- + + +It has been observed that the Chinese character for “crisis” is composed of the character for “danger” plus that for “opportunity.” And the word “crisis” in our own language derives from the Greek word for “decision.” In a similar vein, the fruits of individualism and hard work provide the potential for both psychological wealth and disaster.11 Ultimately, how we structure our time is a choice between alternatives. A rapid pace of life is neither inherently better nor worse than a slow one. + +p159 + +-- + +The well- prepared visitor should seek out homework assignments that utilize on-site practice. Innovative teachers have been known to devise rather elaborate practice conditions. Anthropologist Greg Trifonovich of the East-West Center, for example, used to prepare Peace Corps volunteers and teachers for conditions in rural Pacific societies by creating a simulated village. One of the behaviors that Trifonovich taught was how to live without clock time. He showed students, for example, how to tell time by observing the sun and the tides.18 Whatever your technique, realize that mastering the language of time will require rehearsal, and mistakes. +
But be assured that it is well worth the effort. Cross-cultural training produces a wide range of positive skills. Research has shown, for example, that people who are well prepared for transcultural encounters have better working relationships with people from mixed cultural backgrounds; are better at setting and working toward realistic goals in other cultures; are better at understanding and solving the problems they may confront; and are more successful at their jobs in other cultures. They also report more pleasurable relationships with their hosts, both during work and free time; are more at ease in intercultural settings; and are more likely to enjoy their overseas assignments. The most astute of cross-cultural students also seem to develop a more general interest and concern about life and events in different countries—what has been called a general “world-mindedness.”19 + +Trifonovich, G. (1977). On cross-cultural orientation techniques. In R. Brislin (ed.), Culture Learning: Concepts, Applications and Research, 213–22. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.
19. Brislin, R., and Yoshida, T. (1994). Intercultural Communication Training: An Introduction. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. + +p202 + +-- + +Almost by definition, cultural behaviors signify something very different to insiders than they do to the visitor. When we attribute a Brazilian’s tardiness to irresponsibility, or a Moroccan’s shifting of attention to their lack of focus, we are being both careless and ethnocentrically narrow-minded. These misinterpretations are examples of what social psychologists call the fundamental attribution error—that, when explaining the behaviors of others, there is a pervasive tendency for people to underestimate the influence of the situation and to overestimate others’ internal personality dispositions. For example, when I hear strangers lose their temper, I infer that they must be angry people. When I lose my own temper, I blame it on the situation—perhaps the other person was being annoying or the situation was frustrating. After all, I know that I rarely lose my temper, so there must be something unique to this situation that set me off.
An important ingredient in the fundamental attribution error is how much information you have about the person you are judging. The less familiar you are with others, the more likely you are to resort to explanations that reside inside the other person. When we enter foreign environments—which are, by definition, alien—the fundamental attribution error is an accident waiting to happen.
The careful observer would be wise to attend to the advice of Clifford Geertz: “cultural analysis is (or should be) guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses.” Without fully understanding a cultural context, we are likely to misinterpret its people’s motives. The result, inevitably, is conflict. + +p203 + +-- + +Vicente Lopez, when describing his former Chicano commuter culture, argues that his fellow time travelers have done more than master the two cultures’ times; they have developed their very own time sense, one unique to their own subculture—what Lopez calls an “estuary” culture. In nature, an estuary is the wide mouth of a river into which the tides flow, an area where the fresh water of the river and the salt water of the sea mix together. “In an estuary,” Lopez observes, “nature creates a set of organisms which are not from one side or the other, but completely different. In the same way, people who live on the Tijuana border have this kind of estuarian time. It’s not a Mexican time. It’s not an American time. It’s a different time. The Chicanos are not Americans and are not Mexicans. They live by their own set of rules and have their own unique values and time and pace of life.” +
And how could it be otherwise? As Oswald Spengler once wrote, “It is by the meaning that it intuitively attaches to time that one culture is differentiated from another.”21 When a new culture is born, so too is a singular time sense. + +p206 + +-- + +It is they who have developed the idea of psychological androgyny. Psychologically androgynous people combine both traditional masculine traits (such as assertiveness) and feminine traits (such as nurturance) in their personality repertoire. The androgynous person is not a psychological neuter who falls midway between extreme masculinity and femininity, but one who has both strong masculine and feminine attributes at his or her disposal.
A number of studies have demonstrated the value of psychological androgyny. Whereas masculine types do better in traditional “male” situations and feminine types excel in “female” situations, experiments have shown that androgynous people—both men and women—are more likely to succeed at both masculine and feminine tasks. It has been demonstrated, for example, that masculine and androgynous personalities are better than feminine types at resisting group pressure to conform, but that feminine and androgynous people do better on tasks such as counseling a fellow student with problems.20 Androgynous and feminine spouses—both husbands and wives—also tend to have happier marriages.21 The androgynous person, in other words, has access to the best of both worlds. +
The pace of life moves in an analogous pattern. “The question is not just what floor of the building you’re living on,” as the transpersonal psychologist Ken Wilber puts it, “but how many floors you have access to as you negotiate your way through life.”22 Many situations are best met by a temporal approach requiring a rapid pace of life: speed, attention to the clock, a future orientation, the ability to value time as money. Other domains in life— rest, leisure, the incubation of ideas, social relationships—are more adequately met with a relaxed attitude toward time. The per- son, or the culture, who combines both modes in a temporal repertoire—or even better, who can draw upon a multiplicity of modes—is more likely to be up to all occasions. Jeremy Rifkin speaks of the dangers of temporal ghettos. People who are con- fined to rigid and narrow temporal bands are unprepared to determine their own futures and political fates.23 Multitemporality is the ticket out of these temporal ghettos. To have the ability to move quickly when the occasion demands it, to let go when the pressure stops, and to understand the many temporal shades of grey may be the real answer to the question of “Which pace of life is best?” + +As Lewis Mumford wrote:
Though our first reaction to the external pressure of time necessarily takes the form of the slow-down, the eventual effects of liberation will be to find the right tempo and measure for every human activity; in short, to keep time in life as we do in music, not by obeying the mechanical beat of the metronome—a device only for beginners—but by finding the appropriate tempos from passage to passage, modulating the pace according to human need and purpose.24 +
Like the psychological androgyne, the truly multitemporal person and culture does not simply fall in the average range, but has the ability to move as rapidly or slowly as is needed. Not surprisingly, another significant result of the University of Michigan study was that personal flexibility (versus rigidity) was an effective buffer against stress and job dissatisfaction no matter what one’s occupation. The European who works hard enough to achieve, but who can decelerate to enjoy la dolce vita, the fruit of his or her labors, possesses an element of this multitemporality. The Japanese worker who excels at both speed and slowness also understands the skill. This is hardly to say that all European and Japanese workers have mastered multitemporality. If anything, in fact, the data highlight the price that many in these countries are paying for their rapid pace of life; it is no coincidence that coronary heart disease rates in Western Europe are some of the highest in the world and that suicide is a serious problem in Japan. But the traditional values in these cultures offer potential templates—recipes of a sort—that illuminate paths by which the mindful individual may take control of his or her time.
Joyce Carol Oates wrote, “Time is the element in which we exist . . . We are either borne along by it or drowned in it.” How to be productive enough to be comfortable, to minimize the temporal stress on which this achievement is built, and to simultaneously make time for caring relationships and a civilized society—this is the multitemporal challenge. + +p218-220 + +-- + +While planning what was to turn into my twelve- month trip around the world, it seemed as if every seasoned and/or frustrated traveler I met offered words of advice. These ranged from lists of places that I absolutely had to visit or avoid, to graphic descriptions of what would happen to my body if I even thought about drinking the water. But the single most prophetic wisdom came from an unlikely source. While sitting in the chair of a rather unworldly dentist, my mouth stuffed with the usual un- pleasant objects, he offered the longest nondental communication that ever passed between us: “I went to another country once. You learn a lot about yourself.” + +He was right on the money. After a year of vagabonding across some twenty countries on three continents, visiting every marvel in touring distance from the Great Wall of China to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, having collected multinational data on what would turn out to be the focus of my professional research ever since, what I mostly carried home with me was a new point of view. +
My most lasting insights, those that continue to make a difference in how I live my life, always seem to hover about the theme of time. When people live on the road for extended periods, there seems to be a point when they shift into the consciousness of a transient. Most travelers I have questioned about this transition re- port that the critical cutoff seems to occur sometime around three months. After that, the days of the week and even the months of the year—especially for those who have the good sense to follow the warm weather—meld into one another. Expectations and plans for the future become stunted, or nonentities. +
There is something about the frequent, swift, and often dra-matic changes that are the fabric of long-term traveling—deciding in the middle of breakfast to pack up and head for another country before check-out time; ending a seemingly intimate affair be- cause one partner is inspired to head east while the other selects west—that usually leaves no alternative other than to live from day to day. The force is so strong that it feels more somatic than a volitional choice. I know that personally, by the end of each extended excursion, it felt as if I was physically incapable of fixing my thoughts on either the future or the past. This is not to presume that I had transcended time to some idyllic Zen present-connectedness; more often than not I was, as we say in psychology, simply out to lunch. It was temporal limbo. Having spent most of my life until then as a future-oriented person—a future often defined by the expectations of others—I found it almost comical to observe how my mind was unable to focus on what was coming tomorrow, even when it might be an event that I had been anticipating for months, such as my first visit to the Great Pyramids. But it was definitely the beat of my own clock. As the philosopher Johann Herder once wrote, “everything transient has the measure of its time within itself.”
So when I arrived home to resume my role as a university professor it was with the sensibility of a vagabond. My intellect was temporally unavailable, and I was disoriented from many of the usual ingredients of culture shock. Many long-term travelers will tell you that the shock of returning home is often more jarring than that of leaving. I believe this is because we return with the dangerous illusion that, having arrived home, it is at last permissible to let up, to cease the hard work of coping with constant change. (It is for good reason that the word “travel” is related to the French “travail,” meaning hard work and penance.) But social psychologists will tell you that it is at those very moments when people hold an “illusion of invulnerability” that they are really the most susceptible targets. + +p220-221
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/reading/the-information-diet.txt b/reading/the-information-diet.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea92a83 --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/the-information-diet.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +rn- The Information Diet + +tags: refx, #readingnotes +book: The Information Diet +author: Clay A. Johnson +date: November 30, 2013 8:40:29 PM +--- + +Page 32 | Location 474-477 | Added on Sunday, July 21, 2013 9:41:23 PM
+
+In 1995, in the very early days of the World Wide Web, Clifford Stoll wrote in Silicon Snake Oil (Anchor), **“Computers force us into creating with our minds and prevent us from making things with our hands. They dull the skills we use in everyday life.”** Keller, Stoll, and Carr all point to something interesting: new technologies do create anthropological changes in society. Yet
+ +--- +
+Page 60 | Location 915-918 | Added on Sunday, July 21, 2013 10:47:14 PM
+
+Westen and his colleagues found that when these subjects processed “emotionally threatening information” about their preferred candidates, the parts of the brain associated with reasoning shut down and the parts responsible for emotions flared up.[41] Westen’s research indicates that once we grow biased enough, we lose our capacity to change our minds.
+ +--- +
+ +Page 61 | Location 927-928 | Added on Sunday, July 21, 2013 10:47:32 PM
+
+We already know that things like confirmation bias make us seek out information that we agree with. But it’s also the case that once we’re entrenched in a belief, the facts will not change our minds.
+ +--- + +Page 62 | Location 937-941 | Added on Sunday, July 21, 2013 10:48:44 PM
+
+“Why do humans reason?,”[43] they argue instead that “reasoning does exactly what can be expected of an argumentative device: Look for arguments that support a given conclusion, and, ceteris paribus, favor conclusions for which arguments can be found.” Mercier and Sperber argue that our minds may have evolved to value persuasion over truth. It certainly is plausible— human beings are social animals, and persuasion is a form of social power.
+ +--- +
+Page 68 | Location 1032-1038 | Added on Sunday, July 21, 2013 10:52:39 PM
+
+Back in 1954, psychologist James Olds found that if he allowed a rat to pull a lever and administer a shock to its own lateral hypothalamus, a shock that produced intense pleasure, the rat would keep pressing the lever, over and over again, until it died. He found that “the control exercised over the animal’s behavior by means of this reward is extreme, possibly exceeding that exercised by any other reward previously used in animal experimentation.”[48] This launched the study of brain stimulation reinforcement, which has been shown to exist in all species tested, including humans. At the heart of brain stimulus reinforcement is a neurotransmitter called dopamine.
+ +--- +
+Page 74 | Location 1120-1127 | Added on Sunday, July 21, 2013 10:58:37 PM
+
+2007, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists -- the last major scientific body to reject climate change’s existence and cause -- changed its mind. Climate scientists reached consensus: global warming is “unequivocal” and mankind is the primary cause.[54] Since then, no recognized scientific body has dissented from the theory[55] or rejected the idea of climate change. In the five years since consensus was reached by the scientific community, the number of people doubting climate change’s occurrence has increased. When the battle for scientific minds ended, the doubt production machines shifted into overdrive.
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/reading/the-joyous-cosmology-adventures-in-the-chemistry-of-consciousness.txt b/reading/the-joyous-cosmology-adventures-in-the-chemistry-of-consciousness.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c51064f --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/the-joyous-cosmology-adventures-in-the-chemistry-of-consciousness.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +rn- The Joyous Cosmology - Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness (Alan Watts) + +tags: refx, #readingnotes +book: The Joyous Cosmology - Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness +author: Alan Watts +date: November 30, 2013 8:45:52 PM +--- + +Page 14 | Location 202-207 | Added on Sunday, February 10, 2013 10:27:45 PM
+
+It thus escaped our attention that the organism as a whole, largely unconscious, was using consciousness and reason to inform and control itself. We thought of our conscious intelligence as descending from a higher realm to take possession of a physical vehicle. We therefore failed to see it as an operation of the same formative process as the structure of nerves, muscles, veins, and bones---a structure so subtly ordered (that is, intelligent) that conscious thought is as yet far from being able to describe it.
+ +--- + +Page 15 | Location 219-224 | Added on Sunday, February 10, 2013 10:30:05 PM
+
+We believe, then, that the mind controls the body, not that the body controls itself through the mind. Hence the ingrained prejudice that the mind should be independent of all physical aids to its working---despite microscopes, telescopes, cameras, scales, computers, books, works of art, alphabets, and all those physical tools apart from which it is doubtful whether there would be any mental life at all. At
diff --git a/reading/the-pleasures-of-walking.txt b/reading/the-pleasures-of-walking.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b207a66 --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/the-pleasures-of-walking.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13 @@ +rn- The Pleasures of Walking + +tags: refx, #readingnotes +book: The pleasures of Walking +author: (editor) Edwin V. Mitchell +date: November 12, 2013 11:08:37 AM +--- + +p91 + +From On going on a journey by William Hazlitt: + +All that part of map that we do not see before us is blank. The world in our conceit of it is not much bigger than a nutshell. It is not one prospect expanded into another, county joined to county, kingdom to kingdom, lands to seas, making an image voluminous and vast; -- the mind can form no larger idea of space than the eye can take in at a single glance. The rest is a name written in a map, a calculation of arithmetic. For instance, what is the true signification of that immense mass of territory and population, known by the name of China to us? An inch of pasteboard on a wooden globe, of no more account than a China orange! **Things near us are seen of the size of life: things at a distance are diminished to the size of the understanding.** We measure the universe by ourselves, and even comprehend the texture of our own being only piecemeal. In this way, however, we remember an infinity of things and places. The mind is like a mechanical instrument that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must play them in succession. One idea recalls another, but it at the same time excludes all others. In trying to renew old recollections, we cannot as it were unfold the whole web of our existence; we must pick. out the single threads. So in coming to a place where we have formerly lived, and with which we have intimate associations, every one must have found that the feel ing grows more vivid the nearer we approach the spot, from the mere anticipation of the actual impression:
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/reading/the-secret-of-selling-anything-(harry-browne).txt b/reading/the-secret-of-selling-anything-(harry-browne).txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a2636f8 --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/the-secret-of-selling-anything-(harry-browne).txt @@ -0,0 +1,85 @@ +rn- The Secret of Selling Anything (Harry Browne) + +tags: refx, #readingnotes +book: The Secret of Selling Anything +author: Harry Browne +date: November 21, 2013 7:54:51 PM +--- + + +Page 16 | Location 235-238 | Added on Wednesday, November 20, 2013 9:26:03 PM
+
+This, then, is the story of life: each individual seeks happiness. His concept of what will bring him happiness will differ from that of every other human being; happiness will be relative to him. His resources (time, energy, knowledge and property) are limited; so he must choose constantly between the many alternative courses of action he sees. And he does this by placing values on everything he sees. These values lead him to prefer one thing more than another.
+ +--- +
+Page 17 | Location 252-252 | Added on Wednesday, November 20, 2013 9:27:14 PM
+
+Profit is the increase in happiness by replacing one situation with another.
+ +--- + +Page 18 | Location 274-276 | Added on Wednesday, November 20, 2013 9:29:28 PM
+
+So profit can come in many different ways: through money, knowledge, contentment, spiritual understanding, leisure, etc.. In each case, it is what increases the individual’s happiness.
+ +--- +
+Page 19 | Location 279-281 | Added on Wednesday, November 20, 2013 9:29:54 PM
+
+All individuals seek profit of one kind or another... which means that each individual is seeking to increase his own happiness in whatever way he believes he can.
+ +--- + +Page 20 | Location 293-298 | Added on Wednesday, November 20, 2013 9:31:24 PM
+
+There’s an old saying that “one man’s gain must be another man’s loss.” Many people take that old adage for granted as the whole truth. And yet , it is totally false. Why? SECRET OF SELLING ANYTHING/Harry Browne 23 Because happiness is relative. And what pleases one person is not necessarily going to please the next person. This means that two individuals ~ with different values ~ can arrange an exchange between them that will satisfy both of them. Neither has to triumph over the other one. Both can gain.
+ +
+--- + +Page 22 | Location 326-327 | Added on Wednesday, November 20, 2013 9:33:37 PM
+
+The universal fallacy is the belief that an individual would willingly accept something unprofitable to himself.
+ +--- + +Page 25 | Location 377-378 | Added on Thursday, November 21, 2013 9:38:04 AM
+
+The extent of your own profit depends upon your ability to satisfy the needs and desires of others.
+ +--- + +Page 40 | Location 605-606 | Added on Thursday, November 21, 2013 10:46:53 PM
+
+People only pay for what they want ~ so you will succeed only if you are providing people with what they want.
+ +--- + +Page 43 | Location 648-648 | Added on Thursday, November 21, 2013 10:49:59 PM
+
+Find out what people want and help them get it!
+ +--- + +Page 51 | Location 778-779 | Added on Thursday, November 21, 2013 11:00:51 PM
+
+The key element in the solution was my simple question, “What’s the biggest sales problem facing you right now ?” Everything flowed irresistibly from that. +
+--- + +Page 53 | Location 792-799 | Added on Thursday, November 21, 2013 11:05:16 PM
+
+Any businessman is concerned about dozens of things at any given time. Here are just a few examples: poor employee rapport; lethargic salesmen; bad leads from his advertising; finding new markets; a negative image in his customers’ eyes; quarterly taxes to be paid next Tuesday; spotty distribution; a competitor’s new line; cost-profit squeezes; seasonal delivery problems; lagging sales; higher transportation costs; new government regulations; suppliers cheating him; etc., etc., etc. Not motivated??? How could a man with so many problems not be motivated? He’s a live bundle of motivations. There are so many things he wants, so many problems to solve, so many hopes, so many dreams. He’s loaded with motivations. Everyone is already motivated. The only question is “By what?” Your job is to find out what it is that motivates your prospect. And then show him how he can get what he wants through your product or service. Only then will he buy.
+ +--- + +Page 53 | Location 809-810 | Added on Thursday, November 21, 2013 11:06:26 PM
+
+his motivations are the hopes and dreams and plans he has that he feels will bring him happiness. Those motivations exist before you ever walk onto the scene. You can try, if you wish, to change his motivation. But why bother?
+ +--- + +Page 56 | Location 841-845 | Added on Thursday, November 21, 2013 11:09:15 PM
+
+Find this prospect’s motivation and appeal to it. That’s all there is to it. Find this prospect’s motivation and appeal to it. The emphasis is on the word this. The individual is different from all other human beings in the world. He has his own life, his own outlook, his own nature, his own personality, his own ideas, his own goals, his own plans. You cannot treat him as a carbon copy of every prospect you’ve ever faced. He isn’t. If you try to put him into a mold, you’ll fail. Unless you appeal to him in a way that fits what he is, he won’t respond.
diff --git a/reading/the-source-for-ancient-flood-stories.txt b/reading/the-source-for-ancient-flood-stories.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7750073 --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/the-source-for-ancient-flood-stories.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13 @@ +title: A Short History of Progress p79 +date: 20140726 22:52:58 +tags: #readingnotes #environment #ancient + +The Empire of Ur is apparently the source of the flood stories, the runoff became so bad -- there was no topsoil left to hold rainfall -- it would just wash across the land and there was so much salt it would turn the land white when the water dried. + +-- + +The short-lived Empire of Ur exhibits the same behaviour as we saw on Easter Island: sticking to entrenched beliefs and practices, robbing the future to pay the present, spending the last reserves of natural capital on a reckless binge of excessive wealth and glory. Canals were lengthened, fallow periods reduced, population increased, and the economic surplus concentrated on Ur itself to support grandiose building projects. The result was a few generations of prosperity (for the rulers), followed by a collapse from which southern Mesopotamia has never recovered. + +By 2000 B.C., scribes were reporting that the earth had "turned white." All crops, including barley, were failing. Yields fell to a third of their original levels. The Sumerians' thousand years in the sun of history came to an end. Political power shifted north to Babylon and Assyria, and much later, under Islam, to Baghdad. Northern Mesopotamia is better drained than the south, but even there the same cycle of degradation would be repeated by empire after empire, down to modern times. No one, it seems, was willing to learn from the past. Today, fully half of Iraq's irrigated land is saline — the highest proportion in the world, followed by the other two + +p79
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/reading/waitzkin-josh-the-art-of-learning.txt b/reading/waitzkin-josh-the-art-of-learning.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a16fda6 --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/waitzkin-josh-the-art-of-learning.txt @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +--- +title: The Art of Learning +author: Josh Waitzkin +pubyear: +edition: +readdate: September 01, 2014 03:47:50 PM +tags: non-fiction + +--- + +I believe an appreciation for simplicity, the everyday—the ability to dive deeply into the banal and discover life's hidden richness—is where success, let alone happiness, emerges. +page: + + +The key was to roll with the evolving situation and contour new tactics around the principles we had discovered back home. When hit with such surprises, if you have a solid foundation, you should be fine. **Tactics come easy once principles are in the blood**. +page:238 +notes: emphasis mine + + diff --git a/reading/you-are-not-a-gadget.txt b/reading/you-are-not-a-gadget.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..99bc065 --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/you-are-not-a-gadget.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13 @@ +rn- You Are Not a Gadget + +tags: refx, #readingnotes +book: You Are Not a Gadget +author: Jaron lanier +date: 2012 +--- + +If you want to know what's really going on in a society or ideology, follow the money. If money is flowing to advertising instead of musicians, journalists and artists, the society is more concerned with manipulation than truth or beauty. If content is worthless, then people will start to become empty headed and contentless + +--- + +"It's easy to break into physical cars and houses, for instance, and yet few people do so. Locks are only amulets of inconvenience that remind us of a social contract we ultimately benefit from. It is only human choice that makes the human world function. Technology can motivate human choice but not replace it."
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/reading/your-money-or-your-life.txt b/reading/your-money-or-your-life.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7379f32 --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/your-money-or-your-life.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +rn- Your Money or Your Life + +tags: refx, #readingnotes +book: Your Money or Your Life +author: Vicki Robin;Joe Dominguez;Monique Tilford +date: November 30, 2013 8:41:41 PM +--- +
+ +Page 15 | Location 217-222 | Added on Wednesday, July 10, 2013 10:35:42 PM
+
+Today, the average CEO in the United States makes more in a day than the average worker makes in year. This isn’t said to fuel envy of the wealthy and demand a piece of the pile for the poor. Rather, it’s to point out that while absolute poverty deprives our bodies of necessities, relative poverty—being so much poorer than people no smarter or more willing to work than we are—makes us dissatisfied with our lot in life no matter how much we have. It corrodes society and the psyche—saps our belief in justice and fairness and hope. It makes us poor amidst plenty. We feel left out, lonely10 and are more likely to give up on the dream that we can have a better life than our parents.
+ +---
+ +Page 36 | Location 544-547 | Added on Wednesday, July 10, 2013 10:56:31 PM
+
+The perfect work life would offer enough challenge to be interesting. Enough ease to be enjoyable. Enough camaraderie to be nourishing. Enough solitude to be productive. Enough hours at work to get the job done. Enough leisure to feel refreshed. Enough service to feel needed. Enough silliness to have fun. And enough money to pay the bills . . . and then some.
+ +--- + +142 | Location 2166-2173 | Added on Tuesday, July 16, 2013 2:09:22 PM
+
+For many of us, however, “growing up” has meant outgrowing our dreams. The aspiration to write a great book has shrunk to writing advertising copy. The dream of being an inspiring preacher has evolved into being an administrator and a mediator between the factions in the congregation. Instead of really knowing who their patients are, how their patients live or the challenges in their lives, doctors today are plagued with back-to-back fifteen-minute patient visits and malpractice suits. The dream of traveling around the world becomes two weeks a year of hitting the tourist traps. Living a fulfilling and meaningful life seems almost impossible, given the requirements of simply meeting day-to-day needs and problems. Yet, at one time or another practically every one of us has had a dream of what we wanted our lives to be. People with a diagnosis of cancer often get that divorce or take the trip they’ve been dreaming about or take up a new hobby that’s been patiently waiting for its time in the sun.
+ +--- + +Page 143 | Location 2178-2182 | Added on Tuesday, July 16, 2013 10:20:25 PM
+
+* What did you want to be when you grew up? +* What have you always wanted to do that you haven’t yet done? +* What have you done in your life that you are really proud of? +* If you knew you were going to die within a year, how would you spend that year? +* What brings you the most fulfillment—and how is that related to money? +* If you didn’t have to work for a living, what would you do with your time?
diff --git a/reading/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintanence.txt b/reading/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintanence.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3782cb9 --- /dev/null +++ b/reading/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintanence.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +rn- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence + +tags: refx, #readingnotes +book: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance +author: Robert M. Pirsig +date: November 12, 2013 9:59:06 PM +--- + +Page 5:
+
+Secondary roads are preferred. Paved county roads are the best, state highways are next. Freeways are the worst. **We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time” and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes**. Twisting hilly roads are long in terms of seconds but are much more enjoyable on a cycle where you bank into turns and don't get swung from side to side in any compartment. Roads with little traffic are more enjoyable, as well as safer. Roads free of drive-ins and billboards are better, roads where groves and meadows and orchards and lawns come almost to the shoulder, where kids wave to you when you ride by, where people look from their porches to see who it is, where when you stop to ask directions or information the answer tends to be longer than you want rather than short, where people ask where you're from and how long you've been riding. + +It was some years ago that my wife and I and our friends first began to catch on to these roads. We took them once in a while for variety or for a shortcut to another main highway, and each time the scenery was grand and we left the road with a feeling of relaxation and enjoyment. We did this time after time before realizing what should have been obvious: these roads are truly different from the main ones. The whole pace of life and personality of the people who live along them are different. They're not going anywhere. They're not too busy to be courteous. The hereness and nowness of things is something they know all about. It's the others, the ones who moved to the cities years ago and their lost offspring, who have all but forgotten it. The discovery was a real find. + +I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it and yet we didn't see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned, perhaps, into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I'm looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling. + +But once we caught on, of course, nothing could keep us off these roads, weekends, evenings, vacations. We have become real secondary-road motorcycle buffs and found there are things you learn as you go. + +We have learned how to spot the good ones on a map, for example. If the line wiggles, that's good. That means hills. If it appears to be the main route from a town to a city, that's bad. The best ones always connect nowhere with nowhere and have an alternate that gets you there quicker. If you are going northeast from a large town you never go straight out of town for any long distance. You go out and then start jogging north, then east, then north again, and soon you are on a secondary route that only the local people use. + +The main skill is to keep from getting lost. Since the roads are used only by local people who know them by sight nobody complains if the junctions aren't posted. And often they aren't. When they are it's usually a small sign hiding unobtrusively in the weeds and that's all. County-road-sign makers seldom tell you twice. If you miss that sign in the weeds that's your problem, not theirs. Moreover, you discover that the highway maps are often inaccurate about county roads. And from time to time you find your “county road” takes you onto a two-rutter and then a single rutter and then into a pasture and stops, or else it takes you into some farmer's backyard. + +So we navigate mostly by dead reckoning, and deduction from what clues we find. I keep a compass in one pocket for overcast days when the sun doesn't show directions and have the map mounted in a special carrier on top of the gas tank where I can keep track of miles from the last junction and know what to look for. With those tools and a lack of pressure to “get somewhere” it works out fine and we just about have America all to ourselves.
+
+--- +
+Page 58 | Location 874-878 | Added on Thursday, November 14, 2013 10:36:47 PM
+
+You follow these little discrepancies long enough and they sometimes open up into huge revelations. There was just a feeling on my part that this was something a little bigger than I wanted to take on without thinking about it, and I turned instead to my usual habit of trying to extract causes and effects to see what was involved that could possibly lead to such an impasse between Johns view of that lovely shim and my own. This comes up all the time in mechanical work. A hang-up. You just sit and stare and think, and search randomly for new information, and go away and come back again, and after a while the unseen factors start to emerge. + +
+--- + +Page 59 | Location 887-891 | Added on Thursday, November 14, 2013 10:38:18 PM
+
+At first this difference seemed fairly minor, but then it grew-and grew-and grew-until I began to see why I missed it. Some things you miss because they're so tiny you overlook them. But some things you don't see because they're so huge. We were both looking at the same thing, seeing the same thing, talking about the same thing, thinking about the same thing, except he was looking, seeing, talking and thinking from a completely different dimension.
+ +--- + +Page 105 | Location 1598-1603 | Added on Saturday, November 16, 2013 8:56:40 PM
+
+But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/recipes/thai beef slaw wraps.txt b/recipes/thai beef slaw wraps.txt index 7a6e679..48e1dd2 100644 --- a/recipes/thai beef slaw wraps.txt +++ b/recipes/thai beef slaw wraps.txt @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ MARINADE ½ teaspoon salt 12 ounces beef skirt steak DRESSING -½ cup leaves, loosely packed +½ cup mint leaves, loosely packed ¼ cup lime juice, or to taste 1 or 2 jalapeno peppers, coarsely chopped 2 teaspoons minced ginger diff --git a/saved_articles/Can_We_Make_Bicycles_Sustainable_Again.txt b/saved_articles/Can_We_Make_Bicycles_Sustainable_Again.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 247391b..0000000 --- a/saved_articles/Can_We_Make_Bicycles_Sustainable_Again.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,627 +0,0 @@ -Feed: Low-Tech Magazine -Title: Can We Make Bicycles Sustainable Again? -Author: kris de decker -Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2023 03:19:58 -0500 -Link: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/02/can-we-make-bicycles-sustainable-again.html - -Cycling is the most sustainable form of transportation, but the bicycle is -becoming increasingly damaging to the environment. The energy and material used -for its production go up while its life expectancy decreases. - -[image 1: Imagenweb (link #2)][1] - -Illustration: Diego Marmolejo[3]. - -Cycling is sustainable, but how sustainable is the bicycle? - -Cycling is one of the most sustainable modes of transportation. Increased -ridership reduces fossil fuel consumption and pollution, saves space, and -improves public health and safety. However, the bicycle itself has managed to -elude environmental critique. [1] [2] Studies that calculate the environmental -impact of cycling almost always compare it to driving, with predictable results: -the bicycle is more sustainable than the car. Such research may encourage people -to cycle more often but doesn't encourage manufacturers to make their bicycles -as sustainable as possible. - -For this article, I have consulted academic studies that compare different types -of bicycles against each other or focus on the manufacturing stage of a -particular two-wheeler. That kind of research was virtually non-existent until -three or four years ago. Using the available material, I compare different -generations of bicycles. Set in a historical context, it becomes clear that the -resource use of a bike's production increases while its lifetime is becoming -shorter. The result is a growing environmental footprint. That trend has a clear -beginning. The bicycle evolved very slowly until the early 1980s and then -suddenly underwent a fast succession of changes that continues up to this day. - - The bicycle evolved very slowly until the early 1980s and then suddenly - underwent a fast succession of changes that continues up to this day. - -There are no studies about bicycles built before the 1980s. Life cycle analyses, -which investigate the resource use of a product from “cradle” to “grave,” only -appeared in the 1990s. However, the benchmark for a sustainable bicycle stands -in the room where I write this. It’s my 1980 Gazelle Champion road bike – now 43 -years old. I bought it ten years ago in Barcelona from a tall German guy who was -leaving the city. He had tears in his eyes when I walked away with it. I have a -second road bike, a Mercier from 1978. That is my spare vehicle in case the -other one breaks down and I don't have the time for immediate repairs. I have -two more road bikes parked in Belgium, where I grew up and where I still travel -a few times a year (by train[4], not by bike). These are a Plume Vanqueur from -the late 1960s and a Ventura from the 1970s. - -The main reason why I have opted for old bicycles is that they are much better -than new bicycles. Most people don’t realize that, so they are also much -cheaper. My four bikes cost me just 500 euros in total. That would buy me only -one low-cost new road bike, and such a vehicle surely won’t last 40 to 50 years -– as we shall see. Of course, it’s not just old road bikes which are better. The -same goes for other types of bicycles built before the 1980s. I ride road -bicycles because I cover relatively long distances, usually between 35 and 50 km -round trip. - -[image 2: P2200841 (link #6)][5] - -Image: The bicycle I use most often, a Gazelle Champion from 1980. It has -covered at least 30,000 km since I bought it in 2013. - -What bicycles are made of - -The first significant change in the bicycle manufacturing industry was the -switch from steel to aluminium bicycles. Before the 1980s, virtually all bikes -were made from steel. They had a steel frame, wheels, components and parts. -Nowadays, most bicycle frames and wheels are built from aluminium. The same goes -for many other bike parts. More recently, an increasing number of cycles have -frames and wheels made from carbon fibre composites. Some bike frames are built -from titanium or stainless steel. All of these materials are more energy -intensive to produce than steel. Furthermore, while steel and aluminium can be -recycled and repaired, composite fibres can only be downcycled and have poor -repairability. [3] - -Several studies have compared the energy and carbon costs of bicycle frames and -other components made from these different materials – which all have different -strength-to-weight ratios. That research has some limitations. Scientists use -crude methods because they lack detailed energy data from bike manufacturing -processes, and some studies come from manufacturers who pay researchers to -review the sustainability of their products. Nevertheless, all put together, the -results are pretty consistent. For the sake of brevity, I focus on emissions -(CO2 = CO2-equivalents) and ignore other environmental impacts. - - Before the 1980s, virtually all bicycles were made from steel. - -Reynolds, a British manufacturer known for its bicycle tubing, found that making -a steel frame costs 17.5 kg CO2, while a titanium or stainless steel frame costs -around 55 kg CO2 per frame – three times as much. [4] Starling Cycles, a rare -producer of steel mountain bikes, concluded that a typical carbon frame uses 16 -times more energy than a steel frame. [5] (That would be 280 kg CO2). An -independent 2014 study – the first of its kind – calculated the footprint of an -aluminum road bike frame with carbon fork from the “Specialized” brand and found -the cost to be 2,380 kilowatt-hours of primary energy and over 250 kg of carbon -– roughly 14 times that of a steel frame (without fork) as calculated by -Reynolds. [2] - -A bicycle is more than a frame alone. Life cycle analyses of entire bikes show -that the carbon footprint of all the other components is at least as large as -that of a steel frame. [6] Scientists have calculated the lifetime carbon -emissions of a steel bike at 35 kg CO2, compared to 212 kg CO2 for an aluminum -bicycle. [7] [8] The most detailed life cycle analysis sets the carbon footprint -for an 18.4 kg aluminum bicycle at 200 kg CO2, including its spare parts, for a -lifetime of 15,000 km. The main impact phase is the preparation of materials -(74%; aluminum, stainless steel, rubber), followed by the maintenance phase -(15.5% for 3.5 new sets of tires, six brake pads, one chain, and one cassette) -and the assembly phase (4.96%). [9] - -Where & how bicycles are made - -My steel bicycles date from a time when most industrialized countries had -long-established domestic bicycle industries serving their national market. [3] -These industries collapsed in Europe and North America following neoliberal -globalization in the late 1970s. China opened to foreign investment and quickly -became the largest bicycle manufacturer in the world. During the last two -decades, China has made two-thirds of the world’s bicycles (60-70 million of 110 -million annually). Most of the rest come from other Asian countries. Europe is -back to producing ten million bikes annually, but the US only manufactures -60,000 bicycles per year. [3] - -Throughout the twentieth century, manufacturing bicycles required substantial -inputs of human labor. [3] According to the Routledge Companion to Cycling, -“wheels were spoked and trued manually; frames were built by hand; saddle making -was laborious; headsets, gear clusters (blocks), brake cables and gears were -physically bolted on.” Since the 2000s, automation has considerably reduced the -need for human labor. The largest Chinese bike manufacturer, which builds -one-fifth of the world’s bicycles, has 42 bicycle assembly lines making 55,000 -bicycles a day – almost as much as the US in a year. [3] - - Domestic bicycles industries in Europe and North America collapsed following - neoliberal globalization in the late 1970s. - -The globalization and automation of the bicycle industry make bikes less -sustainable. First, they introduce extra emissions for transportation (from raw -materials, components, and bicycles) and for producing and operating robots and -other machinery. Second, producing steel, aluminum, carbon fiber composites, and -electricity is more energy and carbon-intensive in China and other -bike-producing countries than in Europe and North America. [10] Most -importantly, however, is that large-scale automated production represents sunk -capital that needs to be working most of the time to spread overhead costs, -driving overproduction. [3] - -How long bicycles last - -How much energy and other resources it takes to build a bicycle and to deliver -it to a cyclist is just half the story. At least as importantly is how long the -bike lasts. The shorter its lifetime, the more vehicles need to be produced over -the lifetime of a cyclist, and the higher the resource use becomes. - -For a long life expectancy, some parts of a bicycle need replacement. These are -typically smaller parts such as shifters, chains, and brakes. [11] Until a few -decades ago, component compatibility was a hallmark of bicycle manufacturing. -[12] My bicycles are a perfect example of this. Most components – such as -wheels, gear set, and brakes – are interchangeable between the different frames, -even though every vehicle is from another brand and year of construction. -Component compatibility allows for easy maintenance and repairability, thereby -increasing the lifetime of a bicycle. Bike shops in even the smallest villages -can repair all types of bicycles using a limited set of tools and spare parts. -[12] Cyclists can do minor repairs at home. - -Unfortunately, compatibility is hardly a feature of bicycle manufacturing -anymore. Manufacturers have introduced an increasing number of proprietary parts -and keep changing standards, resulting in compatibility issues even for older -bicycles of the same brand. [1] [3] For example, if the shifter of a modern bike -breaks after some years of use, a replacement part will probably no longer be -available. You need to order a new set from a new generation, which will be -incompatible with your front and rear derailleur – which you also need to -replace. [12] For road bikes, the change from cassette bodies with ten sprockets -(around 2010) to cassette bodies with eleven, twelve, and most recently thirteen -sprockets have made many wheelsets obsolete, and the same goes for the rest of -the drivetrain including shifters and chains. [12] [1] - - Before the 1980s, most bicycle components were interchangeable between frames - of different brands and generations. - -Disc brakes, which are now on almost every new bicycle, all have different axle -designs, meaning that every vehicle now requires proprietary spare parts. [1] -Disc brakes also required new shifters, forks, framesets, cables, and wheels, -making such bicycles incompatible with earlier designs. [12] The rise of -proprietary parts makes it increasingly hard to keep a bike on the road through -maintenance, reuse, and refurbishment. As the number of incompatible components -grows, it becomes impossible for bike shops to have a complete stock of spare -parts. [12] If a manufacturer goes bankrupt, proprietary spare parts will no -longer be available. - -Component incompatibility is accompanied by decreasing component quality. An -example is the saddle, which hardly ever outlasts a frameset because it cracks -at the bottom of the shell. [12] A little extra material would make it last -forever – as proven by all saddles of my 40 to 50-year-old road bikes. Low -quality affects some parts of expensive bicycles but is especially problematic -for cheap bicycles made entirely of low-quality components. Cheap bicycles – -bike mechanics refer to them as “built-to-fail bikes” or “bike-shaped objects” – -often have plastic parts that break easily and cannot be replaced or upgraded. -These vehicles typically last only a few months. [13, 14] - -[image 3: Bike-manufacturing-factory-diego-marmolejo (link #8)][7] - -Illustration: Diego Marmolejo[3]. - -How bicycles are powered - -So far, we have only dealt with entirely human-powered bicycles, but bikes with -electric motors are becoming increasingly popular. The number of e-bikes sold -worldwide grew from 3.7 million in 2019 to 9.7 million in 2021 (10% of total -bike sales and up to 40% in some countries like Germany). Electric bikes -reinforce both trends that make bicycles less sustainable. On the one hand, -electric motors and batteries require additional resources such as lithium, -copper, and magnets, increasing the energy use and emissions of bike -manufacturing. Researchers have calculated the greenhouse gas emissions caused -by manufacturing an aluminum e-bike at 320 kg. [8] This compares to 212 kg for -the production of an unassisted aluminum bicycle and 35 kg for an unassisted -steel bicycle. - -On the other hand, the life expectancy of an electric bicycle is shorter than -that of an unassisted two-wheeler because it has more points of failure. The -breakdown of the extra components – motor, battery, electronics – leads to a -shorter lifecycle due to component incompatibility. An academic study on -circularity in the bike manufacturing industry observes a significant increase -in defective components compared to unassisted bicycles and concludes that “the -great dynamics of the market due to regular innovations, product renewals, and -the lack of spare parts for older models make the long-term use by customers -much more difficult than for conventional bicycles.” [15] - - Electric bikes reinforce both trends that make bicycles less sustainable. - -On top of this, electric bicycles require electricity for their operation, -further increasing resource use and emissions. This impact is small when -compared to the manufacturing phase. After all, humans provide part of the -power, and the electricity use of an electric bike (25 km/h) is only around 1 -kilowatt-hour per 100 km. The average greenhouse gas emission intensity of -electricity generation in Europe in 2019 was 275 gCO2/kWh. [16] If an e-bike -lasts 15,000 km, charging the battery only adds 41 kg of CO2, compared to 320 kg -for producing the (aluminum) bicycle. Even in the US and China, where the carbon -intensity of the power grid is 50-100% higher than the European value, electric -bicycle production dominates total emissions and energy use. - -Cargo cycles - -Combining energy-intensive materials, short lifetimes, and electric motor -assistance can increase lifecycle emissions to surprising levels, especially for -cargo cycles. These vehicles are larger and heavier than passenger bicycles and -need more powerful motors and batteries. There are very few life cycle analyses -of cargo cycles. However, a recent study calculated the lifecycle emissions of a -carbon fiber electric cargo cycle to be 80 gCO2 per kilometer – only half those -of an electric van (158 gCO2/km). [17] The researchers explain this by the -difference in lifetime mileage – 34,000 km compared to 240,000 km for the van – -and the carbon fiber composites in many components, including the chassis of the -vehicle. The lifecycle emissions of the cargo cycle, including the electricity -used to charge its battery, amount to 2,689 kg. That is almost 40 times the -lifecycle emissions of two steel bicycles (each with a 15,000 km lifecycle -mileage). - -Extending the useful life of electric bicycles has less impact on lifecycle -emissions when compared to unassisted bikes. That’s because the battery needs to -be replaced every 3 to 4 years and the motor every ten years, which adds to the -resource use of spare parts. [11] This is demonstrated by a life cycle analysis -of an electric steel cargo cycle with an assumed life expectancy of 20 years. -[18] During its lifetime, the vehicle uses five batteries (each weighing 8,5 -kg), two motors, and 3.5 sets of tires. Most lifecycle emissions are caused by -these spare parts, with the batteries alone accounting for 40% of the total -emissions. In comparison, the emissions for the steel frame are almost -insignificant. [18] This particular cargo cycle was built for African roads and -is not entirely representative of the average cargo cycle, mainly because of its -heavy tires. - -Cargo cycles have another disadvantage. Passenger bicycles and cars usually -carry only one person, meaning that one passenger kilometer on a bike roughly -equals one passenger kilometer in an automobile. However, for cargo, the -comparison of ton-kilometers is more complicated. If the load is relatively -light – usually up to 150 kg – the electric cargo cycle will be less -carbon-intensive than a van. However, heavier loads require several cargo cycles -to replace one van, which multiplies the embodied emissions. [18] Switching to -electric cargo cycles without significantly reducing the cargo volume is -unlikely to save emissions. Obviously, cargo cycles with steel frames and -without electric motors and batteries -- for now still the majority -- will have -much lower carbon emissions over their lifetimes. - -How bicycles are used - -In recent years, many cities have introduced shared bicycle services. In theory, -shared bicycles could lower the number of bikes produced and thus decrease the -environmental impact of bicycle production. However, building and operating -bike-sharing services adds significant energy use and emissions. Furthermore, -shared bicycles don’t last as long as privately owned bicycles. Consequently, -shared bike services further reinforce the trends that make bicycles less -sustainable. - -A 2021 study compares the environmental impact of shared and private bicycles -while including the infrastructure that each option requires. It concludes that -personal bikes are more sustainable than shared bicycles. [8] The research is -based on the Vélib system in Paris, France, which has 19,000 vehicles, roughly -half with an electric motor. Vehicle manufacturing and bike-sharing -infrastructure cause more than 90% of emissions and energy use. The remaining -emissions are due to the construction of cycle lanes (3.5%), the rebalancing of -the bicycles to keep all stations optimally supplied (2%), and the electricity -used for charging the batteries of the electric bikes (0.3%). Altogether, a -shared bicycle from the Vélib system has an emissions rate of 32g CO2/km, which -is three to ten times higher than the rate of a personal bike (between 3.5 -gCO2/km for a steel bicycle and 10.5 g CO2/km for an aluminum bicycle. [8] - - Building and operating bike-sharing services adds significant energy use and - emissions - -The scientists found that the bike-sharing service led to a 15% drop in bike -ownership. However, they also calculated that the average lifespan of a shared -bicycle is only 14.7 months, with an average lifetime mileage of 12,250 km. In -comparison, the average lifetime of a personal bike in France, based on a 2020 -survey, is around 20,000 km – almost 50% higher than for shared bicycles. The -Vélib system includes 14,000 bike-sharing stations with a total surface of -92,000 m2 and an estimated lifetime of ten years. Each of the 46,500 docks -consists of 23 kg steel and 0.5 kg plastic. The power consumption of each -bike-sharing station is around 6,000 kWh per year. Due to the high impact of the -infrastructure, the lifecycle emissions of shared electric bikes are only 24% -higher than those of shared non-electric vehicles. [8] - -The environmental footprint of bike-sharing systems can vary significantly -between cities. A life cycle analysis of bike-sharing services in the US found -carbon emissions of 65g CO2/km – twice as high as in Paris. [19] This is largely -because the US systems rebalance the bicycles using diesel vans, while the -French service employs electric tractors. The US study also looks at the newer -generation of “dockless” bike-sharing services, which score even worse. Dockless -shared bikes can be parked anywhere and located through a smartphone -application. Although this removes the need for stations, each bicycle requires -energy-intensive electronic components, and the system also generates emissions -through communication networks. [19] [10] Furthermore, dockless systems require -more bicycles and involve more rebalancing. - -A life cycle analysis of Chinese bike-sharing services, many dockless systems, -shows high damage rates and low maintenance rates for bicycles. The annual -damage rate is 10-20% for reinforced bicycles and 20-40% for lighter vehicles -which have become more common. In practice, a shared bicycle becomes scrap when -the bike part with the worst durability breaks down. Repair is virtually not -happening. [10] Finally, when the companies go bankrupt, bike sharing creates -mountains of waste – including bicycles in good condition. [10] [1] - -[image 4: Lifecycle-carbon-emissions-per-kilometre-of-riding-bicycle (link -#10)][9] - -Image: Lifecycle carbon emissions per kilometre of riding a bicycle. Data -sources: [8] [17] [19] [26] Graph: Marie Verdeil. - -Not every bicycle replaces a car - -None of this should discourage cycling. Even the most unsustainable bicycles are -significantly less unsustainable than cars. The carbon footprint for -manufacturing a gasoline or diesel-powered car is between 6 tonnes (Citroen C1) -and 35 tonnes (Land Rover Discovery). [20] Consequently, building one small -automobile such as the C1 produces as many emissions as making 171 steel -bicycles or 28 aluminum bicycles. Furthermore, cars also have a high carbon -footprint for fuel use, while bikes are entirely or partly human-powered. [21] -Electric cars have higher emissions for production but lower emissions for -operation (although that depends entirely on the carbon intensity of the power -grid). - -The bicycle even holds its advantage when its much shorter lifetime mileage is -taken into account. [22] Gasoline and diesel-powered cars now reach more than -300,000 km, double their lifetime in the 1960s and 1970s. [23] If a bicycle -lasts 20,000 km, it would take 15 bikes to cover 300,000 km. If those are steel -bicycles without an electric motor, the total carbon footprint for manufacturing -is still six times lower than for a small car: 1,050 kg of CO2. If the bikes are -made from aluminum and have electric motors, then emissions grow to 4,800 kg -CO2, still below the manufacturing carbon footprint of the small car. - -However, not every bicycle replaces a car. That is especially relevant for -shared and electric bikes: studies show that they mainly substitute for more -sustainable transport alternatives such as walking, using an unassisted or -private bicycle, or traveling on the subway. [19][24] In Paris, shared bikes -have three times higher emissions than electric public transportation. [8] In -addition, many carbon-intensive bicycles are bought for recreation and are not -meant to replace cars at all – they may even involve more car use as cyclists -drive out of town for a trip in nature. In all those cases, emissions go up, not -down. - -How to make bicycles sustainable again? - -In conclusion, there are several reasons why bicycles have become less -sustainable: the switch from steel to aluminum and other more energy-intensive -materials, the scaling up of the bicycle manufacturing industry, increasing -incompatibility and decreasing quality of components, the growing success of -electric bicycles, and the use of shared bike services. Most of these are not -problematic in themselves. Rather, it's the combination of trends that leads to -significant differences with bicycles from earlier generations. - -For example, based on data mentioned earlier, manufacturing an electric bicycle -made from steel would have a carbon footprint of 143 kg. Although that is four -times the emissions from an unassisted steel bicycle, it is below the carbon -footprint of an aluminum bicycle without an electric motor (212 kg). Especially -if the battery is charged with renewable energy, riding an electric bike can -thus be more sustainable than riding one without a motor. Likewise, an aluminum -bicycle with a long life expectancy – for example, through component -compatibility – could have a lower carbon footprint than a steel bicycle with a -more limited lifespan. - -Many researchers advocate switching back to producing bicycles from steel -instead of aluminium and other energy-intensive materials. That would bring -significant gains in sustainability for a relatively low cost – slightly heavier -bicycles. Steel frames would also make electric and shared bikes less carbon -intensive. Some researchers promote bamboo bike frames, but the benefit compared -to old-fashioned steel or even aluminium frames is unclear. [27] A “bamboo -bicycle” still requires wheels and many other parts made out of metal or carbon -fibre composites, and the frame tubes are usually held together by carbon fibre -or metal parts. [6] Furthermore, the bamboo is chemically treated against decay -and becomes non-biodegradable. [1] - - Reverting to domestic and less automated bike manufacturing is a requirement - for sustainable bicycles. - -Better component compatibility would increase the life expectancy of bicycles – -also electric ones – through repair and refurbishment. It would bring no -disadvantages for consumers, even on the contrary. However, unlike a switch to -steel frames, better component compatibility would hurt the sales of new -bicycles. A study concludes that “the abandonment of standardization is a -profitable business model because it ensures that bicycles can only be ridden -for so long.” [1] The decreasing sustainability of bikes is not a technological -problem, and it’s not unique to bicycles. We also see it in manufacturing other -products, such as computers[11]. One bike mechanic observes: “The problem here -is capitalism; it’s not the bikes.” [14] - -Reverting to domestic and less automated bike manufacturing is a requirement for -sustainable bicycles. The main reason is not the extra energy use generated by -transportation and machinery, which is relatively small. For example, shipping -from China adds around 0.7 to 1.2 gCO2/km for shared bicycles. [8] More -importantly, domestic and manual bike manufacturing is essential to make repair -and refurbishment the more economically attractive option. By definition, -repairing is local and manual, so it quickly becomes more expensive than -producing a new vehicle in a large-scale, automated factory. [10] Locally made -bicycles would increase the purchase price for consumers. However, better -repairability would allow for a longer life expectancy and a lower cost in the -long term. Addressing bike theft and parking problems is also essential because -they are often a reason for buying cheap, short-lasting bicycles. [25] - -Finally, shared bicycle services can have their place, and we will probably see -further improvements in their resource efficiency – the newest bike-sharing -stations in Paris have reduced their power consumption by a factor of six. [8] -However, shared bicycles are unlikely to become more sustainable than private -bicycles because they always require rebalancing and a high-tech infrastructure -to make the service work. Furthermore, getting attached to your bike can be a -strong incentive to take care of it well and thus increase its life expectancy, -as I can testify. - -Kris De Decker - - * Read Low-tech Magazine offline[12]. - * Subscribe to Low-tech Magazine's newsletter[13]. - * Support Low-tech Magazine via Paypal[14] or Patreon[15]. - -SOURCES - -[1] Szto, Courtney, and Brian Wilson. "Reduce, re-use, re-ride: Bike waste and -moving towards a circular economy for sporting goods." International Review for -the Sociology of Sport (2022): 10126902221138033. -https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/10126902221138033[16] - -[2] Johnson, Rebecca, Alice Kodama, and Regina Willensky. "The complete impact -of bicycle use: analyzing the environmental impact and initiative of the bicycle -industry." (2014). https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/ -8483/Duke_MP_Published.pdf[17] - -[3] Norcliffe, Glen, et al., eds. Routledge Companion to Cycling. Taylor & -Francis, 2022. https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Companion-to-Cycling/Norcliff -e-Brogan-Cox-Gao-Hadland-Hanlon-Jones-Oddy-Vivanco/p/book/9781003142041[18] - -[4] Cole, Emma. “What’s the environmental impact of a steel bicycle frame?” -Cyclist, November 7, 2022. https://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/11003/steel-bike-f -rame-environmental-impact[19] - -[5] Mercer, Liam. “Starling Cycles publishes environmental footprint assessment -and policy.” Off-road.cc, July 2022. https://off.road.cc/content/news/starling-c -ycles-publishes-environmental-footprint-assessment-and-policy-10513[20] - -[6] Chang, Ya-Ju, Erwin M. Schau, and Matthias Finkbeiner. "Application of life -cycle sustainability assessment to the bamboo and aluminum bicycle in surveying -social risks of developing countries." 2nd World Sustainability Forum, Web -Conference. 2012. https://sciforum.net/manuscripts/953/original.pdf[21] - -[7] Chen, Jingrui, et al. "Life cycle carbon dioxide emissions of bike sharing -in China: Production, operation, and recycling." Resources, Conservation and -Recycling 162 (2020): 105011. -https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344920303281[22] - -[8] De Bortoli, Anne. "Environmental performance of shared micromobility and -personal alternatives using integrated modal LCA." Transportation Research Part -D: Transport and Environment 93 (2021): 102743. -https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S136192092100047X[23] - -[9] Roy, Papon, Md Danesh Miah, and Md Tasneem Zafar. "Environmental impacts of -bicycle production in Bangladesh: a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment -approach." SN Applied Sciences 1 (2019): 1-16. -https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42452-019-0721-z[24] - -[10] Mao, Guozhu, et al. "How can bicycle-sharing have a sustainable future? A -research based on life cycle assessment." Journal of Cleaner Production 282 -(2021): 125081. -https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652620351258[25] - -[11] Leuenberger, Marianne, and Rolf Frischknecht. "Life cycle assessment of two -wheel vehicles." ESU-Services Ltd.: Uster, Switzerland (2010). https://treeze.ch -/fileadmin/user_upload/downloads/Publications/Case_Studies/Mobility/leuenberger- -2010-TwoWheelVehicles.pdf[26] - -[12] Erik Bronsvoort & Matthijs Gerrits. “From marginal gains to a circular -revolution”. Paperback (full-colour): 160 pages, ISBN: 978-94-92004-93-2, Warden -Press, Amsterdam. https://circularcycling.nl/product/from-marginal-gains-to-a-ci -rcular-revolution/[27] - -[13] US petition that calls for end o built to fail bikes gaining support in BC. -https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/u-s-petition-that-calls-for-end-of-buil -t-to-fail-bikes-gaining-support-in-b-c[28] - -[14] Aaron Gordon. “Mechanics Ask Walmart, Major Bike Manufacturers to Stop -Making and Selling ‘Built-to-Fail’ Bikes”, Vice, January 13, 2022. https://www.v -ice.com/en/article/wxdgq9/mechanics-ask-walmart-major-bike-manufacturers-to-stop --making-and-selling-built-to-fail-bikes[29] - -[15] Koop, Carina, et al. "Circular business models for remanufacturing in the -electric bicycle industry." Frontiers in Sustainability 2 (2021): 785036. -https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsus.2021.785036/full[30] - -[16] https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/overview-of-the-electric -ity-production-3/assessment[31] - -[17] Temporelli, Andrea, et al. "Last mile logistics life cycle assessment: a -comparative analysis from diesel van to e-cargo bike." Energies 15.20 (2022): -7817.. https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/20/7817[32] - -[18] Schünemann, Jaron, et al. "Life Cycle Assessment on Electric Cargo Bikes -for the Use-Case of Urban Freight Transportation in Ghana." Procedia CIRP 105 -(2022): 721-726. -https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212827122001214[33] - -[19] Luo, Hao, et al. "Comparative life cycle assessment of station-based and -dock-less bike sharing systems." Resources, Conservation and Recycling 146 -(2019): 180-189. -https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344919301090[34] - -[20] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/23/carbo -n-footprint-new-car[35] - -[21] Bicycles are entirely or partly powered by food calories. Some people argue -that the life cycle energy requirements of bicycles are higher than other modes, -when one considers the impact of food require to provide additional calories -that are burned during the bicycle use. However, the majority of people in -car-centered societies take in more calories than their sedentary lifestyle -requires. Increased cycling would lead to lower obesity rates, not to higher -calorie intakes. - -[22] This a purely theoretical calculation, because cars encourage much longer -trips than bicycles. - -[23] Ford, Dexter. “As Cars Are Kept Longer, 200,000 Is New 100,000.” New York -Times, March 16, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/automobiles/as-cars-ar -e-kept-longer-200000-is-new-100000.html?_r=2&ref=business&pagewanted=all&[36] - -[24] Zheng, Fanying, et al. "Is bicycle sharing an environmental practice? -Evidence from a life cycle assessment based on behavioral surveys." -Sustainability 11.6 (2019): 1550. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/6/1550[37] - -[25] Larsen, Jonas, and Mathilde Dissing Christensen. "The unstable lives of -bicycles: the ‘unbecoming’of design objects." Environment and Planning A: -Economy and Space 47.4 (2015): 922-938. https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/131 -212/1/M%20Christensen%202015%20the%20unstable%20lives%20of%20bicycles%20ver2%20p -ostprint.pdf[38] - -[26] Calão, Júlio, et al. "Life Cycle Thinking Approach Applied to a Novel -Micromobility Vehicle." Transportation Research Record 2676.8 (2022): 514-529. -https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/03611981221084692[39] - -[27] A comparison of the life cycle emissions of a bamboo versus an aluminium -bicycle showed little difference (233 vs. 238 kg CO2). [6] - -Read Low-tech Magazine Offline - -Read Low-tech Magazine with no access to a computer, a power supply, or the -internet. The printed archives amount to four volumes with a total of 2,398 -pages and 709 images[12]. They can be ordered in our Lulu bookstore[40]. - -[image 5: NEWbook016 (link #42)][41] - -[43] - -Links: -[1]: https://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883302b75197a7b7200c-pi (link) -[2]: https://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883302b75197a7b7200c-800wi (image) -[3]: https://www.instagram.com/ddidak/ (link) -[4]: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/12/high-speed-trains-are-killing-the-european-railway-network.html (link) -[5]: https://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883302b75197d1bc200c-pi (link) -[6]: https://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883302b75197d1bc200c-800wi (image) -[7]: https://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883302b6852a8ae5200d-pi (link) -[8]: https://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883302b6852a8ae5200d-800wi (image) -[9]: https://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883302b6852aacfa200d-pi (link) -[10]: https://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883302b6852aacfa200d-800wi (image) -[11]: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stopped-buying-new-laptops.html (link) -[12]: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/low-tech-magazine-the-printed-website.html (link) -[13]: https://d69baa34.sibforms.com/serve/MUIEAJWIw9w82Dl4ua6FQArPaI-3Qb-zVTwPNabHQgFH51MiGF69Smy9LOC_HPoUmBj0emaXsXT87gcQXDPvtu-AZsJCHWhkkv21CdrcQu4GdnYAhZ-MrIPhwGDecagLzYxqfvkaqXg2ODcbJU4ByoDmzJK3ZTczDo2jcWtfn-En0MGKLVkgxx9TgdHqYoPabMJCMF-agLEclEwv (link) -[14]: https://www.paypal.me/lowtechmagazine (link) -[15]: https://www.patreon.com/lowtechmagazine (link) -[16]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/10126902221138033 (link) -[17]: https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/8483/Duke_MP_Published.pdf (link) -[18]: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Companion-to-Cycling/Norcliffe-Brogan-Cox-Gao-Hadland-Hanlon-Jones-Oddy-Vivanco/p/book/9781003142041 (link) -[19]: https://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/11003/steel-bike-frame-environmental-impact (link) -[20]: https://off.road.cc/content/news/starling-cycles-publishes-environmental-footprint-assessment-and-policy-10513 (link) -[21]: https://sciforum.net/manuscripts/953/original.pdf (link) -[22]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344920303281 (link) -[23]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S136192092100047X (link) -[24]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42452-019-0721-z (link) -[25]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652620351258 (link) -[26]: https://treeze.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/downloads/Publications/Case_Studies/Mobility/leuenberger-2010-TwoWheelVehicles.pdf (link) -[27]: https://circularcycling.nl/product/from-marginal-gains-to-a-circular-revolution/ (link) -[28]: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/u-s-petition-that-calls-for-end-of-built-to-fail-bikes-gaining-support-in-b-c (link) -[29]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdgq9/mechanics-ask-walmart-major-bike-manufacturers-to-stop-making-and-selling-built-to-fail-bikes (link) -[30]: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsus.2021.785036/full (link) -[31]: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/overview-of-the-electricity-production-3/assessment (link) -[32]: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/20/7817 (link) -[33]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212827122001214 (link) -[34]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344919301090 (link) -[35]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car (link) -[36]: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/automobiles/as-cars-are-kept-longer-200000-is-new-100000.html?_r=2&ref=business&pagewanted=all& (link) -[37]: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/6/1550 (link) -[38]: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/131212/1/M%20Christensen%202015%20the%20unstable%20lives%20of%20bicycles%20ver2%20postprint.pdf (link) -[39]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/03611981221084692 (link) -[40]: https://www.lulu.com/search?adult_audience_rating=00&contributor=Kris+De+Decker&page=1&pageSize=10&sortBy=PRODUCT_SALES_30_DAYS (link) -[41]: https://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883302788070a5b5200d-pi (link) -[42]: https://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883302788070a5b5200d-800wi (image) -[43]: https://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883302b6852a8a55200d-pi (link) - diff --git a/saved_articles/a brief history of money.txt b/saved_articles/a brief history of money.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..0432c52 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/a brief history of money.txt @@ -0,0 +1,153 @@ +--- +title: Rhetorical Device | A Brief History of Money +date: 2007-01-18T01:16:38Z +source: http://rhetoricaldevice.com/BriefHistoryOfMoney1.html +tags: economics, history, culture, society + +--- + +## A Brief History of Money + +Waters rose the world over at the end of the last [Ice Age][1], pushing the [Mediterranean Sea][2] over the [Bosphorus][3] into a massive freshwater lake that we now call the [Black Sea][4][1][5], and transforming a vast riverbed marsh into the Persian Gulf[2][6]. [Neolithic][7] populations from all over the [Ancient Near East][8] were displaced into warm, wet places that had been cold and dry, carrying with them harrowing tales of flood and salvation. + +### Après Le Deluge + +Some of these refugees settled in southern Iraq, between the [Tigris and Euphrates][9][3][10] rivers, in an area that was then a wet marshland[4][11]. They cultivated the dark soil and built dams, dikes and canals to tame the rivers. Nomadic herders grazed animals on the steppes to the east[5][12], bringing livestock to trade for grain, and fisher-folk brought a fresh catch from the then near-by sea. + +The places where herders, fishermen and farmers met were the first markets, where goods were traded by [barter][13]. There was, suddenly and for the first time, more than enough to go around. This abundance led to the creation of the mother of all savings accounts: pottery. Once there were pots in which to store agricultural goods, food science was born. Because agricultural productivity is seasonal but need is perennial, barley became beer, wheat became flour and then bread, milk became yogurt and then cheese[6][14]. + +It's not hard to imagine how difficult it must have been to bring a large supply of agricultural goods (live sheep, ceramic urns full of grain, and so on) to market. This physical problem led to the creation of tiny clay tokens formed into shapes representing various commodities. These tokens were swapped at market to make exchanges that were later fulfilled with actual deliveries. This proto-money is the first recorded use of a material abstraction to represent a real object in communication[7][15]. + +![A small collection from the 8,000 or so trade tokens that have been found in Iraq, Iran and Syria. Photo: Mindy McAdams.][16] + +A small collection from the 8,000 or so trade tokens that have been found in Iraq, Iran and Syria. Photo: Mindy McAdams. + +One problem with these tokens was the ease with which they could be counterfeited. The solution was to certify a set of tokens by sealing them in a clay pot that had been impressed with each token and the producer's personal sign. Over time it was realized that the tokens themselves were superfluous: the inventory and seal were enough. Clay inventory tablets replaced pots full of tokens, and numbers appeared when the convention changed from pressing a symbol for sheep into the clay ten times to pressing a symbol for the number ten followed by a symbol for sheep (a major leap in abstraction). + +Communities developed around marketplaces and farming collectives. One of the benefits of communal living was a shared [granary][17] into which all farmers contributed wheat and barley. If a farmer's crop failed on a given year, he was still able to survive on a ration paid from the central granary, a kind of early risk-pooling[8][18]. Tribal headmen became grange-keepers who paid out rations and conducted ceremonial rituals to appease the gods. These communities eventually grew into cities that were larger than any collective living arrangement mankind had ever known, and the grange-keepers became the hereditary Royal Households of Priest Kings who ruled over the cities of [Egypt][19][9][20] and Mesopotamia for the following several thousand years. + +### The Limitations of Barter + +City life means a much larger diversity of goods and services. This is lovely for one's standard of living, but it's a problem for the barter system. Barter works like a currency exchange where each commodity has a different exchange rate relative to every other commodity. In the countryside, where there were only a few commodities, this was okay, but in the cities it became too hard to tell whether a transaction was a good deal[10][21]. + +This exchange rate problem is compounded with the problem modern economists refer to as "[the coincidence of wants][22]," which is a way of saying that for a trade to occur each person must have something the other wants, and must have it at the right time. This leads to economic transactions that look like a story from [Aesop's Fables][23]: the butcher wants a loaf of bread, the baker wants some cheese, the cheesemonger wants some horseshoes, and so on. + +The modern way of describing these negative properties is "they raise [transaction costs][24]," which is a formal way of saying that they make doing business more expensive in time, headache and resources. The solution, one that has arisen everywhere in the world, is to pick a single commodity to use as a [medium of exchange][25] — a proxy for all other kinds of goods — and thus a [unit of account][26] by which to figure and compare prices[11][27] + +![A Babylonian tablet inscribed with the directions for brewing beer \(c. 3100BCE\). It is part of a series of tablets that account for an order of 134,813 liters of barley to be delivered to the brewery at the temple of Inanna in Uruk over the course of 37 months.][28] + +A Babylonian tablet inscribed with the directions for brewing beer (c. 3100BCE). It is part of a series of tablets that account for an order of 134,813 liters of barley to be delivered to the brewery at the temple of Inanna in Uruk over the course of 37 months. + +### The Barley Standard + +The early Mesopotamians used a weight of barley as their first currency. It seems important to point out to the modern reader, accustomed as she must be to the way modern currency works, that this money was different from the money of today in some very important ways. It was an actual edible commodity that could be used to make soup, bread and beer, for one thing[12][29], and for another, it was prone to decay: pests ate it, it tended to rancidity if kept for too long, and so on. + +This latter property of the currency was shared with most goods in the economy, all of which fell somewhere along a continuum of impermanence[13][30]. The impermanent nature of these goods is linked to the underlying ecosystem from which all value ultimately arises; everything that wasn't made of sand (pottery) or metal (tools and jewelry) was the direct product of sunlight and bio-mass, and consequently subject to unavoidable near-term wear and decay. + +The harmony between the nature of the goods in the market and the nature of the currency meant that — although incomes were far from equal — no one could get very rich because their money would lose its value within a couple of years. This storage problem was carefully studied by those with high incomes, particularly the Priest Kings who — though a small hereditary minority — received a tithe from every producer in the community. Their surplus income was so large that they were unable, even with the technologies of beer and cheese, to store all the commodities they received. + +![A hematite weight used to measure one mina \(60 shekels\) worth of silver \(c. 1300BCE\).][31] + +A hematite weight used to measure one mina (60 shekels) worth of silver (c. 1300BCE). + +You probably won't be surprised to learn that the idea of taking a smaller cut didn't occur to the ruling class of ancient Mesopotamia. Instead, some time between 3,000BCE and 2,500BCE it was decided that temple taxes would only be accepted in the most expensive and durable commodity known at the time: silver. They chose silver for this purpose because, unlike barley, silver doesn't spoil. These new silver weights, called [shekels][32][14][33], were the prototype for the other currencies of the Ancient Near East[15][34]. + +### Abstract Value + +Silver's practical value to the ancients was essentially _nil_, but — rather like the peacock's tail — the ability to expend resources on adornments was an important status marker. Silver's value was derived entirely from its uselessness and scarcity, which made it valuable for being valuable in much the same way that [Paris Hilton][35] is famous for being famous. As if to make the wealth-status connection as obvious as possible, the Sumerians — who never minted coins — pioneered Bronze Age bling in the form of spiral silver armbands[16][36] in even multiples of the shekel[17][37]. + +Silver quickly became the primary currency[18][38] of the rich, who could now "[store value][39]" indefinitely. We should pause here for a moment to make very clear the problem they were trying to solve and the nature of the solution. A small minority controlled such a large share of the society's resources, so much more than they could consume, that they were forced to waste excess commodities, thus they sought to overcome the natural limitations of ecological productivity using a mixed metaphor in which short-lived organic commodities[19][40] were "converted" into long-lived metallic ones[20][41]. + +![A Babylonian shekel coin minted much later under Persian rule \(c. 300BCE\).][42] + +A Babylonian shekel coin minted much later under Persian rule (c. 300BCE). + +### Introducing: Usury + +Whether the Priest Kings realized the full implications[21][43] of their decision is lost to history. We do know that the Sumerian economy developed some now familiar problems: tokens became more desirable than the commodities they represented[22][44], it became possible to capture a one-time economic advantage as a set of tokens and then use access to those tokens to extort goods from the future, thus leading to usury[23][45], which combined with a downturn in agricultural productivity during a period of climatic fluctuation to collapse the economy. By the time of the _[Code of Hammurabi_][46] the government had centralized price controls — setting rates of exchange between commodities and currency, including a fixed price for beer — and instituted periodic debt-clemency to return farmland lost over bad debts[24][47]. + +Bad debts were an unforeseen consequence of storing value in inorganic currency. Loans were no longer repaid in kind through the natural reproduction of the thing lent[25][48], and metal tokens neither grow when planted nor produce offspring when stored together. New financial abstractions also paved the way for such oddities as compound interest[26][49]. + +Most modern economists would suggest that none of this is a problem, that a borrower should buy seed with his loan, cause the crop to multiply, sell the crop, and pay back the loan with the proceeds of that sale. Unfortunately, once the unit of exchange becomes a special indexical commodity whose supply is not related to the supply of the commodities it indexes, a grim cycle arises. This cycle was demonstrated in the well-documented events that followed the Attic states' adoption of money[27][50] and coins: + +> "Before the introduction of coined money the peasant farmer borrowed commodities and repaid the loan in kind, […] after the introduction of coined money the situation became decidedly more difficult […] he must take a loan of money to purchase his necessary supplies at a time when money was cheap and commodities dear. When a year of plenty came and he undertook to repay the loan, commodities were cheap and money was dear." +— _[Introduction to Greek Legal Science_][51], Calhoun and Zulueta + +![A Greek coin minted in Alexandria under Roman rule \(c. 268CE\).][52] + +A Greek coin minted in Alexandria under Roman rule (c. 268CE). + +The ramifications of this situation were exacerbated by the legal codes of [ancient Greece][53], which allowed moneylenders to foreclose on property and — _in extremis_ — force debtors into slavery. Wealth collected in the hands of a few parties who then used usurious lending practices to exploit and ultimately destroy the Greek middle class of free farmers. + +[Athens][54] was saved by [Solon][55], who "shook off[28][56]" all debt. He emancipated enslaved debtors, returned their lands, and even went so far as to buy back those who had been sold into foreign slavery. After these initial steps, he set floor prices for agricultural goods, placed upper limits on the acquisition of property, and re-minted the coins of the realm at lowered weights to increase the money supply. If any of this seems strikingly similar to the measures taken during the [Great Depression][57] under the advice of [Lord Keynes][58], well, the resemblance isn't just a coincidence of needs. + +In a very real sense modern economics is still suffering the effects of a 5,000 year old swindle. The modern wisdom that a small rate of inflation[29][59] is part of a healthy economy comes down to the need to make our silver behave a little more like barley. + +### Acknowledgements and Further Reading + +This essays leans heavily on Fritz Heichelheim's _[An ancient economic history; from the palaeolithic age to the migrations of the Germanic, Slavic and Arabic nations_][60], Karl Polanyi's _[The Great Transformation_][61], Morris Silver's _[Economic Structures of the Ancient Near East_][62], and various articles by [I. J. Gelb][63] in the _[Journal of Near Eastern Studies_][64]. + +[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_maximum +[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Sea +[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosphorus +[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_theory +[5]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn1 +[6]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn2 +[7]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic +[8]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Near_East +[9]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamia +[10]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn3 +[11]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn4 +[12]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn5 +[13]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter +[14]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn6 +[15]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn7 +[16]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com/images/ClayTokens.jpg +[17]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granary +[18]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn8 +[19]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_egypt +[20]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn9 +[21]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn10 +[22]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincidence_of_wants +[23]: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199540756/jackrusher-20 +[24]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_costs +[25]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_of_exchange +[26]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_of_account +[27]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn11 +[28]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com/images/BeerAccountUruk3100BCE.jpg +[29]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn12 +[30]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn13 +[31]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com/images/MinaWeight1300BCE.jpg +[32]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shekel +[33]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn14 +[34]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn15 +[35]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_hilton +[36]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn16 +[37]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn17 +[38]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn18 +[39]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Store_of_value +[40]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn19 +[41]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn20 +[42]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com/images/Shekel300BCE.jpg +[43]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn21 +[44]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn22 +[45]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn23 +[46]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi +[47]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn24 +[48]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn25 +[49]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn26 +[50]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn27 +[51]: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0028QMM3C/jackrusher-20 +[52]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com/images/GreekRomanCoin268.jpg +[53]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_greece +[54]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Athens +[55]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon +[56]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn28 +[57]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_depression +[58]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynes +[59]: http://rhetoricaldevice.com#fn29 +[60]: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000WW6MDU/jackrusher-20 +[61]: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/080705643X/jackrusher-20 +[62]: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0313293805/jackrusher-20 +[63]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._J._Gelb +[64]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Near_Eastern_Studies diff --git a/saved_articles/a combination of simple living anticonsumerism diy ethics self-reliance and applied capitalism.txt b/saved_articles/a combination of simple living anticonsumerism diy ethics self-reliance and applied capitalism.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6f7f6bb --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/a combination of simple living anticonsumerism diy ethics self-reliance and applied capitalism.txt @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +--- +title: — a combination of simple living, anticonsumerism, DIY ethics, self-reliance, and applied capitalism +date: 2012-06-20T02:29:22Z +source: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/manifesto.html +tags: finance, life + +--- + + +In a home I need walls, roof, windows, and a door that can be opened and closed. I also need a place to cook, a place to eat, a place to sleep, a place for a guest, and a place to write. More space is not better. More space means a bigger house. A bigger house means more hassle, more maintenance, more work to pay for rent, mortgage, taxes, and less time for living. More space also attracts more stuff which eventually means less space. The amount of actual space in a room depends more on personal tolerance for clutter than anything else. Some things make life easier, but more things do not make life more easy. More things mean more things that can break down and more time spent fixing or replacing them. Comfort is freedom and independence. Comfort is having the sweat glands and metabolic tolerance to deal with heat and cold. It is not central heating or air conditioning which may fail or be unavailable. It is not plushy seats but a healthy back. Luxury is not expensive things. It is a healthy and capable body that moves with ease with no restraints because something is too heavy, too far, too hard, or too much. It is a content and capable mind that can think critically, solve problems, and form opinions of its own. +Success is having everything you need and doing everything you want. It is not doing everything you need to have everything you want. If so then you do not own your things, instead your things own you. I do not need to own a particular kind of vehicle. I need to go from A to B. I do not need fancy steak dinners, rare ingredients, or someone else to prepare my meals whether it is a pizza parlor, a chef, or an industrial food preprocessor. I need food to live. Food to fuel my body and brain. Luxury is not eating at 5 five star restaurants. Luxury is being able to appreciate any food. Comfort is eating the right kind and the right amount of food. Not whatever I want. Eating and moving right prevents diseases, pains, and lack of functionality. I am what I eat and I look what I do. Everybody is. It is the physiological equivalent of integrity. To say what I mean and mean what I say. This too makes life more comfortable. Money is opportunity. Opportunity is power. Power is freedom. And freedom means responsibility. Without responsibility, eventually there is no freedom, no power, no opportunities, and no money. More importantly, freedom is more than power. Power is more than opportunity. Opportunity is more than money. And money is more than something that just buys stuff. It is simple to understand but hard to remember, but do remember this if nothing else. + +Ipse dixit! + +[1]: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/hello-new-readers.html +[2]: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ +[3]: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/wiki/index.php?title=Article/Summary +[4]: http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/viewforum.php?f=9 diff --git a/saved_articles/a couple of my train stories carrot quinn.txt b/saved_articles/a couple of my train stories carrot quinn.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9a93a07 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/a couple of my train stories carrot quinn.txt @@ -0,0 +1,227 @@ +--- +title: A couple of my train stories +date: 2015-11-30T14:31:42Z +source: http://carrotquinn.com/2014/03/17/a-couple-of-my-train-stories/ +tags: + +--- + +Readers! You are nice. Did you know that in my twenties I was very fond of riding freight trains? In February of last year I published a novella of my train stories on Amazon. People read it and that was awesome but I had neglected to hire an editor and the book was glaringly unfinished, so in October I took it down in order to work on the full-length version, which will take me a couple of years (at least) to complete. But! Here is a chunk of the book for you, from the novella, in honor of this fantastic springtime day. Reading my train stories makes me feel nostalgic for so many things- youth, naivety, the kind of constitution that can deal with 45 minute tunnels choked with diesel exhaust. Oh, and bread. I used to eat bread. + +Note: I'll apologize here for my overuse of the semicolon. + +———————————– + +![Lark][1] + +Lark (time stamp is totally inaccurate) + +Months passed, the season with all its whirlwinds, the manic summer of youth. The light weakened and September came; Lark arrived in Portland, to make good on her promise to teach me to ride the highline. + +Lark lived in a tree outside of Eugene, and was my best friend. She had wild black hair and crooked teeth and her skirt was made from a roadkill deer. She smelled acidic, like coffee, and talked quickly and when she listened you could see her brain working, building kaleidoscopes of information inside her head. + +Lark was really good at riding freight trains. She was brilliant with mileage and direction and maps and data and she never fell asleep, like I did, when she was supposed to be watching for a crew change. She required very little food and water and she carried a monocular with her everywhere. And she managed to pack all her gear into a little backpack that made her look just like a regular person, instead of a homeless scumbag. + +The highline was the train route that went from Seattle east through Idaho and Montana and North Dakota, all the way to Chicago. It was fast and beautiful and cold, and there was nothing like it anywhere. I tore down a cardboard box and spread in on the porch in the sun and Lark made a hitchhiking sign, using the giant, smelly black marker she kept with her for the purpose. _Seattle,_ said the sign. It served us well and we got dropped off right at dusk, a few miles from the trainyard. + +We were in a sea of industry- in the distance we could see the lighted tower of the Starbucks headquarters, which was to be our beacon as we searched for the yard. We had empty water jugs and we found a spigot on a darkened building and filled them; after a time we passed the krispy kreme, and we ripped open the heavy plastic bags that were mounded in the dumpster, collecting the glimmering donuts that spilled out. Next was the filsons dumpster, where Lark unearthed a swath of waxed canvas, which she folded carefully, wrapped with a bit of cord, and wedged inside her backpack. At last we were at the edge of the train yard, where the back end of our train would be. We crouched in the shadows against a low stone wall and ate donuts as the moon rose. I ate too many donuts and became ill; I threw the remaining donuts at the train, watching them break against the grimy steel. + +We climbed into a car on the end of our train and slept a little, leaning against our packs; the train opposite us began to move, so we jumped down onto the ballast and got on that one instead. The train lumbered east out of Seattle, picked up speed, and dawn began to break. We spread out our bedrolls, stuffed in our earplugs, and slept. + +Glacier National Park was cold- the forest dark and empty, the Flathead River milky with silt. We huddled in our sleeping bags as the train thundered east through Montana, watching the wind-blown stars rotate in the sky above us. We peered out of our car in Whitefish, the little storefronts warm and yellow, an inch of sparkling snow across the ground. And then the mountains were behind us and the plains were warm and golden- our train stopped in Havre for inspection for a number of hours and we sprawled, languid, in the tetrahedron of sun that reached into our car. I stuck my nose over the side of the car and saw two little work trucks driving up and down the train and across the street, there was a little store. Lark and I really, really wanted hot dogs so when the trucks were out of sight I hopped off and then, behind the little store, was a really big supermarket, so I bought beans and grapefruit and cheese and an US weekly. I walked back to the train and Lark was waving wildly at me; I ran and climbed into the car just as the breaks released, our car jerking a little as the slack in the string was pulled taught. Then we were out of Havre; Lark and I read about the tragic lives of celebrities and ate garlic pesto cheese in our underwear. Our train moved ponderously through an inland sea of cornfields. + +We played cards and hot dice, keeping score on the chipped paint of the car with a pen. I dared Lark to try my chewing tobacco; she didn't like it much, but then neither did I. Lark fell asleep on the floor of the car, her dirty hands clasped over her stomach, a blue Lake Tahoe visor over her eyes. I sat on the porch of the car in my boxers and watched the corn turn to North Dakota, the breeze almost as good as water on my skin. The sun set and the ocean was papery grass with hills for waves and the moon rose, and our train sided across from a field where a man stood next to his tractor, watching the last of the red bleed from the sky. I didn't know if he saw me watching him watch the west; he stood there until it was completely dark; the air turned crisp and I moved, crept into my sleeping bag, and went to sleep. + +In the morning we were in an Andrew Wyeth painting. The land was beautiful and iridescent the way brown can be when it catches the light and waves. The trees were low like they waited for thunder; boat-shaped yellow leaves fell to the ground. I took a shit on a piece of cardboard in the car behind ours as the train rattled through Fargo. The train picked up speed, I flung the cardboard over the side; it collided with the other track. + +The ceiling dropped in Minnesota; the sky was clotted with clouds. Vegetation crowded the stream banks; wetlands appeared. Our train hurtled towards Minneapolis. Lark had a bottle of habanero hot sauce, and to entertain ourselves we tried to see how much we could pour on the cans of refried beans that we were eating. Lark and I were tired of eating beans, thick masses of salty refried pinto beans- we'd dubbed it "cat food for vegetarians". + +The train slowed as evening fell; we were entering a thunderstorm. The train rolled for ten minutes and stopped, rolled for ten minutes and stopped. Lightning sheared the sky; currents of water began to pour into our car. Lark crawled into her bivy sac; I put all of my things inside the giant plastic bag I had swiped from behind the home depot in Seattle. I put on my rain gear and sat on the porch, watching the storm. The north side of our train was clear sky and stars; the south side was a mass of clouds and lightning, illuminating the landscape in eerie flashes. The rain let up but the lightning kept on for hours. The train crept through crossings and I was pinned in the headlights of waiting cars: sitting on the porch in my dark rain gear, my hood over my head, as lightning split the sky. + +In the morning we woke in the yard in Minneapolis. The air was humid and warm and flocks of Canada Geese passed over us. A worker appeared above the edge of our car and stared down at us; we collected our things and climbed off the train, crossing the empty road next to the tracks, stumbling a little on our sea-legs. We hitch-hiked to Chicago, arrived exhausted, and mounted a commuter train, which would take us to the outskirts of the city. At one a.m. we left the commuter train and found ourselves in a grand old cemetery, with freight trains rattling by in the dark. We walked through the hulking tombstones and the fog along the ground until we found a hole in the fence and crossed over the tracks to a flat forested area, where we fell asleep in the drizzle against a huge fallen log. In the morning there were Italian men gathering mushrooms into plastic grocery sacks. We hiked out on a trail back to the Metra stop and there was a woman with a collie; she looked at us and said- Tell me you didn't sleep in those woods last night! So we said OK, we won't. + +At the kinkos in town we bought an exacto knife and some color copies; we made fake greyhound passes and laminated them. Lark was going all the way to North Carolina; the greyhound would take me home. On the greyhound I slept or didn't sleep; the air was stale and close. I stared out the window at the dull highway, ate French fries at layovers, and dreamed of North Dakota: the wild place that was everywhere and nowhere all at once, the way the wind would beat you so hard you could barely catch your breath. + +**** + +Crouching in the alley with my pack against my legs, I looked at the string of railcars. The string sat motionless on the tracks, perfectly still and cold, but I knew that they were bluffing. In a moment, when the engines fixed themselves to the front of the string, the trainyard would burst into life. + +Everything that was still would become noisy; everything quiet would begin to lurch. + +I only had a few minutes to make my move. + +I hoisted my pack, heavy with cans of beans and several days' worth of water, and jogged clumsily into the yard. The overhead spotlights hacked up reality into impossible brightness and shadow, and I crossed over to the dark side of the train. The train was a string of UPS truck trailers on flatcars- piggybacks. Mail trains are the second fastest thing to Amtrak, and this one would cover the distance from Portland to Chicago in just three days. + +There is no graceful way to ride a piggyback. I found a likely car at the back of the string and heaved myself up onto the filthy steel, shoving my pack under the axle of the truck trailer that sat on the flatcar and then wriggling on my belly after it. Once under the axle I could crouch on my heels with my back hunched over; hoses and metal contraptions, thick with road grime, hung around my face. There was not enough space, under the axle of the truck, to lie down or stretch out completely, but once I was north of the city I could move out onto the flatcar and spread my bedroll in the open. For now I touched the hoses around me- it was a curious sort of intimacy with the underside of a truck trailer that I imagined few people would experience. I pressed the little light on my watch- it was three-thirty in the morning. Beyond my car, the yard was yet unmoving; blinking lights distant and slow, tracks gleaming in the spotlights. + +I closed my eyes, aching for sleep. It was mid-September and the nights were getting colder; I wanted to pull out my sleeping bag and crawl inside of it, but my sleeping bag was florescent orange and besides, there wasn't any room. I thought about the cabin in the mountains where I'd spent my summer, cooking lasagnas for college students and making next to nothing. I'd lived in the attic room above the kitchen; I'd had a hard futon that smelled of dust. At night my futon was enveloped in the impenetrable silence of the forest. + +Now I was going to North Carolina, on the train, by myself. I was running from the rain, from Portland, from something that it could no longer give me and that I wasn't sure it ever had. Something I had dreamed of, something I'd shown up for, but which had never materialized. Now most of the people I'd known had drifted away, nothing to tie us together. And I had a loneliness in me that bordered on anemia; I could feel it in my bone marrow, a constant ache. North Carolina was where Lark was, and sunshine, and something small enough that I could maybe hold it in my hand; something tangible and solid; although I wasn't sure, yet, what that thing would be. And so I was going there. + +At four a.m. the train jerked and I startled; I hadn't even noticed the engines approaching the string. There were usually three or four of them, more if you were going over mountains; they hissed and clicked and made a thundering sound. I must be at the back of the train, I thought, they must have added more cars to make the train even longer; that would make the engines far enough away that I would not hear them. Blood pounding, I swallowed some of the water in my gallon jug. And then, my car began to move. + +I curled myself up small and willed myself to be invisible, hunched behind the tires of the truck trailer, as my train pulled deep into the heart of the yard. Then there were dozens of tracks stretching away on either side; there were strings of cars piled up everywhere; there were engines, crouched and spitting. There were workers in bright vests standing on both sides of the tracks; my train passed in front of them but they did not look at me. I heard the SHHHT of their radios, the crunch of their boots on the ballast. White worker pickups kept pace with my train, but not, thankfully, with my car, and overhead a million burning spotlights reached their fingers into the precious shadows. And there, at a crossing, was the railcop; parked behind the red and white striped arm in his unmarked SUV, inspecting each car as it passed. I held my breath as my car slid through the crossing, the DING DING DING of the crossing arm overwhelming the air around me and then fading, and at last the heart of the yard was behind us. + +And then we were crossing the Columbia River, water growing lighter, reflecting the sunrise. And turning in a great arc along the north side of the river, headed east. Dropping onto my belly, I wriggled out from under the axle, and pulled my pack out after me. Out on the flatcar I unrolled my foam sleeping pad and sat, looking out at the great sparkling river. The wind was thrashing my hair and face, but I didn't care. Piggybacks are windy; you are on a flatcar, there is no protection from the wind. But the view is incredible; you are on a flatcar, being pulled across the continent. It cannot be surpassed. + +After a moment I pulled out my sleeping bag and dark-colored sleeping bag cover and spread out my nest. I scrunched down into it, and felt the warmth envelope me. I was only half hidden by the short lip of the flatcar and yet I was one hundred percent invisible- especially, I knew, by some mysterious law of train riding, when I was asleep. I wedged earplugs into my ears, felt the gentle rocking of the train, and let my weariness claim me at last. + +In the morning I woke, acknowledged the need to pee, and then remembered that I was on a flatcar headed east at sixty miles an hour, being pummeled by the wind. I languished for a while in my sleeping bag, sucking air through the small opening in the hood, and then finally I uncinched it, and wiggled my way out. Lifting my pack, I placed it carefully on my sleeping bag, so that it would not fly away. My boots were tied to a metal rod that ran along the underside of the trailer, and I hoped that they, too, would stay where they were. Crawling on my hands and knees, I reached the opposite end of the flatcar. I dropped my pants, clutched the underside of the trailer, and peed. The flatcar was long enough that even if the wind had been going the other way, my pee would never have reached my sleeping space. I drew up my pants and crawled across the flatcar to my sleeping pad, the wind so strong in my face that it was difficult to breathe. Sitting with my back to the wind, I pulled the food out of my pack and spread it in on the steel floor front of me. Almond butter, brown rice bread, a package of nori. Organic celery. I worked my little can opener into a can of beans, and pulled the spoon out of my pocket. Out beyond the train the dun-colored gorge rose up, and the bright river shone like metal. + +My plan was to ride the mail train all the way to Chicago, fastest freight train on the highline, but by eastern Washington I had had enough. The wind was too much; I would take a train with more cover, even if it meant that the ride would be longer. To do this, I knew, I only had to get off at a likely siding, where trains would often stop, and nap until another eastern-bound intermodal arrived. At some point in the afternoon my train sided; I did not know where I was. I got off. I felt dizzy and disoriented from the wind; I stumbled away from the train. A moment later it left, and I watched it until its rear end disappeared completely. I looked around me at where I'd ended up; a big open sky, brown dirt, the smell of sagebrush. Ahead a little ways there was a highway overpass. And to my right, in a wedge of land between the tracks and a road, there was some pasture and a few tumbled-down buildings, the land bordered in a falling-down fence. I heard the crying of chickens. In an enclosure a young Latino man was roping a calf. There were even a couple of ponies, standing motionless in the shade. And directly in front of me was a tree, its branches bending down, touching the grass. I dropped to my knees and looked under the tree. There was a space under there, cool and shaded. I crawled into this space. There was the burbling sound of water. It was a sort of spring, then, behind that tree. In all this desert. The ground around the tree was thick with green things and invasive blackberries climbed the fence and dropped down, over the hidden water. I parted the branches. The water ran under the fence and through the pony enclosure, painting a long swatch of life. + +I was happy with my secret place. I rolled out my sleeping pad and propped myself onto it, to wait for another train. Dappled shade fell over me. + +I was asleep, I was awake, I was asleep, I was awake; I felt sick to my stomach. The sun moved and my shade disappeared; I covered my face with my hat and fidgeted in the dust. I heard a train in the distance; I sat up; the train did not stop. A time later there was another train, going the other way. I shook my water jug; it was nearly empty. What the fuck was I doing? My morale fell as the sun trolled the empty sky. I'll die here, I thought. I'll die here or reach enlightenment. I opened a dirty paperback copy of Annie Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek", the book I'd brought along for entertainment. I'd been introduced to her by a lover I'd once had who didn't rest or eat, only listen to Patti Smith, drink beer, and ride her bicycle hundreds of miles. This lover was brilliant and devilishly goodlooking but unpredictable- prone to losing jobs, disappearing for days, and falling asleep in uncomfortable places without even a pillow. We once rode the train together to Dunsmuir for the soda spring; the cops had stopped us, thinking we were runaway twelve-year-old boys. + +Now, in the desert, I opened the book and followed Annie to the swollen creek; the creek was a metaphor for all sorts of things. Soon the desert receded, I was in the Virginia forest; beetles were dissolving the insides of frogs and the air was the negative shape of the pines. I felt like weeping. I suddenly felt as though Annie was my best, and only friend. + +A few early crickets went off behind me, like tiny car alarms. I put down my book. The sun was getting low; the blue sky was deepening; I could see a few stars. I reached out and fingered the soft leaves of the tree, which looked like tiny boats from underneath. Behind me, the chickens brayed. A door opened and closed; I felt the heat coming off of the earth. I stumbled upright, clutching my empty water jug. + +I climbed up to the overpass and followed the road. After a while there was a city park. The park was crowded with white people and empty soda bottles; they were having a barbeque in the gathering dusk, playing some basketball in the cool of the evening. Children, their faces smeared with barbeque sauce, watched me pass. Their parents called them away, squinting at my tattoos in the half-light. I found a spigot beneath the drinking fountain and stooped to fill my jug. + +Back at my nest beneath the tree, the crickets were out in full orchestra, screeching from the banks of the spring. A porchlight glowed yellow on the farm. There were sounds of dinner and visiting. I had just gotten settled again when a grainer thundered up, headed east. The train slowed and then stilled. It was a long train, stretching both directions farther than I could see. I quickly packed my things and ran along the side of the train, looking for a rideable car. The sand was soft and I stumbled; the smell of sagebrush was everywhere. The stars were coming out, one by one, like gaslights. I reached the end of the train and then caught myself, looking at the blinking red light affixed to the last car. I turned, and stumbled through the sand again towards the front of the train. When I was nearly abreast of my tree-nest the train began to move; I had missed my opportunity or the train had no rideable cars. I had been slow or it had been the wrong train; parallel possibilities stretching out into the empty night. + +I sat down in the sand and drank some of my water. I crawled into my nest and rolled out my sleeping pad, curling up on my side. The crickets were deafening; I stuffed earplugs into my ears. I am going to die here, I thought. + +I woke in the night to another train. A grainer, again, sitting like a monolith in the moonlight. I reluctantly rose and walked along the train, finding no rideable cars. And then, at the rear, the hissing and spitting of engines- there were two engines, or slave units, as they're called in this case, affixed to the end of the string. For extra power, like battery packs. For Montana, I thought. For the mountains. And they were empty. + +Cautiously, I approached the units. They were rumbling and ticking, lit as if alive. I climbed up the steep steel steps of the rearmost engine, and tried the door at the nose. Locked. I circled the unit, and tried another little door at the side. Open. The moon had clouded over, and at that moment a little rain began to fall. I ducked through the short door and pulled my through after me. And then I stood, and marveled at what I had found. + +Dark leather seats looked out the narrow windshield, blue-lit controls stretched across the dash. All around me were switches and dials, panels and doors. The CB radio squawked, and my heart lept. Was I safe back here? At least for a little while. I was a good mile from the front of the train. No way was anyone coming back here, at some random siding in the rain. Not now. + +I dropped my pack onto the floor and checked the mini-fridge. Cold water in bottles. I took a shit in the little bathroom. I paced the small room, anxious for the train to leave. At last it lurched forward, and I watched the desert slide away through the rainy windowglass. I crawled into my sleeping bag and fell asleep on the dark floor, safe in womb of the beast. + +When I woke, the train had stopped. I jumped up, stuffed my things away and crammed myself into the tiny engine bathroom. I pulled out my railmaps and looked at my watch. It was morning; we were most likely in Hauser, Idaho, so the train could change crew. The crewchange. Would they check the unit _now?_ Was I safe? Could I ride this unit all the way to Chicago? After a few moments my train began to creep forward, and I opened the door to the bathroom, peeking out. The engine was in a sort of bunker, a huge metal building, probably for refueling. _Shit._ I shut the bathroom door. I heard feet thudding on the catwalk outside, the door at the nose swing open. The door to my bathroom popped open, I glimpsed a white hardhat, and the door shut again. _shit._ A moment later it opened again, daylight spilled in, and again it was closed. A third time it was opened. + +"You have to leave," said a man in a hardhat. Two other workers stood behind him, looking down at the floor. I mumbled something about staying on the train, and they mumbled something about how they were sorry that I couldn't. + +I pulled myself out of the bathroom. "How do I get out of this place?" I asked. + +"I'll show you," said the first worker. I followed him off of the train, out of the bunker, and he pointed me in the direction of the road. "Highway 53. Right over there." I set off across the yard, lifting myself over strings of cars, feeling disoriented in the bright daylight. When I got to the road, I turned and waved. + +I put a string of cars between myself and the workers; I walked up the road a ways. There was no traffic. I turned back towards the yard and climbed back over the strings of cars; I was south of the bunker now, abreast of a sandstone bluff that overlooked the mainline, the track where the important trains would be. I circled the bluff. It was shining in the sunlight; handsome pine trees populated its backside. I found a small spot of shade and dropped my pack in the soft pine needles. I ate a triumphant can of beans, and then lay on my stomach, watching the yard below. + +By and by an east-bound intermodal pulled up and stopped, headed to Chicago. I gathered my things and sprinted down the bluff. There were no rideable cars and the train hissed, preparing for departure. And then there was an unfamiliar car, a car that I had never ridden. There was a yellow-painted platform, about four feet wide, on the rear of the car. Up against the freight containers. + +I climbed up onto it and poked around. There was just enough space for my foam sleeping pad, and for me. And there was a mess of machinery there which I did not understand, but which partially hid me. It would have to do. I laid back on the platform and looked at the sky, willing myself to breathe. I was free again. I was headed east. I would _get someplace. _ + +Montana. I slept through Glacier National Park. North Dakota, and the skies became highways of wind. Clouds raced over. The single traintrack snaked through empty, rippling grasslands; there were hills that rolled like cresting waves. I passed old wooden house after old wooden house, standing empty on the horizon. _I'll move here, _I thought. _I'll follow a broth-colored creek; build my shack up around an old stone wall. Watch the train blow through without stopping, no highways anywhere. _I slept some more, ate some more, and started to feel a little better. I sat out in the open. + +Outside of Fargo, the train sided. I was low on water. The train sat and I tried to read its stillness. Beyond the train, under the hot sun, I could see a fast food restaurant. I hopped off the train and jogged to the restaurant, filled my water, and ran back to the train. The train left, rolled a bit through town, and pulled into the Fargo yard, where it halted again. + +I thought we were due for a crew change, which can take a matter of minutes, but after two hours the train still had not moved. Night came, and suddenly there were workers in golf carts, speeding to and fro along the train, little engines whining, bright spotlights filling each car. _Shit. _I lay, frozen, hidden just-so behind the machinery on my grimy metal ledge. I stretched out my legs next to a metal pipe. _My legs are a pipe. _I lay my head on my foam pad, alongside a steel cylinder. _My head is a steel cylinder. _My feet pointed skyward, against a square shelf. _My feet are a shelf._ The spotlights swept into my car and away, into my car and away. The golf carts paused, and moved on. Paused, and moved on. + +As I lay there, stiff, aching, invisible, the dark sky opened up, and rain began to fall. I knew what I needed to do. I needed to pull my crackling, shiny tarp from the side of my pack, and spread it over the top of my body. I needed to cover myself and my pack. But the golfcarts continued to zoom, back and forth, up my train and down the next. So I lay, shivering, as rain soaked my pants, dampened my flannel, and gathered on my eyelashes. Then the golfcarts passed a final time, and I heard them receding in the distance. Once again, the trainyard settled in to its essential stillness. The rain stopped; the sky became visible, the wind-battered stars. I pulled off my stiff, wet jeans and crawled into my sleeping bag in just my long underwear. I cinched the hood around my face, and peeked out at the world. I fell asleep. And as dawn weakened the sky my train pulled away, towards Minneapolis. + +**** + +Trainyards in big cities are complex, impenetrable labyrinths of steel, concrete and concertina wire; their roads lead into each other or dead-end in tangles of blackberry brambles; their bangings and screechings and stadium spotlights will drive you mad; they stretch for miles across the surface of the earth. + +Trainyards in small towns are nicer; they have just a few tracks, no workers, and often a small stand of trees. On occasion you can find interesting things as you walk along the tracks there- sodden reading material, bottles of water, flattened bits of metal. Handfuls of grain, spilled from grainers, sprout between the railroad ties. + +It is preferable to get on and off of a train in a small-town yard, or, if you are going into a big city, at a random siding in its outskirts; a darkened field somewhere, miles from the yard. But sometimes you have no choice where you end up- which is what happened to me when I woke in the incomprehensible hours of the night, sat up in my sleeping bag, and realized that my train had stopped deep in the belly of the Minneapolis yard. I knew this was true because the trees were gone, the rolling pastures were gone, the moon was gone, the night was gone, the wind was gone- instead there was the screeching of steel-on-steel, the crunch of gravel beneath the tires of the workers' trucks, the hiss of CB radios, and the dizzying patchwork of the stadium lights. And in the distance, the beeping of cranes. + +Also, it smelled like oatmeal. The yard in Minneapolis always smells like oatmeal. + +East-bound intermodals sometimes go to Chicago, but sometimes they also terminate in Minneapolis, mysteriously. I figured I had ended up on one of those trains, and so I pulled myself stiffly from my sleeping bag, took a long drink of my water, and packed my things away. I then poked my head around the side of the train, and looked down the dirt track that ran alongside it. There was a white pickup driving towards me, the yellow lights on top of the cab flashing. + +I lay back down. The pickup pulled up flush with my car and then sped away. The yellow lights washed over the wall of my car and then disappeared. I sat back up again, and peeked around the other side of the car. There was a smaller worker vehicle, with a bright white spotlight, making its way along the train. I lay down again, and closed my eyes. I heard the crunch of gravel as this smaller vehicle approached; I opened my eyes a slit and saw that the shadows in my hiding place were gone; the grimy yellow steel, the twisted machinery, the lower half of my body- all of this was washed in blinding light. And then the light ran from the car like water, up the back end of the car behind mine, and away. + +I forced out the breath I'd been holding. I shouldered my pack and, without looking, hopped to the ballast from the side of the train where I'd seen the pickup. The narrow dirt road was, mercifully, cloaked in shadow, and I ran along it, watching for a hole in the high fence that bordered it. Up ahead, I saw a gate, and I sprinted for it; the gate was open and I turned and saw that the dirt track disappeared among truck-sized puddles of dark water and mounds of gravel. There was a tower of concrete blocks and I ducked around the back of it, where its trapezoid of shadow would protect me from the spotlights. A moment later a pair of headlights cut across the puddle to my right, made an arc across the piles of gravel, and disappeared. + +I sat on the mud ground and rested my back against the concrete blocks. I pulled the railmaps from my pack and studied them, along with the notes I'd taken when questioning train-riding friends about this route. I had some conflicting information, but it seemed that my train was either terminating here or it was only _working, _which could mean so many things, and then it was continuing on to Chicago. + +I closed my eyes. The humid oatmeal smell of the air pulled at my empty stomach. And yet, I knew what I would do; I would get back on my train. I had a feeling that this train was continuing on. I only had to find my car again, hide myself as best I could, and wait. + +Somehow I made it down the shadowy dirt track back to my car without being seen; somehow I flung myself up onto my narrow metal shelf and down behind the twisted machinery before the next beeping worker truck passed by. Stretching out, I willed myself to disappear into the shadows. Carefully I unrolled my sleeping pad, scooched inside my sleeping bag, and went to sleep. + +Two hours later the train began to move, and I woke up. The train was moving backwards. I knew that this was not a good sign, and I lay in my sleeping bag, wondering what to do, as my car was pulled beneath the rows of stadium lights. All around me was the beeping and clangings of industry, and it was difficult to ascertain, from my position, just what was happening to my train, exactly. I thought about sitting up, but then my car came to a stop directly beneath one of the giant spotlights, and all the shadows in my hiding place were banished. And worker vehicles crunched past on the gravel run alongside the train, and CB radios hissed and crackled. It wasn't so much that I feared a possible trespassing ticket as I feared the humiliation of climbing down off the train, at this point, in the very heart of the yard. Suddenly appearing in front of a whole audience of unsuspecting yard workers, who would turn away, who would not be able to look; for I was an idiot, I was doing the unthinkable; I was breaking the golden rule of train riding that binds worker to rider in a timeless, symbiotic relationship- _be invisible. _So I stayed in my sleeping bag, peering out into the washed-out night sky, listening to the sound of truck tires on gravel, and then, silhouetted against the blinding stadium light above me, there appeared the wide, rectangular arm of a crane, and the arm descended onto the car that was attached to mine, and the massive freight container was lifted effortlessly into the air above my face. + +I have never moved so fast in my entire life. One moment I was on the train, in my sleeping bag, staring up at the red-lit fingers of the crane as they swung above my car, and the next moment my shoes were on, my sleeping bag was stuffed away, my foam pad was strapped to my pack and I was on the ground, pinned beneath the blinding spotlights, surrounded by the workers. + +The spell had been broken. The spell that had been so strong that I had slept for hours, unnoticed, in a busy yard, so strong that I had almost been crushed. _Be invisible. _ + +There was a little white cart idling next to me. The window came down. "Just where do you think you're headed?" asked the man inside. + +"I'm trying to find my way out of here." I said. + +"How'd you get in here in the first place?" asked the worker. + +"I came in on the train." + +"You were trespassing on the train? Where did you get on?" + +I lied and named a crewchange in Montana. + +"You've been trespassing since _Montana?_" + +Oh come on, I thought. Of course I was trespassing. "Look, are you going to give me a ticket? You don't have to lecture me. It's late." A little light rain was falling. I didn't give a fuck. I had just cheated death. + +"Wait here," said the worker. "I've got to call the railcop. He can decide what he wants to do with you." + +I knew that if I had been more stealthy, and if he had been the only witness, he would've just shooed me away from the yard. But since I'd flaunted the laws of invisibility and made a spectacle of myself in front of the entire yard, then he would have to make a show of following the rules, which means calling the railcop, if there is one. + +It took a while for the railcop to arrive, and meanwhile I stood, waiting, in the busy lot with my hands in my pockets, feeling like a fool. At last the railcop's unmarked SUV crunched over to me, and he stepped out under the bright spotlights, and I saw that he looked just like the man on the pringles can. + +I handed him my ID and he turned it over in his hands, and looked at it thoughtfully. I studied his weepy red eyes and his carefully combed mustache, his tidy wool sweater. At last he looked up at me. + +"I'll take your information," he said, "and then I'll let you go. This time. Next time I'll give you a citation. For _theft of services."_ + +"Theft of services? Really?" + +He nodded. "Just like if you stole a ride on Amtrak." As if I had shipped myself across the country in a freight container, without paying. Which I guess I pretty much had. + +"And one more thing," he added, peering down at me with bleary, grandfatherly eyes- "Did you know, I wonder, that people have been riding freight trains since before you and I were born?" He nodded again, and looked out across the shadowed strings of trains, and rocked a little on his heels. "And they'll still be riding trains, long after you and I are gone." + +This was not the kind of railcop with paramilitary aspirations, the sort of railcop who cut his hair close to the scalp and treated you like a terrorist. This was the kind of railcop who had a wood-paneled office in a trailer somewhere, where he sat drinking tumblers of whiskey and reading railfan magazines and out-of-print books on the history of freight trains, in between rounds of half-heartedly combing the yard with his spotlight. + +The man handed me back my ID and pointed me towards the dark road out of the lot. Thank you, I said. Workers looked away as I passed, lest they be turned into pillars of salt. Beyond the gates of the yard stretched shadowed, sleeping industrial buildings, and a narrow bit of forest. I made my way into these woods, pushing aside the tangled branches, until I found a clearing, strewn with fallen leaves. I spread out my bedroll, propped my pack beside me, and pulled my tarp over everything. And then for a while I lay still, heart racing, and when I closed my eyes I saw the crane again, swinging over me with its red-tipped fingers, and I thought _I have been traumatized,__I will never be able to sleep again._ After which I immediately fell asleep, to the gentle tap of rain on tarpaulin. + +**** + +For two days, in Minneapolis, I waited for another train. The first day it misted, it rained in fits, and then it rained solid, a heavy sheet of rain that blackened the sky and sent torrents of water running down the streets. The sky was no longer a warm roof but a body of water that swept over the city, into every small place that had once been bright and dry. + +I may as well have jumped in the river with my pack on my back. + +I trudged, senselessly, water dripping from my eyelashes, looking for a Laundromat, some dignity, a meaningful life. But the outskirts of Minneapolis would not give me what I needed. In the evening the rain stopped, and a long bus ride took me to a Laundromat, where I watched cable television and dried everything I owned. Then I walked back through the night to the trainyard, where the sky had turned clear stars. On a bluff above the yard there was a trampled-down place among the thistles, carpeted in flattened beer cartons, and it was here that I spread out my bedroll and lay on my stomach to watch the tracks. There was a train sitting there, but it was sitting where my train had sat, and so I knew that it was destined for the hungry maw of the great train-eating crane. Other trains came and went, but my Minneapolis trainyard spirit had been broken. I'll just sleep here, I thought, looking up at the glittering stars. And in the morning I will hitch-hike. + +The second day it didn't rain. I found a food co-op and ate dolmas, and then spent the day on the bus, going this way and that, trying to find the highway. The bus filled up and emptied, filled up and emptied, but nothing was where the map said that it would be. And then the day began to wane, and I knew that I had missed my opportunity, because no-one picks up hitchhikers after sunset. + +I found a payphone at a corner store and called Lark, in North Carolina. + +"I'm trying to get there," I said, "I'm so exhausted." + +"If you make it back onto the train, you can ride it five hours east to Winona." said Lark. "I've got a friend there you can stay with." + +I hung up the phone and stared at the way the streetlights made patterns on the concrete lot. A train, then. A train it would be after all. And I hiked the three miles through winding industry back to the trainyard, and climbed atop my thistle-covered bluff. The trainyard was noisy below me, full of hustling workers and clanging steel, but I'd watched it enough at this point to know that the early morning would be still, the yard would be empty, my train would come, and I would go. + +My trip east had begun with the mail train, Chicago bound, fastest intermodal on the highline, and now I caught that train again- at six a.m. when the sky was growing pale and the whole trainyard was asleep. A piggy back, that windy beast of a car. I hauled myself up and under the axle just moments before the sun rose, the engines attached, and the whole yard came awake. As my train thundered east along the Mississippi river I lay back and drew my hoodie over my face. I had a heat in my throat as though I was getting sick, and the weariness that comes after days of travel; a hunger for vinegar and bitter greens, an aversion to the wind. + +I got off the train in a tangle of green beneath an overpass. I pushed my way onto the road. At a gas station I called Lark's friend, whose name was Florence, and bought a banana and some gas station chili. I hadn't eaten since the day before and I was starving. I was sitting outside on my pack, eating the banana, when Florence arrived. + +Florence was driving a battered red pickup, and she wrenched down the tailgate so I could throw my pack in back. She wore a floppy, wide-brimmed hat, dirty jean shorts, and her skin was tanned the color of hazelnuts. I thanked her for her hospitality, and she took off her sunglasses and peered at me. I saw that her face was a constellation of freckles. + +Florence's farm was a ten minute drive outside of town, and we passed rolling green pastures and flame-colored oak trees and then pulled up alongside a little red house. Inside the house was one tall room, with a woodstove and high windows and sunbeams puddled on the floor. Upstairs was a loft for sleeping, said Florence, and she pointed me to the laundry room so that I could wash my grimy things. + +I sorted my laundry and then discovered Florence's good-smelling peppermint soap, which I used to scrub the diesel exhaust from my face. When I emerged Florence had made us a salad of kale and tomatoes from her garden, some turnips and black pepper. We ate it sitting at the little table looking out at the garden, which sprawled across the property, weedy and dry at the end of the season. + +"Do you want to see the boathouse?" asked Florence. + +I didn't know what that was. + +"Yes." I said. + +We drove into town and then over a bridge to a little island in the Mississippi, forested with ash trees and screeching with insects. There was a soft dirt path that led along the island, and we followed it to a sandy shore where a little house was rocking gently in the current. The house was painted bright candy colors and looked as though it had been built from oddly-shaped pieces of wood. It was dim inside the house, and Florence gathered up a handful of oil lamps and lit them, revealing surfaces that were cluttered with purple plums and taper candles stuffed into wine bottles. A row of theater seats had been bolted to the wall. Upstairs, said Florence, was a bedroom with a view out over the river, a little closet with a sawdust shitter. + +"There's a raftshack too." Said Florence. And she led me outside and around the worn wooden deck, past the tomato garden of hewn plastic barrels, to where a little wooden shack sat bobbing in the water. The raftshack had its own tiny deck, to which a wooden park bench had been bolted. Florence hopped carefully from the houseboat to the raftshack, and I watched as its front end dipped down into the water. There was a plywood door and screen windows, and inside was a heavy dresser, a wooden bedframe with a futon, and some shelves. + +"I just got it two days ago," said Florence. "Some kids had built it; they floated it down from Minneapolis. But they didn't want it anymore; they sold it to me for two hundred bucks." Florence ran her hand along the doorframe. "I've got to take it apart and shorten it," she said. "Make it less heavy. And I've got to get an engine." + +Some friends of Florence's appeared on the path and they built a fire together in the trees. Florence had an old fiddle and someone had brought a case of beer. I made a pot of lentils in the kitchen of the houseboat and then stood on the deck, listening to the music, eating the lentils with a wooden spoon. After a while Florence wandered over and I told her I was tired, so she led me to the raftshack, flipped over a bucket and set an oil lamp on it. Her friend loaned me a sleeping bag and a book on train graffiti and I lay on the futon, feeling the pontoons rock beneath me. Later when I got up to pee everything was still; the sky was black above me, stretching out over the Mississippi, the stars like handfuls of broken glass. I went back to sleep and dreamt that Florence and I were playing in the water like muskrats, that we had bicycles we rode across its surface. + +### Like this: + +Like Loading... + +[1]: http://carrotquinn.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/lark-seattle.jpg?w=676&h=505 diff --git a/saved_articles/a meaningless conversation with life navigator ian mackaye.txt b/saved_articles/a meaningless conversation with life navigator ian mackaye.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8434fd0 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/a meaningless conversation with life navigator ian mackaye.txt @@ -0,0 +1,107 @@ +--- +title: A meaningless conversation with life navigator Ian MacKaye +date: 2015-08-07T15:58:28Z +source: http://www.huckmagazine.com/art-and-culture/ian-mackaye-survival-issue-interview/ +tags: culture + +--- + +Ian MacKaye knows that I cannot look him in the eye. He shows me around a cluttered corner of Dischord House – the storied home of his record label since 1981 – and lets me peek inside the kitchen. The wall behind him rises like a cluttered tomb, enveloping him in a monument to vinyl. Every surface is covered in records, every shelf stacked high with CDs, The Faith, Minor Threat and Snakes LPs acting like a kind of self-authored wallpaper. There's a worn crumpled map pinned just behind his head, but where it points to is entirely blurred. + +Skype is fucked, when you think about it. "You're in your house in London, I'm in Arlington, Virginia, and I'm looking at you and we're talking. This is just… insane!" says Ian, reaching for his tea. "I used to think people were being deferential because they always lowered their eyes. Then I realised they're looking at the picture instead of the camera. But what you do with your eyes when you talk to someone is so important. Look at me… see!" + +Two bright blue beacons flick up at me; they pierce across 4,000 miles. + +Eye to eye with Ian MacKaye is a pretty wild experience. Not because he's widely admired for injecting punk with its own fierce philosophy – a wholesale belief in self-reliance, as expressed through Minor Threat and Fugazi. Or the fact that in Dischord Records he built a seedbed for those ideals and never swayed when others chose the pay cheque. It's not because history will call him a custodian of D.C. hardcore and punk, a cultural movement that has long been the subject of wistful documentaries, many of which, to Ian's mind, distill the experience of thousands of narratives into one oversimplified arc. The man is just so wise. It's like dialling into a Google hangout with Aristotle – if Aristotle wore a beanie and was kind of sweary. + +At fifty-two, the kid who played bass in a band called Teen Idles, and started a record label just so that people would listen, is a little further down the continuum. He wakes up most mornings, heads over to Dischord House, and goes about his business. Part of that business is about preservation – uploading every live show Fugazi ever played into a digital archive that spans back to 1987. It's a chronicle of life. A legacy. The breadcrumb trail of a person who just never stopped. + +And it has absolutely nothing to do with survival. + +**You got me thinking. When I mentioned this issue was about survival, you said that wasn't something you could relate to. +**It's the word survival – the idea you would 'survive' something. I understand that people, melodramatically, may consider life something one has to survive. But you're alive, that's what life is, you are surviving. It plays into this idea that people's lives are narratives – that it's a film or book and you have to survive all this craziness. I think it's a disservice, ultimately, because it makes others feel like their lives aren't crazy enough. In my mind, life is not a war – although human beings create conditions that make it feel that way – and I think that navigation is a fairer term. I see life essentially as an empty field. The construct of that empty space has to do with society, but it also has to do with us. The only real question is how are we going to navigate that space, from beginning to end. If people thought of themselves as navigators, maybe they would have more purchase. Navigation is about having a say in the matter, whereas surviving is about dealing with things being thrown at you. With navigation you get to decide whether you want to be in that situation in the first place. + +**How does that feed into ideas of success? +**You could say society sees success as absolute – you're either winning or you're losing. Can success be interpreted as just keeping going? Success is a perpetual state of affairs. With my music for instance, I'm not goal-oriented. The decision to be in a band was huge for me. I came to a realisation that I could do this, because punk gave me the permission slip. I was able to play bass, which is crazy – here's this animal beating on a wire, and a tune is coming out. That is success. Then I played with other people, and these animals organised those sounds in a way that was recognisable. That is success. We wrote our own songs. That is success. We played a show. That is success. Every day is a success – if you're in the moment. But I think you're right about society seeing success as a brass ring. Have you heard that term? In America, on merry-go-rounds they had these brass rings just off to the side, beyond arm's reach. If you could lean out and hook that brass ring, you could redeem it for a prize. So that's the term, 'Going for a brass ring.' It's that idea of trophies, where success is always the endpoint. Whereas for me, success is fluid. + +**What about when that perpetual state is propelled by an imperative of growth. Capitalism seems to be founded on this idea that you have to grow in order to keep moving forward. Have you ever felt those pressures?** +I reject that concept wholeheartedly. Dischord was just some kids who put out records that nobody cared about, except for those kids and their friends. But it was such a valid time for me. When you are the one actually glueing the records, that's the record industry for real. All the money generated stayed in the label, but it never occurred to me that it wasn't working. I had something I wanted to do every day – what more could you ask for in life? Ten years later we were selling hundreds of thousands of records and that presented other challenges, but I didn't feel like, 'Oh, now we're successful!' I thought, 'Now, it's today.' The label is smaller now, but it doesn't feel any less significant. The hardest part is the observer's perception of the situation. Relevancy, or irrelevancy, isn't a concern for the participants. The people who are actually the doers don't do it for relevancy, but they are judged by a society that focuses on abstract and ridiculous concepts of what is or isn't relevant. This is fucking art, people! If it speaks to you, it speaks to you, even if it doesn't speak to other people. The idea that you have to grow all the time… I mean, visualise a person, you or me, perpetually growing. It's not a pretty picture. At some point we're going to burst. And that is true of all things. The real issue here is a different word that starts with G R. Greed. That's what we talk about when we talk about growth. More for me – that's the concept. + +**What about greed in terms of popularity? In my industry, statistics seem to be the new barometer of success. It's as ridiculous as how many Twitter followers you have. How can we navigate that notion of success and find fulfilment?** +If you have a certain number of followers, you're relevant. If you don't, you're irrelevant. I just think it's nonsense. This one situation came up when a local paper wrote an article about the fact that Urban Outfitters was selling Minor Threat T-shirts. They called to see if this was true and I said, 'Yeah.' Another company makes them, and I just don't give a fuck. The headline was something akin to, 'Ian MacKaye Doesn't Care Anymore'. This set off a day-long siege of comments. It was just so absurd. Friends called to say, 'I feel terrible, you're getting your ass kicked online.' But you know, the internet is an aquarium. There could be the fiercest battle – like the fish could be going at it, just tearing the crap out of each other. The castles could be knocked over. The gravel displaced. But for those of us outside the aquarium, not a drop gets on us. It's just not real. If people want to engage in that communication, I'm not judgemental. But if it hurts you, or it's dispiriting, then get out of the aquarium. I mean, you spend more time in that world, what do you make of it? + +**I feel like it's a beast that has to be constantly fed, but you never really understand it. So for me, it's a permanent anxiety. In publishing, we're judged on how well we engage our audience. +**My response to people judging you on 'Likes' would be, 'Fuck that!' It's just bullshit. This notion that we are judged by clicks on buttons – we should resist that as a form of navigation. My take is that you're a writer. What a shame that you spend time dealing with the machine as a barometer of your work. Frankly, I'm a musician and I spend way too much fucking time dealing with email. Like, when you sent me an email, it was a glacial exchange. Then you got on the phone and things make sense. Should we not have an ocean between us, I'd say come over and let's talk. That's the most rewarding thing, spending time with people. That's why I do what I do. I don't do it to be by myself. I'm interested in riding this world with other people. + +**Do you think technology is a good thing for the culture you have been a part of? +**There will always be people who identify themselves as punk who recognise that technology is a tool not a lifestyle. So, I think punk will survive, or navigate that just fine. But when you say, 'This culture that you are a part of,' I don't think that you can define what that culture is. I mean… could you? + +**It depends on how you define the idea of punk, or DIY. To me, it's about whether you value self-reliance above anything else. I think all kinds of people would be inspired by that, beyond music. Is it a good time for young people to make something happen for themselves? +**I think it's always a good time for that. My definition of punk is the free space. It's an area in which new ideas can be presented without having to go through the filtration or perversion of profiteering. So, if we're not worried about selling things, then we can actually think. The problem with new ideas is that they don't have audiences. And in terms of the marketplace, an audience equals clientele. If you have no audience, it's not profitable. Punk was an area, for me at least, where it didn't seem to matter. I didn't know any punk rocker who thought, 'I'm gonna make a living out of this.' The ones that did quickly left. What I received from the counterculture was a gift; the permission to create freely. And my reaction was to take care of this gift and keep it alive because it continues to give. Of course, there were some people who thought, 'Wow. If I polish it, I can sell it.' And then it ceases to be a gift. + +But I hate to talk so much about the fucking computer. The fact that it's dominating this conversation is a sickness. All we can talk about is our devices. For the last decade, society has been stoned on technology. If we're living through a screen, we're not doing anything. I thought a lot about the psychological effects of an office. People working eight, ten, twelve hours a day. Look up from that computer, look around you, and nothing has moved. Never in the history of the world have people worked ten hours and nothing has moved. Imagine if you were sweeping for twelve hours how clean your fucking house would be? The dirty plate next to your computer? It's still there! As a society, there's gotta be a psychological effect. I don't know what it will be, but at some point, people will sit back and realise that this is a tool. And that life – real life – is outside of it. I can accept it's a miracle that we're talking across an ocean, but fuck if I'm gonna live in it! I wanna go outside, too. If you want to talk about real navigation, one should seek balance. If the right foot and left foot are out of whack, then you go down. + +**Do you relate that sense of bewilderment – at our obsession with technology – with any feelings that gave rise to straight edge? Were you just as bewildered by kids taking drugs? +**Yeah, definitely. It never made sense to me. The structure of society is an oppressive concept. I don't see self-destruction as a valid form of rebellion. If anything it's an assistance; you're a thorn in their side, so help them by taking yourself out. Today, they're imbibing technology, a new kind of drug, and losing themselves. I never got involved with drugs because I saw the fallout from the '60s. As a Hendrix fan, I'd talk to people who'd seen him play and they couldn't remember it because they were high. It doesn't make sense to me that you wouldn't want to remember your life. This concept of partying, it's like you're sweeping up after yourself constantly. You're just sweeping away your memories. I like to be present, and keep it with me. Some people think of straight edge as a tee-totaling sobriety movement, but in my mind it was just about self definition. I found it unimpeachably positive. But people always find ways to be derisive. You're in England – you fucking know that, right? It's an extremely snarky society. + +**England has this tall poppy syndrome… +**Tall poppy what…? + +**It's this saying, like when the poppies grow too tall, someone will want to chop them down. It's a totally different culture to, say, the American Dream, or rooting for other people. Here, when you do well people are more likely to say, 'Don't get too big for your boots.' +**Are you familiar with the crab pit concept? You're at a beach and you dig a hole in the sand and throw a bunch of crabs in, the crabs will try to escape by climbing up the sides. But if one should get higher, the others will pull him down. I don't think it's a vindictive thing, they're just looking for anything to grab onto. So if one starts to ascend, the others see that as a rung on the ladder. The effect, however, is that they pull one another down. So the pit of the crabs is like a self-defeating concept. I find it very troubling, derision. + +![Ian-Mackaye-Rupert-Smisson-Huck-3][1] + +Illustration by Rupert Smissen + +**What about protectionism. When people become very protective of a 'scene' and popularity is seen as death. What do you make of that sense of ownership people have over a collective culture? +**I supplanted the idea of 'scene' with tribe early on. My interest in punk rock was that I wanted to create a family. Most people I knew that identified as punk were marginalised. Maybe they had trouble at home or felt marginalised, politically, racially, for their sexuality – even for their gender! They felt they didn't belong but I realised, 'Oh, we belong to each other.' When you're young you want to protect that, like 'This is fucking important don't ruin it.' At some point I realised overarching protectionism was ruining it because it conflicted with my attempt to create community through inclusion. But then later I saw people who defined themselves through exclusion. Like, 'We all wear purple jackets, and if you don't wear a purple jacket you're not one of us.' That's just unsustainable. If your heart is closed, at some point it's gonna stop beating. Young kids who have a very orthodox view of punk rock are still learning – they'll figure it out. But most people go through life as tourists. They're checking out the sights and eventually they'll go home. I'm always looking for the long-distance runners. The people who recognise that protest is a form of exercise and that life is there if you want it. You just have to be open, communicative and interested. That's who I recognise as my tribe. + +**When you look back on your own history, do you compartmentalise it into different eras? +**I'm definitively anti-chapter. It's all a flight of stairs. I wouldn't be where I am now if it weren't for the steps before. + +**Why are people obsessed with beginnings and endings. I feel like people would expect me to ask you about the 'heyday of punk rock', as if it was a defined period that just ended. Why do we compartmentalise things that way? +**I guess, because it's easier to write about. The reason we like endings is that they're manageable. Think about the effect of the electronic medium on the way we think. Radio, television, movies, computers. At some point things became serialised as stories. But when you live in a society where you're constantly being shown stories, our brains become reformatted to create narratives in our own lives. It's misleading because life does not have a narrative arc. The world does not have a narrative arc. Or if it does, it's bigger than anything we could ever fucking write about. I remember being in bands where someone would say, 'Well, that's the biggest thing I'll ever do.' Who thinks like that?! I don't think of life as phases. I think of life as life. + +**That rings true of something I hear all the time, that life dramatically changes when you're thirty. I see it in the culture all the time, this idea that you have to experience as much as you can before some arbitrary date. As someone who has defined what youth culture means for so many people, what do you make of that obsession with youth? +**I think it's bullshit. I don't believe in youth culture. By embracing it you also embrace the expiration date. Not that I'm always young, fuck that! I'm alive! I'm living! When people say, 'Urgh, I feel so old,' I'm like, 'What the fuck man! You're not old, you just are.' If you're cold you can put a coat on. If you're wet you can dry off. But if you're old you can't do anything. Let me ask you: what role have you played in terms of becoming thirty-one? + +**Um? Zero active participation. +**Exactly! All you did was wake up! That's it. We wake up! There's this notion in American culture that children are not real. It's pointed out by the statement, 'Well, at some point you're gonna have to get real.' But people are real from the moment they're born. They're real and they're valid. When a fifteen-year-old kid has an idea, it's not an unreal idea. But if you're told over and over again that you have to 'get real', it creates this mentality that it doesn't matter what they do. Because once they become real they will be absolved of everything, so they take no responsibility. This experiential thing? It's a little touristic. Like, 'I gotta taste it all!' I know people who fucked one person I know people who fucked 100 people. Their experience may seem different, but outside pressures leave both people wondering if they made a mistake. I wish people wouldn't spend their lives thinking about what they could've or should've done. I wish they would live their lives thinking about what they should be doing now. + +**Do you ever feel anxiety or have moments of insecurity? +**I'm not an anxious person, at all. I tend to think of insecurities as reminders to go do something. As a teenager I was extremely self-conscious of my body. But at some point I realised there's nothing constructive about agonising over it. So I filed that away, like, I can't change this, so just do something – get to work. As a young child, I couldn't grasp the idea of death. It was so unbearable for me, I freaked the fuck out. But then at some point I realised I would never get an answer from a single person on earth. So I figured – just live. I think the most constructive way to approach a lot of this stuff is to make peace with incomprehensibility. I accept the things that I cannot comprehend, that I will never comprehend, and I have peace with that. If I feel an insecurity, I practise more. I write a song. Just do something. + +**That idea that you can be an active participant in life – that if you want to do something, you should do it – what separates you from people that never have that realisation? +**I have no idea… We only wake up for a limited number of days. Although, ironically, I would say life is eternal, because I don't think there's any comprehension before or after it. So, if all we know is this, then it's eternal. But if we're going to spend time waking up, I can't see waking up punching ourselves as any way to live. That just seems crazy. Same with the marketplace; the daily drill. This idea that people's time belongs to companies?! It's just no way to live. + +![Illustration by Rupert Smisson][2] + +Illustration by Rupert Smissen + +**Self-reliance is an amazing navigation tool, but what advice would you have for somehow who was crippled with self-doubt? +**I have this concept about changing the source of light. The way things appear has a lot to do with where the light is. Sometimes things seem impenetrable, but maybe we just need to change the source of light. For instance, if you felt paralysed by your work – you're miserable but you're scared to leave your situation, because you think you'd become irrelevant – then I would say: stand back. Change the source of light. Look at the situation and realise that, though it is important to you – and I will say this to myself – though it is important to you, your work is ridiculous. And your fears are unfounded. You said, 'People are inspired by you,' but however one rates my 'celebritydom' or fame or whatever the fuck I have, it's worth pointing out that 99.9 per cent of the population of the world never has, doesn't and never will know of me. I don't exist. There are entire giant cities in Indonesia where not a single person has ever heard of me. The music I make does not matter. And if it's causing me duress, I should realise it's ridiculous and that my fears are unfounded. Because what's the worse thing that could happen. Like, what would be the worst thing that could happen to you? + +**That I miss my deadline. I have anxiety every week before we go to print – which is now. One voice in my head says, 'You're gonna miss it! You're a failure!' The other voice is like, 'It's a magazine, get a grip.' +**Exactly, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. Life is just a straight line. There are two definitive points, one at the beginning and one at the end. It could be argued that should you decide to procreate that may merit another point. Everything else is affection – accoutrements, add-ons, additives. The way we speak, the things we own, the way we identify ourselves, they're all artifices on some level… While we've been talking maybe 100 people have been killed, maybe 1,000, who knows, and yet this development hasn't affected our conversation whatsoever. If you put things in perspective one realises how it just doesn't matter. So the value is up to us, and if we're gonna assign the value, then why would we assign negative values? + +**I would say you're in the minority – the enlightened minority – for being liberated by feeling like a speck of dust in the universe. And the rest of society is veering more towards this idea of, 'I gotta make it!' Why is the ratio skewed? +**Well, I think that your definition of society is a little off base. People working in the fields of Vietnam, or whatever, I don't think they're thinking, 'I gotta make it!' I think they're just doing their work. You're in London. You work in a field that is obsessed with digital. I think probably the pure irrelevance of that medium, when you get down to it, is the reason people are so hellbent on wanting it to matter. It's almost an inverse. It's like they're making cotton candy, yet they're obsessed with nutrition. 'It has to have nutrients in it!' they say, because they know it's cotton candy. I'm not being dismissive. People freak out when they're thirty, they freak out when they're forty, mostly I think people just like to freak out. I guess it's convention. Convention gives people a sense of comprehension. And people are not at peace with incomprehension. I read an article about a space craft that was tasked with taking photos, I think Carl Sagan was involved. NASA said we'll only operate this camera until we're at the edge of the universe. After years and years, when it slipped past the edge of the universe and NASA said let's cut it off, Sagan lobbied to take one more picture – and it was of the earth. Can you imagine what Earth looked like from outside the universe? + +**Like a star? +**It's not even a star. It was a tiny little dot. And Sagan pointed to this little dot in this vast sea of stars, more than you can imagine, or ever count, and he said, 'Every idea that any human has ever thought, every fight, every war, everything that has ever occurred, happened there.' How insignificant, that people would die over property when it doesn't even rate as a speck in the universe? I appreciate that idea. Because insignificance is liberating. If you stop thinking this is my land, then you're free. If it's your land – my property, my concept, my scene, my society – you have to defend it. You're hamstrung by it. + +**What about legacy. Does that matter to you? +**No. I already have a legacy and I realise how perverted it is, and misleading. I'm not interested in legacy in terms of my reputation. I am however interested in leaving a trail. I feel really clear that the work that I've done – that we've done – was about kids doing something they wanted to do and showing that it's possible despite what the corporations say. Leaving markers, or breadcrumbs, so that people know this is a possibility – I hope that inspires other people who inevitably will come along to do the same. So, yes, I am interested in documentation – I build archives precisely because I have a sense of custodial responsibility. A lot of my work has been focused on the idea that not only can you build your own road, but you can drive on it too. But the problem with these small roads is that they get built off to the side of super highways. They tend to be less used and they atrophy; the vines come over, then people think they're not passable. That they're not possible. But they are passable – they're just not permanent. Super highways are permanent because the people who own the super highways, who erected the tolls, keep them that way. It's just a different track. And it's important that people know there are other possibilities. + +**What is the most important navigation tool that people should rely on? +**I would never pretend to have an answer for you. But at some point in my life I decided that the basis of all my reasoning is this: pain hurts. That's true for you and it's true for me; I don't wanna hurt other people because I don't wanna be hurt. Keep things simple and they suddenly seem doable. I read this book in my early twenties – by C.S. Lewis, I think. There was this image of life as a tree and each decision we made was a branch. And then every decision we made, once we were on that branch, were smaller branches and smaller branches until you got down to the twigs. The author explained that if you are on the wrong branch, if you made a bad decision, you have to go back to the trunk – because once you're on that branch, every decision will be wrong. That was such a great thing for me. I was just navigating, I made a mistake, so I have to go back to the trunk. Because back at the trunk, life – simple life – is always right. + +**This article originally appeared in Huck 49 – The Survival Issue. ****Grab a copy **in the [Huck Shop][3] or [**subscribe today][4] to make sure you don't miss another issue.********Enjoyed this article? [Like Huck on Facebook][5] or [follow us on Twitter][6].** + +[1]: http://www.huckmagazine.com/admin/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Ian-Mackaye-Rupert-Smisson-Huck-3.jpg +[2]: http://www.huckmagazine.com/admin/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Ian-Mackaye-Rupert-Smisson-Huck-2.jpg +[3]: http://huckmagazine.bigcartel.com/product/huck-49-the-survival-issue-pre-order +[4]: http://tcolondon.subscribeonline.co.uk/home/huck +[5]: https://www.facebook.com/HUCKmagazine +[6]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJx_aeb-w7VnlhnAVnRTDXw diff --git a/saved_articles/a selection of obscure robert anton wilson essays.txt b/saved_articles/a selection of obscure robert anton wilson essays.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..89b18cc --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/a selection of obscure robert anton wilson essays.txt @@ -0,0 +1,98 @@ +--- +title: A Selection of Obscure Robert Anton Wilson Essays +date: 2007-01-13T02:45:28Z +source: http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/01/12/a-selection-of-obscure-robert-anton-wilson-essays/ +tags: beauty, culture, literature, philosophy, satire, religion + +--- + + +![][1] +**I was prompted by yesterday's news** of the passing of RAW to scan the pieces he wrote for his 1999 column on [GettingIt.com][2], the progenitor of this webzine. It was a casual act, under the assumption that they would be somewhat dated. But as I reread the articles, it became clear that admirers who are unaware of them might in fact find them enjoyable. + +So, here are their links, with excerpts: + +**[Coming Again: The orgasmic release of the Apocalypse myth][3] ** + +_Sometimes, the Apocalypse can ruin your whole week._ + + +> [T]here may be more here, just as there is to horror and catastrophe movies if you think about them. Neo-Freudians, and especially Reichians, suggest that our form of civilization stifles and constricts us so much that at times we all long to experience some orgasmic but catastrophic "explosion," like King Kong breaking his chains and wrecking New York, or even more like the masochist in bondage, according to Dr. Reich. This sudden release from the bondage-and-discipline of our jobs and our taxes — actually called the Rapture by Fundamentalists — seems ghoulishly attractive to Christians, New Agers, and others who believe in a "spirit" that will survive the general wreckage. In that case, the end of the world seems no worse than a visit to the dentist: You know you'll feel better afterwards. This sort of desire for Total Escape/Total Annihilation has always had its bards and visionaries. + + +**[Reality Ain't What It Used To Be: Thirty-five years after Bell's Theorem][4]** + +_Sounds like Zen to some, but others fear this is opening the door to Dr. Berman's solipsism and the moon that is only there when we look at it..._ + + +> In my own (hazardous) attempt to translate Bell's math into the verbal forms in which we discuss what physics "means," Bell _seems_ to prove that any two "particles" once in contact will continue to act _as if_ connected no matter how far apart they move in "space" or "time" (or in space-time). You can see why New Agers like this: It sounds like it supports the old magick idea that if you get a hold of a hair from your enemy, anything you do to that hair will affect him. + + + + +**[In Doubt We Trust: Cults, religions, and BS in general][5]** + +_Can we actually "know" the universe? My God, it's hard enough finding your way around in Chinatown. — Woody Allen _ + + +> I have no commitment to materialism as a philosophy that explains everything, since no correlation of words can ever do that, and a philosophy is never more than a correlation of words. But restricting myself to the "materialistic"/scientific method of asking questions that have definite experiential answers, I observe no difference in operation between "cults" and "religions." Catholic nuns and priests vowing celibacy seem no more or less weird than Heaven's Gate members who also make that choice. Mormon extraterrestrial cosmology seems as goofy as Scientology, etc. Religions and cults all use the same techniques of brain damage, or "mind control," i.e. they all instill BS — Belief Systems. + + +**[The Lumber Of The Beast: Tracking the Antichrist][6]** + +_Did you know that Bill Gates is the Antichrist? Well, you've probably suspected it, but some people have set out to prove it..._ + + +> Among the fundamentalists, the Antichrist is always considered a specific individual appearing only in the last days of Earth. Recent candidates have included Aleister Crowley, Yasir Arafat, Prince Bernhard (founder of the _Bilderbergers_!), Henry Kissinger, Saddam Hussein, Mickey Mouse, Barney the Dinosaur, and even Ronald Reagan — whose full name, Ronald Wilson Reagan, has six letters in each word, thus yielding 6-6-6. + +**[Bugs Bunny And Other UFO Victims: Reality isn't always consensual][7] ** + +_Although few people remember this, Bugs Bunny was the first UFO "abductee" in a 1952 cartoon called "Hasty Hare."_ + + +> Imagine what would happen if "many millions" of U.S. citizens said they had been sexually assaulted by aliens from Mexico or Iraq, instead of aliens from Outer Space. Obviously, there would be no scientific taboo against investigating such cases, and Congress might even have declared war on the invaders by now. If the subjects claimed, as most of Dr. Mack's subjects do, that they now love their kidnappers and have received important ecological warnings from them, as well as learning from their extraterrestrial sermons about how wicked and wretched our society is, this would be considered evidence that they had been "brainwashed" as well as raped (think Stockholm Syndrome). The differences in scientific and political reactions to atrocities by human aliens and nonhuman aliens seem even more confusing than the rest of this mystery. + + +**[I Remember Satan: 'Recovered memory,' demonology, and duck soup][8] ** + +_Or, worse yet, is it possible that Daffy Duck is the Devil? Keep an eye on your local media for further Feminist or Fundamentalist revelations._ + + +> In 1997, a jury awarded $2.4 million in damages to one Nadine Cool, who had sued her former therapist, Dr. Kenneth Olson, for malpractice. He had convinced her, under hypnosis, that when she was a child her father had forced her to participate in Satanic rituals of human sacrifice. He also convinced her that she possessed no fewer than 126 alternate personalities, including angels, demons and even a duck. She had believed it all — including the duck — until she confronted her father with these hideous memories and he dropped dead of a heart attack. + +**[The Devil On The Chimney: A tale of Lovecraftian horror and psycho-archeology][9]** +_ +I sort of think the fundies have it right for once. Santa not only has an unsavory pagan ancestry but a rather criminal family history all around. Let me Illuminize you..._ + + +> As Weston La Barre pointed out a long time ago in his classic _Ghost Dance: The Origins of Religion, _you can find remnants of a primordial bear-god from the bottom of South America up over North America and over the North Pole and down across most of Europe and Asia. This deity appears in cave paintings from southern France carbon-dated at 30,000 BC. You can find him and her (for this god is bisexual) disguised in Artemis and Arduina and King Arthur, all unmasked via canny detective work by folklorists — and etymologists, who first spotted the bear-god when they identified the Indo-European root _ard_, meaning bear. You can track the bear-god in dwindling forms in a hundred fairy tales from all over Europe and Asia. And you can find the rituals of this still-living god among the indigenous tribes of both American continents. + + +**See Also:** +[Robert Anton Wilson 1932-2007][10] +[Neil Gaiman Has Lost His Clothes][11] +[When Cory Doctorow Ruled The World][12] +[Thou Shalt Realize The Bible Kicketh Ass][13] +[Is The Net Good For Writers?][14] +![][15] + + +Comments feed for this post: [RSS 2.0][16] +You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. + +[1]: http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/images/RAW.jpg +[2]: http://gettingit.com +[3]: http://www.gettingit.com/article/332 +[4]: http://www.gettingit.com/article/266 +[5]: http://www.gettingit.com/article/391 +[6]: http://www.gettingit.com/article/168 +[7]: http://www.gettingit.com/article/456 +[8]: http://www.gettingit.com/article/71 +[9]: http://www.gettingit.com/article/501 +[10]: http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/01/11/robert-anton-wilson-1932-2007/ +[11]: http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2006/10/04/neil-gaiman-has-lost-his-clothes-2/ +[12]: http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/02/08/cory-doctorow-overclocked-ru-sirius-interview/ +[13]: http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2006/12/21/bible-rushkoff-testament/ +[14]: http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/10/05/is-the-net-good-for-writers/ +[15]: http://optimize.indieclick.com/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=102&cb=INSERT_RANDOM_NUMBER_HERE&n=a4229683 +[16]: http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/01/12/a-selection-of-obscure-robert-anton-wilson-essays/feed/ diff --git a/saved_articles/americas vanishing silent spaces.txt b/saved_articles/americas vanishing silent spaces.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..f9bc827 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/americas vanishing silent spaces.txt @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +--- +title: An Unquiet Nation +date: 2010-02-07T22:05:35Z +source: http://www.newsweek.com/id/232668/page/2 +tags: nature + +--- + + +Audio ecologist Gordon Hempton talks about America's vanishing quiet spaces, and how our lives can be helped by listening to the silence. + +"There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm." —Theodore Roosevelt, 1910 + +"The day will come when man will have to fight noise as inexorably as cholera and the plague." —Nobel Prize–winning bacteriologist Robert Koch, 1905 + +Silence is something you assume you will always be able to find if you need it. All you have to do is drive far enough in the right direction, trek through quiet fields or woods, or dive into the sea's belly. For true silence is not noiselessness. As audio ecologist Gordon Hempton defines it, silence is "the complete absence of all audible mechanical vibrations, leaving only the sounds of nature at her most natural. Silence is the presence of everything, undisturbed." + +And silence, Hempton believes, is rapidly disappearing, even in the most remote places. He says there are fewer than a dozen places of silence—areas "where natural silence reigns over many square miles"—remaining in America, and none in Europe. In his book, One Square Inch of Silence: One Man's Search for Natural Silence in a Noisy World, written with John Grossman, Hempton argues that silence—a precious, underrated commodity—is facing extinction. Over the past three decades Hempton has circled the earth three times, recording sound on every continent except Antarctica: butterfly wings fluttering, coyotes singing, snow melting, waterfalls crashing, traffic clanging, birds singing. His work has been used in film soundtracks, videogames, and museums. + +He has also trekked through both remote and urban landscapes, measuring decibels and rude interruptions to the noises of nature. In 1983 he found 21 places in Washington state with noise-free intervals of 15 minutes or more. By 2007 there were three. (One of them is Olympic National Park, which he is trying to save, and he will not reveal the names of the others, arguing that they are protected by their anonymity.) Whom can we blame? People, and planes. Hempton claims that, during daytime, the average noise-free interval in wilderness areas has shrunk to less than five minutes. Think of the snowmobiles roaring through Yellowstone, helicopters flying over Hawaii volcanoes, and air tours over the Grand Canyon. It is air traffic that Hempton seems to resent the most: in his book, he travels across the United States in a 1964 VW bus, recording sound as he goes, from Washington state to Washington, D.C., where he meets with politicians and officials to press his case for the preservation of natural silence. + +I spoke to Hempton about his work, his mission, and whether he is just a cranky leaf-blower-hating hippie. + +Why should we care about silence? +It has become an increasingly rare experience to be in nature as our distant ancestors were. Even in our national parks today, despite laws to protect them, you are much more likely to be hearing noise pollution, particularly overhead aircraft, than you are to be hearing only the native sounds of the land. Yet to be in a naturally silent place is as essential today as it was to our distant ancestors. Besides spending time away from the damaging noise impacts present at our workplace, neighborhoods, and homes, we are given the opportunity not only to heal but discover something incredible—the presence of life, interwoven! Do you know what it sounds like to listen for 20 miles in every direction? That is more than 1,000 square miles. When I listen to a naturally silent place and hear nature at its most natural, it is no longer merely sound; it is music. And like all music, good or bad, it affects us deeply. + +Have you always been interested in silence? Were you a child with acutely sensitive hearing? + +As a young child, I was very close to the natural environment. For my first four years, we lived in Hawaii and all my friends could fit in my pockets—they were bugs. My brother, sister, and I ran wild. We moved back to the mainland eventually, but I clearly remember sliding to the bottom of a swimming pool and loving it. It was such an unusual silence, it was like I was suspended in time as I was holding my breath. + +At college I majored in botany, and I was outdoors in vegetation all the time. But I did not really start thinking of silence until I was a graduate student in plant pathology, when I was driving from Seattle to Madison, Wis., and decided to sleep in a cornfield for the night. I didn't want to pay for a hotel. As I lay there I heard crickets, and rolling thunder in the background, which captivated me. The thunderstorm came, and I truly listened. The storm passed on, and as I lay there, drenched, the only thought in my mind was, how could I be 27 years old and never have truly listened before? I then took my microphone and tape recorder and went everywhere, obsessively listening—freight trains, hobos—it was a flood of sensation. I realized how we need to hear to survive—in evolution, earlids never developed, but eyelids did. And to those who know that true listening is worship, silence is one of nature's most transformative sermons. I am filled with gratitude to have heard it. Max Ehrmann was right-on when he wrote: "Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence." + +Could too much silence make you mad? +Yes, too much silence will drive you mad in no time at all if you are talking about spending time alone in an anechoic chamber. That fact is well established. But in nature, experiencing too much natural silence will not drive you mad—in fact, it might make you sane. Recent studies have shown that nature experience can be as effective as medication in the treatment of autism, for example. + +What can we do to save natural silence? +First, go and experience it. Second, contact members of Congress and tell them to support your right to quiet—specifically, that the FAA needs to route aircraft around our most pristine national parks unless it is a rescue operation or other reasons to preserve life. The Organic Act of 1916 created the National Park Service to manage our national parks to remain "unimpaired" for present and future generations. Yet while natural quiet is listed as a protected natural resource, 90,000 air tours flew over Grand Canyon National Park in 2009, and another 90,000 air tours will fly again in 2010! + +What has been the response to this campaign to reroute aircraft, which you outline in your book? +Airline response has been good but limited. Alaska, American, and Hawaiian Airlines have all volunteered not to fly over Olympic National Park for some flights but not all. The catch is that the FAA has placed four jetways directly over Olympic park: three that crisscross the heart of the park and one that follows the Olympic National Seashore. These jetways are like interstates in the sky, but unlike the interstates that we drive on, there is no pavement to remove or expensive relocation construction cost. These jetways should be moved to protect Olympic park. This area is currently the least polluted by noise when compared to any of the other approximately 390 units managed by the National Park Service. Even more significantly, Olympic park has the greatest diversity of natural soundscapes: glacier-capped peaks, the best example of temperate rainforests in the Western Hemisphere, and the longest uninterrupted stretch of wilderness seashore in the Lower 48. + +How do we find silence? +The way to find silence is to go to onesquareinch.org and get directions. The way to begin to find the other 11 places in the U.S. is to look at a NASA view of the United States at night. Light pollution is the evil cousin of noise pollution. Then find a black space that is not between major cities (hint: look to the faraway corners of this country and the northern boundary with Canada). + +What would you say to people who might dismiss you as a mad hippie? +I'd laugh. I can totally see how they might think this just by reading quickly. But if they met me, visited my home, sit at the dinner table with my two kids—they would not think so. I am an American, like them, but one who has through unusual circumstances recognized something of unusual value. diff --git a/saved_articles/an introduction to unix.txt b/saved_articles/an introduction to unix.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..302c268 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/an introduction to unix.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1913 @@ +--- +title: Oliver | An Introduction to Unix +date: 2015-03-13T14:08:55Z +source: http://www.oliverelliott.org/article/computing/tut_unix/#100UsefulUnixCommands +tags: #cmdline + +--- + +**Everybody Knows How to Use a Computer, but Not Everyone Knows How to Use the Command Line. Yet This is the Gateway to Doing Anything and Everything Sophisticated with a Computer and the Most Natural Starting Place to Learn Programming** +_by Oliver; Jan. 13, 2014_ + + + +## Introduction + +I took programming in high school, but I never took to it. This, I strongly believe, is because it wasn't taught right—and teaching it right means starting at the beginning, with unix. The reason for this is three-fold: _(1)_ it gives you a deeper sense of how a high-level computer works (which a glossy front, like Windows, conceals); _(2)_ it's the most natural port of entry into all other programming languages; and _(3)_ it's super-useful in its own right. If you don't know unix and start programming, some things will forever remain hazy and mysterious, even if you can't put your finger on exactly what they are. If you already know a lot about computers, the point is moot; if you don't, then by all means start your programming education by learning unix! + +A word about terminology here: I'm in the habit of horrendously confusing and misusing all of the precisely defined words "[Unix][1]", "[Linux][2]", "[The Command Line][3]", "[The Terminal][4]", "[Shell Scripting][5]", and "[Bash][6]." Properly speaking, _unix_ is an operating system while _linux_ refers to a closely-related family of unix-based operating systems, which includes commercial and non-commercial distributions [1]. (Unix was not free under its developer, AT&T, which caused the unix-linux schism.) The _command line_, as [Wikipedia][3] says, is: + +> ... a means of interacting with a computer program where the user issues commands to the program in the form of successive lines of text (command lines) ... The interface is usually implemented with a command line shell, which is a program that accepts commands as text input and converts commands to appropriate operating system functions. + +So what I mean when I proselytize for "unix", is simply that you learn how to punch commands in on the command line. The _terminal_ is your portal into this world. Here's what my mine looks like: + +![image][7] + + +There is a suite of commands to become familiar with—[The GNU Core Utilities][8] ([wiki entry][9])—and, in the course of learning them, you learn about computers. Unix is a foundational piece of a programming education. + +In terms of bang for the buck, it's also an excellent investment. You can gain powerful abilities by learning just a little. My coworker was fresh out of his introductory CS course, when he was given a small task by our boss. He wrote a full-fledged program, reading input streams and doing heavy parsing, and then sent an email to the boss that began, _"After 1.5 days of madly absorbing perl syntax, I completed the exercise..."_ He didn't know how to use the command-line at the time, and now [a print-out of that email hangs on his wall][10] as a joke—and as a monument to the power of the terminal. + +You can find ringing endorsements for learning the command line from all corners of the internet. For instance, in the excellent course [Startup Engineering (Stanford/Coursera)][11] Balaji Srinivasan writes: + +> A command line interface (CLI) is a way to control your computer by typing in commands rather than clicking on buttons in a graphical user interface (GUI). Most computer users are only doing basic things like clicking on links, watching movies, and playing video games, and GUIs are fine for such purposes. +> +> But to do industrial strength programming - to analyze large datasets, ship a webapp, or build a software startup - you will need an intimate familiarity with the CLI. Not only can many daily tasks be done more quickly at the command line, many others can only be done at the command line, especially in non-Windows environments. You can understand this from an information transmission perspective: while a standard keyboard has 50+ keys that can be hit very precisely in quick succession, achieving the same speed in a GUI is impossible as it would require rapidly moving a mouse cursor over a profusion of 50 buttons. It is for this reason that expert computer users prefer command-line and keyboard-driven interfaces. + +To provide foreshadowing, here are some things you can do in unix: + +* make or rename 100 folders or files _en masse_ +* find all files of a given extension or any file that was created within the last week +* log onto a computer remotely and access its files with ssh +* copy files to your computer directly over the network (no external hard drive necessary!) with [rsync][12] +* run a [Perl][13] or [Python][14] script +* run one of the many programs that are only available on the command line +* see all processes running on your computer or the space occupied by your folders +* see or change the permissions on a file +* parse a text file in any way imaginable (count lines, swap columns, replace words, etc.) +* soundly encrypt your files or communications with [gpg2][15] +* run your own web server on the [Amazon cloud][16] with [nginx][17] +What do all of these have in common? All are hard to do in the [GUI][18], but easy to do on the command line. It would be remiss not to mention that unix is not for everything. In fact, it's not for a lot of things. Knowing which language to use for what is usually a matter of common sense. However, when you start messing about with computers in any serious capacity, you'll bump into unix very quickly—and that's why it's our starting point. + +Is this the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, [so help my white ass][19]? I believe it is, but also my trajectory through the world of computing began with unix. So perhaps I instinctively want to push this on other people: do it the way I did it. And, because it occupies a bunch of my neuronal real estate at the moment, I could be considered brainwashed :-) + +* * * + + +[1] Still confused about unix vs linux? [Refer to the full family tree][20] and these more precise definitions from Wikipedia: +**_unix_**: _a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, developed in the 1970s at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others_ +**_linux_**: _a Unix-like and mostly POSIX-compliant computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open-source software development and distribution [whose] defining component ... is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released [in] 1991 by Linus Torvalds_ ↑ + +## 100 Useful Unix Commands + +This article is an introduction to unix. It aims to teach the basic principles and neglects to mention many of the utilities that give unix superpowers. To learn about those, see [100 Useful Unix Commands][21]. + +## Getting Started: Opening the Terminal + +If you have a Mac, navigate to Applications > Utilities and open the application named "Terminal": + +![image][22] + +If you have a PC, _abandon all hope, ye who enter here_! Just kidding—partially. None of the native Windows shells, such as [cmd.exe][23] or [PowerShell][24], are unix-like. Instead, they're marked with hideous deformities that betray their ignoble origin as grandchildren of the MS-DOS command interpreter. If you didn't have a compelling reason until now to quit using PCs, here you are [1]. Typically, my misguided PC friends don't use the command line on their local machines; instead, they have to `ssh` into some remote server running Linux. (You can do this with an ssh client like [PuTTY][25], [Chrome's Terminal Emulator][26], or [MobaXterm][27], but don't ask me how.) On Macintosh you can start practicing on the command line right away without having to install a Linux distribution [2] (the Mac-flavored unix is called [Darwin][28]). + +For both Mac and PC users who want a bona fide Linux command line, one easy way to get it is in the cloud with [Amazon EC2][16] via the [AWS Free Tier][29]. If you want to go whole hog, you can download and install a Linux distribution—[Ubuntu][30], [Mint][31], [Fedora][32], and [CentOs][33] are popular choices—but this is asking a lot of non-hardcore-nerds (less drastically, you could boot Linux off of a USB drive or run it in a virtual box). + +* * * + + +[1] I should admit, you can and should get around this by downloading something like [Cygwin][34], whose homepage states: _"Get that Linux feeling - on Windows"_ ↑ +[2] However, if you're using Mac OS rather than Linux, note that OS does not come with the [GNU coreutils][9], which are the gold standard. [You should download them][35] ↑ + +## The Definitive Guides to Unix, Bash, and the Coreutils + +Before going any further, it's only fair to plug the authoritative guides which, unsurprisingly, can be found right on your command line: + + $ man bash + $ info coreutils + +(The $ at the beginning of the line represents the terminal's prompt.) These are good references, but overwhelming to serve as a starting point. There are also great resources online: although these guides, too, are exponentially more useful once you have a small foundation to build on. + +## The Unix Filestructure + +All the files and _directories_ (a fancy word for "folder") on your computer are stored in a hierarchical tree. Picture a tree in your backyard upside-down, so the trunk is on the top. If you proceed downward, you get to big branches, which then give way to smaller branches, and so on. The trunk contains everything in the sense that everything is connected to it. This is the way it looks on the computer, too, and the trunk is called the _root directory_. In unix it's represented with a slash: + +/ + +The root contains directories, which contain other directories, and so on, just like our tree. To get to any particular file or directory, we need to specify the _path_, which is a slash-delimited address: + +/dir1/dir2/dir3/some_file + +Note that a full path always starts with the root, because the root contains everything. As we'll see below, this won't necessarily be the case if we specify the address in a _relative_ way, with respect to our current location in the filesystem. + +Let's examine the directory structure on our Macintosh. We'll go to the root directory and look down just one level with the unix command tree. (If we tried to look at the whole thing, we'd print out every file and directory on our computer!) We have: + +![image][36] + + +While we're at it, let's also look at the directory /Users/username, which is the specially designated [_home directory][37]_ on the Macintosh: + +![image][38] + + +One thing we notice right away is that the Desktop, which holds such a revered spot in the GUI, is just another directory—simply the first one we see when we turn on our computer. + +If you're on Linux rather than Mac OS, the directory tree might look less like the screenshot above and more like this: + +![image][39] + + +The naming of these folders is not intuitive, but you can read about the role of each one [here][40]. I've arbitrarily traced out the path to /var/log, a location where some programs store their log files. + +If the syntax of a unix path looks familiar, it is. A webpage's [URL][41], with its telltale forward slashes, looks like a unix path with a domain prepended to it. This is not a coincidence! For a simple static website, its structure on the web is determined by its underlying directory structure on the server, so navigating to: + +http://www.example.com/abc/xyz + +will serve you content in the folder _websitepath/abc/xyz_ on the host's computer (i.e., the one owned by _example.com_). Modern dynamic websites are more sophisticated than this, but it's neat to reflect that the whole word has learned this unix syntax without knowing it. + +To learn more, see the [O'Reilly discussion of the unix file structure][42]. + +## The Great Trailing Slash Debate + +Sometimes you'll see directories written with a trailing slash, as in: + +dir1/ + +This helpfully reminds you that the entity is a directory rather than a file, but on the command line using the more compact _dir1_ is sufficient. There are a handful of unix commands which behave slightly differently if you leave the trailing slash on, but this sort of extreme pedantry isn't worth worrying about. + +## Where Are You? - Your _Path_ and How to Navigate through the Filesystem + +When you open up the terminal to browse through your filesystem, run a program, or do anything, _you're always somewhere_. Where? You start out in the designated _home directory_ when you open up the terminal. The home directory's path is preset by a global variable called HOME. Again, it's /Users/username on a Mac. + +As we navigate through the filesystem, there are some conventions. The _current working directory (cwd)_—whatever directory we happen to be in at the moment—is specified by a dot: + +. + +Sometimes it's convenient to write this as: + +./ + +which is not to be confused with the root directory: + +/ + +When a program is run in the cwd, you often see the syntax: + + $ ./myprogram + +which emphasizes that you're executing a program from the current directory. The directory one above the cwd is specified by two dots: + +.. + +With the trailing slash syntax, that's: + +../ + +A tilde is shorthand for the home directory: + +~ + +or: + +~/ + +To see where we are, we can _print working directory_: + + $ pwd + +To move around, we can _change directory_: + + $ cd /some/path + +By convention, if we leave off the argument and just type: + + $ cd + +we will go home. To _make directory_—i.e., create a new folder—we use: + + $ mkdir + +As an example, suppose we're in our home directory, /Users/username, and want to get one back to /Users. We can do this two ways: + + $ cd /Users + +or: + + $ cd .. + +This illustrates the difference between an _absolute path_ and a _relative path_. In the former case, we specify the complete address, while in the later we give the address with respect to our _cwd_. We could even accomplish this with: + + $ cd /Users/username/.. + +or maniacally seesawing back and forth: + + $ cd /Users/username/../username/.. + +if our primary goal were obfuscation. This distinction between the two ways to specify a path may seem pedantic, but it's not. Many scripting errors are caused by programs expecting an absolute path and receiving a relative one instead or vice versa. Use relative paths if you can because they're more portable: if the whole directory structure gets moved, they'll still work. + +Let's mess around. We know cd with no arguments takes us home, so try the following experiment: + + $ echo $HOME # print the variable HOME + /Users/username + $ cd # cd is equivalent to cd $HOME + $ pwd # print working directory shows us where we are + /Users/username + + $ unset HOME # unset HOME erases its value + $ echo $HOME + + $ cd /some/path # cd into /some/path + $ cd # take us HOME? + $ pwd + /some/path + +What happened? We stayed in /some/path rather than returning to /Users/username. The point? There's nothing magical about _home_—it's merely set by the variable HOME. More about variables soon! + +## Gently Wading In - The Top 10 Indispensable Unix Commands + +Now that we've dipped one toe into the water, let's make a list of the 10 most important unix commands in the universe: + +1. pwd +2. ls +3. cd +4. mkdir +5. echo +6. cat +7. cp +8. mv +9. rm +10. man +Every command has a help or _manual_ page, which can be summoned by typing man. To see more information about pwd, for example, we enter: + + $ man pwd + +But pwd isn't particularly interesting and its man page is barely worth reading. A better example is afforded by one of the most fundamental commands of all, ls, which lists the contents of the _cwd_ or of whatever directories we give it as arguments: + + $ man ls + +The man pages tend to give TMI (too much information) but the most important point is that commands have _flags_ which usually come in a _one-dash-one-letter_ or _two-dashes-one-word_ flavor: + + command -f + command --flag + +and the docs will tell us what each option does. You can even try: + + $ man man + +Below we'll discuss the commands in the top 10 list in more depth. + +## ls + +Let's go HOME and try out [ls][43] with various flags: + + $ cd + $ ls + $ ls -1 + $ ls -hl + $ ls -al + +Some screen shots: + +![image][44] + + + +![image][45] + + +First, vanilla ls. We see our files—no surprises. And ls -1 merely displays our files in a column. To show the human-readable, long form we stack the -h and -l flags: + +ls -hl + +This is equivalent to: + +ls -h -l + +Screenshot: + +![image][46] + + +This lists the owner of the file; the group to which he belongs (_staff_); the date the file was created; and the file size in human-readable form, which means bytes will be rounded to kilobytes, gigabytes, etc. The column on the left shows _permissions_. If you'll indulge mild hyperbole, this simple command is already revealing secrets that are well-hidden by the GUI and known only to unix users. In unix there are three spheres of permission—_user_, _group_, and _other/world_—as well as three particular types for each sphere—_read_, _write_, and _execute_. Everyone with an account on the computer is a unique _user_ and, although you may not realize it, can be part of various groups, such as a particular lab within a university or team in a company. To see yourself and what groups you belong to, try: + + $ whoami + $ groups + +(To see more information about a user, [finger][47] his username.) A string of dashes displays permission: + + --------- + rwx------ + rwxrwx--- + rwxrwxrwx + +This means, respectively: no permission for anybody; read, write, execute permission for only the user; _rwx_ permission for the user and anyone in the group; and _rwx_ permission for the user, group, and everybody else. Permission is especially important in a shared computing environment. You should internalize now that two of the most common errors in computing stem from the two _P_ words we've already learned: _paths and permissions_. The command chmod, which we'll learn later, governs permission. + +If you look at the screenshot above, you see a tenth letter prepended to the permission string, e.g.: + +This has nothing to do with permissions and instead tells you about the type of entity in the directory: _d_ stands for directory, _l_ stands for symbolic link, and a plain dash denotes a file. + +The -a option in: + +ls -al + +lists _all_ files in the directory, including [_dotfiles][48]_. These are files that begin with a dot and are hidden in the GUI. They're often system files—more about them later. Screenshot: + +![image][49] + + +Note that, in contrast to ls -hl, the file sizes are in pure bytes, which makes them a little hard to read. + +A general point about unix commands: they're often robust. For example, with ls you can use an arbitrary number of arguments and it obeys the convention that an asterisk matches anything (this is known as [file _globbing_][50], and I think of it as the prequel to _regular expressions_). Take: + + $ ls . dir1 .. dir2/*.txt dir3/A*.html + +This monstrosity would list anything in the _cwd_; anything in directory _dir1_; anything in the directory one above us; anything in directory _dir2_ that ends with _.txt_; and anything in directory _dir3_ that starts with _A_ and ends with _.html_. You get the point. + +## Single Line Comments in Unix + +Anything prefaced with a # —that's _pound-space_—is a comment and will not be executed: + + $ # This is a comment. + $ # If we put the pound sign in front of a command, it won't do anything: + $ # ls -hl + +Suppose you write a line of code on the command line and decided you don't want to execute it. You have two choices. The first is pressing _Cntrl-c_, which serves as an "abort mission." The second is jumping to the beginning of the line (_Cntrl-a_) and adding the pound character. This has an advantage over the first method that the line will be saved in bash history (discussed below) and can thus be retrieved and modified later. + +In a script, pound-special-character (like _#!_) is sometimes interpreted (see below), so take note and include a space after # to be safe. + +## The Primacy of Text Files, Text Editors + +As we get deeper into unix, we'll frequently be using text editors to edit code, and viewing either data or code in text files. When I got my hands on a computer as a child, I remember text editors seemed like the most boring programs in the world (compared to, say, 1992 [Prince of Persia][51]). And text files were on the bottom of my food chain. But the years have changed me and now I like nothing better than a clean, unformatted _.txt_ file. It's all you need! If you store your data, your code, your correspondence, your book, or almost anything in _.txt_ files with a systematic structure, they can be parsed on the command line to reveal information from many facets. Here's some advice: do all of your text-related work in a good text editor. Open up clunky [Microsoft Word][52], and you've unwittingly spoken a demonic incantation and summoned the beast. Are these the words of a lone lunatic dispensing [hateration][53]? No, because on the command line you can count the words in a text file, search it with [grep][54], input it into a Python program, et cetera. However, a file in Microsoft Word's proprietary and unknown formatting is utterly unusable. + +Because text editors are extremely important, some people develop deep relationships with them. My co-worker, who is a [Vim][55] aficionado, turned to me not long ago and said, "You know how you should think about editing in Vim? _As if you're talking to it._" On the terminal, a ubiquitous and simple editor is [nano][56]. If you're more advanced, try [Vim][55] or [Emacs][57]. Not immune to my co-worker's proselytizing, I've converted to Vim. Although it's sprawling and the learning curve can be harsh—Vim is like a programming language in itself—you can do a zillion things with it. I put together a quick and dirty Vim wiki [here][58]. + +On the GUI, there are many choices: [Sublime][59], [Aquamacs][60], [Smultron][61], etc. I used to use Smultron until I found, unforgivably, that the spacing of documents when you looked at them in the editor and on the terminal was different. I hear good things about Sublime and Aquamacs. + +_Exercise_: Let's try making a text file with nano. Type: + + $ nano file.txt + +and make the following three-row two-column file: (It's _Cntrl-o_ to save and _Cntrl-x_ to exit.) + +## _echo_ and _cat_ + +More essential commands: echo prints the _string_ passed to it as an argument, while cat prints the _contents_ of files passed to it as arguments. For example: + + $ echo joe + $ echo "joe" + +would both print _joe_, while: + + $ cat file.txt + +would print the contents of _file.txt_. Entering: + + $ cat file.txt file2.txt + +would print out the contents of both _file.txt_ and _file2.txt_ concatenated together, which is where this command gets its slightly confusing name. + +Finally, a couple of nice flags for these commands: + + $ echo -n "joe" # suppress newline + $ echo -e "joetjoenjoe" # interpret special chars ( t is tab, n newline ) + $ cat -n file.txt # print file with line numbers + +## _cp_, _mv_, and _rm_ + +Finishing off our top 10 list we have cp, mv, and rm. The command to make a copy of a file is cp: + + $ cp file1 file2 + $ cp -R dir1 dir2 + +The first line would make an identical copy of _file1_ named _file2_, while the second would do the same thing for directories. Notice that for directories we use the -R flag (for _recursive_). The directory and everything inside it are copied. + +_Question_: what would the following do? + + $ cp -R dir1 ../../ + +_Answer_: it would make a copy of _dir1_ up two levels from our current working directory. + +To rename a file or directory we use mv: + + $ mv file1 file2 + +In a sense, this command also moves files, because we can rename a file into a different path. For example: + + $ mv file1 dir1/dir2/file2 + +would move _file1_ into _dir1/dir2/_ and change its name to _file2_, while: + + $ mv file1 dir1/dir2/ + +would simply move _file1_ into _dir1/dir2/_ or, if you like, rename _./file1_ as _./dir1/dir2/file1_. + +Finally, rm removes a file or directory: + + $ rm file # removes a file + $ rm -r dir # removes a file or directory + $ rm -rf dir # force removal of a file or directory + # (i.e., ignore warnings) + +## Variables in Unix + +To declare something as a variable use an equals sign, with no spaces. Let's declare _a_ to be a variable: + + $ a=3 # This syntax is right (no whitespace) + $ a = 3 # This syntax is wrong (whitespace) + -bash: a: command not found + +Once we've declared something as a variable, we need to use _$_ to access its value (and to let bash know it's a variable). For example: + + $ a=3 + $ echo a + a + $ echo $a + 3 + +So, with no _$_ sign, bash thinks we just want to echo the string _a_. With a _$_ sign, however, it knows we want to access what the variable _a_ is storing, which is the value _3_. Variables in unix are loosely-typed, meaning you don't have to declare something as a string or an integer. + + $ a=3 # a can be an integer + $ echo $a + 3 + + $ a=joe # or a can be a string + $ echo $a + joe + + $ a="joe joe" # Use quotes if you want a string with spaces + $ echo $a + joe joe + +We can declare and echo two variables at the same time, and generally play fast and loose, as we're used to doing on the command line: + + $ a=3; b=4 + $ echo $a $b + 3 4 + $ echo $a$b # mesh variables together as you like + 34 + $ echo "$a$b" # use quotes if you like + 34 + $ echo -e "$at$b" # the -e flag tells echo to interpret t as a tab + 3 4 + +You should also be aware of how bash treats double vs single quotes. As we've seen, if you want to use a string with spaces, you use double quotes. If you use double quotes, any variable inside them will be expanded, the same as in Perl. If you use single quotes, everything is taken literally and variables are not expanded. Here's an example: + + $ var=5 + $ joe=hello $var + -bash: 5: command not found + + $ joe="hello $var" + $ echo $joe + hello 5 + + $ joe='hello $var' + $ echo $joe + hello $var + +An important note is that often we use variables to store _paths_ in unix. Once we do this, we can use all of our familiar directory commands on the variable: + + $ d=dir1/dir2/dir3 + $ ls $d + $ cd $d + + $ d=.. # this variable stores the directory one above us (relative path) + $ cd $d/.. # cd two directories up + +## Escape Sequences + +[Escape sequences][62] are important in every language. When bash reads _$a_ it interprets it as whatever's stored in the variable _a_. What if we actually want to echo the string _$a_? To do this, we use as an escape character: + + $ a=3 + $ echo $a + 3 + $ echo $a + $a + $ echo "$a" # use quotes if you like + $a + +What if we want to echo the slash, too? Then we have to escape the escape character (using the escape character!): + + $ echo \$a # escape the slash and the dollar sign + $a + +This really comes down to parsing. The slash helps bash figure out if your text is a plain old string or a variable. It goes without saying that you should avoid special characters in your variable names. In unix we might occasionally fall into a parsing tar-pit trap. To avoid this, and make extra sure bash parses our variable right, we can use the syntax _${a}_ as in: + + $ echo ${a} + 3 + +When could this possibly be an issue? Later, when we discuss scripting, we'll learn that _$n_, where _n_ is a number, is the _n_th argument to our script. If you were crazy enough to write a script with 11 arguments, you'd discover that bash interprets a=$11 as a=$1 (the first argument) concatenated with the string 1 while a=${11} properly represents the eleventh argument. This is getting in the weeds, but FYI. + +Here's a more practical example: + + $ a=3 + $ echo $a # variable a equals 3 + 3 + $ echo $apple # variable apple is not set + + $ echo ${a}pple # this describes the variable a plus the string "pple" + 3pple + +## Global Variables in Unix + +In general, it is the convention to use capital letters for global variables. We've already learned about one: HOME. We can see all the variables set in our shell by simply typing: + + $ set + +Some basic variables deserve comment: + +* HOME +* PS1 +* TMPDIR +* EDITOR +* DISPLAY +HOME, as we've already seen, is the path to our home directory (preset to /Users/username on Macintosh). PS1 sets the shell's prompt. For example: + + $ PS1=':-) ' + +changes our prompt from a dollar-sign into an emoticon, as in: + +![image][63] + + +On your computer there is a designated temporary directory and its path is stored in TMPDIR. Some commands, such as sort, which we'll learn later, surreptitiously make use of this directory to store intermediate files. At work, we have a shared computer system and occasionally this common directory $TMPDIR will run out of space, causing programs trying to write there to fail. One solution is to simply set TMPDIR to a different path where there's free space. EDITOR sets the default text editor (you can invoke it by pressing _Cntrl-x-e_). And DISPLAY is a variable related to the [X Window System][64]. + +Many programs rely on their own agreed-upon global variables. For example, if you're a Perl user, you may know that Perl looks for modules in the directory whose path is stored in PERL5LIB. Python looks for its modules in PYTHONPATH; R looks for packages in R_LIBS; Matlab uses MATLABPATH; awk uses AWKPATH; C++ looks for libraries in LD_LIBRARY_PATH; and so on. These variables don't exist in the shell by default. A program will make a system call and look for the variable. If the user has had the need or foresight to define it, the program can make use of it. + +## The _PATH_ + +The most important global variable of all is the PATH. This is _the_ PATH, as distinct from _a_ path, a term we've already learned referring to a location in the filesystem. The PATH is a colon-delimited list of directories where unix will look for executable programs when you enter something on command line. If your program is in one of these directories, you can run it from any location by simply entering its name. If the program is not in one of these directories, you can still run it, of course, but you'll have to include its path. + +Let's revisit the idea of a command in unix. What's a command? It's nothing more than a program sitting in a directory somewhere. So, if ls is a program, where is it? Use the command which to see its path: + + $ which ls # on my work computer + /bin/ls + + $ which ls # on my home Mac + /usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.20/libexec/gnubin/ls + +For the sake of argument, let's say I download an updated version of the ls command, and then type ls in my terminal. What will happen—will the old ls or the new ls execute? The PATH comes into play here because it also determines priority. When you enter a command, unix will look for it in each directory of the PATH, from first to last, and execute the first instance it finds. For example, if: + +PATH=/bin/dir1:/bin/dir2:/bin/dir3 + +and there's a command named _ls_ in both /bin/dir1 and /bin/dir2, the one in /bin/dir1 will be executed. + +Let's see what your PATH looks like. Enter: + + $ echo $PATH + +For example, here's a screenshot of the default PATH on Ubuntu: + +![image][65] + + +To emphasize the point again, all the programs in the directories specified by your PATH are all the programs that you can access on the command line by simply typing their names. + +The PATH is not immutable. You can set it to be anything you want, but in practice you'll want to augment, rather than overwrite, it. By default, it contains directories where unix expects executables, like: + +* /bin +* /usr/bin +* /usr/local/bin +Let's say you have just written the command /mydir/newcommand. If you're not going to use the command very often, you can invoke it using its full path every time you need it: + + $ /mydir/newcommand + +However, if you're going to be using it frequently, you can just add /mydir to the PATH and then invoke the command by name: + + $ PATH=/mydir:$PATH # add /mydir to the front of PATH - highest priority + $ PATH=$PATH:/mydir # add /mydir to the back of PATH - lowest priority + $ newcommand # now invoking newcommand is this easy + +This is a frequent chore in unix. If you download some new program, you will often find yourself updating the PATH to include the directory containing its binaries. How can we avoid having to do this every time we open the terminal for a new session? We'll discuss this below when we learn about _.bashrc_. + +If you want to shoot yourself in the foot, you can vaporize the PATH: + + $ unset PATH # not advisable + $ ls # now ls is not found + -bash: ls: No such file or directory + +but this is not advisable, save as a one-time educational experience. + +## Links + +While we're on the general subject of paths, let's talk about [_symbolic links][66]_. If you've ever used the _Make Alias_ command on a Macintosh (not to be confused with the unix command alias, discussed below), you've already developed intuition for what a link is. Suppose you have a file in one folder and you want that file to exist in another folder simultaneously. You could copy the file, but that would be wasteful. Moreover, if the file changes, you'll have to re-copy it—a huge ball-ache. Links solve this problem. A link to a file is a stand-in for the original file, often used to access the original file from an alternate file path. It's not a copy of the file but, rather, points to the file. + +To make a symbolic link, use the command [ln][67]: + + $ ln -s /path/to/target/file mylink + +This produces: + + mylink --> /path/to/target/file + +in the cwd, as ls -hl will show. Note that removing _mylink_: + + $ rm mylink + +does not affect our original file. + +If we give the target (or source) path as the sole argument to ln, the name of the link will be the same as the source file's. So: + + $ ln -s /path/to/target/file + +produces: + + file --> /path/to/target/file + +Links are incredibly useful for all sorts of reasons—the primary one being, as we've already remarked, if you want a file to exist in multiple locations without having to make extraneous, space-consuming copies. You can make links to directories as well as files. Suppose you add a directory to your PATH that has a particular version of a program in it. If you install a newer version, you'll need to change the PATH to include the new directory. However, if you add a link to your PATH and keep the link always pointing to the most up-to-date directory, you won't need to keep fiddling with your PATH. The scenario could look like this: + + $ ls -hl myprogram + current -> version3 + version1 + version2 + version3 + +(where I'm hiding some of the output in the long listing format.) In contrast to our other examples, the link is in the same directory as the target. Its purpose is to tell us which version, among the many crowding a directory, we should use. + +Another good practice is putting links in your home directory to folders you often use. This way, navigating to those folders is easy when you log in. If you make the link: + + ~/MYLINK --> /some/long/and/complicated/path/to/an/often/used/directory + +then you need only type: + + $ cd MYLINK + +rather than: + + $ cd /some/long/and/complicated/path/to/an/often/used/directory + +Links are everywhere, so be glad you've made their acquaintance! + +## What is Scripting? + +By this point, you should be comfortable using basic utilities like echo, cat, mkdir, cd, and ls. Let's enter a series of commands, creating a directory with an empty file inside it, for no particular reason: + + $ mkdir tmp + $ cd tmp + $ pwd + /Users/oliver/tmp + $ touch myfile.txt # the command touch creates an empty file + $ ls + myfile.txt + $ ls myfile_2.txt # purposely execute a command we know will fail + ls: cannot access myfile_2.txt: No such file or directory + +What if we want to repeat the exact same sequence of commands 5 minutes later? _Massive bombshell_—we can save all of these commands in a file! And then run them whenever we like! Try this: + + $ nano myscript.sh + +and write the following: + + # a first script + mkdir tmp + cd tmp + pwd + touch myfile.txt + ls + ls myfile_2.txt + +Gratuitous screenshot: + +![image][68] + + +This file is called a _script_ (_.sh_ is a typical suffix for a shell script), and writing it constitutes our first step into the land of bona fide computer programming. In general usage, a script refers to a small program used to perform a niche task. What we've written is a recipe that says: ** + +* create a directory called "tmp" +* go into that directory +* print our current path in the file system +* make a new file called "myfile.txt" +* list the contents of the directory we're in +* specifically list the file "myfile_2.txt" (which doesn't exist) +** This script, though silly and useless, teaches us the fundamental fact that all computer programs are ultimately just lists of commands. + +Let's run our program! Try: + + $ ./myscript.sh + -bash: ./myscript.sh: Permission denied + +_WTF!_ It's dysfunctional. What's going on here is that the file permissions are not set properly. In unix, when you create a file, the default permission is _not executable_. You can think of this as a brake that's been engaged and must be released before we can go (and do something potentially dangerous). First, let's look at the file permissions: + + $ ls -hl myscript.sh + -rw-r--r-- 1 oliver staff 75 Oct 12 11:43 myscript.sh + +Let's change the permissions with the command chmod and execute the script: + + $ chmod u+x myscript.sh # add executable(x) permission for the user(u) only + $ ls -hl myscript.sh + -rwxr--r-- 1 oliver staff 75 Oct 12 11:43 myscript.sh + + $ ./myscript.sh + /Users/oliver/tmp/tmp + myfile.txt + ls: cannot access myfile_2.txt: No such file or directory + +Not bad. Did it work? Yes, it did because it's printed stuff out and we see it's created tmp/myfile.txt: + + $ ls + myfile.txt myscript.sh tmp + $ ls tmp + myfile.txt + +An important note is that even though there was a cd in our script, if we type: + + $ pwd + /Users/oliver/tmp + +we see that we're still in the same directory as we were in when we ran the script. Even though the script entered /Users/oliver/tmp/tmp, and did its bidding, we stay in /Users/oliver/tmp. Scripts always work this way—where they go is independent of where we go. + +If you're wondering why anyone would write such a pointless script, you're right—it would be odd if we had occasion to repeat this combination of commands. There are some more realistic examples of scripting below. + +## File Suffixes in Unix + +As we begin to script it's worth following some file naming conventions. We should use common sense suffixes, like: + +* _.txt_ \- for text files +* _.html_ \- for html files +* _.sh_ \- for shell scripts +* _.pl_ \- for Perl scripts +* _.py_ \- for Python scripts +* _.cpp_ \- for c++ code +and so on. Adhering to this organizational practice will enable us to quickly scan our files, and make searching for particular file types easier [1]. As we saw above, commands like ls and find are particularly well-suited to use this kind of information. For example, list all text files in the cwd: + + $ ls *.txt + +List all text files in the cwd and below (i.e., including child directories): + + $ find . -name "*.txt" + + + +* * * + + +[1] An astute reader noted that, for commands—as opposed to, say, html or text files—using suffixes is not the best practice because it violates the principle of encapsulation. The argument is that a user is neither supposed to know nor care about a program's internal implementation details, which the suffix advertises. You can imagine a program that starts out as a shell script called _mycommand.sh_, is upgraded to Python as _mycommand.py_, and then is rewritten in C for speed, becoming the binary _mycommand_. What if other programs depend on _mycommand_? Then each time _mycommand_'s suffix changes they have to be rewritten—a big problem. Although I make this sloppy mistake in this article, that doesn't excuse you! [Read the full argument][69] ↑ + +## The Shebang + +We've left out one important detail about scripting. How does unix know we want to run a bash script, as opposed to, say, a Perl or Python script? There are two ways to do it. We'll illustrate with two simple scripts, a bash script and a Perl script: + + $ cat myscript_1.sh # a bash script + echo "hello kitty" + + $ cat myscript_1.pl # a Perl script + print "hello kittyn"; + +The first way to tell unix which program to use to interpret the script is simply to say so on the command line. For example, we can use bash to execute bash scripts: + + $ bash ./myscript_1.sh # use bash for bash scripts + hello kitty + +and perl for Perl scripts: + + $ perl ./myscript_1.pl # use Perl for Perl scripts + hello kitty + +But this won't work for a Perl script: + + $ ./myscript_1.pl # this won't work + ./myscript_1.pl: line 1: print: command not found + +And if we purposefully specify the wrong language, we'll get errors: + + $ bash ./myscript_1.pl # let's purposefully do it backwards + ./myscript_1.pl: line 1: print: command not found + + $ perl ./myscript_1.sh + String found where operator expected at ./myscript_1.sh line 1, + near "echo "hello kitty"" + (Do you need to predeclare echo?) + syntax error at ./myscript_1.sh line 1, near "echo "hello kitty"" + Execution of ./myscript_1.sh aborted due to compilation errors. + +The second way to specify the proper interpreter—and the better way, which you should emulate—is to put it in the script itself using a [_shebang_][70]. To do this, let's remind ourselves where bash and perl reside on our system. On my computer, they're here: + + $ which perl + /usr/bin/perl + + $ which bash + /bin/bash + +although perl could be somewhere else on your machine (bash should be in /bin by convention). The _shebang_ specifies the language in which your script is interpreted according to the syntax #! followed by the path to the language. It should be the first line of your script. Note that it's not a comment even though it looks like one. Let's add shebangs to our two scripts: + + $ cat myscript_1.sh + #!/bin/bash + echo "hello kitty" + + $ cat myscript_1.pl + #!/usr/bin/perl + print "hello kittyn"; + +Now we can run them without specifying the interpreter in front: + + $ ./myscript_1.sh + hello kitty + $ ./myscript_1.pl + hello kitty + +However, there's _still_ a lingering issue and it has to do with [portability][71], an important software principle. What if perl is in a different place on your machine than mine and you copy my scripts and try to run them? The path will be wrong and they won't work. The solution to this issue is courtesy of a neat trick using [env][72]. We can amend our script to be: + + $ cat myscript_1.pl + #!/usr/bin/env perl + print "hello kittyn"; + +Of course, this assumes you have a copy of env in /usr/bin, but this is usually a correct assumption. What env does here is to use whatever your environmental variable for perl is—i.e., the perl that's first in your PATH. + +This is a useful practice even if you're not sharing scripts. Suppose you've updated your version of perl and there's a newer copy than /usr/bin/perl. You've appropriately updated your PATH such that the directory containing the updated perl comes before /usr/bin. If you have env in your shebang, you're all set. However, if you've _hardwired_ the old path in your shebang, your script will run on the old perl [1]. + +The question that the shebang resolves—which program will run your script?—reminds us of a more fundamental distinction between [interpreted languages][73] and [compiled languages][74]. The former are those like bash, Perl, and Python, where you can cat a script and look inside it. The later, like C++, require [_compilation][75]_, the process whereby code is translated into machine language (the result is sometimes called a _binary_). This can be done with a command line utility like [g++][76]: + + $ g++ MyProgram.cpp -o MyProgram + +Compiled programs, such as the unix utilities themselves, tend to run faster. Don't try to cat a binary, such as ls, or it will spew out gibberish: + + $ cat $( which ls ) # don't do this! + + + +* * * + + +[1] Of course, depending on circumstances, you may very well want to stick with the old version of Perl or whatever's running your program. An update can have unforeseen consequences and this is the motivation for tools like [virtualenv][77] (Python), whose docs remind us: "_If an application works, any change in its libraries or the versions of those libraries can break the application_" ↑ + +## _bash_ + +We've thrown around the term _bash_ a few times but we haven't defined it. To do so, let's examine the special command, sh, which is more primitive than bash and came before it. To quote Wikipedia and the manual page: + +> The Bourne shell (sh) is a shell, or command-line interpreter, for computer operating systems. The shell is a command that reads lines from either a file or the terminal, interprets them, and generally executes other commands. It is the program that is running when a user logs into the system ... Commands can be typed directly to the running shell or can be put into a file and the file can be executed directly by the shell + +As it describes, sh is special because it's both a command interpreter and a command itself (usually found at /bin/sh). Put differently, you can run _myscript_ as: + + $ sh ./myscript + +or you can simply type: + + $ sh + +to start an interactive sh shell. If you're in this shell and run: + + $ ./myscript + +without specifying an interpreter or using a shebang, your script will be interpreted by sh by default. On most computers, however, the default shell is no longer sh but bash (usually located at /bin/bash). To mash up Wikipedia and the manual page: + +> The **B**ourne-**A**gain **SH**ell (bash) a Unix shell written by Brian Fox for the GNU Project as a free software replacement for the Bourne shell. bash is an sh-compatible command language interpreter that executes commands read from the standard input or from a file ... There are some subtle differences between bash and traditional versions of sh + +Like sh, bash is a command you can either invoke on a script or use to start an interactive bash shell. Read more on Stackoverflow: [Difference between sh and bash][78]. + +Which shell are you using right now? Almost certainly bash, but if you want to double check, there's a neat command [given here][79] to display your shell type: + + $ ps -p $$ + +There are more exotic shells, like [Z shell][80] and [tcsh][81], but they're beyond the scope of this article. + +## _chmod_ + +Let's take a closer look at how to use [chmod][82]. Remember the three domains: + +* _u_ \- user +* _g_ \- group +* _o_ \- other/world +and the three types of permission: +* _r_ \- read +* _w_ \- write +* _x_ \- execute +we can mix and match these how we like, using a plus sign to grant permissions according to the syntax: + +chmod entity+permissiontype + +or a minus sign to remove permissions: + +chmod entity-permissiontype + +E.g.: + + $ chmod u+x myfile # make executable for you + $ chmod g+rxw myfile # add read write execute permissions for the group + $ chmod go-wx myfile # remove write execute permissions for the group + # and for everyone else (excluding you, the user) + +You can also use _a_ for "all of the above", as in: + + $ chmod a-rwx myfile # remove all permissions for you, the group, + # and the rest of the world + +If you find the above syntax cumbersome, there's a numerical shorthand you can use with chmod. The only two I have memorized are _777_ and _755_: + + $ chmod 777 myfile # grant all permissions (rwxrwxrwx) + $ chmod 755 myfile # reserve write access for the user, + # but grant all other permissions (rwxr-xr-x) + +Read more about the numeric code [here][83]. In general, it's a good practice to allow your files to be writable by you alone, unless you have a compelling reason to share access to them. + +## _ssh_ + +In addition to chmod, there's another command it would be remiss not to mention. For many people, the first time they need to go to the command line, rather than the GUI, is to use the [Secure Shell (ssh)][84] protocol. Suppose you want to use a computer, but it's not the computer that's in front of you. It's a different computer in some other location—say, at your university, your company, or on the [Amazon cloud][16]. [ssh][85] is the command that allows you to log into a computer remotely over the network. Once you've sshed into a computer, you're in its shell and can run commands on it just as if it were your personal laptop. To ssh, you need to know your user name, the address of the host computer you want to log into, and the password [1]. The basic syntax is: + +ssh username@host + +For example: + + $ ssh username@myhost.university.edu + +If you're trying to ssh into a private computer and don't know the hostname, use its IP address (_username@IP-address_). + +ssh also allows you to run a command on the remote server without logging in. For instance, to list of the contents of your remote computer's home directory, you could run: + + $ ssh username@myhost.university.edu "ls -hl" + +Cool, eh? Moreover, if you have ssh access to a machine, you can copy files to or from it with the utility [rsync][12]—a great way to move data without an external hard drive. + +The file: + +~/.ssh/config + +determines ssh's behavior and you can create it if it doesn't exist (the dot in the name _.ssh_ confers invisibility—[see the discussion about dotfiles below][86]). On your own private computer, you can ssh into selected servers without having to type in a password by updating this configuration file. To do this, generate [rsa][87] ssh [keys][88]: + + $ mkdir -p ~/.ssh + $ cd ~/.ssh + $ ssh-keygen -t rsa -f localkey + +This will create two files on your computer, a public key: + +~/.ssh/localkey.pub + +and a private key: + +~/.ssh/localkey + +You can share your public key, but _do not give anyone your private key!_ Suppose you want to ssh into _myserver.com_. Normally, that's: + + $ ssh myusername@myserver.com + +Instead of doing this, add these lines to your _~/.ssh/config_ file: + + Host Myserver + HostName myserver.com + User myusername + IdentityFile ~/.ssh/localkey + +Next, cat your public key and paste it into: + +~/.ssh/authorized_keys + +on the remote machine (i.e., the _myserver.com_ computer). Now on your local computer, you can ssh into _myserver.com_ without a password: + + $ ssh Myserver + +You can also use this technique to push to [github.com][89] [2], without having to punch your password in each time, by pasting your public key into: + +Settings > SSH Keys > Add SSH Key + +on GitHub (read the [official tutorial][90]). + +If this is your first encounter with ssh, you'd be surprised how much of the work of the world is done by ssh. It's worth reading the extensive man page, which gets into matters of computer security and cryptography. + +* * * + + +[1] The host also has to enable ssh access. On Macintosh, for example, it's disabled by default, but you can turn it on, as instructed [here][91] ↑ +[2] As you get deeper into the game, tracking your scripts and keeping a single, stable version of them becomes crucial. [Git][92], a vast subject for [another tutorial][93], is the neat solution to this problem and the industry standard for version control. On the web [GitHub][94] provides free hosting of script repositories and connects to the command line via the git interface ↑ + +## Saving to a File; Stdout and Stderr + +To save to a file in unix, use an angle bracket: + + $ echo joe > junk.txt # save to file + $ cat junk.txt + joe + +To append to the end of a pre-existing file, use a double angle bracket: + + $ echo joe >> junk.txt # append to already-existing file + $ cat junk.txt + joe + joe + +Returning to our first script, [_myscript.sh][95]_, let's save the output to a file: + + $ ./myscript.sh > out.txt + mkdir: cannot create directory 'tmp': File exists + ls: cannot access myfile_2.txt: No such file or directory + + $ cat out.txt + /Users/oliver/tmp/tmp + myfile.txt + +This is interesting: _out.txt_ has its output. However, not everything went into _out.txt_, because some error messages were echoed to the console. What's going on here is that there are actually two [output streams][96]: _stdout_ (standard out) and _stderr_ (standard error). Look at the following figure from Wikipedia: + +![image][97] + +(Image credit: [Wikipedia: Standard streams][96]) + +Proper output goes into stdout while errors go into stderr. The syntax for saving stderr in unix is 2> as in: + + $ # save the output into out.txt and the error into err.txt + $ ./myscript.sh > out.txt 2> err.txt + $ cat out.txt + /Users/oliver/tmp/tmp + myfile.txt + $ cat err.txt + mkdir: cannot create directory 'tmp': File exists + ls: cannot access myfile_2.txt: No such file or directory + +When you think about it, the fact that output and error are separated is supremely useful. At work, sometimes we parallelize heavily and run 1000 instances of a script. For each instance, the error and output are saved separately. The 758th job, for example, might look like this: + +./myjob --instance 758 > out758.o 2> out758.e + +(I'm in the habit of using the suffixes _.o_ for output and _.e_ for error.) With this technique we can quickly scan through all 1000 _.e_ files and check if their size is 0. If it is, we know there was no error; if not, we can re-run the failed jobs. Some programs are in the habit of echoing run statistics or other information to stderr. This is an unfortunate practice because it muddies the water and, as in the example above, would make it hard to tell if there was an actual error. + +Output vs error is a distinction that many programming languages make. For example, in C++ writing to stdout and stderr is like this: + + cout << "some output" << endl; + cerr << "some error" << endl; + +In Perl it's: + + print STDOUT "some outputn"; + print STDERR "some errorn"; + +In Python it's: + + import sys + sys.stdout.write("some outputn") + sys.stderr.write("some errorn") + +and so on. + +## More on Stdout and Stderr; Redirection + +For the sake of completeness, we should note that you can redirect standard error to standard output and vice versa. Let's make sure we get the syntax of all things pertaining to stdout and stderr right: + + 1> # save stdout to (plain old > also works) + 2> # save stderr to + +as in: + + $ ./myscript.sh 1> out.o 2> out.e + $ ./myscript.sh > out.o 2> out.e # these two lines are identical + +What if we want to choose where things will be printed from _within_ our script? Then we can use the following syntax: + + &1 # standard out stream + &2 # standard error stream + +Let's examine five possible versions of our _Hello Kitty_ script: + + #!/bin/bash + # version 1 + echo "hello kitty" + + #!/bin/bash + # version 2 + echo "hello kitty" > somefile.txt + + #!/bin/bash + # version 3 + echo "hello kitty" > &1 + + #!/bin/bash + # version 4 + echo "hello kitty" > &2 + + #!/bin/bash + # version 5 + echo "hello kitty" > 1 + +Here's how they work: + +* _version 1_ \- echo "hello kitty" to stdout +* _version 2_ \- echo "hello kitty" to the file somefile.txt +* _version 3_ \- same as version 1 +* _version 4_ \- echo "hello kitty" to sterr +* _version 5_ \- echo "hello kitty" to _the file named 1_ +This illustrates the point of the ampersand syntax: it distinguishes between the output streams and files named _1_ or _2_. Let's try running script version 4 as a sanity check to make sure these scripts are working as expected: + + $ # output saved to file but error printed to console + $ ./hellokitty.sh > junk.txt + hello kitty + +_hello kitty_ is indeed stderr because it's echoed to the console, not saved into _junk.txt_. + +This syntax makes it easy to see how we could, e.g., redirect the standard error to standard output: + + $ ./somescript.sh 2> &1 # redirect stderr to stdout + +I rarely have occasion to do this and, although it's not something you need in your introductory unix toolkit, it's good to know. + +## Conditional Logic + +Conditional Logic is a universal feature of programming languages. The basic idea is, _if_ this condition, _then_ do something. It can be made more complex: _if_ this condition, _then_ do something; _else if_ that condition, _then_ do another thing; _else_ (if any other condition), _then_ do yet another thing. Let's see how to implement this in bash: + + $ a=joe + $ if [ $a == "joe" ]; then echo hello; fi + hello + +or: + + $ a=joe + $ if [ $a == "joe" ]; then echo hello; echo hello; echo hello; fi + hello + hello + hello + +The structure is: + +if [ _condition_ ]; then ... ; fi + +Everything between the words then and fi (_if_ backwards in case you didn't notice) will execute if the condition is satisfied. In other languages, this block is often defined by curly brackets: _{ }_. For example, in a Perl script, the same code would be: + + #!/usr/bin/env perl + + my $a="joe"; + + if ( $a eq "joe" ) + { + print "hellon"; + print "hellon"; + print "hellon"; + } + +In bash, _if_ is if, _else_ is else, and _else if_ is elif. In a script it would look like this: + + #!/bin/bash + + a=joe + + if [ $a == "joe" ]; then + echo hello; + elif [ $a == "doe" ]; then + echo goodbye; + else + echo "ni hao"; + fi + +You can also use a case statement to implement conditional logic. See an example of that [here][98]. + +Although I said in the intro that unix is the best place to start your computer science education, I have to admit that the syntax for _if-then_ logic is somewhat unwieldy—even unfriendly. Bash is a bad teaching language for conditional logic, [arrays][99], [hashes][100], etc. But that's only because its element is not heavy-duty programming with lots of functions, numerical operations, sophisticated data structures, and logic. Its mastery is over the quick and dirty, manipulating files and directories, and doing system stuff. I still maintain it's the proper starting point because of its wonderful tools, and because knowing its fundamentals is a great asset. Every language has its place in the programming ecosystem. Back in College, I stumbled on a physics book called [_The Tiger and the Shark: Empirical Roots of Wave-Particle Dualism_][101] by Bruce Wheaton. The book had a great epigraph: + +> It is like a struggle between a tiger and a shark, +each is supreme in his own element, +but helpless in that of the other. +_J.J. Thomson, 1925_ + +In our context, this would read: bash is supreme on the command line, but not inside of a script. + +## File Test Operators; Return or Exit Status + +_File Test Operators_ and _exit status_ are two completely different topics, but since they both go well with if statements, I'll discuss them here. File Test Operators are things you can stick in an if statement to give you information about a file. Two common problems are _(1)_ checking if your file exists and _(2)_ checking if it's non-zero size: Let's create two files, one empty and one not: + + $ touch emptyfile # create an empty file + $ echo joe > nonemptyfile # create a non-empty file + +The operator _-e_ tests for existence and _-s_ tests for non-zero-ness: + + $ file=emptyfile + $ if [ -e $file ]; then echo "exists"; if [ -s $file ]; then echo "non-0"; fi; fi + exists + + $ file=nonemptyfile + $ if [ -e $file ]; then echo "exists"; if [ -s $file ]; then echo "non-0"; fi; fi + exists + non-0 + +Read The Linux Documentation Project's discussion of file test operators [here][102]. + +Changing the subject altogether, you may be familiar with the idea of a return value in computer science. Functions can return a value upon completion. In unix, commands also have a return value or _exit code_, queryable with: + +$? + +This is usually employed to tell the user whether or not the command successfully executed. By convention, successful execution returns 0. For example: + + $ echo joe + joe + $ echo $? # query exit code of previous command + 0 + +Let's see how the exit code can be useful. We'll make a script, _test_exitcode.sh_, such that: + + $ cat test_exitcode.sh + #!/bin/bash + sleep 10 + +This script just pauses for 10 seconds. First, we'll let it run and then we'll interrupt it using _Cntrl-c_: + + $ ./test_exitcode.sh; # let it run + $ echo $? + 0 + + $ ./test_exitcode.sh; # interrupt it + ^C + $ echo $? + 130 + +The non-zero exit code tells us that it's failed. Now we'll try the same thing with an if statement: + + $ ./test_exitcode.sh + $ if [ $? == 0 ]; then echo "program succeeded"; else echo "program failed"; fi + program succeeded + + $ ./test_exitcode.sh; + ^C + $ if [ $? == 0 ]; then echo "program succeeded"; else echo "program failed"; fi + program failed + +In research, you might run hundreds of command-line programs in parallel. For each instance, there are two key questions: _(1)_ Did it finish? _(2)_ Did it run without error? Checking the exit status is the way to address the second point. You should always check the program you're running to find information about its exit code, since some use different conventions. Read The Linux Documentation Project's discussion of exit status [here][103]. + +_Question_: What's going on here? + + $ if echo joe; then echo joe; fi + joe + joe + +This is yet another example of bash allowing you to stretch syntax like silly putty. In this code snippet, + +echo joe + +is run, and its successful execution passes a _true_ return code to the if statement. So, the two _joe_s we see echoed to the console are from the statement to be evaluated and the statement inside the conditional. We can also invert this formula, doing something if our command fails: + + $ outputdir=nonexistentdir # set output dir equal to a nonexistent dir + $ if ! cd $outputdir; then echo "couldnt cd into output dir"; fi + -bash: pushd: nonexistentdir: No such file or directory + couldnt cd into output dir + + $ mkdir existentdir # make a test directory + $ outputdir=existentdir + $ if ! cd $outputdir; then echo "couldnt cd into output dir"; fi + $ # no error - now we're in the directory existentdir + +Did you follow that? (! means logical NOT in unix.) The idea is, we try to cd but, if it's unsuccessful, we echo an error message. This is a particularly useful line to include in a script. If the user gives an output directory as an argument and the directory doesn't exist, we exit. If it does exist, we cd into it and it's business as usual: + +if ! cd $outputdir; then echo "[error] couldn't cd into output dir"; exit; fi + +Without this line, the script will run in whatever directory it's in if cd fails. Once in lab, I was running a script that didn't have this kind of protection. The output directory wasn't found and the script starting making and deleting files in the wrong directory. It was powerfully uncool! + +We can implement similar constructions using the && and || operators rather than an if statement. Let's see how this works by making some test files: + + $ touch file{1..4} + $ ls + file1 file2 file3 file4 + +The && operator will chug through a chain of commands and keep on going until one of the commands fails, as in: + + $ ( ls file1 ) && ( ls file2 ) && ( ls file3 ) && ( ls file4 ) + file1 + file2 + file3 + file4 + + $ ( ls file1 ) && ( ls file2 ) && ( ls fileX ) && ( ls file4 ) + file1 + file2 + ls: cannot access fileX: No such file or directory + +In contrast, the || operator will proceed through the command chain and _stop_ after the first successful one, as in: + + $ ( ls file1 ) || ( ls file2 ) || ( ls file3 ) || ( ls file4 ) + file1 + + $ ( ls fileX ) || ( ls fileY ) || ( ls fileZ ) || ( ls file4 ) + ls: cannot access fileX: No such file or directory + ls: cannot access fileY: No such file or directory + ls: cannot access fileZ: No such file or directory + file4 + +## Basic Loops + +In programming, loops are a way of performing operations iteratively. Loops come in different flavors, but the _for loop_ and _while loop_ are the most basic. In bash, we can implement a for loop like this: + + $ for i in 1 2 3; do echo $i; done + 1 + 2 + 3 + +The structure is: + +for _variable_ in _list_; do ... ; done + +Put anything you like in the list: + + $ for i in 1 2 hello; do echo $i; done + 1 + 2 + hello + +Many other languages wouldn't let you get away with combining data types in the iterations of a loop, but this is a recurrent bash theme: it's fast; it's loose; it's malleable. + +To count from 1 to 10, try: + + $ for i in {1..10}; do echo -n "$i "; done; echo + 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 + +But if we can just write: + + $ echo {1..10} + +why do we need a loop here? Loops really come into their own in bash when—no surprise!—we're dealing with files, paths, and commands. For example, to loop through all of the text files in the cwd, use: + + $ for i in *.txt; do echo $i; done + +Although this is nearly the same as: + + $ ls *.txt + +the former construction has the advantage that we can stuff as much code as we like in the block between do and done. Let's make a random directory structure like so: + + $ mkdir -p myfolder{1..3}/{X,Y} + +We can populate it with token files (fodder for our example) via a loop: + + $ j=0; for i in myfolder*/*; do echo "*** "$i" ***"; touch ${i}/a_${j}.txt ${i}/b_${j}.txt; ((j++)); done + +In bash, ((j++)) is a way of incrementing j. We echo $i to get some visual feedback as the loop iterates. Now our directory structure looks like this: + +![image][104] + + +To practice loops, suppose we want to find any file that begins with _b_ in any subfolder and make a symbolic link to it from the cwd: + + $ for i in myfolder*/*/b*; do echo "*** "$i" ***"; ln -s $i; done + +As we learned above, a link is not a copy of a file but, rather, a kind of pointer that allows us to access a file from a path other than the one where it actually resides. Our loop yields the links: + + b_0.txt -> myfolder1/X/b_0.txt + b_1.txt -> myfolder1/Y/b_1.txt + b_2.txt -> myfolder2/X/b_2.txt + b_3.txt -> myfolder2/Y/b_3.txt + b_4.txt -> myfolder3/X/b_4.txt + b_5.txt -> myfolder3/Y/b_5.txt + +allowing us to access the _b_ files from the cwd. + +I can't overstate all the heroic things you can do with loops in bash. Suppose we want to change the extension of any text file that begins with _a_ and resides in an _X_ subfolder from _.txt_ to _.html_: + + $ for i in myfolder*/X/a*.txt; do echo "*** "$i" ***"; j=$( echo $i | sed 's|.txt|.html|' ); echo $j; mv $i $j; echo; done + +But I've jumped the gun! This example features three things we haven't learned yet: command substitution, piping, and sed. You should revisit it after reading those sections, but the idea is that the variable _j_ stores a path that looks like our file's but has the extension replaced. And you see that a knowledge of loops is like a stick of dynamite you can use to blow through large numbers of files. + +Here's another contrived example with these yet-to-be-discussed techniques: + + $ for i in $( echo $PATH | tr ":" " " ); do echo "*** "$i" ***"; ls $i | head; echo; done | less + +Can you guess what this does? It shows the first ten commands in each folder in our PATH—not something you'd likely need to do, but a demonstration of the fluidity of these constructions. + +If we want to run a command or script in parallel, we can do that with loops, too. [gzip][105] is a utility to compress files, thereby saving hard drive space. To compress all text files in the cwd, in parallel, do: + + $ for i in *.txt; do { echo $i; gzip $i & }; done + +But I've gotten ahead of myself again. We'll leave the discussion of this example to the section on processes. + +The structure of a while loop is: + +while _condition_; do ... ; done + +I use while loops much less than for loops, but here's an example: + + $ x=1; while ((x <= 3)); do echo $x; ((x++)); done + 1 + 2 + 3 + +The while loop can also take input from a file. Suppose there's a file _junk.txt_ such that: + + $ cat junk.txt + 1 + 2 + 3 + +You can iterate over this file as such: + + $ while read x; do echo $x; done < junk.txt + 1 + 2 + 3 + +## Arguments to a Script + +Now that we've covered basic [control flow][106], let's return to the subject of scripting. An important question is, how can we pass arguments to our script? Let's make a script called _hellokitty.sh_: + + #!/bin/bash + + echo hello + +Try running it: + + $ chmod 755 hellokitty.sh + $ ./hellokitty.sh + hello + +We can change it to the following: + + #!/bin/bash + + echo hello $1 + +Now: + + $ ./hellokitty.sh kitty + hello kitty + +In bash $1 represents the first argument to the script, $2 the second, and so on. If our script is: + + #!/bin/bash + + echo $0 + echo hello $1 $4 + +Then: + + $ ./hellokitty.sh my sweet kitty cat + ./hellokitty.sh + hello my cat + +In most programming languages, arguments passed in on the command line are stored as an array. Bash stores the _n_th element of this array in the variable $_n_. $0 is special and refers to the name of the script itself. + +For casual scripts this suits us well. However, as you go on to write more involved programs with many options, it becomes impractical to rely on the position of an argument to determine its function in your script. The proper way to do this is using _flags_ that can be deployed in arbitrary order, as in: + +command --flag1 1 --flag2 1 --flag3 5 + +or, in short form: + +command -f1 1 -f2 1 -f3 5 + +You can do this with the command [getopts][107], but it's sometimes easier just to write your own options parser. Here's a sample script called [_test_args][108]_. Although a case statement would be a good way to handle numerous conditions, I'll use an if statement: + + #!/bin/bash + + helpmessage="This script showcases how to read arguments" + + ### get arguments + # while input array size greater than zero + while (($# > 0)); do + if [ "$1" == "-h" -o "$1" == "-help" -o "$1" == "--help" ]; then + shift; + echo "$helpmessage" + exit; + elif [ "$1" == "-f1" -o "$1" == "--flag1" ]; then + # store what's passed via flag1 in var1 + shift; var1=$1; shift + elif [ "$1" == "-f2" -o "$1" == "--flag2" ]; then + shift; var2=$1; shift + elif [ "$1" == "-f3" -o "$1" == "--flag3" ]; then + shift; var3=$1; shift + # if unknown argument, just shift + else + shift + fi + done + + ### main + # echo variable if not empty + if [ ! -z $var1 ]; then echo "flag1 passed "$var1; fi + if [ ! -z $var2 ]; then echo "flag2 passed "$var2; fi + if [ ! -z $var3 ]; then echo "flag3 passed "$var3; fi + +This has some things we haven't seen yet: + +* $# is the size of our input argument array +* shift pops an element off of our array (the same as in Perl) +* exit exits the script +* -o is logical OR in unix +* -z checks if a variable is empty +The code loops through the argument array and keeps popping off elements until the array size is zero, whereupon it exits the loop. For example, one might run this script as: + + $ ./test_args --flag1 x -f2 y --flag3 zzz + flag1 passed x + flag2 passed y + flag3 passed zzz + +To spell out how this works, the first argument is _\--flag1_. Since this matches one of our checks, we shift. This pops this element out of our array, so the first element, $1, becomes _x_. This is stored in the variable _var1_, then there's another shift and $1 becomes _-f2_, which matches another condition, and so on. + +The flags can come in any order: + + $ ./test_args --flag3 x --flag1 zzz + flag1 passed zzz + flag3 passed x + + $ ./test_args --flag2 asdf + flag2 passed asdf + +We're brushing up against the outer limits of bash here. My prejudice is that you usually shouldn't go this far with bash, because its limitations will come sharply into focus if you try to do too-involved scripting. Instead, use a more friendly language. In Perl, for example, the array containing inputs is @ARGV; in Python, it's sys.argv. Let's compare these common scripting languages: + +| ----- | +| **Bash** | **Perl** | **Python** | **Description** | +| $0 | $0 | sys.argv[0] | Name of Script Itself | +| $* | | | String Containing All Input Arguments | +| ("$@") | @ARGV | sys.argv | Array or List Containing All Input Arguments [1] | +| $1 | $ARGV[0] | sys.argv[1] | First Argument | +| $2 | $ARGV[1] | sys.argv[2] | Second Argument | + +Perl has a [Getopt][109] package that is convenient for reading arguments, and Python has an even better one called [argparse][110]. Their functionality is infinitely nicer than bash's, so steer clear of bash if you're going for a script with lots of options. + +* * * + + +[1] The distinction between $* and $@ is knotty. Dive into these subtleties [on Stackoverflow][111] ↑ + +## Multi-Line Comments, Multi-Line Strings in Bash + +Let's continue in the realm of scripting. You can do a multi-line comment in bash with an if statement: + + # multi-line comment + if false; then + echo hello + echo hello + echo hello + fi + +(Yes, this is a bit of a hack!) + +Multi-line strings are handy for many things. For example, if you want a help section for your script, you can do it like this: + + cat <<_EOF_ + + Usage: + + $0 --flag1 STRING [--flag2 STRING] [--flag3 STRING] + + Required Arguments: + + --flag1 STRING This argument does this + + Options: + + --flag2 STRING This argument does that + --flag3 STRING This argument does another thing + + _EOF_ + +How does this syntax work? Everything between the __EOF__ tags comprises the string and is printed. This is called a [_Here Document][112]_. Read The Linux Documentation Project's discussion of Here Documents [here][113]. + +## Source and Export + +_Question_: If we create some variables in a script and exit, what happens to those variables? Do they disappear? The answer is, yes, they do. Let's make a script called _test_src.sh_ such that: + + $ cat ./test_src.sh + #!/bin/bash + + myvariable=54 + echo $myvariable + +If we run it and then check what happened to the variable on our command line, we get: + + $ ./test_src.sh + 54 + $ echo $myvariable + +The variable is undefined. The command [source][114] is for solving this problem. If we want the variable to persist, we run: + + $ source ./test_src.sh + 54 + $ echo $myvariable + 54 + +and—voilà!—our variable exists in the shell. An equivalent syntax for sourcing uses a dot: + + $ . ./test_src.sh # this is the same as "source ./test_src.sh" + 54 + +But now observe the following. We'll make a new script, _test_src_2.sh_, such that: + + $ cat ./test_src_2.sh + #!/bin/bash + + echo $myvariable + +This script is also looking for _$myvariable_. Running it, we get: + + $ ./test_src_2.sh + +Nothing! So _$myvariable_ is defined in the shell but, if we run another script, its existence is unknown. Let's amend our original script to add in an export: + + $ cat ./test_src.sh + #!/bin/bash + + export myvariable=54 # export this variable + echo $myvariable + +Now what happens? + + $ ./test_src.sh + 54 + $ ./test_src_2.sh + +Still nothing! Why? Because we didn't source _test_src.sh_. Trying again: + + $ source ./test_src.sh + 54 + $ ./test_src_2.sh + 54 + +So, at last, we see how to do this. If we want access on the shell to a variable which is defined inside a script, we must source that script. If we want _other_ scripts to have access to that variable, we must source plus export. + +## Dotfiles (_.bashrc_ and _.bash_profile_) + +Dotfiles are simply files that begin with a dot. We can make a test one as follows: + + $ touch .test + +Such a file will be invisible in the GUI and you won't see it with vanilla ls either. (This works the same way for directories.) The only way to see it is to use the list _all_ option: + +ls -al + +or to list it explicitly by name. This is useful for files that you generally want to keep hidden from the user or discourage tinkering with. + +Many programs, such as bash, [Vim][55], and [Git][92], are highly configurable. Each uses dotfiles to let the user add functionality, change options, switch key bindings, etc. For example, here are some of the dotfiles files each program employs: + +* bash - _.bashrc_ +* vim - _.vimrc_ +* git - _.gitconfig_ +The most famous dotfile in my circle is _.bashrc_ which resides in HOME and configures your bash. Actually, let me retract that: let's say _.bash_profile_ instead of _.bashrc_ (read about the difference [here][115]). In any case, the idea is that this dotfile gets executed as soon as you open up the terminal and start a new session. It is therefore ideal for setting your PATH and other variables, adding functions ([like this one][116]), creating _aliases_ (discussed below), and doing any other setup related chore. For example, suppose you download a new program into /some/path/to/prog and you want to add it to your PATH. Then in your _.bash_profile_ you'd add: + + export PATH=/some/path/to/prog:$PATH + +Recalling how export works, this will allow any programs we run on the command line to have access to our amended PATH. Note that we're adding this to the front of our PATH (so, if the program exists in our PATH already, the existing copy will be superseded). Here's an example snippet of my setup file: + + PATH=/apps/python/2.7.6/bin:$PATH # use this version of Python + PATH=/apps/R/3.1.2/bin:$PATH # use this version of R + PATH=/apps/gcc/4.6.0/bin/:$PATH # use this version of gcc + export PATH + +There is much ado about _.bashrc_ (read _.bash_profile_) and it inspired one of the greatest unix blog-post titles of all time: [_Pimp my .bashrc][117]_—although this blogger is only playing with his prompt, as it were. As you go on in unix and add things to your _.bash_profile_, it will evolve into a kind of fingerprint, optimizing bash in your own unique way (and potentially making it difficult for others to use). + +If you have multiple computers, you'll want to recycle much of your program configurations on all of them. My co-worker uses a nice system I've adopted where the local and global aspects of setup are separated. For example, if you wanted to use certain aliases across all your computers, you'd put them in a global settings file. However, changes to your PATH might be different on different machines, so you'd store this in a local settings file. Then any time you change computers you can simply copy the global files and get your familiar setup, saving lots of work. A convenient way to accomplish this goal of a unified shell environment across all the systems you work on is to put your dotfiles on a server, like [GitHub][94] or [Bitbucket][118], you can access from anywhere. This is exactly what I've done and you can [get the up-to-date versions of my dotfiles on GitHub][119]. + +Here's a sketch of how this idea works: in HOME make a _.dotfiles/bash_ directory and populate it with your setup files, using a suffix of either _local_ or _share_: + + $ ls -1 .dotfiles/bash/ + bash_aliases_local + bash_aliases_share + bash_functions_share + bash_inirun_local + bash_paths_local + bash_settings_local + bash_settings_share + bash_welcome_local + bash_welcome_share + +When _.bash_profile_ is called at the startup of your session, it sources all these files: + + # the directory where bash configuration files reside + INIT_DIR="${HOME}/.dotfiles/bash" + + # to make local configurations, add these files into this directory: + # bash_aliases_local + # bash_paths_local + # bash_settings_local + # bash_welcome_local + + # this line, e.g., protects the functionality of rsync by only turning on the below if the shell is in interactive mode + # In particular, rsync fails if things are echo-ed to the terminal + [[ "$-" != *i* ]] && return + + # bash welcome + if [ -e "${INIT_DIR}/bash_welcome_local" ]; then + cat ${INIT_DIR}/bash_welcome_local + elif [ -e "${INIT_DIR}/bash_welcome_share" ]; then + cat ${INIT_DIR}/bash_welcome_share + fi + + #--------------------LOCAL------------------------------ + # aliases local + if [ -e "${INIT_DIR}/bash_aliases_local" ]; then + source "${INIT_DIR}/bash_aliases_local" + echo "bash_aliases_local loaded" + fi + + # settings local + if [ -e "${INIT_DIR}/bash_settings_local" ]; then + source "${INIT_DIR}/bash_settings_local" + echo "bash_settings_local loaded" + fi + + # paths local + if [ -e "${INIT_DIR}/bash_paths_local" ]; then + source "${INIT_DIR}/bash_paths_local" + echo "bash_paths_local loaded" + fi + + #---------------SHARE----------------------------- + # aliases share + if [ -e "${INIT_DIR}/bash_aliases_share" ]; then + source "${INIT_DIR}/bash_aliases_share" + echo "bash_aliases_share loaded" + fi + + # settings share + if [ -e "${INIT_DIR}/bash_settings_share" ]; then + source "${INIT_DIR}/bash_settings_share" + echo "bash_settings_share loaded" + fi + + # functions share + if [ -e "${INIT_DIR}/bash_functions_share" ]; then + source "${INIT_DIR}/bash_functions_share" + echo "bash_functions_share loaded" + fi + +A word of caution: echoing things in your _.bash_profile_, as I'm doing here, can be dangerous and break the functionaly of utilities like scp and rsync. However, we protect against this with the cryptic line near the top. + +Taking care of bash is the hard part. Other programs are less of a chore because, even if you have different programs in your PATH on your home and work computers, you probably want everything else to behave the same. To accomplish this, just drop all your other configuration files into your _.dotfiles_ repository and link to them from your home directory: + + .gitconfig -> .dotfiles/.gitconfig + .vimrc -> .dotfiles/.vimrc + +## Working Faster with Readline Functions and Key Bindings + +If you've started using the terminal extensively, you might find that things are a bit slow. Perhaps you need some long command you wrote yesterday and you don't want to write the damn thing again. Or, if you want to jump to the end of a line, it's tiresome to move the cursor one character at a time. Failure to immediately solve these problems will push your productivity back into the stone age and you may end up swearing off the terminal as a Rube Goldberg-ian dystopia. So—enter keyboard shortcuts! + +The backstory about shortcuts is that there are two massively influential text editors, [Emacs][57] and [Vim][55], whose users—to be overdramatic—are divided into two warring camps. Each program has its own conventions for shortcuts, like jumping words with your cursor, and in bash they're Emacs-flavored by default. But you can toggle between either one: + + $ set -o emacs # Set emacs-style key bindings (this is the default) + $ set -o vi # Set vi-style key bindings + +Although I prefer Vim as a text-editor, I use Emacs key bindings on the command line. The reason is that in Vim there are multiple modes (normal mode, insert mode, command mode). If you want to jump to the front of a line, you have to switch from insert mode to normal mode, which breaks up the flow a little. In Emacs there's no such complication. Emacs commands usually start with the _Control_ key or the _Meta_ key (usually _Esc_). Here are some things you can do: + +* _Cntrl-a_ \- jump cursor to beginning of line +* _Cntrl-e_ \- jump cursor to end of line +* _Cntrl-k_ \- delete to end of line +* _Cntrl-u_ \- delete to beginning of line +* _Cntrl-w_ \- delete back one word +* _Cntrl-y_ \- paste (yank) what was deleted with the above shortcuts +* _Cntrl-r_ \- reverse-search history for a given word +* _Cntrl-c_ \- kill the process running in the foreground; don't execute current line on the command line +* _Cntrl-z_ \- suspend the process running in the foreground +* _Cntrl-l_ \- clear screen. (this has an advantage over the unix command clear in that it works in the Python, MySQL, and other shells) +* _Cntrl-d_ \- [end of transmission][120] (in practice, often synonymous with quit - e.g., exiting the Python or MySQL shells) +* _Cntrl-s_ \- freeze screen +* _Cntrl-q_ \- un-freeze screen +_These are supremely useful!_ I use these numerous times a day. (On the Mac, the first three even work in the Google search bar!) The first bunch of these fall under the umbrella of [_ReadLine Functions][121]_ (read GNU's extensive documentation [here][122]). There are actually tons more, and you can see them all by entering: + + $ bind -P # show all Readline Functions and their key bindings + $ bind -l # show all Readline Functions + +Four of the most excellent Readline Functions are: + +* _forward-word_ \- jump cursor forward a word +* _backward-word_ \- jump cursor backward a word +* _history-search-backward_ \- scroll through your bash history backward +* _history-search-forward_ \- scroll through your bash history forward +For the first two—which are absolutely indispensable—you can use the default Emacs way: +* _Meta-f_ \- jump forward one word +* _Meta-b_ \- jump backward one word +However, reaching for the _Esc_ key is a royal pain in the ass—you have to re-position your hands on the keyboard. This is where _key-binding_ comes into play. Using the command bind, you can map a Readline Function to any key combination you like. Of course, you should be careful not to overwrite pre-existing key bindings that you want to use. I like to map the following keys to these Readline Functions: + +* _Cntrl-forward-arrow_ \- forward-word +* _Cntrl-backward-arrow_ \- backward-word +* _up-arrow_ \- history-search-backward +* _down-arrow_ \- history-search-forward +In my _.bash_profile_ (or, more accurately, in my global bash settings file) I use: + + # make cursor jump over words + bind '"e[5C": forward-word' # control+arrow_right + bind '"e[5D": backward-word' # control+arrow_left + + # make history searchable by entering the beginning of command + # and using up and down keys + bind '"e[A": history-search-backward' # arrow_up + bind '"e[B": history-search-forward' # arrow_down + +(although these may not work universally [1].) How does this cryptic symbology translate into these particular keybindings? There's a neat trick you can use, to be revealed in the next section. + +_Tip_: On Mac, you can move your cursor to any position on the line by holding down _Option_ and clicking your mouse there. I rarely use this, however, because it's faster to make your cursor jump via the keyboard. + +* * * + + +[1] If you have trouble getting this to work on OS's terminal, try [iTerm2][123] instead, as described [here][124] ↑ + +## More on Key Bindings, the ASCII Table, _Control-v_ + +Before we get to the key binding conundrum, let's review [ASCII][125]. This is, simply, a way of mapping every character on your keyboard to a numeric code. As Wikipedia puts it: + +> The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is a character-encoding scheme originally based on the English alphabet that encodes 128 specified characters—the numbers 0-9, the letters a-z and A-Z, some basic punctuation symbols, some control codes that originated with Teletype machines, and a blank space—into the 7-bit binary integers. + +For example, the character _A_ is mapped to the number _65_, while _q_ is _113_. Of special interest are the _control characters_, which are the representations of things that cannot be printed like _return_ or _delete_. Again [from Wikipedia][126], here is the portion of the ASCII table for these control characters: + +| ----- | +| **Binary** | **Oct** | **Dec** | **Hex** | **Abbr** | [**a]** | [**b]** | [**c]** | **Name** | +| 000 0000 | 000 | 0 | 00 | NUL | ␀ | ^@ | + +[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix +[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux +[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_interface +[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_emulator +[5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_script +[6]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourne-again_shell +[7]: http://www.oliverelliott.org/static/article/img/terminal_591.png +[8]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ +[9]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Core_Utilities +[10]: /static/img/letter_600.jpg +[11]: https://class.coursera.org/startup-001 +[12]: http://ss64.com/bash/rsync.html +[13]: http://www.perl.org +[14]: http://www.python.org +[15]: https://www.gnupg.org/index.html +[16]: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ +[17]: http://nginx.org/ +[18]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface +[19]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiX7GTelTPM +[20]: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Unix_timeline.en.svg +[21]: /article/computing/ref_unix/ +[22]: http://www.oliverelliott.org/static/article/img/terminal_119.png +[23]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cmd.exe +[24]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell +[25]: http://www.putty.org +[26]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo?hl=en +[27]: http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net +[28]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) +[29]: http://aws.amazon.com/free/ +[30]: http://www.ubuntu.com/download +[31]: http://www.linuxmint.com +[32]: https://getfedora.org/ +[33]: http://www.centos.org +[34]: https://www.cygwin.com/ +[35]: /article/computing/tips_mac/#InstalltheGNUCoreutils +[36]: http://www.oliverelliott.org/static/article/img/root_dir_structure.png +[37]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_directory +[38]: http://www.oliverelliott.org/static/article/img/home_dir_structure.png +[39]: http://www.oliverelliott.org/static/article/img/dir_struct_1125.png +[40]: http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/09/linux-file-system-structure/ +[41]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_resource_locator +[42]: http://www.e-reading.biz/htmbook.php/orelly/unix2.1/lrnunix/ch03_01.htm +[43]: http://ss64.com/bash/ls.html +[44]: http://www.oliverelliott.org/static/article/img/ls.png +[45]: http://www.oliverelliott.org/static/article/img/ls1.png +[46]: http://www.oliverelliott.org/static/article/img/lshl.png +[47]: http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?finger +[48]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_file_and_hidden_directory +[49]: http://www.oliverelliott.org/static/article/img/lsal.png +[50]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glob_%28programming%29 +[51]: http://macintoshgarden.org/games/prince-of-persia +[52]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word +[53]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znlFu_lemsU +[54]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grep +[55]: http://www.vim.org +[56]: http://www.nano-editor.org/ +[57]: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ +[58]: /article/computing/wik_vim/ +[59]: http://www.sublimetext.com/ +[60]: http://aquamacs.org/ +[61]: http://www.peterborgapps.com/smultron/ +[62]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_character +[63]: http://www.oliverelliott.org/static/article/img/bash_prompt_426.png +[64]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System +[65]: http://www.oliverelliott.org/static/article/img/thepath_410.png +[66]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link +[67]: http://ss64.com/bash/ln.html +[68]: http://www.oliverelliott.org/static/article/img/myscript_634.png +[69]: https://www.talisman.org/~erlkonig/documents/commandname-extensions-considered-harmful.shtml +[70]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebang_(Unix) +[71]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_portability +[72]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Env +[73]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreted_language +[74]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiled_language +[75]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiler +[76]: http://gcc.gnu.org +[77]: https://virtualenv.pypa.io/en/latest/ +[78]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5725296/difference-between-sh-and-bash +[79]: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-do-i-find-out-what-shell-im-using.html +[80]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_shell +[81]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcsh +[82]: http://ss64.com/bash/chmod.html +[83]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chmod +[84]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Shell +[85]: http://www.ss64.com/bash/ssh.html +[86]: /article/computing/tut_unix/#Dotfilesbashrcandbash_profile +[87]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_(cryptosystem) +[88]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography +[89]: https://github.com/ +[90]: https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys/ +[91]: /article/computing/tips_mac/#sshintoYourMac +[92]: http://git-scm.com/ +[93]: /article/computing/wik_git/ +[94]: https://github.com +[95]: /static/article/example/myscript.html +[96]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_streams +[97]: http://www.oliverelliott.org/static/article/img/Stdstreams-notitle.svg.png +[98]: http://bash.cyberciti.biz/guide/The_case_statement +[99]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Array_data_structure +[100]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_table +[101]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Tiger-Shark-Empirical-Wave-Particle/dp/0521358922 +[102]: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/fto.html +[103]: http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/exit-status.html +[104]: http://www.oliverelliott.org/static/article/img/lsdirtree_234.jpg +[105]: http://ss64.com/bash/gzip.html +[106]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_flow +[107]: http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/howto/getopts_tutorial +[108]: /static/article/example/test_args.html +[109]: http://perldoc.perl.org/Getopt/Long.html +[110]: https://docs.python.org/2/howto/argparse.html +[111]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12314451/accessing-bash-command-line-args-vs +[112]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_document +[113]: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/here-docs.html +[114]: http://ss64.com/bash/source.html +[115]: http://www.joshstaiger.org/archives/2005/07/bash_profile_vs.html +[116]: http://www.virtualblueness.net/linux-gazette/109/marinov.html +[117]: http://zxvf-linux.blogspot.com/2013/05/pimp-my-bashrc.html +[118]: https://bitbucket.org +[119]: https://github.com/gitliver/.dotfiles +[120]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-transmission_character +[121]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Readline +[122]: http://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/readline/readline.html +[123]: http://iterm2.com/ +[124]: /article/computing/tips_mac/#InstalliTerm2 +[125]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII +[126]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII#ASCII_control_characters diff --git a/saved_articles/anarchism and crime.txt b/saved_articles/anarchism and crime.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..26e56ab --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/anarchism and crime.txt @@ -0,0 +1,95 @@ +--- +title: Anarchism and Crime | The Anarchist Library +date: 2016-02-18T14:19:25Z +source: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/robert-anton-wilson-anarchism-and-crime +tags: politics + +--- + +Because anarchists aim at the abolition of government, the first question they are usually asked is, "What about murderers, thieves, rapists? The government protects us from them. Would you just let them run wild?" + +The answer, first of all, is that government does not protect us. Its claims are a total imposture, like the fraud of a primitive shaman who claims to bring rain and warns everybody, "If you abolish me, it will never rain again." Thus,_ the major crimes are all legal;_ the thieves who have stolen the land and the natural resources from under our feet operate with a government franchise. These huge banks, corporations and land monopolies finance both political parties, train the corporation lawyers who become Congressmen or Presidents, and can never be successfully resisted in the courts because they own the judges, too. + +Second, the next level of crime, the so-called Syndicate or Mafia, is also in cahoots with big government and big business, and only token arrests and light sentences are ever imposed on "gangland leaders" -- usually rebels who have become unpopular with the higher-level mobsters. In every big city, the links between the mayor's office and the Mob are well-known and often "exposed" in the press, but no reforms are permanent and never can be under this system. The links between the national Mob and the national government are less well publicized, but books like _The Politics of Opium in Southeast Asia,_ the recent Harpers magazine issue on the CIA and heroin, etc., show that the heroin syndicate could not operate without high-level Federal protection. + +Finally, the small-time free-lance criminal -- the rapist and sneak thief -- _can be _arrested and prosecuted in this system; but_ is_ he, usually? In New York, in 1972, there were 300,000 burglaries but only 20,000 arrests for burglary. The police are too busy protecting the high-level criminals -- as we will explain -- to have the manpower to really battle the small independents. + +Do you deny this? Well, of course, you have been trained by the State-run schools and the mass media to deny it, do you believe your own denial? How safe do you feel in a large American city, especially after dark? Do you honestly think the government can and will protect you? + +#### IS MORE LAW THE ANSWER? + +Many admit that they are frightened and appalled by modern American life, but they think the answer is more laws, tougher laws, an evolution toward the total Police State. + +This is, of course, the natural direction of government. The more honest (and misguided) a politician happens to be, the more laws he will write -- to prove to himself that he is "working" for the people. Obviously, every time the legislature meets, the honest politicians will introduce more laws, to show how hard they're working. Eventually, nothing will remain that is not covered by some law or other. Everything not compulsory will be forbidden, and everything not forbidden will be compulsory. + +Stop and ask yourself if you really want that kind of Nazi- or Communist-style tyranny. + +Now, even if we (or most of us) do want it -- to be protected from criminals -- and even if we escalate our progress and pass a billion new laws a year, arriving at Total Law in say five or ten years, what then? How will such a system be enforced? Kinsey estimated that to enforce our sex laws alone, 95 percent of the population would have to become either police or jail-guards -- except that they would all be in jail themselves. This is already impossible, but suppose we tried to enforce the anti-drug and anti-gambling laws, also? We would all spend our lives in Federal prisons, spending part of the day guarding others and part of the day being guarded by them. + +This is absurd, but within the framework of government and law, how can we stop short of such a total prison-society? + +And remember: each step in this direction -- each new law, and each new bureaucracy to enforce the new laws -- raises your tax burden. Already, you are working from January 1 to May 23 for the Federal government, to pay your IRS bill for the year. For a few months thereafter, you are working to pay nuisance taxes, state taxes, and various other concealed taxes on every item you buy, every movie you see, every drink you take. Already, it would probably be cheaper to just let yourself be robbed every week by a casual sneak-thief. Government may be more genteel than a mugger (occasionally) but it usually ends up taking more of one's money. + +#### THE FUNCTION OF LAW + +There are three kinds of laws on the books today, and to understand them is to understand the State. + +The first kind of law declares the State's power over you. It says: we may rob you of this much per year (taxation), we may enslave you for this period of time (the draft), we may do this and that and the other thing to you, and you cannot resist because we are your Masters. This is the earliest kind of law and was originally imposed on conquered people by conquerors. No attempt to justify it has ever been convincing to anyone bold enough to question it in the first place. It is based on mere Force; its only argument is the gun. + +The second kind of law is coercive morality. This makes the State into an armed clergyman. It says you can enjoy yourself this way, but not that way; you can smoke this, but not that; you can drink this, but not that. Thou Shalt Not Play Parchesi On The Night of the Full Moon. Thou shalt not gamble on Sunday. Thou shalt not make love to your wife the way you and she both like, but the way the legislators like. Four million arrests a year, and an incredible expenditure of time and manpower and money, go into enforcing these laws. + +These are the laws that establish crimes without victims. These are the laws that everybody occasionally violates and some people violate constantly. Their only justification, as with the first type of laws, is sheer brute force. That is, without force, a man who believed in, say, the Seventh Day Adventist vegetarian diet would still obey that diet's rules; with force, the Adventists, if they get into government, can make all of us obey it. The day is not distant when pot-smokers will take over, and if they are vengeful, anti-booze laws will come back on the books. This stupid bullying can go on forever, each group getting its turn to impose its own prejudices on others. Anarchists say: stop it now, get off your neighbor's back, get him off your back, and let everybody enjoy his or her own lifestyle. + +Finally, there is the third class of laws -- the class that every decent person wishes society would live by. No killing. No stealing. No rape. No fraud. Anarchists, just like you, would like to see these laws really functioning. We just don't believe that government can do that job. We think government is, always has been, and always will be preoccupied with the first two kinds of law. Read on and we will explain this. + +#### THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT + +Government was instituted to guarantee that property would remain stolen. The chief function of every cop, every judge, every bureaucrat is to see that property remains stolen. + +The first kings were conquerors. They stole the land by shot and shell, period. Then, they settled down to rob the survivors at a certain rate per year, called taxation. Next, they divided up the land among their relatives or officers in the army, who all became lords-of-the-land, landlords, and were empowered to rob the citizens at a certain other rate per year, called rent. When science and industry appeared, other satraps and sycophants of the royal families received charters to monopolize the resources and means of production, and to rob at a certain rate per year, called capital interest or profit. When banks were formed to circulate the medium of exchange (money), other charters were handed out to others in the bandit-gang, who became bank directors with a license to rob at another rate per year, called money interest or economic interest. + +It soon became evident that those not in the gang, the majority of the population, were inclined to rob back as much as they could. The Robin Hood hero appears in all societies at this point, and most of us still admire him, although shamefacedly, since the schools and mass media tell us not to. (Still, who doesn't heroize Jesse James or John Dillinger a little?) + +Anarchists say that the first crime was the crime of the conquerors/governors, who seized a whole land, cut it up among themselves, and proceeded to rob all of us forever by taxation, rent, corporative profit, money interest, and various sub-classes of the same basic fraud. Anarchists say that the Earth belongs to its inhabitants, not to this small "owning" and "governing" class of less than 1 percent of the population. + +Anarchists say that the way to stop crime is to stop the primordial crime, the State, and administer the land through voluntary associations (syndicates) of all the people. + +Anarchists say that if people could work for themselves -- if they received the full product of their labor through a syndicate of fellow-workers -- almost all motivation for crime would disappear. If you didn't have to pay taxes and rent, starting tomorrow, your purchasing power would be more than doubled. If other forms of exploitation and robbery, through the financial-interest system, were also abolished, your purchasing power would more than quadruple. How much envy, how much worry about money, how much irrational fear, ulcers, nightmares, headaches and other motivations to cheat a little or steal a little would survive after this simple economic justice was achieved? + +#### THE OTHER CRIMINALS + +"But, but -- how about the violent criminal types? How about the thrill-killers, the nuts, the psychopaths or sociopaths or sadists? How about those who simply enjoy being evil and destructive?" + +We are not evading that question. It is absolutely necessary, however, to put it in perspective by explaining the Major Economic Crime of capitalist government (and feudal and other governments) and how other, lesser crimes mostly derive from that primordial injustice. + +Now, after economic justice is achieved and voluntary associations of all sorts (labor unions, credit unions, consumer-owned co-ops, people-owned insurance companies, rural communes, tribes, any type of free human grouping) have taken over the functions of government, _some _persons, due to sickness or perversity or one damn thing or another, will still make trouble. Rape. Pilfering. Attempts to defraud. How will anarchists deal with these remaining no-goodniks? + +#### EDUCATION AND THE FAMILY + +The first step in solving any social problem, like any medical problem, is prevention. Other remedies are necessary only when prevention fails. + +Anarchists claim that the violent-nut-type of human being is produced by our current methods of child-rearing. This claim is hardly radical or extreme: every psychiatrist, every sociologist, every anthropologist, in one way or another, admits that this grave charge is true. We would not have so many rapists and other violent nuisances if our society were not, in some way, training them from birth onward to behave like that. For instance, Sweden has only a few rapes per year; the United States has one every seven minutes. One rape every seven minutes is not natural male behavior (whatever Womens Lib may say); it is a function of the sexual misery in this society. + +Anarchists believe that the repressive, authoritarian, coercive, brutal and degrading practices currently used in the family and the school are only necessary to condition the young human to live in a government-run society. Children must be beaten or otherwise terrorized and bullied in the home and the school in order that they may "adjust" to the terror and brutality of government as they mature. In short, a State-run society must be repressive because repression is the essence of the State. + +Libertarian, free-form families and schools -- the open family, the Summerhill school, the free association of men, women and children without authoritarian control -- will not produce the deformed, mentally twisted, violent and "mean" and "crazy" types so common in our authoritarian society. So anarchists aim, first of all, to prevent violent criminals by changing the child-rearing methods that produce them. + +#### THE DEMONIAC OR MONSTER + +There still remains the inexplicable criminal -- the guy who enjoys harming others for reasons nobody today can understand. The superstitious say he is possessed by demons; the naturalists imply that maybe he has bad genes or is a throwback to an earlier stage of evolution. Whatever the explanation, he will appear, presumably, in anarchist societies, as he has appeared in all other societies, even after economic injustice and mind-warping education are abolished. + +Human-centered societies (as distinguished from governmental or property-centered societies) have dealing with this problem for thousands of years. Tribes, clans, bands, free communes, have existed outside, before and alongside the States which get all the attention from historians. Anthropologists have investigated these free human groupings and have found a variety of methods of dealing with "demoniacs," many of them as good or better than the State's traditional jails, tortures or executions. + +Ostracism should not be underestimated. One critic of anarchism, George Orwell, actually complained that ostracism was so cruel that most people would rather fall afoul of government and go to jail than be the sole ostracized person in an anarchist community. + +Exile, widely used by governments before jail became popular, is also effective. At least, it solves the problem for the community that uses it (while, alas, passing the problem on to the unlucky community that next gets the offensive nut.) + +The Quakers have widely practiced a form of moral forgiveness which sounds impractical to most of us, but which is murderously effective. Bertrand Russell was so impressed with this that he suggested it as a fit punishment for Stalin. Until you have seen a group of Quakers reciting somebody's sins in public, weeping over them loudly, and then forgiving and praying for the culprit, you can't imagine how much psychological impulse-to-change this generates. + +Many anarchists believe the private defense groups are legitimate; some even are willing to allow such groups to use traditional Vigilante methods. Clarence Lee Schwartz, an American anarchist who observed this system first-hand in the old West, thought it both more humane and more effective at peace-keeping than the government law system back East. Other anarchists fear this as the possible source of a new State. + +Most anarchists believe that criminals should not be caged under any circumstances, due to the overwhelming evidence that every prisoner comes out of a cage worse than he goes into it. Others believe, however, that punishment in a form of indemnification is compatible with libertarian ideas and should be rigorously enforced by anarchist syndicates. Under the indemnity system, every criminal must pay in cash or work or some needed good to compensate his victims (or their survivors). This certainly does the victims more good than having the criminal put in a cage and fed at community expense, to say the least of it; and is probably just as discouraging or more discouraging to every nut with even the remnant of an ability to forsee the probable results of his actions. + +Finally, we must mention miscellaneous solutions. Just as crime in an economically just and free community will be freaky and sporadic (rather than the steady hour-after-hour terror that it is in this mad, unequal and unfree society), the remedies will also be individualized and peculiar to each situation. In some cases, undoubtedly, an anarchist community will decide the "criminal" was right and the community was wrong; for this reason, anarchists do not believe in unalterable laws, but only in general policies. + +The acme of anarchist theory is the principle of non-invasiveness or non-coercion -- Mind Your Own Business -- and those found to be violating this will be given, usually, some method of compensating those whose lives they have damaged. If they refuse, methods like the boycott-ostracism-exile or general cold shoulder need not always be deliberately organized against them. The good sense, the social bonds, and the sense of humor of the organic community will find some way to make them known that human tolerance, even under anarchy, is not infinite. In the Old West, men booted through town with a skunk tied around their necks, and then shoved onto the highway, often became valuable, co-operative and productive citizens in the next town, after some time to figure the likelihood of a repetition of that public amusement if they were to try similar modes of behavior again.
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/saved_articles/ancient green robin wall kimmerer.txt b/saved_articles/ancient green robin wall kimmerer.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8ee1c5b --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/ancient green robin wall kimmerer.txt @@ -0,0 +1,109 @@ +Emergence Magazine Essay +https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/ancient-green/ +Ancient Green - Moss, Climate, and Deep Time + +by Robin Wall Kimmerer +April 20, 2022 + +Taking a long view of life on Earth, Robin Wall Kimmerer explores how mosses—ancient beings who +transformed the world—teach us strategies for persisting amid a changing climate. + +One summer day in Alaska, I stood within a glacial cave, blue and strange beneath the ice. I heard the plunk of drips falling into the meltwater pool and shivered in the cold blue light. I listened to the calls of ice becoming water. There’s a story that begins here, or maybe it ends. It depends on us. + +The last time the glaciers melted here in the Adirondacks, they left this boulder field behind. Hundreds of glacial erratics—scraped from the ancient Laurentian Shield, rolled here beneath the ice sheet—dot the landscape. Today, their scarred granite surfaces are robed in mosses. The air itself is charged with their radiant green. The boulders look like a herd of Ice Age musk oxen, frozen in place with a thick coat of green fur, grazing beneath a post-Pleistocene canopy of birches, maples, and hemlocks. As a bryoecologist, I’ve spent decades observing these islands of mossy rock. What seems like a lifetime to me is barely an eyeblink in the ten-thousand-year rest that allowed these rolling stones to gather some moss. Mosses and rocks take the long view. + +Mosses, I think, are like time made visible. They create a kind of botanical forgetting. Shoot by tiny shoot, the past is obscured in green. That’s why we have stories, so we can remember. + +The mosses remember that this is not the first time the glaciers have melted. If time is a line, as western thinking presumes, we might think this is a unique moment for which we have to devise a solution that enables that line to continue. If time is a circle, as the Indigenous worldview presumes, the knowledge we need is already within the circle; we just have to remember it to find it again and let it teach us. That’s where the storytellers come in. + +Among the first people of the eastern woodlands, it is said that at one point on the circle of time that is our ongoing story, the People lived in the Skyworld, in much the same way as we live here on Earth today. There grew among them a great Tree of Life. Every kind of plant was borne on its branches: the grasses, the berries, the trees, the ferns, and even the mosses, tucked in a knothole. One night a great windstorm blew through the Skyworld and toppled the tree. The next morning Gizhgokwe, a beautiful young woman, stood beside the great hole where its roots had been. She stepped close to the edge to look below, and all she saw was blackness. So she went a little closer, but all she could see was the beam of light from the Skyworld disappearing into the dark. As she leaned forward, the soil at the edge began to crumble and she reached out to the Tree of Life to steady herself, but the branch broke off in her hand. And she fell, into the uncertainty of a new world. + +At that time, the world below was covered completely in water and peopled with water beings. Some say this is the flood memory of our people, who were witness to the inundations at the end of the last ice age. Who can say? Seeing the woman spiraling toward them, the geese rose from the water and flew up to catch her in their strong wings. Imagine her relief, far from the only home she’d ever known, to be rescued in a warm embrace of soft feathers. From the beginning of time, we have been told that the very first encounter between humans and other beings of the earth was marked by care and responsibility. The council of water beings convened to decide what to do. A great ridge-backed snapping turtle floated in the watery gathering, and he offered to let Gizhgokwe, or Skywoman, rest upon his back. Gratefully she stepped from the goose wings onto the dome of the Turtle. The others understood that she needed land for her home. + +The deep divers among them had heard of mud at the bottom of the water and agreed to retrieve some. Loon dove to get a beakful, but the distance was too far, and after a long while he surfaced with nothing to show for his efforts. One by one, the other animals offered to help: the otter, the beaver, the sturgeon. But the depth, the darkness, and the pressures were too great for even these strongest of swimmers, who came up gasping for air with their heads ringing. Soon, only the muskrat was left, the weakest diver of all. He volunteered to go while the others looked on doubtfully. His little legs flailed as he worked his way downward. They waited and waited for him to return, fearing the worst for their relative. A stream of bubbles rose from the water and the small, limp body of muskrat floated upward. He had given his life to aid this helpless human. But the others noticed that his paw was tightly clenched, and when they opened it, there was a small handful of mud. Turtle said, “Here, put it on my back and I will hold it.” + +Skywoman bent and spread the mud across the shell of the turtle. Moved by gratitude for the gifts of the animals, she sang in thanksgiving and then began to dance, her feet caressing the earth with love. As she danced her thanks, the land grew and grew from the dab of mud on Turtle’s back. And so, the earth was made. Not by one alone, but from the alchemy of the animal’s gifts, and human gratitude. Together they created what we know today as Turtle Island. + +Skywoman shared the gift in her hand, the branch of the Tree of Life. She scattered the seeds across the new layer of soil, and so the world became green with every kind of wild plant. She is our teacher of how the world works: through an exchange of gifts, the practice of reciprocity among beings enables life as we know it. Rescue and gratitude, muskrat life for woman life, mud and song, turtle and dance, seed and soil. There must have been spores on her moccasins, for the mosses, too, sprang up where she walked. + +Among the contemporary peoples of western science, a different creation story is told, from one point along the line that is time: after the coalescence of matter that became the Earth and before it became paradise. It is the story of a great teacher come among us, of how green came to the rocky back of that Turtle. + + Mosses were the first plants to blanket the Earth. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are also the last. + +At that time in the evolution of life, the world was covered by water and peopled with many beings from the simplest unicells to complex swimmers. There was for the longest time no land at all except for at the bottom of the sea, beyond even the reach of a devoted muskrat. Eventually, land began to rise from the primordial sea like the dome of an enormous turtle. Too harsh for life, the rocky land was devoid of green. The light streaming from the Skyworld was too intense for life. High levels of ultraviolet radiation and gamma rays bombarded the Earth so that any life that ventured onto land would be irradiated with wavelengths that destroy DNA. + +All the green was sheltered in the safety of the water. Those myriad algae, their glistening threads, tumbling unicells, waving forests of kelp kin, were all churning out oxygen, molecule by molecule, building an atmosphere from photosynthesis. Oxygen and sunlight worked together and produced a layer of ozone high in the atmosphere, which created a filter for the UV radiation. This planetary sunscreen, created by the breath of the water plants, made it safe for the first someone to set the first leaf upon the barren land. Like Skywoman on a new and empty world, the first land plants appeared on a bare surface where there was not even a muskrat-pawful of soil to cover it. So these new plants had to attach themselves to bare rock, huddle in crevices and moist depressions to avoid drying out in the still intense sun. These courageous pioneers had to unlearn the ways of their algal ancestors—who were used to an easy life bathed in water and nutrients—and withstand the harsh conditions of dry land. The colonists evolved means of holding water and scavenging minerals from bare rock with their membrane-thin leaves. + +Imagine that moment, the first touch of green on the land, the first union of rock and leaf, the courage it took to venture forth and change the world. And change the world they did, leaf by tiny pellucid leaf, without roots or flowers or seeds or wood or really much of anything except their half-inch-tall selves. Their watery ancestry didn’t equip them very well for pioneering, for living as the first immigrants on the back of the Turtle. Nonetheless they persisted. In time, the Earth became covered with patches of green. These brave new beings were the mosses, who 450 million years ago began a great experiment in evolution, the challenge of living on the land, an experiment of which we are all a part, a story whose ending is unwritten. + +The mosses, tiny in stature, simple in form, nonetheless had a huge impact. Studies have revealed that the colonization of land by mosses caused a massive climate change on the early Earth. When they crossed the border onto the land, mosses slowly weathered and dissolved rock and sent those loosened nutrients trickling back to the sea. The marine algae, whose numbers had been limited by a scarcity of nutrients, now had plenty and, thanks to the mosses, experienced a population explosion. The proliferation of algae required huge amounts of carbon dioxide to fuel their photosynthesis, which they absorbed, molecule by molecule, from the atmosphere. We know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, that it absorbs heat and warms the planet. With so much demand for CO[2] in algal photosynthesis, it diminished significantly in the atmosphere, and without its thick atmospheric blanket, the Earth began to cool. It cooled enough to trigger one of the first ice ages, and the world experienced a long barren era as a result of rapid climate change. This is a testament to the interconnected nature of the world and the collective power of the small and green to change the history of the Earth. This was the first but not the only climate change that the mosses would see. + +In this new world made by mosses, their bodies became soil, more slowly than muskrat’s pawful but as powerful, making fertile homes for the ones who would follow—and follow they did, in an evolutionary parade of experiments in being green, in colonizing the new world. + +In successive waves of evolution and extinction, the once dominant is replaced by the upstart with greater adaptation to a changed environment. The Plant Kingdom has evolved and changed. Today, the names of those early plants are rarely heard. Psilotum, Rhynia, Archaeopteris. They came, they grew, they changed the world and changed with the world—or if they didn’t, they are known today only as fossils, for extinction is the fate of most. Far more plant species have come and gone, evolved, and become extinct than are alive today. + +That scares us, and it should. The lesson is clear: adapt to change or become extinct. Your choice. + +Since that momentous colonization of land 450 million years ago, when the first moss set leaf on rock, everything on Earth has changed. All those species, entire phyla—gone. And yet, the mosses are still here, their contemporary form indistinguishable from their fossil ancestors. They have drunk from the fountain of youth, or maybe the fountain of longevity, flourished beneath a sky of pterodactyls, and flourish today under a sky of weather satellites that tell us the oceans are rising and the ice caps are melting. + +All things pass away. Oh, lovely, cool shaded maples, towering pines, waving grass, and extravagant lilies, will you, too, pass away in this overheated greenhouse, yielding to the ones who are yet to come? + + In the Anishinaabe languages of Skywoman, our words for moss, aasaakamig and aasaakamek, carry the meaning “those ones who cover the earth.” + +In the Anishinaabe languages of Skywoman, our words for moss, aasaakamig and aasaakamek, carry the meaning “those ones who cover the earth.” Soft, moist, protective, they turn time into life, covering the transient and softening the transition to another state. + +They do not discriminate in their coverage, be it a post-glacial boulder or a car long abandoned in the woods—all are blanketed. I once found a pair of logger’s boots on a cut stump, robed in moss, with sporophytes rising through the eyelets. In their vibrant verdancy, they seem to say, Where there is light and water, life will win. + +They cover the inanimate with the animate. Without judgment, they cover our mistakes, with an unconditional acceptance of their responsibility for healing. They’ve grown a bandage over the ground of Chernobyl, over mine waste and sludge ponds. There is a whole genre of photographic images of mosses in abandoned interiors, where dripping water and dim light create moss habitat out of human habitations. Broken windows and collapsing roofs invite a strangely beautiful carpet of bryophytes to upholster old couches and blanket beds of abandoned motels. For me, the most powerful of these scenes is the luminous mosses carpeting the conference room of a derelict Detroit office where the captains of gas-guzzling industry once conspired. The chairs where they plotted short-term exploitation have turned to long-term green. + +They will cover the abandoned frack pads with the same tenderness as the bare rubble of a melted glacier. Mosses were the first plants to blanket the Earth. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are also the last. + +It doesn’t have to be that way. What if we look at the mosses not only as healers of land, but as teachers of how we might live? + +I don’t know about you, but in this moment on the cusp of climate catastrophe, I long for a wise elder, a teacher to guide us. In our mythic origin story, we say that Skywoman went back to the sky and now looks over us all with the visage of Grandmother Moon. We say that she left behind teachers for us, the plants. If plants are our teachers, then the aasaakamek are our very oldest teachers. At the time of the sixth extinction, might we stop wringing our hands long enough to sit quietly at the feet of the ones who have avoided every era of extinction since the dawn of life on land? + +I’ve had the privilege of being a student of mosses for most of my life, kneeling before them, writing the stories they have shared with me. It never gets old, peering into moss rainforests where the trees are just an inch tall and brightly colored mites perch like parrots on their lustrous leaves. Each one as different from the next as a palm tree is to a magnolia, their beauty draws me back again and again. There is no light like moss light after a rain shower, when they glow and glisten, water beading up on intricate leaves smaller than a raindrop. And the smell … the woodsy, humic richness that reminds you where we came from. + +Diminutive as they be, often overlooked and mistaken for someone else, mosses as a group are extraordinarily successful—depending on how you assess success. + +If success is measured by widespread distribution, they occupy every continent, from the tropics to Antarctica, and live in nearly every habitat, from desert to rainforest. If success is measured by expanse, consider the vast peatlands of the north, blanketed by sphagnum moss. If success is colonization of new places, mosses are the first to occupy new places after an eruption or a forest fire or a nuclear meltdown. If creativity and adaptation are the metrics, mosses have diversified to fill every niche, generating more than eleven thousand uniquely adapted species, an outpouring of biodiversity. If success lies in beauty—well—just look. + +These are extraordinary successes for such a humble being, but in a time when continuity of life as we know it is in question, the most poignant measure of success may be persistence. Defying evolutionary expectation of extinction, they have come through ice ages, eons of warmings, dryings, shifting of continents, uplift of mountain ranges, the rise and fall of countless other beings, from Tyrannosaurus rex to Homo sapiens. They have lasted. + +The needs of a moss are simple and not unlike our own: food energy, water, warmth, a place to raise their young—and beauty. But their means of meeting needs are very different. + +Mosses make minimal demands on their surroundings. All they need is a little light, a sheer film of water, and a thin decoction of minerals, delivered by rainwater or dissolution of rock. If they are hydrated and illuminated, they will exuberantly photosynthesize and expand the green carpet. But when times are tough, most simply stop growing and wait until water returns. They don’t die, they just crinkle up and pause, following the rhythms of the natural world, growing in periods of abundance and waiting through periods of scarcity: a wise strategy for life that is in tune with uncertainty. + +Moss lifeways offer a strong contrast to the ways we’ve organized our society, which prioritizes relentless growth as the metric of well-being: always getting bigger, producing more, having more. Infinite growth is ecologically impossible and exceedingly destructive, as it demands the transformation of the lives of other beings into raw materials to feed the fiction. Mosses show us another way—the abundance that emanates from self-restraint, from enoughness. Mosses have lived too long on this planet to be seduced by the nonsense of accumulation, the delusion of permanence, the endless striving for productivity. Maybe our heartbeats slow when we sit with mosses because they remind us that contentment could be ours. + +Embedded in the name aasaakamek, “the ones who cover the Earth,” is the ecological truth that mosses live on surfaces. We see them on logs, on trees, on statues and roofs, on impermeable surfaces where rooted plants cannot live. + +There is a kind of brilliance in their occupancy of surfaces—a habitat with unique properties. Bare millimeters above a surface, the air is slowed to stillness. In that quiet boundary layer where the wind does not reach, radiant heat is trapped, along with moisture and the exhaled carbon dioxide of wee beings whose home it is. The laws of physics produce a microgreenhouse right at the surface of a rock, a splendid habitat where large plants can’t fit but mosses can bask. Taking advantage of naturally occurring microclimates, they live in an earth-sheltered, solar-powered home without building a thing. As they grow and fill the boundary layer with their velvety greenness, that layer thickens and invites larger mosses in. + +The biggest factor that limits their growth is water, since they can only photosynthesize when wet, which is why moss is so lush in waterfall splash zones and dripping temperate rainforests. But even in the driest desert there are mosses, living on dew. Without the fancy water conservation mechanisms of more advanced plants, mosses rely on an intimate relationship with water droplets to thrive. Their thin leaves, just one cell thick, overlap one another like shingles, and each miniscule leaf is sculpted with nubs and grooves and frilly hairlike extensions to hold a film of water by capillary action. The whole architecture of a moss fosters the love affair between leaf and water, the physicochemical attraction of water for cellulose, in order to hold water close. + + At the time of the sixth extinction, might we stop wringing our hands long enough to sit quietly at the feet of the ones who have avoided every era of extinction since the dawn of life on land? + +Watch a raindrop land on a dry moss and you might learn something more about living well. The water seems to move of its own accord, running along the leaf surface and climbing up to a branch tip, defying gravity through the affinity between moss and water. Water is moved not by clanking pumps and pipes, but by the sculpted shape of the plant. The architecture of a moss is designed to move water without expending any additional energy at all, rather by simply harnessing the forces of attraction between water and cellulose. Such economic elegance requires accepting natural forces and letting them shape your way of life. I like to imagine a human community designed the same way, embracing natural forces rather than obstructing them. + +Water is held best, not by an individual shoot, but by the collective sponge of an entire colony. Competition as an organizing economic principle has fairly predictable results: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But mosses organize themselves for a different economic outcome: shared wealth. Rather than competing for scarce water, a moss is designed for equitable sharing. Water is passed from shoot to shoot across leafy bridges and down canals of capillary space to moisten the entire colony, not just an individual. Ecological rules usually dictate that crowding is deleterious, but mosses break those rules. A community of mosses can gather and retain precious moisture much more effectively than a lone individual. We know this kind of mutual support instinctively—in times of trouble people leave their isolated lives and band together. But we forget. + +This model of cooperation extends beyond the mosses’ own needs to those of the wider community. Tiny as they are, mosses play an outsize role in supporting the lives of other beings. They can be a seedbed for rooted plants, a habitat for countless invertebrates and microbes, the soft lining of birds’ nests, and nurseries for trout food. They purify water, build soil, store carbon, and heal land after disturbance. Most humans cannot make these claims. + +When I see the way mosses create lush communities over the surface of a once barren rock, I think, it’s not so unlike our place, in the thin boundary layer between the Earth’s surface and the emptiness of space. Everything they need is there. But unlike our species, mosses have learned to live within the natural limits of the boundary layer; they have no eye on dominion. On the surface of a rock, they simply live, gathering life to them with an egoless beauty. + +A moss community possesses many of the attributes we might envision for a sustainable human community of the future: solar energy and an integrated system of recycling where nothing is wasted. Look at its stunning architecture of translucent green domes and leafy spires, every glistening surface a solar collector. A moss is energetically self-sufficient. There is no dependence on foreign oil or nuclear waste here. The only “waste” produced is oxygen; and an element vital to the life of others can scarcely be called a waste. Dead leaves are decomposed by the microbial multitudes and recycled in situ, transformed to carbon dioxide and nutrients, which are once again taken up by the moss or its inhabitants. A system of this sort can sustain itself indefinitely, as mosses clearly show us. + +This is the environmental philosophy of mosses, that small is beautiful. They remind us of the virtue of humility, a value in short supply among the people of the Anthropocene. This view is hard for humans to accept, with our love of power and stature. + +I can imagine Elon Musk scoffing at the thought of mosses being considered the most successful beings on Earth. After all, they are not the largest nor the most numerous. They have not accumulated great hoards of wealth, consumed the most stuff, attracted the gaze of billions, nor invented a way to leave the Earth. Quite the opposite: they decided long ago to stay. + +I can almost hear the billionaires sneering in response to these lessons of moss. “Don’t tell me to live like a moss. I have become a giant among men.” We’d do well to remember that the dinosaurs were big too. Living small is not a sign of weakness or complacency. Rather, it is the surpassing strength of self-restraint, to live simply so that others might simply live. + +We humans pride ourselves on living by the rule of law, but the laws we choose to obey are only those of our own making. We ignore ecological laws as if the fiction of human exceptionalism meant that thermodynamics did not apply to us. Whether we choose to heed them or not, natural laws will prevail. Arrogance has brought us to the brink. The laws of nature will bring us to our knees. And then perhaps we will see the mosses. + +The rhythm of Skywoman’s dancing steps joins the dripping drumbeat of ice becoming water. Both are the pulse of a new world being made from the old, in the circle of time. Aasaakamek says “Watch. This is how you do it, the dance that turns rock to life and covers it with green.” + + +Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Kimmerer lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. + diff --git a/saved_articles/anyone can learn to be a polymath.txt b/saved_articles/anyone can learn to be a polymath.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..846da03 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/anyone can learn to be a polymath.txt @@ -0,0 +1,65 @@ +--- +title: Anyone can learn to be a polymath – Robert Twigger – Aeon +date: 2015-07-16T19:34:59Z +source: http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/anyone-can-learn-to-be-a-polymath/ +tags: life + +--- + +I travelled with Bedouin in the Western Desert of Egypt. When we got a puncture, they used tape and an old inner tube to suck air from three tyres to inflate a fourth. It was the cook who suggested the idea; maybe he was used to making food designed for a few go further. Far from expressing shame at having no pump, they told me that carrying too many tools is the sign of a weak man; it makes him lazy. The real master has no tools at all, only a limitless capacity to improvise with what is to hand. The more fields of knowledge you cover, the greater your resources for improvisation. + +We hear the descriptive words psychopath and sociopath all the time, but here's a new one: monopath. It means a person with a narrow mind, a one-track brain, a bore, a super-specialist, an expert with no other interests — in other words, the role-model of choice in the Western world. You think I jest? In June, I was invited on the _Today_ programme on BBC Radio 4 to say a few words on the river Nile, because I had a new book about it. The producer called me 'Dr Twigger' several times. I was flattered, but I also felt a sense of panic. I have never sought or held a PhD. After the third 'Dr', I gently put the producer right. And of course, it was fine — he didn't especially want me to be a doctor. The culture did. My Nile book was necessarily the work of a generalist. But the radio needs credible guests. It needs an expert — otherwise why would anyone listen? + +The monopathic model derives some of its credibility from its success in business. In the late 18th century, Adam Smith (himself an early polymath who wrote not only on economics but also philosophy, astronomy, literature and law) noted that the division of labour was the engine of capitalism. His famous example was the way in which pin-making could be broken down into its component parts, greatly increasing the overall efficiency of the production process. But Smith also observed that 'mental mutilation' followed the too-strict division of labour. Or as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: 'Nothing tends to materialise man, and to deprive his work of the faintest trace of mind, more than extreme division of labour.' + +Ever since the beginning of the industrial era, we have known both the benefits and the drawbacks of dividing jobs into ever smaller and more tedious ones. Riches must be balanced against boredom and misery. But as long as a boring job retains an element of physicality, one can find a rhythm, entering a 'flow' state wherein time passes easily and the hard labour is followed by a sense of accomplishment. In Jack Kerouac's novel _Big Sur_ (1962) there is a marvellous description of Neal Cassady working like a demon, changing tyres in a tyre shop and finding himself uplifted rather than diminished by the work. Industrialism tends toward monopathy because of the growth of divided labour, but it is only when the physical element is removed that the real problems begin. When the body remains still and the mind is forced to do something repetitive, the human inside us rebels. + +The average job now is done by someone who is stationary in front of some kind of screen. Someone who has just one overriding interest is tunnel-visioned, a bore, but also a specialist, an expert. Welcome to the monopathic world, a place where only the single-minded can thrive. Of course, the rest of us are very adept at pretending to be specialists. We doctor our CVs to make it look as if all we ever wanted to do was sell mobile homes or Nespresso machines. It's common sense, isn't it, to try to create the impression that we are entirely focused on the job we want? And wasn't it ever thus? + +In fact, it wasn't. Classically, a polymath was someone who 'had learnt much', conquering many different subject areas. As the 15th-century polymath Leon Battista Alberti — an architect, painter, horseman, archer and inventor — wrote: 'a man can do all things if he will'. During the Renaissance, polymathy became part of the idea of the 'perfected man', the manifold master of intellectual, artistic and physical pursuits. Leonardo da Vinci was said to be as proud of his ability to bend iron bars with his hands as he was of the Mona Lisa. + +Polymaths such as Da Vinci, Goethe and Benjamin Franklin were such high achievers that we might feel a bit reluctant to use the word 'polymath' to describe our own humble attempts to become multi-talented. We can't all be geniuses. But we do all still indulge in polymathic activity; it's part of what makes us human. + +So, say that we all have at least the potential to become polymaths. Once we have a word, we can see the world more clearly. And that's when we notice a huge cognitive dissonance at the centre of Western culture: a huge confusion about how new ideas, new discoveries, and new art actually come about. + +Science, for example, likes to project itself as clean, logical, rational and unemotional. In fact, it's pretty haphazard, driven by funding and ego, reliant on inspired intuition by its top-flight practitioners. Above all it is polymathic. New ideas frequently come from the cross-fertilisation of two separate fields. Francis Crick, who intuited the structure of DNA, was originally a physicist; he claimed this background gave him the confidence to solve problems that biologists thought were insoluble. Richard Feynman came up with his Nobel Prize-winning ideas about quantum electrodynamics by reflecting on a peculiar hobby of his — spinning a plate on his finger (he also played the bongos and was an expert safe-cracker). Percy Spencer, a radar expert, noticed that the radiation produced by microwaves melted a chocolate bar in his pocket and developed microwave ovens. And Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the modern machine gun, was inspired by a self-cocking mousetrap he had made in his teens. + +> I thought you were either a 'natural' or nothing. Then I saw natural athletes fall behind when they didn't practice enough. This, shamefully, was a great morale booster + +Despite all this, there remains the melancholy joke about the scientist who outlines a whole new area of study only to dismiss it out of hand because it trespasses across too many field boundaries and would never get funding. Somehow, this is just as believable as any number of amazing breakthroughs inspired by the cross-fertilisation of disciplines. + +One could tell similar stories about breakthroughs in art — cubism crossed the simplicity of African carving with a growing non-representational trend in European painting. Jean-Michel Basquiat and Banksy took street graffiti and made it acceptable to galleries. In business, cross-fertilisation is the source of all kinds of innovations: fibres inspired by spider webs have become a source of bulletproof fabric; practically every mobile phone also seems to be a computer, a camera and a GPS tracker. To come up with such ideas, you need to know things outside your field. What's more, the further afield your knowledge extends, the greater potential you have for innovation. + +Invention fights specialisation at every turn. Human nature and human progress are polymathic at root. And life itself is various — you need many skills to be able to live it. In traditional cultures, everyone can do a little of everything. Though one man might be the best hunter or archer or trapper, he doesn't do only that. + +The benefits of polymathic endeavour in innovation are not so hard to see. What is less obvious is how we ever allowed ourselves to lose sight of them. The problem, I believe, is some mistaken assumptions about learning. We come to believe that we can only learn when we are young, and that only 'naturals' can acquire certain skills. We imagine that we have a limited budget for learning, and that different skills absorb all the effort we plough into them, without giving us anything to spend on other pursuits. + +Our hunch that it's easier to learn when you're young isn't completely wrong, or at least it has a real basis in neurology. However, the pessimistic assumption that learning somehow 'stops' when you leave school or university or hit thirty is at odds with the evidence. It appears that a great deal depends on the nucleus basalis, located in the basal forebrain. Among other things, this bit of the brain produces significant amounts of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that regulates the rate at which new connections are made between brain cells. This in turn dictates how readily we form memories of various kinds, and how strongly we retain them. When the nucleus basalisis 'switched on', acetylcholine flows and new connections occur. When it is switched off, we make far fewer new connections. + +Between birth and the age of ten or eleven, the nucleus basalisis is permanently 'switched on'. It contains an abundance of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, and this means new connections are being made all the time. Typically this means that a child will be learning almost all the time — if they see or hear something once they remember it. But as we progress towards the later teenage years the brain becomes more selective. From research into the way stroke victims recover lost skills it has been observed that the nucleus basalis only switches on when one of three conditions occur: a novel situation, a shock, or intense focus, maintained through repetition or continuous application. + +> Over-specialisation, eventually retreats into defending what one has learnt rather than making new connections + +I know from my own experience of studying martial arts in Japan that intense study brings rewards that are impossible to achieve by casual application. For a year I studied an hour a day three days a week and made minimal progress. For a further year I switched to an intensive course of five hours a day five days a week. The gains were dramatic and permanent, resulting in a black belt and an instructor certificate. Deep down I was pessimistic that I could actually learn a martial art. I thought you were either a 'natural' or nothing. Then I saw natural athletes fall behind when they didn't practice enough. This, shamefully, was a great morale booster. + +The fact that I succeeded where others were failing also gave me an important key to the secret of learning. There was nothing special about me, but I worked at it and I got it. One reason many people shy away from polymathic activity is that they think they can't learn new skills. I believe we all can — and at any age too — but only if we keep learning. 'Use it or lose it' is the watchword of brain plasticity. + +People as old as 90 who actively acquire new interests that involve learning retain their ability to learn. But if we stop taxing the nucleus basalis, it begins to dry up. In some older people it has been shown to contain no acetylcholine — they have been 'switched off' for so long the organ no longer functions. In extreme cases this is considered to be one factor in Alzheimers and other forms of dementia — treated, effectively at first, by artificially raising acetylcholine levels. But simply attempting new things seems to offer health benefits to people who aren't suffering from Alzheimers. After only short periods of trying, the ability to make new connections develops. And it isn't just about doing puzzles and crosswords; you really have to try and learn something new. + +Monopathy, or over-specialisation, eventually retreats into defending what one has learnt rather than making new connections. The initial spurt of learning gives out, and the expert is left, like an animal, merely defending his territory. One sees this in the academic arena, where ancient professors vie with each other to expel intruders from their hard-won patches. Just look at the bitter arguments over how far the sciences should be allowed to encroach on the humanities. But the polymath, whatever his or her 'level' or societal status, is not constrained to defend their own turf. The polymath's identity and value comes from multiple mastery. + +Besides, it may be that the humanities have less to worry about than it seems. An intriguing study funded by the Dana foundation and summarised by Dr Michael Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, suggests that studying the performing arts — dance, music and acting — actually improves one's ability to learn anything else. Collating several studies, the researchers found that performing arts generated much higher levels of motivation than other subjects. These enhanced levels of motivation made students aware of their own ability to focus and concentrate on improvement. Later, even if they gave up the arts, they could apply their new-found talent for concentration to learning anything new. + +I find this very suggestive. The old Renaissance idea of mastering physical as well as intellectual skills appears to have real grounding in improving our general ability to learn new things. It is having the confidence that one can learn something new that opens the gates to polymathic activity. + +There is, I think, a case to be made for a new area of study to counter the monopathic drift of the modern world. Call it polymathics. Any such field would have to include physical, artistic and scientific elements to be truly rounded. It isn't just that mastering physical skills aids general learning. The fact is, if we exclude the physicality of existence and reduce everything worth knowing down to book-learning, we miss out on a huge chunk of what makes us human. Remember, Feynman had to be physically competent enough to spin a plate to get his new idea. + +Polymathics might focus on rapid methods of learning that allow you to master multiple fields. It might also work to develop transferable learning methods. A large part of it would naturally be concerned with creativity — crossing unrelated things to invent something new. But polymathics would not just be another name for innovation. It would, I believe, help build better judgment in all areas. There is often something rather obvious about people with narrow interests — they are bores, and bores always lack a sense of humour. They just don't see that it's absurd to devote your life to a tiny area of study and have no other outside interests. I suspect that the converse is true: by being more polymathic, you develop a better sense of proportion and balance — which gives you a better sense of humour. And that can't be a bad thing. + +_ 4 November 2013 _ + +_Read more essays on [cognition & intelligence][1], [general culture][2] and [self-improvement][3]_ + +[1]: http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/cognition-and-intelligence/ "view all essays in cognition & intelligence" +[2]: http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/general-culture/ "view all essays in general culture" +[3]: http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/self-improvement/ "view all essays in self-improvement" diff --git a/saved_articles/beautiful islands of the south pacific.txt b/saved_articles/beautiful islands of the south pacific.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..f3f974b --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/beautiful islands of the south pacific.txt @@ -0,0 +1,215 @@ +--- +title: Beautiful Islands of the South Pacific +date: 2010-02-09T19:33:18Z +source: http://kathika.com/destinations/20091202-007408/ +tags: travel, islands + +--- + +Whether it’s the rich blue waters, clean +[beaches](/web/20100106230059/http://kathika.com/tag/beaches/), or +vibrant coral reefs the islands of the south pacific are becoming a +popular tourist destination for many of today’s modern travelers. Sit +back as we take you on a pictorial visit to 12 of the areas most popular +islands. + +[](/web/20100106230059/http://kathika.com/wp-content/uploads/bora-bora-tensaibuta186-ll.jpg "Bora Bora-tensaibuta186")[](/web/20100106230059/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ "Attribution License") +Photo credit: +[tensaibuta](/web/20100106230059/http://www.flickr.com/photos/97657657@N00/2092792187/ "name") + +Bora Bora + +Bora Bora is a tiny island located in the Pacific Ocean, part of the +Society Islands of French Polynesia. Only about 8,800 people call Bora +Bora home, while many thousands more visit the island and its many +resorts in order to experience the great natural beauty of Bora Bora’s +pristine beaches and crystal clear water. Because of its connection to +[France](/web/20100106230059/http://kathika.com/tag/france/), many of +the island’s citizens speak French and Tahitian, but those who are deal +with tourists do understand English. + +[](/web/20100106230059/http://kathika.com/wp-content/uploads/p1040781.jpg-richard-gifford386-ll.jpg "P1040781.JPG-Richard Gifford386")[](/web/20100106230059/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ "Attribution License") +Photo credit: [Richard +Gifford](/web/20100106230059/http://www.flickr.com/photos/rgifford/260587788/ "name") + +Fiji + +Fiji is an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean, a political +grouping of about 322 islands and 522 islets. Out of these islands, only +106 of them are permanently inhabited. Viti Levu and Vanua Levu are the +primary population centers, the both of them supporting 87 percent of +the population. Because of its rich culture and beautiful beaches, this +exotic island nation has become extremely popular as the ideal vacation +and honeymoon destination for many tourists. + +[](/web/20100106230059/http://kathika.com/wp-content/uploads/ocean-color-diversity---huahine-landscape-tiarescott44-ll.jpg "Ocean Color Diversity - Huahine Landscape-tiarescott44")[](/web/20100106230059/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ "Attribution License") +Photo credit: +[tiarescott](/web/20100106230059/http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiarescott/43401833/ "name") + +Ocean Color Diversity + +Huahine is an island located among the Society Islands, a French +Polynesian archipelago. The island is relatively small, with a length of +about 9.9 miles and a maximum width of 8.1 miles. Two main islands make +up Huahine, both of them surrounding a fringing coral reef. Only a few +hundred yards of water separate the two islands with a sandspit +connected them during low tide. + +[](/web/20100106230059/http://kathika.com/wp-content/uploads/tahiti-beach---huahine---tahiti-pictures-tiarescott449-ll.jpg "Tahiti Beach - Huahine - Tahiti Pictures-tiarescott449")[](/web/20100106230059/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ "Attribution License") +Photo credit: +[tiarescott](/web/20100106230059/http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiarescott/33505225/ "name") + +Tahiti Beach - Huahine + +Tahiti is the largest island located in Windward group of islands of +French Polynesia. As of August 2007, the island was home to around +180,000 people, making it the most populous island in French Polynesia +by quite a distance. While Tahiti has a very rich culture and history, +thanks to its unique blend of indigenous and French cultures, the island +is most well known internationally because of its popularity as a +vacation destination. + +[](/web/20100106230059/http://kathika.com/wp-content/uploads/tikehau-archipel-des-tuamotus-benoit-mahe858-ll.jpg "Tikehau, archipel des Tuamotus-Benoit Mahe858")[](/web/20100106230059/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ "Attribution License") +Photo credit: [Benoit +Mahe](/web/20100106230059/http://www.flickr.com/photos/loulou/249803558/ "name") + +Tikehau, archipel des Tuamotus + +Tikehau is a coral atoll located in the Tuamotus Archipelago. +Specifically, Tikehau belongs to the Palliser subgroup of islands, which +is the westernmost group in the Tuamotus. A continuous coral reef +surrounds the lagoon, which contains a great density of fish and other +marine life. About 400 people inhabit the island, supported by a healthy +amount of coconut palms. Tourists resorts also dot the coasts of +Tikehau. + +[](/web/20100106230059/http://kathika.com/wp-content/uploads/the-island-of-moorea-eatatmarks906-ll.jpg "The island of Moorea-eatatmarks906")[](/web/20100106230059/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ "Attribution License") +Photo credit: +[eatatmarks](/web/20100106230059/http://www.flickr.com/photos/markjtaylor/2821984266/ "name") + +The island of Moorea + +Moorea Island is part of the Society Islands archipelago, which is in +turn located in French Polynesia. Located about nine miles northwest of +Tahiti, Moorea is home to about 17,000 residents. Moorea is a popular +tourist destination, especially for those who are already visiting +French Polynesia, and it has become especially associated with +honeymoons. One can find ads for vacations to Moorea in many wedding +magazines. + +[](/web/20100106230059/http://kathika.com/wp-content/uploads/kia-ora-rangiroa-tensaibuta384-ll.jpg "Kia Ora, Rangiroa-tensaibuta384")[](/web/20100106230059/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ "Attribution License") +Photo credit: +[tensaibuta](/web/20100106230059/http://www.flickr.com/photos/97657657@N00/3123351125/ "name") + +Kia Ora, Rangiroa + +Rangiroa is the largest atoll in the Tuamotus, which is a chain of +atolls that runs throughout French Polynesia, and it is one of the +largest in the world. About 250 islands, islets, and sandbars make up +the atoll, which is home to about 2,334 inhabitants. Avatoru is the +chief town of the Rangiroa. It is home to several administrative +offices, a post office, many churches and a small airport. + +[](/web/20100106230059/http://kathika.com/wp-content/uploads/vavau-yxo181-ll.jpg "Vavau-YXO181")[](/web/20100106230059/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ "Attribution License") +Photo credit: +[YXO](/web/20100106230059/http://www.flickr.com/photos/yxo/155767869/ "name") + +Vavau + +Vavau is an island chain consisting of one large island and forty +smaller ones, all of which are a part of Tonga. Vavau’s administrative +center, Neiafu, is the second-largest city in Tonga and it sits at what +is known as one of the best harbor in the entire world. Because of its +excellent harbor and abundant untouched seas, Vavau has gained +recognition as one of the world’s prime fishing spots. + +[](/web/20100106230059/http://kathika.com/wp-content/uploads/raiatea---motu-oatara-othanga443-ll.jpg "Raiatea - Motu Oatara-othanga443")[](/web/20100106230059/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ "Attribution License") +Photo credit: +[othanga](/web/20100106230059/http://www.flickr.com/photos/24324534@N02/2839561498/ "name") + +Raiatea - Motu Oatara + +Only second to Tahiti in size, Raiatea is the second-largest island in +the Society Islands group of French Polynesia. The most important town +in Raiatea is Utuora, which also serves as the administrative center for +the Leeward Islands group. Raiatea, which is enclosed by a coral reef, +is home to about 12,000 residents and is known as the center of +Polynesia. + +[](/web/20100106230059/http://kathika.com/wp-content/uploads/round-efate-vanuatu-trip-26-nov.-2006---nguna-from-paonangisi-beach-phillipc242-ll.jpg "Round Efate (Vanuatu) trip, 26 Nov. 2006 - Nguna from Paonangisi Beach-PhillipC242")[](/web/20100106230059/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ "Attribution License") +Photo credit: +[PhillipC](/web/20100106230059/http://www.flickr.com/photos/flissphil/311762598/ "name") + +Vanuatu + +Vanuatu is an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean, one that +was first inhabited by Melanesian people and then subsequently settled +by Europeans in the 18th century. Vanuatu would change hands between +several European powers before finally establishing independence in 1980 +following a successful independence movement. About 222,000 people live +in Vanuatu, with thousands more people visiting the exotic island locale +each year. + +[](/web/20100106230059/http://kathika.com/wp-content/uploads/rockpools-and-cliff-at-niue-piawaugh65-ll.jpg "Rockpools and cliff at Niue-piawaugh65")[](/web/20100106230059/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ "Attribution License") +Photo credit: +[piawaugh](/web/20100106230059/http://www.flickr.com/photos/piawaugh/2762569296/ "name") + +Rockpools and cliff at Niue + +Niue, often referred to as “the rock of Polynesia,” is an island nation +located in the South Pacific Ocean. While Niue governs itself, it has a +free association with [New +Zealand](/web/20100106230059/http://kathika.com/new-zealand) and does +not actually have sovereignty, with Queen Elizabeth II serving as the +head of state. The country is in the process of refining its tourism +sector after having identified tourism as one of the best ways for the +country to create revenue. + +[](/web/20100106230059/http://kathika.com/wp-content/uploads/awesome-moment-tata_aka_t588-ll.jpg "Awesome Moment-tata_aka_T588")[](/web/20100106230059/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ "Attribution License") +Photo credit: +[tata\_aka\_T](/web/20100106230059/http://www.flickr.com/photos/12453467@N00/3824885116/ "name") + +Yap Island + +Yap is an island located in the Caroline Islands grouping, which is in +turn situated in the western Pacific Ocean. While many other neighboring +islands have begun to take on European attitudes, Yap has managed to +retain much of its indigenous culture. About 6,300 live in Yap, +according to a 2003 estimate, while tourism brings thousands more +visitors to Yap each year. + diff --git a/saved_articles/central asia salon literary guide to the world.txt b/saved_articles/central asia salon literary guide to the world.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..40ac88e --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/central asia salon literary guide to the world.txt @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +--- +title: Destination: Central Asia - Salon.com +date: 2006-06-23T15:26:30Z +source: http://www.salon.com/books/literary_guide/2006/06/22/central_asia/ +tags: magazine, guide, travel, reviews + +--- + +Within the nations collectively known as "the 'stans" one can sense the still-cooling results of numerous historical collisions, not all of them figurative, seeing that an active fault line runs straight through the region. (Uzbekistan's capital, Tashkent, was earthquake-flattened as recently as 1966.) Central Asia is where Europe abuts Asia and Christianity smashes against Islam, where Alexander the Great was stopped dead in his tracks and Genghis Khan and Tamerlane staged their conquests of the known world. The region received one of its first known English visitors in the 1500s, and his subsequent report was measured in its enthusiasm: "These merchants are so beggarly and poor, and bring so little quantity of wares … that there is no hope of any good trade there to be had." + +Variously ruled by Arab conquistadors, Mongol horsemen, Persian meddlers, a series of cruel but sometimes enlightened despots, czarist Russia and, finally — and most disastrously — by the Soviet Union, Central Asia is the geographical equivalent of an oft-forwarded parcel bearing the traces of each of its temporary holder's stamps. It is home to despairingly vast deserts, several large inland seas, endless steppes, beautiful mountainous valleys, and some of the world's least inspiring governments. Its religion is predominantly Islam, but a softer, less ideological incarnation than that which is typically encountered in Arab states, and its culture is a curious agglutination of Soviet, Turkic, Persian and Mongol influences. + +A fine place to begin one's encounter with the diverse and often disquieting literature of Central Asia would be Chingiz Aitmatov's "The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years." An ethnic Kyrgyz who writes in Russian, Aitmatov is the only Central Asian fiction writer to have been widely translated in the West. After years of working as an apparatchik in the Soviet government and achieving small prominence as a story writer and playwright, Aitmatov came to world renown with the publication of his first novel in 1980, which broke the gait of lockstep Soviet literary circles to a degree not seen since Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" in 1963. Aitmatov's father was executed during Stalin's purges, and Aitmatov's greatest book is simultaneously a cautious but devastating critique of Stalinism, a fable of a Kazakh man attempting to bury a friend according to Muslim etiquette, and a deeply weird sci-fi novel replete with space stations and what Russian speakers refer to as inoplanetyane (that is, extraterrestrials). + +* * * + +* * * + +Solzhenitsyn's "Cancer Ward" (1968) is partially based on its author's own doubly ill-fated experience of recovering from skin cancer at the tail end of his eight-year sentence to the gulag. (Solzhenitsyn's crime was criticizing Stalin in a letter to a friend during World War II, when he was an officer in the Red Army.) Primarily the story of an unjustly exiled man named Oleg Kostoglotov, "Cancer Ward" is a multicharacter and often bitterly funny study of the lives of exiled Soviets, from still-proud Stalinists to confused men and women unsure of their actual crime to the nurses and doctors who do their best (which is not much) to help "cure" them. It reads as if "M*A*S*H*" had been crossbred with "Darkness at Noon." The unnamed setting of "Cancer Ward" is Tashkent, long considered one of the region's more cosmopolitan cities, but currently an open sore of dictatorial policies and suppurating unrest. "Cancer Ward's" unforgettably bleak final scene takes place in Tashkent's zoo, which was apparently as upsetting in the 1950s as it remains today. + +A more recent novel about Central Asia is Robert Rosenberg's "This Is Not Civilization," published in 2004, which contains what is surely one of contemporary fiction's most beguiling opening lines: "The idea of using porn films to encourage dairy cows to breed was a poor one." Rosenberg is a former Peace Corps volunteer who served in Kyrgyzstan, which reminds us that the Peace Corps, if nothing else, has midwifed some first-rate American literature with an internationalist bent. While Rosenberg's novel roams widely (from Arizona to Kyrgyzstan to Istanbul), its non-Western characters are frequently the most interesting. The novel's central Kyrgyz character, Anarbek, must cope with his daughter's culturally sanctioned "wife-napping" (whereby a young girl is literally stolen from her home and forced to marry) as well as the ruination of his cheese factory. The delights of this novel are primarily its sense of humor and humanely old-fashioned empathy for all. By its final page, one cannot be at all sure which civilization it is that the novel's title piquantly condemns. All of them, probably. + +There are many fine histories detailing the 19th century clash of Russia and Great Britain's imperial ambitions in Central Asia, but the best remains Peter Hopkirk's 1992 book "The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia" (2002). The title refers to what has been called a "Victorian-era Cold War" that, despite both parties' best efforts, never resulted in a direct military confrontation. "Great Game" was coined by one of its central players, an intransigently Christian British officer named Arthur Connolly, whose ghastly fate is one of many that Hopkirk details. While the agents of Europe's two most powerful nations vexed and stymied one another from Kandahar to Khiva, the region's local people watched and waited and occasionally acted, such as during the British retreat from Kabul in 1841. The result was the single largest military disaster in Great Britain's history and, in Hopkirk's retelling, a story as hypnotically monstrous as 9/11 footage. This book is required reading for a general understanding of how modern Central Asia took uncertain shape. + +Fears of militant Islam in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia are, in the popular media, almost always overstated. Seven decades of Soviet atheism have left their mark, and state-appointed religious leaders are still widely derided as "red mullahs." That said, Central Asia has pockets of religious unrest, which ruthless governmental crackdowns, especially in Uzbekistan, have predictably made worse. Ahmed Rashid's "Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia" is the best primer on this troubling aspect of contemporary Central Asia, and is worth reading if only for a brief story Rashid describes in his preface. While in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, one year into its 5-year-long civil war, Rashid enjoys "a leisurely Sunday lunch" with a Tajik poet, a novelist and a journalist — "the cream of Tajikistan's liberal intelligentsia." Suddenly Rashid is startled by the sound of nearby gunfire. The poet, the novelist and the journalist, to Rashid's shock, "suddenly pulled concealed pistols out of their pockets and fired back." To draw too many conclusions from an anecdote mired in such direly specific circumstances would be unwise, but it does suggest the heat packed by the best of Central Asia's literature — not all of it figurative. + +[ ][1] + +[1]: http://www.salon.com/2006/06/22/central_asia/ diff --git a/saved_articles/death of an adventure traveler.txt b/saved_articles/death of an adventure traveler.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..bb3b246 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/death of an adventure traveler.txt @@ -0,0 +1,121 @@ +--- +title: The Smart Set: Death of an Adventure Traveler +date: 2007-10-10T21:15:39Z +source: http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article09260701.aspx +tags: travel, culture, writing, history + +--- + + +Death of an Adventure Traveler +_For Mr. Benny, evading pirates and smuggling tin were all in a day's work._ + +Matthew, the small Burmese Kayin man who worked the front desk at the Lotus Guesthouse, was the first one to suggest that Mr. Benny might be dead. "Benny went back to Burma so he could die near his family," he told me, his eyes fixed on the TV set as flickering Shiites danced in the streets of Iraq. "He was too sick to live in Thailand any more." + +I had just returned to the rainy border town of Ranong, Thailand, after an absence of five months. It was April 9, 2003, the day U.S. tanks rolled into central Baghdad. Matthew had been squatting in the guesthouse lobby, translating BBC commentary for the other hotel workers — all of them illegal migrant workers from Burma. Deciphering the images from Iraq proved to be a difficult process, since even the BBC commentators didn't seem to know what was going on. Had Baghdad fallen or not? Were the U.S. soldiers welcomed or reviled? Nobody knew for sure, but when a soldier on the TV flung an American flag over the head of the Saddam Hussein statue in Firdos Square, the Burmese workers had let out a cheer, as if Rangoon's junta would be next. + +When the BBC cut to a commercial, Matthew finally looked over at me. "How did you know Benny?" he asked. Matthew's eyes were dark, fringed by faint yellow; he wore a crisp Oxford shirt, and his black hair was just beginning to show gray. A devout Baptist like many ethnic Kayin, he was painfully earnest in his beliefs — a quality that would eventually get him fired from the guesthouse. + +"Mr. Benny was my barber," I said. Benny had also been my best friend in Ranong, and one of the most remarkable men I'd ever met. He'd evaded death so many times in his life that I found it hard to believe that he would submit to a quiet end back in Burma. "Are you sure he's dead?" + +Matthew shrugged. "I didn't even know him. You should talk to Phiman. He'll know if Benny is still alive." + +Phiman was a Thai man who owned the dusty little TV repair shop where Mr. Benny slept. Since I didn't speak enough Thai for Phiman to understand me, this meant I had to get translation help from Ezio, a barrel-chested Italian who lived with his Thai wife on the other side of Ranong. I'd sold my motorcycle when I'd last left Thailand, so I headed off to Ezio's place on foot, skirting the hot, murky puddles that dotted the streets after heavy rains. + +• + +Of all the places in the world where I'd lived for more than a couple of months, Ranong was by far the most obscure. A frumpy border town of 30,000 people in the rainiest part of Thailand's isthmus, it held little appeal for tourists — apart from its proximity to the southern tip of Burma, where backpackers enamored with the country's meditation retreats and full-moon parties could get a cheap re-entry visa in a couple of hours. Besides fishing and tin mining, timber poaching and amphetamine smuggling seemed to be Ranong's principal industries, and scores of refugees from Burma's repressive dictatorship lived in squalid huts at the edges of town. Heavy rains resulted in power blackouts that could last for days, and the sour-fresh scent of rainforest competed with the fishy smell of the port. Though just four hours by motorcycle from the tourist resort of Phuket — and 10 hours by bus from the modern hum of Bangkok — Ranong felt years away from the rest of Thailand. + +I'd first arrived in Ranong two years earlier, while writing an article about the Moken sea gypsies who lived in the islands on the Burmese side of the sea-border. I'd been trying to build my career as an adventure-travel writer, and a Major American Luxury-Travel Magazine had underwritten my journey to investigate recent tourism ventures into Moken territory. I didn't have a permanent address at the time, so I'd rented a studio room at the Lotus Guesthouse to write the sea gypsy article. When it was finished I decided to stay in the sleepy town to work on my first book, a philosophical how-to primer about long-term travel. + +Writing my book required long stretches of isolation, and I didn't socialize much during my stint in Ranong. I tried to get out of my room to explore the town from time to time, but even six months into my tenure, Thai kids who lived just a few blocks away from my guesthouse would shout "_farang!_" at me as I walked past, as if I was just another random backpacker in town for a visa run. The word, which means "foreigner," was a reminder of how little I really knew about the daily workings of Ranong, or of Thailand in general. + +Besides Ezio and Matthew, the only person I saw regularly when I lived in Ranong was Mr. Benny — a thin, sexagenarian Burmese émigré who worked at a humid storefront barbershop in the center of town. His haircuts cost 40 _baht_ (about $0.90 at the time), and afterwards he'd invite me to a dim café next door and spend most of his fee on coffee thickened with condensed milk. As we sipped from dented aluminum cups, he would tell me stories about his younger years, when he would make ends meet for his family by smuggling tin to Malaysia, or diving for pearls off the coast of Burma. Sometimes he'd invite me to join him for Sunday services at the local Catholic chapel; other times he'd ask me to meet him at his cramped bunkroom in the TV repair shop to practice English vocabulary. When he learned that I hailed from the prairies of North America, he told me that his favorite English-language book was an old cowboy novel called _The Big Sky_. I'd found a used copy of the novel when I was back in the U.S. on my book tour; one reason I'd returned to Ranong was so that I could present _The Big Sky_ to Mr. Benny. + +The other reason I'd returned to Ranong was to find some isolation so I could finish a magazine article that was weeks overdue. The adventure stories I'd written two years earlier for the Major American Luxury-Travel Magazine had attracted the attention of a Major American Adventure-Travel Magazine, and I'd been discussing possible assignments with an editor for months. Unfortunately, no story I proposed — exploring fishing villages along the upper Cambodian Mekong, mountaineering in Turkish Kurdistan, visiting the isolated tribesmen of the Andaman Islands — seemed quite right for him. We'd finally settled on a how-to feature about "classic adventures" in Asia. I'd spent much of the previous three years adventuring through the distant corners of the Asian continent, but this experience had put me at a weird disadvantage in reporting the story. "You're giving us too much geography," my editor would tell me every time I submitted a new list of destination summaries. Readers of Major American Adventure-Travel Magazines, he told me, didn't want to read about journeys that were obscure or complicated; they wanted exotic challenges wherein they might test — or, at least, imagine themselves testing — the extremes of human experience. + +For weeks, I had trouble understanding exactly what this meant, and my increasingly irritated editor returned my story drafts marked with comments like, "Is there a helicopter service that can get you there faster?" and, "Would you recommend some cutting-edge outerwear for this kind of trek?" and, "Can you think of any celebrities who've visited the region recently?" In time, I discerned that adventure itself was far less important to the magazine than creating a romanticized _sense_ of adventure — preferably with recommendations on where to buy a cappuccino and a Swedish massage afterwards. The Major American Adventure-Travel Magazine, it seemed, wanted me to create a tantalizing recipe for the exotic and the unexpected, but only the kind of "unexpected" that could be planned in advance and completed in less than three weeks. + +• + +![][1]It took me less than half an hour to walk the damp streets to Ezio's house. Pong — his slim, shy Thai wife — answered the door. At 23, she was exactly half his age; he'd met her when she was still a student in a country village across the isthmus in Chumphon Province. Before Pong, Ezio had a previous Thai wife — an ex-bargirl who had borne him two daughters and tried to kill him twice before their marriage ended. She had once stabbed him in the back with a kitchen knife; another time she'd dumped poison in his soup. He had recovered unshaken both times, but their marriage fell apart after a few years, and he rarely saw his daughters anymore. Newly remarried, Ezio was teaching Pong how to help him with his Web site-design business, and they were successful enough to employ two Burmese girls to cook and clean for them. + +Ezio teased me about my latest magazine assignment as he stood in the kitchen, his hulking mass bent over a tiny espresso pot. "These American magazines don't even know what adventure is," he said. "They want you to write about camping toys and sports vacations. They want you to make people think adventure is something that costs $8,000 and lasts as long as a Christmas holiday. They want you to make rich people feel good for being rich." + +I didn't argue with him. Twenty-five years ago, Ezio had left Rome for a winter holiday in North Africa, and he'd never returned. He'd taught himself Arabic in Algeria, learned to live in the desert, bought a few camels, and made a living as a tour guide. Intrigued by wars, he eventually wandered on to Uganda, and then Lebanon, and then Sri Lanka, picking up languages as he needed them. He eventually landed in Southeast Asia, where he fell in love with Thai women — all of them, from the way he described it — and he'd been based in Thailand for over 10 years now. What Ezio had done with his life was unusual, but not unique. Every out-of-the-way province in Southeast Asia, it seemed, had a few guys like him — aging expats who'd lived remarkable lives, and enjoyed their anonymity with no plans of going home. Whenever I talked to Ezio I was reminded of how the storied travelers of history invariably discovered they were not alone in their wanderings — how William of Rubrouck arrived in Karakorum to find Ukrainian carpenters, Greek doctors, and Parisian goldsmiths; how Marco Polo encountered Lombards, Germans, and Frenchmen in the streets of Cambaluc. These people's stories were never told because they never went home. + +I took my espresso and moved into the living room. Ezio brought out a package of cigars he'd bought during his latest run to Burma. We lit them, and Ezio caught me up on the local gossip — how local gangsters were turning the island of Koh Samui into the Sicily of Thailand; how an influx of Burmese girls had turned Ranong into one of the cheapest places in the country to buy a prostitute. When Ezio ran out of news, I asked him about Mr. Benny. + +"I didn't know him; Pong cuts my hair. Did you ask at the barbershop?" + +"He had to stop working there," I said. "He was getting sick, and his hands were too shaky. Last time I saw him he was helping Phiman at the TV repair shop." + +Repairing televisions and cutting hair were just two of Mr. Benny's many callings in life. Born to a Portuguese-Kayin mother, who met his Chinese-Thai father in southern Burma during the Japanese occupation of Ranong in World War II, young Benny was trained in English by Irish priests at the local mission school. When his family's finances got tight, his unique language skills led to his first job at age 14: fighting communists with a regrouped Chinese Kuomintang army in northeastern Burma. At a time when the average daily income for a Burmese soldier was 15 _kyat_, Benny made 150 _kyat_ a day carrying ammunition belts and translating intelligence information for American CIA advisors. + +Mr. Benny deserted the Kuomintang army when the CIA funding dried up, and he returned to the Burmese south convinced that risking danger was the most efficient way to make a living. Against his mother's protestations, he crossed the border and used his newfound skills to detonate explosive charges in an illegal tin mine owned by a Thai general who was said to have 22 wives. When his father forced him to return home, Benny found a job diving for oysters in the Mergui Archipelago, each day donning a weight belt and a hose-fed air helmet to search at the bottom of the sea. ("You couldn't just bend over and get the shells, or else you could fall out of your helmet and drown," he'd told me. "You had to squat and feel for the oysters with your hands.") + +Marriage to a local girl took Mr. Benny out of the sea and into a barbershop, but the arrival of children left him in need of a better income, so he took up an offer from a group of wealthy Taiwanese men who needed a guide and translator for a rhino-poaching excursion in the Burmese jungle. Dodging the Burmese army along the Thai borderlands, the expedition party dragged on for six months, surviving on deer and monkey meat before they managed to bag a rhino; Benny came home with his hair "long, like an Indian," and his young children didn't recognize him. + +After the Burmese military coup in 1961, English was officially regarded as a "slave language," and Mr. Benny was forced to toss out his books, including his favorite, A.B. Guthrie's _The Big Sky_. The local economy nose-dived, and Benny increasingly found it necessary to cross into Thailand and do construction work to keep his family fed. For a while he managed to make as much as 800 _baht_ a day smuggling tin across the sea border to Malaysia, until one winter day a group of pirates posing as policemen seized his boat and tossed him overboard. Mr. Benny swam the three miles back to shore and returned to cutting hair. On the side, he taught himself how to fix radios, and, later, TVs. It was a skill he returned to in his old age. + +Ezio seemed skeptical that a man who was too sick to cut hair could work on televisions. "You can't do that kind of thing with shaky hands," he said. + +"Mr. Benny used to joke that without steady hands he was just a nurse in the TV shop," I said. "He would locate the illness, and Phiman would do the surgery." + +Ezio chuckled and stubbed out his cigar. "Let's go and see what Phiman knows," he said. + +• + +As I rode into central Ranong on the back of Ezio's motorcycle, it occurred to me that I didn't even know the exact nature of Mr. Benny's sickness. His shaky hands implied Parkinson's disease, but he also had increasing trouble keeping his food down. On a couple occasions I suggested that he visit a doctor, but he always waved me off. "This is just what happens to old men," he said. + +Mr. Benny didn't like talking about his health, and it was only at my urging that he elaborated on his memories of Malay pirates and Kuomintang mercenaries. To him, smuggling tin and tracking rhinos were merely jobs — better paid, but not entirely dissimilar to cutting hair or pouring concrete. Usually, he would steer our conversation to the small, charmed moments he remembered from his life, like the first time he learned what garbage was. ("Before, everything was reused or fed to the animals.") One of his favorite memories was the time a fisherman brought him a bottle containing an English-language letter from a 7-year-old Dutch boy named Donald, who became Mr. Benny's pen-pal for the next five years. He also loved to recall his friend's failed attempt to make an airplane using wood planks and a 120-horsepower motorcycle engine. He asked me countless questions about what it was like to live on the American plains; in his mind, I think, my home was inseparable from the pages of _The Big Sky_. + +The last week I saw him, all Mr. Benny could talk about was an article he'd read on Sudan's "Lost Boys." He kept telling me how 40 years of war and repression had left Burma with countless refugees of its own, and that maybe Americans would care more about Burma if he could think of a name as clever as "Lost Boys." + +Ezio and I found Phiman in the back of his shop, his white hair tousled, his glasses hanging on the end of his nose as he soldered a wire into the back of a television. He frowned as Ezio spoke to him in Thai, then set down his soldering iron. "Mr. Benny left two months ago," he said, Ezio translating. "He's in Rangoon now, with his wife and grandkids. It's better for him to die there." + +"But are you sure he was going to die?" I asked. + +"Yes. But if he comes back, I'll be the first to know; I still owe him some money." Phiman laughed soberly. "He was good at fixing TVs, you know. That even saved his life once." + +"How's that?" + +"Sometime in 1979 Benny got word that you could make a lot of money getting gems in western Cambodia and taking them across the border to sell. Back then that area was mostly lawless, except for the Khmer Rouge. He camped out there for a couple of months, digging for rubies, and trading food for raw stones from Cambodians. One day a Khmer Rouge patrol found him, took him back to their camp, beat him up a little, took his rubies. They probably would have killed him, too, but he heard them complaining about how they missed their Thai soap operas. He fixed their TV, and they let him go. They kept his rubies, of course, but they let him go." + +Phiman picked up his soldering iron and resumed his work. "Come back in a week," he said. "I'll let you know if I've heard anything new." + +• + +I went back a week later, and the week after that, but Phiman had no news about Mr. Benny. + +I stayed on at the Lotus Guesthouse and struggled with my article for the Major American Adventure-Travel Magazine. Every time I researched some upscale mountain trek in the Nepal Himalayas or two-week scuba diving excursion off the coast of Papua New Guinea, I couldn't help but ponder how pointless it all was. I began to e-mail my editor pointed questions about how one should define the "extremes of human experience." How was kayaking a remote Chinese river, I asked, more notable than surviving on its shores for a lifetime? How did risking frostbite on a helicopter-supported journey to arctic Siberia constitute more of an "adventure" than risking frostbite on a winter road-crew in Upper Peninsula Michigan? Did anyone else think it was telling that bored British aristocrats — not the peoples of the Himalayas — were the ones who first deemed it important to climb Mount Everest? My editor's replies were understandably terse. + +![][2]Things changed as Ranong slipped further into the rainy season. Ezio and Pong decided the power blackouts were bad for their Internet business, so they moved upcountry to Chiang Rai. At the guesthouse, Matthew made the repeated mistake of assuming Western backpackers were as excited about the fall of Baghdad as he was. It didn't help that he was an unrepentant Baptist, given to salting his conversations with cheery Gospel references. More than once this led to bizarre scenes in the lobby, where sunburned Germans and Canadians and Californians angrily lectured Matthew about the pacifistic merits of Buddhism while the Kayin desk clerk tremblingly tried to explain how Burmese Buddhists had murdered his brothers. It was as if the backpackers didn't know what to do with this meek little brown man who, with his professed love of Jesus and affinity for George Bush, didn't follow the accepted narrative of how Southeast Asians were supposed to act. Less than a month after he translated the defeat of Saddam Hussein for his coworkers, Matthew was fired and replaced with another Burmese migrant — a serious young Buddhist kid who fetched keys, kept his mouth shut, and garnered no complaints. + +Eventually I finished the last rewrite of my article for the Major American Adventure-Travel Magazine. I e-mailed it to my editor, requesting that it run without my byline. + +After checking out of the Lotus Guesthouse, I slipped a self-addressed envelope into my copy of _The Big Sky_ and left it with Phiman in the hope that Mr. Benny might one day come back. + +Then I did something Mr. Benny never had the option of doing: I headed back across the ocean, to a place where "adventure travel" was not a way of getting by in life, but a whimsical, self-induced abstraction — a way of testing our limits so that we can more keenly feel our comforts. • _26 September 2007_ + + + + +* * * + +_Rolf Potts is the author of _Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel_ (Random House, 2003). His work has appeared in publications such as _National Geographic Traveler_, _WorldHum, Conde Nast Traveler_, _Outside_, _Islands_, _Salon_, __and _Slate_. Each summer he can be found in France, where he is the summer writer-in-residence at the Paris American Academy. He can be reached at [rolf@rolfpotts.com][3]._ + + +* * * + + +Photos by [Chris Jules][4] and [cysweski][5] ([2][6]), ([Creative Commons][7] via Flickr). + + +[1]: http://www.thesmartset.com/files/Images/Features/Journeys/Call_Outs/JO_POTTS_RANONG/CO_001.jpg +[2]: http://www.thesmartset.com/files/Images/Features/Journeys/Call_Outs/JO_POTTS_RANONG/CO_002.jpg +[3]: mailto:rolf%40rolfpotts.com +[4]: http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Asia/Thailand/South/Ranong/photo257942.htm +[5]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cysewski/154432859/ +[6]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cysewski/154433660/in/set-72157594146996081/ +[7]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/deed.en-us diff --git a/saved_articles/decline in style zacalo public square.txt b/saved_articles/decline in style zacalo public square.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..e497e5a --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/decline in style zacalo public square.txt @@ -0,0 +1,54 @@ +--- +title: Zócalo Public Square :: Decline in Style +date: 2012-01-28T14:25:27Z +source: http://zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2011/11/27/decline-in-style/read/inside-out/ +tags: + +--- + +![Argentina presidential reelection celebration][1] + +**by Gabriel Saez** + +_Tony Soprano: It's good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that, I know. But lately I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over._ + +Dr. Melfi: Many Americans, I think, feel that way. + +For more than a decade I had heard about how great _The Sopranos_ was. So earlier this year I finally decided to give it a try. And how shocked I was when, just four minutes into the pilot, and right after Soprano and Melfi shook hands for the first time, the above exchange took place! It sounded so familiar … I mean, this is a guy of Italian descent complaining about how the present, although richer and more comfortable, is nevertheless worse than the past. It was the incarnation of the Argentinian spirit. + +Growing up in Argentina entails continually practicing historical revisionism and indulging in nostalgia for our bygone greatness. Actually, it is more like nostalgia for the greatness we feel entitled to, but were somehow deprived of. Argentina's psyche resides permanently in the land of "should have, would have, could have." If neighboring Brazil is the perennial country of the future, Argentina is the country of the perennially golden past-we are obsessed with looking back to a time (say, a century ago) when our GDP was comparable to that of European powers, and scratching our heads as to how we could have blown it ever since. If only … + +Argentina is the dean of the club of nations utterly obsessed with their decline, so it is our distinct pleasure to welcome the United States to our dour fraternity-go ahead and take your place, there, alongside France. + +Welcome, but brace yourself for lots of snide comments. I for one am sick and tired of hearing: "Japan is an example of how much you can do with so little; Argentina is the other way around." Then there is the equally annoying: "Australia is what Argentina could have been." Brazilians, meanwhile, make me cringe with their subtle invitation for Argentina to become "their Canada." + +But tough global times make Argentina's experience seem, well, universally relevant. That's why our current president takes advantage of every opportunity she has to preach to the rest of the world-and, more importantly, to the rest of the G20 countries-about the "Argentinian model." It is not a model of development, that's for sure. It is a model of resilience. + +You see, Argentina is a part of Europe in exile-or on probation. So when we look at Greece, we smile. We immediately and instinctively know what all that mess is about. We look at the Spanish _indignados_ as brethren, since we are the perennially outraged. And "Occupy Wall Street" seems to us to be the Hollywood version of "_Que se vayan todos_," the movement that unseated President De La Rua a decade ago, and allowed our country the rare privilege of having five presidents in one week. See, America, you still have a ways to go. + +And don't worry, obsessive decline isn't all bad. It's a bonanza for booksellers, shrinks, and pessimistic political analysts. It turns taxi drivers into philosophers. It seems to do wonders, as well, for red meat-and-wine consumption, not to mention late-night, angst-ridden café conversations. Buenos Aires does late and angst like no one else. Maybe Kansas will see the emergence of its own tango-like melancholic dance. + +But for you Americans to join the club of the obsessively declining nations, there is still one thing you must do. Senseless wars, reckless fiscal policy, and cultural decay aren't enough. You must also shed your quintessentially American core belief that you can reinvent yourselves. Yes, you must give up what Roberto Unger and Cornel West have described as "the American religion of possibility." This idea that it is the natural order of things for your democracy to fulfill an ideal, and for individuals to become fulfilled themselves? Forget it if you know what's good for you. It is an obstacle to the full enjoyment of decline that comes with resigned fatalism. + +That American religion of possibility is what those of us elsewhere have most admired about the United States throughout history. Now that this faith is in retreat in your country, Argentinians can appreciate how it evokes the sense of possibility that once upon a time also drew millions of immigrants to our shores. We're so wrapped up in our historical drama, it is difficult to ascertain how great we really were, or for how long. But people from all over the world did come here in search of happiness and fulfillment. Most of their children still love this land. Our neighbors like us more than they are ready to admit. Maybe, someday, we can still achieve greatness, or at least an equilibrium where the humor and angst involving our "might have beens" will become more folkloric, and less wrenchingly poignant. + +It isn't quite reinventing the notion of reinvention, which may still be within America's grasp, but it might be enough to make the Tony Soprano in all of us feel a bit better. + +_**Gabriel Saez** is a legislative advisor to a member of Argentina's National Congress. _ +_ +*Photo courtesy of [CateIncBA][2]._ + + + + +### Post navigation + +![][3][ Prev][4] ![][5][ Next][6] + + +[1]: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Argentina_Style_Decline-600x399.jpg +[2]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cateincba/6275524212/ +[3]: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/wp-content/themes/zocalo/images/icon_prev.png +[4]: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/09/15/ah-nolds-love-boat/ideas/inside-out/ +[5]: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/wp-content/themes/zocalo/images/icon_next.png +[6]: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2012/05/10/basques-capture-mothers-cup/ideas/inside-out/ diff --git a/saved_articles/destination new guinea salon literary guide to the world.txt b/saved_articles/destination new guinea salon literary guide to the world.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..84d75f4 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/destination new guinea salon literary guide to the world.txt @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +--- +title: Destination: New Guinea - Salon.com +date: 2006-07-31T23:55:34Z +source: http://www.salon.com/books/literary_guide/2006/07/20/new_guinea/index_np.html +tags: travel, guide, reviews, magazine + +--- + +New Guinea is the second largest island in the world (after Greenland) and the focus of a lot of Western dreaming. This has to do with how relatively unknown the area has been. Contact between native and Westerner took place mostly in the 20th century — much later than in other parts of the colonial world. It is said that more languages are spoken in New Guinea than anywhere else — possibly several hundred — and that the island's inner valleys with their birds of paradise are still not fully explored — though apparently all the cannibals have now learned to eat other things. + +Besides the mainland — the western half of which is part of Indonesia, while the east is the Independent Nation of Papua New Guinea — New Guinea also includes hundreds of islands that lie offshore, including the Trobriands. The legendary anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski traveled there twice during World War I to research the lives of the islanders. Today, his book "A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term" would be a blog, but in his own day Malinowski never even thought to make public his private reflections on life in New Guinea. In 1967, 25 years after his death, his widow published his book — and it caused a scandal. No surprise there. "Diary" offers a frank account of Malinowski's boredom with his work, his anger toward the subjects of his research, and his lust for colonial and indigenous women alike. + +Malinowski's book is the expression of a turbulent mind, an elite and daring traveler in a far place, trying to get serious work done. He must fight his own lethargy ("I awoke feeling as if just taken down from a cross — just wasnt functioning") and fight his disdain ("I thought about my present attitude toward ethnogr[aphic] work and the natives. My dislike of them, my longing for civilization"). He must fight his desire, too: "I can repress occasional violent whoring impulses by realizing that it would get me nowhere, that even if I possessed women under these conditions, I would merely be sloshing in the mud." + +In his less loathsome moments, Malinowski also recorded stirring descriptions of New Guinea's watery geography, like this section about passing an island by boat: "Two rocks rise up out of the vegetation, like two truncated pillars out of a heap of overgrown ruins. The sea striving, advancing in orderly rows of long smooth waves. I rowed. At moments I didn't know which way to look — at the exquisite silhouette of Gumasila or the vigorous harmonies of Domdom, or the symphony of pastel colors on the distant mountains of the big island — Sarakeikeine. Flights of birds against the clouds dotting them like buckshot." + +* * * + +* * * + +Move ahead 30 years. New Guinea is part of our history now. So try one of the great antiwar books of all time: "Fear Drive My Feet," published in 1959 by the Australian writer Peter Ryan. Ryan wrote the book when he was 21, teaching at the Australian military academy and reflecting on his experiences two and three years before, behind the lines in the war in New Guinea. Ryan originally tried to publish his book in the 1940s but didn't get anywhere. Years later, a houseguest stuck her nose into the manuscript unbidden, and went to work to find it a home. + +There are so many wonderful things about Ryan's book it is hard to know where to start. It's about youth, and the ways that idealism is killed off in war — or lost, as it was for Ryan. It's an outdoors adventure: Told in a straightforward and open manner, Ryan relates an amazing, and, as it turns out, deadly journey from village to village on New Guinea's Huon Peninsula, and then over 12,000-foot mountains, with the Japanese not far behind. + +Ryan describes the place in a wide-eyed and naturalistic manner, as in this moment, about a family whose dying 8-year-old he cannot heal: "The tultul leant forward and picked up a piece of wood from the fire. He blew gently on it till it flamed, and then held it close to the childs head so that I could see better. Death was already in the little black face + +"No one spoke. As I squeezed out the doorway the mother and father looked bewildered and the old woman followed me with her eyes, detesting my interference. I felt angry at my own helplessness… + +"[Sometime later] A piercing, terrible wail shivered through the air from the village. It was like a dog howling, but infinitely tragic. The child was dead … The wailing became general, taken up, swelling and fading, by every voice in the community … it went on all night." + +The book's majesty is as a screed against war brought to a land that did not ask for it. Here, for instance, is Ryan's portrayal of a wounded Japanese prisoner, being revived so as to be interrogated. "As I looked at his face, wasted with fever and suffering, I suddenly felt more akin to him than to the Australians who would not let him die in peace. His eyes, wonderfully large and soft, met mine. In that brief second, I hoped he could read the message in my face." + +For all the destruction it brought, the war helped to internationalize New Guinea, and make way for art lovers, even tourists. One of those who found her way to the island is Samantha Gillison, a Western woman who landed in New Guinea 60 years after Ryan. "The King of America" is Gillison's 2004 fictionalized account of the death of Michael Rockefeller in 1961 in western New Guinea, where he had gone to collect artworks. Her novel's main business is the psychology of American privilege. Delicately, she lays out the anxieties of Stephen Hesse — her Rockefeller — over his background, his isolation and his true self. + +Hesse comes to feel that he can only find himself in New Guinea, and though he dies there, he is right. The yearning discomfort of his spirit is at last comfortable in this wild place. Gillison's sense of village life is unerring. "Only a few old men and women and quiet children lived in the isolated little hamlet," she writes, sketching a group of houses in the mountains that has drawn the attention of Hesse and a colleague. "The fathers, husbands and sons were either living in the men's house down in the village or had been killed in battle. There was something in this corner of the Koa Valley that was impossibly beautiful to Stephen. It was so full of feeling, as lonely as the end of the world … Soft night was slowly pouring in around them, filling up the mountains. They could see a woman in the glow of the flames. She pulled a sweet-potato tuber out of the ashes, banged it on the mud floor to loose the skin from its steaming white meat…" + +On the one hand, this passage is mundane, showing life stripped to ignoble essentials. On the other, it is utterly transcendent, showing the weariness of a Westerner escaping his materialist condition. In the end, this is why travelers have been drawn to the island: to feel, as no other place can inspire, true spiritual conflict. To have visions while stuck in the mud. + +[ ][1] + +[1]: http://www.salon.com/2006/07/20/new_guinea/ diff --git a/saved_articles/destination west texas salon literary guide to the world.txt b/saved_articles/destination west texas salon literary guide to the world.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..6b471db --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/destination west texas salon literary guide to the world.txt @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +--- +title: Destination: West Texas - Salon.com +date: 2006-07-31T23:53:07Z +source: http://www.salon.com/books/literary_guide/2006/07/31/west_texas/index_np.html +tags: magazine, guide, travel, reviews + +--- + +I am not a Texan. Mind you, I'm not apologizing, though maybe I am being a little bit defensive. Texas was its own country once, and Texans have never come close to getting over it. Just last week, on North Lamar here in cosmopolitan Austin, I saw a homeless guy wearing a black T-shirt that said, in big white letters, "Fuck y'all. I'm from Texas." Which is a hilarious and even charming sentiment from a homeless guy, but not so funny when it comes from, say, the president of the United States. But there you have it: Dagoberto Gilb has pointed out that Texas literature has more of a national character than a regional one, and all I'm saying is, as your tour guide to West Texas literature, I'm a foreigner, a native Michigander, an NPR listener, a daily reader of the New York Times, a Midwestern college-town liberal, a wearer of Birkenstocks, an atheist. A Yankee, in short. So the selection of books that follows is by no means an official one. They're just the books about West Texas that I love. + +In that spirit, I thought at first I wouldn't mention Larry McMurtry at all (just like I'm not going to mention Cormac McCarthy, except in passing), but then I decided that was just too willfully idiosyncratic, like writing about Elizabethan England and not mentioning Shakespeare. But on the assumption that y'all have already read "Lonesome Dove" (1985) or at least seen the miniseries, let me recommend Mr. M's charming, wry and wonderfully readable ["Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen"][1] (1999), a long, memoiristic essay showing how McMurtry went from being a rancher's kid (and a real cowboy) in a household that didn't even have a Bible in it, to a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, a reader of Proust and Woolf, and the proprietor of Booked Up, the large used bookstore he still runs (though perhaps for not much longer) in Archer City, west of Fort Worth. It says a lot about McMurtry himself that a book largely about books and reading has such a palpable sense of place, especially of the wide-open, treeless landscape of the Texas prairie. + +* * * + +* * * + +That same sense of place is also beautifully evoked in Max Crawford's magnificent 1985 novel of the Comanche Wars, "Lords of the Plain." Narrated by a liberal-minded cavalry officer in a pitch-perfect imitation of plainspoken 19th century American prose (think Francis Parkman), this may be the most culturally and politically astute novel ever written about the Indian Wars. It's a thrilling, tragic story, full of adventure and vivid characterizations, but what's best about it is its unforgettable evocation of the llano estacado, or "staked plain," the huge, featureless plateau that takes up much of the Texas Panhandle, and of the gorgeous caprock canyons at its eastern edge, such as Palo Duro and Blanco canyons. Indeed, now that the city of Lubbock sits spang dab (as we say in Texas) in the middle of the llano, the book's long and loving descriptions are probably more beautiful than the llano itself is today. + +Heading south, we come into the vast, empty but not so picturesque landscape of the Permian Basin, which is best known as oil country, and was the inspiration for several pungent, gritty volumes by the pulp genius, Jim Thompson. Thompson wasn't a Texan, either, having been born in Oklahoma, but he spent much of his youth in Texas, and wrote colorfully about it in his (largely unreliable) memoirs, "Bad Boy" (1953) and "Roughneck" (1954). His best-known novel, "The Killer Inside Me" (1952), is a ferociously cynical and deeply unsettling noir set in a small West Texas town. That the main character brutally murders a prostitute and then frames another man for it — that's just business as usual for noir. What makes it freaky and uniquely Thompsonian is that the killer is the town's deputy sheriff — and the narrator. Who else but a Jim Thompson narrator would say, "I shot him, then, right in his gaping stupid mouth. I emptied the gun into him"? + +Much less creepy, but still gritty and emotionally blunt and often violent, is Thompson's "South of Heaven" (1967), based loosely on his experiences working on a natural gas pipeline in the 1920s. Unusually for a Thompson novel, the narrator, Tommy Burwell, is no psychopath, but an ordinarily decent if headstrong young man; the novel also features a plucky heroine, some nasty bad guys, and 600 rowdy hobos, desperate for work. What's best about the novel is Thompson's sharp, working-man's evocation of the hard, dangerous labor of laying pipe. His descriptions of working with dynamite, jackhammers and something called a mormon board are nearly as powerful as anything in Orwell — in fact, minus the novel's rickety plot about a payroll heist, this book might even have been called "Down and Out in Midland and Odessa." + +Also noir-inflected is Dagoberto Gilb's first novel, "The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña" (1994), in which the title character, an unemployed Chicano, washes up in the El Paso YMCA. Here he waits for an important letter and bounces entertainingly off a large, colorful cast of burnouts, no-hopers and never-wuzzers. There's something of Beckett about the book, if you can imagine a combative, horny, smart-mouthed Beckett who sometimes writes in Spanglish and can be flat-out hilarious. + +Even more combative, and often equally hilarious, is Gilb's 2003 book of essays, "Gritos," which brings me full circle, since it's an almost perfect counterpoint to the McMurtry volume. It may be too, well, glib to call Gilb the anti-McMurtry, especially since they are both writers from highly unliterary backgrounds — a bookless ranch in McMurtry's case, and a lifetime as a carpenter in Gilb's. But Gilb's version of West Texas, with its tension between the city and the desert, and between his working-class Chicano roots and middle-class literary success, is more up-to-date than McMurtry's. Gilb won't let you forget that before it was its own country, Texas was part of Mexico, and he's a master of the sharp political crack, calling El Paso "the Chicano Ellis Island" and pointing out that Anglos are in the "vast minority" there. It's a prickly, sometimes infuriating book, but there's no gainsaying Gilb's ferocious honesty, especially on the centrality of Mexicans to the story of Texas, and likewise on the subject of who gets to decide who's a Texas writer — or an American one, for that matter. At the very least, having read "Gritos," I will never look at Cormac McCarthy in quite the same way again. + +Who's not a Texan, either, by the way. Just like Jim Thompson wasn't. Just like I'm not. What else can I say? Fuck y'all. I'm from Ann Arbor. + +[ ][2] + +[1]: http://www.salon.com/books/review/1999/11/29/mcmurtry/index.html +[2]: http://www.salon.com/2006/07/31/west_texas/ diff --git a/saved_articles/do you really understand ere.txt b/saved_articles/do you really understand ere.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..29713d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/do you really understand ere.txt @@ -0,0 +1,21 @@ +--- +title: Do you really understand ERE? - Page 3 +date: 2015-07-24T12:29:54Z +source: http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/viewtopic.php?p=74349#p74349 +tags: life + +--- + +When I want or need to use goods and those aren't automatically provided to me, I define that as "work" (for the purpose of this discussion). If I have goods that go unused, I define that as "pollution". + +At its most fundamental level, ERE is about designing one's world so as to eliminate work (the kind that is required to satisfy needs and wants, not the fun kind that done voluntarily) and pollution (wasted effort, wasted goods, ...). When things are optimally designed goods will flow through me with little effort and waste. + +In this way ERE is very similar to permaculture. It's a way of setting up a system that requires little maintenance. Compare to a conventional garden where deficiencies must be supplied by the gardener (work) and pollution must be carried away be the gardener with more work. + +Human living is more complicated than nature because while the latter seeks to evolve towards a steady state, human living is a dynamical process. Therefore ERE also contains a substantial focus on the future. Specifically contingencies and backups. So the difference between ERE and permaculture is that ERE pays more attention to the time component and the probability space. + +This, I would say, is how I understand ERE. It has two parts: Eliminating work and pollution and considering human living as a dynamic time and probability dependent process. + +Now, there are standard solutions or designs. The live close to the job, in a small space with less stuff, exercise to work (walk/bike), and earn money to invest for passive income all have the goal of reducing "work" and "pollution". Having interesting/useful hobbies and making connections and staying active all have the goal of considering the time/probability components. + +There are other solutions as well.
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/saved_articles/early retirement extreme.txt b/saved_articles/early retirement extreme.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..2587046 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/early retirement extreme.txt @@ -0,0 +1,125 @@ +rn- Early Retirement Extreme + +tags: refx, #readingnotes +book: Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence +author: Jacob Lund Fisker;Zev Averbach; Ann Beaver +date: November 30, 2013 7:54:51 PM +--- + +Page 17 | Location 255-258 | Added on Saturday, November 23, 2013 7:06:12 PM
+
+Remember that the shadows on the wall are just a part of life. There's no reason to only follow the rules of the shadows. I have been inspired by many different sources: books on backpacking, observations of animals and ecosystems, boating, cycling, people living in cars--even the homeless. I have read books on systems theory, biology, physics, finance, as well as more practical manuals on plumbing, house wiring, construction, etc., and then I have adapted these ideas to my own life.
+ +--- +
+Page 18 | Location 263-268 | Added on Saturday, November 23, 2013 7:07:46 PM
+
+one's entire philosophy must change. Later on I offer a philosophy modeled on the Renaissance ideal of the 17th century and the craftsmen of the 18th century who wrote the Constitution of the United States at the peak of the Age of Enlightenment. This is a framework of complexity where a person is skilled in more than just one area. It is, in a way, a contrarian approach to the contemporary idea of "one man-one specialization." It's an interlocking way of arranging one's life. In risk management parlance, one wants to transfer from a tightly coupled linear system of financed consumerism to a loosely coupled, complex system of the financially independent Renaissance man.
+ +--- + +Page 27 | Location 406-408 | Added on Saturday, November 23, 2013 8:15:18 PM
+
+Dissatisfaction with the current situation may be high and the vision of an alternative may be high as well, but without a plan, this can only lead to frustration. There must be a strategy or at least a plan, and it must be practical. To get things done, it's much better to have a plan than to have passion, at least insofar as you act on it.
+ +--- + +Page 27 | Location 409-411 | Added on Saturday, November 23, 2013 8:15:54 PM
+
+Changemongers thus have the following four variables to play with: Increase your dissatisfaction with present situation. Strengthen your vision of future situation. Build a plan to get from the present to the future. Lower the perceived cost of the plan.
+ +--- + +Page 41 | Location 622-626 | Added on Saturday, November 23, 2013 8:56:09 PM
+
+The Darwinian "survival of the fittest" often has undertones of "survival of the best," a belief that the "fittest" are happy to reinforce. The distinction should not be forgotten, though. In competitive environments, the selection isn't for the best but for those that best fit the environment. People are not selected for the best attributes, they're selected for the fittest attributes. A world without trees selects the short-necked giraffe, which is better adapted. Similarly, the career track selects people who are willing to give up their lives for the sake of work.
+ +--- + +Page 45 | Location 679-683 | Added on Saturday, November 23, 2013 9:56:59 PM
+
+The means to survival for a specialist is his ability to rapidly learn new subjects, quickly produce saleable works, and then move on. This is called skimming. It's the same strategy pursued by weeds, to use an ecological analogy. At the expert level (see Gauging mastery), a person needs 80-100 hours a week to stay competitive. For masters level, it's 60-80 hours, and to remain competent requires 40-60 hours a week.
+ + +--- + +Page 47 | Location 717-720 | Added on Saturday, November 23, 2013 10:01:54 PM
+
+Our culture was founded on the idea that maximizing production equals maximizing happiness. In the past, pursuing this goal was admirable since any increase in production resulted in an increase in well-being: better food, better medicine, better clothing, better housing, better work, and better living. At some point the focus changed from better to more: more food, more medicine, more clothing, more bedrooms, more bathrooms, and more work. But can we honestly say this still results in better living and greater well-being?
+ +--- + +Page 50 | Location 765-767 | Added on Saturday, November 23, 2013 10:07:24 PM
+
+garage and parking the car on the street. People don't seem to realize that the quest to bring more possessions in through the front door is a chronic disease, and that the shortage of space is a symptom rather than an underlying problem.
+ +--- + +Page 61 | Location 931-933 | Added on Saturday, November 23, 2013 10:27:17 PM
+
+Many more people started prodigally wasting the abundance of resources and goods that were suddenly at their disposal. This has now turned into a collaborative/exploitative arrangement, where a few get wealthy selling waste to the many, while the many are employed in arrangements in which they have little control over what they produce.
+ +--- + +Page 83 | Location 1253-1258 | Added on Monday, November 25, 2013 9:31:36 PM
+
+Anyone who has been out in the world for a while and experienced a lot of different situations has a good idea of what is normal, and thus can describe a bad situation as what it is: simply a bad situation. Conversely, people with less agency and a belief that they are not in control of their destiny are more likely to be stressed and to suffer the associated health effects. Combined with self-confidence, agency is the attitude that any problem can be fixed, given enough resources in the form of time, effort, and determination. This attitude rests either on a thorough knowledge of or training in what is to be done, or on the surety that such knowledge or training can be attained. This attitude is often transferable from one field to another, completely unrelated field.
+ +--- + +Page 83 | Location 1263-1266 | Added on Monday, November 25, 2013 9:34:02 PM
+
+We have an economic model that is based on pulling resources out of the ground and mostly turning them into unnecessary products, getting people to buy the products by convincing them that they need them, then getting them to throw the products away because they're obsolete. This makes people buy the next model and bury the other one in the ground. The sole goal of this seemingly pointless exercise is to work faster and grow the gross domestic product, which measures the resource churn.
+ +--- + +Page 88 | Location 1342-1346 | Added on Monday, November 25, 2013 9:43:14 PM
+
+the present methodical, milestone-governed specialist approach is largely a mopping-up operation which leads to increasing levels of detail but no new ways of understanding things. This way of thinking has dominated our culture for some time, where problems are formulated and solved within the present framework of thinking, leading to the world and way of life described in The lock-in. If you want to change your life, don't be tempted to outsource your life or your operations. You'll never know which kind of connections or synergies you're missing and you'll only make yourself
+ +--- + +Page 101 | Location 1540-1546 | Added on Monday, November 25, 2013 10:01:48 PM
+
+technically adept person will be able to quickly crunch numbers and manipulate equations, while perhaps not quite understanding the underlying concepts of his chosen specialization, whereas a more experienced person will quickly understand the underlying concepts of even unfamiliar subject areas. In physics and mathematics, such experienced people are said to have physical intuition or mathematical maturity, respectively. Sadly, many educations focus more on technical details because they are more easily testable. Even without the need for testing, many authors and educators are guilty of obscuring the fundamentals by giving equal time to all pieces of information.33 Automatically grasping what is important only comes with experience. Now, there are
+--- + +Page 101 | Location 1546-1548 | Added on Tuesday, November 26, 2013 10:42:10 PM
+
+However, working in the same place for five years does not imply five years of experience. If you've been doing exactly the same thing, day in and day out for five years, and it only took a day to learn, you have one day's experience, five years over.
+ +--- + +Page 103 | Location 1567-1569 | Added on Tuesday, November 26, 2013 10:55:12 PM
+
+it's more useful to look at expertise by considering the following list, which parallels the development mentioned above. Copying Comparing Compiling Computing Coordinating Creating
+ +--- + +Page 107 | Location 1632-1636 | Added on Tuesday, November 26, 2013 10:57:56 PM
+
+For instance, at any one time I have four to six simultaneous projects going. If I restricted myself to just one project for the sake of simplicity, or tried to switch projects on a pre-arranged schedule dictated by time management, there would be a lot of downtime when my subconscious was processing a problem while I would be sitting around doing nothing and being underutilized. Hence, not allowing yourself to do anything but focus on one specific task will actually not increase productivity for creative work. It will only increase productivity for assembly line work
+ +--- + +Page 110 | Location 1677-1678 | Added on Tuesday, November 26, 2013 11:02:09 PM
+
+It's important to understand that doing the right thing (good strategy) is much more important than doing things right (good tactics).
+ +--- + +Page 125 | Location 1906-1908 | Added on Wednesday, November 27, 2013 8:38:31 PM
+
+Yet enormous amounts of resources in our society are aimed towards solving problems heterotelically. Sometimes the solution is the cause of a new problem, but thanks to short-term thinking, the focus is often on responding to problems rather than preventing them. Our culture seems to have an ongoing fascination with action, and "reaction" is ironically more visible than "proaction."
+ +--- + +Page 167 | Location 2552-2555 | Added on Friday, November 29, 2013 11:32:55 AM
+
+In general, people who live a life of abundance, like "primitive" tribesmen (see Human capital and necessary personal assets) or Californians, will be happy to give things away, the latter primarily to create more space in their garages, and the former presumably because they can easily build replacements.
+ +--- + +Page 179 | Location 2733-2742 | Added on Friday, November 29, 2013 7:49:52 PM
+
+Make a list of activities (verbs) that you need to do--sleeping, eating, washing up--and what you want to do--writing, hiking, cycling, entertaining, working, skating, talking, cooking, playing, exercising, etc. Now consider whether you do some of these activities often enough to have "in-home" facilities or whether you're better off outsourcing them. Consider this list and extend it to your general facilities--for example, how long since you last used the guest room, the bar room, the home cinema room, etc. Consider that some rooms could have multiple uses (see Monouse and Multiuse). In particular, are the facilities available nearby already? In this case, there's really no reason to duplicate them at home. For instance, if you're a gym rat and spend six days a week at the gym, maybe you can shower there and thus don't need elaborate bathroom facilities at home. If you eat in cafeterias most of the time, maybe you don't need anything fancier than a microwave and a minirefrigerator for your in-home kitchen facilities. Hence, if you currently have rooms and facilities that mostly go unused or could go unused with a change of habit or hobby to something that requires less stuff on location, yet provides as much enjoyment, don't include them in your next home.
diff --git a/saved_articles/fail-safe investing - by harry browne.txt b/saved_articles/fail-safe investing - by harry browne.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..49134d6 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/fail-safe investing - by harry browne.txt @@ -0,0 +1,275 @@ +--- +title: Fail-Safe Investing - by Harry Browne +date: 2012-06-22T13:52:22Z +source: http://sivers.org/book/FailSafeInvesting +tags: investing, finance + +--- + +![Fail-Safe Investing - by Harry Browne][1] + +ISBN: 031226321X +READ: 2011-04-21 +RATING: 5/10 + + +[Amazon page][2] for details and reviews. + +Its main point is the "Permanent Portfolio" - a beautiful simple idea to have 25% of your savings each in investments that do well during boom (stocks), bust (bonds), inflation (gold), deflation (cash). Then just rebalance when they get too far out of 25% each. No predicting the future. No worrying about the news. Just 25% each and rebalance. + +## my notes + +The 17 Simple Rules of Financial Safety + +RULE #1 BUILD YOUR WEALTH UPON YOUR CAREER + +Most part-time investors who try to beat the markets lose part or all of the savings they've worked so hard to accumulate. + +Can you make big profits by relying on an expert who does have the proper qualifications? How do you identify a true expert? That task is no easier than picking the right investments. If you don't understand investing as well as the pros, you won't know how to evaluate those who seek to advise you. And you can't rely on an advisor's track record, even when it's presented honestly. Track records tell you only how advisors did in the past - not how they will do next year. + +You're violating Rule #1 if you think your investments can be the sole source of your retirement wealth - or if you steal time from your work to manage your investments - or if you think about abandoning your job to become a full-time investor. + +RULE #2 DON'T ASSUME YOU CAN REPLACE YOUR WEALTH + +You earned your wealth because your talent and effort harmonized with the circumstances in which you found yourself. But the world won't stand still for you or repeat itself when you need it to. + +So assume that what you have now is irreplaceable, that you could never earn it again - even if you suspect you could. + +Say "No!" to any proposition that asks you to risk losing it. + +RULE #3 RECOGNIZE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INVESTING AND SPECULATING + +When you invest, you accept whatever return the markets are paying investors in general. When you speculate, you attempt to beat that return. + +You're speculating when: + +* You select individual stocks, mutual funds, or stock market sectors you believe will do better than the market as a whole. + +* You move your capital in and out of markets according to how well you think they'll perform in the near future. + +* You base your investments on current prospects for the nation's economy. + +* You use fundamental analysis, technical analysis, cyclical analysis, or any other form of analysis or system to tell you when to buy and sell. + +RULE #4 BEWARE OF FORTUNE-TELLERS + +As with the rest of your life, safety doesn't come from trying to peer into the future to eliminate uncertainty. Safety comes from devising realistic ways to deal with uncertainty. + +We live in an uncertain world - and that no one can eliminate the uncertainty for you. + +Look for ways to assure that the uncertain future won't hurt you - no matter what it turns out to be. + +RULE #5 DON'T EXPECT ANYONE TO MAKE YOU RICH + +The Helper (accountant, etc) is worth listening to. He or she can acquaint you with investment alternatives you weren't aware of, and that might be a good fit for you. He can teach you the mechanics and procedures for getting things done in the investment world. He can raise the questions you need to answer in order to devise a portfolio that suits your needs. He can help you reduce the tax bill on your investment profits. + +You don't act on the advice of someone you never heard of. And you hear of him only after - and because - he has made several profitable recommendations in a row. + +The investment expert with the perfect record up to now will lose his touch as soon as you start acting on his advice. + +RULE #6 DON'T EXPECT A TRADING SYSTEM TO MAKE YOU RICH + +Trading systems generally arise from one of two sources. + +The first source is a commonsense observation about human behavior - which someone then tries to transform into a quantifiable, mechanical system. + +For example, Contrary Opinion is a theory that says, among other things, that an investment is likely to be near its peak when everyone seems to know how good its prospects are. + +The idea makes some sense. If everyone already knows something is a good investment, most people who are likely to buy it probably already have done so - leaving very few investors to buy it and push its price still higher. In such a case, you should be skeptical about its prospects as a speculation. But that doesn't mean we know precisely when or at what price the investment will peak. You know only that there doesn't seem to be room for the price to go much higher. + +But people who devise trading systems aren't satisfied with anything so indefinite. They devise indicators to measure the precise degree of bullishness and bearishness surrounding a specific investment - and then construct formulas that provide specific signals for buying and selling. This is similar to taking an obvious truth - such as that attendance at sporting events is generally smaller on rainy days than on sunny days - and constructing a formula that supposedly translates the number of inches of rainfall into an exact forecast of the attendance. + +Trading systems are based on the unstated assumption that the world doesn't change. But the world is in constant change - as desires change, demand changes, and supplies change. + +RULE #7 INVEST ONLY ON A CASH BASIS + +When someone goes completely broke, it's almost always because he was operating with borrowed money. + +RULE #8 MAKE YOUR OWN DECISIONS + +Many individuals have lost their fortunes because they gave someone (usually a financial advisor or attorney) the authority to make their decisions and handle their money. + +Even when there is no wrongdoing, no advisor can be expected to treat your wealth with the same respect you give to it. You don't need a money manager. Investing is complicated and difficult only if you're trying to speculate and beat the market. + +Above all, never give anyone signature authority over money that's precious to you. + +RULE #9 DO ONLY WHAT YOU UNDERSTAND + +RULE #10 SPREAD THE RISK + +No one investment is good for all times. + +You can't rely on any institution to protect your wealth for you. Old-line banks have failed, pension funds have come under a cloud of suspicion, and scandals - both real and imagined - are common on Wall Street. The company you depend on to keep your wealth may no longer be there when you're ready to withdraw your life savings. + +Diversify across investments and institutions - and keep things simple enough to manage yourself - you can relax, knowing that no one event can do you in. + +RULE #11 BUILD A BULLETPROOF PORTFOLIO FOR PROTECTION + +The portfolio should assure that your wealth will survive any event - including events that would be devastating to any one investment. + +Three absolute requirements for such a portfolio are: + +1\. Safety: + +It should protect you against every possible economic future. You should profit during times of normal prosperity, but you also should be safe (and perhaps even profit) during bad times - inflation, recession, or even depression. + +2\. Stability: + +Whatever economic climate arrives, the portfolio's performance should be so steady that you won't wonder whether the portfolio needs to be changed. Even in the worst possible circumstances, the portfolio's value should drop no more than slightly - so that you won't panic and abandon it. This stability also permits you to turn your attention away from your investments, confident that your portfolio will protect you in any circumstance. + +3\. Simplicity: + +The portfolio should be so easy to maintain, and require so little of your time, that you'll never be tempted to look for something that seems simpler, but is less safe. + +You leave it alone - to hold the same investments, in the same proportions, permanently. You don't change the proportions as you, your friends, or investment gurus change their minds about the future. + +Your portfolio needs to respond well only to those broad movements. And they fit into four general categories: + +1\. Prosperity: + +A period during which living standards are rising, the economy is growing, business is thriving, interest rates usually are falling, and unemployment is declining. + +2\. Inflation: + +A period when consumer prices generally are rising. They might be rising moderately (an inflation rate of 6% or so), rapidly (10% to 20% or so, as in the late 1970s), or at a runaway rate (25% or more). + +3\. Tight money or recession: + +A period during which the growth of the supply of money in circulation slows down. This leaves people with less cash than they expected to have, and usually leads to a recession - a period of poor economic conditions. + +4\. Deflation: + +The opposite of inflation. Consumer prices decline and the purchasing power value of money grows. In the past, deflation has sometimes triggered a depression - a prolonged period of very bad economic conditions, as in the 1930s. + +Investment prices can be affected by what happens outside the financial system - wars, changes in government policies, new tax rules, civil turmoil, and other matters. But these events have a lasting effect on investments only if they push the economy from one to another of the four environments I've just described. The four economic categories are all-inclusive. At any time, one of them will predominate. So if you're protected in these four situations, you're protected in all situations. + +Thus four investments provide coverage for all four economic environments: + +STOCKS take advantage of prosperity. They tend to do poorly during periods of inflation, deflation, and tight money, but over time those periods don't undo the gains that stocks achieve during periods of prosperity. + +BONDS also take advantage of prosperity. In addition, they profit when interest rates collapse during a deflation. You should expect bonds to do poorly during times of inflation and tight money. + +GOLD not only does well during times of intense inflation, it does very well. In the 1970s, gold rose twenty times over as the inflation rate soared to its peak of 15% in 1980. Gold generally does poorly during times of prosperity, tight money, and deflation. + +CASH is most profitable during a period of tight money. Not only is it a liquid asset that can give you purchasing power when your income and investments might be ailing, but the rise in interest rates increases the return on your dollars. Cash also becomes more valuable during a deflation as prices fall. Cash is essentially neutral during a time of prosperity, and it is a loser during times of inflation. + +Any attempt to be clever in assigning portions to the investments probably will do more harm than good. I prefer the simplicity of allocating 25% to each of the four investments. + +The only maintenance required is to check the portfolio's makeup once a year. + +If any of the four investments has become worth less than 15%, or more than 35%, of the portfolio's overall value, you need to restore the original percentages. + +When you make your once-a-year check of the portfolio's value, if all four investments are within the 15-35% range, no rebalancing is necessary. During the year, if you happen to notice that there's been a big change in investment prices, you may want to check the values of the investments. Again, if any investment has strayed outside the 15-35% range, go ahead and rebalance the entire portfolio. + +The test of a Permanent Portfolio is whether it provides peace of mind. A Permanent Portfolio should let you watch the evening news or read investment publications in total serenity. No actual or threatened event should trouble you, because you'll know that your portfolio is protected against it. + +If someone warns about the "alarming parallels" between the current decade and the 1920s, you shouldn't wonder whether you need to sell all your stocks. You'll know that your Permanent Portfolio will take care of you - even if next year turns out to be 1929 revisited. The deflation that could devastate stocks would push interest rates downward and bring big profits for your bonds. + +When someone claims the inflation rate is headed back to 15%, you shouldn't wonder whether to dump all your bonds. You'll know that the gain in your Permanent Portfolio's gold would far outweigh any losses on the bonds. + +When someone announces that a new debt crisis is on the way, or that a bull market is about to begin in stocks, bonds, or gold, you won't feel pressured to decide whether he's right. You'll know that the Permanent Portfolio will respond favorably to any eventuality. + +I can't list every potential event. So if you become concerned by any possibility, reread this chapter and you should be reassured that there's an investment in your Permanent Portfolio that will cover you if the worst should occur. Whatever the potential crisis or opportunity, your Permanent Portfolio should already be taking care of you. + +The portfolio can't guarantee a profit every year; no portfolio can. It won't outperform the hotshot advisor in his best year. And it won't outperform the best investment of the year. But it can give you the confidence that no crisis will destroy you, the assurance that your savings are secure and growing in all circumstances, and the knowledge that you're no longer vulnerable to the mistakes in judgment that you or the best advisor could so easily make. + +RULE #12 SPECULATE ONLY WITH MONEY YOU CAN AFFORD TO LOSE + +RULE #13 KEEP SOME ASSETS OUTSIDE YOUR OWN COUNTRY + +For complete safety, don't allow everything you own to be within the reach of your government. If you keep some assets in a different country, you'll be less vulnerable, and you'll feel less vulnerable. You won't have to worry so much about what your government might do next. + +Keeping some investments abroad provides safe and easy protection against surprises that might happen anywhere - confiscation of gold holdings by the government, exchange controls, civil disorder, even war. + +No one knows how the people elected in the coming years might choose to solve the economic problems the country will face. It might strike them that the quick and easy solution is to take your property - as has happened so often already. Your assets will be safe even if war, civil disorder, a weakening of law enforcement, or a physical catastrophe should disrupt record-keeping in your own country. + +Your entire estate will no longer be vulnerable to economic, political, or legal setbacks in your own country. + +Geographic diversification is a necessary part of making sure the Permanent Portfolio can handle whatever hazard materializes. + +RULE #14 TAKE ADVANTAGE OF TAX-REDUCTION PLANS + +Tax deferral: the basic method for reducing the tax burden on your investment program. With tax deferral, the money you don't pay in taxes today can work to produce more earnings every year until you finally have to pay the tax. + +RULE #15 ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS + +In what economic circumstances is the investment's price likely to go down? +Are other investments in your portfolio likely to take up the slack by gaining in those same circumstances? +Under what circumstances could I lose a substantial share - 20% or more - of my investment? +Under what circumstances could my entire investment be lost? +Would I have any residual liability - that is, can I lose even more than the cash I invested? + +Interest rates generally reflect an investment's risk. A higher interest rate means there's a greater possibility the capital can be lost - through default or inflation. + +Under what circumstances, if any, is the investment likely to appreciate? +Under what circumstances, if any, is the investment likely to depreciate? +In good circumstances for the investment, will the overall return - yield plus capital appreciation - help your portfolio overcome losses in other investments? + +If the investment is a mutual fund, you want the fund with the lowest yield - other things being equal. Any dividend paid by a mutual fund simply reduces the price of your shares + +"Is this company a potential takeover candidate?" + +The crowd isn't always wrong, but you can't make much betting with it - because you will buy at a price that's already high. By going against the crowd, you buy when an investment is out of favor and cheap; if it does succeed, there's a long way for it to go up. So the most important factor in speculating is whether you expect something that most people don't expect. For example, the time to consider buying inflation hedges speculatively is when most people believe inflation is under control. The time to consider buying a particular company is when everyone knows what a dog it is - not when everyone talks about its great promise. Unpopularity doesn't guarantee profits, but you'll never make a killing with a popular investment. + +"Do the technical factors favor the investment now?" + +You must have an investment plan. Without a plan, you will be tossed and turned by all the conflicting ideas you read and hear- - and you'll never ask the right questions. With a plan, you'll have a basis for evaluating whatever you hear. You'll know to ask the questions that help you determine whether an investment furthers your plan. + +RULE #16 ENJOY YOURSELF WITH A BUDGET FOR PLEASURE + +Budget a sum of money that you can spend each year without concern for the consequences. If you stay within that amount, you can feel free to blow the money on cars, trips, anything you want - without worry, because you'll know you aren't blowing your future. + +RULE #17 WHENEVER YOU'RE IN DOUBT, ERR ON THE SIDE OF SAFETY + +If you wind up losing something, let it be only an opportunity that was lost - not precious capital. People rarely go broke playing it safe. But many go broke taking great risks or making investments they know too little about. + +If you're hesitating, it's because you don't yet know enough about the investment or the problem to make a confident decision. That means you shouldn't take the plunge until you know more and you're sure you understand all the ramifications. + +The premise for speculation is that you're more astute than most other investors - that you understand the market better, that you have information not available to other investors, that you can make better decisions, or that your interpretation of available information is especially perceptive. The elements of speculation are timing, forecasting, trading systems, and selection. Any time you use any of these tactics you're speculating. + +Investment forecasts can be exciting. But in other areas of our lives, we think of fortune-tellers as entertainers. + +Forecasts are not entirely useless. Someone's predictions can help you recognize that your own expectations for the future aren't the only possible outcome. This can help keep you humble and prudent. + +If you come to feel a given event is quite possible but most people disagree with you, the market probably will provide a big payoff if you bet on that event and prove to be right. So if you like to watch the investment markets closely and you see a potential future that most people are ignoring, you may want to make a small speculation with money you can afford to lose. + +A sure way to lose what you've accumulated is to risk the funds that are precious to you on the idea that some event is inevitable. + +In 1970, the chief gold trader at the largest Swiss bank told a friend of mine that the gold price would never go above $40. When asked how he could be so sure, the trader replied, "Because we control the market." + +"Insiders" are no more help than fortunetellers or high-priced pros. + +You can protect yourself against the possibility of institutional crisis by using more than one institution. You can protect yourself against the failings of individuals by relying only on yourself. And you can protect yourself against investment roller coasters by diversifying across investment markets. + +Split the 25% stock-market portion among three mutual funds. + +For the bond portion, you don't want to have to monitor credit risk, so buy only U.S. Treasury bonds. So long as the U.S. government has the ability to tax people or print money to pay its bills, there is virtually no credit risk. + +Put the 25% in the Treasury bond issue that currently has the longest time until it matures. That will be close to 30 years. Ten years later, the bond will have only 20 years to maturity; at that time replace it with a new 30-year bond. + +Buy bullion coins - coins whose only value is the gold bullion they contain. They sell for about 3-5% more per ounce than gold bullion. That means a one-ounce coin will sell for about $310-$315 if the price of gold is $300 an ounce. + +The cash portion should be kept in a money market fund investing only in short-term U.S. Treasury securities, so that you don't have to evaluate credit risk. These securities are safer than bank accounts and other debt instruments. If your cash budget is large enough, divide your holdings between two or three funds - for further protection against the unthinkable. + +The value of real estate in your portfolio is indivisible, and everything else must accommodate it. Just like a 15-foot piano in the living room, you have to arrange the rest of the furniture around it. + +Your house is a consumption item - the place where you live and enjoy your life. + +Don't play games with your Permanent Portfolio. Don't wait for any investment to become cheaper before you buy it. And don't go overboard investing in something that happens to be doing well now. Just put 25% in each of the four categories. + +No matter how strong your expectations about the near future, you could easily be mistaken. And the point of the Permanent Portfolio is to ignore your own expectations and let the portfolio take care of you no matter what may come. + +Fund it with equal portions of all four investments and don't worry over which is going to do best. It is a package of investments that provides the safety you need. Tear apart the package and you tear apart the safety. + +A foreign account in any country outside your own is a tremendous improvement over having everything in your home country. But some countries are more hospitable than others. And some have legal traditions that protect your privacy. I've always been partial to Switzerland and Austria, because each has a centuries-old tradition of respecting privacy and fending off inquiries from other governments. + +If you buy and hold gold through the foreign bank, the gold most likely will be stored within the bank itself. + +The secret - that things rarely work out as expected - is shared unwittingly by investors, brokers, advisors, newsletter writers, and financial journalists, few of whom can bring themselves to acknowledge it. Each wants to appear to be in command of the situation, on top of the markets, aware of what's happening and what's going to happen - and to appear as though everything that has already happened was anticipated. A professional needs to keep up this guise because he must look sharper than his competitors. Even investors often pose as members of the all-knowing - perhaps because no one wants to appear to be the only loser, and everyone else seems to be so smart. + +When you give up the search for certainty, an enormous burden is lifted from your shoulders. + +The less you know - and the more honestly you recognize the limits of your knowledge - the more likely your investment program will turn out okay. Humility is accepting that you don't know everything, or even everything about any particular topic, and it is an investor's most vital asset. Arrogance eventually ruins any investor. + +[1]: http://sivers.org/images/FailSafeInvesting.gif +[2]: http://www.amazon.com/dp/031226321X?tag=sivers-20 diff --git a/saved_articles/fighting the mississippi river.txt b/saved_articles/fighting the mississippi river.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..4085f42 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/fighting the mississippi river.txt @@ -0,0 +1,456 @@ +--- +title: Atchafalaya - The New Yorker +date: 2011-05-19T13:15:22Z +source: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1987/02/23/1987_02_23_039_TNY_CARDS_000347146 +tags: research, nature + +--- +Atchafalaya + +BY JOHN MCPHEE + +Three hundred miles up the Mississippi River from its mouth—many parishes above New Orleans and well north of Baton Rouge—a navigation lock in the Mississippi's right bank allows ships to drop out of the river. In evident defiance of nature, they descend as much as thirty-three feet, then go off to the west or south. This, to say the least, bespeaks a rare relationship between a river and adjacent terrain—any river, anywhere, let alone the third-ranking river on earth. The adjacent terrain is Cajun country, in a geographical sense the apex of the French Acadian world, which forms a triangle in southern Louisiana, with its base the Gulf Coast from the mouth of the Mississippi almost to Texas, its two sides converging up here near the lock—and including neither New Orleans nor Baton Rouge. The people of the local parishes (Pointe Coupee Parish, Avoyelles Parish) would call this the apex of Cajun country in every possible sense—no one more emphatically than the lockmaster, on whose face one day I noticed a spreading astonishment as he watched me remove from my pocket a red bandanna. + +"You are a coonass with that red handkerchief," he said. + +A coonass being a Cajun, I threw him an appreciative smile. I told him that I always have a bandanna in my pocket, wherever I happen to be—in New York as in Maine or Louisiana, not to mention New Jersey (my home)—and sometimes the color is blue. He said, "Blue is the sign of a Yankee. But that red handkerchief—with that, you are pure coonass." The lockmaster wore a white hard hat above his creased and deeply tanned face, his full but not overloaded frame. The nameplate on his desk said rabalais. + +The navigation lock is not a formal place. When I first met Rabalais, six months before, he was sitting with his staff at 10 a.m. eating homemade bread, macaroni and cheese, and a mound of rice that was concealed beneath what he called "smoked old-chicken gravy." He said, "Get yourself a plate of that." As I went somewhat heavily for the old chicken, Rabalais said to the others, "He's pure coonass. I knew it." + +If I was pure coonass, I would like to know what that made Rabalais—Norris F. Rabalais, born and raised on a farm near Simmesport, in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. When Rabalais was a child, there was no navigation lock to lower ships from the Mississippi. The water just poured out—boats with it—and flowed on into a distributary waterscape known as Atchafalaya. In each decade since about 1860, the Atchafalaya River had drawn off more water from the Mississippi than it had in the decade before. By the late nineteen-forties, when Rabalais was in his teens, the volume approached one-third. As the Atchafalaya widened and deepened, eroding headward, offering the Mississippi an increasingly attractive alternative, it was preparing for nothing less than an absolute capture: before long, it would take all of the Mississippi, and itself become the master stream. Rabalais said, "They used to teach us in high school that one day there was going to be structures up here to control the flow of that water, but I never dreamed I was going to be on one. Somebody way back yonder—which is dead and gone now—visualized it. We had some pretty sharp teachers." + +The Mississippi River, with its sand and silt, has created most of Louisiana, and it could not have done so by remaining in one channel. If it had, southern Louisiana would be a long narrow peninsula reaching into the Gulf of Mexico. Southern Louisiana exists in its present form because the Mississippi River has jumped here and there within an arc about two hundred miles wide, like a pianist playing with one hand—frequently and radically changing course, surging over the left or the right bank to go off in utterly new directions. Always it is the river's purpose to get to the Gulf by the shortest and steepest gradient. As the mouth advances southward and the river lengthens, the gradient declines, the current slows, and sediment builds up the bed. Eventually, it builds up so much that the river spills to one side. Major shifts of that nature have tended to occur roughly once a millennium. The Mississippi's main channel of three thousand years ago is now the quiet water of Bayou Teche, which mimics the shape of the Mississippi. Along Bayou Teche, on the high ground of ancient natural levees, are Jeanerette, Breaux Bridge, Broussard, Olivier—arcuate strings of Cajun towns. Eight hundred years before the birth of Christ, the channel was captured from the east. It shifted abruptly and flowed in that direction for about a thousand years. In the second century a.d., it was captured again, and taken south, by the now unprepossessing Bayou Lafourche, which, by the year 1000, was losing its hegemony to the river's present course, through the region that would be known as Plaquemines. By the nineteen-fifties, the Mississippi River had advanced so far past New Orleans and out into the Gulf that it was about to shift again, and its offspring Atchafalaya was ready to receive it. By the route of the Atchafalaya, the distance across the delta plain was a hundred and forty-five miles—well under half the length of the route of the master stream. + +For the Mississippi to make such a change was completely natural, but in the interval since the last shift Europeans had settled beside the river, a nation had developed, and the nation could not afford nature. The consequences of the Atchafalaya's conquest of the Mississippi would include but not be limited to the demise of Baton Rouge and the virtual destruction of New Orleans. With its fresh water gone, its harbor a silt bar, its economy disconnected from inland commerce, New Orleans would turn into New Gomorrah. Moreover, there were so many big industries between the two cities that at night they made the river glow like a worm. As a result of settlement patterns, this reach of the Mississippi had long been known as "the German coast," and now, with B. F. Goodrich, E. I. du Pont, Union Carbide, Reynolds Metals, Shell, Mobil, Texaco, Exxon, Monsanto, Uniroyal, Georgia-Pacific, Hydrocarbon Industries, Vulcan Materials, Nalco Chemical, Freeport Chemical, Dow Chemical, Allied Chemical, Stauffer Chemical, Hooker Chemicals, Rubicon Chemicals, American Petrofina—with an infrastructural concentration equalled in few other places—it was often called "the American Ruhr." The industries were there because of the river. They had come for its navigational convenience and its fresh water. They would not, and could not, linger beside a tidal creek. For nature to take its course was simply unthinkable. The Sixth World War would do less damage to southern Louisiana. Nature, in this place, had become an enemy of the state. + +Rabalais works for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Some years ago, the Corps made a film that showed the navigation lock and a complex of associated structures built in an effort to prevent the capture of the Mississippi. The narrator said, "This nation has a large and powerful adversary. Our opponent could cause the United States to lose nearly all her seaborne commerce, to lose her standing as first among trading nations. . . .We are fighting Mother Nature. . . .It's a battle we have to fight day by day, year by year; the health of our economy depends on victory." + +Rabalais was in on the action from the beginning, working as a construction inspector. Here by the site of the navigation lock was where the battle had begun. An old meander bend of the Mississippi was the conduit through which water had been escaping into the Atchafalaya. Complicating the scene, the old meander bend had also served as the mouth of the Red River. Coming in from the northwest, from Texas via Shreveport, the Red River had been a tributary of the Mississippi for a couple of thousand years—until the nineteen-forties, when the Atchafalaya captured it and drew it away. The capture of the Red increased the Atchafalaya's power as it cut down the country beside the Mississippi. On a map, these entangling watercourses had come to look like the letter "H." The Mississippi was the right-hand side. The Atchafalaya and the captured Red were the left-hand side. The crosspiece, scarcely seven miles long, was the former meander bend, which the people of the parish had long since named Old River. Sometimes enough water would pour out of the Mississippi and through Old River to quintuple the falls at Niagara. It was at Old River that the United States was going to lose its status among the world's trading nations. It was at Old River that New Orleans would be lost, Baton Rouge would be lost. At Old River, we would lose the American Ruhr. The Army's name for its operation there was Old River Control. + +Rabalais gestured across the lock toward what seemed to be a pair of placid lakes separated by a trapezoidal earth dam a hundred feet high. It weighed five million tons, and it had stopped Old River. It had cut Old River in two. The severed ends were sitting there filling up with weeds. Where the Atchafalaya had entrapped the Mississippi, bigmouth bass were now in charge. The navigation lock had been dug beside this monument. The big dam, like the lock, was fitted into the mainline levee of the Mississippi. In Rabalais's pickup, we drove on the top of the dam, and drifted as well through Old River country. On this day, he said, the water on the Mississippi side was eighteen feet above sea level, while the water on the Atchafalaya side was five feet above sea level. Cattle were grazing on the slopes of the levees, and white horses with white colts, in deep-green grass. Behind the levees, the fields were flat and reached to rows of distant trees. Very early in the morning, a low fog had covered the fields. The sun, just above the horizon, was large and ruddy in the mist, rising slowly, like a hot-air balloon. This was a countryside of corn and soybeans, of grain-fed-catfish ponds, of feed stores and Kingdom Halls in crossroad towns. There were small neat cemeteries with ranks of white sarcophagi raised a foot or two aboveground, notwithstanding the protection of the levees. There were tarpapered cabins on concrete pylons, and low brick houses under planted pines. Pickups under the pines. If this was a form of battlefield, it was not unlike a great many battlefields—landscapes so quiet they belie their story. Most battlefields, though, are places where something happened once. Here it would happen indefinitely. + +We went out to the Mississippi. Still indistinct in mist, it looked like a piece of the sea. Rabalais said, "That's a wide booger, right there." In the spring high water of vintage years—1927, 1937, 1973—more than two million cubic feet of water had gone by this place in every second. Sixty-five kilotons per second. By the mouth of the inflow channel leading to the lock were rock jetties, articulated concrete mattress revetments, and other heavy defenses. Rabalais observed that this particular site was no more vulnerable than almost any other point in this reach of river that ran so close to the Atchafalaya plain. There were countless places where a breakout might occur: "It has a tendency to go through just anywheres you can call for." + +Why, then, had the Mississippi not jumped the bank and long since diverted to the Atchafalaya? + +"Because they're watching it close," said Rabalais. "It's under close surveillance." + +After the Corps dammed Old River, in 1963, the engineers could not just walk away, like roofers who had fixed a leak. In the early planning stages, they had considered doing that, but there were certain effects they could not overlook. The Atchafalaya, after all, was a distributary of the Mississippi—the major one, and, as it happened, the only one worth mentioning that the Corps had not already plugged. In time of thundering flood, the Atchafalaya was used as a safety valve, to relieve a good deal of pressure and help keep New Orleans from ending up in Yucatán. The Atchafalaya was also the source of the water in the swamps and bayous of the Cajun world. It was the water supply of small cities and countless towns. Its upper reaches were surrounded by farms. The Corps was not in a political or moral position to kill the Atchafalaya. It had to feed it water. By the principles of nature, the more the Atchafalaya was given, the more it would want to take, because it was the steeper stream. The more it was given, the deeper it would make its bed. The difference in level between the Atchafalaya and the Mississippi would continue to increase, magnifying the conditions for capture. The Corps would have to deal with that. The Corps would have to build something that could give the Atchafalaya a portion of the Mississippi and at the same time prevent it from taking all. In effect, the Corps would have to build a Fort Laramie: a place where the natives could buy flour and firearms but where the gates could be closed if they attacked. + +Ten miles upriver from the navigation lock, where the collective sediments were thought to be more firm, they dug into a piece of dry ground and built what appeared for a time to be an incongruous, waterless bridge. Five hundred and sixty-six feet long, it stood parallel to the Mississippi and about a thousand yards back from the water. Between its abutments were ten piers, framing eleven gates that could be lifted or dropped, opened or shut, like windows. To this structure, and through it, there soon came a new Old River—an excavated channel leading in from the Mississippi and out seven miles to the Red-Atchafalaya. The Corps was not intending to accommodate nature. Its engineers were intending to control it in space and arrest it in time. In 1950, shortly before the project began, the Atchafalaya was taking thirty per cent of the water that came down from the north to Old River. This water was known as the latitude flow, and it consisted of a little in the Red, a lot in the Mississippi. The United States Congress, in its deliberations, decided that "the distribution of flow and sediment in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers is now in desirable proportions and should be so maintained." The Corps was thereby ordered to preserve 1950. In perpetuity, at Old River, thirty per cent of the latitude flow was to pass to the Atchafalaya. + +The device that resembled a ten-pier bridge was technically a sill, or weir, and it was put on line in 1963, in an orchestrated sequence of events that flourished the art of civil engineering. The old Old River was closed. The new Old River was opened. The water, as it crossed the sill from the Mississippi's level to the Atchafalaya's, tore to white shreds in the deafening turbulence of a great new falls, from lip to basin the construction of the Corps. More or less simultaneously, the navigation lock opened its chamber. Now everything had changed and nothing had changed. Boats could still drop away from the river. The ratio of waters continued as before—this for the American Ruhr, that for the ecosystems of the Cajun swamps. Withal, there was a change of command, as the Army replaced nature. + +In time, people would come to suggest that there was about these enterprises an element of hauteur. A professor of law at Tulane University, for example, would assign it third place in the annals of arrogance. His name was Oliver Houck. "The greatest arrogance was the stealing of the sun," he said. "The second-greatest arrogance is running rivers backward. The third-greatest arrogance is trying to hold the Mississippi in place. The ancient channels of the river go almost to Texas. Human beings have tried to restrict the river to one course—that's where the arrogance began." The Corps listens closely to things like that and files them in its archives. Houck had a point. Bold it was indeed to dig a fresh conduit in the very ground where one river had prepared to trap another, bolder yet to build a structure there meant to be in charge of what might happen. + +Some people went further than Houck, and said that they thought the structure would fail. In 1980, for example, a study published by the Water Resources Research Institute, at Louisiana State University, described Old River as "the scene of a direct confrontation between the United States Government and the Mississippi River," and—all constructions of the Corps notwithstanding—awarded the victory to the Mississippi River. "Just when this will occur cannot be predicted," the report concluded. "It could happen next year, during the next decade, or sometime in the next thirty or forty years. But the final outcome is simply a matter of time and it is only prudent to prepare for it." + +The Corps thought differently, saying, "We can't let that happen. We are charged by Congress not to let that happen." Its promotional film referred to Old River Control as "a good soldier." Old River Control was, moreover, "the keystone of the comprehensive flood-protection project for the lower Mississippi Valley," and nothing was going to remove the keystone. People arriving at New Orleans District Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, were confronted at the door by a muralled collage of maps and pictures and bold letters unequivocally declaring, "The Old River Control Structures, located about two hundred miles above New Orleans on the Mississippi River, prevent the Mississippi from changing course by controlling flows diverted into the Atchafalaya Basin." + +No one's opinions were based on more intimate knowledge than those of LeRoy Dugas, Rabalais's upstream counterpart—the manager of the apparatus that controlled the flow at Old River. Like Rabalais, he was Acadian and of the country. Dugie—as he is universally called—had worked at Old River Control since 1963, when the water started flowing. In years to follow, colonels and generals would seek his counsel. "Those professors at L.S.U. say that whatever we do we're going to lose the system," he remarked one day at Old River, and, after a pause, added, "Maybe they're right." His voice had the sound of water over rock. In pitch, it was lower than a helicon tuba. Better to hear him indoors, in his operations office, away from the structure's competing thunders. "Maybe they're right," he repeated. "We feel that we can hold the river. We're going to try. Whenever you try to control nature, you've got one strike against you." + +Dugie's face, weathered and deeply tanned, was saved from looking weary by the alertness and the humor in his eyes. He wore a large, lettered belt buckle that said to help control the mississippi. "I was originally born in Morganza," he told me. "Thirty miles down the road. I have lived in Pointe Coupee Parish all my life. Once, I even closed my domicile and went to work in Texas for the Corps—but you always come back." (Rabalais also—as he puts it—"left out of here one time," but not for long.) All through Dugie's youth, of course, the Mississippi had spilled out freely to feed the Atchafalaya. He took the vagaries of the waters for granted, not to mention the supremacy of their force in flood. He was a naval gunner on Liberty ships in the South Pacific during the Second World War, and within a year or two of his return was astonished to hear that the Corps of Engineers was planning to restrain Old River. "They were going to try to control the flow," he said. "I thought they had lost their marbles." + +Outside, on the roadway that crosses the five-hundred-an-sixty-six-foot structure, one could readily understand where the marbles might have gone. Even at this time of modest normal flow, we looked down into a rage of water. It was running at about twelve miles an hour—significantly faster than the Yukon after breakup—and it was pounding into the so-called stilling basin on the downstream side, the least still place you would ever see. The No. 10 rapids of the Grand Canyon, which cannot be run without risk of life, resemble the Old River stilling basin, but the rapids of the canyon are a fifth as wide. The Susitna River is sometimes more like it—melted glacier ice from the Alaska Range. Huge trucks full of hardwood logs kept coming from the north to cross the structure, on their way to a chipping mill at Simmesport. One could scarcely hear them as they went by. + +There was a high sill next to this one—a separate weir, two-thirds of a mile long and set two feet above the local flood stage, its purpose being to help regulate the flow of extremely high waters. The low sill, as the one we stood on was frequently called, was the prime valve at Old River, and dealt with the water every day. The fate of the project had depended on the low sill, and it was what people meant when, as they often did, they simply said "the structure." The structure and the high sill—like the navigation lock downstream—were filled into the Mississippi's mainline levee. Beyond the sound of the water, the broad low country around these structures was quiet and truly still. Here and again in the fields, pump jacks bobbed for oil. In the river batcher—the silt-swept no man's land between waterline and levee—lone egrets sat in trees, waiting for the next cow. + +Dugie remarked that he would soon retire, that he felt old and worn down from fighting the river. + +I said to him, "All you need is a good flood." + +And he said, "Oh, no. Don't talk like that, man. You talk vulgar." + +It was odd to look out toward the main-stem Mississippi, scarcely half a mile away, and see its contents spilling sideways, like cornmeal pouring from a hole in a burlap bag. Dugie said that so much water coming out of the Mississippi created a powerful and deceptive draw, something like a vacuum, that could suck in boats of any size. He had seen some big ones up against the structure. In the mid-sixties, a man alone had come down from Wisconsin in a small double-ended vessel with curling ends and tumblehome—a craft that would not have been unfamiliar to the Algonquians, who named the Mississippi. Dugie called this boat "a pirogue." Whatever it was, the man had paddled it all the way from Wisconsin, intent on reaching New Orleans When he had nearly conquered the Mississippi, however, he was captured by the Atchafalaya. Old River caught him, pulled him off the Mississippi, and shot him through the structure. "He was in shock, but he lived," Dugie said. "We put him in the hospital in Natchez." + +After a moment, I said, "This is an exciting place." + +And Dugie said, "You've heard of Murphy—'What can happen will happen'? This is where Murphy lives." + +A towboat coming up the Atchafalaya may be running from Corpus Christi to Vicksburg with a cargo of gasoline, or from Houston to St. Paul with ethylene glycol. Occasionally, Rabalais sees a sailboat, more rarely a canoe. One time, a cottonwood-log dugout with a high Viking bow went past Old River. A ship carrying Leif Eriksson himself, however, would be less likely to arrest the undivided attention of the lockmaster than a certain red-trimmed cream-hulled vessel called Mississippi, bearing Major General Thomas Sands. + +Each year, in late summer or early fall, the Mississippi comes down its eponymous river and noses into the lock. This is the Low-Water Inspection Trip, when the General makes a journey from St. Louis and into the Atchafalaya, stopping along the way at river towns, picking up visitors, listening to complaints. In external configuration, the Mississippi is a regular towboat—two hundred and seventeen feet long, fifty feet wide, its horsepower approaching four thousand. The term "towboat" is a misnomer, for the river towboats all push their assembled barges and are therefore designed with broad flat bows. Their unpleasant profiles seem precarious, as if they were the rear halves of ships that have been cut in two. The Mississippi triumphs over these disadvantages. Intended as a carrier of influenceable people, it makes up in luxury what it suffers in form. Only its red trim is martial. Its over-all bright cream suggests globules that have risen to the top. Its broad flat front is a wall of picture windows, of riverine panoramas, faced with cream-colored couches among coffee tables and standing lamps. A river towboat will push as many as fifty barges at one time. What this boat pushes is the program of the Corps. + +The Mississippi, on its fall trip, is the site of on-board hearings at Cape Girardeau, Memphis, Vicksburg, and, ultimately, Morgan City. Customarily, it arrives at Old River early in the morning. Before the boat goes through the lock, people with names like Broussard, Brignac, Begnaud, Blanchard, Juneau, Gautreau, Caillouet, and Smith get on—people from the Atchafalaya Basin Levee Board, the East Jefferson Levee Board, the Pontchartrain Levee Board, the Louisiana Office of Public Works, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the Teche-Vermilion Fresh Water District. Oliver Houck, the Tulane professor, gets on, and nine people—seven civilians and two colonels—from the New Orleans District of the Corps of Engineers. "This is the ultimate in communications," says the enthusiastic General Sands as he greets his colleagues and guests. The gates close behind the Mississippi. The mooring bits inside the lock wail like coyotes as the water and the boat go down. + +The pilothouse of the Mississippi is a wide handsome room directly above the lounge and similarly fronted with a wall of windows. It has map-and-chart tables, consoles of electronic equipment, redundant radars. The pilots stand front and center, as trim and trig as pilots of the air—John Dugger, from Collierville, Tennessee (the ship's home port is Memphis), and Jorge Cano, a local "contact pilot," who is here to help the regular pilots sense the shoals of the Atchafalaya. Among the mutating profiles of the river, their work is complicated. Mark Twain wrote of river pilots, "Two things seemed pretty apparent to me. One was, that in order to be a pilot a man had got to learn more than any one man ought to be allowed to know; and the other was, that he must learn it all over again in a different way every twenty-four hours. . . .Your true pilot cares nothing about anything on earth but the river, and his pride in his occupation surpasses the pride of kings." Cano, for his part, is somewhat less flattering on the subject of Twain. He says it baffles him that Twain has "such a big reputation for someone who spent so little time on the river." Today, the Atchafalaya waters are twelve feet lower than the Mississippi's. Cano says that the difference is often as much as twenty. Now the gates slowly open, revealing the outflow channel that leads into old Old River and soon to the Atchafalaya. + +The Mississippi River Commission, which is part civilian and part military, with General Sands as president, is required by statute to make these trips—to inspect the flood-control and navigation systems from Illinois to the Gulf, and to hold the hearings. Accordingly, there are two major generals and one brigadier aboard, several colonels, various majors—in all, a military concentration that is actually untypical of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps consists essentially of civilians, with a veneer of military people at and near the top. For example, Sands has with him his chief executive assistant, his chief engineer, his chief planner, his chief of operations, and his chief of programming. All these chiefs are civilians. Sands is commander of the Corps' Lower Mississippi Valley Division, which the New Orleans District, which includes Old River, is a part. The New Orleans District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, consists of something like ten Army officers and fourteen hundred civilians. + +Just why the Army should be involved at all with levee systems, navigation locks, rock jetties, concrete revetments, and the austere realities of deltaic geomorphology is a question that attracts no obvious answer. The Corps is here because it is here. Its presence is an expression not of contemporary military strategy but of pure evolutionary tradition, its depth of origin about a century and three-quarters. The Corps is here specifically to safeguard the nation against any repetition of the War of 1812. When that unusual year was in its thirty-sixth month, the British Army landed on the Gulf Coast and marched against New Orleans. The war had been promoted, not to say provoked, by territorially aggressive American Midwesterners who were known around the country as hawks. It had so far produced some invigorating American moments ("We have met the enemy and they are ours"), including significant naval victories by ships like the Hornet and the Wasp. By and large, though, the triumphs had been British. The British had repelled numerous assaults on Canada. They had established a base in Maine. In Washington, they had burned the Capitol and the White House, and with their rutilant rockets and airburst ballistics they tried to destroy Baltimore. New Orleans was not unaware of these events, and very much dreaded invasion. When it came, militarily untrained American backwoods sharpshooters, standing behind things like cotton bales, picked off two thousand soldiers of the King while losing seventy-one of their own. Nonetheless, the city's fear of invasion long outlasted the war. + +Despite the Treaty of Ghent, there was a widespread assumption that the British would attack again and, if so, would surely attack where they had attacked before. One did not have to go to the War College to learn that lightning enjoys a second chance. Fortifications were therefore required in the environs of New Orleans. That this was an assignment for the Army Corps of Engineers was obvious in more than a military sense. There was—and for another decade would be—only one school of engineering in America. This was the United States Military Academy, at West Point, New York. The academy had been founded in 1802. The beginnings of the Army Corps of Engineers actually date to the American Revolution. General Washington, finding among his aroused colonists few engineers worthy of the word, hired engineers from Louis XVI, and the first Corps was for the most part French. + +The Army engineers chose half a dozen sites near New Orleans and, setting a pattern, signed up a civilian contractor to build the fortifications. Congress also instructed the Army to survey the Mississippi and its tributaries with an eye to assuring and improving inland navigation. Thus the Corps spread northward from its military fortifications into civil works along the rivers. In the eighteen-forties and fifties, many of these projects were advanced under the supervision of Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, West Point '38, a native of St. Bernard Parish, and ranking military engineer in the district. Late in 1860, Beauregard was named superintendent of the United States Military Academy. He served five days, resigned to become a Confederate general, and opened the Civil War by directing the bombardment of Fort Sumter. + +So much for why there are military officers on the towboat Mississippi inspecting the flood controls of Louisiana's delta plain. Thomas Sands with his two stars, his warm smile, his intuitive sense of people, and his knowledge of hydrology—is Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard's apostolic successor. Sands is trim, athletic, and, in appearance, youthful. Only in his Vietnam ribbons does he show the effects of his assignments as a combat engineer. One of his thumbs is larger and less straight than the other, but that is nothing more than an orthopedic reference to the rigors of plebe lacrosse—West Point '58. He grew up near Nashville, and has an advanced degree in hydrology from Texas A. & M. and a law degree he earned at night while working in the Pentagon. As a colonel, he spent three years in charge of the New Orleans District. As a brigadier general, he was commander of the Corps' North Atlantic Division, covering military and civil works from Maine to Virginia. Now, from his division headquarters, in Vicksburg, he is in charge of the Mississippi Valley from Missouri to the Gulf. On a wall of his private office is a board of green slate. One day when I was interviewing him there, he spent much of the time making and erasing chalk diagrams. "Man against nature. That's what life's all about," he said as he sketched the concatenating forces at Old River and the controls the Corps had applied. He used only the middle third of the slate. The rest had been preempted. The words 'Be Innovative, Be Responsive, and Operate with a Touch of Class" were chalked across the bottom. "Old River is a true representation of a confrontation with nature," he went on. "Folks recognized that Mother Nature, being what she is—having changed course many times—would do it again. Today, Mother Nature is working within a constrained environment in the lower Mississippi. Old River is the key element. Every facet of law below there relates to what goes on in this little out-of-the-way point that most folks have never heard about." Chalked across the upper third of the state were the words "Do What's Right, and Be Prepared to Fight as Infantry When Required!!!" + +Now, aboard the towboat Mississippi, the General is saying, "In terms of hydrology, what we've done here at Old River is stop time. We have, in effect, stopped time in terms of the distribution of flows. Man is directing the maturing process of the Atchafalaya and the lower Mississippi." There is nothing formal about these remarks. The General says that this journey downriver is meant to be "a floating convention." Listening to him is not a requirement. From the pilothouse to the fantail, people wander where they please, stopping here and again to converse in small groups. + +Two floatplanes appear above the trees, descend, flare, and land side by side behind the Mississippi. The towboat reduces power, and the airplanes taxi into its wake. They carry four passengers from Morgan City—latecomers to the floating convention. They climb aboard, and the airplanes fly away. These four, making such effort to advance their special interests, are four among two million nine hundred thousand people whose livelihoods, safety, health, and quality of life are directly influenced by the Corps' controls at Old River. In years gone by, when there were no control structures, naturally there were no complaints. The water went where it pleased. People took it as it came. The delta was in a state of nature. But now that Old River is valved and metered there are two million nine hundred thousand potential complainers, very few of whom are reluctant to present a grievance to the Corps. When farmers want less water, for example, fishermen want more, and they all complain to the Corps. In General Sands' words, "We're always walkin' around with, by and large, the black hat on. There's no place in the U.S. where there are so many competing interests relating to one water resource." + +Aboard the Mississippi, this is the primary theme. Oliver Houck, professor of ecoprudence, is heard to mutter, "What the Corps does with the water decides everything." And General Sands cheerfully remarks that every time he makes one of these trips he gets "beaten on the head and shoulders." He continues, "In most water-resources stories, you can identify two sides. Here there are many more. The crawfisherman and the shrimper come up within five minutes asking for opposite things. The crawfishermen say, 'Put more water in, the water is low.' Shrimpers don't want more water. They are benefitted by low water. Navigation interests say, 'The water is too low, don't take more away or you'll have to dredge.' Municipal interests say, 'Keep the water high or you'll increase saltwater intrusion.' In the high-water season, everybody is interested in less water. As the water starts dropping, upstream farmers say, 'Get the water off of us quicker.' But folks downstream don't want it quicker. As water levels go up, we divert some fresh water into marshes, because the marshes need it for the nutrients and the sedimentation, but oyster fishermen complain. They all complain except the ones who have seed-oyster beds, which are destroyed by excessive salinity. The variety of competing influences is phenomenal." + +In southern Louisiana, the bed of the Mississippi River is so far below sea level that a flow of at least a hundred and twenty thousand cubic feet per second is needed to hold back salt water and keep it below New Orleans, which drinks the river. Along the ragged edges of the Gulf, whole ecosystems depend on the relationship of fresh to salt water, which is in large part controlled by the Corps. Shrimp people want water to be brackish, waterfowl people want it fresh—a situation that causes National Marine Fisheries to do battle with United States Fish and Wildlife while both simultaneously attack the Corps. The industrial interests of the American Ruhr beseech the Corps to maintain their supply of fresh water. Agricultural pumping stations demand more fresh water for their rice but nervily ask the Corps to keep the sediment. Morgan City needs water to get oil boats and barges to rigs offshore, but if Morgan City gets too much water it's the end of Morgan City. Port authorities present special needs, and the owners of grain elevators, and the owners of coal elevators, barge interests, flood-control districts, levee boards. As General Sands says, finishing the list, "A guy who wants to put a new dock in has to come to us." People suspect the Corps of favoring other people. In addition to all the things the Corps actually does and does not do, there are infinite actions it is imagined to do, infinite actions it is imagined not to do, and infinite actions it is imagined to be capable of doing, because the Corps has been conceded the almighty role of God. + +The towboat enters the Atchafalaya at an unprepossessing T in a jungle of phreatophytic Trees. Atchafalaya. The "a"s are broad, the word rhymes with "jambalaya," and the accents are on the second and fourth syllables. Among navigable rivers, the Atchafalaya is widely described as one of the most treacherous in the world, but it just lies there quiet and smooth. It lies there like a big alligator in a low slough, with time on its side, waiting—waiting to outwit the Corps of Engineers—and hunkering down ever lower in its bed and presenting a sort of maw to the Mississippi, into which the river could fall. In the pilothouse, standing behind Jorge Cano and John Dugger as they swing the ship to port and head south, I find myself remembering an exchange between Cano smd Rabalais a couple of days ago, when Cano was speculating about the Atchafalaya's chances of capturing the Mississippi someday despite all efforts to prevent it from doing so. "Mother Nature is patient," he said. "Mother Nature has more time than we do." + +Rabalais said, "She has nothing but time." + +Frederic Chatry happens to be in the pilothouse, too, as does Fred Bayley. Both are civilians: Chatry, chief engineer of the New Orleans District; Bayley, chief engineer of the Lower Mississippi Valley Division. Chatry is short and slender, a courtly and formal man, his uniform a bow tie. He is saying that before the control structures were built water used to flow in either direction through Old River. It would flow into the Mississippi if the Red happened to be higher. This was known as a reversal, and the last reversal occurred in 1945. The enlarging Atchafalaya was by then so powerful in its draw that it took all of the Red and kept it. "The more water the Atchafalaya takes, the bigger it gets; the bigger it gets, the more water it takes. The only thing that interrupts it is Old River Control. If we had not interrupted it, the main river would now be the Atchafalaya, below this point. If you left it to its own devices, the end result had to be that it would become the master stream. If that were to happen, below Old River the Mississippi reach would be unstable. Salt would fill it in. The Corps could not cope with it. Old River to Baton Rouge would fill in. River traffic from the north would stop. Everything would go to pot in the delta. We couldn't cope. It would be plugged." + +I ask to what extent they ever contemplate that the structures at Old River might fail. + +Bayley is quick to answer—Fred Bayley, a handsome sandy-haired man in a regimental tie and a cool tan suit, with the contemplative manner of an academic and none of the defenses of a challenged engineer. "Anything can fail," he says. "In most of our projects, we try to train natural effects instead of taking them head on. I never approach anything we do with the idea that it can't fail. That is sticking your head in the sand." + +We are making twelve knots on a two-and-a-half-knot current under bright sun and cottony bits of cloud—flying along between the Atchafalaya levees, between the river-batcher trees. We are running down the reach above Simmesport, but only a distant bridge attests to that fact. From the river you cannot see the country. From the country you cannot see the river. I once looked down at this country from the air, in a light plane, and although it is called a floodway—this segment of it the West Atchafalaya Floodway—it is full of agriculture, in plowed geometries of brown, green, and tan. The Atchafalaya from above looks like the Connecticut winding past New Hampshire floodplain farms. If you look up, you do not see Mt. Washington. You see artificial ponds, now and again, as far as the horizon—square ponds, dotted with the cages of crawfish. You see dark-green pastureland, rail fences, cows with short fat shadows. + +The unexpected happens—unthinkable, unfortunate, but not unimaginable. At first with a modest lurch, and then with a more pronounced lurch, and then with a profound structural shudder, the Mississippi is captured by the Atchafalaya. The mid-American flagship of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has run aground. + +After going on line, in 1963, the control structures at Old River had to wait ten years to prove what they could do. The nineteen-fifties and nineteen-sixties were secure in the Mississippi Valley. In human terms, a generation passed with no disastrous floods. The Mississippi River and Tributaries Project—the Corps' total repertory of defenses from Cairo, Illinois, southward—seemed to have met its design purpose: to confine and conduct the run of the river, to see it safely into the Gulf. The Corps looked upon this accomplishment with understandable pride and, without intended diminution of respect for its enemy, issued a statement of victory: "We harnessed it, straightened it, regularized it, shackled it." + +Then, in the fall of 1972, the winter of 1973, river stages were higher than normal, reducing the system's tolerance for what might come in spring. In the upper valley, snows were unusually heavy. In the South came a season of exceptional rains. During the uneventful era that was about to end, the Mississippi's main channel, in its relative lethargy, had given up a lot of volume to accumulations of sediment. High water, therefore, would flow that much higher. As the spring runoff came down the tributaries, collected, and approached, computers gave warning that the mainline levees were not sufficient to contain it. Eight hundred miles of frantically filled sandbags were added to the levees. Bulldozers added potato ridges—barriers of uncompacted dirt. While this was going on, more rain was falling. In the southern part of the valley, twenty inches fell in a day and a half. + +At Old River Control on an ordinary day, when the stilling basin sounds like Victoria Falls but otherwise the country is calm and dry—when sandy spaces and stands of trees fill up the view between the structure and the Mississippi—an almost academic effort is required to visualize a slab of water six stories high, spread to the ends of perspective. That is how it was in 1973. During the sustained spring high water—week after week after week—the gathered drainage of Middle America came to Old River in units exceeding two million cubic feet a second. Twenty-five per cent of that left the Mississippi channel and went to the Atchafalaya. In aerial view, trees and fields were no longer visible, and the gated stronghold of the Corps seemed vulnerable in the extreme—a narrow causeway, a thin fragile line across a brown sea. + +The Corps had built Old River Control to control just about as much as was passing through it. In mid-March, when the volume began to approach that amount, curiosity got the best of Raphael G. Kazmann, author of a book called "Modern Hydrology" and professor of civil engineering at Louisiana State University. Kazmann got into his car, crossed the Mississippi on the high bridge at Baton Rouge, and made his way north to Old River. He parked, got out, and began to walk the structure. An extremely low percentage of its five hundred and sixty-six feet eradicated his curiosity. "That whole miserable structure was vibrating," he recalled in 1986, adding that he had felt as if he were standing on a platform at a small rural train station when "a fully loaded freight goes through." Kazmann opted not to wait for the caboose. "I thought, This thing weighs two hundred thousand tons. When two hundred thousand tons vibrates like this, this is no place for R. G. Kazmann. I got into my car, turned around, and got the hell out of there. I was just a professor—and, thank God, not responsible." + +Kazmann says that the Tennessee River and the Missouri River were "the two main culprits" in the 1973 flood. In one high water and another, the big contributors vary around the watershed. An ultimate deluge might possibly involve them all. After Kazmann went home from Old River that time in 1973, he did his potamology indoors for a while, assembling daily figures. In some of the numbers he felt severe vibrations. In his words, "I watched the Ohio like a hawk, because if that had come up, I thought, Katie, bar the door!" + +The water was plenty high as it was, and continuously raged through the structure. Nowhere in the Mississippi Valley were velocities greater than in this one place, where the waters made their hydraulic jump, plunging over what Kazmann describes as "concrete falls" into the regime of the Atchafalaya. The structure and its stilling basin had been configured to dissipate energy—but not nearly so much energy. The excess force was attacking the environment of the structure. A large eddy had formed. Unbeknownst to anyone, its swirling power was excavating sediments by the inflow apron of the structure. Even larger holes had formed under the apron itself. Unfortunately, the main force of the Mississippi was crashing against the south side of the inflow channel, producing unplanned turbulence. The control structure had been set up near the outside of a bend of the river, and closer to the Mississippi than many engineers thought wise. + +On the outflow side—where the water fell to the level of the Atchafalaya—a hole had developed that was larger and deeper than a football stadium, and with much the same shape. It was hidden, of course, far beneath the chop of wild water. The Corps had long since been compelled to leave all eleven gates wide open, in order to reduce to the greatest extent possible the force that was shaking the structure, and so there was no alternative to aggravating the effects on the bed of the channel. In addition to the structure's weight, what was holding it in place was a millipede of stilts—steel H-beams that reached down at various angles, as pilings, ninety feet through sands and silts, through clayey peats and organic mucks. There never was a question of anchoring such a fortress in rock. The shallowest rock was seven thousand feet straight down. In three places below the structure, sheet steel went into the substrate like fins; but the integrity of the structure depended essentially on the H-beams, and vehicular traffic continued to cross it en route to San Luis Rey. + +Then, as now, LeRoy Dugas was the person whose hand controlled Old River Control—a thought that makes him smile. "We couldn't afford to close any of the gates," he remarked to me one day at Old River. "Too much water was passing through the structure. Water picked up riprap off the bottom in front, and rammed it through to the tail bed." The riprap included derrick stones, and each stone weighed seven tons. On the level of the road deck, the vibrations increased. The operator of a moving crane let the crane move without him and waited for it at the end of the structure. Dugie continued, "You could get on the structure with your automobile and open the door and it would close the door." The crisis recalled the magnitude of "the '27 high water," when Dugie was a baby. Up the valley somewhere, during the '27 high water, was a railroad bridge with a train sitting on it loaded with coal. The train had been put there because its weight might help keep the bridge in place, but the bridge, vibrating in the floodwater, produced so much friction that the coal in the gondolas caught fire. Soon the bridge, the train, and the glowing coal fell into the water. + +One April evening in 1973—at the height of the flood—a fisherman walked onto the structure. There is, after all, order in the universe, and some things take precedence over impending disasters. On the inflow side, facing the Mississippi, the structure was bracketed by a pair of guide walls that reached out like curving arms to bring in the water. Close by the guide wall at the south end was the swirling eddy, which by now had become a whirlpool. There was other motion as well—or so it seemed. The fisherman went to find Dugas, in his command post at the north end of the structure, and told him the guide wall had moved. Dugie told the fisherman he was seeing things. The fisherman nodded affirmatively. + +When Dugie himself went to look at the guide wall, he looked at it for the last time. "It was slipping into the river, into the inflow channel." Slowly it dipped, sank, broke. Its foundations were gone. There was nothing below it but water. Professor Kazmann likes to say that this was when the Corps became "scared green." Whatever the engineers may have felt, as soon as the water began to recede they set about learning the dimensions of the damage. The structure was obviously undermined, but how much so, and where? What was solid, what was not? What was directly below the gates and the roadway? With a diamond drill, in a central position, they bored the first of many holes in the structure. When they had penetrated to basal levels, they lowered a television camera into the hole. They saw fish. + +This was scarcely the first time that an attempt to control the Mississippi had failed. Old River, 1973, was merely the most emblematic place and moment where, in the course of three centuries, failure had occurred. From the beginnings of settlement, failure was the par expectation with respect to the river—a fact generally masked by the powerful fabric of ambition that impelled people to build towns and cities where almost any camper would be loath to pitch a tent. + +If you travel by canoe through the river swamps of Louisiana, you may very well grow uneasy as the sun is going down. You look around for a site—a place to sleep, a place to cook. There is no terra firma. Nothing is solider than duckweed, resting on the water like green burlap. Quietly, you slide through the forest, breaking out now and again into acreages of open lake. You study the dusk for some dark cap of uncovered ground. Seeing one at last, you occupy it, limited though it may be. Your tent site may be smaller than your tent, but in this amphibious milieu you have found yourself terrain. You have established yourself in much the same manner that the French established New Orleans. So what does it matter if your leg spends the night in the water. + +The water is from the state of New York, the state of Idaho, the province of Alberta, and everywhere below that frame. Far above Old River are places where the floodplain is more than a hundred miles wide. Spaniards in the sixteenth century came upon it at the wrong time, saw an ocean moving south, and may have been discouraged. Where the delta began, at Old River, the water spread out even more—through a palimpsest of bayous and distributary streams in forested paludal basins—but this did not dissuade the French. For military and commercial purposes, they wanted a city in such country. They laid it out in 1718, only months before a great flood. Even as New Orleans was rising, its foundations filled with water. The message in the landscape could not have been more clear: like the aboriginal people, you could fish and forage and move on, but you could not build there—you could not create a city, or even a cluster of modest steadings—without declaring war on nature. You did not have to be Dutch to understand this, or French to ignore it. The people of southern Louisiana have often been compared unfavorably with farmers of the pre-Aswan Nile, who lived on high ground, farmed low ground, and permitted floods to come and go according to the rhythms of nature. There were differences in Louisiana, though. There was no high ground worth mentioning, and planters had to live on their plantations. The waters of the Nile were warm; the Mississippi brought cold northern floods that sometimes stood for months, defeating agriculture for the year. If people were to farm successfully in the rich loams of the natural levees—or anywhere nearby—they could not allow the Mississippi to continue in its natural state. Herbert Kassner, the division's public-relations director, once remarked to me, "This river used to meander all over its floodplain. People would move their tepees, and that was that. You can't move Vicksburg." + +When rivers go over their banks, the spreading water immediately slows up, dropping the heavier sediments. The finer the silt, the farther it is scattered, but so much falls close to the river that natural levees rise through time. The first houses of New Orleans were built on the natural levees, overlooking the river. In the face of disaster, there was no better place to go. If there was to be a New Orleans, the levees themselves would have to be raised, and the owners of the houses were ordered to do the raising. This law (1724) was about as effective as the ordinances that compel homeowners and shopkeepers in the North to shovel snow off their sidewalks. Odd as it seems now, those early levees were only three feet high, and they were rife with imperfections. To the extent that they were effective at all, they owed a great deal to the country across the river, where there were no artificial levees, and waters that went over the bank flowed to the horizon. In 1727, the French colonial governor declared the New Orleans levee complete, adding that within a year it would be extended a number of miles up and down the river, making the community floodproof. The governor's name was Perrier. If words could stop water, Perrier had found them—initiating a durable genre. + +In 1735, New Orleans went under—and again in 1785. The intervals—like those between earthquakes in San Francisco—were generally long enough to allow the people to build up a false sense of security. In response to the major floods, they extended and raised the levees. A levee appeared across the river from New Orleans, and by 1812 the west bank was leveed to the vicinity of Old River, a couple of hundred miles upstream. At that time, the east bank was leveed as far as Baton Rouge. Neither of the levees was continuous. Both protected plantation land. Where the country remained as the Choctaws had known it, floodwaters poured to the side, reducing the threat elsewhere. Land was not cheap—forty acres cost three thousand dollars—but so great was the demand for riverfront plantations that by 1828 the levees in southern Louisiana were continuous, the river artificially confined. Just in case the levees should fail, some plantation houses—among their fields of sugarcane, their long bright rows of oranges—were built on Indian burial mounds. In 1828, Bayou Manchac was closed. In the whole of the Mississippi's delta plain, Bayou Manchac happened to have been the only distributary that went east. It was dammed at the source. Its discharge world no longer ease the pressures of the master stream. + +By this time, Henry Shreve had appeared on the scene—in various ways to change it forever. He was the consummate riverman: boatman, pilot, entrepreneur, empirical naval architect. He is noted as the creator of the flat hulled layer-cake stern-wheel Mississippi steamboat, its shallow draft result of moving the machinery up from below to occupy its own deck. The Mississippi steamboat was not invented, however. It evolved. And Shreve's contribution was less in its configuration than its power. A steamboat built and piloted by Henry Shreve travelled north against the current as far as Louisville. He demonstrated that commerce could go both ways. Navigation was inconvenienced, though, by hazards in the river—the worst of which were huge trees that had drifted south over the years and become stuck in various ways. One kind was rigid in the riverbed and stood up like a spear. It was called a planter. Another, known as a sawyer sawed up and down with the vagaries of the current, and was likely to rise suddenly in the path of a boat and destroy it. In the Yukon River, such logs—eternally bowing—are known as preachers. In the Mississippi, whatever the arrested logs were called individually, they were all "snags," and after the Army engineers had made Shreve, a civilian, their Superintendent of Western River Improvements he went around like a dentist yanking snags. The multihulled snag boats were devices of his invention. In the Red River, he undertook to disassemble a "raft"—uprooted trees by the tens of thousands that were stopping navigation for a hundred and sixty miles. Shreve cleared eighty miles in one year. Meanwhile, at 31 degrees north latitude (about halfway between Vicksburg and Baton Rouge) he made a bold move on the Mississippi. In the sinusoidal path of the river, any meander tended to grow until its loop was so large it would cut itself off. At 31 degrees north latitude was a westbending loop that was eighteen miles around and had so nearly doubled back upon itself that Shreve decided to help it out. He adapted one of his snag boats as a dredge, and after two weeks of digging across the narrow neck he had a good swift current flowing. The Mississippi quickly took over. The width of Shreve's new channel doubled in two days. A few days more and it had become the main channel of the river. + +The great loop at 31 degrees north happened to he where the Red-Atchafalaya conjoined the Mississippi, like a pair of parentheses back to back. Steamboats had had difficulty there in the colliding waters. Shreve's purpose in cutting off the loop was to give the boats a smoother shorter way to go, and, as an incidental, to speed up the Mississippi, lowering, however slightly, its crests in flood. One effect of the cutoff was to increase the flow of water out of the Mississippi and into the Atchafalaya, advancing the date of ultimate capture. Where the flow departed from the Mississippi now, it followed an arm of the cutoff meander. This short body of water soon became known as Old River. In less than a fortnight, it had been removed as a segment of the main-stem Mississippi and restyled as a form of surgical drain. + +In city and country, riverfront owners became sensitive about the fact that the levees they were obliged to build were protecting not only their properties but also the properties behind them. Levee districts were established—administered by levee boards—to spread the cost. The more the levees confined the river, the more destructive it became when they failed. A place where water broke through was known as a crevasse—a source of terror no less effective than a bursting dam—and the big ones were memorialized, like other great disasters, in a series of proper names: the Macarty Crevasse (1816), the Sauve Crevasse (1849). Levee inspectors were given power to call out male slaves—aged fifteen to sixty—whose owners lived within seven miles of trouble. With the approach of mid-century, the levees were averaging six feet—twice their original height—and calculations indicated that the flow line would rise. Most levee districts were not populous enough to cover the multiplying costs, so the United States Congress, in 1850, wrote the swamp and Overflow Land Act. It is possible that no friend of Peter had ever been so generous in handing over his money to Paul. The federal government deeded millions of acres of swampland to states along the river, and the states sold the acreage to pay for the levees. The Swamp Act gave eight and a half million acres of river swamps and marshes to Louisiana alone. Other states, in aggregate, got twenty million more. Since time immemorial, these river swamps had been the natural reservoirs where floodwaters were taken in and held, and gradually released as the flood went down. Where there was timber (including virgin cypress), the swampland was sold for seventy-five cents an acre, twelve and a half cents where there were no trees. The new owners were for the most part absentee. An absentee was a Yankee. The new owners drained much of the swampland, turned it into farmland, and demanded the protection of new and larger levees. At this point, Congress might have asked itself which was the act and which was the swamp. + +River stages, in their wide variations, became generally higher through time, as the water was presented with fewer outlets. People began to wonder if the levees could ever be high enough and strong enough to make the river safe. Possibly a system of dams and reservoirs in the tributaries of the upper valley could hold water back and release it in the drier months, and possibly a system of spillways and floodways could be fashioned in the lower valley to distribute water when big floods arrived. Beginning in the eighteen-fifties, these notions were the subject of virulent debate among civilian and military engineers. Four major floods in ten years and thirty-two disastrous crevasses in a single spring were not enough to suggest to the Corps that levees alone might never be equal to the job. The Corps, as things stood, was not yet in charge. District by district, state by state, the levee system was still a patchwork effort. There was no high command in the fight against the water. In one of the Corps' official histories, the situation is expressed in this rather preoccupied sentence: "By 1860, it had become increasingly obvious that a successful war over such an immense battleground could be waged only by a consolidated army under one authority." While the Civil War came and went, the posture of the river did not change. Vicksburg fell but did not move. In the floods of 1862,1866, and 1867, levees failed. Catastrophes notwithstanding, Bayou Plaquemine—a major distributary of the Mississippi and a natural escape for large percentages of spring high water—was closed in 1868, its junction with the Mississippi sealed by an earthen dam. Even at normal stages, the Mississippi was beginning to stand up like a large vein on the back of a hand. The river of the eighteen-seventies ran higher than it ever had before. + +In 1879, Congress at last created the Mississippi River Commission, which included civilians but granted hegemony to the Corps. The president of the commission would always be an Army engineer, and all decisions were subject to veto by the commandant of the Corps. Imperiously, Congress ordered the commission to "prevent destructive floods," and left it to the Corps to say how. The Corps remained committed to the argument that tributary dams and reservoirs and downstream spillways would create more problems than they would solve. "Hold by levees" was the way to do the job. + +The national importance of the commission is perhaps illuminated by the fact that one of its first civilian members was Benjamin Harrison. Another was James B. Eads, probably the most brilliant engineer who has ever addressed his attention to the Mississippi River. As a young man, he had walked around on its bottom under a device of his own invention that he called a submarine. As a naval architect in the Civil War, he had designed the first American ironclads. Later, at St. Louis, he had built the first permanent bridge across the main stem of the river south of the Missouri. More recently, in defiance of the cumulative wisdom of nearly everyone in his profession, he had solved a primal question in anadromous navigation: how to get into the river. The mouth was defended by a mud-lump blockade—impenetrable masses of sediment dumped by the river as it reached the still waters of the Gulf. Dredging was hopeless. What would make a channel deep enough for ships? The government wouldn't finance him, so Eads bet his own considerable fortune on an elegant idea: he built parallel jetties in the river's mouth. They pinched the currents. The accelerated water dug out and maintained a navigable channel. + +To the Corps' belief that a river confined by levees would similarly look after itself the success of the jetties gave considerable reinforcement. And Eads added words that spoke louder than his actions. "If the profession of an engineer were not based upon exact science," he said, "I might tremble for the result, in view of the immensely of the interests dependent on my success. But every atom that moves onward in the river, from the moment it leaves its home among the crystal springs or mountain snows, throughout the fifteen hundred leagues of its devious pathway, until it is finally lost in the vast waters of the Gulf, is controlled by laws as fixed and certain as those which direct the majestic march of the heavenly spheres. Every phenomenon and apparent eccentricity of the river—its scouring and depositing action, its caving banks, the formation of the bars at its mouth, the effect of the waves and tides of the sea upon its currents and deposits—is controlled by law as immutable as the Creator, and the engineer need only to be insured that he does not ignore the existence of any of these laws, to feel positively certain of the results he aims at." + +When the commission was created, Mark Twain was forty-three. A book he happened to be working on was "Life on the Mississippi." Through a character called Uncle Mumford, he remarked that "four years at West Point, and plenty of books and schooling, will learn a man a good deal, I reckon, but it won't learn him the river." Twain also wrote, "One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver—not aloud but to himself—that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, 'Go here,' or 'Go there,' and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it |has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at. But a discreet man will not put these things into spoken words; for the West Point engineers have not their superiors anywhere; they know all that can be known of their abstruse science; and so, since they conceive that they can fetter and handcuff that river and boss him, it is but wisdom for the unscientific man to keep still, lie low, and wait till they do it. Captain Eads, with his jetties, has done a work at the mouth of the Mississippi which seemed clearly impossible; so we do not feel full confidence now to prophesy against like impossibilities. Otherwise one would pipe out and say the Commission might as well bully the comets in their courses and undertake to make them behave, as try to bully the Mississippi into right and reasonable conduct." + +In 1882 came the most destructive flood of the nineteenth century. After breaking the levees in two hundred and eighty-four crevasses, the water spread out as much as seventy miles. In the fertile lands on the two sides of Old River, plantations were deeply submerged, and livestock survived in flatboats. A floating journalist who reported these scenes in the March 29th New Orleans _Times-Democrat said, "The current running down the Atchafalaya was very swift, the Mississippi showing a predilection in that direction, which needs only to be seen to enforce the opinion of that river's desperate endeavors to find a short way to the Gulf." The capture of the Mississippi, in other words, was already obvious enough to be noticed by a journalist. Seventy-eight years earlier—just after the Louisiana Purchase—the Army officer who went to take possession of the new country observed the Atchafalaya "completely obstructed by logs and other material" and said in his report, "Were it not for these obstructions, the probability is that the Mississippi would soon find a much nearer way to the Gulf than at present, particularly as it manifests a constant inclination to vary its course." The head of the Atchafalaya was plugged with logs for thirty miles. The raft was so compact that El Camino Real, the Spanish trail coming in from Texas, crossed the Atchafalaya near its head, and cattle being driven toward the Mississippi walked across the logs. The logjam was Old River Control Structure No. O. Gradually, it was disassembled, freeing the Atchafalaya to lower its plain. Snag boats worked on it, and an attempt was made to clear it with fire. The flood of 1863 apparently broke it open, and at once the Atchafalaya began to widen and deepen, increasing its draw on the Mississippi. Shreve's clearing of the Red River had also increased the flow of the Atchafalaya. The interventional skill of human engineers, which would be called upon in the twentieth century to stop the great shift at Old River, did much in the nineteenth to hurry it up. _ + +For forty-eight years, the Mississippi River Commission and the Corps of Engineers adhered strictly to the "hold by levees" policy—levees, and levees only. It was important that no water be allowed to escape the river, because its full power would be most effective in scouring the bed, deepening the channel, increasing velocity, lowering stages, and preventing destructive floods. This was the hydraulic and hydrological philosophy not only of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers but also of the great seventeenth-century savant Domenico Guglielmini, whose insights, ultimately, were to prove so ineffective in the valley of the Po. In 1885, one of General Sands' predecessors said, "The commission is distinctly committed to the idea of closing all outlets. . . .It has consistently opposed the fallacy known as the 'Outlet System.'" + +Slaves with wheelbarrows started the levees. Immigrants with wheelbarrows replaced the slaves. Mule-drawn scrapers replaced the wheelbarrows, but not until the twentieth century. Fifteen hundred miles of earthen walls—roughly six, then nine, then twelve feet high, and a hundred feet from side to side—were built by men with shovels. They wove huge mats of willow poles and laid them down in cutbanks as revetments. When floods came, they went out to defend their defenses, and, in the words of a Corps publication, the effort was comparable to "the rigors of the battlefield." Nature was not always the only enemy. Anywhere along the river, people were safer if the levee failed across the way. If you lived on the east side, you might not be sad if water flooded west. You were also safer if the levee broke on your own side downstream. Armed patrols went up and down the levees. They watched for sand boils—signs of seepage that could open a crevasse from within. And they watched for Private commandos, landing in the dark with dynamite. + +Bayou Lafourche, a major distributary, was dammed in 1904. In something like twenty years, the increased confinement of the river had elevated floodwaters in Memphis by an average of about eight feet. The Corps remained loyal to the teachings of Guglielmini, and pronouncements were still forthcoming that the river was at last under control and destructive floods would not occur again. Declarations of that sort had been made in the quiet times before the great floods of 1884, 1890, 1891, 1897, 1898, and 1903, and they would be made again before 1912, 1913, 1922, and 1927. + +The '27 high water tore the valley apart. On both sides of the river, levees crevassed from Cairo to the Gulf, and in the same thousand miles the flood destroyed every bridge. It killed hundreds of people, thousands of animals. Overbank, it covered twenty-six thousand square miles. It stayed on the land as much as three months. New Orleans was saved by blowing up a levee downstream. Yet the total volume of the 1927 high water was nowhere near a record. It was not a hundred-year flood. It was a form of explosion, achieved by the confining levees. + +The levees of the nineteen-twenties were about six times as high as their earliest predecessors, but really no more effective. In a sense, they had been an empirical experiment—in aggregate, fifteen hundred miles of trial and error. They could be—and they would be—raised even higher. But in 1927 the results of the experiment at last came clear. The levees were helping to aggravate the problem they were meant to solve. With walls alone, one could only build an absurdly elevated aqueduct. Resistance times the resistance distance amplified the force of nature. Every phenomenon and apparent eccentricity of the river might be subject to laws as fixed and certain as those which direct the majestic march of the heavenly spheres, but, if so, the laws were inexactly understood. The Corps had attacked Antaeus without quite knowing who he was. + +Congress appropriated three hundred million dollars to find out. This was more money in one bill—the hopefully titled Flood Control Act (1928)—than had been spent on Mississippi levees in all of Colonial and American history. These were the start-up funds for the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project, the coordinated defenses that would still be incomplete in the nineteen-eighties and would ultimately cost about seven billion dollars. The project would raise levees and build new ones, pave cutbanks, sever loops to align the current, and hold back large volumes of water with substantial dams in tributary streams. Dredges known as dustpans would take up sediment by the millions of tons. Stone dikes would appear in strategic places, forcing the water to go around them, preventing the channel from spreading out. Most significantly, though, the project would acknowledge the superiority of the force with which it was meant to deal. It would give back to the river some measure of the freedom lost as the delta's distributaries one by one were sealed. It would go into the levees in certain places and build gates that could be opened in times of extraordinary flood. The water coming out of such spillways would enter new systems of levees guiding it down floodways to the Gulf. But how many spillways? How many floodways? How many tributary dams? Calculating maximum storms, frequency of storms, maximum snowmelts, sustained saturation of the upper valley, coincident storms in scattered parts of the watershed, the Corps reached for the figure that would float Noah. The round number was three million—that is, three million cubic feet per second coming past Old River. This was twenty-five per cent above the 1927 high. The expanded control system, with its variety of devices, would have to be designed to process that. Various names were given to this blue-moon superflow, this concatenation of recorded moments written in the future unknown. It was called the Design Flood. Alternatively, it was called the Project Flood. + +Bonnet Carre was the first spillway—completed in 1931, roughly thirty miles upriver from New Orleans. The water was meant to Spill into Lake Pontchartrain and go on into the Gulf, dispersing eight and a half per cent of the Project Flood. Bonnet Carre (locally pronounced "Bonny Carey") would replace dynamite in the defense of New Orleans. When the great crest of 1937 came down the river—setting an all-time record at Natchez—enough of the new improvements were in place to see it through in relative safety, with the final and supreme test presented at Bonnet Carre, where the gates were opened for the first time. At the high point, more than two hundred thousand feet per second were diverted into Lake Pontchartrain, and the flow that went on by New Orleans left the city low and dry. + +For the Corps of Engineers, not to mention the people of the southern parishes, the triumph of 1937 brought fresh courage, renewed confidence—a sense once again that the river could be controlled. Major General Harley B. Ferguson, the division commander, became a regional military hero. It was he who had advocated the project's many cutoffs, all made in the decade since 1927, which shortened the river by more than a hundred miles, reducing the amount of friction working against the water. The more distance, the more friction. Friction slows the river and raises its level. The mainline levees were rebuilt, extended, reinforced—and their height was almost doubled, reaching thirty feet. There was now a Great Wall of China running up each side of the river, with the difference that while the levees were each about as long as the Great Wall they were in many places higher and in cross-section ten times as large. Work continued on the floodways. There was one in Missouri that let water out of the river and put it back into the river a few miles downstream. But the principal conduit of release—without which Bonnet Carre would be about as useful as a bailing can—was the route of the Atchafalaya. Since the lower part of it was the largest river swamp in North America, it was, by nature, ready for the storage of water. The Corps built guide levees about seventeen miles apart to shape the discharge toward Atchafalaya Bay, incidentally establishing a framework for the swamp. In the northern Atchafalaya, near Old River, they built a three-chambered system of floodways involving so many intersecting levees that the country soon resembled a cranberry farm developed on an epic scale. The West Atchafalaya Floodway had so many people in it, and so many soybeans, that its levees were to be breached only by explosives in extreme emergency—maybe once in a hundred years. The Morganza Floodway, completed in the nineteen-fifties, contained farmlands but no permanent buildings. A couple of towns and the odd refinery were surrounded by levees in the form of rings. But the plane geometry of the floodways was primarily intended to take the water from the Mississippi and get it to the swamp. + +The flood-control design of 1928 had left Old River open—the only distributary of the Mississippi to continue in its natural state. The Army was aware of the threat from the Atchafalaya. Colonel Charles Potter, president of the Mississippi River Commission, told Congress in 1928 that the Mississippi was "just itching to go that way." In the new master plan, however, nothing resulted from his testimony. The Corps, in making its flow diagrams, planned that the Atchafalaya would take nearly half the Mississippi during the Design Flood. It was not in the design that the Atchafalaya take it all. + +The Atchafalaya, continuing to grow, had become, by volume of discharge, the second-largest river in the United States. Compared with the Mississippi, it had a three-to-one advantage in slope. Around 1950, geologists predicted that by 1975 the shift would be unstoppable. The Mississippi River and Tributaries Project would be in large part invalidated, the entire levee system of southern Louisiana would have to be rebuilt, communities like Morgan City in the Atchafalaya Basin would be a good deal less preserved than Pompeii, and the new mouth of the Mississippi would be a hundred and twenty miles from the old. Old River Control was authorized in 1954. + +The levees were raised again. What had been adequate in 1937 was problematical in the nineteen-fifties. New grades were set. New dollars were spent to meet the grades. So often compared with the Great Wall of China, the levees had more in common with the Maginot Line. Taken together, they were a retroactive redoubt, more than adequate to wage a bygone war but below the requirements of the war to come. The levee grades of the nineteen-fifties would prove inadequate in the nineteen-seventies. Every shopping center, every drainage improvement, every square foot of new pavement in nearly half the United States was accelerating runoff toward Louisiana. Streams were being channelized to drain swamps. Meanders were cut off to speed up flow. The valley's natural storage capacities were everywhere reduced. As contributing factors grew, the river delivered more flood for less rain. The precipitation that produced the great flood of 1973 was only about twenty per cent above normal. Yet the crest at St. Louis was the highest ever recorded there. The flood proved that control of the Mississippi was as much a hope for the future as control of the Mississippi had ever been. The 1973 high water did not come close to being a Project Flood. It merely came close to wiping out the project. + +While the control structure at Old River was shaking, more than a third of the Mississippi was going down the Atchafalaya. If the structure had toppled, the flow would have risen to seventy per cent. It was enough to scare not only a Louisiana State University professor but the division commander himself. At the time, this was Major General Charles Noble. He walked the bridge, looked down into the exploding water, and later wrote these words: "The south training wall on the Mississippi River side of the structure failed very early in the flood, causing violent eddy patterns and extreme turbulence. The toppled training wall monoliths worsened the situation. The integrity of the structure at this point was greatly in doubt. It was frightening to stand above the gate bays and experience the punishing vibrations caused by the violently turbulent, massive flood waters." + +If the General had known what was below him, he might have sounded retreat. The Old River Control Structure—this two-hundred-thousand-ton keystone of the comprehensive flood-protection project for the lower Mississippi Valley—was teetering on steel pilings above extensive cavities full of water. The gates of the Morganza Floodway, thirty miles downstream, had never been opened. The soybean farmers of Morganza were begging the Corps not to open them now. The Corps thought it over for a few days while the Old River Control Structure, absorbing shock of the sort that could bring down a skyscraper, continued to shake. Relieving some of the pressure, the Corps opened Morganza. + +The damage at Old River was increased but not initiated by the 1973 flood. The invasive scouring of the channel bed and the undermining of the control structure may actually have begun in 1963, as soon as the structure opened. In years that followed, loose barges now and again slammed against the gates, stuck there for months, blocked the flow, enhanced the hydraulic jump, and no doubt contributed to the scouring. Scour holes formed on both sides of the control structure, and expanded steadily. If they had met in 1973, they might have brought the structure down. + +After the waters quieted and the concrete had been penetrated by exploratory diamond drills, Old River Control at once became, and has since remained, the civil-works project of highest national priority for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Through the surface of Louisiana 15, the road that traverses the structure, more holes were drilled, with diameters the size of dinner plates, and grout was inserted in the cavities below, like fillings in a row of molars. The grout was cement and bentonite. The drilling and filling went on for months. There was no alternative to leaving gates open and giving up control. Stress on the structure was lowest with the gates open. Turbulence in the channel was commensurately higher. The greater turbulence allowed tho water on the Atchafalaya side to dig deeper and increase its advantage over the Mississippi side. As the Corps has reported, "The percentage of Mississippi River flow being diverted through the structure in the absence of control was steadily increasing." That could not be helped. + +After three and a half years, control was to some extent restored, but the extent was limited. In the words of the Corps, "The partial foundation undermining which occurred in 1973 inflicted permanent damage to the foundation of the low sill control structure. Emergency foundation repair, in the form of rock riprap and cement grout, was performed to safeguard the structure from a potential total failure. The foundation under approximately fifty per cent of the structure was drastically and irrevocably changed." The structure had been built to function with a maximum difference of thirty-seven feet between the Mississippi and Atchafalaya sides. That maximum now had to be lowered to twenty-two feet—a diminution that brought forth the humor in the phrase "Old River Control." Robert Fairless, a New Orleans District engineer who has long been a part of the Old River story, once told me that "things were touch and go for some months in 1973" and the situation was precarious still. "At a head greater than twenty-two feet, there's danger of losing the whole thing," he said. "If loose barges were to be pulled into the front of the structure where they would block the flow, the head would build up, and there'd be nothing we could do about it." + +A sign appeared on one of the three remaining wing walls: "Fishing and Shad Dipping off This Wing Wall Is Prohibited." + +A survey boat, Navy-gray and very powerful and much resembling PT-109, began to make runs toward the sill upstream through the roiling brown rapids. Year after year—at least five times a week—this has continued. The survey boat drives itself to a standstill in the whaleback waves a few yards shy of the structure. Two men in life vests, who stand on the swaying deck in spray that curls like smoke, let go a fifty-pound ball that drops on a cable from a big stainless reel. The ball sinks to the bottom. The crewmen note the depth. They are not looking for mark twain. For example, in 1974 they found three holes so deep that it took a hundred and eighty-five thousand tons of rock to fill them in. + +The 1973 flood shook the control structure a whole lot more than it shook the confidence of the Corps. When a legislative committee seemed worried, a Corps general reassured them, saying, "The Corps of Engineers can make the Mississippi River go anywhere the Corps directs it to go." On display in division headquarters in Vicksburg is a large aerial photograph of a school bus moving along a dry road beside a levee while a Galilee on the other side laps at the levee crown. This picture alone is a triumph for the Corps. Herbert Kassner, the public-relations director and a master of his craft, says of the picture, "Of course, I tell people the school bus may have been loaded with workers going to fix a break in the levee, but it looks good." And of course, after 1973, the flow lines were recomputed and the levees had to be raised. When the river would pool against the stratosphere was only a question of time. + +The Washington _Post, in an editorial in November of 1980, called attention to the Corps' efforts to prevent the great shift at Old River, and concluded with this paragraph:_ + +Who will win as this slow-motion confrontation between humankind and nature goes on? No one really knows. But after watching Mt. St. Helens and listening to the guesses about its performance, if we had to bet, we would bet on the river. + + +The Corps had already seen that bet, and was about to bump it, too. Even before the muds were dry from the 1973 flood, Corps engineers had begun building a model of Old River at their Waterways Experiment Station, in Vicksburg. The model was to cover an acre and a half. A model of that size was modest for the Corps. Not far away, it had a fifteen-acre model of the Mississippi drainage, where water flowing in from the dendritic tips could get itself together and attack Louisiana. The scale was one human stride to the mile. In the time it took to say "one Mississippi," if fourteen gallons went past Arkansas City that was a Project Flood. Something like eight and a half gallon was "a high-water event." "It's the ultimate sandbox—these guys have made a profession of the sandbox," Tulane's Oliver Houck has said, with concealed admiration. "They've put the whole river in a sandbox." The Old River model not only helped with repairs, it also showed a need for supplementary fortification. Since the first control structure was irreparably damaged, a second one, nearby, with its own inflow channel from the Mississippi, should establish full control at Old River and take pressure off the original structure in times of high stress. + +To refine the engineering of the auxiliary structure, several additional models, with movable beds, were built on a distorted scale. Making the vertical scale larger than the horizontal was believed to eliminate surface-tension problems in simulating the turbulence of a real river. The channel beds were covered with crushed coal—which has half the specific gravity of sand—or with walnut shells, which were thought to be better replicas of channel-protecting rock but had an unfortunate tendency to decay, releasing gas bubbles. In one model, the stilling basin below the new structure was filled with driveway-size limestone gravel, each piece meant to represent a derrick stone six feet thick. After enough water had churned through these models to satisfy the designers, ground was broken at Old River, about a third of a mile from the crippled sill, for the Old River Control Auxiliary Structure, the most advanced weapon ever developed to prevent the capture of a river—a handsome gift to the American Ruhr, worth three hundred million dollars. In Vicksburg, Robert Fletcher—a sturdily built, footballish sort of engineer, who had explained to me about the nutshells, the coal, and the gravel—said of the new structure, "I hope it works." + +The Old River Control Auxiliary Structure is a rank of seven towers, each buff with a white crown. They are vertical on the upstream side, and they slope toward the Atchafalaya. Therefore, they resemble flying buttresses facing the Mississippi. The towers are separated by six arciform gates, convex to the Mississippi, and hinged in trunnion blocks secured with steel to carom the force of the river into the core of the structure. Lifted by cables, these tainter gates, as they are called, are about as light and graceful as anything could be that has a composite weight of twenty-six hundred tons. Each of them is sixty-two feet wide. They are the strongest the Corps has ever designed and built. A work of engineering such as a Maillart bridge or a bridge by Christian Menn can outdo some other works of art, because it is not only a gift to the imagination but also structural in the matrix of the world. The auxiliary structure at Old River contains too many working components to be classed with such a bridge, but in grandeur and in profile it would not shame a pharaoh. + +The origin Old River Control project, going on line in 1963, cost eighty-six million dollars. The works of repair and supplement have extended the full cost of the battle to five hundred million. The disproportion in these figures does, of course, reflect inflation, but to a much greater extent it reflects the price of lessons learned. It reflects the fact that no one is stretching words who says that in 1973 the control structure failed. The new one is not only bigger and better and more costly; also, no doubt, there are redundancies in its engineering in memory of '73. + +In 1983 came the third-greatest flood of the twentieth century—a narrow but decisive victory for the Corps. The Old River Control Auxiliary Structure was nothing much by then but a foundation that had recently been poured in dry ground. The grout in the old structure kept Old River stuck together. Across the Mississippi, a few miles downstream, the water rose to a threatening level at Louisiana's maximum-security prison. The prison was protected not only by the mainline levee but also by a ring levee of its own. Nonetheless, as things appeared for a while the water was going to pour into the prison. The state would have to move the prisoners, taking them in buses out into the road system, risking Lord knows what. The state went on its knees before the Corps: Do something. The Corps evaluated the situation and decided to bet the rehabilitation of the control structure against the rehabilitation of the prisoners. By letting more water through the control structure, the Corps caused the water at the prison to go down. + +Viewed from five or six thousand feet in the air, the structures at Old River inspire less confidence than they do up close. They seem temporary, fragile, vastly outmatched by the natural world—a lesion in the side of the Mississippi butterflied with surgical tape. Under construction nearby is a large hydropower plant that will take advantage of the head between the two rivers and light the city of Vidalia. The channel cut to serve it raises to three the number of artificial outlets opened locally in the side of the Mississippi River, making Old River a complex of canals and artificial islands, and giving it the appearance of a marina. The Corps is officially confident that all this will stay in place, and supports its claim with a good deal more than walnuts. The amount of limestone that has been imported from Kentucky is enough to confuse a geologist. As Fred Chatry once said, "The Corps of Engineers is convinced that the Mississippi River can be convinced to remain where it is." + +I once asked Fred Smith, a geologist who works for the Corps at New Orleans District Headquarters, if he thought Old River Control would eventually be overwhelmed. He said, "Capture doesn't have to happen at the control structures. It could happen somewhere else. The river is close to it a little to the north. That whole area is suspect. The Mississippi wants to go west. Nineteen-seventy-three was a forty-year flood. The big one lies out there somewhere—when the structures can't release all the floodwaters and the levee is going to have to give way. That is when the river's going to jump its banks and try to break through." + +Geologists in general have declared the capture inevitable, but, of course, they would. They know that in 1852 the Yellow River shifted its course away from the Yellow Sea, establishing a new mouth four hundred miles from the old. They know the story of catastrophic shifts by the Mekong, the Indus, the Po, the Volga, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Rosetta branch of the Nile was the main stem of the river three thousand years ago. + +Raphael Kazmann, the hydrologic engineer, who is now emeritus at Louisiana State, sat me down in his study in Baton Rouge, instructed me to turn on a tape recorder, and, with reference to Old River Control, said, "I have no fight with the Corps of Engineers. I may be a critic, but I'm not mad at anybody. It's a good design. Don't get me wrong. These guys are the best. If it doesn't work for them, nobody can do it." + +A tape recorder was not a necessity for gathering the impression that nobody could do it. "More and more energy is being dissipated there," Kazmann said. "Floods are more frequent. There will be a bigger and bigger differential head as time goes on. It almost went out in '73. Sooner or later, it will be undermined or bypassed—give way. I have a lot of respect for Mother . . . for this alluvial river of ours. I don't want to be around here when it happens." + +The Corps would say he won't be. + +"Nobody knows where the hundred-year flood is," Kazmann continued. "Perspective should be a minimum of a hundred years. This is an extremely complicated river system altered by works of man. A fifty-year prediction is not reliable. The data have lost their pristine character. It's a mixture of hydrologic events and human events. Floods across the century are getting higher, low stages lower. The Corps of Engineers—they're scared as hell. They don't know what's going to happen. This is planned chaos. The more planning they do, the more chaotic it is. Nobody knows exactly where it's going to end." + +The towboat Mississippi has hit the point of a sandbar. The depth finder shows thirty-eight feet—indicating that there are five fathoms of water between the bottom of the hull and the bed of the river. The depth finder is on the port side of the ship, however, and the sandbar to starboard, only a few feet down. Thus the towboat has come to its convulsive stop, breaking the stride of two major generals and bringing state officials and levee boards out to the rail. General Sands, the division commander, has a look on his face which suggests that Hopkins has just scored on Army but Army will win the game. There is some running around, some eye-bugging, some breaths drawn shallower even than the sandbar—but not here in the pilothouse. John Dugger, the pilot, and Jorge Cano, the local contact pilot, reveal on their faces not the least touch of dismay, or even surprise, whatever they may feel. They behave as if it were absolutely routine to be aiming downstream in midcurrent at zero knots. In a sense, that is true, for this is not some minor navigational challenge, like shooting rapids in an aircraft carrier. This is the Atchafalaya River. + +A poker player might get out of an analogous situation by reaching toward a sleeve. A basketball player would reverse pivot—shielding the ball, whirling the body in a complete circle to leave the defender flat as a sandbar. John Dugger seems to be both. He has cut the engines, and now—looking interested, and nothing else—he lets the current take the stern and swing it wide. The big boat spins, reverse pivots, comes off the bar, and leaves it behind. + +Conversations resume—in the lounge, on the outer decks, in the pilothouse—and inevitably many of them touch on the subject of controls at Old River. General Sands is saying, "Between 1950 and 1973, there was intensification of land use in the lower Mississippi—a whole generation grew up thinking you could grow soybeans here and never get wet. Since '73, Mother Nature has been trying to catch up. There have been seven high-water events since 1973. Now the auxiliary structure gives these folks all the assurance they need that Old River can continue to operate." + +I ask if anyone agrees that the Atchafalaya could capture the Mississippi near the control structures and not through them. + +General Sands replies, "I don't know that I'm personally smart enough to answer that, but I'd say no." + +Lieutenant Colonel Ed Willis asks C. J. Nettles, chief of operations for the New Orleans District, if he thinks the auxiliary structure will do the job. + +Nettles says, "The jury is out on that one," and adds that he is not as confident about it as others are. + +At Old River a couple of days ago, near the new structure, Nettles and LeRoy Dugas were looking over a scene full of cargo barges, labor barges, crawling bulldozers, hundreds of yards of articulated concrete mattress revetments recently sunk into place, and millions of tons of new limestone riprap. Nettles asked Dugie how long he thought the new armor would last. + +Dugie said, "Two high waters." + +General Sands advanced a question: "Had man not settled in southern Louisiana, what would it be like today? Under nature's scenario, what would it be like?" And, not waiting for an answer, he supplies one himself: "If only nature were here, people—except for some hunters and fishermen—couldn't exist here." + +Under nature's scenario, with many distributaries spreading the floodwaters left and right across the big deltaic plain, visually the whole region would be covered—with fresh sediments as well as water. In an average year, some two hundred million tons of sediment are in transport in the river. This is where the foreland Rockies go, the western Appalachians. Southern Louisiana is a very large lump of mountain butter, eight miles thick where it rests upon the continental shelf, half that under New Orleans, a mile and a third at Old River. It is the nature of unconsolidated sediments to compact, condense, and crustally sink. So the whole deltaic plain, a superhimalaya upside down, is to varying extents subsiding, as it has been for thousands of years. Until about 1900, the river and its distributaries were able to compensate for the subsidence with the amounts of fresh sediment they spread in flood. Across the centuries, distribution was uneven, as channels shifted and land would sink in one place and fill in somewhere else, but over all the land building process was net positive. It was abetted by decaying vegetation, which went into the flooded silts and made soil. Vegetation cannot decay unless it grows first, and it grew in large part on nutrients supplied by floodwaters. + +"In the seventeenth century, the Mississippi was very porous along its banks, and water left it in many places," Fred Chatry reminds us. "Only at low water was it completely confined. Now, in two thousand miles, the first place where water naturally escapes the Mississippi is at Bayou Baptiste Collette—sixty miles below New Orleans." + +What was a net gain before 1900 has by now been a net loss for nearly a hundred years, and the Louisiana we have known—from Old River and the Acadian world to Bayou Baptiste Collette—is sinking. Sediments are being kept within the mainline levees and shot into the Gulf at the rate of three hundred and fifty-six thousand tons a day—shot over the shelf like peas through a peashooter, and lost to the abyssal plain. As waters rise ever higher between levees, the ground behind the levees subsides, with the result that the Mississippi delta plain has become an exaggerated Venice, two hundred miles wide—its rivers, its bayous, its artificial canals a trelliswork of water among subsiding lands. + +The medians of interstates are water. St. Bernard Parish, which includes suburbs of New Orleans and is larger than the state of Delaware, is two per cent terra firma, eighteen per cent wetland, and eighty per cent water. A ring levee may surround a whole parish. A ring levee may surround fifty-five square miles of soybeans. Every square foot within a ring levee forces water upward somewhere else. + +An Alexander Calder might revel in these motions—interdependent, interconnected, related to the flow at Old River. Calder would have understood Old River Control: the place where the work is attached to the ceiling, and below which everything—New Orleans, Morgan City, the river swamp of the Atchafalaya—dangles and swings. + +Something like half of New Orleans is now below sea level—as much as fifteen feet. New Orleans, surrounded by levees, is emplaced between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi like a broad shallow bowl. Nowhere is New Orleans higher than the river's natural bank. Underprivileged people live in the lower elevations, and always have. The rich—by the river—occupy the highest ground. In New Orleans, income and elevation can be correlated on a literally sliding scale: the Garden District on the highest level, Stanley Kowalski in the swamp. The Garden District and its environs are locally known as uptown. + +Torrential rains fall on New Orleans—enough to cause flash floods inside the municipal walls. The water has nowhere to go. Left on its own, it would form a lake, rising inexorably from one level of the economy to the next. So it has to be pumped out. Every drop of rain that falls on New Orleans evaporates or is pumped out. Its removal lowers the water table and accelerates the city's subsidence. Where marshes have been drained to create tracts for new housing, ground will shrink, too. People buy landfill to keep up with the Joneses. In the words of Bob Fairless, of the New Orleans District engineers, "It's almost an annual spring ritual to get a load of dirt and fill in the low spots on your lawn." A child jumping up and down on such a lawn can cause the earth to move under another child, on the far side of the lawn. + +Many houses are built on slabs that firmly rest on pilings. As the turf around a house gradually subsides, the slab seems to rise. Where the driveway was once flush with the floor of the carport, a bump appears. The front walk sags like a hammock. The sidewalk sags. The bump up to the carport, growing, becomes high enough to knock the front wheels out of alignment. Sakrete appears, like putty beside a windowpane, to ease the bump. The property sinks another foot. The house stays where it is, on its slab and pilings. A ramp is built to get the car into the carport. The ramp rises three feet. But the yard, before long, has subsided four. The carport becomes a porch, with hanging plants and steep wooden steps. A carport that is not firmly anchored may dangle from the side of a house like a third of a drop-leaf table. Under the house, daylight appears. You can see under the slab and out the other side. More landfill or more concrete is packed around the edges to hide the ugly scene. A gas main, broken by the settling earth, leaks below the slab. The sealed cavity fills with gas. The house blows sky high. + +"The people cannot have wells, and so they take rain-water," Mark Twain observed in the eighteen-eighties. "Neither can they conveniently have cellars or graves, the town being built upon 'made' ground; so they do without both, and few of the living complain, and none of the others." The others may not complain, but they sometimes leave. New Orleans is not a place for interment. In all its major cemeteries, the clients lie aboveground. In the intramural flash floods, coffins go out of their crypts and take off down the street. + +The water in New Orleans' natural aquifer is modest in amount and even less appealing than the water in the river. The city consumes the effluent of nearly half of America, and, more immediately, of the American Ruhr. None of these matters withstanding, in 1984 New Orleans took first place in the annual Drinking Water Taste Test Challenge of the American Water Works Association. + +The river goes through New Orleans like an elevated highway. Jackson Square, in the French Quarter, is on high ground with respect to the rest of New Orleans, but even from the benches of Jackson Square one looks up across the levee at the hulls of passing ships. Their keels are higher than the AstroTurf in the Superdome, and if somehow the ships could turn and move at river level into the city and into the stadium they would hover above the playing field like blimps. + +In the early nineteen-eighties, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a new large district headquarters in New Orleans. It is a tetragon, several stories high, with expanses of sheet glass, and it is right beside the river. Its foundation was dug in the mainline levee. That, to a fare-thee-well, is putting your money where your mouth is. + +Among the five hundred miles of levee deficiencies now calling for attention along the Mississippi River, the most serious happen to be in New Orleans. Among other factors, the freeboard—the amount of levee that reaches above flood levels—has to be higher in New Orleans to combat the waves of ships. Elsewhere, the deficiencies are averaging between one and two feet with respect to the computed high-water flow line, which goes on rising as runoffs continue to speed up and waters are increasingly confined. Not only is the water higher. The levees tend to sink as well. They press down on the mucks beneath them and squirt materials out to the sides. Their crowns have to be built up. "You put five feet on and three feet sink," a Corps engineer remarked to me one day. This is especially true of the levees that frame the Atchafalaya swamp, so the Corps has given up trying to fight the subsidence there with earth movers alone, and has built concrete floodwalls along the tops of the levees, causing the largest river swamp in North America to appear to be the world's largest prison. It keeps in not only water, of course, but silt. Gradually, the swamp elevations are building up. The people of Acadiana say that the swamp would be the safest place in which to seek refuge in a major flood, because the swamp is higher than the land outside the levees. + +As sediments slide down the continental slope and the river is prevented from building a proper lobe—as the delta plain subsides and is not replenished—erosion eats into the coastal marshes, and quantities of Louisiana steadily disappear. The net loss is over fifty square miles a year. In the middle of the nineteenth century, a fort was built about a thousand feet from a saltwater bay east of New Orleans. The fort is now collapsing into the bay. In a hundred years, Louisiana as a whole has decreased by a million acres. Plaquemines Parish is coming to pieces like old rotted cloth. A hundred years hence, there will in all likelihood be no Plaquemines Parish, no Terrebonne Parish. Such losses are being accelerated by access canals to the sites of oil and gas wells. After the canals are dredged, their width increases on its own, and they erode the region from the inside. A typical three-hundred-foot oil-and-gas canal will be six hundred feet wide in five years. There are in Louisiana ten thousand miles of canals. In the nineteen-fifties, after Louisiana had been made nervous by the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Corps of Engineers built the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, a shipping canal that saves forty miles by traversing marsh country straight from New Orleans to the Gulf. The canal is known as Mr. Go, and shipping has largely ignored it. Mr. Go, having eroded laterally for twenty-five years, is as much as three times its original width. It has devastated twenty-four thousand acres of wetlands, replacing them with open water. A mile of marsh will reduce a coastal-storm-surge wave by about one inch. Where fifty miles of marsh are gone, fifty inches of additional water will inevitably surge. The Corps has been obliged to deal with this fact by completing the ring of levees around New Orleans, thus creating New Avignon, a walled medieval city accessed by an interstate that jumps over the walls. + +"The coast is sinking out of sight," Oliver Houck has said. "We've reversed Mother Nature." Hurricanes greatly advance the coastal erosion process, tearing up landscape made weak by the confinement of the river. The threat of destruction from the south is even greater than the threat from the north. + +I went to see Sherwood Gagliano one day—an independent coastal geologist and regional planner who lives in Baton Rouge. "We must recognize that natural processes cannot be restored," he told me. "We can't put it back the way it was. The best we can do is try to get it back in balance, try to treat early symptoms. It's like treating cancer. You get in early, you may do something." Gagliano has urged that water be diverted to compensate for the nutrient starvation and sediment deprivation caused by the levees. In other words, open holes in the riverbank and allow water and sediment to build small deltas into disappearing parishes. "If we don't do these things, we're going to end up with a skeletal framework with levees around it—a set of peninsulas to the Gulf," he said. "We will lose virtually all of our wetlands. The cost of maintaining protected areas will be very high. There will be no buffer between them and the coast." + +Professor Kazmann, of L.S.U., seemed less hopeful. He said, "Attempts to save the coast are pretty much spitting in the ocean." + +The Corps is not about to give up the battle, or so much as imagine impending defeat. "Deltas wax and wane," remarks Fred Chatry, in the pilothouse of the Mississippi. "You have to be continuously adjusting the system in consonance with changes that occur." Southern Louisiana may be a house of cards, but, as General Sands suggested, virtually no one would be living in it were it not for the Corps. There is no going back, as Gagliano says—not without going away. And there will be no retreat without a struggle. The Army engineers did not pick this fight. When it started, they were still in France. The guide levees, ring levees, spillways, and floodways that dangle and swing from Old River are here because people, against odds, willed them to be here. Or, as the historian Albert Cowdrey expresses it in the introduction to "Land's End," the Corps' official narrative of its efforts in southern Louisiana, "Society required artifice to survive in a region where nature might reasonably have asked a few more eons to finish a work of creation that was incomplete." + +The towboat Mississippi is more than halfway down the Atchafalaya now—beyond the leveed farmland of the upper basin and into the storied swamp. The willows on the two sides of the river, however, continue to be so dense that they block from sight what lies behind them, and all we can see is the unobstructed waterway running on and on, half a mile wide, in filtered sunlight and the shadows of clouds. A breeze has put waves on the water. Coming over the starboard quarter, it more than quells the humidity and the heat. Nevertheless, as one might expect, most of the people remain indoors, in the chilled atmosphere of the pilothouse, the coat-and-tie comfort of the lounge. A deck of cards appears, and a game of bouré develops, in showboat motif, among various civilian millionaires—Ed Kyle, of the Morgan City Harbor & Terminal District, dealing off the top to the Pontchartrain Levee Board, the Lafourche Basin Levee Board, the Teche-Vermilion Fresh Water District. Oliver Houck—the law professor, former general counsel of the National Wildlife Federation, whose lone presence signals the continuing existence of the environmental movement—naturally stays outdoors. He has established an eyrie on an upper deck, to windward. Tall and loosely structured, Houck could be a middle-aged high jumper, still in shape to clear six feet. His face in repose is melancholy—made so, perhaps, by the world as his mind would have it in comparison with the world as he sees it. What he is seeing at the moment—in the center of the greatest river swamp in North America, which he and his battalions worked fifteen years to "save"—is a walled-off monotony of sky and water. + +General Sands joins him, and they talk easily and informally, as two people will who have faced each other across great quantities of time and paper. Sands remarks again that on inspection trips such as this one he has become wed to being "beaten on the head and shoulders" by almost everyone he encounters, not just the odd ecologue attired in alienation. + +Houck addresses himself to the head, the shoulders, and the chest, saying that he has deep reservations about Sands' uniform: all those brass trinkets and serried stars, the castle keeps, the stratified ribbons. He says that Sands' habiliments constitute a form of intimidation, especially in a region of the country that has not lost its respect for the military presence. Sands' habiliments are not appropriate in a civilian milieu. "You are Army—an untypical American entity to be performing a political role like this," Houck says to him, beating on. He tells Sands that he reminds him of "a politician on the stump, going around stroking his constituency." He calls him "a political water czar." + +Sands implicitly reminds Houck that if it were not for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers there wouldn't be any stump, the constituency would be somewhere else, and Houck's neighborhood would be nine feet under water. He says, "Under nature's scenario, think what it would be like." + +The water czar, I feel a duty to insert, is not the very model of a major general. If he were to chew nails, he would break his teeth. I am not attempting to suggest that he lacks the presence of a general, or the mien, or the bearing. Yet he is, withal, somewhat less martial than most English teachers. Effusive and friendly in a folk-and-country way, courteous, accommodating, he is of the sort whose upward mobility would be swift in a service industry. Make no mistake, he is a general. "Shall we just go to the Four Seasons? A nice little place to have lunch," he said one day in Vicksburg, and we drove to a large building in the center of town, where his car was left directly in front of the main entrance, beside a bright-yellow curb under various belligerent signs forbidding parking. It stayed there for an hour while he had his crab gumbo. + +We approach, on the right, a gap in the Atchafalaya's bank, where the willows open to reveal a plexus of bayous. Houck has been complaining that the old Cajun swamp life of the Atchafalaya Basin is gone now, and has been for many years, as a result of the volumes of water concentrated in the floodway and of rules forbidding people to live inside the levees. "This single piece of plumbing," he says of the Atchafalaya, "is the last great river-overflow swamp in the world and also the biggest floodway in the world—all to protect Baton Rouge and New Orleans." We now come abreast of the gap on the right, and it ends the tedium of the reach upriver. It is a broad window into stands of cypress, their wide fluted bases attached to their redirections in still, dark water. "How I love them," says Houck, who is a conservationist of the sunset school, with legal skills adjunct to the force of his emotion. Pointing into the beauty of the bayou, he informs General Sands, "That's what it's all about." + +The General takes in the scene without comment. In silence, we look at the water-standing trees and into narrow passages that disappear among them. They draw me into thoughts of my own. I first went in there in 1980—that is, into the Atchafalaya swamp, away from its floodway levees, and miles from the river. There were four of us, in canoes. The guide was Charles Fryling, a professor of landscape architecture at Louisiana State University, who, among the environmentalists of the eighteenth state, plays Romulus to Oliver Houck's Remus. Fryling is a tall man with a broad forehead, whose hair falls straight to his eyes without the slight suggestion that comb or brush has ever been invited to intrude upon nature. In 1973, when he moved into his house, on the periphery of Baton Rouge, it sat on a smooth green lawn, in a neighborhood of ranch contemporaries, each on a smooth green lawn. Fryling's yard is now a rough green forest, its sweet gums, grapevine, pepper vine, rattan vine, hackberry, passionflowers, and climbing ferns a showcase of natural succession. In Fryling's words, "It beats the hell out of mowing the lawn." The trees are thirty feet high. + +Fryling speaks in a slow country roll that could win him a job in movies. He would be Li'l Abner, or Candide at Fort Dix—the soldier who appears slow in basic training and dies on an intelligence mission twenty-five miles behind enemy lines. He is a graduate of the illustrious forestry school of the State University of New York (Syracuse), his advanced degree is from Harvard, and—to continue the escalation—he knows how to get from here to there in the swamp. This is a remarkable feat in seven hundred thousand acres that change so much and so often that they are largely unmappable. Fryling understands the minor bayous. Sometimes they run one way, sometimes the other. The water contains sediment or is clear. "See. The water is clearer. It's coming toward us. It's coming down from Bayou Pigeon. We'll get through." + +If you ask him what something is, he knows. It's green hawthorn. It's deciduous holly. It's water privet. It's water elm. It's a water moccasin—there on the branch of that water oak. The moccasin doesn't move. A moccasin never backs off. Dragonflies land on the gunwales. In the Atchafalaya, dragonflies are known as snake doctors. Leaving the open bayou, the canoes turn into the forest and slide among the trunks of cypress under feathery arrowhead crowns. "Young cypress need a couple of years on dry land to get started, but we rend so much water through the Atchafalaya that young trees" can't get going. So existing cypress are not—as trees are generally thought to be—a renewable resource. We have to protect them in order to have them." + +To be in the Atchafalaya is to float among trees under silently flying blue herons, to see the pileated woodpecker, to hope to see an ivorybill, to hear the prothonotary warbler. The barred owl has a speaking voice as guttural as a dog's. It seems to be growling, "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for y'all?" The barred owl—staring from a branch straight down into the canoes—appears to be a parrot in camouflage. In the language of the Longtown Choctaw, "Hacha Falaia" meant "Long River." (The words are reversed in translation.) Since my first travels with Fryling, those rippling syllables have symbolized for me the bilateral extensions of the phrase "control of nature." Atchafalaya. The word will now come to mind more or less in echo of any struggle against natural forces—heroic or venal, rash or well advised—when human beings conscript themselves to fight against the earth, to take what is not given, to rout the destroying enemy, to surround the base of Mt. Olympus demanding and expecting the surrender of the gods. The Atchafalaya—this most apparently natural of natural worlds, this swamp of the anhinga, swamp of the nocturnal bear—lies between walls, like a zoo. It is utterly dependent on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, whose decisions at Old River can cut it dry or fill it with water and silt. Fryling gave me a green-and-white sticker that said "atchafalaya." I put it in a window of my car. It has been there for many years, causing drivers on the New Jersey Turnpike to veer in close and crowd my lane while staring at a word that signifies collision. + +In the Atchafalaya more recently, we came upon a sport fisherman in a skiff called Mon Ark. "There's all kind of land out there now," he said. He meant not only that the wet parts were low but also that the dry parts were growing. In the Atchafalaya, the land comes and goes, but it comes more than it goes. As the overflow swamp of the only remaining distributary in the delta—the only place other than the mouth of the Mississippi where silt can go—the Atchafalaya is silting in. From a light plane at five hundred feet, this is particularly evident as the reflection of the sun races through trees and shoots forth light from the water. The reflection disappears when it crosses the accumulating land. If land accretes from the shore of a lake or a bayou, the new ground belongs to the shore's owner. If it accretes as an island, it belongs to the state—a situation of which Gilbert would be sure to inform Sullivan. Some fifty thousand acres are caught in this tug-of-war. Wet and dry, three-quarters of the Atchafalaya swampland is privately owned. Nearly all the owners are interested less in the swamp than in what may lie beneath it. The conservationists, the Corps, landowners, and recreational interests have worked out a compromise by which all parties putatively get what they want: floodway, fishway, oil field, Eden. From five hundred feet up, the world below is green swamp everywhere, far as the eye can see. The fact is, though, that the eye can't see very far. The biggest river swamp in North America, between its demarcating levees, is seventeen miles wide and sixty miles long. It is about half of what it was when it began at the Mississippi River and went all the way to Bayou Teche. + +The old life of the basin is not entirely gone. It is true that people don't collect moss anymore to use in stuffing furniture, true that the great virgin cypresses are away. Their flared stumps remain, like cabins standing in the water. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, Cajuns made their lives and livings in the swamp. Their grocery stores were afloat, and moved among them, camp to camp. It is true all that has vanished, and the Cajuns live outside the levees, but they and others—operating for the most part alone or in pairs—go into the swamp and take twenty-five million dollars' worth of protein out of the water in any given year. The fish alone can average a thousand pounds an acre, and that, according to Fryling, is "more fish than in any other natural water system in the United States"—two and a half times as productive as the Everglades. The fish are not in the conversation, however, when compared with the crawfish. + +I know a crawfisherman named Mike Bourque, who lives in Catahoula. I remember as if it were today running his lines with him. "Watch your hands. Don't put 'em on the side of the boat. 'Cause smash 'em," he said as we went out of Bayou Gravenburg and headed into the trees. His boat was not a canoe, and the object on the stern was no paddle. It was a fifty-horse Mariner, enough for lift-off if the boat had wings. Bourque's brother-in-law was with us. In French, Bourque told him that he was affecting the balance and to shift his position in the boat. Then, addressing me in English, he said, "Watch yourself, I got to jump that log." Ahead of us, half hidden in water hyacinths, was an impressive floating log, with a solid diameter of about two feet. The boat smashed against it, thrust up and over it, with a piercing aluminum screech. The boat was about seventeen feet long. The brother-in-law, Dave Soileau, called it a bateau. Bourque called it a skiff. "French and English—we mix it up," he said. Ordinarily, he works alone, and talks a good deal to himself. "When I talk to myself, I talk in French. When I meet other fishermen, ninety per cent of the time we speak French." If he doesn't know them, he knows where they live, because each town has its accent. + +Like everyone else, he calls the hyacinths lilies—water lilies. This densely growing plant—a waterborne kudzu, an exotic from the Orient—has come to plague Southern waterways and spread over marshes like nuclear winter closing many forms of life. That is not the case, however, in the Atchafalaya, where the lilies are good for the crawfish. The young feed on stuff that clings to the roots. On heavy stems, the water hyacinths grow three to four feet high, so a lot of power is needed to get through them. "You'll never see a fisherman with less than a fifty-horse motor." + +Bourque moved the skiff from tree to tree as if he were on snowshoes in a sugarbush emptying buckets of sap. The crawfish cages were chicken-wire pillows with openings at one end. Bourque pulled them out of the water on cords that were tied to the trees, and poured the crawfish into a device that looked something like a roasting pan and was hinged to the side of the boat. He called it the trough. Open at the inner end, it forms a kind of ramp down which the crawfish crawl until they drop into a bucket. Dead bait fish, dead crawfish, and other detritus remain in the trough, and thus the living creatures winnow themselves from what is thrown away. Snakes are thrown away. Some of the used bait fish have less remaining flesh than skeletons lifted by waiters who work in white gloves. The larger crawfish weigh a quarter of a pound and are nine inches long, with claw spans greater than that. When the bucket is full, the crawfish in their motions seem to simmer at the top. "_C'est bon. C'est bon. Où est le sac?" said Bourque, and Soileau handed him a plastic-burlap sack. Containing forty pounds each, the sacks began to pile up. The crawfish lay quiet. When a sack was moved, or even touched, though, the commotion inside sounded like heavy rain._ + +The boat climbed another log. The engine cavitated. We broke through brush like an elephant. Bourque had been following what he called the driftwood line, where a small change in depth had caused driftwood to linger. To him the swamp topography was as distinctive and varied as the neighborhoods of a city would be to someone else—these subworlds of the Atchafalaya, out past Bayou Gravenburg, on toward the Red Eye Swamp. "This line used to go in back there, but I moved them out in front," he said in a place that seemed much too redundant to have a back or a front. Colored ribbons, which he called flags, helped to distinguish the fishermen's trees, but he could run his lines without them, covering his four hundred cages. He did about sixty an hour. Soileau, using a grain scoop, shoveled dead alewives and compressed pellets of Acadiana Choice Crawfish Bait into each emptied cage, and Bourque returned it to the water. Bourque told Soileau, who is a biologist with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, to quit the government and come work for him. Soileau said, "For ten dollars a day?" + +Bourque said, "Good future. No benefits." + +We were in a coulee, which is like a slough but deeper and with slushier muds at the bottom. A cage came up with seventy crawfish, all dead. The cage had been too low in the muck, where the creatures died in an anoxic slurry. They stirred it up themselves. The cage should just lightly touch the bottom, with the closed end slightly raised. + +Bourque next pulled up an empty cage. "Somebody helped me out," he remarked, and added that he had occasionally met a thief in the act of raiding one of his cages. + +Soileau said, "There's only one thing to do. Go straight to him, board his vessel, and start slugging. There have been no deaths." + +Theft was rising in direct proportion to unemployment. Oil companies owned that part of the swamp. Fishermen have, in fact, been arrested for trespass. Fryling's wife, Doris Falkenheiner, defends them in court. Meanwhile, so many fishermen work the watery forest that there is a plastic ribbon on almost every tree. The fishermen say they have to bring their own trees. + +We hit another log. We ran between a cypress and its knees. "We're getting up on the ridge," Bourque said, referring to a subtle, invisible feature of the bottom of the swamp. Out of a cage came a white crawfish, a male. (The male has longer arms.) Crawfish are red, white, or blue. The white ones like the sand of the ridge. Blue ones are rare. Bourque sees fewer than twenty a year. Now he was reaching down into the water for a cage that had been separated from its string by another fisherman's motor. + +"_Touchez la?" asked Soileau._ + +Bourque answered, "Yes." Then he said, "_Ah, bon," as he retrieved the cage._ + +"Are y'all hungry?" Bourque asked. + +"I live hungry," said Soileau. + +Bourque turned off the motor and we stopped for lunch: ham sandwiches, Royal Crown, Mr. Porker fried cured pork skins. It was seven-thirty in the morning. + +We got up around three-thirty and were driving down the levee by four o'clock—in Bourque's pickup, with the skiff behind. Soileau made the comment that the levees were like cancer, because they had to keep growing while they sank into the swamp. After twenty-five miles, we went down a ramp to a boat landing, where forty-one pickups had arrived before us. Roughly five thousand people take crawfish from the swamp, annually trapping twenty-three million pounds. + +Now, at lunchtime, as the early-morning sun began to penetrate the trees, we were looking out on one lovely scene, with tupelo and cypress rising from the water, and pollen on the water like pale-green silk. "The best months are Epp Rill and May," Bourque said. "The water might rise in October sometimes. I'll come and try." He was wearing mirrored sunglasses, a soft cap with a buttoned visor, white rubber boots, and yellow rubber overalls slashed at the crotch. Of middle height, blond and fine-featured, he had sandy hair around his ears and a large curl in back, like a breaking wave. His low-sill mustache looked French. He went to St. Martinville High School, as did Soileau, who married the youngest of Bourque's six sisters. In large script below the windows of a drugstore in St. Martinville, a sign says, "_Sidney Dupois Pharmacien—Au Service de la Santé de Votre Famille." The Teche _News, published down the street, has a regular column headlined "pense donc!!" and contains marriage and death notices about people with names like Boudreau, Tesreau, Landreaux, Passeau, Bordagaray, Lajoie, Angelle, and Guidry. Bourque was the youngest in his family and the only sibling male. He explains that Cajuns keep going until they get a male, and this was where the Bourques stopped.__ + +Soileau passed the pork skins. Bourque chewed them crunchily. "Crawfish are _écrevisses in French," he said. "We call them crawfish."_ + +I mentioned that _écrevisses are cherished by chefs in France._ + +Soileau said, "I hear you get only three or four." + +Bourque had a recipe of which the nouveaux cuisiniers may not have heard. "Sauté onions in butter, then put in fat out of the head for ten or fifteen minutes, then put meat in for a few minutes more," he said. "Salt. Cayenne pepper. Onion tops. What makes the étouffée is the fat. Some people put a little roux in there. You can stretch it like that." Crawfish étouffée: the Cajun quenelle de brochet. The meat is ground, but not to the end of texture. On Easter Sunday morning in Catahoula, the Bourques have a crawfish ball. At least, I thought that's what they were saying until I saw what they did. They boiled a hundred pounds of crawfish. They ate a crimson mountain of condensed lobsters. + +Now we were running in Bayou Eugene, which Soileau and Bourque lyrically pronounced in three syllables—"by yooz yen." We came upon a beaver on a floating log. This was not the animal that founded a nation, the alert and agile slapper of the boreal lakes. This was a Louisiana beaver—huge, half asleep, prone like a walrus, a mound of cinnamon fur with nothing much to do but eat. There was no need to dam a thing here. The Corps of Engineers would see to that. The beaver topples trees just to eat the bark. There is no mandate to practice conservation when you are what is being conserved. "A willow branch eaten by a beaver is just as smooth as if it had been sanded," Soileau remarked. "There's nothing prettier than a willow branch eaten by a beaver." Nutria live in the swamp as well. Bourque said that he sees only four or five alligators a year. A friend of his lost a finger to a cottonmouth. "He was walking through thick lilies, very high lilies, to make a road for his pirogue. The snake bit his finger through a glove." Among the crowns of the cypress, a heron flapped by. Bourque called it a _gros bec. Soileau called it a yellow-crowned night heron. Bourque said, "The _gros bec is here for the same purpose we are: to get crawfish." A mulberry-blue crawfish came into the boat from a cage that was deep in the Red Eye Swamp.__ + +Farther down the trap line, Bourque said, "Crawfish is something hard to understand. When it's muddier, they're hungrier. The water's not muddy enough out here." There was a time when that sort of thing was a fact of nature. Now, of course, he blamed the Corps. "I'd like more water," he continued. "A lot of times, they've got much more in the Mississippi than they can use. They say they give us thirty per cent. We don't know if that's true." + +I told him I had seen a tally sheet at Old River Control, and it said that 31.1 per cent had gone down the Atchafalaya the day before. + +"I'd like to see that paper when the river starts dropping," Bourque responded. "I don't see that we get thirty per cent except when there is plenty of water. If they close the locks, it start dropping fast." + +I mentioned the towboat Mississippi and its low-water Atchafalaya inspection trip, and asked if he had ever gone aboard to complain. + +"I never heard of that until you mentioned it right now," he said. "They know we want more water. They don't have to ask." + +I remembered Rabalais saying, "After they built the structure and started stabilizing this water and so on, the main complaint was the people from the Atchafalaya Basin—all your crawfish fishermen, and so on. They claimed they wasn't getting enough water, but over the years they've learned to live with it, and they catch as many crawfish, I would say, now as they did then." + +And Peck Oubre, the lock mechanic, asking Rabalais, "Before they put in Old River Lock and the control structure, what was the people talking about when the water used to rise and come through here? Were they complaining about it?" + +"No," said Rabalais. "They wouldn't complain, because there wasn't nothing you could do." + +Bourque said that farmers who raise crawfish in artificial ponds—a fairly new and rapidly expanding industry—were influencing the Corps to keep the water low in the Atchafalaya in order to squeeze out swamp fishermen like him, whose forebears were swamp fishermen. It is possible that the charge he was making was based on pure suspicion, but now that the structures were emplaced at Old River—and the Corps had assumed charge of the latitude flow—suspicion was one more force they had to try to control. + +As we were heading back toward the landing, Bourque remarked, surprisingly, "It's good we have the levees. Before the levees, the crawfish, they was spread all over." + +For bait, for gasoline, and so forth, the cost of the day's run was seventy-five dollars. At the boat landing, Bourque sold the crawfish for three hundred and sixty. The buyer was Michael Williams, a youth from New Iberia with a mane of Etruscan hair. He identified himself as a poet, and said, "For poems there's not a market anymore. The days of the Romantic poets is gone. That's like in the past." So he also writes country-and-western lyrics. He recited one that began, "Oh, it's hard to write a love song / If you've never been in love." He had a pit bull named Demon with him. Demon went into the water and snapped at wave. He tried to bite motorboat waves. + +I emerge from my remembrances standing at the rail, bewitched by the impenetrable vegetation. No part of those scenes that lie behind it can be felt or sensed from the decks of the Mississippi as the towboat moves on between the curtains of willow and straight down the middle of the bifurcated swamp. The others continue to talk, argue. The point is made that if the Mississippi River were to shift into the Atchafalaya the entire basin would fill with sediment and become a bottomland hardwood forest. "When nature shifts, man shifts," Oliver Houck says. The petrochemical industries would move to the basin, too, rebuilding themselves on Bayou Eugene, extruding plastics in the Red Eye Swamp. There are people in Morgan City who envision another Ruhr Valley up the Atchafalaya. Morgan City would be the new New Orleans. + +The new New Orleans—seventeen miles from the Gulf—is not far ahead of us now. The landscape is changing to coastal marsh. Going below, I make a circumspect visit to the card game in the lounge. The Pontchartrain Levee Board draws three, Teche-Vermilion needs two. Ed Kyle, of Morgan City, whose pockets are familiar with United States currency bearing portraits that most people in their lifetime never see and do not even know exist, throws one dollar into the pot. In the center of the table, the greenbacks reach flood stage. + +Now, through the picture windows at the front of the lounge, our destination is in view: Morgan City, the Cajun Carcassonne—a very small town behind a very high wall. A railroad bridge and two highway bridges leap the Atchafalaya and seem to touch gingerly on the two sides, as if they were landing on lily pads. Flood stage in Morgan City is four feet above sea level. A dirt levee protected the town until 1937. It was succeeded by concrete walls six and then eight feet high. As floods grew—and the Atchafalaya became the only distributary of the Mississippi—sandbags and wooden baffles were piled up in haste on top of the eight-foot walls. Since it is the Corps' intention that fifty per cent of a Design Flood go down the Atchafalaya, and since Morgan City is on a small island of no relief situated directly in the path of the planned deluge, the Corps has built the present wall twenty-two feet high. It is of such regal and formidable demeanor that it attracts tourists. It is a wall that imagines water—a sheet of water at least twenty feet thick between Morgan City and the horizon. The sea wall, as it is known, rises to the skirts of palms that stand in rows behind it. From the approaching towboat we can see a steeple, a flagpole, a water tower, but not the town's low avenues or deeply shaded streets. Damocles would not have been so lonely had he lived in Morgan City. In a proportion inverse to the seawall's great size, the seawall betokens a vulnerability the like of which is hard to find so far from a volcano. + +Water approaches Morgan City from every side. The Atchafalaya River and its surrounding floodway come down from the north and pass the western edge of town. The seawall is a part of the floodway's eastern guide levee. When there are heavy local rains, as there were at the time of the great flood of 1973, water that is kept out of the floodway by the seventy-five miles of the eastern guide levee—water that used to go into the swamp and the river when the basin was under the control of nature—pools against the levee, caroms in the direction of the Gulf, and assaults Morgan City from the back side. The levee ends on Avoca Island, five or six miles south. The Atchafalaya floodwaters are sometimes so high that they go around the end of the levee and come back against Morgan City. Hurricanes also bring floods from that direction, surging from the Gulf like tidal waves. + +Professor Kazmann, of L.S.U., said, "You can't sell Morgan City short, or I would." To end its days, Morgan City does not require a Design Flood. The Design Flood, at Morgan City, is a million and a half cubic feet per second. LeRoy Dugas, of Old River, once explained to me, "The Old River Control Structures can pass seven hundred and fifty thousand cubic feet per second and the Morganza Spillway six hundred. In that situation, if both of them are wide open, we've got Morgan City gasping for air." The people of Morgan City are not easily frightened. They would tell Professor Kazmann to get back into his college and Dugie to shut a few gates. Mayor Cedric LaFleur says, "I feel safe. I feel secure. We're not going to wash away." If there is a slightly hollow sound as he speaks, it is because Morgan City is sort of like a large tumbler glued to the bottom of an aquarium. The Corps, of course, built Morgan City's great rampart, and graced it with bas-reliefs of shrimp boats and oil rigs—consecutive emblems of Morgan City booms. Everyone is grateful for the wall. Morgan City—in its unusual setting—is dependent on the Corps of Engineers in the way that a space platform would depend on Mission Control. The fate of Morgan City is written at Old River. Anything that happens there is relevant to the town. + +As the towboat passes under the second bridge and turns toward a berth below the seawall, I ask General Sands what sort of complaint he most frequently receives when he comes here. He says, "The Corps of Engineers isn't doing enough to protect Morgan City from disaster." + +The hearing is at nine the next morning, aboard the Mississippi in the thoroughly transformed lounge. Where Teche-Vermilion was taking pots, the scene is now set for the court-martial of Billy Mitchell. In front of various standing flags, the three generals and two civilian members of the Mississippi River Commission sit at a large formal table, with General Sands in the central position. A colonel is master of ceremonies, and three other colonels are in the front row. This seems an unlikely place for Clifton Aucoin to present his petitions, but now he stands before them—a man in bluejeans and an open shirt, whose remarks suggest that he has spent a good many days of his life up to his hips in water. "My name is Clifton Aucoin," he testifies. "Very few people pronounce it right, so don't feel bad about it." He tells the commission that he once kept a boat tied to the knob of his front door. "As far as us people in the back floodwater area, we feel neglected," he continues. "As far as we can tell, nothing has been fixed. Atchafalaya water just comes around Bayou Chene, it comes right on us backwater people. . . . We feel that it's just another major flood that's waiting to hit us if nothing is done about it." As a hunter, he further complains of dying trees, of disappearing browse and cover—changes no longer ascribable to nature but now quite obviously conceded to be under the control of the Corps. + +The commissioners hear Cedric LaFleur, a trimly built man with curly hair and dark, quick eyes. LaFleur says it is "a dire relief" to have the seawall completed, and suggests that the Corps stop studying the Avoca Island levee and extend it several miles south—to prevent the floods of the Atchafalaya from going around the levee's tip and coming back upon the town. Terrebonne Parish, east of the proposed extension, has complained to the Corps that an extended levee would deprive Terrebonne marshes of sediment, thereby destroying the marshes. The survival of one parish is in conflict with the survival of another, and each is appealing to the Corps. + +They hear Mark Denham, of St. Mary Parish: "We appreciate y'all coming down. We really consider having the Corps as a presence in our area a tremendous asset to our area as far as protection of floodwaters and as far as economic development also." + +They hear Jesse Fontenot, Curtis Patterson, Gerald Dyson—chambers of commerce, levee boards, the government of the state. And, as they inevitably do in Morgan City, they hear Doc Brownell. He comes forward slowly, slightly stoop-shouldered, septuagenarian. This man once entered prizefights. There is a trace of smile on his face. He, too, thanks the commission. "It's always a pleasure to see you people come down here. It gives as a little encouragement." And then, in effect, he tells the Corps to get its act mobilized and extend the levee. For thirty-two and a half years, Doc Brownell was the mayor of Morgan City. LaFleur has been described as his clone. In 1973, when the water went around the end of the levee and came back up Bayou Chene, Brownell, without authority, sank a fifteen-hundred-ton barge in the bayou. The barge acted as a dam and held off the water long enough for the people to build up their defenses and save the city. "The nightmare of '73 is still with us," Brownell reminds the commission. "We live in a state of apprehension; we live on the whims of the weather of over forty-two per cent of the United States. . . .We live with it twenty-four hours a day." He praises the beauty of the new seawall but points out that to the people of Morgan City its extraordinary height is an unambiguous message from the Corps. "We can expect that much more water. It makes us very apprehensive. We have got to extend our defenses." + +Brownell, who went into medicine because the lumber business was dying, became a sort of bayou Schweitzer, delivering babies far out in the swamps, doing surgery in an un-air-conditioned operating room for twelve and fourteen hours a day. Among his closest companions was an alligator called Old Bull, who lived with the Brownell family for thirty-five years. Old Bull died in 1982 and is now in a glass-sided mahogany-framed case—in effect, a see-in coffin—looking almost alive among simulated hyacinths, iris, and moss in Brownell's parlor. Tip to tip, Old Bull is ten and a half feet long. There is a brass footrail next to Old Bull and a padded bar above him, with beer tap, soda siphon, and a generous stock of bottles. Brownell took Charlie Fryling and me there one spring day to admire Old Bull and to show us, with the help of pictures, the predicament of Morgan City. What struck me most of all as he talked was his evident and inherent conviction that a community can have a right to exist—to rise, expand, and prosper—in the middle of one of the most theatrically inundated floodplains in the world. To be sure, the natural floodplain is also an artificial floodway—concentrated and shaped—and, accordingly, its high waters are all the more severe. In Morgan City, it has become impossible to separate the works of people from the periodic acts of God. "We have a lot of restaurants now and various types of establishments in places vulnerable to the water," Brownell said. "We got to develop on the floodplain. It's the only place we got to develop. We still have got to look for places for people to live. Now, you can see from this map that we're right in the middle of this floodway. It's like a funnel with a spout, and we're at the end of that spout. We're in the concentration part of it. We have our homes, our families, our whole future in the floodway. We've got to live with these problems—and to me it ought to be some type of priority for the people who live under these conditions twelve months out of the year should be given some type of preference as to what our future is. It's the nation's problem, and we are only the victims here of a lot of things that does happen here that are imposed upon us. We lost the big live oaks in the park because of the long-standing floodwater. A flood doesn't last for weeks here, as it does in some of those northern places. Our floods last for months. The more ring levees are built to the north, the more water Morgan City gets. In whatever way the people upriver protect themselves, they send more water to Morgan City. If people dig canals to get water off their land, it goes to Morgan City. When you're drowning, you don't need more water." + +Tarzan of the Apes once leaped about among the live oaks in the park. The first Tarzan movie was filmed in Morgan City. The Atchafalaya swamp was Tarzan's jungle. Black extras in costumes pretended they were Africans. + +Not far from Old Bull, the head of another alligator was in use as a lamp—its mouth open, a light bulb in the back of its throat. Stuffed owls and hawks were hanging on the walls, and Canada geese were flying through the air. There were the heads of deer, of black bears from the Atchafalaya swamp. Brownell said his father had killed six bears shortly before he died. There was a stuffed tarpon head as large as the head of a horse. The tarpon was caught in the Atchafalaya River near Morgan City before the river, increasing in volume and power, pushed back the salt water. Islands now stand where the river was a hundred feet deep. As the Atchafalaya has grown, more and more sediments have, of course, come with it, stopping where they reach still water. This is the one place in Louisiana, other than the mouth of the Mississippi, where new coastal land is forming. Large areas of what was once Atchafalaya Bay have become dry flats. The soil broke the surface as the flood receded in 1973. Whole islands appeared at once. The bay was choked. Brownell says the river built a dam there. A geologist would call it a delta. + +Charles Morgan, a shipper in New Orleans in the eighteen-fifties and sixties, was so irritated by New Orleans' taxes, New Orleans' dockage fees, and New Orleans' waterfront clutter that he moved his operation to the Atchafalaya and developed a competing city. It seems unlikely that he was aware that the Mississippi River meant to follow him. Morgan City thrived on shipping, on oysters. When the big cypresses were felled in the Atchafalaya swamp, Morgan City became the center of the cypress industry in the United States: numerous sawmills, hundreds of schooners in the port. Brownell's great-grandfather owned a sawmill. In the nineteen-thirties, Captain Ted Anderson, a Florida-based fisherman, was blown off course by a storm, and put in at Morgan City. In the hold of his boat were shrimp of a size unfamiliar in Morgan City—big ones, like croissants, from far offshore. They were considered repulsive, and at first no one wanted them, but these jumbos of the deep Gulf soon gave Morgan City the foremost shrimp fleet in the world. As the Atchafalaya River pushed back the salt water, it pushed out of the marshes the nurseries of shrimp. Caught in the westbound littoral drift, the shrimp went to Texas, where much of the business is now. The growth of cypresses was too slow to keep up with the lumber industry, so the lumber industry collapsed. The next boom was in oil. The big offshore towers come out of the marshlands surrounding Morgan City. They are built on their sides and dominate the horizon like skeletons of trapezoidal blimps. Of the twelve hundred and sixty-three permanent platforms now standing in the Gulf on the continental shelf, eighty-eight per cent are off Louisiana. + +In other words, the people of Morgan City are accustomed to taking nature as it comes. Cindy Thibodaux, the town archivist—a robust young poet with cerulean eyes and a fervent manner of speaking—said to me one day, "When you're fishing in the bayou, you're out in nature with the oil industry all around you." She has written a poem about the oil industry and nature from an alligator's perspective. + +In the presence of the tribunes on the towboat, as the Pontchartrain Levee District recites its needs and the State of Louisiana its concerns—as the discussion touches upon the varied supplication of the whole deltaic plain, and on the growth of the extremities of the great levee system not only below Morgan City but down the Mississippi from Bohemia to Baptiste Collette—my mind cannot help drifting back to Old River, where every part of this story in a sense had its beginnings and could also have its end. Near the mouths of the intake channels of Old River Control, the Corps maintains another towboat, smaller than the Mississippi but no less powerful—a vessel on duty twenty-four hours a day and not equipped with white couches, wall-to-wall windows, or venetian blinds—the name of which is Kent. + +Kent is a picket boat. It defends Old River Control. With its squared bow and severed aspect, it appears to be a piece of wharf that loosened like a tooth and came out on the river. Kent's job is to catch, hold, and assist any vessel in trouble. If barges break loose upstream and there is insufficient time to tie them up, Kent is supposed to divert them. Technically, it is a twin-screw steel motor rug, eighty-five feet long, with two nine-hundred-horse diesels that can start at the touch of buttons. (Compressed air makes that possible.) It cost two million dollars and differs from most river towboats only in its uncommon electronics—the state and variety of its radar, the applications of its multiple computers. In addition to the on-board radar, two radar beams sweep the river from the bank at stations four miles apart, and anything that reflects from these beams appears on a screen in Kent. If a tow rig is moving at the speed of the current, an alarm goes off, for the coincidental speed suggests that the rig is without power. Kent can tell this eight miles away. + +Fifteen miles up the river, in April of 1964, twenty barges full of ore were tied to the bank and left there unattended. Eight of them broke free. There was no picket boat then. As a functioning valve, the control structure at Old River was nine months old. As the ore-laden barges drifted near, they were drawn away from the Mississippi, sucked into the structure by the power of the Atchafalaya. One of them plunged through the gates and sank on the lower side. Three sank in front of the gates and effectively closed the structure. A standard barge is a hundred and ninety-five feet long. Water piled up. Weeks went by. Much of the time, the difference in water level between the Mississippi and Atchafalaya sides was thirty-five feet, a critical number that resulted in damage and "threatened the integrity of the structure"—the Corps' way of saying that it might have been wiped out. + +Today, it is illegal to tie anything to either bank of the Mississippi within twenty upstream miles of the structures at Old River. Every approaching vessel has to radio Kent and, as Dugas puts it, "say what he is, who he is, and if he has a red-flag product." And for ignorant river pilots and all uninitiated craft there's a very large sign high up the bank of the river—its first three words in red: + +WARNING + +DANGEROUS DRAW + +1 Mile—West Bank + +Old River Control Structure + +U.S. ARMY + +Corps of Engineers + +New Orleans District + + +Spring high water often knocks the sign away. + +It would be difficult to overestimate the power of the draw, deriving, as it does, from the Atchafalaya, by now, in point of discharge, the seventh-strongest river in the world. The Coast Guard once tried to set five warning buoys in the west side of the Mississippi, but could not keep them in place, because the suction was so fierce. This threat to navigation could be called an American Maelstrom—a modern Charybdis, a Corryvreckan—were it not so very much greater in destructive force. In Dugie's words, "Any rig on the right side of the river is in trouble." + +An empty barge and three barges loaded with quarry stones were sucked into the low sucked into the low sill in 1965. Two loaded barges went through the structure and sank on the Atchafalaya side. The other sank against the gates without causing apparent damage, but it must have contributed to the turbulences that even then were undermining the structure. After the great flood of 1973 and the considerable debilitation it disclosed, there was the constant danger that if several loose barges were to block the flow and the difference in water levels were to build to catastrophic proportions nothing could be done about it. One barge spent a flood against the gates in 1974, but the structure survived. + +People in Simmesport often refer to Old River Control as "the second locks." John Hughes, the supervisor of Kent and one of its operators, does his best to correct them. "That's not a lock, that's a control structure," he says. And a Simmesport person says, "Well, we was born and raised here, and we call it the second locks." To judge by the amount of traffic erroneously attracted to the control structure, they have a point. A boat comes down the river, takes a right, and heads for Old River Control, thinking that it is Old River Navigation Lock. Usually, the boat is smaller—a cabin cruiser, or something of the sort—but the mistake has been made by a fifteen-barge tow. Its skipper called in on the radio to the navigation lock, announcing his arrival. The people at the lock replied that they didn't see him. He said, "I'm right here looking at you, I'm coming in." The mistake was corrected just in time. + +In 1982, thirty-nine barges broke loose thirteen miles upstream at four in the morning. The whole rig just came apart. Dugie recalls, "He was in a bend of the river. He couldn't maneuver the river. He hit the bank." The picket boat went after the barges. Five other skippers, joining their units together, detached four towboats that came to help. "They could see the picket boat had a lot of problems, trying to catch thirty-nine barges by himself," Dugie says. At 6 a.m., right at the entrance to the intake channel of Old River Control, the last barge was caught. Not even one hit the gates. Two of the thirty-nine were red-flag barges, loaded with petroleum. Later that year, a fifteen-barge rig heading north in the dark swung too close to Old River Control, was drawn off course, and—its engines overmatched by the force of the water—crashed in the sand on the north side of the intake-channel mouth. In 1983, at midnight, a towboat with three jumbo barges lost power at Black Hawk Point, two miles above the structure. The picket boat caught it before it reached the channel. + +The operator on that occasion was Gerald Gillis, whose broad full face and long jet-black hair lend him the look of an Elizabethan page after twenty-five years in Morgan City. He is one of eight men who work Kent—two on a shift. One day, he took me out on the beat with him, running up the river. He said the speed of the Mississippi current ranges from about three knots in low water to six in spring and eight in flood. A rig coming downstream on this September day would be averaging about eight knots. To conserve fuel, the big thirty-five-barge tows like to crawl along just barely ahead of the speed of the river, and that confuses Kent, because the tows could be dead in the water. An example was descending toward us now, called Gale C, shoving thirty-five barges of grain and cord, and much alive in the river, as Gillis learned from his transceiver. While the huge rig was passing by us—really an itinerant island, eight thousand horsepower and a third of a mile long, with its barges in seven ranks of five—he said the rough rule of thumb for fuelling such an enterprise is one gallon per horsepower per day. + +Gillis turned on the depth finder. We had come up the Mississippi's east side, and now he swung crosscurrent, heading for the cutbank of the west-convexing bend just above the structures of Old River. As we traversed the Mississippi, the depth, which was being sketched by a stylus on graph paper, dropped steadily and kept on dropping the closer we came to the bank. We were only a few swimming strokes from shore when the depth reached a hundred feet. It was notable that the riverbed was fifty feet below sea level more than three hundred miles from the mouth of the river, but what particularly astounded me was the very great depth so close to the west bank. It showed the excavating force of a tremendous river. The foundations of skyscrapers are rarely that deep. And this was the bend where the water swung off and into Old River Control—a bend armored with concrete where the Mississippi might break free and go to the Atchafalaya. Kent was so close to the bank that it had no room to turn. Gillis backed away. + +Twenty years before, a barge that broke loose and was crumpled after sinking at the structure was hauled up the intake channel and left by the edge of the river. The barge had not moved since then, but the Mississippi's bank—consumed by the scouring currents—had eroded to the west. The barge now lay five hundred feet out in the Mississippi. + +General Sands, reflecting on these matters, once said, "The Old River Control Structure was put in the wrong place. It was designed to a dollar figure." + +And Fred Bayley, his chief engineer, added, "That is correct. It was done during the Eisenhower Administration." + +The Corps once attempted to barricade the intake channel with a string of barges anchored in the river. Drift—as the big logs are called that unremittingly come down the river—amassed against the anchoring cables until enough had gathered to heave high and start breaking the cables. As if drift were not enough of a problem, ice has been known to appear as well. It may come only once in twenty years, but ice it is, in Louisiana. + +The water attacking Old River Control is of course continuous, working, in different ways, from both sides. In 1986, one of the low-sill structure's eleven gates was seriously damaged by the ever-pounding river. Another gate lost its guiding rail. When I asked Fred Smith, the district geologist, if he thought it inevitable that the Mississippi would succeed in swinging its channel west, he said, "Personally, I think it might. Yes. That's not the Corps' position, though. We'll try to keep it where it is, for economic reasons. If the right circumstances are all put together (huge rainfall, a large snowmelt), there's a very definite possibility that the river would divert—go down through the Atchafalaya Basin. So far, we have been able to alleviate those problems." + +Significant thanks to Kent. + +A skiff rides on Kent's stern. A part of the skiff's permanent equipment is a fifteen-foot bamboo pole. Kent is alert to everything that moves in the river, including catfish. ♦ + +* * * * ![][1] +* ![][2] + +[1]: http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/assets/dist/img/icon/email.png +[2]: http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/assets/dist/img/icon/printer.png diff --git a/saved_articles/flood maps.txt b/saved_articles/flood maps.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..abc0bea --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/flood maps.txt @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +title: Flood Maps +date: 2007-04-30T15:09:44Z +source: http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=43.3251,-101.6015&z=13&m=7 +tags: climate_change, science, maps + +--- + +**Sea level rise:** 0 m +1 m +2 m +3 m +4 m +5 m +6 m +7 m +9 m +13 m +20 m +30 m +40 m +50 m +60 m + + + sea level rise + +[Europe][1] [N. America][2] [S. America][3] [Africa][4] [SE. Asia][5] [China & Japan][6] [Australia][7] + +[1]: ?http://flood.firetree.net?ll%3D48.3416%2C14.6777%26amp%3Bz%3D13%26amp%3Bm%3D7 +[2]: ?http://flood.firetree.net?ll%3D43.3251%2C-101.6015%26amp%3Bz%3D13%26amp%3Bm%3D7 +[3]: ?http://flood.firetree.net?ll%3D-24.5271%2C-62.2265%26amp%3Bz%3D14%26amp%3Bm%3D7 +[4]: ?http://flood.firetree.net?ll%3D6.8391%2C20.3906%26amp%3Bz%3D14%26amp%3Bm%3D7 +[5]: ?http://flood.firetree.net?ll%3D16.3412%2C97.3388%26amp%3Bz%3D12%26amp%3Bm%3D7 +[6]: ?http://flood.firetree.net?ll%3D33.8339%2C129.7265%26amp%3Bz%3D12%26amp%3Bm%3D7 +[7]: ?http://flood.firetree.net?ll%3D-27.8390%2C138.1640%26amp%3Bz%3D13%26amp%3Bm%3D7 diff --git a/saved_articles/for when you are feeling poor carrot quinn.txt b/saved_articles/for when you are feeling poor carrot quinn.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..54fe9cd --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/for when you are feeling poor carrot quinn.txt @@ -0,0 +1,53 @@ +--- +title: For when you are feeling poor +date: 2015-11-30T14:31:59Z +source: http://carrotquinn.com/2013/02/06/how-to-be-poor/ +tags: + +--- + +![how to be poor][1] + +So you are poor. You are cold, you are hungry, you feel very sorry for yourself. You have four dollars in quarters, and your rent is due. You can buy a jar of peanut butter, but what do you do tomorrow? It is winter; outside it is raining; you feel suddenly alone. + +Listen; we are all going to die one day. Life, as its final act, will kill you, but, as they say, it is very rare to die of hunger. + +Listen; do not go out drinking tonight. Spend the evening in contemplation, in the absolute silence of your room. Fall asleep without realizing it, knowing that this emptiness, which is all around you, will always be free. + +Walk everywhere. Walk to a river, to a forest, to a superfund site where there is an abandoned warehouse, a train trestle, the remains of a pirate ship. Walk to a new neighborhood, where the slant of the light is different. Notice the way the houses are set away from the curb, in this neighborhood; the way they are all identical, little two-room pastel houses with brick chimneys and awnings over the window that faces the street. There used to be a mill in this neighborhood, and this is where the workers lived. Now the houses are inhabited by African-American grandmothers, they are sanctuaries for housecats and grandchildren. + +Walk to the bluff that overlooks the trainyard and the big gray river; climb the apple tree and sit in the crook of its branches, where so many lovers have sat before. Notice the way the bark has been worn by human hands, the smoothness of the finger-holds where children hoist themselves into the tree. + +Feel nostalgic for this moment, as though it has already passed. Feel all of history, this moment, and what has not yet happened, all together. + +You are poor; talk slowly. Pass entire days without speaking. At night, look at the stars. Peer at discarded objects. Notice color in unexpected places. Find pianos that need tuning, for free, on the curb. Touch the keys of these pianos. + +Go to the library and study these things: orienteering, the plants that grow along the roadsides, the history of the people in your area. Read the classics; the classics are abundant and inexpensive. Read various translations; form opinions on which translations are the best. Read unabridged editions but skip the sections that bore you; linger over the descriptions of gardens, of longing, of the bewilderment of youth. + +Go to mass in old churches, preferably in a language that you do not understand. Study the beautiful architecture, the stained glass, let the smell of the incense permeate you. Feel the mystery all around you, like light. + +You are poor. Here is a list of all of the things which you have in abundance: The stars, the trees, the wind, the flowers in the springtime, the smell of clover, the sun, as much as anyone, when it happens to shine; the animals in the thickets, the sounds of bells, a sense of anticipation, the moon in its phases, the solidity of the earth, possibility, the morning, a sense of the unknown, the ocean. + +You have inherited the ocean. Hitchhike to the ocean, and view your inheritance. Bring an old blanket and a dog (dogs are also poor, bring a friend's dog if you do not have one). Let the dog run along the sand. Walk out towards the ocean and put your fingers in your inheritance. The ocean will always be there; no-one can take your inheritance away from you. At night, spread your blanket on a bluff above the ocean, and watch the moon shine on the water. Your inheritance is made of silver. Your inheritance is bottomless; it cannot be exhausted. Sleep. The ocean loves you. The dog will keep you warm. (Large dogs are best for this.) + +Pay very little for rent; live in the place that makes you happy, but sacrifice what you must; space, comfort, amenities. Live in large, drafty rooms; live in small, dim spaces; live in backyards, in blackberry brambles, in vehicles. Live in treehouses, in sailboats at their moorings, in small clearings in the forest. Make your space beautiful, keep your space tidy. Own only two of everything; two forks, two plates, two mason jars for drinking. Leave all of the useless things- extra sweaters, books you won't read again, knickknacks from other times in your life, on the curb in a cardboard box, for others to carry away. When you find cardboard boxes of objects, sitting on the curb in the rain, sift through the contents, and think about the histories of things, but take nothing home; you already have more than you need. + +Take only as much work as you need. There is simple work everywhere; your hunger, the sharpness of your mind, and your sense of urgency will help you find it. Look at the boy at the end of the street selling rocks; look at the busy restaurants; look at the people in their nice houses who leave their anxious dogs all alone. Think about the tasks that make you feel alive, and look at what the people need. Eschew authority, tradition, the validation of institutions. Think of yourself as a creature in a complex and changing ecosystem; walk everywhere, looking at the sky, touch everything around you, until you have ideas. Pry, ask questions, be nosy. You only need a little bit of money; you live amidst great mountains of money. Spin your straw into gold. + +In the fall, look for fruit trees. Gather hundreds of plums; these plums are for you. Also bosc pears, windfall apples, overly sweet figs. If you have a bicycle, ride it to where there is farmland and gather blackberries; make a pie from the berries and eat the entire pie yourself, over the course of several days. + +When you have a little money, buy an expensive hat. Wear this hat every day. Take a beautiful girl to dinner. Buy a bar of very dark chocolate. + +Often you will suffer; allow yourself to suffer. Do not deprive yourself of your own pain, which is one of the brightest things that you own. Rejoice, when you are able, in the sensation of your suffering. + +You are poor; be kind to yourself. Forgive yourself for the stupid things which you have done, the assumptions you have made, for the way you have been helpless in the face of your jealousy. Forgive yourself your desire to make some order of your life; tell the little child within you that everything turned out alright, that you got exactly the life that you wanted, and realize, for the first time, that this is true. + +Talk to strangers. Have them tell you their stories. Listen to the way that life wends itself loudly through the fabric of time, in spite of everything. Listen to the quiet parts of the stories, the warm puddles of color, the explosions of light. Life contains time coiled within it like a spring but is also outside of time, everywhere, encompassing time. Encompassing everything, holding things together at every imaginable angle. There is color skewered with darkness, fixed to stretches of contemplation. A thing with dimensions we cannot imagine. As you listen to the stories of strangers, hear the sounds of their words, the way the sounds dissipate in the air. Try not to feel sorrow as you imagine the sheer magnitude of all of our collected stories, and the way that they dissipate. Listen to the stranger that stands before you, in broad daylight, and let the vibrations of her story move through your body. Let the story change you, in imperceptible ways, and become part of you, like mist. + +You have guessed by this time that you are not poor. That it is not possible to be poor, that to be alive is to be wealthy. Now it is revealed that you have more than four dollars; there is a twenty dollar bill, forgotten in the pocket of your jacket. You are not only wealthy but indescribably wealthy; the sky has split open and fortune rains down upon you, like confetti. This world is unfathomably large and unspeakably brilliant; its strength lies in its fantastic complexity. It will always be too large to fit inside of us and yet, somehow, it does. We are so large and so alive as to be incomprehensible; there is nothing larger or more alive than you or I, right now. Don't be afraid to feel what waits for you, in this bleating second of existence; it is the strongest medicine there is, and the thing that comes after it will be just as blinding; and it is the spaces in between, those pauses that are your birthright, which are made of solid gold. + +### Like this: + +Like Loading... + +[1]: http://carrotquinn.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/cosmos1.jpg?w=600&h=485 diff --git a/saved_articles/great questions.txt b/saved_articles/great questions.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..433d0b0 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/great questions.txt @@ -0,0 +1,224 @@ +--- +title: StoryCorps | Great Questions +date: 2014-11-13T15:15:51Z +source: http://storycorps.org/great-questions/ +tags: #lux, travel + +--- + +#### Great Questions + +These questions are merely suggestions for getting a good conversation going. We encourage you to use the ones you like and to come up with your own. + +This list is in no particular order. You may choose one of the categories below, or scroll through and read them all. To use our question generator, please [click here][1]. + +* * * + +## Great questions for anyone + +* Who has been the most important person in your life? Can you tell me about him or her? +* What was the happiest moment of your life? The saddest? +* Who has been the biggest influence on your life? What lessons did that person teach you? +* Who has been the kindest to you in your life? +* What are the most important lessons you've learned in life? +* What is your earliest memory? +* What is your favorite memory of me? +* Are there any funny stories your family tells about you that come to mind? +* Are there any funny stories or memories or characters from your life that you want to tell me about? +* What are you proudest of? +* When in life have you felt most alone? +* If you could hold on to one memory from your life forever, what would that be? +* How has your life been different than what you'd imagined? +* How would you like to be remembered? +* Do you have any regrets? +* What does your future hold? +* What are your hopes for what the future holds for me? For my children? +* If this was to be our very last conversation, is there anything you'd want to say to me +* For your great great grandchildren listening to this years from now: is there any wisdom you'd want to pass on to them? What would you want them to know? +* Is there anything that you've never told me but want to tell me now? +* Is there something about me that you've always wanted to know but have never asked? + +## Friends or Colleagues + +* If you could interview anyone from your life living or dead, but not a celebrity, who would it be and why? +* What is your first memory of me? +* Was there a time when you didn't like me? +* What makes us such good friends? +* How would you describe me? How would you describe yourself? +* Where will we be in 10 years? 20 years? +* Do you think we'll ever lose touch with each other? +* Is there anything that you've always wanted to tell me but haven't? + +## Grandparents + +* Where did you grow up? +* What was your childhood like? +* Who were your favorite relatives? +* Do you remember any of the stories they used to tell you? +* How did you and grandma/grandpa meet? +* What was my mom/dad like growing up? +* Do you remember any songs that you used to sing to her/him? Can you sing them now? +* Was she/he well-behaved? +* What is the worst thing she/he ever did? +* What were your parents like? +* What were your grandparents like? +* How would you like to be remembered? +* Are you proud of me? + +## Raising children + +* When did you first find out that you'd be a parent? How did you feel? +* Can you describe the moment when you saw your child for the first time? +* How has being a parent changed you? +* What are your dreams for your children? +* Do you remember when your last child left home for good? +* Do you have any favorite stories about your kids? + +## Parents + +* Do you remember what was going through your head when you first saw me? +* How did you choose my name? +* What was I like as a baby? As a young child? +* Do you remember any of the songs you used to sing to me? Can you sing them now? +* What were my siblings like? +* What were the hardest moments you had when I was growing up? +* If you could do everything again, would you raise me differently? +* What advice would you give me about raising my own kids? +* What are your dreams for me? +* How did you meet mom/dad? +* Are you proud of me? + +## Growing up + +* When and where were you born? +* Where did you grow up? +* What was it like? +* Who were your parents? +* What were your parents like? +* How was your relationship with your parents? +* Did you get into trouble? What was the worst thing you did? +* Do you have any siblings? What were they like growing up? +* What did you look like? +* How would you describe yourself as a child? Were you happy? +* What is your best memory of childhood? Worst? +* Did you have a nickname? How'd you get it? +* Who were your best friends? What were they like? +* How would you describe a perfect day when you were young? +* What did you think your life would be like when you were older? +* Do you have any favorite stories from your childhood? + +## School + +* Did you enjoy school? +* What kind of student were you? +* What would you do for fun? +* How would your classmates remember you? +* Are you still friends with anyone from that time in your life? +* What are your best memories of grade school/high school/college/graduate school? Worst memories? +* Was there a teacher or teachers who had a particularly strong influence on your life? Tell me about them. +* Do you have any favorite stories from school? + +## Love & Relationships + +* Do you have a love of your life? +* When did you first fall in love? +* Can you tell me about your first kiss? +* What was your first serious relationship? +* Do you believe in love at first sight? +* Do you ever think about previous lovers? +* What lessons have you learned from your relationships? + +## Marriage & Partnerships + +* How did you meet your husband/wife? +* How did you know he/she was "the one"? +* How did you propose? +* What were the best times? The most difficult times? +* Did you ever think of getting divorced? +* Did you ever get divorced? Can you tell me about it? +* What advice do you have for young couples? +* Do you have any favorite stories from your marriage or about your husband/wife? + +## Working + +* What do you do for a living? +* Tell me about how you got into your line of work. +* Do you like your job? +* What did you think you were going to be when you grew up? +* What did you want to be when you grew up? +* What lessons has your work life taught you? +* If you could do anything now, what would you do? Why? +* Do you plan on retiring? If so, when? How do you feel about it? +* Do you have any favorite stories from your work life? + +## Religion + +* Can you tell me about your religious beliefs/spiritual beliefs? What is your religion? +* Have you experienced any miracles? +* What was the most profound spiritual moment of your life? +* Do you believe in God? +* Do you believe in the after-life? What do you think it will be like? +* When you meet God, what do you want to say to Him? + +## Serious Illness + +* Can you tell me about your illness? +* Do you think about dying? Are you scared? +* How do you imagine your death? +* Do you believe in an after-life? +* Do you regret anything? +* Do you look at your life differently now than before you were diagnosed? +* Do you have any last wishes? +* If you were to give advice to me or my children, or even children to come in our family, what would it be? +* What have you learned from life? The most important things? +* Has this illness changed you? What have you learned? +* How do you want to be remembered? + +## Family heritage + +* What is your ethnic background? +* Where is your mom's family from? Where is your dad's family from? +* Have you ever been there? What was that experience like? +* What traditions have been passed down in your family? +* Who were your favorite relatives? +* Do you remember any of the stories they used to tell you? +* What are the classic family stories? Jokes? Songs? + +## War + +* Were you in the military? +* Did you go to war? What was it like? +* How did war change you? +* During your service, can you recall times when you were afraid? +* What are your strongest memories from your time in the military? +* What lessons did you learn from this time in your life? + +## Remembering a loved one + +* What was your relationship to _____? +* Tell me about _____. +* What is your first memory of _____? +* What is your best memory of _____? +* What is your most vivid memory of _____? +* What did _____ mean to you? +* Are you comfortable/ can you talk about _____'s death? How did _____ die? +* What has been the hardest thing about losing _____? +* What would you ask _____ if _____ were here today? +* What do you miss most about _____? +* How do you think _____ would want to be remembered? +* Can you talk about the biggest obstacles _____ overcame in life? +* Was there anything you and _____ disagreed about, fought over, or experienced some conflict around? +* What about _____ makes you smile? +* What was your relationship like? +* What did _____ look like? +* Did you have any favorite jokes _____ used to tell? +* Do you have any stories you want to share about _____? +* What were _____'s hopes and dreams for the future? +* Is there something about _____ that you think no one else knows? +* How are you different now than you were before you lost _____? +* What is the image of _____ that persists? +* Do you have any traditions to honor _____? +* What has helped you the most in your grief? +* What are the hardest times? + +[1]: /great-questions/question-generator/ diff --git a/saved_articles/heroines of frugality and related topics reading list - early retirement extreme forums.txt b/saved_articles/heroines of frugality and related topics reading list - early retirement extreme forums.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3290f85 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/heroines of frugality and related topics reading list - early retirement extreme forums.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +title: Heroines of Frugality and Related Topics Reading List +date: 2014-12-30T18:45:26Z +source: http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/viewtopic.php?t=5750 +tags: finance + +--- + +> 7Wannabe5 wrote:Good suggestion. For some reason this made me think of adding some fictional books meant for children such as "The Adventures of Pippi Longstocking","The Little Princess" ,"Maida's Little Shop" ,"Mandy", "From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler", "A Wrinkle in Time" and many books by Louisa May Alcott and Laura Ingalls Wilder. + + +I shouldn't have chimed in and *redirected* the list, but I guess I was thinking of a list of ERE heroines which would include adventurers and free thinkers. I agree with Alcott and Wilder. I might add [Charlotte Mason][1] for her original ideas on educating children. [Here's][2] a good introduction to her method. + +I also like [The American Woman's Home][3] by Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. ("This is a remarkable work, both in philosophy and practicality. It is dedicated "To the women of America, in whose hands rest the real destinies of the Republic" and offers a guide to the formation and maintenance of economical, healthful, beautiful, and Christian homes.") + +I remember liking Edith Schaeffer's [What is a Family?][4] and [The Hidden Art of Homemaking][5] in particular (it's been years since I read them). They were dated and heavy on religion and christian values, but they taught me to view homemaking differently. The first was about embracing the people who come and go and viewing family as a fluid concept (she used the image of a "mobile"). The second book was about incorporating beauty into everything you do (without spending money!). I've set a table with that in mind ever since I read the book. Even when we were eating one of my many recipes for *enhanced* ramen noodles, we ate it with (mismatched, but) proper dishes and linens. I still go out into the yard to clip something, even if it's only one flower, to place on the table or near the bedside. I'm not an artsy person, but I learned the difference between 'art' and 'beauty' and how to bring beauty into our lives. + +Many of the older books didn't give me a ton of practical tips so much as change the way I view homemaking. Up until this century, homemaking was about frugality, conservation, preparation, and presentation, regardless of whether the household was small or large, permanent or temporary, or prosperous or poor. Caroline Ingalls approached her tasks while in their wagon the same way Beecher Stowe did. + +[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Mason +[2]: http://www.amazon.com/Charlotte-Mason-Companion-Personal-Reflections/dp/1889209023/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416829375&sr=1-1&keywords=charlotte+mason+companion +[3]: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/books/book_26.cfm +[4]: http://www.amazon.com/What-Family-Edith-Schaeffer-ebook/dp/B004HO55PK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416829724&sr=1-1&keywords=what+is+a+family+by+edith+schaeffer +[5]: http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Art-Homemaking-Edith-Schaeffer/dp/0842313982/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416829724&sr=1-2&keywords=what+is+a+family+by+edith+schaeffer diff --git a/saved_articles/how to cure lactose intolerance.txt b/saved_articles/how to cure lactose intolerance.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a3fb970 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/how to cure lactose intolerance.txt @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +--- +title: How to cure lactose intolerance +date: 2015-08-28T11:20:55Z +source: https://chriskresser.com/how-to-cure-lactose-intolerance/ +tags: health + +--- + +![Gut Health eBook][1] + +Find out how poor gut health contributes to everything from fatigue to autoimmune disease to depression—and what to do about it. You'll learn: + +* How our modern diets and lifestyles contribute to poor gut health, and how an unhealthy gut contributes to disease +* The common foods and medications that could be harming your gut health +* A simple, natural, yet effective plan for healing your gut and restoring your health + +**Get my FREE eBook on gut health and rebuild your health—from the inside out!** + +[1]: https://chriskresser.com/wp-content/uploads/02-eBook-Gut-Health.png diff --git a/saved_articles/how to disappear in america without a trace.txt b/saved_articles/how to disappear in america without a trace.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..d82ddac --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/how to disappear in america without a trace.txt @@ -0,0 +1,927 @@ +--- +title: How to disappear in America without a trace +date: 2007-10-18T02:47:05Z +source: http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/vanish.htm#Section3 +tags: paranoia, society, guide + +--- + +![---][1] + +**Section 1: What I'll be discussing in this how-to essay** + +There are many good reasons to want to disappear from society. There are many bad reasons to want to. There are many good ways to disappear from society and there are many bad ways to disappear. While I won't delve too deeply into the ** whys** of disappearing, I will cover my opinions on **how** to disappear successfully. + +This essay covers what I consider to be the most salient points on how to disappear and remain successfully hidden in American society. If you have further suggestions, please don't hesitate to E-Mail me at the address provided at the bottom of this text so that I may include your ideas. + +* If you're thinking of hiding from a moral responsibility -- such as child support -- I want you to stop reading this right now and shoot yourself. This web page isn't for you. If you're thinking about committing a crime and then trying to get away with it, don't be an idiot: you **will get caught** \-- it's just a matter of when -- and nothing on this web page can possibly help you. + +If you're thinking of running from an abusive ex-husband or ex-boyfriend who wishes to do you harm, I wish you the very best and hope that some of these suggestions and contact references prove helpful though most of it, I'm afraid, is probably unworkable, silly suggestions that won't help you one bit. + +* If you're thinking about taking your children with you, **_ DON'T! _** Bring yourself and your children to a shelter in another State **_but for no reason_** should you ever drag your children around with you while on the run or while hiding. They don't deserve the abuse and you're being selfish if you try to. If you need help caring for your children but need to run from a dangerous spouse, ex-spouse, girl/boy friend, or ex-girl/boy friend, dial **1-800-4ACHILD** and ask about what your options are for your safety and the safety of your child or children. Call **before** you leave if possible but most certainly call someone if you and your children must flee. + +**Also: The number of the _National Domestic Violence Hotline_ is 1-800-799-7233.** + +The authorities will be highly motivated into tracking you down if you bring your kids with you as well. **_Think_** about what's best for those you leave behind and, as difficult as it will be **_leave them behind!_** + +* While there are many shelters for women, finding a shelter for yourself and your children if you are a man is going to be difficult. References provided toward the end of the essay should be helpful in this regard yet understand that if you're a man fleeing spousal abuse, America just doesn't care too much about you. A man still has many options, however, yet, in America, there are fewer than for a woman. + +Women who make allegations of child abuse against their husbands, ex-husbands, or ex-boyfriends are likely to be considered truthful in American society in far greater percentages than such claims made by men against their female counterparts. A man who must take himself and his children away from an abusive female is likely to be accused of child abuse and American society is likely to believe the allegations. + +Because of this, whether you're a man or a woman, **_ protect yourself _** from such allegations by documenting abuses **_before_** you flee to a shelter with your children. Once at the shelter, make sure that a service worker at the shelter is given a copy of (or a chance to review) your documentation. It's greatly unfortunate that you will have to face legal needs when you're trying to escape from a criminally abusive person but legalities is something you must be prepared to face before you make your break. The fact that you took yourself to a children's shelter or a battered-woman's shelter goes a long way toward establishing your innocence in allegations likely to surface later. + +Women are assigned priority status when it comes to such things. If you are a man fleeing an abusive woman, understand that whatever you tell the authorities (or organizations which provide assistance) will be greeted with undue skepticism. Check the references at the end of this essay for organizations which specifically assist men. + +![---][1] + +**Section 2: Understand who or what you're hiding from** + +You should consider the resources of the individual or organization which you're hiding from as well as their degree of motivation for finding you. Always over-estimate the resolve of those seeking to find you yet keep your estimations reasonable. Greatly over-estimating your opposition can cause you to behave in predictable, patterned ways, however. It is the predictability of your actions based upon your opposition's controlled stimulus which can get you caught. + +If your opposition are police authorities, rest assured that they have decades of experience to back them up whereas to them, you're nothing more than another faceless fugitive on the run. To them you're no one special; it's not usually personal (unless you've killed a cop in which case they _will_ get you -- and I hope you'll have an "accident" on the way to the police station.) To you, however, being hunted down is quite personal. They know how you will feel and will use that against you. + +If you've entered the United States illegally to start a new life, (or are planning to) you must contend with immigration officials which have historically been under-staffed, poorly-managed, and staffed by incompetent (though often voraciously brutal) thugs -- high school dropouts \-- who only want to carry a gun but couldn't make it in the police force. Unlike police officers, immigration officials didn't get into their line of work to help people; they got into their line of work to keep you out of the country and to track you down and throw you out if you do get in. Their desire is to subject you to their control, feeding their power trips, making themselves feel manly. Unlike police officers, they aren't out to help society, they're out to inflict misery upon the hapless and the down-trodden. + +I mention this because you must understand who your opposition is when you go on the run and try to hide. The objective is for you to disappear and start a new, normal life somewhere else. Illegal immigrants face the exact same problems that those who wish to become anonymous in America face. The house wife who's been beaten into the hospital too many times faces the same problems which illegal "wet backs" face. The _opposition,_ however -- those detailed to finding the house wife \-- are quite different than those trying to find a cop killer. Know who'll be out looking for you when you run and hide. + +The resources of your opposition will dictate greatly your behavior and decisions. If you're running from an abusive ex-husband or ex-wife, think of what their resources are and determine whether you should stay in the same State or whether you should leave the country entirely. If at all possible, plan your escape as much in advance as possible and work to limit your opposition's resources. This mean that you clean-out bank accounts if you can and you destroy all vehicles the opposition has easy access to so that they may not be used to track you down. (And they can't be sold to finance private investigators to look for you.) You destroy said vehicles in a **_safe_** and non-violent way, by the way; you don't want to hurt anyone and thus strengthen the resolve of the authorities. + +Total destruction of automobiles can be accomplished easily enough: + +* Add long-grain rice to the car's radiator fluid. If you've been a house wife for decades, you may not know that much about cars so here's what you look for: + * Pop the hood of the car. There will be a lever somewhere above the feet of the driver's side of the car or, in older models, a lever is provided under the leading edge of the hood. Some hoods will stay open on their own whereas others have a rod mounted in the engine compartment that's used to hold the hood up. The lever might even say "Hood release." + * Remove the radiator filler cap if the engine is cold. (Opening the cap with the engine hot can get you badly burned. The fluid can start to boil once the pressure is relieved and spray all over you. The fluid will be quite painful resulting in first and second-degree burns. It's not likely to be disfiguring but if you accidentally burn yourself, you can very well go ahead with your plan to escape however your mind might be focused entirely upon the pain and not upon escape. With the engine cold you don't have to worry about getting burned.) + +The cap can be found easily enough. Look for a cap with a small lever on it. Some radiator caps don't have levers, I'll add, but they'll be a standard size and shape. The cap will be mounted either in the center of the radiator or, usually, to the right. There will often be a notice on it saying something like "Pressure Test to 13-18 Pounds" -- at least in the United States they do. The cap is removed by lifting up the small lever on the top of the cap and turning counter-clockwise. If there's no lever, press down and turn counter-clockwise. It often only takes about a half turn before you can pull up the cap and remove it. + + * Add as much long-grain rice as possible. The insides of the radiator will greatly affect the amount of rice you can add. If it looks like you must, poor in some rice and use your fingers to move the rice around inside the radiator. Then add more. Try to add as much rice as possible since what you're aiming for is a horribly clogged radiator and badly damaged engine. As you're adding rice, fluid will slop out. Don't worry about that for now. + * Replace the cap. You'll have to lift the small lever on the cap (if there is one) then set the cap in place, turn clockwise until it stops turning, and then release the cap's lever, pushing it down if it doesn't automatically go down. Close the hood. + * Depending upon the amount of rice you added and the fluid level of the radiator before you began, you may have a pool of radiator fluid on the ground which, since it's usually a bright green, can be seen. Someone could see that pool, pop the hood, notice spilled grains of rice, and know that they've been "processed." They're not likely to run the engine with rice in the radiator -- something you want them to do so that they'll destroy their engine by warping the head. So get a hose and wash the evidence away before your opposition can see it. +* Add dirt and sand to the engine's crankcase. Open the hood and find the cap which covers the oil filler tube and remove the cap. (The location of the oil cap is far too different on cars to describe where to locate it.) You may find a notice which indicates the oil filler cap. Such a notice might say something like "Use only SAE 30" or "Use only SAE 10-40." Add as much sand and gravel as possible. This will rest in the valve cover until the engine is started. As the engine is run, some parts of it will not get oil -- oil which is used for both lubrication as well as cooling. Worse still: ground-down particulates will work its way around the entire engine eventually ruining it until it just stops. +* The traditional way to destroy a car quickly has become somewhat difficult now that most cars have locking gas caps. Still, if you have access to the car's keys (which you might if you're running from an abusive spouse) get yourself a funnel and add a pound of sugar to the car's gas tank. The sugar will disperse in solution and caramelize in the guts of the engine when it's burned with the air/fuel mixture. That'll kill the car for sure and will do the job quickly. Note that adding too much sugar could simply clog the fuel outlet line which, while it damages the car and requires extensive repair to clear, won't kill the car out totally -- that's your objective, remember, since you're working to limit the resources of your opposition. + +> ** ** +> +> NOTE added July, 2005: Sugar in the gasoline tank does not work well and it's something of an urban legend. The suggestion is covered in a number of classic books such as Edward Abbey's "The Monkeywrench Gang" however actual experimentation proves that sugar added to a gas tank doesn't do enough damage. +> +> It has been suggested that other substances added to a gas tank might cause serious damage, such as pancake syrup and other sweateners however there is no good scientific data available anywhere that I'm aware of that provides any evidence that such substances work. +> +> In the end, perhaps the best way to destroy a vehicle that might be used to come after you is to drape a blanket over the vehicle, dump a gallon of gasoline on it, and throw on a burning object from a relatively safe distance. +> +> Alternatively experimentation with putting clothes soaked in gasoline in a pile under vehicles and then setting the clothes on fire has met with success in the United States so that's an option. +> +> But take care: Gasoline doesn't burn; the _fumes_ mixed with oxygen in the air is what burns. After gasoline soaked cloth is set in a location, fumes will build and if yo strike a match anywhere within the volume of asperated fuel, it will go _BANG!_ And you don't want to be inside that volume when it ignites. +> +> Also take care: Arson should be a last resort because it's considered to be a violent and dangerous crime. Ask yourself wether your life is in danger or whether your child's life is in danger and whether burning the vehicle is what's absolutely required to safeguard your life or the life of your children. If the answer is No, just don't do it. + +Another important aspect of running from a spouse or boy/girlfriend: **_If they have firearms, think about getting them._** If you are comfortable handling any firearms your opposition might have which you feel could be used against you, acquire them and -- if they're small hand guns -- deposit them in a postal box as soon as you can. The postal box on the end of any business district street is fine and it doesn't matter that it's close to your house or apartment that you're fleeing. + +Assuming you're a housewife with little to no experience with guns: + +* Remove the firearm from its drawer, night stand, or under the bed or the closet making sure that you keep your hands and fingers away from the trigger. Nearly all firearms will not discharge if you keep your fingers away from the trigger. All firearms require the weapon to be either cocked before it will discharge else one must use a fairly heavy pull on the trigger to both cock and fire the weapon. If a weapon has been cocked, it could be that even the slightest pressure \-- some three pounds or less -- could discharge the weapon. For this reason, keep your fingers away from the trigger! +* Always be fully aware of where the barrel of the firearm is pointing. Keep it pointed in a direction which will not result in injury of yourself or anyone else in the event the gun discharges. Ground-floor apartment dwellers should point the firearm down. Other-floor apartment dwellers should point the firearm at the television, book-shelves, radiator, heater, or air conditioner -- anything heavy which would stop the bullet if the firearm discharges. Most apartment complexes' walls and most residential houses' walls are too thin to stop most of the popular projectiles. +* If you know what to do, clear the weapon. If you don't know what to do or are uncomfortable clearing the weapon, **_don't try it._** + +In revolvers, there is a round cylinder which you can see has a number of tubes inside. You should also be able to see some of the bullets in the cylinder if it is loaded. On revolvers, one must usually pull a long metal pin resting under the length of the barrel before the round cylinder will swing out to the left. In some revolvers, after pulling the pin out until it stops, one must also pull back the hammer before the cylinder will swing out. With an eye toward where the barrel is pointing at all time, clear the weapon by swinging the weapon's barrel up. The bullets should slide down toward the floor and into your hand. If not, having the cylinder swung open makes the weapon safe enough to transport to a postal box. + +In semi-automatics, there is ammunition stored in the handle of the gun inside of a removable clip. There is usually a lever at the base of the handle which, when pressed, releases the clip. The clip may not slide out on its own in which case you must press the lever and pull the clip out using both hands. On some semi-automatics, there is no lever but there is a screw which one must turn. + +Even after removing the clip from a semi-automatic or swinging the cylinder out a revolver, the weapon should not be considered safe. Check to see if there is a round chambered in the barrel. In a revolver, with the cylinder swung out, it will be easy to see if the barrel has a bullet chambered. In a semi-automatic, the way to check to make sure there's no round in the chamber is -- after the clip is removed -- to pull back the cocking mechanism to eject any chambered round. If there is, a bullet will be ejected to your right and behind you a few feet so don't be surprised when it does. + +After clearing the weapon, you should have a gun that either has the cylinder swung open or the cocking mechanism locked open. Most semi-automatics will lock open when the last round is emptied from the gun yet many will not lock open. + +* When you can, deposit the safely-emptied firearm in a postal box. If you couldn't clear the weapon, go ahead and deposit the firearm in a postal box anyway. + +Leaving the firearm in a visibly-safe state will make it easier on the postal employee who runs into the firearm when he or she empties the postal box you drop it into. I suggest routing any firearms which might be used against you to the postal service because postal employees have standing orders not to touch what may be evidence and to contact the police. (The letters and boxes taken from the postal box will also be subjected to several day's -- if not weeks -- delays as they are checked and the origination and destination addresses checked. Because of that, you shouldn't deposit any letters you might feel to write in the same box as they will be delayed.) + +The police will keep any firearm you deposit into a postal box for a long, long time, perhaps even destroying it even though it's not been used in a crime. The fact that you are missing will mean that the firearm **_will not be returned_** to your abusive spouse or boy/girlfriend to be used against you. More: In many States the right to purchase another firearm will be either revoked or denied until the disposition of your whereabouts is ascertained. Dropping your opposition's firearms into a postal box will effectively transfer ownership to the police and de-claw your opposition greatly. + +Private detective agencies don't usually operate for free. If your opposition has no financial resources to draw upon, they are limited to a great extent. If you're a criminal, they'll still use the police agencies of the country to track you down, of course, at which point it's simply a matter of time before they find you. If you're not on the run for a criminal act, police authorities will have no reason to try to find you and, lacking private detective services, your opposition will be working alone. + +If you're running from the IRS, know that your opposition has unlimited resources and, depending upon how much money you owe, a broad spectrum of motivation for finding you. If you're running from the criminal law, you should know that you ** will** eventually get caught regardless of what measures you take to hide yourself. It's only a question of time before they find you. + +In summary, stay motivated and work to reduce both the motivation and the financial avenues of your opposition. Know who your opposition is and what they'll likely employ to find you. Work to reduce the effectiveness of what your opposition is likely to do to find you. If your opposition has weapons which could be used against you, give them to the police by using the post office. + +![---][1] + +**Section 3: Throw away yourself and build a new you** + +Before you go to ground, destroy as much of the old you as possible. You want to go beyond making yourself disappear: You want to make it seem as if you never existed. This means that you should do as much of the following as possible before and after you disappear: + +* Destroy all photographs you have access to before you disappear. This includes family volumes of photographs that family members have. Your family members may or may not be supportive and hand over (to your opposition) all of their photographs of you depending upon your situation. Your family could be forced to support your opposition through threat of law or through physical violence. If you destroy all photographs of you, they can't be shown around gas stations and quick food stops. + +If at all possible, your opposition should be reduced to passing out artist renditions of you. Even if you have police mug shots on file or have a drivers license photograph on file, it's still a good idea to limit the availability of photographs. Make the opposition use old photographs rather than up-to-date photographs if you can. + +* Discard all your worldly possessions except cash. Most importantly destroy and discard all of your credit cards! The instant you use a credit card or an ATM bank card while on the run is the instant the authorities or private investigators know where you are. Before you run you should empty all bank accounts anyway. Gas debit cards can also be used to find you. Telephone calling cards can be used to find you. In fact, any magnetic card with your name or the name of someone you know can and will be used to find your general area. Destroy them all. If the FBI, DEA, BATF, CIA, or any number of other agencies are involved in searching for you, they can pinpoint your location within minutes of you using a magnetic card. + +Don't even think about hanging onto a credit card or other type of magnetic card for an emergency. You might think about maxing-out your cards then converting what you purchase to quick cash... but don't take cards with you! What you don't have can't tempt you to give your location away. **_When you're cold and hungry_** you will be tempted to use any cards you keep so destroy them before that happens. + +* Purchase clothes you normally wouldn't consider wearing and put them on in a place where you won't be observed. Cut your old clothes into pieces and flush them down the toilet -- you don't want your old clothes to be found. (O. J. Simpson probably discarded the shoes and clothes he wore when he probably murdered two people by depositing them into an airport trash can. Don't rely on blind luck to save you like he probably did: Destroy your old clothes and flush them!) +* Abandon your car. Don't bother driving your car into a lake or an ocean. They can be seen from helicopters or, at minimum, fresh tracks left in the mud surrounding lakes can be spotted from the air easier than by people from the ground. Since you're giving up an asset, make giving it up work for you. + +Abandoning your car in a place where you feel confident it will be stripped and sold by thieves is a good idea yet you're left with having to walk out of a probably dangerous neighborhood. + +Leave the pink slip of the car in the glove box to make it easier for thieves to chop and sell your abandoned car. Leave a door unlocked so they don't have to break a window. You want the car to be taken in mass rather than picked apart on the street where a cop will spot it so it's best that you leave the key in the ignition while you're at it. Before you walk away from your car, leave the engine running, in fact, so that a thief will feel more comfortable stealing it. You could make it look like you're just running into a store to buy something quickly. + +* Don't use a taxi service any time you're fleeing. Taxi drivers and their dispatcher will take records of everyone picked up and dropped off and often taxi drivers will be able to recall your description to match you to your destination. If you look like you're running from something, their memory of you will be even sharper. +* Purchase another car. In America one can slap down $300.00 and buy a pile of junk with no questions asked and no identification needed. If the seller has the pink slip and a key, you buy it if it's cheap and doesn't have anything a cop might consider stopping you for a safety violation. + +Make sure that the back license plate has a current registration and that the exhaust doesn't visibly smoke. Make sure the turn indicators are working and that you have headlights. Make sure the windshield has no cracks. Broken or missing break lights are often used as an excuse by police officers to pull over suspicious cars so make sure that the break lights are working. + +Don't do something stupid and buy a stolen car! If there's no pink slip and no ignition key, don't buy it. Match the VID number on the pink slip to the VID number on the metal plate usually mounted on the dash board under the windshield wipers. Match the license plate number. If one or both don't match, don't buy the car: the license plate could be stolen or the car could be stolen or both. + +Don't borrow a friend's car. Don't even think about borrowing a family member's car. There are cameras situated along America's highways and, while I don't know their resolving capabilities, I think it's likely that the make and model of cars streaming past them can be made. Even if they can't resolve your car, a borrowed car is a **_ known _** avenue of your escape so avoid it. + +You might consider a street motorcycle, in fact, since they're as mobile as one can get without using a horse. Motorcycles, however, draw more police attention to them if they look chopped and fast. Your personal appearance on a motorcycle can help deduct from any suspicion that is a normal part of riding a motorcycle in America. A suit and tie might be a good idea: "Mr. Business Man" or "Ms. Business Woman" clothes and appearance might help. + +* Don't fill up your newly-acquired car with any of your personal belongings. If you get stopped by a cop or a cop drives by you, you don't want it to look like you're packed up to the ceiling with all your worldly possessions. You need to discard everything you own and don't let it show that you're doing anything other than commuting to or from work. Even if the cop doesn't stop you, if word gets around that you've gone missing, the cop is more likely to remember a stuffed car than all the countless cars simply commuting. They'll match your profile against your description and may recall the general -- if not the exact -- type of car you may be driving. If you want to escape notice of the cops, you need to blend in. + +Cops work off of profiles: They are trained to spot the unusual as well as how to spot individuals fitting a variety of profiles. Someone on the run fits several profiles. You want to "fall out of the net" and slip through the typical police profiles. + +A cup of coffee on the dashboard in front of a guy or gal wearing work clothes arouses no suspicions. You're on your way to work, not running from someone. + +Don't studiously avoid catching a cop's eye, by the way. Lean back in your seat, left arm on the window sill, right hand on the steering wheel at the 6:00 O'Clock position. Take a sip of your coffee, water, or Diet Coke every now and then, and try to act like you're a mindless commuter getting from point A to point B with the rest of the lemmings. + +You're not frightened that you'll get stopped. You're not anxious of what will happen when your wife or boyfriend discovers you've left. You'll need to adopt a carefree attitude and outward composure. If you're an illegal alien, you should be thinking about joining the work force and becoming a productive member of your new society, not thinking about the friends and family you might have left behind. Cops, immigration, and everyday people can smell your anxiety and fear so you'll want to focus on the positive aspects of why you're on the run. + +* **Don't run from the cops in a car or motorcycle!** If you're in a car or on a motorcycle, pull over, stop, turn the engine off, and show your hands. If you like, get out and run. (More on bailing out of cars and running later.) The worse thing you can do is try to run with your car. Not only will you kill someone, the police will be **_very_** motivated to do what it takes to stop you before you do kill someone. In America that includes pulling along side you and popping you with Mr. Shotgun. If you're driving 120 through the streets of Los Angeles, you become a fatal threat and will be handled with fatal force. **_Don't think that you and your car can get away!_** You can't. These days nobody can. Believe it. You can't outrun radio or helicopters and the police aren't just going to go away. Spike strips will puncture your tires and slow you down even more. (Eventually there will be devices deployed which will destroy an engine's ignition system, operated through a remote-control radio link.) These days nobody gets away and you are a dangerous fool to try it in America. **_Believe it._** +* Don't tell _anyone_ where you're planning to go or what you're planning to do. For as long as possible, don't ask friends for help or shelter -- most of all never ask family members! Don't telephone anyone to say "good bye." Don't have any contact with friends or family! Police authorities will monitor their residential lines and private investigators can easily tap loop-start residential lines with not much more than two pieces of equipment costing all of $200.00 each. +* Leave town. Don't go to any place you've talked about or stated a desire to visit. Don't run to any place predictable. Don't hide in a city or town you've ever been to or contains known family members. Don't do something obviously stupid like running to **_ Las Vegas _** or **_Hollywood._** If you're taking children out of an abusive family, leave town and go immediately to a shelter in another State -- preferably a State which has laws which help to protect battered men or women from their ex-spouses or live-ins. (References provided toward the end of this essay.) +* Alter your buying habits. When you throw your old self away, you need to discard as many predictable patterns as possible. One of the most common mistakes when hiding is maintaining old habits. If you're a smoker, stop. If you don't smoke, start. If you enjoy hot and spicy foods, stop purchasing those items and change to mild foods. If you frequent bars, stop. This may seem an unusual step but you're working toward disappearing, right? Patterns are predictable. Break them. + +There is the possibility that in the future people may be identifiable by their purchasing habits. Granted the point-of-sale data collected by computers would need to be **immense** yet eventually pattern-recognition software **may** some day be able to provide authorities with perhaps 100 of the best possible "hits" on people matching your known buying habits. When -- if ever -- that becomes a reality, you can be sure you won't know about it until it's shown on cable television. By that time the technology will have been in use for years and you may end up on a list of possible matching a purchase profile. + +* It's best to avoid going to **_ McDonnald's _** or other fast food places if you have a habit of doing so. When spotted in a city the authorities will divide and eliminate sections of the city. If you like certain fast food places and they know this, they will keep an eye out for you in those areas. These places also have been installing cameras which watch over the counter and the eating areas -- cameras you can't see and cameras you can see. This is also true of many drive-through areas as well though the camera angle is usually covered up by a one-way concave mirrored surface. + +![---][1] + +**Section 4: Keep from depositing traces of yourself** + +Every place you go, you inadvertently leave pieces of yourself. Every article of clothing, every door knob, every carpet, every telephone, every toilet seat you use will contain pieces of you. Your skin is flaking off all the time. You need to decide whether there is a risk of the authorities or private investigators looking for you tracking you through your blood type or DNA (which can be worked-up by using pieces of your hair.) After you weigh the risks, take the precautions you deem are needed. + +* Wear a hat indoors. Wearing a hat in a hotel room won't remove the probability of you leaving hair follicles in the room yet it will reduce the **_number_** of such particles making finding evidence difficult. Cutting your hair until it's real short will also help. And that's what you want to do: Limit the amount of physical evidence which can be used to track you. +* Use "toilet seat protectors" -- so-called "Ass Gaskets" -- where they are provided to reduce the possibility of leaving skin, sweat, or other body fluids on the seat. These substances can be swabbed into glass vials and be used to identify you. Paper seat covers will either eliminate this problem else reduce it greatly. +* **NEVER** lick an envelope or a stamp for obvious reasons! If it is known you're in a particular city your general location can be inferred by the physical location of your correspondence in a stack collected by the postal authority. You shouldn't mail anyone anything unless it's done so anonymously (wear gloves when handling paper) yet if you feel the need, remember that if you lick something and it leaves your control, you may as well take out an advertisement in the newspapers broadcasting your general location. +* Don't leave blood, semen, or menstrual discharge behind you as you run. If you happen to spill your blood on something, there's not a damn thing you can do to get it cleaned-up so you may as well not expend the effort to try. Even if you were to clean it up entirely and then wash everything down with gasoline, there are substances which can spot minute traces of blood and technologies which can type extremely minute traces. Even burning the building down to the ground is pointless: Spill your blood and you've left a clue you can't retract at any cost. Don't even try as you make it worse by spending time trying. +* Wipe every surface in your hotel before you leave. For good measure, wipe every surface in any bathroom you may use along the road. Keep in mind that you need to use soap and water when you wipe away your fingerprints and skin tissue otherwise you'll only leave a bunch of smudges which can be reconstructed using contemporary computer imaging technologies. + +Toss your wiping materials down the toilet. (If you're on an airplane, ** don't** toss anything down the toilet as it goes to a holding tank which can be raked for evidence later. Carry-out your wiping papers with you inside your shirt under an armpit and flush them in a normal toilet when you can. (Note: Visible bulges under your shirt will be considered by flight attending employees to be indicating the real possibility that you're smuggling drugs. If you must hide a lot of wipe materials, you should distribute them among your body to eliminate bulges, otherwise you may be escorted to a little white room and made to strip. When they find you're hiding damp paper towels, you'll have some explaining to do.) + +Be sure to wipe everything **including things you didn't touch!** Scientifically-controlled testing shows that people touch objects without realizing it or being able to recall having touched them. The only way to be absolutely certain you remove finger prints from everything you touch is to clean everything within reach. + +By the way: Rubbing alcohol is pretty good at getting up the natural oils which comprise the majority of your fingerprints so perhaps before you run you should acquire a bottle and keep it with you. + +Before you leave your hotel room, hang the "please make-up this room as soon as possible" sign on the door handle, taking care not to leave your prints on the sign. You want the room vacuumed, cleaned, and touched by hotel employees as soon as possible. + +Don't wear gloves where you can be seen yet do wear gloves when you won't be seen. + +* Don't eat in restaurants. Your drinking glasses and eating utensils will contain pieces of you. Fast-food places without cameras are okay provided you be sure to take the food with you and can flush paper down a toilet. If you eat at a fast-food place and discard of your trash in the trash bin, you're leaving a trail behind you. (It's a difficult trail to follow, granted, yet still a trail.) + +**Don't forget** that most fast-food places and mini-markets these days will videotape you. Even the smallest stores usually run continual videotape of everyone who enters, leaves, and stands in the check-out line. + +Don't look for the cameras; notice where they are _not_ and then focus on that spot. Turning your head up to look at a camera changes the shadow and contrast attributes of the video shots of you drastically so, as you enter a shop, keep you face down and look at spots where you off-handedly know cameras are not mounted. (In fact, practice becoming aware of where visible cameras are. Lately cameras are becoming invisible so eventually you'll never know where they are. You **_ can _** learn where cameras are usually located, however. Learning the location of cameras you can see will tell you a lot about the possible locations of cameras you won't see.) + +Contemporary computer imaging software can take multiple video shots of you from different camera angles and combine them in extraordinary ways. Poor quality video shots of differing contrasts, brightness, and angles can be processed on a computer to yield good quality photographs of you. Your job is to limit the number and attributes of raw video shots taken of you. This is a damn difficult thing to do, of course. + +![---][1] + +**Section 5: Keeping yourself hidden** + +Running is the easiest part. Hiding is a bit harder. Staying hidden is the difficult part. The difficulties are determined by the resolve and resources of those hunting you. If the government wants to find you, they will unless you are willing to sacrifice **everything.** + +* If you run to the hills, satellites can see you and identify the type and color of the automobile you're driving. If you've hidden yourself in a cabin, your thermal signature will be seen from satellites. Even if you drive to a road and abandon your vehicle and walk to a cabin 30 miles away, a body heat source in a cabin in the desert or in the woods with no corresponding automobile heat source can signal where you are. It's suspicious. + +Satellites can bounce LASER light off of your windows and, by measuring the minute distance differences between a vibrating window and the satellite, reconstruct your speech -- from orbit! I don't know how much this process costs yet it was demonstrated for PBS some years ago so it may not be all that expensive. The quality of the audio is poor but it can be understood. + +Incidentally: Some of the higher technology law enforcement agencies (FBI, CIA, lately BATF) employ "adaptive mirrors" for some of their optical law enforcement efforts. A signal is bounced off of an object, and the signal contains marking information and timing information. The return bounce tells the computer system a great deal of information about the atmospheric conditions, temperatures of the air and surfaces, and a host of other attributes about the environment (such as humidity.) + +The computer system evaluates conditions and then adapts mirrored surfaces to remove distortion, providing amazingly clean audio surveillance from orbit upon unsuspecting suspects. As you can imagine, it's expensive and law enforcement doesn't apply the technology to every fugitive. It's used against law breakers only in extreme cases. The technology is usually applied in intelligence gathering missions for NATO-aligned countries. + +If a satellite must be re-missioned or maneuvered, obviously the cost goes up -- but then if they do that, they've launched a man hunt against you which you probably won't escape anyway. Cloud cover won't help. Smog won't help. Tree coverage will help a little but don't rely on it. + +* The eyes track motion. If there are helicopters looking for you, it is always best to hide in a bush or up in a tree rather than running it out on foot. Your body heat will probably give you away any way. If you have a helicopter looking for you, bury yourself in mud and leaves and you stand a chance of not being detected by your body heat. A river, lake, or stream can mask your body heat, of course, yet those would be obvious places to look for you. + +I might add that helicopter pilots are trained to follow the driver of automobiles when they bail out and leave any other occupants of the car that bail out to the ground officers. If you're driving a car and bail out (which is the safe, smart move rather than trying to make a run for it with the car) with a helicopter watching over you, climb over to the rear right hand seat and bail out from there, never from the driver's seat. If they don't know you're alone, they may mistakenly wait for the driver. It might even help to kick open the driver's door before climbing out the back door. If you do that, though, you could be identified as the driver by your clothes so consider the problem. + +If you're walking or running through hills or wooded areas, the eyes of your opposition will track your motion. If you're motionless, picking you out of the visual clutter will be difficult. Even dogs have trouble picking up a stationary object. + +* Speaking of dogs, I've yet to see a human capable of outrunning a healthy dog. You can confuse them by running around objects a few times and -- always traditional -- running downstream a swiftly moving stream of water. + +Running upstream should be avoided. Your scent will be carried downstream and you wish to go with it otherwise you leave a long tail behind you. + +Dogs will go for your feet or hands when you're running then for your hands when you're down. They're trained not to go for the throat (though I've heard that some police trained dogs will if given specific instructions to.) Since they are trained not to bark until they are close to you, you will probably not hear the dog getting closer. + +Dogs usually work with one officer. Putting more than one dog on an individual's trail is very rarely done. The officer usually holds onto the dog's leash yet that slows the dog down considerably. Dogs that have had their voices removed are rarely released for long-distance track downs. + +If a police dog confronts you with an officer, give up. If the police dog has been sent on ahead, kill the dog. You should sacrifice a bit of flesh to do this effectively: Offer your "dumb" hand to the dog and let it take it. (First wrap your arm in a shirt if you can.) Use the knife in your "smart" hand and try to drive it through the dog's braincase. + +This will work provided the dog hasn't seen your knife. They know what they look like and what they're used for. Anything in your hand, in fact, even if it's a jacket or a pair of socks will be treated with much suspicion by the dog and the dog will be trained to go after the hand with the object in it. + +Dogs are trained to expect their targets to scream and yell such amusing phrases as "Argh! Get him off me! Get him off me!" That makes the dog immune to the emotional pleas of its victims. They're trained to ignore all commands except those of its master and in some cases they are trained to understand commands given in different languages. + +Trying to get both hands around the dog's neck is probably a mistake since doing so will be next to impossible. If you **_can_** get your hands around the neck and you don't have a knife, lift the dog off the ground and shake it until its neck snaps. You can try to squeeze the dog's windpipe closed yet that takes strength and time. It's best to break the neck. You've been on the run and will probably lack the strength needed to strangle the dog. + +There was a discussion several years ago about police dogs' bodies being used to offer clues as to the general location of the criminal they had been tracking. If possible, hike the dog's body along with you and dispose of it later. If you use a knife, leave it in the dog as the blade can and will be used to identify you if you're caught with it. + +* When running from ground forces, it is expected that you'll: + * They will expect you to: Run directly away from the opposition. You'll want to put as much distance between yourself and your opposition as possible. That may be a bad decision since escape could be to your left or your right. You don't want to be driven into a trap by running directly away from the ground forces. If they can see you, running directly away could be leading you into a trap -- they have radios and you probably don't. They have helicopters. If they can't see you, take an unexpected tangent to their pursuit. It won't put as much distance between you at first but if they walk past you at a distance, you win for a while. + * They will expect you to: Seek the high ground. There is the idea that if one puts a mountain between you and your pursers, you're home free. From the top of a mountain or high hills you can better see possible avenues of escape. Your opposition will expect you to climb. Ravines and passes are going to be easier, allowing you to move faster though perhaps not as far away from the opposition as you would like. Going around a mountain could take more time than going over -- you decide how you want to do it. If you go over the top, you stand a chance of being seen and you also have more of a helicopter treat. + * They will expect you to: Go to ground (or "hole up.") If you're hurt or just tired, hungry, and desperate, you will probably want to go to ground. It is expected that as your pursers get closer to you, you'll find a hole to climb into, a tree to climb, or something equally disastrous. In the cities, the criminals are often found under a bush, in a tree, under a car, in someone's shed on a roof. At some point it's expected that you'll stop running and try to hide. With today's technology, that's a bad idea. Keep going until you're unable to. You can catch up on your sleep when they catch you or when they put a few rounds into your back. + * They will expect you to: Take the easiest route to escape capture. You may want to do things which are totally unexpected by doing things the hard way. If you're tramping through the forest along a trail walking at high speed, making good time toward freedom, you may want to toss that away, break from the trail, climb the ridge if there is one, and crash through the bush for ten miles. They'll expect you to walk in the shade if it's a hot day and along water ways if it's a hot day. Decide whether taking the easy way and being predictable is acceptable. + * They will expect you to: Doubled back on yourself. If you can work your way around a hill free from the eyes of your opposition, and double back on yourself, you have increased the chances of escape. Your opposition will be looking for signs that you've double backed on yourself. You're leaving a scent trail for every dog in the area to follow so that should be of some consideration when you double back. You need to try to create a break in your trail at the point you change direction. This could mean walking backwards a bit, climbing a tree, working your way through the branches to other trees, climbing down, and then working your way back the way you came. **Even if you don't suspect that you're being trailed, it is probably a good idea to break your trail from time to time if you can.** You could start being followed hours later, after all. + * They will expect you to: Work your way to your right. You might be tempted not to keep an eye on landmarks and set yourself goals to acquire in the distance. If you're worried about and focused upon getting away, your natural behavior will be to circle to your right if you're right handed, to the left if you're left handed. If it's at night, pick out the North Star and set your course by it rather than rely upon your internal direction sense to travel. + +![---][1] + +**Section 6: People and Organizations Which Can Assist You** + +It's getting harder and harder to hide in America. There used to be a loose defacto "underground" of "freedom loving" people \-- hippies, if you will -- who would provide aid, shelter, and comfort to those on the run from Authority (or The Establishment, The Man, The Fuzz, The P. I. G.) + +These days, however, in our increasingly paranoid and dangerous society, offering assistance to strangers is a bad idea: It gets people killed. One must rely upon professional organizations which assist people who need to hide from abusive people. **Professional organizations, however, will want you to have a virtuous reason for running and hiding and will want to help you by reporting you to the authorities if they feel they should.** None that I know of assist you if you're running from a law enforcement agency. (Note: Foreign agents operating in America might be willing to assist you yet that falls outside the scope of this commentary. Arrive at the embassy of your choice and make your offers and perhaps they'll grant you provisional security from police authorities.) + +The hippies have given way to another class of citizen. These are the so-called "skin heads," punk rockers, and New Age nuts. While many are social misfits, most interact with "regular society" in their off-hours and rock-out at night or on the week ends. + +The anti-establishment and socially disassociated populace has always existed and has always been an asset to those on the run. Your job is to find them if you need them. Be honest with such people since they know the score and will shine you on if you're a lying jerk. + +* Motorcycle Hangouts. + +Buy people drinks, talk politics, express your viewpoints, and get to know the people in motorcycle hangouts. + + * Express an honest interest in learning how to ride safely. Find out what it's like to drop everything and ride to feel free. + * Eventually, let a few you think you can trust know that you're looking for a place to hang out "out of the way" for a couple of days. Don't press the issue and don't ask outright for shelter. Ask around about where a good spot to sleep is out in the hills where the cops won't find you. Someone may offer you a tent in his backyard. + * Ask where a good place is to find something to eat or get day labor. Someone may offer you a fiver or yard work. + +Honestly make friends with some of the people. Your best bet is not to lead people on and take advantage of them but to actually befriend people who can help you hide and then -- hopefully -- start a new life with a new identity. + +Motorcycle riders have reputations they must defend and domination games they must play. If you're on the run or need a place to hide, understand that you are Beta Male among Alpha Males. Understand that these are usually good people worthy of your friendship who can and will help you. Understand that _you_ must fit into _their_ society of Alpha and Beta males and accept their domination games. Many gangs are only minor criminals with codes of honor and ethics, existing only to drink, fuck, and ride with their buddies -- bikers who have regular jobs during the week and hang out and ride when they can. Not all motorcycle gangs are druggie murderers and thieves. These days in America, bikers like that are few in number. + +* Punk Rock or New Age dance studios. + +This group of people tend to be younger than the motorcycle crowd. Your best bet for assistance will be among the younger kids but, being young, they'll probably be living with their parents and have no resources to help you with. They probably know where you can sleep safely, however, and will know who might have jobs available. + +With punkers it will be okay to let it be known outright that you're looking to find a place to hide from the cops for awhile. The punkers with the proper punk attitude will "know someone who might know someone" who can help you find a place to cool off for awhile -- or maybe find a meal or two. + +* Gay bars. + +Gay bars are a good place to go if you're needing a meal or a safe place to spend a couple of nights. Of course it helps if you're good-looking yet most people at gay and straight bars are looking for companionship first and hoping for sex second. It doesn't matter if you're gay or straight: What people want is companionship and interesting people to talk with first and foremost. If you're interesting or have interesting stories to tell, finding someone in a gay bar can be mutually beneficial to the both of you. + +When it comes down to it, it doesn't pay to be shy... let someone take you home with them. Get a bath, a meal, and a place to sleep for awhile. Don't over stay your welcome, however. Offer to leave from time to time and when asked to do so, do so. Return to the same bar later and make yourself known. + +* Homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and churches. Most moderate or large cities will have shelters and soup kitchens operated by either the State government or religious organizations. Questions are usually never asked though such places usually like to make sure you're not holding dope or weapons before they'll let you stay. If possible, try to see if there's any work in the kitchen or dorms you could do to repay their kindness. Such people who exhibit a willingness to work will be afforded assistance finding a paying job -- which is something you'll want to do since you're trying to build a new life. + +![---][1] + +**Section 7: Employment: Food, Shelter While on the Run, While Underground** + +The idea is to run and hide only as long as you have to and then start rebuilding your life under a new identity. Homeless shelters, job placement services, and day labor can give you hope and help while you're struggling to make your new life. You're using a computer so I assume that you have food and shelter now and possibly employment. **Save up your money before you run** and you'll give yourself a chance. + +If you're in a city or town, you stand a better chance of feeding yourself and keeping yourself from freezing to death. There are often shelters run by Christian, Muslim, or Jewish organizations which will feed you and put you up. It may be dangerous to do so simply because such places are usually -- nearly always -- in dangerous neighborhoods. If you're wearing the wrong color face, you have to compare the possibility of violence and abuse against hunger. If you look like you're on the run, you could be victimized in the city. Those who would victimize you know you won't go to the cops. You're on your own in an area where punks band together out of boredom. + +Finding work is your best bet. You're using a computer right now so it is assumed that you have a job (or are married without a paying job) and as such have some marketable skills. Even without marketable skills, you can find employment if you're willing to work hard. + +Suppose you're a wife looking to leave an abusive husband. Suppose you're a teen-ager looking to leave an abusive mother or father. How would you feed and house yourself when you run and hide? If you're young, you can expect to be raped (boy **or** girl) drugged, and horribly abused when living on American streets so you must consider that fact and go for a children's shelter instead. + +Hopefully you've managed to save aside some cash but that won't last long. There ** are** jobs that you can do: + +* Day Labor: Normally day labor is back-breaking, hot and sweaty work and is given to men. Women can get day labor cleaning -- houses, hotels, dishes... it's hard work but it **is** out there. You may be paid cash for day labor and no one will ask you questions. If you have a skill (such as sewing, tree trimming, or painting) your pay will be higher than if you're just moving dirt or laying down bricks. + +Without other expenses, day labor should be enough to feed yourself and maybe save some cash aside against the day you find a serious job and rent an apartment with friends. + +By the way: Most day labor consists of men who speak Spanish with only a few words of English (at least this is the case in the United States.) Most will be Mexican workers with families to support. Nearly all will be **_extremely_** hard working individuals who know that when the day is over and they get their pay, tomorrow the work bosses will be out picking up day laborers again and they'll pick faces they recognize as hard workers. Competition for work is heavy so joining a group of day laborers could be difficult. No one asks questions, any way, which you would find embarrassing. + +If you attempt to perform day labor by hanging out with other day labor crew, if you're wearing a white face you stand a better chance of being looked over carefully by police and private individuals than if you're wearing a brown face. + +* Most cities will have job placement services run by governmental workers. They'll want a home address and identification so be ready with a real residential address even though it may not be your real one (because you may not have one.) When asked for identification, state that you've been on the street "for a long, long time" and, if they would help, you would like to get a State identification card and a Social Security number and "start living like a normal human being." **Since you might want to be difficult to contact, you should be the one to _check with governmental job placement services every day_ to see if they have something for you.** The address of local shelters will often work for contact addresses for you. + +**It is a _crime_ to defraud** your State or Federal government so you must be clear on this: Your intention is to build yourself a better life. A Social Security card issued to you under a false identity **_MUST_** be considered by you to be absolutely honest and real. That Social Security number is issued to someone you have wholly become. You will pay taxes to that account and you will file income reports with that account number. That's **_you_** now, not a fake. Because you're paying your taxes and working at an honest living, if your real identity is found out, people will maybe be reasonable about the fact that you've been working hard to be a productive, tax-paying member of society. (Of course if you're a wanted criminal, trying to "fly right" by paying your fair share of the tax burden won't cut you much slack in front of a judge.) + +NOTE: Food coupons could be issued to you if you qualify though you may need a valid mailing address. Check with your local social services office to find out whether this could help you. + +* If you're clean and neat, you could get minimum wage at a fast-food place and be allotted a lower price for your meals. Cut your hair short \-- but not too short, regardless of whether you're a man or a woman. Remove facial hair if you've got it. Look neat and clean. Consider shaving your arms if you're a man -- seriously. Women usually do in the United States and it's perfectly acceptable for men to do likewise. Lacking skills, you must work to make yourself look more acceptable, better capable of filling a fast-food job than the rest standing behind you also wanting that job. + +This might not be a good job for you since you'll be working with the public and you may not want your face to be seen so much. (And don't forget that nearly all fast-food places have cameras these days watching everything that goes on.) + +* Restaurants, like fast-food places, are another place to check out. Even though kitchens have automatic dish washers these days (there are regulations about water temperature) someone still must load the washers, sort the dishes, and move them about. Someone also has to keep the floors clean. Working a restaurants is hard work and low-pay but, like fast-food places, one's meals will be discounted in cost or provided by the establishment as part of one's wages. These places are often trade-unionized so you might have trouble with being forced to join the union. If at all possible, don't. (Some States have a "Right To Work" law which makes enforced payment to union organizations (that is to say, to organized crime) illegal. Check to see if the State you're working in has a "Right To Work" law.) Every dollar you don't have to pay out of pocket translates to food and freedom. **_Unions are a fraud and don't provide anything you can use._** +* If you can type, data entry is a job that's very much in demand. It's long hours and low pay but it'll keep you from starving to death. Data entry (and card keypunch operating) often require taking numbers and text off of printed forms and, for nine or ten hours a day, typing them into a computer. That work often gets printed to paper and then audited line-by-line against the form data to make sure there were no mistakes. This is mentally challenging work better suited for women than for men, I will add, and employers know this. They usually hire women for data entry and card keypunch. +* Telephone solicitation. You don't need too many skills to dial a telephone number and read from a script when your "victim" answers. The script that you would work off of will lead toward getting information from the person you reach. The information is usually typed into a database. The required abilities here are wearing a headset, working a desktop telephone display set, and keying in information into a form on a screen as you read from a script and get information. These places can be either boiler-plate sweat shops or nicely air-conditioned buildings, either selling crap nobody needs else selling goods and services some will find useful. Your pay will be determined by either the number of hours you put in or the number of calls you make or the number of subscriptions (or units of merchandise) you sell. +* You could get a job in a warehouse or distribution center. Men usually can find work in either a warehouse or a distribution center yet women stand a better chance of getting work in a distribution center. The reason is because in a distribution center, clothes, food, books, video tapes, shoes et al. are shipped by the manufacturer to the distribution center which sorts them for shipment to the stores. This type of work is usually given to women. + +The sorting and counting of shirts and socks, moving items from bins to bins according to written orders, starts out being an unskilled job. As an employee of a distribution center (or a warehouse) has been with the company for some time, they are given more responsibility which often require working with computers and using the telephone to correct problems with customers and suppliers. Eventually warehouse management skills are acquired and such skills are in demand. Learning to work with customers to solve problems with filling orders and billing is a very good skill to cultivate. + +* I don't know anything about dock working and I suspect that dock workers are trade unionized. If you lack marketable skills, you might check into dock work. +* I also don't know anything about clothing manufacturing factories. If you can sew or operate a sewing machine, cut from patterns, and work looms, you might consider this. I hear that the pay is often less than minimum wage and that illegal labor is often employed. Raids are not infrequent, either. +* Farm work, picking nuts, oranges, vegetables, grapes and such can be found in parts of Centeral and Northern California however once again there is a glut of available illegal Mexican labor out there that you would be competing with. + +No job, little to no money, and you're hungry? + +There is often food stored in people's garages in rural areas where the population density is lower than the major cities and there's few homeless people on the streets. Freezers containing food are common. Gardens containing vegetables in the back yard is common. **Theft should be considered a last resort** however since the object is to rebuild a new, normal life, not a criminal one. It should be a last resort because there **are** other ways to get food. + +If you're out in the desert or the woods, either running or holed up somewhere, you should face up to the fact that you're going to lose weight. The idea that with a rifle and a box of ammunition and a book of matches you can survive for a long period of time is wishful thinking. There are a lot of "survivalists" in the United States who, like their self-professed "militia" intellectual colleagues honestly believe they could survive in the woods if they had to. + +That's nonsense. There was a time when it was possible but those days are long over. Biodiversity in the major Westernized societies has been decimated, often with pollution and introduced pests. Disease among the plants and animals you would eat must be taken into consideration. The deer you eat, the fish you eat, and the rabbits you eat will sustain you only for so long (if not make you violently ill) and then your body is going to need other foodstuffs. You can delay the eventuality of malnutrition with multi-vitamins but eventually you'll need to forage wider and wider for fruits, nuts, and vegetables -- not to mention fresh water which is often in very short supply. (Camp grounds, don't forget.) + +If it was easy or reasonably possible to survive in the woods, everyone who hates their jobs would be doing it. Don't kid yourself: If you're on the run, you must remain in contact with human habitation and either work for or steal food or get food from a shelter in the city. If you're holed up some where (in a tent in the hills overlooking a city, perhaps) stock up on canned goods if you can. Don't rely on what you can pick up from the land. You run the risk of drawing attention to yourself as you visit the city (assuming you've got a hide out in the woods or desert) but you should consider adopting the risk since the alternative \-- malnutrition -- is worse. + +I mention this because the idea is to hide until you can rebuild your life and start living a normal life. If you eat nothing but fish for three months, malnutrition is going to reduce your chances of getting a job or having enough energy for working day labor -- or having the energy to run again if your hiding place is discovered. Keep yourself as healthy as possible by taking the risks needed to obtain processed foods. + +Farms are a good place to find food but they're also a good place to run into dogs and farmers on horseback with rifles who also have access to telephones to report you. Orange groves, walnut trees, strawberry patches et al. often run along highways and they could be raided successfully and safely every now and then. You could work on a farm as "stoop labor" picking lettuce, oranges, grapes, and nuts in many States of the United States. + +![---][1] + +**Section 8: Checkpoints on America's Highways -- People Looking for you** + +Road blocks, police check points, sobriety checks, immigration check points, agricultural check points: You may be stopped and searched, your identification examined, and possibly compromised in America for these reasons while traveling on America's highways. Even if "they" don't have the check point up specifically looking for _you_, accidental catches happen frequently. (Ask any Highway Patrol Officer stopping a vehicle for a broken tail light. The California HP has the largest felony arrest record of any police agency anywhere in the world.) + +If there's a road block up looking specifically for you, you'll probably not have much of a chance anyway and you probably deserve to get caught. Usually, however, a road block is up looking for someone else or, as is common during holidays, sobriety checks can get you examined by the police. You'll want to avoid that. + +* Try not to travel during the holidays. Police are out in force due to drunk drivers and -- though it's considered unconstitutional -- pulling vehicles over and conducting searches without probable cause is more common during the holidays than outside of the holidays. + +You might consider using public transportation since bus and taxi drivers are not usually pulled over and, for no reason, checked. They're usually waved past most check points though such vehicles draw extra focus at police check points. (Note: Some States have made unconstitutional laws which allows their police officers to stop and search public transportation without probable cause. This latest unconstitutional series of laws is part of the government's insane "war on drugs" nonsense.) + +* Try to stay out of areas which have only one or a few roads leading in and out of it. Such places as you would probably consider your best place to lay low would be camping grounds and areas surrounding lakes. Such places are most often accessed by only one winding road which is very easy for the authorities to block and sift for you. Also, camp grounds provide sources of food and water -- which should be acquired, of course, at night. + +In remote areas such as forests, your opposition will be setting up a command post some where in your suspected location from which foot searches for you will radiate. Such command centers usually are selected for the availability of electricity, radios, telephones, and sanitation facilities. If you know the area you're in, you can bet that the command post is a fire station, ranger station, or perhaps a camp ground or gas station. + +The road blocks will be in communication via radio with the command post and, since they're probably line-of-site radios, expect road blocks to be within five or ten miles of the command post. That'll be a guess and there's no guarantee that everyone in the effort is talking to each other but it's a good bet they'll want to. You have to decide what the most probable size of the parameter around you is and make a guess as to where road blocks might be. + +Don't forget that radio doesn't have to be line-of-sight if the authorities are utilizing radio repeaters + +You need to abandon your vehicle before you come into eye contact with your opposition. If they see you and you try to turn around and get away, there's no point: you're just risking the lives of innocent people and you should stop your engine and show your hands else you should bail and run on foot. But if you hear on the radio that there's police activity in your area and you suspect a road block, taking off on foot might be your best bet. Your car is a lot easier to spot than just yourself -- and yo can dig in somewhere and walk over nearly everything whereas you can't drive a car in most places. + +**Listen to traffic reports!** You may be informed by your local news traffic reports that there is "police activity" in an area. That activity **_could_** be in your honor. + +One idea that seems to have some success is to drive down the road and abandoning the car thereafter you walk back the way you came for several miles before taking a tangent. They'll be expecting you to either continue working your way in the direction you were driving or they expect you to take off on a tangent from where you left the car. When they find your car it becomes the center of operations and a new perimeter will be set up around it. + +Another idea someone suggested was if someone must abandon one's car, to let the air out of one tire before doubling back on foot. This will make the authorities suspect that you've had a flat and abandoned your car unintentionally. Unintentionally abandoning the car might mean that you didn't twigg to the road block and bailed. That would mean that you left the car and headed for the nearest telephone to call for help. The nearest residence or town then becomes one of the center of operations and the road block further down the road becomes another center of operations. It would be considered that you had a flat, headed down the road for assistance, and then saw the road block and either turned around or headed into the hills on a tangent. By making the opposition think your plans were thwarted by a hardware failure, **you force _them_ to behave in ways _you_ want them to** and kind of gets even for what they're making you do. + +* Freeway sifting. It happens on rare occasions yet it's becoming more and more popular: Police will try to sift you on the freeways of America if you're suspected to be in a general location. + +This is currently done two different ways. + + * The first is manpower intensive yet has some successful results. Police officers are stationed along freeway overpasses if they're looking for a particular make and model of a car. A circle is set up on a map and every overpass along the freeways and intersections in an operations grid is staffed with cops with radios. + +If such an operation sees the suspect make and model car pass under a bridge, mobile officers from outlying stations are redirected to intercept the car. It's rare for cops on bridges to leave their stations unless the wanted scumbag is confirmed so they'll use a number of roving police cars on outlying picket to chase down suspect vehicles, leaving the net in place. + +There's really no defense for this operation other than to bail and run on foot. You've probably bought it, though. On California freeways you'll not have much of a chance. In places like New Jersey, you may have a chance if there's no helicopter watching you due to the high population density along freeways. California freeways tend to have trees and bush growing along side but the areas are wide open to visual eye contact from one bridge to the next. If there's no trees and bushes, the highways in California tend to have high walls walling in the freeway. + + * Forced exits. More often than the above method, police will put up cones and construction vehicles to close all lanes of a freeway, making all cars take an exit, a surface road, and then an on-ramp. The idea is to make the person they're looking for think that an accident or emergency road maintenance is being worked rather than a man hunt. + +As cars approach the exit, police cars by the dozen will be observing everyone in line. More police will be watching for several miles down the freeway for anyone bailing at previous exists (depending upon the length of freeway traffic backup.) Police will be watching for anyone pulling to the break-down lane and trying to avoid them. + +Like the other method, there's really no defense for this other than to try to bail and run. It's probably hopeless, though. + +As previously mentioned, however, traffic stops and check points are going to be the biggest problem. They can happen at random without any notice. Agricultural check points -- such as one can find on highway 15 between Las Vegas and Southern California and the one on Interstate 5 near Grapevine -- are stationary and usually run 24 hours a day. The officers don't have authority among themselves to arrest or detain you if your picture has been circulated among them. The most they can do is request that you pull over and stop and, failing to do so, they press a button and the police cruisers on station at the facility will hunt you down and stop you. + +There's really nothing you can do about stationary check points except either avoid them entirely or comply with the check point's attendant and smile your way through and just hope your face isn't in their book. + +Roving check points and random sampling is something you have no control over. You may try to fall out of the set of profiles that cops are trained to look for to reduce the chances of getting randomly stopped and searched. Profiles cops learn to focus on are different from city to city, town to town, but you can bet that most of the profiles consists of: + +* Drug dealers or buyers. Drug dealers have a range of profiles they match. Drug buyers -- being from all walks of life -- have a much broader spectrum of profiles they match. **Traveling in known drug trafficing areas is a bad idea.** It gets worse if you're traveling slowly. You may have no choice if you're looking to purchase false identification papers in such areas, of course, but drug profiles are well ingrained in today's American police force. The druggie profiles are something cops "feel" and they're usually right. If you're on the run and you're in a drug dealing area, you may just smell suspicious and could get pulled over and asked what you're doing in the area. +* Prostitution Johns. You may find yourself driving along a street that's heavy with prostitution. Though you'll probably not draw attention just for driving down the street, the density of cops along such streets will be higher than elsewhere so you'll want to avoid the area. Like with druggie areas, since you're on the run you may just give the cop a gut feeling something's wrong with you and get yourself pulled over. Such areas gives officers a courtroom-friendly excuse for pulling you over and searching you. +* So-called "gang banger." You don't want to drive a car that's had its suspension fucked up, it's identification stickers removed (such as the Toyota logos the manufacturers put on) and mud on its license plates. You don't want to be driving a car that's missing its license plates. There shouldn't be a lot of clothing in the back seat which such a profile often contains since such people often change their clothes after a drive-by shooting or other crimes. +* Cruiser. In many cities there is a major street which has become a defacto cruising scene for High School or college kids. It's usually a street that has restaurants or bars and coffee shops that are open until midnight or so. Cruising or joy riding is getting "cracked down upon" in most cities and you could be stopped if you match the profile of a cruiser. + +A cruiser will be driving at night in a clean car that's either a fairly new car, a restored classic, or any kind of car with a bunch of kids stuffed into it. If you're driving a clean 1972 Ford Pinto with the windows rolled down at 11:00 p.m. down Sunset Blvd. in Southern California, cops in the area will register your car the first time they see it. The second time they see you driving the street will convince them you're cruising and they may decide to pull you over. Even though you're minding your own business, you may want to avoid streets where cruising takes place if you're driving something that matches the profile. + +The idea is to travel along America's highways without drawing attention to yourself and ending up getting pulled out of a check point queue or getting stopped by a cop. You should think about what kind of car and what kind of "look and feel" cops are likely to pull over and work to defeat the expected image. Get a couple of books and put them on your dash board. Something from Ann Rand and Albert Einstein, maybe, or something containing intellectual material. Criminals don't read -- they're stupid: That's why they're criminals. You want to look like you're Mr. or Ms. Citizen going about your lawful business and not a wanted fugitive or a missing house wife who's husband wants you back to further abuse you. + +![---][1] + +**Section 9: Summary** + +Your goals are to manufacture a new life under a new identity complete with legal recognition under your new identity. To acquire that goal, you must be ready and willing to do what it takes -- without compounding any criminal activities you might be wanted for. As mentioned before, that means discarding all your friends, your family, and your way of life in favor for new friends, a new way of life and possibly a new marriage with a loving wife or husband to create a new family. + +The steps you take along the way toward acquiring that new life can be boiled down to these salient points: + +* Discard your old life. +* Limit the resolve and resources of your opposition. +* Run from your opposition (and your old life.) +* Hide from your opposition. +* Make new friends. +* Acquire a new identity. (Legal papers: Birth record, Social Security #) +* Find gainful employment. +* Pay your taxes. +* Get medical, life, and automotive insurance. +* Get a credit card -- and keep it paid up. +* Perhaps take college courses to learn a new marketable skill. +* Acquire and maintain respectability in your community. +* Find a wife or husband: Make a new family. +* Don't drink heavily, don't use _any_ illegal drugs, don't do any crimes. +* Die with dignity. + +What you want to do is make your new life to the point where if you're ever caught, your employer, friends, and neighbors will express disbelief when the cops haul you away. While getting caught shouldn't be part of your goals, you should consider the possibility and plan accordingly. + +This is **_very_** important if you build a new family: Your wife or husband should be told who you really are before you get married. Since you're working to become a respectable, productive member of society, your prospective spouse should know your past before you get married! + +Finding out your real name isn't Michael Johnson after five years of marriage won't help your wife maintain support for you when the cops come to haul you away. Letting her know you're on the run and for why you're on the run before hand means that you'll have support if they ever do find you. + +![---][1] + +**Section 10: Special note to Earth Liberation and Animal Liberation groups** + +You people are faced with extraordinary problems when trying to disappear in America that aren't experienced by the traditional citizen attempting to disappear for more traditional reasons. + +Much has been written already about your problems and how to deal with them so this essay doesn't attempt to address them. Additionally I don't presume to claim to know what's best for you and your loose-nit organizations since your efforts are totally outside of my experience even as I share some of your goals. I'm (Fredric Rice speaking here, by the way) a vegetarian and I find the vivisectionists trade and the animal fur trade to be worth destroying totally -- however my venue is to employ completely legal avenues of recource. Still, if I may offer what I feel to be a salient point about the plight of direct-action liberationists: Your mind set. + +* You're considered to be domestic terrorists with international ties given the advent of the Internet which allows you to communicate locally and internationally. You doubtlessly don't consider yourself to be terrorists -- domestic or foreign -- however the fact is that law enforcement **_does_** consider you as such. + +This is an important thing to keep in mind when on the run from the law and working to build for yourself a new identity. You may feel that burning down some barns after liberating a couple of thousand mink prisoners should not be a crime since you're correcting a massive wrong, but your opposition consider you to be economic terrorists predicated upon ideological attributes which place you firmly into a set of profiles law enforcement use as baseline into the psychology of what drives you. + +As such, your opposition is motivated to find you. Given the fact that the vivisectionist industry and the animal fur industry financially support political venues, and you're left needing to discard any mindset you may have that your crimes are minimal. You must adopt the mindset of your opposition which considers you -- rightly or wrongly -- to be a considerable threat to people's security. + +* Don't claim that what the law enforcement agencies do to you is some how "harassment" or otherwise totally unwarranted. While police brutality against direct-actionists is very real, and while innocent people are questioned or interrogated by the authorities for no apparent reason other than to intimidate you, you need to face some facts of life simply so that if you ever do find yourself on the lam from the law, you'll have internalized where you fit into the "food chain" so-to-speak. + +Namely: By associating with animal rights and Earth rights activists, you **_are_** aligning yourself to a criminal element and you **_do_** know what you're in for when you join protests against the bad guys. That's the way the system works, you accepted that when you joined the resistance, so get comfortable with the consequences. If you don't -- if you persist in lamenting the woes about how unfair it all is that the cops are picking on you -- you're in a mindset that doesn't assist the positive mental state you'll need if you find yourself needing to hide from the law. + +My advice is that you get pragmatic and admit to yourself that you're really a criminal if you engage in direct action. Accept the fact that you're committing a wrong even as you're correcting a wrong. Since the law is on the side of the planet killers, vivisectionists, and the animal fur trade, the law doesn't recognize the wrong of these industries so you may feel that you've done nothing wrong. In the eyes of the law, you're in the wrong so be pragmatic about it and **_believe_** that you did wrong so that if you have to run, your mind is where it needs to be to survive. + +* Acquire the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of lawyers which work with direct-actionists and have that information with you when you go on the lam from the law. Keep it with you while you try to rebuild your new life so that in the event there's a knock on your door (or the fascist pigs kick it in like how it's done in Moscow) <end rant> ) you'll be ready to acquire defense. +* Don't run to fellow activists to seek shelter from the law. While the above-ground activists are routinely monitored by the FBI -- spot checks, usually, irregularly or regularly scheduled depending upon a number of factors -- don't forget that even under-ground activists have probably already been compromised. Assume the worst and stop associating with fellow activists. **Never contact a fellow activist unless it's from a pay telephone that you can vacate outside a ten mile radius within a ten minute time frame.** That means that if you must contact people for support, it should be from a pay telephone along a freeway or other high-speed avenue. +* **Arsonists are not "political prisoners!"** I have read in so many web pages for decades that animal rights or Earth rights activists like to point at their fellow activists who have been indicted and jailed and claim they're "political prisoners." **No. They are not.** + +This point is important. Pretending that arsonists and vandals who smash fur farms and such -- while undeniably deserving to be smashed -- are some how "political prisoners" is equal to the fascists in the goverment claiming such actvists are some how "terrorists." **Neither is true** and all sides who engage in such outrageously false and delusional rhetoric suffer from playing such idiot games. + +If you're trying to run and hide and rebuild your life, it's important to get your head together, divest yourself of your comfortable delusions, and admit to yourself exactly who and what you are. Pretend you're on the run to avoid being a "political prisoner" ingrains within you a fictitious and false view of your real situation -- something that only helps your opposition. + +In summation, I feel that there is a need within the direct-actionist community to get more realistic about who they are and what they're doing; that arson **_is_** a crime, that liberating animals **_is_** against the law. Not accepting the facts pragmatically, I feel, adversely impacts an activist's chances of avoiding capture. + +![---][1] + +**Section 11: South Western Deserts as a Place to Hide / Squatting** + +Where there's water, life is possible. True, it may be very difficult and very hard to live, depending, but anyone who's driven, hiked, or camped in the American South West will have noticed that cities and ranches crop up where there's surface water or where there's been a well dug. + +Within the state of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado, there are deserts, mesas, mountains, and forests where normally people never or rarely visit; not-so-secret places where there's water, access to a road within a day's hike, and where a fairly rugged individual may hide while remaining basically healthy, marginally well fed, and reasonably sane. + +In this section I'll look at two such environments, neither of which I would recommend, but one of which I'd suggest is a reasonable way to live in basic health while either on the run, hiding out from the law, old girl friends, **_the draft for an illegal war_**, putative wives and such. + +The first South Western environment (the one I wouldn't recommend except for the most hearty individual) is the Mojave Desert among the volcanic rocks where there's water if you know where to find it, and where shade from the relentless Sun can be built, if you know how to build it. + +South Western Mojave Desert + +Some years ago my brother Desertphile was tracking across the Mojave Desert in the dead of night, hiking a long distance from one water hole to another, using a hand-held Global Positioning System device, topo maps, and a backpack containing mostly water and tarp equipment for emergency shade. + +While crossing the mouth of a small side canyon out in the middle of absolutely nowhere, he stumbled across squatters -- or more accurately their dogs -- living in a number of small trailors covered with camouflage netting over paint-splotched shade tarps. With no roads of any kind, the people living there had managed to some how drag small mobile trailors into the high desert and had been living there hidden from the outside world. + +Thinking about this and the people squatting there, there were some very basic things they had done: + +* Shade from the sun -- A long-term squat like this took time, some money, and effort and among the first priorities would have been shade from the Sun. I would hazard a guess that the camp started with a single trailor, dropped off in a Winter month, possible during the rainy season where the area might get as much as five inches of rain for the year. As time and circumstances permitted, I'd guess that the squatters camp was built up over the years piece by piece. With desert-colored splotches of paint on tarps spread not only on the trailors but in the spaces between, a reasonable amount of shade was possible. +* Disguise from overhead -- Aircraft from area Air Force Bases all other Southern California and Western Nevada would fly over the general area, not to mention the occasional commercial aircraft, power line or natural gas company. Visibly breaking up the shade tarps would help keep aircraft from spotting the squatter's camp. Heat sources within the camp, of course, at night and possibly during the day depending on the ambient temp wouldn't be blocked from military equipment on board military aircraft. +* Reasonable access to water -- This squatters camp was about a third to a half a day's hike to the nearest water hole, and perhaps a half of a day's hike to a mud hole from which muddy water could be acquired. A wheeled travois, motorized two or three wheeled vehicle, or backpack was probably used to fetch water once a month or so, probably setting out after sunset and getting back to camp before sunrise. +* Emergency transportation -- One of the things noticed at this squatters camp was a number of beat-up four-wheeled buggies, the small kind used by kids. There was no way to know whether they were used to haul water, make trips into Las Vegas for supplies, or what not, however I'd expect that any reasonably safe effort to hide out and live in such an area would include a motorized vehicle that could be driven to a hospital in the event of a broken leg, poison, snake bite, and other emergencies. +* Minimal agriculture -- There looked to be a minimal amount of food being grown. Perhaps a wise squatter will do some basic research and see what eatable plants would survive in the area if given shade. +Anyone contemplating setting up a camp in the Mojave Desert -- or in any of the surrounding deserts -- would obtain a topographical map, note where the indicated springs, stock ponds, and other water sources are, and then would evaluate where to locate shade for such a camp. Then the individual would investigate the water sources to verify that they're wet and drinkable all year around -- or at least during the months the individual will be surviving in the area for. + +Where exactly? + +One possible wide spread area of interest would be the area between Las Vegas, Nevada, and some 30 miles West of Baker, California, North of the 15 highway -- perhaps within the hills along North Cima Road. Much of the lands located there are owned by the Federal government however ranchers subsidized by tax money run cattle which can be poached, and there's water which can be found. + +South of the 15 highway is more volcanic and has less water unless you go to Soda Springs off of Zyzzyx Road where there's a ranger station and the Desert Studies center (filling up canteens there from the spring could be done without suspicions but filling up drums of water might cause people at Soda Springs to suspect you're living out in the desert.) + +North of the 15 highway your topo map will show numerous springs, tanks, and stock ponds, many of which will contain water, and many of which will be dry -- but will not be listed as dry on the map so you need to investigate, take notes, take GPS coordinates, and plan thoughtfully. + +Also North of highway 15 is cattle subsidized by U. S. Forest Service; cattle that has overgrazed and destroyed much of the plants and displaced much of the animals that used to eck out a meger existance in these lands. Poaching is illegal, of course, and could get you strung up, drained, and jerked like deer meat if you're caught, so perhaps you could look at cows -- what Edward Abbey called "slow elk" -- as an emergency food source. + +If you plan on poaching, you should do your homework and learn how to butcher a cow and transport batches of the animal from the place where you butchered it back to your camp, figuring out how to wrap what you can't carry to keep flies, vultures, and other animals out of your meat until you can return for the rest of it. + +Still, I'd recommend **_not_** poaching in the high desert out there not only because it's illegal, not only because if you're caught by a rancher he may decide to dump your carcass into a volcanic rock crack, but most importantly because you don't want to draw attention to the fact that you're living in the general area. A rancher coming up short on his count might very well put down the shortage to "natural causes" but if you leave remains to be found and the remains show that the missing cattle was butchered and carted off, the Feds like nothing better than to mount up a nice desert posse to come look for you. + +How I Would Do It + +For setting up a squatters camp in the deserts North of Highway 15 and West of Baker, I might choose somewhere in the Iron Mountain range, North of the military base, and South West of the bombing range. Here's what I would do: + +* Acquire topo maps of the area, and acquire an aircraft sectional map of the area. +* Contrive a suitable explanation on why I'm treking all over the desert where humans rarely visit. With a digital camera, claiming that I'm creating an Internet web site to record some of the natural rock formations of the area would be a suitable explanation. The notes I take would be vague to others who might read it yet meaningful to me when I lay it all out for evaluation. +* Note the dirt roads in the area, use a ruler to note as accurately as possible the indicated springs, stock ponds, water tanks, buildings, and towers in the area, writing down their logitude and latitude in a book of note paper. Figure out the worst-case distance between the water source and narby dirt roads. +* Get on the Internet and do research on the names of the springs listed in the notebook to get an idea on what might be in the area and how often humans visit it. Also to get information on the types of plants and animals that live in the area, including nearby ranches and cattle. +* Visit as many water sources as possible, hiking to them with a GPS hand-held device, topo maps, notebook, digital camera, a writing pen, matches, water (don't forget the hat!) I'd do as much of my hiking at night, stopping when the GPS indicates I'm in the general area, and then search for the water source at first day light, check the condition of the water source and then use the GPS device, topo maps, and maybe a compass to return to my car an hour ot two before sunset. Take digital photographs and make written notes about the area, the water, and signs of human visits. +* Visit numerous ravines, craigs, and valleys in among the volcanic rocks of the hills and mountains in the area looking for a suitable camp site, making note of how far they are from suitable water sources. Such camp sites would have to be modifiable with tarps and covers that would provide shade and invisibility to aircraft. +* After doing as much research on the water in an area, and as much research on likely camp sites in the area, all of the accumulated information would be placed on a table and all of the salient factors would be considered for where to place a camp: + * Distance from dirt road where a vehicle can be parked so that supplies and camp equipment can be backpacked from the vehicle to the camp. + * Distance and time from the likely camp sites to one or more water sources so that water can be fetched within a third of a day's hike. This would allow a water-fetching to take place comfortably within a single night. Note any hills, ravines, mountains that have to be bypassed to make it to water, considering that it will probably be done at night, and also note that the desert looks completely different at night than it does during the day. + * Availability of rock formations that can house a camp that can have tarps cover it over. +* After selecting a suitable camp site, I'd start moving equipment into the camp: + * Park on the closest dirt road and hike into the new camp site with spray-painted splotchy desert colored tarps and other covering, water, matches, and bedding. + * Set up the tarps and other covers. + * Hike off in a circle around the camp and verify that the camp's location can not be seen by anyone who might walk around the area. + * Spend a couple of nights and days under the tarp to see what living there would be like, taking note of how cold and how hot it gets. If something about the camp isn't acceptable, relocate. + * After deciding that the camp is acceptable, stash some of the remaining water and bedding under the camp tarps and return to the vehicle. + * Return to the dirt road, parking the vehicle a little ways off from the previous visits with additional equipment, and back pack it to the new camp: Camp stove, fuel, lantern, frying pan, water pan, cups, wooden spoons, more water, more bedding, clothes, books, batteries, flashlights, car battery, solar cells, power inverter. Basically as much equipment as I would want for a comfortable camp would be unloaded in numerous trips, most of it done at night when it's cool. I'd bring more water with me to stash at the camp with each trip. + * After the camp is assembled, I'd get a friend to drop me off at the dirt road with my backpack and as much water as I could carry. That way the vehicle could be driven back to civilization to leave me there without any sign that someone's in the area. + * Arrange a date and general time when the friend would visit the dirt road again a month later, agreeing on a radio frequency to call on. At the same time acquire more books, canned food, perhaps, and other stuff that might have been thought of during the last month. If all is well, arrange for the friend to visit only once every 4 months or so. + * If a friend can't be found, hiding the vehicle would have to be done. Some care would need to be taken about the health of the vehicle since the desert can reach 120 degrees and some of the metal on the vehicle can get much hotter than that. +The result would be a camp that has a tarp for a cover, a tarp for a floor, possibly tarps for walls, all tight and roped up with rocks and poles, with a 12-volt lamp being driven by a car battery that's charged by a solar panel through a power inverter. + +Books and a laptop computer would be provided for entertainment and perhaps the mood to write a book of my own would strike. I would expect boredom to be as big a problem as food, water, and shade so more thinking about creative ways to remain occupied would have to be done. + +Very likely after a couple of weeks it would be discovered what was forgotten and what's needed to make living in the area possible. Hiking at night into Baker, California, every other month or so to draw money out of the bank, purchase canned goods, and visit the local Taco Bell would be possible however if anyone was looking for someone doing so, that points an arrow straight at them. + +South Western Arizona Virgin River Gorge + +A better place to hide out and set up a long-term living camp far from any human being would be within the Virgin River Gorge. During a drive from Utah to California along the 70 and then the 15 highway, one passes through the Virgin River Gorge carved by the Virgin River. On a topo map the rough longitude and lattitude coordinates would be somewhere around: + +North 36 degrees 57.725 +West 113 degrees 45.659 +Approximately 2394 feet + +The gorge itself is long and wide, consisting of a seemingly endless series of canyons, ravines, cliffs, and spires, most of which is impossible to get to on foot. Highway 15 passes right through the gorge and follows the Virgin River for some distance before the hills disappear and the desert opens up to the West toward Valley of Fire and the Moapa Piute Indian Reservation lands. + +A great deal of fresh water is available in these canyons all year around though most of the waterways are muddy. Fresh, clear water is found in fairly straight runs of the Virgin River and in standing, deeper plunge pools created when the river's course changed slightly over the years. + +Hiking and camping among this gorge is difficult, to understate the case. Sheer cliff walls one or two hundred feet high create box canyons and box ravines and together with sharp shards of rock and soft but lose sandy rock, the gorge's innermost secret areas are very difficult to get in and out of and getting lost is easy. + +Five years ago I was visiting the Valley of Fire where far to the South along a dirt road behind the Piute fireworks and casino there's a good water spring that's rarely visited by wheeled vehicle. Being in the general area I drove East into the Virgin River Gorge and parked some distance from the GPS coordinates offered above. + +With a backpack containing food, water, matches, bedding, compass, camera, GPS unit, USGS aircraft photographs of the gorge, and other equipment I parked my vehicle along a turn out on the highway and hiked into the gorge. + +After walking in for about two hours I set up camp, ate something, got out my book, and read until it got too dark to read, then I set out my sleeping bag and laid down on it (it was about 80 degrees at midnight there.) + +Around an hour after dark I heard someone pounding metal on rock and I stood up thinking someone was pounding on the highway some distance away, at first, yet walking a little around my camp I placed the pounding toward the South West. After about 5 minutes of the noise it stopped and all that could be heard was the crickets and frogs some distance in the river and the far-away drone of the big rigs using engine breaking on the highway 15 decline. + +In the morning I went looking for the source of the noise and I found a desert hermit living along the Virgin River in among trees, some of which he had relocated himself some years ago. The old guy had a large camp and a motorcycle. I took a GPS reading, returned to my car, and moved it to the West side of the highway, then returned to camp with the guy for the rest of the day, that night, and then left early the next morning. + +This month -- just a week ago -- I found that the guy had left, gone to live with his daughter whose husband had died but his story is relevant to this section of this piece. Some of the relevant aspects of his squatters camp: + +* Rope and pully was used to move the motorcycle in and out of the gorge to the highway at night. The nearest town is some 10 miles or less away though the canned goods there tend to be very expensive compared to the next large city, Las Vegas. +* His daughter knew where he lived -- and didn't approve. But she helped. A crushed tin can was placed under a rock behind a mile marker on the highway and inside the can the man living there was able to convey notes to his daughter back and forth. (Neither knew they could acquire 2-meter HAM radios without a license.) +* On occasion the daughter would hike in to camp with her father until she decided she got too out of shape. She would bring him books and magazines which the old guy would burn after reading, and would bring clothes or other things he asked for. She would also bring endless nagging and complaints asking him to move in with her in her appartment in Las Vegas. +* The old man shaved every day and bathed in the river every day \-- or more than once a day during the summer. +* The guy hated the U. S. government, taxes, and "those bastards," whoever they were. +* His bank account had monthly Social Security deposits made of less than some $2000 Dollars however his expenses were such that he'd been accumulating money for all the years he'd been living in the desert. His only real expense was food, gasoline, and telephone calls into Las Vegas. +* The guy was sharp -- well educated, extremely bright, likeable, friendly, witty, and could tell a thousand jokes. He remembered the Great Depression, laughed at "those fools in their fancy cars with the windows rolled up" on the highway, and absolutely despised and felt pity for the people "spending their lives in their fancy cars stuck in city traffic." +* He hadn't read any Edward Abbey but had read everything Sam Clemens had ever written. Liked Snoopy comics, disliked every other comic he could think of. +* Burnable trash was burned at night in small chunks. Trash that couldn't be burned -- cans and such -- were smashed flat with rocks and added to a hole dug for the purpose, a comfortable distance away from the actual camp. +* Shade was created by using existing bush and trees, and by the relocating of bush and trees which were then watered. The camp itself was a low-hung series of tarps just tall enough to stand up in with a tarp on the ground, nailed down into fairly hard sandstone, with blankets covering it. +* No lighting was used for dark nights other than small camp fires that couldn't be seen either directly or through reflected light. The guy started out with candles the first year, flashlights for a couple of years, and then decided moonlight and starlight together with the campfire was enough. + +Some Other Areas + +Two other areas spring instantly to mind when it comes to long-term squatting near water. **_Ceder City, Utah_** has a muddy river going through it, bounded by a shallow canyon with a bike trail along one side and a busy highway on the other. I've found a person camping there long-term once and it looked fairly comfortable. + +The other location is along the San Gabriel River above Azusa, California, along Highway 39. Camping there long term is fairly dangerous due to the large number of illegal Mexicans and the large number of gun nuts that frequent the area, shooting into the hills at night without a care in the world that somebody might be camping or living in the canyons. + +In summation of this section, people on the run, in hiding, or otherwise wishing to step out of mainstream society **_can_** do so safely, in health, and without risk to one's sanity though it seems to me that to do so some contact -- if not support -- with others still living in society is needed. + +There are secret, hidden places in America's South West among the deserts, mesas, mountains, and forests where people can hermit themselves, with or without the aid and support of others. But to do so required planning, creativity, and foresight -- as well as a willingness to pack up and relocate if a site that's selected turns out to be inappropriate after awhile. + +Incidentally, the U. S. Forest Service generally allows for campers to remain at a site for 14 days after which their rules dictate that the camper must leave. What constitutes leaving will depend upon the individual Ranger who discovers a camper. Some will allow that moving a mile from one's camp constitutes leaving at which time the 14 day limit begins again. Other Rangers will demand that the camper leave a particular geographical area after 14 days. + +So being discovered squatting can cause problems beyond any warrants that may be pending for your arrest. Being able to show a bank account might save you from being arrested and detained as a vagrant yet I believe that how you look -- your appearances -- when you're discovered (if ever) would dictate what happens to you (if anything.) + +That goes for what your camp looks like: If your camp looks like you've been there for a long time and looks like you intend to be there a long time, any Ranger discovering you squatting will have a different opinion on what to do with you than if your camp looked like you just got there. If discovered you could claim you've been there for three days and plan to "return back to work after my vacation is over in four days" and perhaps you'll be believed. That could keep you out of the vagrant hatch long enough to relocate. + +Then again it's anybody's question on whether you'll be asked to show identification and whether you'll be checked for wants and warrants. My experience when encountering Rangers and other authority types in the South West is that they'll make sure you have enough water, that you know where you are, that you have a hat on, and that you aren't committing suicide in stupid, irresponsible ways, they'll ask you to be careful out here and to on their way. Squatters who look like they've been camping for a long time may get run into the local police station so I'd suggest you keep your camp looking new and have a good story to tell about calling a friend to come pick you up in a few days -- and make sure the name and telephone of your friend is valid even if said friend isn't aware that you're squatting. + +![---][1] + +**Section 12: Fright Hopping -- Riding the Rails** + +Fright hopping isn't safe and unless you're in fairly good shape I wouldn't recommend it... And even if you **_are_** in fairly good shape, I wouldn't recommend it unless there's a very real and pressing need to get out of an area fairly quickly. + +If law enforcement is after you and they know you're in an area, of course, then they'll likely have all fright trains and passenger trains monitored and scanned however there are lots of places to hide on fright trains, most of them quite dangerous. + +There's a great deal of information available on the Internet about how to safely hop freight trains and you should check them out with the URL links offered below in this section. But this section will offer a fairly brief summation of what you need to do to hop frieght trains as an emergency means of escape. + +Endless Safety Hazards When Freight Hopping + +* Crossing rail lines inside and outside of rail yards is dangerous enough; walking through rail yards and switching yards it even worse. One of the primary reasons why vehicles and pedestrians so often get struck or run over by locomotives is because humans can't always judge accurately the speed of locomotives coming toward them. Crossing rails can be dangerous. +* Walking along the rails can be just as dangerous as crossing them \-- even though I and endless kids did so for many years without problem. Typically one steps off the tracks when a train approaches and moves away from the rails to allow the train to go by, then one returns to the rails or ties. But on trellis or bridges there may not be a way to leave the tracks, and if there is the sides of the rails may not be wide enough to safely allow a train to pass. +* When in a yard, cars very often use gravity to move from place to place based on remote switching. Since they're unpowered and since they can roll quietly, you need to watch out for slowly moving or quickly moving cars that you can't hear coming. +* When blocked by a train, don't climb under it to cross. Either go around, climb over, or find a way to pass between the coupled cars rather than try to roll or crawl under the cars. Though they're heavy and have enormous inertia, locomotives are designed to get things rolling quickly to break the massive moment of inertia of each car in line and things can move very quickly. +* Yard Bulls -- security people paid for by the carrier -- must be avoided in yards even though most will let you go if you're caught the first time trying to ride his trains. Many Bulls, however, will give you a solid beating on a bad day or simply hold you for the cops to arrest you, something you don't want. Bulls and other individuals you'll want to avoid in the yard often drive vehicles that are easy to spot, and they all have radios so that they can listen to the yard dispatchers for orders to stop or vacate an area. White vehicles are very common since they're easy to see. +* Non-locomotive equipment can move and crush parts of you. Switches -- movable rails at "points" along the tracks -- can move by remote command either from automated processing equipment or by the command of human operators. The track equipment detects train car wheels, not human feet so the equipment and human operators can't tell you're occupying a point before they move it and lock your foot in place. +* Yards and the areas outside of yards are frequented by hobos (a.k.a. hoebos) which may or may not be dangerous. Additionally criminals may prey on tramps, bums, and hobos that ride the rails and if you don't watch what you're doing, you could be trapped and assaulted, robbed, or killed. Many hobos are mentally unstable however most will be friendly and will share what they have provided you share what you have. Among the most salient things hobos you may meet will have is **_information_**. Information about train schedules is valuable. Hopping a freight with another hobo who's experienced in also very valueable for first-time hoppers. +* Hopping fright trains is difficult and dangerous when they're moving. Typically you'll have a backpack that must also get on the train with you. There are numerous places to get on a train but the days of box cars that are safe to travel in are becoming rare. These days the cars are grain carriers, stacked trailor carriers, and other things that afford less safe places for humans than what once existed. +* Getting off a moving train is difficult and dangerous since it's rather difficult for humans to accurately judge how quickly they're moving before they jump. Having to start running before you hit the ground means you could fall, trip, roll under the wheels and make a considerable mess. +* Falling off of a perch on a car when you're asleep could be a problem unless you've found a safe, comfortable place to sleep. Since a great many locomotives average less than 20 miles an hour, the time you spend getting out of town to anywhere may be a whole day. On the other hand some freight trains will travel anywhere up to 50 or 60 miles an hour -- it all depends on the gradient of the hills, the radius of curves, the number of cars vs. the accumulative rated horsepower of the locomotive engines, temporary speed restrictions, and a host of other factors. + +The dangers are considerable and you would have to decide what's acceptable to you and what's too dangerous. If you can't hitch hike and need to leave an area without being seen, you may feel that the dangers of fright hopping are acceptable. + +What You Should Bring When Freight Hopping + +Since this piece is about disappearing from America's view and -- with any luck -- reappearing somewhere else to restart a normal life in some other place, it may be that you'll want to travel with as many worldly possessions as you can carry. This isn't a good idea and for reasons that were described at the beginning of this piece. + +But to safely and comfortably use freight trains, there's probably a minimum amount of things you should brig with you: + +* Wear dark clothing to make it difficult for yard Bulls and police as well as for average citizens to spot you. Your backpack or knapsack should likewise be fairly dark. Since you may be using your sleeping bag to keep warm when exposed on a moving car, your sleeping bag should also be fairly dark. +* Your backpack or knapsack shouldn't be too heavy since you'll be throwing it around a lot. You shouldn't have any breakables in your pack since anything breakable will almost certainly break. You might practice hauling your pack around, throwing it up onto dressers to get an idea on how heavy or difficult it will be to manage. +* Additional warm clothing is a must to avoid freezing to death or spending wakeless days unable to sleep because it's so cold. Unless you can get out of the wind, layers of clothing is the only thing that'll keep you from freezing. Locos traveling 50 or 60 miles an hour can cause the wind to suck every bit of heat out of you and if you're reasonably healthy when the locomotive stops, it could be that you'll be caught simply because you couldn't get up and run away. +* Gloves, boots, hat, sunscreen. Clutching moving iron can remove a lot of skin from your hands. Being dragged along the ground as you scramble up the side of a moving car can remove a lot of toes. Sun beating down on an exposed perch for relentless hours can burn you without a hat -- not to mention make you irritable, crazy, and stupid. Cover your nose, neck, ears, forhead, and whatever other parts of skin you might expose to prolonged durations of sunlight, perferably before you get on and get moving unless you can smear stuff on safely on the move. +* Maps of the area which show rail lines, an atlas, topo maps, time tables, and maybe even a hand-held GPS unit might all be good to bring with you -- if you have the time to gather them. It's always best to know where the train you hopped is going though if you've hopped a train to anywhere, it's assumed you consider anyplace to be perferable to where you are. But the objective is to not get caught and to be healthy once you're safe, and knowing where you're going and how long it might take to get there are things you should try to find out. +* Water and some amount of food; whatever you can safely and comfortably carry. You'll dehydrate when exposed to the wind faster than you will if you're not exposed. Alcohol will make you dehydrate even faster so always bring water, never alcohol. Additionally alcohol can be smelled by dogs hunting you. +* Something to read. You'll be waiting for trains, waiting for information, waiting to get into the next town, and generally spending a lot of time doing nothing. A radio will also help pass the time and could give you news you could use. + +That would be probably a minimum of the stuff you would need to take when hopping a freight train. **_Information_** about where trains are going is something you can get from workers in rail yards since they'll usually assist you -- everyone except the Bulls whose job it is to keep you out. Rail workers who are paid minimum wage and may not speak the language are often willing to help inform you about which direction a train is going. + +The Types of Cars To Hop + +Some cars are more dangerous than others. There are lists of cars in the order of preference available all over the Internet yet for now, here's what's been suggested in a preliminary scan of such texts: + +* Open box cars +* Rear platform of a grain hauler +* Between the wheels of a biggyback trailor hauler +* In the well behind cargo containers +* Second or third level of **_empty_** car carriers +* Empty gondolas. + +There are many reasons why you should avoid parking inside of grain or gravel haulers, and avoid parking inside full cargo containers but the primary danger is that of shifting cargo. You can be burried by gravel, crushed by crates, crushed by moving cars that weren't tied down well, and get crushed by damn near everything. + +But as mentioned above, open box cars are getting rare. If you're planning on hopping a freight train, find a place to hide where you won't be seen and watch a number of trains go by and see what kinds of cars there are to get a feel for what kind of transport you can expect. + +![---][1] + +**Section 13: Dropping off the Grid: Peace Corps, Others** + +From time to time I get people emailing me asking about religious organizations, International organizations, or other ways to drop out of the "Rat Race" and my response has always been that to drop off the grid successfully, one must have large amounts of money or be willing to live in abject poverty and hunger. + +But there **are** a few other alternatives to be considered: + +* The [Peace Corps][2] is a United States Federal government agency and details about the Corps [may be read here][3]. + +The problem with signing on with the Peace Corps is that there are a number of requirements you must meet in order to volunteer with them and, of course, they are the Federal government and they will keep trace of you if they ship you outside of the United States. + +* If you have enough money to pay for your own food and other needs and are willing to live in poverty, you can volunteer to work with elderly Navajos. + +This type of work requires that you have your head straight and that you have your shit together. This type of work is not a vacation; it's hard and serious work of long hours and effort. It has the added benefit and attraction that volunteering to assist is a good way to drop out of the rat race, disappear from the eyes of the U. S. government, and you're kept very busy and occupied. + +Volunteering to assist elderly Navajos requires that you become familiar with the social behavioral aspects of Navajo tribes and a good place to find such information [may be found here][4]. + +Volunteers are asked to commit to at minimum two months, and there is a formal interview process of hopeful volunteers that one is subjected to to ensure that volunteers have their heads together, can actually do the work that's needed, and are trustworthy. + +Contact [these people][5] through their web site to find out more about working with assisting in herding sheep, other farming and ranching needs, and working with the elderly. **But remember: only strong-minded, responsible people are considered for such work**. It's a 24 hour job that few are capable of committing to, and few are able to complete their committments. + +* Farm work or ranch work is a possibility if you can find such work where live-ins are allowed. This type of work is usually very low pay -- far below minimum wage -- and you would be working with illegal immigrants, many of which may not speak English. + +The industrial farms and ranches aren't what you would be looking for since they have forms, documents, and other tracking of your employment and are answerable to government agencies. Additionally the large industrial farms and ranches will usually not allow workers to live on their property. + +There are, however, an increasingly rare number of family farms and ranches situated around the United States, places where families have been working the land or running ranches for generations and where people's children have moved away and the older parents are looking for live-in help. + +But these positions are rare and seldom are they advertised. They are discovered through word-of-mouth from other ranchers and farmers in the area, or by postings on bulletin boards in farming or ranching communities in their civic centers or markets. + +This type of work has the benefit that you can drop out of the eyes of the government and still maintain a healthy, productive, and busy life while being paid low wages but also being given a place to live. It has the draw back of not offering medical coverage or insurance of any kind such that if you're hurt or injured, medical bills will have to be paid from your chronically empty pocket. + +Because family farm or ranch work means working closely with the owners or operators of the land, you can expect to be subjected to a very detailed and close examination of your physical and mental makeup, and trustworthyness is going to be the number 1 priority among any such a job. + +From what I've been reading and from the emails of people who have dropped off the grid from time to time, there **are** ways to drop out of the rat race, and the three suggested methods described above have been shown to me to be viable. + +But there are some primary aspects of one's behavior and attitude that one must meet before dropping out and disappearing into some work enclaive like these: + +* Say "goodbye" to money. If you're paid at all for your work, it is either through room and board, or it is through a room and a small amount of money each month from which you purchase your own food. Some months you may be paid, some months you may not be depending on how well (or not) the farm or ranch does during the course of the year. +* Be ready to get your head out of your ass, get your shit together, and start cleaning up your act if you're dropping out because you're laboring under emotional problems you're trying to divest yourself of. The Peace Corps, farms, and ranches don't want to baby sit and the owners and operators don't want to provide psychiatry services; they want volunteers or workers who can do the job competently, either with minimal instruction and supervision, or without supervision. +* If you smoke, drink alcohol, or use illegal narcotics, stop it. Unless you're wealthy, dropping off the grid means you can't afford such things anyway -- or at least store bought tobacco, alcohol, or drugs. + +Discarding your old life and working toward rebuilding or renewing means scraping off some of the old baggage that brought you to the point where you're looking for a new life, and smoking, drinking alcohol, and using illegal narcotics is probably going to be part of that old life you need to toss in the trash. + +Any prospective employeer is going to look for any outward signs that you use illegal narcotics, even though -- as may be with a family ranch or farm -- the owners or operators may themselves smoke a little canabis from time to time. A prospective employeer won't like to have someone working and living on the property who uses narcotics even if the owner, operators, foreman or what have you smokes pot. That's just the way it is. + +* Expect to be the "low man on the totem pole" if you look for the type of employment where you're working out of the eyes of the government. If you walk onto a family or industrial ranch or farm and ask for work, **don't immediately ask about wages** since it's likely that the owners or operators will want to examine you and try you out for the day to determine whether they'll give you a **serious** try out. + +In such places where a foreman of a farm or ranch assigns you tasks for the day to evaluate whether you're worth giving a serious looking over, you may be given a place to sleep and something to eat, and in the morning you may be asked to hit the road or you may be asked to stick around and talk a bit. + +If you're asked to stay and answer questions, you could expect to be grilled heavily with questions designed to delve into whether you're trustworthy and capable of performing the work, and whether you'll put in the required number of hours every day without slacking. + +* Also such work may be seasonal with farms and ranches hireing certain months during the year. You will be competing with illegal immigrants for such seasonal work, of course, however if you're in the United States legally or are a citizen, you stand a better chance of being hired than an illegal immigrant has if the employeer has had warnings by the government about hireing illegal workers. + +![---][1] + +**Section 14: Montana Supreme Court Notes Ability to Track Everyone** + +Justice James C. Nelson was asked to rule a case where a suspect's trash that had been discarded. The contention was whether the evidence contained within someone's trash can be used against them in a court of law. While Justice Nelson affirmed, he felt compelled to express the growing realm of trackability and loss of freedom, issues that are covered in this document. + +This is a fitting Opinion for inclusion in the Vanishing Point document since the ability to locate wanted individuals by their purchasing habits is always just around the corner, lacking only the motivation to instigate such measures. The technology is already there with -- as the Justice notes -- "discount cards" that are used by so many people to purchase their foods and other goods. + +> [ http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/08/322625.shtml][6] +> +> Justice James C. Nelson concurs. +> +> I have signed our Opinion because we have correctly applied existing legal theory and constitutional jurisprudence to resolve this case on its facts. +> +> I feel the pain of conflict, however. I fear that, eventually, we are all going to become collateral damage in the war on drugs, or terrorism, or whatever war is in vogue at the moment. I retain an abiding concern that our Declaration of Rights not be killed by friendly fire. And, in this day and age, the courts are the last, if not only, bulwark to prevent that from happening. +> +> In truth, though, we are a throw-away society. My garbage can contains the remains of what I eat and drink. It may contain discarded credit card receipts along with yesterday's newspaper and junk mail. It might hold some personal letters, bills, receipts, vouchers, medical records, photographs and stuff that is imprinted with the multitude of assigned numbers that allow me access to the global economy and vice versa. +> +> My garbage can contains my DNA. +> +> As our Opinion states, what we voluntarily throw away, what we discard--i.e., what we abandon--is fair game for roving animals, scavengers, busybodies, crooks and for those seeking evidence of criminal enterprise. +> +> Yet, as I expect with most people, when I take the day's trash (neatly packaged in opaque plastic bags) to the garbage can each night, I give little consideration to what I am throwing away and less thought, still, to what might become of my refuse. I don't necessarily envision that someone or something is going to paw through it looking for a morsel of food, a discarded treasure, a stealable part of my identity or a piece of evidence. But, I've seen that happen enough times to understand--though not graciously accept--that there is nothing sacred in whatever privacy interest I think I have retained in my trash once it leaves my control--the Fourth Amendment and Article II, Sections 10 and 11, notwithstanding. +> +> Like it or not, I live in a society that accepts virtual strip searches at airports; surveillance cameras; "discount" cards that record my buying habits; bar codes; "cookies" and spywear on my computer; on-line access to satellite technology that can image my back yard; and microchip radio frequency identification devices already implanted in the family dog and soon to be integrated into my groceries, my credit cards, my cash and my new underwear. +> +> I know that the notes from the visit to my doctor's office may be transcribed in some overseas country under an out-sourcing contract by a person who couldn't care less about my privacy. I know that there are all sorts of businesses that have records of what medications I take and why. I know that information taken from my blood sample may wind up in databases and be put to uses that the boilerplate on the sheaf of papers I sign to get medical treatment doesn't even begin to disclose. I know that my insurance companies and employer know more about me than does my mother. I know that many aspects of my life are available on the Internet. Even a black box in my car--or event data recorder as they are called--is ready and willing to spill the beans on my driving habits, if I have an event--and I really trusted that car, too. +> +> And, I also know that my most unwelcome and paternalistic relative, Uncle Sam, is with me from womb to tomb. Fueled by the paranoia of "ists" and "isms," Sam has the capability of spying on everything and everybody--and no doubt is. But, as Sam says: "It's for my own good." +> +> In short, I know that my personal information is recorded in databases, servers, hard drives and file cabinets all over the world. I know that these portals to the most intimate details of my life are restricted only by the degree of sophistication and goodwill or malevolence of the person, institution, corporation or government that wants access to my data. +> +> I also know that much of my life can be reconstructed from the contents of my garbage can. +> +> I don't like living in Orwell's 1984; but I do. And, absent the next extinction event or civil libertarians taking charge of the government (the former being more likely than the latter), the best we can do is try to keep Sam and the sub-Sams on a short leash. +> +> As our Opinion states, search and seizure jurisprudence is centered around privacy expectations and reasonableness considerations. That is true even under the extended protections afforded by Montana's Constitution, Article II, Sections 10. and 11\. We have ruled within those parameters. And, as is often the case, we have had to draw a fine line in a gray area. Justice Cotter and those who have signed the Opinion worked hard at defining that line; and I am satisfied we've drawn it correctly on the facts of this case and under the conventional law of abandonment. +> +> That said, if this Opinion is used to justify a sweep of the trash cans of a neighborhood or community; or if a trash dive for Sudafed boxes and matchbooks results in DNA or fingerprints being added to a forensic database or results in personal or business records, credit card receipts, personal correspondence or other property being archived for some future use unrelated to the case at hand, then, absent a search warrant, I may well reconsider my legal position and approach to these sorts of cases--even if I have to think outside the garbage can to get there. +> +> I concur. +/S/ JAMES C. NELSON + +![---][1] + +**Section 15: Hanging Out in the Mojave Desert -- How It Was Done** + +The first video below (which is a YouTube object that will play if you click on it and wait a while) is a description of how Desertphile spent 22 months in the Mojave Desert -- California and Nevada. Various things to be aware of when squatting in the desert is offered as is some good commentary on water and the people one might meet out there. The second video shows how a solar oven was made and how it's used. + +![---][1] + +**Section 16: Some good comments offered by readers** + +Over the years many emails have come in to The Skeptic Tank commenting upon things within this document, many people offering suggested additions, changes, and sections that should be removed. One individual -- CP is his initials; I didn't get permission to use his name -- offered most of the suggested comments which are provided in this section. + +This is a living document -- the web page has been viewed by millions of people, according to the web site statistics engine on the web site's server, and this web page remains the single most read web page on all of Skeptic Tank since the enactment of the "USA PTRIOT Act" -- and there are over half a million pages on The Skeptic Tank so that says a bit about this page -- as well as a growing desire to escape the ever growing fascism in the United States. + +Point of correction and commentary. This section will be added as more and more comments are received through email. **Some of the suggestions have been so good that I have copied them from my inbound email mail box word for word.** + +* A missing person's report is generally not something that can be filed until some 24 hours after the person has gone missing -- in most States of the Union. Additionally it usually requires a family member or some other unique "qualified" individual to file a missing person's report. + +Because of this, sposes who are attempting to vanish might consider getting themselves ready to do so ahead of time, ducking out and running as soon as their spouse leaves for work. The 24 hour rule may start with the time you were last seen, or it may start on the morning of your disappearance, or your State might not have such a rule. + +Some States don't apply the 24 hour rule if there is any indication that foul play was involved, or if there is any indication that you might be suicidal or harbor violent intentions of your own. + +On the other hand, if you have a history of domestic difficulties and you suddenly go missing, suspicion may come down on your spouse and if it's considered that your spouse might have done you in, the authorities may set aside any 24 hour rule for that reason as well. + +Point being: You may or may not be afforded 24 hours before any law enforcement offer or agency feels the need to look for you. **If you're a minor, of course, the 24 hour rule is _probably_ not going to apply**, even if you have a history of running away from home. + +* If you are employed, make arrangements in advance. First off, stop looking at this stuff at work. Network administrators have on going logs for where their users visit when they are supposed to be working. Go to a public library, or if you have a laptop, do it from a wifi location. Don't do it at home, because it is information that can be used against you. Don't do it at work. Do it from a public place. +* Begin to express your dislike for your employment, and if possible, have the quiet conversation with your boss about being a part of the next layoff. It comes with a serverance check. In some cases, you can prearrange to have your 401k liquidated giving you additional funds to vanish. If you don't have a job to disappear from, there are fewer leads for your pursuers. +* Carry as little cash as possible, but find safe places to hide cash. Scatter it around so that in the even one cache is found, you have others. +* Change hair color and cut as soon as possible. If you are a man, grow or shave your mustache as soon as possible. Mustaches are readily spotted, but beards, not so much. +* If you are going to squat, get a Boy Scout Handbook. The information contained is invaluable, including simple first aid and how to get spotted when you need to be. Also how to build a shelter, and how to survive in the wilderness. +* If you are going to squat in the desert, the landscape is food and water. Learn what plants are edible. Realize that they will be a shock to your system and expect what is to be expected from a radical dietary shift. +* Properly skinning your poached meat will protect it from flies. Learn how to properly skin animals. Properly tanning the hide of your poach will give you clothing and additional shelter. Learn how. Properly "jerking" your poach will prevent it from spoiling giving you food sources for a long time. +* The US National Park Service has scores of backcountry hiking areas. Take your survival skills on a "test run". When you are ready to "drop off the grid", you will know what to expect. +* Drop your car off at a border crossing. Preferably on the other side of the border. The additional headache of working with international agencies causes your pursuers to waste additional time negotiating jurisdiction. And the Mexican side of the border is where you want your center of operations to be. Walking back across the border during normal "rush" is an easy way to blend. + +Consider using cameras at transportation facilities to your advantage. Buy your $500 beater car and park it the day before. Drive your own car to the airport, bus station, trainstation, etc. Go into restroom and change your clothes, cutting and destroying as previously mentioned. + +If you can't cut your hair, at least shave and acquire a new wig. You should have also destroyed your bag that you carried in. Go out the door and get into your beater car and drive away. Dump that car as quickly as possible and acquire a 3rd. Sell it to a car lot and it, in effect, disappears. + +* Put paper napkins around any glass, can or bottle that you drink from. Open push doors with the back of your hand. Wipe the counter tops of restrooms with a clean paper towel before you walk out and toss the papertowel into another trash can. Get in these habits before you leave. +* Wear a hat... everywhere. Hat's hide the face from cameras. Most cameras are higher than your head. Spend a lot of time looking at the counter. Or your shoes. +* Find nomadic jobs. They don't have insurance, but the people are communal and will help when they can. Rennaissance faires, traveling Carnivals, Migrant farm workers are all nomadic. + +Also look for natural disasters. There is a lot of work to be done, and there is also meals and shelter. I am not saying that you should defraud the government and take relief funds, but if you were dishonest sort, you may be able to. + +* Many small towns don't have daylabor programs, but if you are reasonably well groomed, you can get day labor by knocking on doors and asking the people of the house if they have some outside chores you can do in exchange for lunch. If they are friendly sorts, you may be able to work for them a couple of days, but don't press your luck. If there isn't, move on quickly. +* Like others said, shed the baggage. No one wants to hear your sob story and how everyone is out to get you. You left and aren't ready to be found yet. That's all that you need to tell them. +* Be prepared for a spiritual awakening. Be prepared to have a new appreciation for people and less appreciation for material things. Be prepared to learn how wonderful and cruel the human being can be. Learn to drop your grudges. Any heavy emotional baggage takes physical energy to contain and release. You are going to be tired and hungry and just won't have the energy to maintain it. +* If you decide to carry a gun, realize that you may be breaking laws of the state that you are in. Realize also that it can be taken away from you and used against you. + +Know that guns and jewelry are quick pawns for quick money. If your pursuers know that you have a firearm and they have the serial number, they will track you down. If they don't have that serial number, then a pawnbroker may not release your stuff for 90-120 days. Pawn and get out of town. Don't use the same pawn shop, preferably don't use the same town. If you can get away with it, don't use the same name, address or phone number, either. + +* Dropping off the grid isn't what most people do for a lifetime. It is what they do for a couple of months to get their heads on straight, gather up their courage to face whatever they are running from. + +The longer you are off, the harder it is to get back on. The longer you are off, the less people are going to be willing to side with you. Once you drop off, realize when you try and get back on, your friends may be gone. So may your family. + + +![---][1] **Section 17: Public Camps and National Forest Squatting** + +In the Angeles National Forest there are private camps which exist upon leased property, leased from the United States Forest Service or "grandfatheredt" in to otherwise National public lands as private holdings. One such camp was Camp Follows (see [ http://www.hikercentral.com/campgrounds/101704.html][7] ) which no longer exists, another such camp is Camp Williams (see [ http://www.campwilliams.com/][8] ) which still exists and which classifies itself as a resort. + +Such camps as one may find in the United States located in somewhat remote locations (such as Camp Williams is) may offer residential rental plots where a mobile trailer or even a cabin is located that one may rent, just as if it were a normal residential rental located within a city (Camp Williams has a mobile home park with units already on it as well as available slots for parking your own mobile home.) + +Due to their remote locations and small populations, such camps can provide an environment within which to hide but they also provide an environment within which to re-establish oneself in society, a less populace place to live where you get to have some measure of control over who sees you, who you interact with. Private camps can be populated by people who disdain the "civilized world" and have what might be considered "alternative" modes of life somewhat removed from what society would consider to be "normal." + +There are other advantages about taking up residence in a small camp located otherwise remotely. If you are being sought, strangers who spend a great deal of time in the region are generally noticed, and anyone who talks with residents about you or someone close to your description will be talked about and it's possible that you will learn of the interest being expressed by said strangers. + +The down side to adopting residence in private camps like this is that they do cost money, the amount of which depends upon whether or not the area is favorable and accessible to wealthy people who aren't trying to disappear in America. In addition to either purchasing the mobile home on existing property, there is also the usual monthly rental fees for parking your mobile home on the property, and of course there's the utility bill fees that camps may also require you to pay, either metered individually else collectively as part of the plot rental. + +Private camps may be sold or they may be otherwise closed and returned to either a State or Federal holding which means that residence in such camps may not be entirely secure. Camp Follows in the Angeles National Forest was sold to a foreign company and in the year 2006 the last of the residents were evicted, putting many people out on the streets (many of whom were then homeless and living out of their cars, prompting an abandoned cat crisis, see [ http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/147322.php][9] ) for a write-up and photographs of the cat rescue effort.) + +When examining a private camp which provides residential housing, you should spend as much time as possible looking the place over, doing feet-on-the-ground research to see whether the camp provides both anonymity and well as an environment for disappearing and, if it is your goal, resurfacing under a new identity. + +Note: Doing research on line leaves hints about what you were researching embedded in your web browser disk cache as well as web site log records which can be used to track you down. Feet-on-the-ground research in to a possible camp to disappear to eliminates the electronic trail. Alternatively, deliberately researching hundreds of camps across the United States and pretending to give a dozen or so such camps more focus and return web site visits might conceivably help to throw off the trail to the actual camp you go to. + +What about squatting in a State or Federal park or forest? + +As mentioned previously, the typical maximum duration stay for visitors to public lands is either one, two, or three weeks, after which the individual is expected to relocate a minimum set distance from the previous camp site, often 50 miles at minimum. + +A great many public lands have illegal squatters on them, and law enforcement periodically performs sweeps and evicts such people, often after running them for wants and warrants and searching them and their possessions for contraband. In the Angeles National Forest a hideously filthy pollution problem developed as illegal gold miners squatted along the East Fork Road section of the San Gabriel River, many of them living there for years, many of them under the belief that they could do so after "staking claims" on public land. + +There are no legal avenues for people to squat on public property in a National Forest. There are also no legal avenues for people to stake mining claims on public lands in a National Forest. There exist lawful mining of public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management however one can't carve out a section of public property, proclaim it belongs to them, and then proceed to live on the public property. + +This is important to underscore for two reasons: First off, numerous web sites will tell you that mining on public lands is legal when in fact it may or may not be depending upon the region. Even places where a government agency sells you a mining permit actual mining in that region may be prohibited. If mining is permitted, suction dredging may be prohibited, and in any event living on the property in tents longer than the maximum permissible period of time is always prohibited. + +Secondly, living in an illegal mining camp isn't conducive to either disappearing or to rebuilding a normal or even quasi-normal life. In addition to the periodic narcotics and illegal alien sweeps, a narcotics-heavy existence along a crowded river or stream living in a tent isn't a fun or comfortable life, it's just marking time before you die, it's not disappearing with the goal of resurfacing fresh with a new identity elsewhere. + +![---][1] + +**Section 18: Internet Research Before You Disappear** + +An Additional Review of Internet Research Before You Disappear + +Most people are now aware that every time they visit a web site, send or receive an email, or do anything else online, an electric record of their activity is made and such information is easily retrieved by law enforcement agencies, often without a subpoena, court order, or warrant. + +When you do research online prior to attempting to disappear, you leave behind records which can be used to not only track you down but to indict you if you're doing research prior to or after the commission of a crime. + +In the year 2007, a homicide detective in State other than California contacted The Skeptic Tank by starting from my identity taken from the public domain skeptictank.org registry records which lead the detective to the city I live in where-after he contacted the local Police Department which came to my residence and handed me a business card for the detective asking me to return his call. + +When I received the business card and returned the call, I learned that this Vanishing Point web page is used by people who either commit murder else who plan to commit murder, reviewing the web page at times placing it to paper as part of their online homework in to such things as how to remove people's heads and other identifying body parts and research in to how deep various lakes are in the prospective murderer's region are. + +The detective called to ask whether Vanishing Point had been updated since a particular date that he gave me, then he informed me that a man and his lover had murdered the lover's husband, and one of the many web pages he and the woman had visited was Vanishing Point. + +I told the detective that I considered some of the information provided here to be unworkable and I asked him his opinion about the feasibility of any of this information being useful. + +He told me that the focus of the web page is not about committing crimes and attempting to avoid prosecution but rather about dropping out and rebuilding one's life for wholly legitimate reasons, and as such he said he found the information useful and informative, not an impediment to legitimate law enforcement efforts. His opinion, like mine, is mixed. + +The point about this section is that there should be no expectation that any of the research that people do on line is private. Even erasing your hard disk drive's web browser's cache, even running wipe software to fill erased disk sectors with zeros, even doing your best to eradicate records that you have control over isn't sufficient to erase all tracks, your Internet Service Provider, your cable company, your email host, the web site servers that you visit, every router, bridge, or hub that retains records may contain traces of your research activities, all of which are easily obtained by law enforcement or by private investigators who commit crimes by colluding with police to illegally seize such records. + +Note: Anonymity proxy servers and other online services that seek to obscure your identity while on line do not provide enough security for hiding your identity and eliminating traceable electronic records. For some measure of on line security, you might research the Tor network (see <http://www.torproject.org/> ) + +![---][1] + +**Section 19: Gold Mining as a Means to Disappearing** + +One of the more difficult things you can do to establish yourself in a new identity and make an honest living while remaining invisible to society at large is to become a miner, either for gold or other metals and minerals such as silver, gypsum, and talc. + +Mining in the American Southwest is very difficult, subject to Bureau of Land Management or Forest Service rules and regulations, and may result in slow starvation, heat stroke, and other medical problems given the harsh conditions one can expect working long hours in an open and exposed environment where the pay-off yield in precious metals and minerals may be very low. + +**Where to mine** + +Overwhelmingly the number 1, most definitive, most trusted source of information on where you can expect to find gold and other precious materials that you can mine is found at the [Free Gold Maps][10] web site. This web site is **_the_** definitive source of information which is currently maintained by one of the world's most famous desert hermits and adventure explorers, the living legend named **_Desertphile_**. If you consider disappearing in America and sustaining yourself through mining, checking out that web site and researching there is absolutely required. + +For a brief review of the Desertphile gold maps information, you should first check the brief video, **_"Gold Is Where Others Have Found It."_** which can be viewed here: + +**Illegal Mining** + +If you research areas where others have found gold and where mines have been abandoned which will still harbor gold that you may find useful, you may come across mines and regions which still have gold but are illegal to mine, even if they have been mined previously. + +The Bureau of Land Management and the United States Forest Service may ban mining in regions where there has been considerable ecological damage due to previous mining and efforts to restore the region's flora and fauna are underway. Agencies may ban mining in regions where mining was performed previously for any number of reasons, so you can not count upon locating abandoned claims and resume working the mines or the tailings left behind. + +The goal of disappearing in America and rebuilding a new life includes refraining from drawing undue law enforcement attention to yourself. This means that you will want to avoid working claims which are in "withdrawn" locations where mining has always been illegal and in locations where mining has become illegal. + +**San Gabriel Mountains / Angeles National Forest / East Fork** + +You may see a great many videos on YouTube and may read a great many on-line articles about gold mining in the San Gabriel Mountains within the Angeles National Forest along East Fork which follows the San Gabriel River. It is true that a great deal of mining has taken place there and mining continues to take place there however **_it has been illegal to mine East Fork since the mid 1960s_**. + +Federal and State law enforcement agents periodically raid, arrest, and remove illegal miners and squatters along East Fork and in other areas of the Angeles National Forest because it **_is illegal_** however the law enforcement agencies of the region lack enough manpower and other resources to remove illegal miners constantly. They raid and remove illegal miners when water quality or violence or other problems result and they have the resources to remove them. + +Day panning using gold pans and hand shovels are permitted since that is "prospecting" which remains legal, however using dredges, sluice boxes, shovels, digging deep holes, mechanized equipment and such is **_totally illegal_** in the Angeles National Forest. + +> **Please do not email me demanding that mining in the Angeles National Forest is legal. I continue to get email from people who think it is because they see other people doing it, or because they hear stories that the Forest Service has told someone that mining is permitted. It is not, and I am tired of hearing from people who have not done their homework on the issue and have not contacted the U. S. Forest Service personally to find out.** + +**How To Mine** + +Any previous claim that you may try to work will have been picked over and worked, reworked, and reworked again by people who have come before you, so extracting what gold may be left behind will probably result in small yields yet **_may_** be enough to sustain you given the prices one can expect from previous metals today. + +If you have the resources to purchase mining equipment, you need to determine whether there is water in the area or whether you will be dry mining. You need to determine how best to extract gold or silver or other materials from as large a volume of raw materials as you can in as short a time frame as possible, perhaps concentrating the payload dirt in to a small volume so that you can refine your precious materials extraction. + +One company that provides quality equipment is [Keene Engineering][11] which sells **_"Dry Washers"_**. These are machines that are either cranked by hand or have a motor which is run by a car battery. You shovel your dirt and rock on to a slide plate above the device and a carpeted washboard is giggled which collects the higher gravity, denser materials from the raw materials concentrates it in the folds of the washboard. + +After putting many hundreds of pounds of material through such Dry Washers, one then stops shoveling and allows the excess materials to work off of the wash board, then the carpeting material is carefully lifted off of the device (usually after unbolting) and the concentrated materials is dumped in to buckets. + +Usually the machine is reassembled and more raw materials are put through the machine, the process continuing until all buckets are filled with concentrated fill which hopefully contains much gold. + +At the end of the day after digging stops, the contents of the buckets is either panned next to a water source and the gold is retrieved and placed in to glass jars, or if water is lacking tweezers is used to sort through the contents of the buckets piece by piece. + +**What Gold / Silver / Copper Looks Like** + +If you are mining for a material and do not know what it looks like in all of its forms, you are wasting your time and very likely throwing out and discarding valuable materials. + +A great deal of the gold that illegal miners sift through in the San Gabriel Mountains is not recognized as being gold by the illegal miners, so much so that the **majority** of gold that pass through their pans and illegal sluice boxes is discarded. Being uninformed about what physical appearances gold takes means that the illegal miners are only keeping the bright, shiny, golden metal which is only a fraction of the gold that actually passes through their hands. + +So you need to research what things look like in the field, you need to research everything you can about what you expect to find so that you can recognize it when you do find it. + +**Requirements For Mining** + +There are going to be requirements for filing a claim so that you can legally work a mine, among them being providing the agency responsible for filing your claim needing your identification, residence, and other information. This can be problematic, and even creating a corporate fake front to hide behind will need to eventually wind down to identifying actual humans. + +It is conceivable that you can provide faulty identification in your paperwork however that is almost certainly illegal, and one of the goals of disappearing in America is to eliminate any cause or reason for law enforcement or other entities to look you over closely. + +On the other hand you can encorporate, have a third party file the claim on your behalf such as an attorney or other proxy which **_is legal_** since your attorney may be authorized to provide a layer of administrative assistance between you and local, State, or Federal entities which removes from you the burden of dealing directly with incompetent fuckwits. + +* You must "locate" your claim which means identifying the geographic corner locations for the square or rectangle of the area you wish to filing your claim upon. You must identify specific boundaries for your claim which these days means establishing the Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates for each corner and writing them down. With or without a list of GPS coordinates you need to be able to verbally describe the location of each corner so that you can write that down on forms you must file. +* Locating your claim also means that you must physically mark the corners of the geographical region. This is usually done with wooden posts, piles of rocks, and perhaps a glass or metal container within pepers are stored which describe the owner of the claim. +* After locating a claim you must file papers to hold that claim with the proper authorities within 90 days. If you find paydirt you will want to file as quickly as possible any way because failure to do so would mean that others who notice you retrieving paydirt are free to file ahead of you. +* You must work your claim a certain number of hours every year and you must keep record of how many hours. Additionally you must spend a certain amount of money to maintain your claim and keep records of doing so such that you have records which you file with the proper authorities to show that your claim is not abandoned. +* Other things. You must research what the requirements are to file and maintain your claim. + +**Exchanging Goods** + +Of course once you have gold, silver, or copper it will be of differing percentages of purity, and finding companies who are willing to exchange paper money for your previous materials will result in a spectrum of dollar values per ounce of material you bring them. You will not get the Wall Street dollar value so you should not expect that much. Your material is only a certain, as-yet-unknown percentage of pure material so until your material has been assayed and its trade value considered, you may not know how much your final mine product is worth. + +Chances are that there is a "mining community" of people in the region who may not like you joining in the mining of the area. If other miners are not hostile you could talk to them about where to market the precious metals you extract. Chances are that small grocery stores and mining equipment stores may accept mined gold or silver in exchange for foods and equipment, you must research how best to utilize whatever precious materials you extract. + +![---][1] + + +[1]: http://www.skeptictank.org/greenbar.gif +[2]: http://www.peacecorps.gov +[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Corps +[4]: http://www.navajocentral.org/taboos_menu.html +[5]: http://www.blackmesais.org/needlist022704.htm +[6]: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/08/322625.shtml +[7]: http://www.hikercentral.com/campgrounds/101704.html +[8]: http://www.campwilliams.com/ +[9]: http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/147322.php +[10]: http://www.freegoldmaps.com +[11]: http://www.keeneeng.com/ diff --git a/saved_articles/how to make non-toxic deodorant - probiotic - all.txt b/saved_articles/how to make non-toxic deodorant - probiotic - all.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8aaa164 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/how to make non-toxic deodorant - probiotic - all.txt @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +--- +title: How to Make Non-Toxic Deodorant - Probiotic +date: 2016-05-11T13:21:44Z +source: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Non-Toxic-Deodorant-Probiotic/ +tags: health + +--- + +**Non-toxic, healthy deodorant is simple to make & I've found it to work so much better than the store brand deodorants!** More importantly, it only requires a few ingredients - safe ones which are non-toxic and not going to disrupt your body's system. It only takes a few minutes to make, and there are a lot of variations of this recipe online - so feel free to make alterations to it as you please. + +**Ingredients Needed: ** + +* 1/2 Cup of Coconut Oil +* 1/4 Cup of Baking Soda +* 1/4 Cup of Corn Starch +* Small mason jar +**Optional Additions: ** + +* 1/2 Teaspoon of Vitamin E Oil +* 1/2 Teaspoon of Almond Oil (or any other Oil of your Choice) +* Essential Oil for Scent (I used Grapefruit) +* 1 Probiotic Capsule (Shelf-stable) +Mix the first three ingredients together in a medium-size bowl. If you would like to use the optional ingredients, add them now. The batch makes about a cup of deodorant - and my small one-cup mason jar was perfect for it. Once it sits for a while, it will not be so liquidy - it will be a soft semi-solid. + +With this recipe, you'll need to open up the jar and scoop out a small amount onto your finger and rub it on. This method of application sounded a bit gross to me, to be honest - but once applied, it dries right away and it's no big deal. If you wanted to make this and put it in a a clean plastic twist-able deodorant container, that is an option. It is possible to do it with this mixture, but I personally would add one other ingredient to the mix if I were to make a solid deodorant - melted beeswax. In the future, I will make it and share the instructions in a new Instructable if readers would like that! For now, I love this stuff! +**I hope you enjoy your new homemade deodorant! :)** +If you have any questions, let me know! + +Also, if you have any skin sensitivities, as some people may, not using as much baking soda should help. The use of a probiotic is something without a lot of scientific data to support it as being beneficial - just lots of raving reviews of the people who have tried it before us and have had success with it - stating they thought it got rid of their yucky underarm smell. With or without it, this deodorant is the best I have ever used! + +\-------------------------------------------- + +**So, why use non-toxic deodorant - why does it matter?** (Skip if you don't want to know my personal thoughts on this!) +I realized about six months ago that I've been subtly deceived my whole life! When going to the store, I'd buy makeup, shampoo, deodorant and lotions because I liked the product; the quality, price or scent and that was about it. I'd do the same for all my other cleaning product purchases. I was an extreme couponer up until the past few months too - due to lack of time - I've taken a break. So, I had accumulated a nice stock pile of name-brand products that most people enjoy and use everyday. I then discovered that the FDA and other governing agencies don't really keep track of what the major companies are putting in their beauty, home and cleaning products (food too, but that is another topic). I discovered that all my products contained a lot of items which had toxic effects on the way the body functions. + +**You may be saying to yourself that the amount of toxic ingredients are "probably" so miniscule that it wouldn't affect you. **Well, I disagree. We use so many different products while getting ready in the morning and while cleaning the house - we are overloading our senses and our bodies with these toxins from every possible direction. I also had a bout of preinvasive cervical cancer before - thankfully I had a minor surgery and it hasn't come back. I'm not saying deodorant or any particular product is causing cancer - but I know a lot of people die from it everyday. Everyone has been effected by cancer. If making these small changes will increase my health and keep some toxins out - I am all for it! I love life too much to not make these small changes!!! I also love having way less products around. This deodorant was my final step in totally transitioning over to all-natural products - and it works better than any store deodorant I've used! + +*There has been research which shows a strong link between anti-antiperspirants containing aluminum and breast cancer, birth defects, allergies, and hormonal imbalances. If you like, you can read more about it [here][1]. You can also do searches on all your products here at the [Skin Deep Database][2] to see which products are safe! I'm done preaching! + +[1]: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/29/cbsnews_investigates/main5123621.shtml +[2]: http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/ diff --git a/saved_articles/how to transfer digital assets upon one's unexpected passing.txt b/saved_articles/how to transfer digital assets upon one's unexpected passing.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..48c5638 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/how to transfer digital assets upon one's unexpected passing.txt @@ -0,0 +1,59 @@ +--- +title: How to transfer digital assets upon one's unexpected passing +date: 2015-03-05T14:02:42Z +source: http://www.dafacto.com/how-to-transfer-confidential-data-upon-ones-passing/ +tags: life, todo + +--- + +After a friend passed last week, I was forced to reflect on the matter of how our personal and confidential digital data would be passed on and entrusted to others in case something unexpected happened to my wife and I. + +## Original approach + +I maintain a 256-bit AES encrypted disk image that contains a copy of my 1Password keychain and a text file whose contents include my 1Password password along with an extensive description of the locations and access credentials of the various places in which we store both physical and digital confidential data. + +Only my wife and I know the password to that encrypted disk image, and the idea was that if anything should happened to me, she would be able to access that disk and its contents. + +What I hadn't considered until now is the case in which something happens to _both_ me and my wife. How could I get that disk image to trusted relatives or friends, along with the password required to open it? + +Here's the solution I implemented this week. + +## SecureSafe + +[SecureSafe][1] is a Swiss company that provides what can be thought of as an online digital safe-deposit box. It can be used to securely store digital files and to keep track of passwords. + +The service is extremely secure. Since your data is encrypted to a key derived from your password, the SecureSafe company itself can not access your data. In addition to that, there is no way to even reset your password. + +SecureSafe offer a feature called "Data Inheritance", which allows you to define any number of "beneficiaries" who can access the files and passwords you store in the system. When you create a beneficiary, SecureSafe generates a PDF file for them, containing a unique access-code along with a description of the procedure for using it to access your account. + +So what keeps a beneficiary from accessing your data when they shouldn't? If a beneficiary attempts to access your SecureSafe account, you, as the account owner, are notified by email and SMS. You then have a configurable amount of time (the "delay period") in which you can respond, denying the request. The default delay period is 8 days, but the account owner can decrease it to a day, or increase it up to 180 days. + +In support of my needs, I have uploaded two documents to SecureSafe: + +1. A copy of my encrypted disk image. +2. A text file that is GPG-encrypted to the PGP keys of my beneficiaries, and which contains the password needed to open the encrypted disk. + +Although it's almost certainly unnecessary, I have chosen, as you can see, to add my own layer of encryption to the data I've put in SecureSafe. + +About once a month, I'll update the 1Password keychain and text-file information map contained in the disk image, and upload a fresh copy to SecureSafe. + +## Deathswitch + +A second problem to address is the following. How would our beneficiaries know if something happened to us while traveling or on extended leave? That's where [Deathswitch][2] comes in. + +After creating a free account at Deathswitch, the system will send you an email every two weeks (or however long you define in the configuration.) If you don't respond to that email after a configurable delay period (default 5 days), Deathswitch goes into "worry" mode, during which it will try to contact you (optionally on a secondary email address) each day for a configurable number of days (default 10). + +If you have not responded by the end of the worry period, the system will then send out any number of emails, the contents and recipients of which are defined by you. + +## Putting it all together + +Should something unexpectedly happen to my wife and I, Deathswitch would eventually send an email to each of our SecureSafe beneficiaries, explaining that we've not been heard from, and reminding them of their access to our data in SecureSafe. + +In addition, those emails would contain the beneficiary's SecureSafe access PDF (encrypted to their PGP keys) as an attachment, in case they've lost track of them. + +Using their SecureSafe access codes, and after having waited for the SecureSafe delay period, our beneficiaries would eventually have access to our personal and confidential data. + + + +[1]: http://www.securesafe.com/en/security/ +[2]: http://deathswitch.com diff --git a/saved_articles/i don’t know.txt b/saved_articles/i don’t know.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d6d6f27 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/i don’t know.txt @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +--- +title: I Don’t Know +date: 2014-10-24T14:16:25Z +source: http://www.jasonhead.com/i-dont-know/ +tags: #lhp + +--- + +10/16/2014 12:56 pm +| [9 Comments][1] + +Three words that strike fear and disgust in project managers, creative directors and especially account executives in agencies across the globe. + +Me? Well as a web developer and manager _I embrace them_. + +I think it's high time that we got rid of the stigma attached to "I Don't Know". This is especially relevant in the web development industry – where the technologies we use come and go as fast as the speed of light. + +Over the years I've interviewed hundreds of candidates for web dev positions on my teams. One thing I always want to hear from a prospective employee? I want to hear them say "I Don't Know." + +But you know who hates hearing this? Your colleagues who are not developers (especially those Client Service folks!). And I'm here to tell you that they need to lighten up a little bit. They should also want to hear you say this once in a while. It's healthy. It's normal. It tells your colleagues to trust you. + +"But Jason!" you scream! "Why would I want to work with someone who says they don't know how to do something!" + +Because when it comes to web development – **we can't know everything**. I've been working as a front-end web dev for close to 20 years. (Oh man, that explains my demeanor I guess!) **Every single project I work on – yes: every one – has some part that I have to learn something new on.** This is simply the life of a web developer. We are used to it. Our job is basically putting together puzzles and doing brainteasers all day. Our industry moves so darn fast that we have to step into the unknown every time we open up our code editors. + +This is why I want someone I interview for a dev position to tell me "I Don't Know". Knowing that you are confident enough in your abilities to figure something out is a key skill. _"Problem Solving" is just as as important a technology as as knowing php, javascript or any other programming language._ Sometimes it's even more important. Being humble enough to recognize this is a trait I would take in any developer over someone with "award-winning" on their resume. It's not really fun working with someone who describes themselves as a "ninja" or "rockstar" – unless of course you are making a kung-fu movie or being a roadie for Metallica. + +Let's look at the other end. I've been in a number of planning meetings when non-dev team members look at you with faces of dread when you mention "Sorry, I can't tell you how many hours this will take because I need to figure it out first." Look, I understand their worries. But if you wanna tread in the waters of building interactive development, you have to get used to it. Put trust in your developers to know what they are doing. Don't be scared when they tell you they need time to figure something out – it's in our job descriptions. + +**Side note: Developers** – don't forget that _you still need to have some people skills too_. Sure, we need to figure out how to do things, but you also have to know when to hold em' and know when to fold em'. There are gonna be times when you can't figure something out – and you'll need to keep the communications open with your team members to let them know – and also when to ask for help. In other words – be honest. Let people know ahead of time rather than an hour before it's due. A late deliverable can throw off everyone on your team – and they will all talk bad about you at lunch. + +It's a fast-paced world out there for people in the web development industry. Let's all make sure to say "I Don't Know" once in a while and then getting to work figuring all this stuff out! + +[1]: http://www.jasonhead.com/i-dont-know/#comments "Comment on " diff --git a/saved_articles/life before air conditioning.txt b/saved_articles/life before air conditioning.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..a365738 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/life before air conditioning.txt @@ -0,0 +1,119 @@ +--- +title: Life Before Air Conditioning +date: 2007-09-23T14:50:07Z +source: http://mentalfloss.com/article/16842/life-air-conditioning +tags: history, culture, society, sociology, psychology, community, environment + +--- + +How in the world did people deal with the summer heat without air +conditioning? Lots of ways, both time-tested and experimental. + +Cooling homes was not the intended purpose when [Willis +Carrier](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk1eVlGwAms) invented modern +[air +conditioning](http://www.corp.carrier.com/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=4455d66bdcb08010VgnVCM100000cb890b80RCRD&cpsextcurrchannel=1) +in 1902. The earliest air conditioners were for industrial quality +control; the comfort of the workers was incidental. However, artificial +climate control made [steel and glass +skyscrapers](http://www.oldhouseweb.com/stories/Detailed/725.shtml) +practical. Home air conditioning became widely available after World War +II and ushered in the age of [suburban tract +housing](http://www.eweek.org/site/news/Features/staycool.shtml). It +also spelled the demise of some old-fashioned architectual details and +social customs. + + + +A look at some of these architectual details, after the jump. + +The oldest method of home climate control is living underground. Our +cave-dwelling ancestors enjoyed temperatures in the 50s both summer and +winter. This dugout house found at +[Shorpy](http://www.shorpy.com/node/1536) was both inexpensive to build +(but labor-intensive) and cool in the summer. Although no one wants to +live in a pit, this method of cooling survived in the use of deep +spacious basements, split-level homes, and houses built into a hillside. +The lower levels stayed much cooler than modern homes. + + + +Underground level climate control is [still in +use](http://enterthelaughter.com/blog/2007/07/13/cave-boy-and-the-goblet-of-squid/), +as we see in the extensive underground workplace called +[Subtropolis](http://www.huntmidwest.com/subtropolis/index.html). More +new buildings are constructed underground, or [partially +buried](http://www.subsurfacebuildings.com/UnderGroundbutNotUnderground.html), +every year. + + + +The effect of cave living was somewhat duplicated by the use of thick +stone, adobe, or traditional brick outer walls. Air conditioning allows +the use of cheaper and lighter materials. Thirty years ago, it was +unheard of to cancel school due to heat. My school had [no air +conditioning](http://www.conspairacy.com/..%5CMainthemes%5CCEILINGS.HTML), +but it had thick brick walls, [high +ceilings](http://www.conspairacy.com/..%5Cmainthemes%5Cwhyhigh.html), +[transoms](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window#Transom_window), ceiling +fans, and if all else failed, plenty of trees outside to hold classes +under. We also walked six miles, uphill both ways. That building is +still there, although the school has moved to a new climate-controlled +facility. The school pictured is in [Hendricks, +Minnesota](http://www.hendricksmn.com/hendricks_postcards.html), but +resembles the school I attended. + + + +Rooms with high ceilings benefit from the tendency of heat to rise. If +heat gathers in the top third of a room, then a ten-foot ceiling will +make a room relatively cooler for most people. Ceiling fans accentuate +the effect by pulling air up during the summer, and pushing warmer air +down in the winter. Older homes with more than one story took advantage +of the [stack effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_effect), as +open stairwells vented heat upstairs. That's why upper floors were [only +used at night](http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07214/806268-155.stm), +with the windows open. Some houses even had a tower or turret to act as +a [windcatcher](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher) or heat +exhaust vent. + + + +Shade trees planted on the east and west sides of a home [block the +summer sun](http://oikos.com/esb/34/shading.html) before it warms the +home exterior. They also cool down breezes slightly before they enter +[the porch +area](http://architectstudio3d.org/AS3d/people_benachihouse.html). +Awnings and window overhangs provide the same effect, and let more +sunshine in during the winter, when the sun hangs lower. + + + +The [front +porch](http://xroads.virginia.edu/~class/am483_97/projects/cook/cultur.htm) +was an alternative to hot homes, and became a means of social +interaction. If you weren't sitting on your own porch in the cool of the +evening, you could stroll the neighborhood and visit other familes +sitting on *their* porch. + + + +On hot nights, the porch was a cooler place to sleep. Apartment dwellers +would sleep on the fire escape when it was unbearably hot indoors. The +widespread use of the [automobile, television, and air +conditioning](http://xroads.virginia.edu/~class/am483_97/projects/cook/decline.htm) +killed the front porch as a social institution. + + + +People had other personal methods for keeping cool, such as hanging wet +laundry in doorways, sleeping in refrigerated sheets, and keeping one's +[underwear in the +freezer](http://community.livejournal.com/iceboxundies/profile). + +Years ago when air conditioning wasn't universal, we *were* sometimes +miserably hot. But "miserable"? is a relative term. We didn't know what +we were missing, and [we were used to +it](http://www.wisebread.com/living-without-air-conditioning-can-save-big-bucks-this-summer). +We were never as miserable as someone in a small modern home built for +artificial climate control when the air conditioner fails! diff --git a/saved_articles/mexico salon literary guide to the world.txt b/saved_articles/mexico salon literary guide to the world.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..e8dc64f --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/mexico salon literary guide to the world.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +title: Destination: Mexico - Salon.com +date: 2006-07-17T16:16:35Z +source: http://www.salon.com/books/literary_guide/2006/07/10/mexico/ +tags: books, literature + +--- + +In front of tourists, Mexicans become consummate actors. They'll say just about anything to enchant you, to make you lose your mind. This, after all, is a country where the bizarre becomes routine. Not surprisingly, foreigners return again and again as if hypnotized. Their account of life en el México profundo is as captivating as it is untrustworthy. + +Of course, tourists in Mexico are performers, too. Take André Breton, the founder of surrealism and author of "Anthology of Black Humor" (1938), who traveled from France to Mexico in 1938 hoping to meet Leon Trostky. What he found was an archaic, millenarian, pre-modern country that, as he wrote, "delivers its message in the language of dreams"; a place where even the darkest aspects of life — including death — are approached by all with humor. And there's Sergei Eisenstein, the Russian filmmaker, who struggled to complete his documentary "Que Viva Mexico!" with money from Upton Sinclair while Joseph Stalin struggled to make his life impossible. The most absurd, even impossible logic, Eisenstein believed, finds in Mexico its most comfortable home. + +Then there's Ambrose Bierce, who looked death in the eye during the American Civil War and left us with his astonishing "Devil's Dictionary" (1906). He later crossed the border in 1913 while looking for Pancho Villa — and was never to be seen again. He was seeking, as he put it, "the good, kind darkness." Likewise with the poets of the Beat Generation: Allen Ginsberg experimented with drugs as he visited ancient ruins here while William S. Burroughs accidentally killed his common-law wife, Joan Vollmer, while playing a shooting game. Inspired by Aldous Huxley's mescaline-induced chronicle "The Doors of Perception," Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso and other beatniks — not to mention the hordes of hippies that followed them — became mad, got stoned and sought nirvana (a word whose meaning, by the way, is "extinction") all in Mexico. + +* * * + +* * * + +If you're looking for travelogues, memoirs and fiction about Mexico to take not only with a grain of salt but also with a few drops of Tabasco sauce, I recommend starting with the ultimate con artist of the New Age generation: Carlos Castaneda. "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge," published in 1968, is the chronicle of a series of encounters with a Yaqui shaman, Don Juan Matus, whom the author claims to have met in 1960, during a trip to Nogales, Ariz., at a Greyhound bus station. A critique of rationalism, Don Juan's wisdom is showcased as a road map of Mexico's "mystical" side. It should be read with a skeptic's eye, though; Don Juan's statements are a hodgepodge of ancient wisdom and McSpirituality. + +Graham Greene's novel "The Power and the Glory," originally published in 1940 under the title "The Labyrinthine Ways," is a tour de force about the elusive separation — or shall we say promiscuous relationship? — of church and state in Mexico. Set in the '30s in the southern region of Chiapas, home today of Subcomandante Marcos and his Zapatistas, it tells the story of a drunken priest at the time of intense anti-Catholic sentiment in the country. Greene was a "failed" Catholic himself who contemplated and then abandoned the idea of a life in the priesthood, and his book is an invaluable snapshot of a little-known historical moment in Mexican history. Another worthy novel about alcohol and the Brits in Mexico is Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano," set in the city of Cuernavaca, the capital of the state of Morelos, during the Day of the Dead celebrations. Reading it is like descending to a previously unknown tropical chamber in Dante's Inferno. Published in 1947, Lowry's book is injected with hallucinatory descriptions in which the effect of alcohol intertwines with dream visions of Nazism in the Americas. + +Equally arresting, if less frantic, is Italo Calvino's "Under the Jaguar Sun." (First published as a story in the New Yorker in 1983, it is the first of three stories in the book of the same title.) The story is organized around the five senses, and follows a husband and wife discovering Mexico through its sensual cuisine. In Mexico, Calvino suggests, food and religion are intimately linked. The plethora of tastes available pushed the tourists into a state of ecstasy as they visit ruins. The clash between pre-Columbian and European ways, still raw since the conquest, is revisited with startling effects. There's also D.H. Lawrence's "The Plumed Serpent" (1926), the self-aggrandizing tale of a self-flagellating European woman set against the backdrop of self-effacing Aztec rituals. It's the ideal travel companion for readers who see the world as a never-ending battle between the forces of good and evil. + +Katherine Anne Porter, known for having a persona larger than the person who hosted it, spent years in Mexico, working as a translator, screenwriter, lecturer and reporter. Her 1930 book "Flowering Judas and Other Stories" includes excellent tales about Mexican peasant life that ought to be read alongside more idiosyncratic — and nativistic — portraits such as Juan Rulfo's 1968 classic "The Burning Plain," a collection of stories told from the peasant viewpoint. His characters don't just suffer their misery, they act it out for us with bravado. + +Finally, no literary tour should ignore Harriet Doerr's debut novel, "Stones for Ibarra," for which she won the National Book Award in 1984 at the age of 73. The book focuses on an aging Anglo couple who move to a Mexican mining town, hoping to return to a copper mine the husband's family once owned. But he soon falls sick, and the wife's odyssey ultimately revolves around her interaction with the villagers. She learns that Ibarrans go about "their individual dooms" with resignation, recognizing "as inevitable the hail on the ripe corn, the vultures at the heart of the starved cow, the stillborn child." Doerr said of her work: "I found I'm quite happy working on a sentence for an hour or more, searching for the right phrase, the right word. I compare it to the work of a stone cutter — chipping away at the raw material until it's just right, or as right as you can get it." The narrative makes you believe she's patiently sculpting each of the town's dwellers, their wrinkled faces, their longing souls, in stone. + +For those ready to unearth Mexico's treasures from within, I recommend Octavio Paz's "The Labyrinth of Solitude," a 1950 study that will help, even today, elucidate the ways people in Mexico live. In his essays, Paz proves the extent to which the whole civilization approaches life as a cosmic performance. His prose is cosmopolitan, and he makes insightful connections between psychology and faith, literature and technology. Sadly, his iconoclastic poetry is less enticing. In its stead, I suggest un paseo, a rendezvous through one of the most lucid and emblematic of all Mexican poets, the 17th century nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Her superb book "Poems, Protest, and a Dream" covers the treacherous path women walk in a society ruled by machismo. Finally, people interested in Mexico's tumultuous past may want to look at Mariano Azuela's "The Underdogs" (1915), a short novel about how the Mexican revolution of 1910 ended up betraying its own objectives. It follows the paths of a series of characters in search of a mission and explains how political corruption became the law of the land. + +Perhaps before you travel to Mexico you'll doubt the veracity of most of these books. You might even find them mystifying. But I doubt you'll have the same feeling when you're there. Everything in Mexico _es un show,_ the logical and the nonsensical. And before you know it, you will become part of the cast. + +[ ][1] + +[1]: http://www.salon.com/2006/07/10/mexico_12/ diff --git a/saved_articles/ocean wanderers the ultimate resource for pelagic birding enthusiasts.txt b/saved_articles/ocean wanderers the ultimate resource for pelagic birding enthusiasts.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..a9901c9 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/ocean wanderers the ultimate resource for pelagic birding enthusiasts.txt @@ -0,0 +1,306 @@ +--- +title: The Ultimate Resource for Pelagic Birding Enthusiasts +date: 2006-05-17T22:00:22Z +source: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/index.html +tags: nature, research + +--- + +> > **Welcome to oceanwanderers.com** +**The on-line resource for serious birders and pelagic enthusiasts** + + +**![][1] +Cover photo: **Bottlenose Dolphin springs from the pressure wave behind a whale watching boat off Cape May New Jersey, July 2005. Photographed using a Canon 10D digital camera and 400 mm Canon lens. Copyright Angus Wilson©2005. + +To view previous cover photos, [click here][2]. +[Tell a friend][3] about this site! + +* * * + +**What's new?** + +****************Gull Identification- [Is this the first documented Western Gull for the Atlantic][4]? +![][5] +******** +[Seabird-News][6] \- New global discussion group on Google. ******** + +******Want to keep up with the latest seabird and marine mammal news from around the world? Become a member of [Seabird-News][7], a new free listserve started by Angus Wilson/Oceanwanderers.com. The archive of messages is open to all but you must be a members to be able to share your sightings from seawatches or boat-based excursions. We also encourage posting of conservation or research news. Hopefully, trip leaders and wildlife tour companies will use this list as a venue to announce forthcoming offshore trips or holidays. To sign up for messages, follow this link: [Subscribe to Seabirds-News][8].****** + +********Shorebird Identification- Japanese Shorebird Blog******** + +********![][9] +Interested in Asiatic shorebirds? Check out the [Shore Birds in Japan][10] blog from Nobuhiro Hashimoto;******** a shorebird enthusiast who birds in Osaka and Mie Prefectures. ****He has photographed a large number of really superb photographs ********captured, ************for the most part, by digiscoping. Many of the images focuse on feather detail, providing a valuable reference collection for birders elsewhere. +![][11] **** + +OW Reviews - Prominar TD-1, the new digital camera/telescope combination from Kowa. +![][12] +**********The shape of things to come? Ocean Wanderers reviews the innovative new spotting scope from Kowa featuring a built in digital camera. [Click here for more][13] (Added 24 Oct 2005).****** + +****Seabird Conservation - Sir David Attenborough joins the _Save the Albatross_ Campaign. +**![][14]BirdLife International's [Save the Albatross campaign][15] received a welcome boost today when broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough and the organisers of the world's premier ocean sailing challenge – The Volvo Ocean Race - announced their support for this important cause. Other notable public figure to support the campaign include HRH Prince of Wales, transatlantic oarsman John Ridgway and record-breaking yachtswoman Dame Ellen MacArthur. ****** + +******Sir David Attenborough said, "_Albatrosses have survived in the harshest marine environments for 50 million years; more than 100 times longer than our own species. However, these magnificent birds are unable to cope with man-made threats, such as longline fishing. Europeans saw their first albatrosses only 500 years ago in the Southern Ocean, but in our fleeting overlap with these birds we are threatening all but two of the world's 21 species with extinction. It is awe-inspiring to think that some of the albatrosses nesting when I started my broadcasting career are still raising young, half a century later. However, with 100,000 of these birds drowning annually on longlines, the chance of an individual albatross surviving to old age now, seems as remote as the ability of many albatross species to exist beyond the end of this century. Albatrosses should be free to circle the globe for millions of years to come – we must stop this needless slaughter now to prevent an entire branch being torn from the evolutionary tree. It is unthinkable that the only record we will have of these birds will be the attempts of broadcasters, like myself, to share the beauty of our natural world._" ****** + +![][16] + +******The above image (******©******Peter Ryan/Save the Albatross Campaign) shows seabirds (White-chinned Petrels, Giant Petrels, Shy Albatross and Yellow-nosed Albatross) killed by a [long-lining][17] vessel during a single trip. The campaign seeks to persuade governments and fishing authorities around the world to pass and enforce laws to protect albatrosses and other seabirds. Simple measures such as flying colored streams behind the boat when actively fishing and using a plastic shoot to drop baited hooks into the water are highly effective in reducing seabird mortality. There really are no excuses for not making this standard practice worldwide (Added 8 Oct 2005).****** + +****Transoceanic Migrations - Interconnections between populations of Great White Sharks. +An article in the journal _Science_ (7 October 2005: 100-103) described recent satellite tagging studies that reveal an unexpectedly long and rapid migration by Great White Sharks across the Indian Ocean. One adult female (nick-named Nicole after Australian actress Nicole Kidman) was tagged on 7 November 2003 by a team headed by Ramon Bonfil, a scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society. 'Nicole' spent some time in South African waters before embarking on a 6,900 mile journey straight across the Indian Ocean to western Australia. During this time, the shark made a number of deep dives (up to 3,215 feet) but otherwise spent 61% of the time close to the surface. The satellite device detached itself 99 days later (to allow for collection of the stored data) a mile from shore just south of the Exmouth Gulf in Western Australia. Remarkably, the same shark was resighted off South Africa on 20 August 2004. Other animals in the study did not follow the same path but instead moved up and down the East African coast, including Mozambiquan Territorial waters where they are not protected. These results suggest that the different populations of Great White Sharks may be significantly more interconnected that previously thought and that depletion of one stock will therefore directly impact others (Added 8 Oct 2005).**** + +**Whale & Dolphin Watching- CRESLI. +The [Coastal Research and Education Society of Long Island][18] (CRESLI) has been studying marine mammals in the waters off Long Island (principally New York, Rhode Island and Massachucetts) for more than 20 years. At least 25 species of cetaceans have been shown to utilize Long Island's waters at one time or another, including Fin, Humpback, Minke, North Atlantic Right, Sei, Blue, Sperm and Long-finned Pilot whales, as well as Common, Bottlenose, Striped and Atlantic White-sided Dolphins. During mid-summer (July-August) they run trips to the Great South Channel off Cape Cod. This is a very productive area for whales, including remarkable congregations of the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale on migration between summering grounds in the Canadian maritimes (especially the Bay of Fundy) and the warmer waters off Florida/Georgia and parts unknown (Added 17 Sept 2005).** + +**![][19]![][20] +(Left) Great Shearwater off Long Island, NY 5 June 2005, copyright: Arthur Kopelman©2005. (Right) Breaching Humpback Whale, Great South Channel, MA, August 2005, copyright: Arthur Kopelman©2005.** + +**Where to Watch Seabirds - Heritage Expeditions announces 'Cruise for Conservation'. +[Heritage Expeditions][21] announced the inaugural _"Cruise for Conservation"_, a special voyage to the Subantarctic Islands of Campbell, Auckland and Snares. This journey is being run in association with New Zealand's[ Forest and Bird ][22]and the [Department of Conservation][23], supporters of Birdlife International's [Save the Albatross][24] Campaign. The theme of the trip is for passangers to experience an abundance of albatrosses in their natural element, the Southern Ocean and hopefully bring attention to their growing plight. The expedition will be lead by a number of seabird experts and biologists. Importantly, a percentage of the ticket price will be donated to the [International Save the Albatross Campaign][24], to aid research into albatross biology and possible bycatch prevention solutions. The first voyage will take place on 6th to 12th January, 2006. ** + +For a taste of the extraordinary diversity and numbers of seabird that breed on these wonderful islands, check out the [trip report][25] prepared by John Brodie-Good and myself following our own visit (Nov-Dec 2001) to these jewels of the southern ocean. (Added 8 August 2005) + +**Shorebird Identification - Hybrid Sandpiper or Dunlin? +![][26] +On-going discussion of the identity of two interesting sandpipers photographed in May. (Added 8 August 2005) ** + +**Where to Watch Seabirds - Announcing the 'Western Pacific Odyssey'. + +![][27] +Black Petrel. Photographed in the Hauraki Gulf, New Zealand by Chris Collins© 2005, All rights reserved. ****** + +John Brodie-Good ([WildWings/WildOceans][28]) and Rodney Russ ([Heritage Expeditions, NZ][21]) have just announced an exclusive seabirding adventure through the Western Pacific. Sailing from New Zealand, the cruise will thread its way through the numerous islands of the western Pacific to Kagoshima in Japan. For seabird fanatics this is the proverbial 'once in a lifetime' chance to connect with a host of stunning seabirds including the newly rediscovered New Zealand Storm-Petrel and numerous tropical goodies such as Tahiti Petrel, Gould's Petrel, White-necked Petrel, Heinroth's Shearwater, White-throated Storm-Petrel and Grey Ternlet. The trip will culminate with a visit to Torishima, the principal nesting site for Short-tailed Albatross. A number of landings are planned and participants will encounter numerous hard-to-get landbirds including the awesome Kagu on Noumea in New Caledonia. + +Book soon!! Berths are limited and the ship is filling fast!! + +Click here for more information about the cruise and to view a host of seabird photos from the recce trip by Chris Collins and Kaj Kampp (Added 19 July 2005). + +**Shorebird Identification - Hybrid Sandpiper?** + +![][29] +Wayne Richardson found and superbly photographed this puzzling sandpiper on Marco Island, Florida. Superficially resembling a White-rumped Sandpiper several details appear to be a miss. Click the picture to see more images including a flight shot. Dennis Paulson, author of _Shorebirds of North America: The Photographic Guide_ (2005 Princeton University Press) gets the ball rolling with some comments on the possible parents. (Added 17 June 2005) + +**New pelagic Web Site - [Pterodroma Pelagics][30]. +** +![][31] + +Chris Gaskin & Karen Baird operate [Pterodroma Pelagics][30] as a subsidiary of [Kiwi Wildlife Tours NZ][32]. They have been operating pelagics to the Outer Hauraki Gulf (through Kiwi Wildlife Tours NZ) since the end of 2002, when the Gulf's full potential as a world-class pelagic destination was recognized. Their web site is full of useful information for pelagic birders. Without a doubt, a major highlight of any pelagic to the Hauraki Gulf would be an encounter with the newly discovered New Zealand Storm-Petrel. There are a number of photos of the species scattered across the site and a very interesting article on the work of the NEW ZEALAND STORM PETREL WORKING GROUP, which aims to discover and protect the nesting site(s). Also there is a review of recent sightings - a must for anyone planning a trip. (Added 13 April 2005) + +![][33] +New Zealand Storm-Petrel. Photo by Hadoram Shirihai © Tubenoses Project, A & C Black. + +**Books - Coming Soon: A major new field guide to the marine mammals of the world.** + +![][34]Later this year, A&C Black expects to release "_**A Field Guide to the Marine Mammals of the World Whales, Dolphins, Sirenians and Seals**_" by **Hadoram Shirihai** & **Brett Jarrett**. Intended as a true field guide, the book will show important variation (age, sex and geographical variation) and depict similar species together for ease of comparison. Text and maps will be accompanied by ~400 photographs and ~90 plates, all solely geared towards identification. The compact size of the guide (216 x 135 mm) will allow it to fit in a pocket. For the armchair enthusiast, a larger (A4) format edition, using the same plates and text but containing over 1,000 extra photographs is planned for release at a later date. + +High quality photographs are still being sought for last minute inclusion. Species or forms of interest include:** Fur seals and sea lions:** South African, Australian, Antarctic, Subantarctic, Guadalupe, Juan Fernández, New Zealand, South American, Galápagos and Northern Fur Seals; Californian (includes Galápagos, and Japanese), Northern (Steller's), Australian, New Zealand and South American Sea Lions. **True seals:** Bearded, Harbour, Largha (Spotted), Ringed, Caspian, Baikal, Grey, Ribbon, Harp and Hooded Seals; Mediterranean, Hawaiian and West Indian Monk Seals; Southern and Northern Elephant Seals; Weddell, Ross', Crabeater and Leopard Seals. **Baleen whales:** North Atlantic, North Pacific and Southern Right Whales, Bowhead Whale, Pygmy Right Whale, Gray Whale, Humpback, Northern, Dwarf and Antarctic Minke Whales, Bryde's (includes Eden's, and Omura's), Sei, Fin and Blue Whales (includes Northern, Indian Ocean, Pygmy, and Southern Blue Whales). **Sperm whales:** Sperm Whale, Pygmy Sperm Whale, Dwarf Sperm Whale. **Beaked whales:** Cuvier's, Arnoux's, Baird's and Shepherd's (Tasman) Beaked Whales, Tropical, Northern and Southern Bottlenose Whales, Hector's, True's, Gervais', Sowerby's, Gray's, Pygmy, Andrews', Spade-toothed, Hubbs', Gingko-toothed, Stejneger's, Strap-toothed, Blainville's and Perrin's Beaked Whales. **Oceanic and costal dolphins:** Commerson's, Black (Chilean), Haviside's (Heaviside's), Hector's and Rough-toothed Dolphins, Humpback Dolphins (includes Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific), Tucuxi (includes Atlantic Coast and Amazon), Common and Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins, Pantropical and Atlantic Spotted Dolphins,) Spinner (includes Gray's or Hawaiian and also Eastern and Central American), Clymene and Striped Dolphins, Short-beaked and Long-beaked Common Dolphins (includes D. c. tropicalis, Arabian Common Dolphin), Fraser's and White-beaked Dolphins, Atlantic and Pacific White-sided Dolphins, Dusky (includes South American, South African and New Zealand), Peale's and Hourglass Dolphins, Northern and Southern Right-whale Dolphins, Risso's Dolphin, Melon-headed Whale, Pygmy Killer Whale, False Killer Whale, Killer Whale, Long-finned and Short-finned Pilot Whales, and Irrawaddy Dolphin. **Porpoises:** Finless (includes Indo-Pacific, Chinese Finless Porpoise, and Yangtse), Harbour, Gulf of California, Spectacled, Burmeister's and Dall's Porpoises. **Arctic cetaceans: **Beluga, Narwhal. **River dolphins and Franciscana: **Ganges, Indus, Amazon and Chinese River Dolphins, and Franciscana. **Sirenians:** West Indian, West African and Amazonian Manatees, Dugong. **Arctic animals:** Walrus, Polar Bear. **Otters:** Marine and Sea Otters. A fee is payable for every photo published. The authors prefer to receive material electronically as digital images or scans of slides, and in high resolution suitable for publication. For submission details please contact Hadoram at [msanroman@bluewin.ch][35]. + +**At the Limits of Ocean and Air** \- New York Times Editorial - Published: January 20, 2005 + +**'Most humans have never seen a [gray-headed albatross][36] or, for that matter, any albatross. And for good reason. The gray-headed albatross breeds in grassy tufts set high on the cliffs of remote islands in the seas just north of Antarctica. But the bird's true habitat is the tumultuous air above those seas. In April 1999, scientists fixed tiny locaters to the albatrosses in a cohort breeding on Bird Island, near South Georgia. The data retrieved \- a map of the migratory patterns of 22 birds - will help scientists understand where albatrosses are most likely to cross paths with fishing boats, which often hook and kill the birds with baited hooks floating just under the water's surface. That could make all the difference to this species, which belongs to the most threatened family of birds on the planet.' ** + +'This research also turned up some surprising glimpses of how albatrosses live. It was already known that they could fly at astonishingly high speeds with Antarctic storms at their backs, and scientists had guessed that the birds were capable of spending great lengths of time aloft. But half the birds in this study flew around the world - as much as 14,000 miles - and one of them did so in 46 days. This implies an ability simply to live on the wing, to rest and forage while making constant headway toward the east and, ultimately, their breeding grounds.' + +'As so often happens, the more we come to know about the life of any individual species, the better we understand how extensive the human impact on this planet really is. Few things seem more remote from our daily lives than the peregrinations of an albatross in the southernmost latitudes. And yet those birds, when they feed, are all too often the immediate victims of our appetite for fish.' + +'It's hard to say how many albatrosses are lost to legal and illegal long-lining ships, which trail enormous numbers of baited hooks behind them. But some estimates say they kill as many as 100,000 birds per year. The long-lining fishing fleet is overharvesting the air as well as the sea.' (Added 20 Jan 2005) + +**Waterfowl Identification- Canada/Cackling Goose Split.** + +**![][37]The [Overview of Canada/Cackling Goose Subspecies][38] has been updated in light of the recent decision by the American Ornithologists' Union to separate the commonly recognized subspecies of Canada Goose into two distinct species. Most of the larger forms remain as 'Canada Goose', whereas the smaller ones are lumped together as 'Cackling Goose'. (6 Oct 2004)** + +**Pelagic Bird Conservation- Betting on Albatrosses** + +**_And they're off_......... In an unusual partnership, the world's biggest bookmaker has teamed up with [Conservation Foundation][39] and the Tasmanian State Government to launch the [Ladbrook's Big Bird Race][40] also known as the 'ultimate flutter'. Scientists from the Tasmanian state government tagged 18 juvenile Shy Albatrosses with satellite transmitters and will follow their migration from Pedra Branca, Albatross Island and Mewstone, three islands lying off the Australian state to feeding grounds in the Benguela Current off Southern Africa. Ladbrokes.com will be offering a variety of bets on the 6000 mile 'race' and punters can follow the birds' progress on-line. Birds are sponsored by celebrity 'owners' including Queen Noor of Jordan ('The Ancient Mariner') and Brian May, the former guitarist for Queen ('Rocky').** + +**An estimated 300,000 seabirds die from longlining each year. One goal of the project is to encourage more countries to sign the Agreement for the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP). ACAP requires signatory states to take specific measures to reduce seabird by-catch from longline fishing and improve the conservation status of the birds. Initially, only Australia, New Zealand, Ecuador, Spain and South Africa signed the agreement. The UK became the sixth country to ratify in April 2004. Ratification by the UK included the Overseas Territories of the Falklands, British Antarctic Territory and South Georgia/South Sandwich Islands but not Tristan da Cunha, which is crucial and which is due to ratify soon. Most pirate fishing vessels are owned by companies based in Taiwan, Spain, Panama, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, China and Equatorial Guinea. (Added 2 July 2004)** + +**New York Rarities- Bar-tailed Godwit** +**** +![][41] On Friday 28 May 2004, Ken and Sue Feustel discovered a nominate [Bar-tailed Godwit][42] on the flat at Mecox Bay, eastern Long Island. If accepted, this will be the sixth record for the state and first in 19 years. For more images of New York State rarities [click here][43]. (Added 29 May 2004).**** + +**Marine Mammals- New Whale Watching Magazine** +**** +Earlier this month, Rachel Saward launched [Whale and Dolphin Magazine][44]. This beautifully produced publication is aimed at whale and dolphin watchers in the United Kingdom but has plenty to interest enthusiasts further afield.**** + +**Pelagic Birding \- New Bay of Biscay Pelagics** + +**Adam Scott Kennedy has launched a new company [Ultimate Pelagics Ltd][45] offering multiday cruises to bird and mammal rich areas within Europe's hotspot for pelagic wildlife. Details of forthcoming trips are available at [www.ultimatepelagics.com][45].** + +**Pelagic Bird Conservation- Remembering Alec Zino** +** +** **Niklas Holmstrom posted the following sad news: "Paul Alexander (Alec) Zino, the Madeiran ornithologist and conservationist, passed away on 3 March 2004, aged 88. He gave his name to endemic species Zino's Petrel (_Pterodroma madeira_), which is near extinction with only 45 known breeding pairs. Subfossil evidence has revealed that the bird was once abundant on the island, but declined when the first settlers arrived in 1419. ** + +**Alec Zino was born at Quinta Margarida on Madeira on February 9 1916 and was educated in England, where he attended St Edmund's College, Ware, Herts, before going on to read Modern Languages at Christ's College, Cambridge. After graduation he returned to Madeira to work in the family property business.** + +You are welcome to read Brian Unwin's tribute to Alec Zino on: <http://madeira.seawatching.net/zino.html> + +**Give Alec a thought when visiting Madeira, Niklas Holmstrom" (6 April 2004)** + +**Pelagic Birding \- Update on New Zealand Storm-Petrel** + +**Seabird fanatics hoping to catch up with the newly rediscovered New Zealand Storm-Petrel can take heart in continuing sightings from the same area. Brent Stephenson reports that a 18 January trip into the Hauraki Gulf managed to attract 11 or more New Zealand Storm-Petrels to the boat and at times they were the most common species on view - not bad going for a bird that was presumed extinct this time last year! Take a look at the [superb photos and full story][46] on the Wrybill Tours site. (Added 21 Jan 2004)** + +****Where to Watch Seabirds - Madiera**** + +![][47]![][48] + +**Swedish birder, Niklas Holmstrm has created a wonderful web site about [birding and seawatching in the Madeira archipelago][49]. Appropriately named 'Birding Madeira', the site contains all the information you need for a trip to this fascinating archipelago situated in the North Atlantic off North Africa. There are sections on 'Travel info', 'Seawatching', 'Trip reports', 'Photo gallery' and selective lists of birds and more. Niklas is an ardent seawatcher and coauthor of [Flight Identification of European Seabirds][50] (Added 21 Jan 2004) ** + +****Frontiers in Bird ID - North American Juncos**** + +****![][51]**** + +**Juncos are a distinctive group of medium-sized Sparrows found throughout North and Central America. Dark-eyed Junco (_Junco hyemalis_) breeds in boreal habitat from Alaska to Newfoundland and winters widely across North America and into Mexico. The 'species' is highly variable in part due to extensive hybridization between different populations. Juncos present many identification and taxonomic challenges, relevant to birders throughout the USA and Canada. OceanWanderers is proud to archive a lively debate from ID-Frontiers Listerserv centered around [the identification of 'Oregon-type' and 'Pink-sided' juncos found in the eastern half of the continent][52]. An additional page features a [collection of odd juncos from the east][53]. (Added 16 Jan 2004).** + +**Pelagic Birding \- New Zealand Storm-Petrel Rediscovered** + +![][54] + +**The world of seabirds is always full of great surprises. Earlier this year (25th January 2003) a group of pelagic birders led by Brent Stephenson and Sav Saville ([Wrybill Birding Tours][55]) were off Whitianga, New Zealand and photographed an unfamiliar storm-petrel (above). Hitting the books, they came to the heady conclusion that this might be the supposedly extinct and certainly very poorly known New Zealand Storm-Petrel _Oceanites maorianus_. Review of the type specimen at the British Museum in Tring by Hadoram Shirihai and Bill Bourne strongly supports this identification. There almost no information on the natural history of this obscure seabird and there are only three specimens in existence, one at Tring and two in Paris. You can learn more about this extraordinary sighting and view Ian Southey's photos of all three specimens by visiting the dedicated page on the [Wrybill Tours][56] web site.** + +**So is the Whitianga bird a one off? The last of its kind? Apparently not! The thrilling news is that Bob Flood and Bryan Thomas, visiting birders from the UK, observed and photographed a flock of New Zealand Storm-Petrels off Little Barrier Island on 17 November 2003\. They saw 10 birds together, with up to 20 different birds visiting their chum slick over a period of 2 hours. An article on this exciting new development, written by Bob Flood, has just been published in [Birding World][57] (December 10th issue). Note that caption to Plates 6 & 7 is incorrect and should read, 'Black-bellied Storm-petrel _Fregetta tropica_ c.40 kms east of Southport, Queensland, Australia, November 15, 2003 (Bryan Thomas ...'. This additional sighting of multiple individuals should provide the necessary incentive for birders to work with the New Zealand Department of Conservation to quickly discover the breeding localities and ensure their protection. (Added 12 Dec 2003).** + +**Pelagic Birding - Birds and marine mammals of the Eastern Tropical Pacific** + +**![][58]** + +**Read the exclusive and richly illustrated web article aptly titled [Petrel Cocktail][59] written and illustrated by Hadoram Shirihai, describing a recent research cruise through the eastern Pacific starting in Costa Rica and landing in Peru by way of the Galapagos Islands. (Added 6 Dec 2003)** + +**Cetacean Taxonomy - Bryde's Whale split into three distinct species. ** + +**A scientific team led by Dr. Tadasu Yamada of Tokyo's National Science Museum used anatomical and molecular criteria to classify nine balaen whale specimens as belonging to a new species.Their results were published in the journal Nature [2003, 20 Nov. 426 (No 6964): 278-281]. ** + +**Named in honor of the late Dr. Hideo Omura, a celebrated Japanese cetacean biologist, the new whale (Balaenoptera omurai) closely resembles Bryde's Whale (B. brydei) and another cryptic species Eden's Whale (B. edeni). The specimens suggest that Omura's Whales occur mainly in the East China Sea and surrounding waters, with a crudely estimated population of at least 1,000. These exciting discoveries illustrate how little we really know about our marine mammals. How these species can be differentiated at sea remains an open and interesting question for whale watchers and scientists alike. (Added 29 Nov 2003)** + +**Tyrant flycatcher Identification \- ['Western Kingbird' from Geneseo in western New York or something more exotic?][60]** + +![][61] + +**This puzzling _Tyrannus_ flycatcher generated much discussion amongst North American birders. Suggestions ranged from Western, Couch's, Tropical and White-throated Flycatchers to hybrid combinations of Western or Couch's with Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. Although the bird has since disappeared, the debate continues (Added 18 Nov 2003)** + +**Seabird Identification - [Unidentified Pterodroma petrel from Maui, Hawaii][62].** + +![][63] + +**Seabird Identification - Exciting news from the Bismarck Archipelago! ** + +**Working on his forthcoming tubenose monograph, Hadoram Shirihai discovered an unknown feeding ground for the [Heinroth's Shearwater][64] (_Puffinus heinrothi_), with c. 100 birds in a small area. He has generously provided OceanWanderers with the stunning shot posted below. Heinroth's Shearwater is one of the world's least known seabirds and Hadoram's photographs are probably the only images ever taken of the bird in the wild. There are a handful of unconfirmed at-sea sightings from this general area. The breeding grounds are not known with certainty, but most likely lie in the Solomons, east of Papua New Guinea. The same trip produced good numbers of Tahiti Petrels, some Beck's Petrels and a suspected Macgillivray's Petrel, among some other good seabirds and marine mammals. ** + +**Watch this space for more photos and an account of his thrilling adventure! (Added 25 Aug 2003)** + +![][65] + +**Seabird Identification - [Southern Mollymawk on Midway Island, Hawaii 8 April 2003 - Salvin's or Buller's?][66]** + +**[Latest Additions to OceanWanderers][67] Last updated 14 August 2003** + +**[Earlier additions to Ocean Wanderers (1999 to 2001)][68]** + +* * * + +**Main Content** + +**Pelagic Birding and Whale Watching** + +**[Seabird News Round Up][69]** +**[Where to Watch Seabirds][70]** +**[Books about Oceanic Birds and Mammals][71] ** +**[Annotated list of the Seabirds of the World][72]** +**[Annotated list of the Marine Mammals of the World][73]** + +**Shorebird identification** + +**[Shorebirds (Waders) of the World][74]** + +**Rarities and Bird Identification** + +**[Topics in Bird Identification][75]** **Last updated 20 Jan 2004** +**[Archive of Bird Photographs][76]** +**[New York State Rarities][43]** +**[Identification Articles in the Literature][77]** +**[Select List of Recommended Web Sites][78]** + +**Important Tip:** To view the many images on this site, set your monitor to 'real colors' or 'thousands of colors'. The pages may load a tiny bit slower but believe me it makes quite a difference to the image quality! + +[About me][79] + +[1]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/OWCover.10.2005.jpg +[2]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/OWOldcovers.html +[3]: %3Ca%20href=%22mailto:?subject=Check%20this%20out&body=Thought%20this%20might%20interest%20you:%20http://www.oceanwanderers.com%22%3E +[4]: http://oceanwanderers.com/unidBBGull.html +[5]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/unidBBG10.jpg +[6]: http://groups.google.com/group/Seabird-News +[7]: http://groups.google.com/group/Seabird-News?lnk=lr +[8]: http://groups.google.com/group/Seabird-News/subscribe +[9]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/Nobuhiro_Hashimoto1.jpg +[10]: http://shorebirds.exblog.jp/ +[11]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/Nobuhiro_Hashimoto2.jpg +[12]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/TD1Scope.6153.jpg +[13]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/KowaTD1.html +[14]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/BirdLifeInt.jpg +[15]: http://www.savethealbatross.net/ +[16]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/ph_14.jpg +[17]: http://www.birdlife.org/action/science/species/seabirds/longlining.html +[18]: http://www.cresli.org/ +[19]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/Cresli.GtShwater.jpg +[20]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/GSC05_1_-439.jpg +[21]: http://www.heritage-expeditions.com/Home +[22]: http://www.forestandbird.org.nz/Marine/albatross.asp +[23]: http://www.doc.govt.nz/index.html +[24]: http://www.birdlife.org/action/campaigns/save_the_albatross/index.html +[25]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/SubAntNZAUS.html +[26]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/Dunlin24052001cNDvS.jpg +[27]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/BlackPetrel.1412ss.jpg +[28]: http://www.wildwings.co.uk/ +[29]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/Peep%20Sp.jpg +[30]: http://www.nzseabirds.com +[31]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/new_banner.jpg +[32]: http://www.kiwi-wildlife.co.nz +[33]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/NZSP5.jpg +[34]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/SouthernRWDolpin.jpg +[35]: mailto:msanroman%40bluewin.ch +[36]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/Gryh.Alb.html +[37]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/CaGo.5442.jpg +[38]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/CAGO.Subspecies.html +[39]: http://www.conservationfoundation.co.uk/html/news/news_albatross.htm +[40]: http://www.ladbrokes.com/bigbirdrace/ +[41]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/NYBarTGodwit.0032s.jpg +[42]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/NYBarTailGodwit.html +[43]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/NYRarities.html +[44]: http://www.wdmag.co.uk/ +[45]: http://www.ultimatepelagics.com +[46]: http://www.wrybill-tours.com/idproblems/stormpet4.htm%20%0D +[47]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/Bulwers_Petrel.jpg +[48]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/Corys_Shearwater.jpg +[49]: http://madeira.seawatching.net/ +[50]: http://theflight.seawatching.net/ +[51]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/Oct2003.jpg +[52]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/JuncoID.html +[53]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/JuncoID2.html +[54]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/nzsp_brent_stephenson.jpg +[55]: http://www.wrybill-tours.com/ +[56]: http://www.wrybill-tours.com/idproblems/stormpet.htm +[57]: http://www.birdingworld.co.uk/ +[58]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/PC.HS.JuanFernandezPetrel.JPG +[59]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/PetrelCocktail.html +[60]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/NYTyrannus.html +[61]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/kb37sm1.jpg +[62]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/MauiPetrel.html +[63]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/MauiPetrel.5.JPG +[64]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/HeinrothShear.html +[65]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/HS.HeinrothsShear.jpg +[66]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/MidwayAlbert.html +[67]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/Stoppress.html +[68]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/Past%20Additions2001.html +[69]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/SeabirdNews.index.html +[70]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/BestPelagics.html +[71]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/PelagicBooks.html +[72]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/Seabird.Home.html +[73]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/Mammals.html +[74]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/OWShore.html +[75]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/OWIDT.html +[76]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/AngusBirdingPhotos.html +[77]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/AngusBirdingCoolstuff.html +[78]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/AngusBirdingWebSites.html +[79]: http://www.oceanwanderers.com/AboutAngus.html diff --git a/saved_articles/on the natural history of destruction by w. g. sebald.txt b/saved_articles/on the natural history of destruction by w. g. sebald.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..2fe1c68 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/on the natural history of destruction by w. g. sebald.txt @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +--- +title: On the Natural History of Destruction by W G Sebald, trans. Anthea Bell - Reviews - Books +date: 2006-06-13T18:23:46Z +source: http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article119846.ece +tags: books, literature + +--- + +During the Second World War, vast formations of Lancasters, Halifaxes, Liberators and Flying Fortresses dropped a million tons of bombs on 131 German towns and cities, killing 600,000 and rendering 3.5 million homeless. Allied goals – destroying German industry, and breaking civilian morale – stayed unachieved. W G Sebald is concerned in these 1997 Zürich lectures with the immorality of carpet-bombing. He knows that Hitler was meeting a nemesis of his own devising. + +But his main subject is in the inability of German writers to bear truthful witness. Sebald condemns their bad faith and selective amnesia, casting himself in the roles of public conscience and seer. + +He loved King Lear's lament for Cordelia (quoted in his prose-poem After Nature): "What's dead is gone forever". One writerly task is to recover what's dead, to peer into the dark, to imagine the worst, to think the unthinkable; to remember. The destruction of Dresden provokes anguish: how can everyday language cope? + +Sebald wants you to "see", and not forget: here are images to disturb both appetite and sleep. During Operation Gomorrah, the raid on Hamburg that started at 1am on 27 July 1943, 10,000 tons of explosive and incendiary bombs were dropped. Within minutes, 20sq km were alight, and the fire-storm – moving at 150kph – lifted roofs and gables, tore up trees and drove human beings before it like living torches before depositing them, roasted brown or purple and reduced to a third of their normal size, doubled up in pools of their own melted fat. + +Records of autopsies ("heads and extremities could frequently be broken off without difficulty") are impressive. Casualty figures have never been agreed. A surviving mother – half-deranged with grief and shock – carried about in a suitcase the mummified remains of her child. Germans, who had proposed to "sanitise" all Europe, became themselves the rat people, ruled by rodents and "slippery finger- length maggots". + +They fell first into lassitude and not-seeing, soon into wilful not-remembering. + +There are corpses built into the foundations of the postwar German state whose "economic miracle" needed a destruction of outdated industrial complexes, and exploited the passive yet energetic workforce Nazism + +had created. + +"Sir, if a butcher tells you his heart bleeds for his country" – Samuel Johnson once said – "you may be sure he feels no uneasy sensation".W G Sebald, poet of discomfort, deplored facile un-earned feeling. He is after the real thing. Uneasy sensations are his kingdom. + +He is a profoundly – and excitingly – unsettling writer. Believing that human history is a record of ever-intensifying disasters, he impersonates the coolly objective Messenger in classical tragedy, driven to tell you what no one wants to hear. + +Sebald, like Freud, fears that what is repressed may be reenacted. He knows the risks of a pornography of violence, of voyeurism, and sado-masochism; and admires emotional understatement, abhorring melodrama, kitsch, hysteria and aesthetic pretension. + +Three short essays on fellow writers end this collection. The reputation of morally compromised Alfred Andersch is targeted for selective destruction, while brave Peter Weiss and Jean Améry are commended for willingness to confront their own terror of the night, risking exhaustion on visits to places from which they may lack strength to return. Améry killed himself in 1974. The Gestapo had strung him up with his arms behind him, dislocated from their sockets, twisting uselessly over his head. His chaste, terrifying recollection satisfies Sebald's exacting requirements. + +So much for the torment of remembering. What of the pleasures of reading? Born in 1944 into a peaceful pocket of Catholic Bavaria, Sebald settled willingly in the UK in 1970 and became a professor of German literature. Fluent in English, he still wrote in German. When he was killed by a car accident 15 months ago aged 57, we knew him as the exquisite, portentous and invigorating author of five brilliantly original and Teutonically gloomy works of fiction. + +For Sebald everything is an uncanny memento mori: even a photograph is a device through which the dead scrutinise the living. He identified with the condition of solitary Jewish exiles (The Emigrants; Austerlitz), making poetry out of estrangement and grief. His Rings of Saturn grafts a walking-tour of Suffolk on to a thrillingly composed elegiac ramble around the mysteries of remembering and forgetting, the certainty of loss, the wicked cruelties of empire and war. Here is another context for Hitler's abominations: if Cromwell killed "half the population of Ireland" and Belgians in the Congo annually wasted 500,000 African lives, then genocide, too, has its "natural history". + +Though the work of a laconically witty man, Sebald's writing has little humour. But his bleak pessimism, like Skegness air, is bracing. These four essays add to our picture of his achievement a fiercely didactic moralist, brave in his pursuit of truth. + +_Peter J Conradi's biography of Iris Murdoch is published by HarperCollins_
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/saved_articles/saving food from the fridge.txt b/saved_articles/saving food from the fridge.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..9e69b14 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/saving food from the fridge.txt @@ -0,0 +1,79 @@ +--- +title: It Will Taste Better, May Even Last Longer And Reduce Your Energy Bills : TreeHugger +date: 2012-04-26T02:42:04Z +source: http://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/saving-food-fridge-it-will-taste-better-may-even-last-longer-and-reduce-your-energy-bills.html +tags: health, finance + +--- + +![][1]_© [jihyun ryou][2]_ + +Fridges are a recent invention; for thousands of years, people lived without them, but had many low-tech ways of making food last. Today most fridges are filled with stuff that would last just as long and probably would taste a lot better if it was never lost in the back of the fridge. They are expensive air conditioned parking lots for what[ Shay Salomon][3] called "compost and condiments." + +Some are looking at alternatives to such an expensive and wasteful model. Kris De Decker of [No Tech Magazine ][4]"refuses to assume that every problem has a high-tech solution," and shows the work of Korean designer[ Jihyun Ryou][2], who says "we hand over the responsibility of taking care of food to the technology, the refrigerator. We don't observe the food any more and we don't understand how to treat it." + +She has developed a series of modern designs that rely on traditional techniques, learned from her grandmother and other elderly people in the community, the " traditional oral knowledge which has been accumulated from experience and transmitted by mouth to mouth." + +![][5]_© [Jihyun Ryou][6]_ + +Here is an interesting and complicated example. Many fruits give off ethylene gas as they ripen; a lot of people put their tomatoes in paper or plastic bags to make them ripen faster. That's why putting fruit is a fridge is so silly, the ethylene builds up inside the sealed box and the fruit goes rotten faster. But some vegetables react differently to ethylene; with potatoes and onions, it [suppresses the sprouting process.][7] Put a banana in a plastic bag with a potato and the banana will be rotten in no time, but the potato won't sprout. Jihyun Ryou's response: + +> Apples emit a lot of ethylene gas. It has the effect of speeding up the ripening process of fruits and vegetables kept together with apples. When combined with potatoes, apples prevent them from sprouting. + +![][8]_© [ Jihyun Ryou][9]_ + +The designer writes about the **Verticality of Root Vegetables:** + +> Keeping roots in a vertical position allows the organism to save energy and remain fresh for a longer time. This shelf gives a place for them to stand easily, using sand. At the same time, sand helps to keep the proper humidity. + +Kris de Decker elaborates: + +> Keeping vegetables in slightly damp sand has been a storage method for many centuries. While low temperatures are favourable for vegetables like carrots, high humidity is equally important. Keeping them in wet sand can be a good compromise.... Just don't forget to water them from time to time. + +![][10]_© [ Jihyun Ryou][11]_ + +> An egg has millions of holes in its shell. It absorbs the odour and substance around itself very easily. This creates a bad taste if it's kept in the fridge with other food ingredients. This shelf provides a place for eggs outside of the fridge. Also the freshness of eggs can be tested in the water. The fresher they are, the further they sink. + +Everyone in North America stores their eggs in the fridge, but few people in Europe do, they can last for days on a shelf or in a pantry. In European supermarkets, the eggs are not refrigerated. Integrating the water into the egg storage shelf is really clever; according to[ about.com,][12] if an egg: + +> + +> * Sinks to the bottom and stays there, it is about three to six days old. +> + +> * Sinks, but floats at an angle, it's more than a week old. +> + +> * Sinks, but then stands on end, it's about two weeks old. +> + +> * Floats, it's too old and should be discarded +> . +> +> Eggs act this way in water because of the air sac present in all eggs. As the egg ages, the air sac gets larger because the egg shell is a semi-permeable membrane. The air sac, when large enough, makes the egg float. Eggs are generally good for about three weeks after you buy them. + +![][13]_© [Jihyun Ryou][14]_ + +This is probably the most well known idea of the bunch, adding a bit of rice to spices; it absorbs humidity and keeps them dry. My grandma did this. + +There are more on the[ designers website ][2] and with more analysis at [No Tech Magazine, ][4] where Kris concludes: + +> The more food you can keep out of the fridge, the smaller it needs to be and the less energy it will consume. The designs described above show a refreshing way to do that, although it should be remembered that these are artworks, not consumer products. Using similar methods when storing food in a basement or a specially designed root cellar - the traditional way - will give better results. + +Smaller fridges use less energy, of course, take up less space and[ make good cities.][15] Furthermore, these techniques are not relics from the past, they are templates for the future. In the hands of a talented designer, they can look beautiful, too. + +[1]: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/01/set_without_text.jpeg.650x0_q85_crop-smart.jpg +[2]: http://www.savefoodfromthefridge.com/ +[3]: http://books.google.ca/books?id=CU68rXjM1UEC&pg=PT45&lpg=PT45&dq=%22condiments+and+compost%22&source=bl&ots=20N2nDdjx2&sig=MUT9fpE8vKI96BZofvyCRlMmCig&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hLMhT-6RAoriggfCq9zWCA&ved=0CFIQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=%22condiments%20and%20compost%22&f=false +[4]: http://www.notechmagazine.com/2012/01/saving-food-from-the-fridge.html +[5]: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/01/apple_potato.jpeg.650x0_q85_crop-smart.jpg +[6]: http://www.savefoodfromthefridge.com/p/symbiosis-of-potatoapple.html +[7]: http://bio-fresh.org.uk/ethylene/Default.aspx +[8]: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/01/root.jpeg.650x0_q85_crop-smart.jpg +[9]: http://www.savefoodfromthefridge.com/p/verticality-of-root-vegetables.html +[10]: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/01/eggs.jpeg.650x0_q85_crop-smart.jpg +[11]: http://www.savefoodfromthefridge.com/p/breathing-of-eggs.html +[12]: http://busycooks.about.com/od/quicktips/qt/testingeggs.htm +[13]: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/02/spices.jpeg.650x0_q85_crop-smart.jpg +[14]: http://www.savefoodfromthefridge.com/p/dryness-of-spices.html +[15]: http://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/ids07-small-fridges-make-good-cities.html diff --git a/saved_articles/sensible bash · small & opinionated selection of basic bash configurations for an improved command-line user experience.txt b/saved_articles/sensible bash · small & opinionated selection of basic bash configurations for an improved command-line user experience.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e970206 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/sensible bash · small & opinionated selection of basic bash configurations for an improved command-line user experience.txt @@ -0,0 +1,129 @@ +--- +title: Sensible Bash · Small & opinionated selection of basic Bash configurations for an improved command-line user experience +date: 2016-03-03T14:45:30Z +source: http://mrzool.cc/writing/sensible-bash/ +tags: linux, programming, bash + +--- + +#### Written on December 10, 2015 by [mrzool][1] + +[ Tweet ][2] + +### Small & opinionated selection of basic Bash configurations for an improved command-line user experience + +there's a small set of simple Bash options that removes certain limitations typical of command-line interfaces and can dramatically improve the user experience. These options enable small optimizations that might not seem like a big deal at first, but every keystroke saved adds up rapidly if you're a heavy terminal user. After reading this article, you will be able to use Bash to move into directories using less keystrokes, enjoy a smarter tab completion, work with a command history that actually makes sense, and jump everywhere in your file system at the speed of thought. All this without relying on any convoluted hack, just plain native or quasi-native Bash options. + +Every option listed in this article is [packaged in a repo on GitHub][3] and can be enabled from your Bash configuration file, namely `bashrc` or `bash_profile`. The difference between the two is clearly explained in [this short post][4] by Josh Staiger. If you're on OS X, I recommend you to follow Josh's advice of sourcing `bashrc` from `bash_profile` so to keep all your configuration in one place. I will assume you did this throughout the rest of the article. + +A couple of caveats before jumping in: since changes to Bash configuration require you to reload your config file to become effective, you might want to save you some typing by setting up an alias that does that: + + alias refresh='source ~/.bashrc' + +Also, make sure you have the [Bash Completion][5] package installed and properly configured on your system, as some of the options described here will not work properly without it. + +### Smarter tab completion + +[Readline][6] is the GNU library that provides an unified interface for advanced line editing to CLI programs like Bash. As command-line user, you use it all the time. Tab completion? Powered by Readline. Emacs-like key bindings like `C-w` to delete back one word? Powered by Readline. Incremental history search? Powered by Readline. + +The capabilities provided by Readline are so symbiotic to Bash that most users consider them native Bash features (this is what I meant above with _quasi-native_ Bash options). They're not, but we can set them from our `bashrc` anyway using the built-in Bash command `bind`. Here are my favorites, each improving a different aspect of tab completion: + + bind "set completion-ignore-case on" + bind "set completion-map-case on" + bind "set show-all-if-ambiguous on" + +The option **`completion-ignore-case`** tells Readline to perform filename completion in a case-insensitive fashion. This is almost always what you want, and it comes in handy particularly on OS X, where system folders are capitalized by default: I no longer need to press `<Shift>` when I want to `cd` into `Documents`, typing `cd do<Tab>` will be enough. + +With **`completion-map-case`**, filename matching during completion will treat hyphens and underscores as equivalent. Since in most keyboard layouts typing an underscore usually requires pressing `<Shift>`, that's another keystroke saved. This option requires `completion-ignore-case` to be enabled. + +Lastly, **`show-all-of-ambiguous`** will get Readline to display all possible matches for an ambiguous pattern at the first `<Tab>` press instead of at the second. This is another small UX improvement you will get used to in no time. + +There are tons of other cool Readline runtime behaviors you can activate, like [vi-like key bindings][7] or some clever [history-search tweaks][8]. As your configuration grows, consider using a dedicated `initrc`, Readline's [default configuration file][9], instead of cluttering your `bashrc` with too many `bind` statements. This is [mine][10]. + +### Better History + +Most of the options below are taken from the article [Better Bash History][11] by Tom Ryder. They enable history behaviors that make sense and ease the job when it comes to searching or parsing the archive. Each line is briefly explained by a comment, refer to the [original post][11] if you want to dig deeper. + + # Append to the history file, don't overwrite it + shopt -s histappend + + # Save multi-line commands as one command + shopt -s cmdhist + + # Record each line as it gets issued + PROMPT_COMMAND='history -a' + + # Huge history. Doesn't appear to slow things down, so why not? + HISTSIZE=500000 + HISTFILESIZE=100000 + + # Avoid duplicate entries + HISTCONTROL="erasedups:ignoreboth" + + # Don't record some commands + export HISTIGNORE="&:[ ]*:exit:ls:bg:fg:history" + + # Useful timestamp format + HISTTIMEFORMAT='%F %T ' + +### Better, faster directory navigation I + +Here are three lovely options that will considerably speed up the way you navigate through the file system: + + shopt -s autocd + shopt -s dirspell + shopt -s cdspell + +The option **`autocd`** will spare you the hassle of typing `cd` every time you need to navigate into a directory. You just need to type the name of your target: Bash will understand what you want and prepend `cd` for you. This also works for the common shortcut `..` to go to the parent directory. Sadly, it doesn't work for `-` to go back to the previous working directory, but you can get around that by setting up an alias using this [clever trick][12]. + +In addition, **`dirspell`** and **`cdspell`** will get Bash to autocorrect minor spelling errors like transposed characters in directory names: the former during tab completion, the latter in arguments already supplied to the `cd` command. + +### Better, faster directory navigation II + +By default, `cd` will look in the current directory for possible targets you might want to move into. This behavior is defined by the environment variable **`CDPATH`**, that thus looks like `CDPATH="."` by default. You can add more paths to this variable by separating them with a colon. This is how my `CDPATH` looks: + +Simply enough, I've added the directory where I keep all my projects (`~/repos`) to the list of possible `cd` targets. Now, whenever I want to jump to a particular project, I just have to type its name's first letters at my prompt. As soon as I press `<Tab>`, the project's name I'm looking for will pop up in the suggestions and I'll be able to jump into it right away, regardless of my current directory. No more typing long and complex paths at the prompt. + +My `~/repos` folder is the only place I want to be able to rapidly jump into wherever I am, so this slightly conservative `CDPATH` definition is enough for my needs. Feel free to add more folders—just try to limit yourself to those that are actually important to avoid requiring a pager every time you tab-complete a `cd` command. + +Let's now look at another native option, `cdable_vars`, that has a similar effect but allows for finer-grained control. + +### Better, faster directory navigation III + +In case you were using this [nifty hack][13] to bookmark your favorite directories to be able to jump into them from everywhere—like I did until not so long ago—I have good news for you: You can stop using it right away. This ability is already baked into Bash and can be enabled through the native option `cdable_vars`: + +With this option set, we can then define and export variables containing paths to our most important directories and `cd` into them from our prompt, thus enabling a simple, effective and hack-free bookmarking system: + + # Don't use ~ to define your home here, it won't work. + export dotfiles="$HOME/dotfiles" + export repos="$HOME/repos" + export documents="$HOME/Documents" + export dropbox="$HOME/Dropbox" + +Now `cd documents` will take you right into `~/Documents` from wherever you are when you issue the command. If you have [Bash Completion][5] installed and configured, tab completion will also expand your `cdable_vars`, besides the target folders you've set in `CDPATH`. + +## Conclusion + +As said at the beginning, I came to rely on this setup so much that it has become my new default, so I packaged it in a [repo on GitHub][3] that's meant to be something along the lines of Tim Pope's [sensible.vim][14]. If you think I've missed something important, you can open an issue, send a pull request or let me know on [Twitter][15]. + +—[Mattia Tezzele][16] + +Thanks for reading so far! For comments, suggestions, questions and corrections you can always reach me on [Twitter][15]. You can also subscribe to the [RSS feed][17] to be notified of new posts. + +[1]: / "Homepage" +[2]: https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Sensible Bash&url=http://localhost:3000/writing/sensible-bash/&via=mrzool_&related=mrzool_ "Share on Twitter" +[3]: https://github.com/mrzool/bash-sensible +[4]: http://www.joshstaiger.org/archives/2005/07/bash_profile_vs.html +[5]: http://bash-completion.alioth.debian.org/ +[6]: https://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html +[7]: http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/vi-mode-in-bash/ +[8]: https://coderwall.com/p/oqtj8w/the-single-most-useful-thing-in-bash +[9]: http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/readline.html#SEC9 +[10]: https://github.com/mrzool/dotfiles/blob/master/inputrc +[11]: http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/better-bash-history/ +[12]: http://askubuntu.com/questions/146031/bash-alias-alias-name-should-be-a-simple-dash-not-working +[13]: http://jeroenjanssens.com/2013/08/16/quickly-navigate-your-filesystem-from-the-command-line.html +[14]: https://github.com/tpope/vim-sensible +[15]: http://twitter.com/mrzool_ +[16]: http://mrzool.cc +[17]: /feed.xml diff --git a/saved_articles/slow sync flash.txt b/saved_articles/slow sync flash.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..c75a111 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/slow sync flash.txt @@ -0,0 +1,72 @@ +--- +title: Slow Sync Flash - Digital Photography School +date: 2007-05-24T02:35:40Z +source: http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/slow-sync-flash/ +tags: photography, tutorial + +--- + +A Post By: [Darren Rowse][1] + +![Explore the Creative Possibilities with Slow Sync Flash][2] + + +One camera function that can be a lot of fun to play with (and that can get you some interesting results) is **slow sync flash**. + +### Low Light Photography Options + +When shooting with a subject in low light situations you generally have two options; either to shoot with a flash or to shoot with a slow shutter speed. + +**1\. Flash** – When shooting in low light with a flash in auto mode your camera will choose a relatively fast shutter speed. This means that your subject will be well lit and that if it is moving it will be frozen and as a result will be sharp. The problem with this is that it can also leave your subject lit up too brightly and can leave it's background looking very dark as there is not enough time for the camera to collect any ambient light. + +**2\. Slow Shutter Speed** – The other option is to turn your flash off and shoot with a longer shutter speed in order to collect enough available light from the image to get a well exposed shot. This can be an effective technique if you're shooting landscape or environmental shots where everything is nice and still – however if you're shooting a moving subject it means you'll get motion blur which could ruin your shot. + +Both of the above options are legitimate technique but both have their weaknesses. Another options to consider is slow sync flash. + + +### What is Slow Sync Flash? + +![Slow-Sync-Flash][3] + + +**Slow Sync Flash** is a function found on many cameras that tells your camera to shoot with both a longer shutter speed as well as firing the flash. This means you get the best of both worlds above and can both get a relatively sharp shot of your main subject as well as get some ambient light from the background and foreground. + +Some cameras allow you to access slow sync flash manually and set exposure length and flash strength but on many compact cameras there is a little less control given and it's presented as an automatic shooting mode, often called 'night mode' or even 'party mode' where the camera selects the slower shutter speed and flash strength for you. + +### Rear and Front Curtain Sync + +If your camera gives you some manual control when it comes to slow sync flash you might find yourself presented with two options called 'rear curtain sync' and 'front curtain sync'. + +These two modes sound a little technical but to put it most simply they are the way in which you choose **when** to fire your flash during the longer exposure. + +![Slow-Sync-Flash-2][4] + + +**Rear Curtain Sync** – this tells your camera to fire the flash at the end of the exposure. ie when you press the shutter your lens opens up and starts collecting light and just before it closes the flash will fire to light up and freeze your main subject (see the card shot to the left for an example where you'll see the card trail ending in a nice crisp shot of the card). + +**Front Curtain Sync** – this tells your camera to fire the flash at the start of the exposure. ie when you press the shutter, the flash will fire immediately and the shutter will remain open afterwards capturing ambient light. + +You might not think there's much difference between these modes but when you're photographing a moving subject it can have a real impact. You'll find many action/sports photographers will use Rear Curtain Sync when shooting with a panning technique. + +### Tripod or Handheld? + +![Slow-Sync-Flash-1][5] + + +When using either slow synch in either mode (or in the automatic 'night mode' you will want to consider whether or not to use a tripod. Traditionally when shooting with longer shutter speeds it is accepted that a tripod is essential in order to stop any camera movement. Even the steadiest of hands will not be able to stop a camera moving over even a 1 or 2 second exposure. So if you want to eliminate blur from your cameras movement definitely use a tripod (and consider a shutter release cable). + +However in some circumstances hand holding your camera while using slow sync flash can lead to some wonderful effects. For example if you're at a wedding or party and are out on the dance floor the results can be great at capturing the mood of a night with those you're photographing largely frozen by the flash but the lights on the dance floor blurred from you moving your camera during the shot. + +Of course hand held techniques won't work with every situation so experiment with both methods at different shutter speeds and by using both rear and front curtain sync and find the best methods for your particular situation. + +Post your Slow Sync Flash Shots over at our [forum assignment on the topic.][6]. Also check out these [13 great Slow Sync Flash images][7]. + +_This post was previously posted in January 2007 but today has been reposted with updates._ + +[1]: http://digital-photography-school.com/author/darren/ +[2]: http://digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/slow-sync-flash-3-1.jpg +[3]: http://digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/slow-sync-flash.jpg +[4]: http://digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/slow-sync-flash-2.jpg +[5]: http://digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/slow-sync-flash-1.jpg +[6]: http://digital-photography-school.com/forum/showthread.php?p=5193#post5193 +[7]: http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/13-great-slow-sync-flash-images/ diff --git a/saved_articles/so you want to sail around the world.txt b/saved_articles/so you want to sail around the world.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..ac8bf5d --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/so you want to sail around the world.txt @@ -0,0 +1,662 @@ +--- +title: So You Want To Sail Around The World +date: 2008-08-30T20:37:58Z +source: http://www.webmoxie.com/seawind/dream/index.htm#sails now: https://web.archive.org/web/20090311015130/http://www.webmoxie.com/seawind/dream/index.htm +tags: guide, nature, ocean, research, sailing, travel + +--- + + The Dream +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- + +So you want to sail around the world? Or sail to fabulous Tahiti? Or to +the glamorous West Indies? Do you dream of following puffy cottonballs +of tradewind clouds for day after day over seas of unbelievable colors +with the wind always astern and always just right for reeling off 100 or +more miles a day? Would you like to pit your wit and stamina against the +sea, and emerge triumphant and yet strangely humble before the mighty +forces previously raging? Do you dream of snug, palm-lined anchorages +where you can fall of the boat, swim ashore and bask on white coral +sands? All of this can be yours as seen by the long voyages taken but +people of all backgrounds and training in a surprising variety of small +boats. + +I, too, had these dreams and they burned with enough fire to enable me +to realize them. Recently, I completed a circumnavigation of the world, +largely singlehanded, in *Apogee*, a 30 foot SEAWIND ketch. An average +sailor before starting, I had dreamed and saved enough to buy and outfit +*Apogee* with a bit left over for the voyage. *Apogee* followed the +usual tradewind route around the world, and the voyage was unusual in +only two respects. *Apogee* is the first fiberglass boat to sail around +the world, although I had no idea that this would be the case when I +started. In addition, *Apogee* is one of the few yachts that has the +very dubious distinction of being attacked by a school of whales. + +In the middle of the Indian Ocean, 700 miles from the nearest land, +*Apogee* was sailing herself comfortably under twin jibs. I was just +finishing the dishes - doing them in the cockpit as usual. I had gone +below to fetch a dishtowel when I heard a tremendous bang, and *Apogee* +shuddered from keel to masthead. What, I wondered, could be out here so +far from land? Looking in the wake after mounting the cockpit, I saw a +dark shape in the water astern. My first though was that it was a +massive tree trunk, but then the shape moved and I saw that it was a +whale! Before this really had time to sink in, there was another +shuddering bang - sounding drumlike with the reverberations in the +fiberglass - and only then did it become frighteningly obvious that +*Apogee* was being attacked by a school of whales. + +What could I possibly do? Was there any way to drive them away? I had no +gun and only one small fish spear that would only antagonize them, I +suspected. Soapy dish water, oil, detergent - was there anything I could +pur into the water to deter them? Should I prepare to abandon ship? + +These thoughts ran through my mind as I stood in the cockpit too +frightened to go below, watching three or four whales swimming abreast +of *Apogee*. And as I watched, steaming through the seas came a dozen +more bearing down on *Apogee* like torpedoes, until the water all around +was filled with fins and blunt noses poking out to see what kind of +creature *Apogee* was. I could have scratched the backs of the nearest +ones. + +Again a terrific reverberating bang, and I thought about the layers of +fiberglass which were taking the beating -- perhaps it could stand +several bashings, but what if 20 or so of the brutes decided to line up +and bang away at the same spot on the hull like machine gun bullets -- +what then? + +I retained sufficient presence of mind to estimate their length as +slightly more than one-half of *Apogee's*, small perhaps as whales go, +but sufficiently massive to prevent me from going below to rummage my +camera out of its locker. After looking around at the whales (would they +be kind to a defenseless life raft and dinghy?) and they looking at me +with their pigs' eyes for perhaps 20 minutes or so, they gave up to my +utmost relief and gratitude. When finally certain that the school was no +longer following, I went below to see if there was any damage. +Everything seemed OK. *Apogee* brought me safely through another crisis! + +After thinking it over, I suspect that the first encounter happened when +*Apogee* hit a sleeping whale, because it seemed to be stunned and +rolling with a motion unusual in whales, when I first sighted it a boat +length behind. There is no doubt that the other two were deliberate +rammings. The limited reference material aboard suggested that the +whales were either false killer whales or pilot whales. + +This is the type of ocurrence that I hope all yachts can avoid, but it +made a vivid impression on me which will always be filed along with the +other pleasant memories of the trip. To help others so that they may +share in these more pleasant experiences, I offer some notes and +comments on my voyage, some observations and preferences born of that +voyage, and most of all, encouragement to try it yourself! + +What kinds of people make long-distance voyagers? Uniting them all is +love of the sea, sailing and adventure. Herculean strength is not +necessary as shown by the singlehanded voyages undertaken and completed +by women. A certain determination and stamina count for more than +strength alone. Handiness with tools is a help since much of the +maintenance of the boat must be done by the crew. But most important is +the *will* to do it. With this, you can learn the techniques of boat +handling, upkeep, navigation, and the myriad other areas where nobody's +expertise is complete. + +My own prior experience was not unusual among the members of the +cruising community. Never having set foot on a sailboat until ten years +before starting out, I gained cruising experience on other people's +boats as well as on two of my own before *Apogee*. When I left Virginia +in June 1963 bound for the Virgin Islands, I had never been offshore +overnight, or even offshore by myself, or even taken a sight in +"earnest." Now 5 years, 40,000 miles and nearly 400 anchorages later, I +feel that this was sufficient experience but on the meager side. The +more coastline cruising experience you can get, the better. + +What else does it take? A suitable boat, good sails, engine and gear, +good planning, and the inevitable factors of time and money. These are +but hurdles to be overcome if you have the will and determination to +voyage. Perhaps you will find this booklet helpful in getting started. + + + + + +* * * * * + +[](/web/20090311015130/http://www.webmoxie.com/seawind/dream/img/15.jpg)\ + Boat +----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- + +What boat is suitable for long distance cruising? A glance around the +cruising ports of Papeete, Panama, Fiji, Durban and the West Indies will +offer a tremendous variety of sizes, types, constructions, and designs, +most of which have crossed an ocean. + +Having owned and lived aboard *Apogee*, a stock fiberglass ketch for 6 +years, I can unhesitantingly recommend fiberglass construction for any +long distance cruiser. Steel boats may be stronger and perhaps less +expensive, wooden boats more pleasing esthetically, but reduced +maintenance and the freedom from worry more than outweigh the advantages +of other types of construction. Rust or teredos are no problem if the +bottom paint is scratched, and when the nearby slipway is weeks or +months away, such a problem can be a nagging irritation.*Apogee* has +been a source of relief during her varied experiences on primitive +slipways, or upright on the beach with steadying lines from the +masthead, and during the whale attack and grounding. + +Boat size and crew size are closely related. the more crew you have, the +larger the boat to carry them comfortably, and the more work the boat +demands in handling and maintenance. Attempts to reduce the +proportionate share in money and effort by having a large crew aboard +have rarely been permanent. Different objectives, different personal +tastes, and the daily friction of living together in a confined space +have led to frequent and upsetting crew changes at major ports. +Experience shows that the most harmonious crews are a family, two people +(perhaps man and wife) or the ultimate escape from crew problems - the +singlehander. A good assumption for planning is that at one time or +another, you will have to sail and maintain the boat singlehanded. + +Basically, the larger the boat, the more comfortable you will be, both +at sea and at port. In port, there is more living space and stowage +space for items that contibute to comfort, and at sea, the motion will +tend to be easier, very important in voyages of two or three weeks. On +the other hand, initial investment, the work involved in boat handling +and maintenance, and the running costs will increase with the larger +boat. + +Initial investment and maintenance aside, the recent singlehanded +Transatlantic race has shown that boats of close to 60 feet can be +*raced* by one man under far more severe conditions than the cruising +yacht will normally encounter. However, all of the largest entries were +light displacement racing machines, hardly designed for comfort as a +floating home, and the skippers were mostly active young men who were +keyed up to month of maximum effort. + +Although *Apogee* is 30 feet and about 6.5 tons, I feel that one person +(a singlehander or a husband of a husband-and-wife team) can sail and +maintain about 40 to 45 feet if the displacement does not rise above 9 +tons or so, and if the hull is fiberglass. + + + + + +* * * * * + +[](/web/20090311015130/http://www.webmoxie.com/seawind/dream/img/9.jpg)\ + Engine +----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- + +An engine on a short handed boat is like an extra crew member. More +islands are available to the boat which can power through tricky passes. +Electric lighting, a boon in the tropics, is convenient with an engine. +With sufficient fuel, an engine will make a more pleasant time of the +deadly monotonous calm periods encountered on nearly every long trip. +Entering harbors at night becomes easy with an engine, saving an +annoying night jilling back and forth at the harbor entrance. It may +even avoid a possible catastrophe, With all these advantages, nearly all +the world cruisers have engines. + +On the other hand, an engine can be smelly, a nuisance, and may require +what seems like excessive time spent in maintenance. If the intended +cruise lies away from good repair facilities and easy parts +availability, annoying time delays may ensue. I have known boats to be +practically immobilized with the loss of an engine - no running water, +food spoiling in the refrigerator, no lights, and no cooking facilities. +Complete reliance on the engine for necessities and comforts is myopic +on long distance cruises. + +There is a choice between gasoline and diesel engines. By all means try +to have a reliable diesel engine in preference to gasoline. The only +disadvantages of the diesel that I can think of are increased initial +investment, and larger size and weight, but the latter problem can +usually be overcome with modern diesels. Apogee was equipped with a +Graymarine gasoline engine, and the basic engine has given no problems - +in fact the head has never been taken off in the 6y2 years since +installation. Nonetheless, I have spent many hours in the hot engine +compartment doing maintenance and repair on all the external equipment - +electrical system, fuel system and water system. For extended cruising +take spares for as many parts as possible: fuel pump, carburetor, coil, +plugs, generator, starter, water pump or their diesel equivalents. + +A hand-start capability is a distinct advantage. Sooner or later, the +batteries may fail, and there is nothing more frustrating than not being +able to start the engine when it is needed. + +Finally, I do not think it wise to put ultimate dependence in the +engine. With confidence under sail, tricky conditions of maneuvering, +like short tacking through a narrow channel, or sailing to a dock, will +not cause confusion and panic if the engine stops or refuses to start. + + + + + +* * * * * + +[](/web/20090311015130/http://www.webmoxie.com/seawind/dream/img/19.jpg)\ + Sails +------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- + +Dacron sails are wonderful for cruising as well as racing. *Apogee* has +sailed around the world with the original suit of Ratsey and Lapthorn +sails supplied with the boat. There are, to be sure, many repairs +dotting their once pristine surfaces, and their set is perhaps not good +enough for serious racing. Chafing of the seams has resulted in nearly +completely restitching, by machine when a sailmaker was available, and +very tediously by hand when not. Many boats carry a hand sewing machine +for sail work as well as the many sewing jobs that occur above and below +decks. Chafe and sunlight are the chief enemies of Dacron. Careful +attention to chafe comes naturally. Sunlight, however, is the more +insidious enemy because it is progressive and because large areas of the +sail may be affected. *Apogee* has three new panels in the mainsail +primarily because the sail cover was left off on the long voyages under +twins when the main was not in use. *Apogee* started the voyage with 8 +sails: main, mizzen, two identical working jibs (which also served as +the twins), a \#2 genoa, storm jib, mizzen staysail and spinnaker. All +of them are currently in use. I would now substitute a drifter for a +spinnaker as being a more useful sail under light cruising conditions. +In New Zealand, I added a spare mizzen without battens and with +provisions for reefing. Less than a month old, that mizzen rendered +excellent service in a four day storm just after leaving, which *Apogee* +rode out hove-to under jib and mizzen, then storm jib and reefed mizzen, +and finally mizzen, then storm jib and reefed mizzen, and finally under +bare poles for one of these days. + + + + + +* * * * * + +[](/web/20090311015130/http://www.webmoxie.com/seawind/dream/img/20.jpg) +\ + Fitting Out, Provisioning and Cooking + +In fitting out a yacht for long distance voyaging, safety should be the +first consideration. Like the cautious man who wears a belt and +suspenders, it is worthwhile considering two ways of doing the important +things, such as carrying sail, starting the engine, navigating and +emergency procedures. If not belt and suspenders, at least make sure +that the belt is heavy duty. Items for convenience and comfort should +take second place in the case of conflict. For example, Apogee carried +heavier tackle than normal for a boat of her size - 50 fathoms of 5/16" +chain, 50 fathoms of 3/4" nylon rope, a 75 lb. fisherman anchor, and 40 +lb. and 22 lb. Danforth anchors. Normal anchoring called for the use of +the chain and the larger Danforth. Without a winch, getting all that +weight back aboard was sometimes a real chore, especially if anchored .n +10 fathoms or more. I felt much safer going ashore or in sleeping at +night knowing that Apogee had a firm grip on the bottom. Only when I was +careless about anchoring did Apogee break free, and then only 3 times in +nearly 400 anchorages, each time with no serious consequences. Two short +wave receivers and a chronometer-watch formed my belt-and-suspenders for +accurate time. Two sextants, one being plastic, provided the same safety +for taking sights. I debated a long time whether to carry a marine +radiotelephone, and indeed I haven't missed one, except for those few +occasions when it could have been useful socially. It is very annoying +to arrive back where you have tied the dinghy, only to find the damed +thing floating deflated on the surface like a huge skin. Rubber dinghies +are fine for relatively protected anchorages where facilities exist for +handling them. Although more difficult to sweat aboard and stow, a wood +or fiberglass dinghy will prove much more reliable over the years. An +outboard motor may make pleasant shopping or sightseeing if you are +willing to stow and service it. Kerosene, although not as convenient to +use as bottled gas or electric- ity, has served for all cooking and some +lighting throughout the entire voyage. It is cheap, available in the +most primitive places, and Primus parts for the stove are easy to find. +Bottled gas has several advantages: better control of the flame, +possibility of having a refrigerator, very little mess, and infrequent +refilling. However, fittings for the gas bottles are not the same all +over the world, I understand, and the safety factor is reduced. It is +surprising and perhaps inconceivable to those who have never been on a +long cruise, the amount of time and effort and dreaming that is spent on +things to eat and drink. In warm weather, far from the nearest +refrigerator, one can get the most compelling thirst for an icy cold +beer with the drops of water streaming down the sides of the glass. In +cold weather, the same yearning may be for a sizzling steak with all the +trimmings. The fullfilment of dreams like this were, alas, never carried +aboard Apogee. Much has been written about provisioning small yachts for +long passages and so much depends on whether the boat has reliable +refrigeration or a well insulated and capacious ice box. Perhaps the +only thing I can add is a simple recipe for fresh bread, not requiring +an oven- This recipe has been passed from boat to boat and has been in +constant use aboard Apogee ever since I learned of it. The bread is made +in a pressure cooker and the recipe calls for a cup and a half of sea +water. A tablespoon of sugar, and a like amount of dried yeast are +melted in the water, then four cups of plain flour are added and stirred +well. No kneading is necessary. The pressure cooker is well greased and +floured, though a heavy saucepan would do as well since the pressure +valve is left open. The dough is put into the pressure cooker and with +the lid left on, is left in a warm place for two hours to rise, then +cooked on a low flame on top of the stove for half an hour. The +half-cooked loaf is re- moved from the cooker, replaced top-side down +and cooked for a further half hour. Fresh bread is delicious, and has +never lasted more than two days be- cause the temptation is to eat it +all at one sitting. Much has been written about adequate water supplies. +For long voyages, an adequate minimum is 1/2 gallon per man per day. In +fact, with very little care, two of us existed on 5 gallons a week. +Thus, the tank capac- ity of the normal cruising boat will prove +adequate for most voyages. Keep a spare jerrycan or two full of water +for emergencies and if the boat has a pressure water system, turn it +off, and use hand pumps. A salt water pump in the galley will make it +easy to supplement the fresh water supply and is easy to install. + + + + + +* * * * * + +Navigation +---------- + +Ocean voyaging depends on celestial navigation, but its difficulty has +been overrated. The most important thing is to learn one method of sight +reduction and learn it well! Errors in arithmetic are easy to make on a +rolling boat if one is tired, but with a standard and well practiced +system, these errors are more easily traced. Most small boat navigators, +including myself, use the Air Navigation Tables (H.O. 249) and the +Nautical Almanac. General accuracy with sun sights is normally within +five miles, although if sea conditions are rough and the sun is playing +hide-and-seek, I triple this amount for safety, providing there is no +other way of error estimation. On long voyages, I took a daily round of +three sun sights (weather permitting) and plotted her position at local +noon. I have used star sights only near landfalls and on difficult +passages among low islands or reefs, as in the Tuamotus. + +It is in the coastwise passages and short hops between islands that the +greatest navigational dangers occur. Having crossed an ocean or two, one +tends to get overconfident when faced with an overnight sail. This +overconfidence led to a near disaster for Apogee in Fiji. Because I was +unaware of currents, and because I thought that breakers would be easy +to spot in the moonlight, Apogee ran onto a weather reef and pounded for +an hour and a half before I was lucky enough to get her off unaided. The +moderate damage sustained, and the relatively easy repairs were a good +demonstration of the strength of fiberglass, and of Apogee's sturdy +construction. No doubt steel would have survived, but a wooden boat +would have suffered far more damage, I feel. + + + + + +* * * * * + +Freak Occurances and Heavy Weather + +In the hundreds of thousands of miles sailed each year by small boats, +there will naturally be some freak occurances. Waterspouts have been +sighted and even sailed through. Swordfish have attacked yachts as +opposed to game fishermen. Whales although normally pacific, can cause +damage accidentally or intentionally. However, few well-found yachts +have perished without good possible causes: hurricane force winds, heavy +steamer traffic, or owner's health in the case of singlehanders. + +It is difficult for me to write about heavy weather, because I have been +fortunate enough to avoid any of the itultimate storms". Except fo +squalls, Apogee has encountered sustained gale force winds or higher +only four times while at sea. In each of these cases, life aboard was +extremely unpleasant, and spirits were low, perhaps, but there was never +any.fear for boat or life. On another occasion, Apogee was bodily tossed +so that her mast was nearly horizontal by a hurricane swell reaching +shelving waters in the Coral Sea. There was a stupendous mess below, but +the wind was not excessively strong, and the experience was never +-repeated on that voyage or any other. Squalls also present a danger, +particularly if one arrives unseen at night. Wind velocities in some of +the squalls I have seen have been well above Force 8 for short periods +of time. Even a short period of time is sufficient for a shroud to part +or for the sails to blow out. Neither of these things has happened to +Apogee, thank goodness, but one squall did manage to flog a batten and +its pocket clean out of the mainsail before I was able to muzzle the +sail. + +With all these comments on safety and the dangers of voyaging, I would +hate to give the impression that sailing the oceans is unpleasant. just +the opposite, perhaps 50% of the trip has been superb sailing, 40% +reasonably good, and only 10% or less poor sailing. During the supurb +sailing, small boats can reel off some fantastic voyages. During the +Galapagos to Marquesas passage, which a good friend of mine +characterizes as "flying-fish weather", Apogee sailed 1285 miles in 8 +days for slightly better than 160 miles per day. At that time, it was +probably some sort of record for singlehanders, surpassed more recently +by Sir Francis Chichester, for one, I am certain. Apo,6ee's design +waterline length is 24 feet, and there was an unknown following current, +but it gives some indications of the amazing speeds for small boats +under optimum conditions. + +Tradewind passages are the superb sailing, and outstanding among these +is the 3000 mile stretch of that Galapagos to Marquesas passage. The +Indian Ocean crossing tends to be slightly rougher, but still very +enjoyable. Also superb sailing are short passages in inside protecting +reefs, the most memorable being the wonderful lagoon between Raiatea and +Tahaa, close to Tahiti. + +In Apogee's trip, the poor sailing would be characterized by the stormy +periods and those passages which took place in heavy steamer traffic. +Around the coast of South Africa, the steamer traffic is intense at the +present time due to the Suez closure, fogs and dead calms are frequent, +and storms can be violent. It is not at all unusual to sight 30 to 40 +steamers in one day, even when the coast is not visible. The passage +from Durban to Cape Town was the only time when Apogee had a man on the +helm 24 hours a day. Still, only selected parts of that 800 mile +coastline passage can be termed "poor". At other times, it was quite +enjoyable. + +Apogee's route around the world was selected to utilize the tradewinds +to best advantage. Different routes are quite possible, but less +enjoyable. The poorest choice is also the fastest - the old +wool-and-grain route in the Roaring Forties. Any small boat which +attempts the three capes, Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin, and Cape +Horn, has my admiration. + + + + + +* * * * * + +[](/web/20090311015130/http://www.webmoxie.com/seawind/dream/img/13.jpg) Self-steering [](/web/20090311015130/http://www.webmoxie.com/seawind/dream/img/14.jpg) +------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- + +For short handed cruising, some form of self-steering is almost a +requirement. Even if the usual watches are kept, it relieves the +helmsman from the tyranny of the tiller. It is most disconcerting to +have the boat luff up with sails flapping, simply because the helmsman +wants to brew a cup of coffee. Of course, with larger crews of three, +four, or more, it may be desirable to require manual steering simply to +keep the helmsman awake. + +Since Apogee left the States, quite remarkable improvements have been +made in self-steering vanes, and they have been fitted to large as well +as small boats. Apogee has retained the earlier methods of self-steering +primarily because of the major structural alterations necessary to fit +the best of the vanes, but I would not leave again without vane +steering. + +Even with vane steering, I think that twin running sails would be useful +for any long downwind passages in the tradewinds. There is less chafe, +no fear of a jibe, and the boat tends to yaw less with the sail area +well forward. For those who may be contemplating such a rig, the details +are given in Figure 1. Some method of adjusting the total sail area such +as twin rollerfurling genoas, would be more flexible. Several times the +tradewinds have been too strong for the 330 square feet of Apogee's +twins, and many times it has been too light. With light winds, the +mizzen staysail helped considerably, but I found no really successful +method for coping with winds too strong. + +On beam or broad reaches, I used a modification of the jibsheet +selfsteering. It is extremely simple, requiring an extra snatch block or +two, some different sizes of shock cord, and a little experimentation. +For those who might like to try this on their own boats, a glance at +Figure 2 will help. + +Naturally, any well-balanced boat will self-steer on a close reach or +beat. With a ketch rig, adjustment of the mizzen enable Apogee to cope +with changes of wind strength for long periods of time without +adjustments. + +Apogee's twin running rig is the product of considerable experimentation +to achieve maximum control and stability under a variety of weather +conditions. The twins are two working jibs with interleaved hanks on the +forestay, both jibs being raised or lowered by one halyard. Normal +spinnaker poles are set on a normal spinnaker track, each to its own +car, so that the height of the inboard ends can be adjusted +individually. A short strop leads to two-part sheets. One end of the +sheet is led to the winch for easy adjustment. The other end is fastened +to a point well aft. A bight is taken in the fixed end of the sheet with +a snatch block and led to the tiller. Not shown in the figure are the +pole lifts. No foreguys are needed. + +Adjustment of the tiller lines, the sheets, the pole lifts, and the +inboard ends of the poles may be needed to produce the desired course +with minimum hunting. In strong winds, the poles are let forward so that +there is more belly in the sails. In light winds not too far astern, +Apogee has carried the mizzen, mizzen staysail and -main as well as the +twins and still self-steered. In beam to quarter winds, the arrangement +shown above produced fairly reliable self steering. Normal arrangement +is used with the exception that the sheet is led well aft before going +to the winch. A bight is taken in the sheet with a snatch block and led +across to the weather side of the tiller. Shock cord of suitable +diameter is used to balance the tension in the sheet. If the course lay +farther downwind than shown, the jib was poled out from the mast. The +other sails are not shown, but the mizzen was always carried, with the +main and mizzen staysail being added according to the wind strength. Of +course, all wind or sail operated self-steering methods only give a +course which is as steady as the wind direction. A singlehander usually +gets used the "feel" of this boat, and will be wakened by any major +changes of direction. But with light winds and clam seas, one can be +fooled, as I found to my disappointment one night when Apogee sailed +back towards her departure for 15 miles. + + + + + + + + + +* * * * * + +Finances +-------- + +Perhaps you have been leafing through these pages thinking "How much +does all this cost?" Initial investment can be estimated reasonably +well. Having a fiberglass boat, stainless rigging and fittings, and +Dacron sails will work yourself to reduce the costs. How much will you +succumb to the temptations of shore - good restaurants, some time in a +hotel, sightseeing trips in a rental car? You and your pocketbook will +be the guide. How about earning money on the way? It certainly is +possible. But not always easy. There is still a market for books and +articles about cruising, despite all that has been written, because +there are more people interested in boats and cruising. If you have a +trade - carpenter, electrician, mechanic, etc., there is usually +something available at the larger ports in Australia, New Zealand, South +Africa, and occasionally in the smaller ports. If you have had +experience with small boats in these trades, you can earn money wherever +there are boats. Visa and customs restrictions sometimes make it +difficult to stay in any pace for a long time. The day of the +beachcomber has passed in the glamorous islands of the South Pacific, +where immigration officials take a dim view of yachts arriving with no +money. Making movies for commercial showing or for TV is exacting and +best planned along with the planning of the trip. Chartering is +definitely a possibility in the West Indies, but charterers pay for and +have a right to expect standards of comfort and privacy that not all +cruising boats offer. In addition, most of the cruising boats who have +chartered have found their costs soaring so that it is not easy to save +vast amounts of money form the relatively high charter rates. As a +planning figure, I would suggest hat you have between \$100 and \$500 +per month for two people. With a small, easily maintained boat and a +relatively frugal existence, one might be able to meet the lower figure. +As the size of the boat increases, and comforts ashore and afloat are +added, the higher figure will be approached. There are boats that fall +outside these limits, but I assume that you want to leave before you are +too old to enjoy it without sacrificing all comforts. + + + + + + + +* * * * * + +Statistics of Apogee's Voyage +----------------------------- + +The following table will give an idea of the passage times which can be +expected by small boast under a variety of conditions. All of Apogee's +voyages over 1000 miles non-stop are included. Passage Nautical Miles +Duration in Days St. Helena - Grenada, West Indies 3880 34 Galapagos - +Marquesas 2990 22 Cocos - Rodrigues Indian Ocean 2020 15 Darwin, Aust. - +Christmas Island 1550 15 Reunion I. -- Durban, South Africa 1540 20 +Hampton, Virginia - Virgin Islands 1520 18 Balboa, Canal Zone - +Galapagos 1170 18 Whangerei, N.Z. - Suva, Fiji 1160 18 Suva, Fiji - +Russell, N. Z. 1110 11 It is obviously tedious to list the nearly 400 +anchorages of Apogee on the voyage. The following list gives the island +groups and countries only, along with time of year. Place Visited Dates +Hampton, Virginia June 1963 West Indies, Netherlands Antilles, Colombia +July '3 - March '64 Panama April '64 Galapagos May - June '64 Marquesas, +Tuamotus, Tahiti and Society Islands July '64 - April '65 Cooks, Tonga, +Samoa, Fiji May - Oct '65 New Zealand Nov. '65 - April '66 Fiji, Rotuma, +Banks, New Hebrides and New Caledonia May - Nov '66 Australia, Great +Barrier Reef, New Guinea Dec. '66 - June '67 Christmas, Cocos, +Rodrigues, Mauritus, and Reunion Islands July - Oct. '67 South Africa +Nov. '67 - May '68 St. Helena June '68 West Indies July - Dec. '68 +Bahamas, Florida Jan. '69 Total distance sailed: 39,000 miles Duration +of voyage: 5 ½ years, U.S. to U.S, 4 ½ years to circumnavigate Highest +daily run: 179 miles noon to noon. + + + + + +* * * * * + +Final Encouragement +------------------- + +If this book has whetted your appetite for voyaging and you wish to know +more, I can think of no better source than Eric Hiscock's Voyaging Under +Sail and Cruising Under Sail. Should you have the grit and determination +to start you on a long voyage, there is no better feeling than to see +our very first landfall lying dead ahead. You know that all the +planning, hard work, and money invested in the trip is just beginning to +pay off. The original slogan for the Seawind was "She'll cross an ocean +if you will" which my trip has confirmed. + + + + + +* * * * * + +About the manufacturer +---------------------- + +Allied Boat Company is located in Catskill, New York on a tributary of +the Hudson River. + + + + + +*Editor note:* Dan Smith*, the current historian is a wealth of +information on the company and has a more current ac**count to be +published.* + +*Transcription notes:**Allied Boat Company**is no longer in operation. I +couldn'd find a copywrite date nor any reference to who printed this +little book. We hope you enjoy it as well as the perspective it has +given us. A man rowed over to us in the Grenadines and said it belonged +on our Seawind, +[Moxie](/web/20090311015130/http://www.webmoxie.com/seawind/moxie%20lake/Island.htm) +our dreamboat.* \ + [Kirk and Sherrie](mailto:kirkchamberklain@hotmail.com) + + + + + +[back to +top](/web/20090311015130/http://www.webmoxie.com/seawind/dream/index.htm) + + diff --git a/saved_articles/the heresy of technological choice.txt b/saved_articles/the heresy of technological choice.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8e5c4d3 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/the heresy of technological choice.txt @@ -0,0 +1,63 @@ +--- +title: The Heresy of Technological Choice +date: 2015-11-19T02:32:18Z +source: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-heresy-of-technological-choice.html +tags: life + +--- + +Among the interesting benefits of writing a blog like this, focusing as it does on the end of industrial civilization, are the opportunities it routinely affords for a glimpse at the stranger side of the collective thinking of our time. The last few weeks have been an unusually good source of that experience, as a result of one detail of the Retrotopia narrative I've been developing in the posts here. + +The detail in question is the system by which residents of my fictional Lakeland Republic choose how much infrastructure they want to have and, not incidentally, to pay for via their local tax revenues. It's done on a county-by-county basis by majority vote. The more infrastructure you want, the higher your taxes are; the more infrastructure you can do without, the less of your income goes to the county to pay for it. There are five levels, called tiers, and each one has a notional date connected to it: thus tier five has the notional date of 1950, and corresponds to the infrastructure you'd expect to find in a county in the Midwestern states of the US in that year: countywide electrical, telephone, water, and sewer service; roads and related infrastructure throughout the county capable of handling heavy automobile use; and mass transit—specifically, streetcars—in the towns. + +The other tiers have less infrastructure, and correspondingly lower taxes. Tier four has a notional date of 1920, tier three of 1890, tier two of 1860, and tier one of 1830. In each case, the infrastructure you'd find in such a county is roughly what you'd find in a midwestern American county in that year. With tier one, your county infrastructure consists of dirt roads and that's about it. All the other functions of county government exist in tier one, tier five, and everything in between; there are courts, police, social welfare provisions for those who are unable to take care of themselves, and so forth—all the things you would expect to find in any midwestern county in the US at any point between 1830 and 1950. That's the tier system: one small detail of the imaginary future I've been sketching here. + +Before we go on, I'd like my readers to stop and notice that the only things that are subject to the tier system are the elements of local infrastructure that are paid for by local tax revenues. If you live in a county that voted to adopt a certain tier level, that tells you what kind of infrastructure will be funded by local tax revenues, and therefore what the tax bills are going to be like. That's all it tells you. In particular, the tier system doesn't apply to privately owned infrastructure—for example, railroads in the Lakeland Republic are privately owned, and so every county, whatever its tier, has train stations in any town where paying passengers and freight may be found in sufficient quantity to make it worth a railroad's while to stop there. + +The tier system also, and crucially, doesn't determine what kind of technology the residents can use. If you live in a tier one county, you can use all the electrical appliances you can afford to buy, as long as you generate the electricity yourself. Some technologies that are completely dependent on public infrastructure aren't going to work in a low tier county—for example, without paved roads, gas stations, huge government subsidies for petroleum production, military bases all over the Middle East, and a great deal more, cars aren't much more than oversized paperweights—but that's built into the technology in question, not any fault of the tier system. Furthermore, the tier system doesn't determine social customs and mores. If you live in a tier four county, for example, no law requires you to dress in a zoot suit or a flapper dress, drink bootleg liquor, and say things like "Hubba hubba" and "Twenty-three skidoo!" This may seem obvious, but trust me, it's apparently far from obvious to a certain portion of my readers. + +I can say this because, ever since the tier system first got mentioned in the narrative, I've fielded a steady stream of comments from people who wanted to object to the tier system because it forcibly deprives people of access to technology. I had one reader insist that the tier system would keep farmers in tier one counties from using plastic sheeting for hoop houses, for example, and another who compared the system to the arrangements in former Eastern Bloc nations, where the Communist Party imposed rigid restrictions on what technologies people could have. The mere facts that plastic sheeting for hoop houses isn't infrastructure paid for by tax revenues, and that the tier system doesn't impose rigid restrictions on anybody—on the contrary, it allows the voters in each county to choose for themselves how much infrastructure they're going to pay for—somehow never found their way into the resulting diatribes. + +What made all this even more fascinating to me is that no matter how often I addressed the points in question, and pointed out that the tier system just allows local voters to choose what infrastructure gets paid for their by tax money, a certain fraction of readers just kept rabbiting on endlessly along the same lines. It wasn't that they were disagreeing with what I was saying. It's that they were acting as though I had never said anything to address the subject at all, even when I addressed it to their faces, and nothing I or anyone else could say was able to break through their conviction that in imagining the tier system, I must be talking about some way to deprive people of technology by main force. + +It was after the third or fourth round of comments along these lines, I think it was, that a sudden sense of deja vu reminded me that I'd seen this same sort of curiously detached paralogic before. + +Longtime readers of this blog will remember how, some years ago, I pointed out in passing that the survival of the internet in the deindustrial age didn't depend on whether there was some technically feasible way to run an internet in times of energy and resource limits, much less on how neat we think the internet is today. Rather, I suggested, its survival in the future would depend on whether it could make enough money to cover its operating and maintenance costs, and on whether it could successfully keep on outcompeting less complex and expensive ways of providing the same services to its users. That post got a flurry of responses from the geekoisie, all of whom wanted to talk exclusively about whether there was some technically feasible way to run the internet in a deindustrial world, and oh, yes, how incredibly neat the internet supposedly is. + +What's more, when I pointed out that they weren't discussing the issues I had raised, they didn't argue with me or try to make an opposing case. They just kept on talking more and more loudly about the technical feasibility of various gimmicks for a deindustrial internet, and by the way, did we mention yet how unbelievably neat the internet is? It was frankly rather weird, and I don't mean that in a good way. It felt at times as though I'd somehow managed to hit the off switch on a dozen or so intellects, leaving their empty husks to lurch mindlessly through a series of animatronic talking points with all the persistence and irrelevance of broken records. + +It took a while for me to realize that the people who were engaged in this bizarre sort of nonresponse understood perfectly well what I was talking about. They knew at least as well as I did that the internet is the most gargantuan technostructure in the history of our species, a vast, sprawling, unimaginably costly, and hopelessly unsustainable energy- and resource-devouring behemoth that survives only because a significant fraction of the world's total economic activity goes directly and indirectly toward its upkeep. They knew about the slave-worked open pit mines, the vast grim factories run by sweatshop labor, and the countless belching smokestacks that feed its ravenous appetite for hardware and power; they also know about the constellations of data centers scattered across the world that keep it running, each of which uses as much energy as a small city, and each of which has to have one semi-truck after another pull up to the loading dock every single day to offload pallets of brand new hard drives and other hardware, in order to replace those that will burn out the next day. + +They knew all this, and they knew, or at least suspected, just how little of it will be viable in a future of harsh energy and resource constraints. They simply didn't want to think about that, much less talk about it, and so they babbled endlessly about other things in a frantic attempt to drown out a subject they couldn't bear to hear discussed openly. + +I'm pretty sure that this is what's going on in the present case, too, and an interesting set of news stories from earlier this year points up the unspoken logic behind it. + +Port Townsend is a pleasant little town in Washington State, perched on a bluff above the western shores of Puget Sound. Due to the vagaries of the regional economy, it basically got bypassed by the twentieth century, and much of the housing stock dates from the Victorian era. It so happens that one couple who live there find Victorian technology, clothing, and personal habits more to their taste than the current fashions in these things, and they live, as thoroughly as they can, a Victorian lifestyle. The wife of the couple, Sarah Chrisman, recently wrote a book about her experiences, and got her [canonical fifteen minutes of fame][1] on the internet and the media as a result. + +You might think, dear reader, that the people of Port Townsend would treat this as merely a harmless eccentricity, or even find it pleasantly amusing to have a couple in Victorian cycling clothes riding their penny-farthing bicycles on the city streets. To some extent, you'd be right, but it's the exceptions that I want to discuss here. Ever since they adopted their Victorian lifestyle, the Chrismans have been on the receiving end of constant harassment by people who find their presence in the community intolerable. The shouted insults, the in-your-face confrontations, the death threats—they've seen it all. What's more, the appearance of Sarah Chrisman's book and various online articles related to it fielded, in response, an impressive flurry of spluttering online denunciations, which insisted among other things that the fact that she prefers to wear long skirts and corsets somehow makes her personally responsible for all the sins that have ever been imputed to the Victorian era. + +Why? Why the fury, the brutality, and the frankly irrational denunciations directed at a couple whose lifestyle choices have got to count well up there among the world's most harmless hobbies? + +The reason's actually very simple. Sarah Chrisman and her husband have transgressed one of the modern world's most rigidly enforced taboos. They've shown in the most irrefutable way, by personal example, that the technologies each of us use in our own lives are a matter of individual choice. + +You're not supposed to say that in today's world. You're not even supposed to think it. You're allowed, at most, to talk nostalgically about how much more pleasant it must have been not to be constantly harassed and annoyed by the current round of officially prescribed technologies, and squashed into the Procrustean bed of the narrow range of acceptable lifestyles that go with them. Even that's risky in many circles these days, and risks fielding a diatribe from somebody who just has to tell you, at great length and with obvious irritation, all about the horrible things you'd supposedly suffer if you didn't have the current round of officially prescribed technologies constantly harassing and annoying you. + +The nostalgia in question doesn't have to be oriented toward the past. I long ago lost track of the number of people I've heard talk nostalgically about what I tend to call the Ecotopian future, the default vision of a green tomorrow that infests most minds on the leftward end of things. Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the last forty years, you already know every detail of the Ecotopian future. It's the place where wind turbines and solar panels power everything, everyone commutes by bicycle from their earth-sheltered suburban homes to their LEED-certified urban workplaces, everything is recycled, and social problems have all been solved because everybody, without exception, has come to embrace the ideas and attitudes currently found among upper-middle-class San Francisco liberals. + +It's far from rare, at sustainability-oriented events, to hear well-to-do attendees waxing rhapsodically about how great life will be when the Ecotopian future arrives. If you encounter someone engaging in that sort of nostalgic exercise, and are minded to be cruel, ask the person who's doing it whether he (it's usually a man) bicycles to work, and if not, why not. Odds are you'll get to hear any number of frantic excuses to explain why the lifestyle that everyone's going to love in the Ecotopian future is one that he can't possibly embrace today. If you want a look behind the excuses and evasions, ask him how he got to the sustainability-oriented event you're attending. Odds are that he drove his SUV, in which there were no other passengers, and if you press him about that you can expect to see the dark heart of privilege and rage that underlies his enthusiastic praise of an imaginary lifestyle that he would never, not even for a moment, dream of adopting himself. + +I wish I were joking about the rage. It so happens that I don't have a car, a television, or a cell phone, and I have zero interest in ever having any of these things. My defection from the officially prescribed technologies and the lifestyles that go with them isn't as immediately obvious as Sarah Chrisman's, so I don't take as much day to day harassment as she does. Still, it happens from time to time that somebody wants to know if I've seen this or that television program, and in the conversations that unfold from such questions it sometimes comes out that I don't have a television at all. + +Where I now live, in an old red brick mill town in the north central Appalachians, that revelation rarely gets a hostile response, and it's fairly common for someone else to say, "Good for you," or something like that. A lot of people here are very poor, and thus have a certain detachment from technologies and lifestyles they know perfectly well they will never be able to afford. Back when I lived in prosperous Left Coast towns, on the other hand, mentioning that I didn't own a television routinely meant that I'd get to hear a long and patronizing disquisition about how I really ought to run out and buy a TV so I could watch this or that or the other really really wonderful program, in the absence of which my life must be intolerably barren and incomplete. + +Any lack of enthusiasm for that sort of disquisition very reliably brought out a variety of furiously angry responses that had precisely nothing to do with the issue at hand, which is that I simply don't enjoy the activity of watching television. Oh, and it's not the programming I find unenjoyable—it's the technology itself; I get bored very quickly with the process of watching little colored images jerking about on a glass screen, no matter what the images happen to be. That's another taboo, by the way. It's acceptable in today's America to grumble about what's on television, but the technology itself is sacrosanct; you're not allowed to criticize it, much less to talk about the biases, agendas, and simple annoyances hardwired into television as a technological system. If you try to bring any of that up, people will insist that you're criticizing the programming; if you correct them, they'll ignore the correction and keep on talking as though the programs on TV are the only thing under discussion. + +A similar issue drives the bizarre paralogic surrounding the nonresponses to the tier system discussed above. The core premises behind the tier system in my narrative are, first, that people can choose the technological infrastructure they have, and have to pay for—and second, that some of them, when they consider the costs and benefits involved, might reasonably decide that an infrastructure of dirt roads and a landscape of self-sufficient farms and small towns is the best option. To a great many people today, that's heresy of the most unthinkable sort. The easiest way to deal with the heresy in question, for those who aren't interested in thinking about it, is to pretend that nothing so shocking has been suggested at all, and force the discussion into some less threatening form as quickly as possible. Redefining it in ways that erase the unbearable idea that technologies can be chosen freely, and just as freely rejected, is quite probably the easiest way to do that. + +I'd encourage those of my readers who aren't blinded by the terror of intellectual heresy to think, and think hard, about the taboo against technological choice—the insistence that you cannot, may not, and must not make your own choices when it comes to whatever the latest technological fad happens to be, but must do as you're told and accept whatever technology the consumer society hands you, no matter how dysfunctional, harmful, or boring it turns out to be. That taboo is very deeply ingrained, far more potent than the handful of relatively weak taboos our society still applies to such things as sexuality, and most of the people you know obey it so unthinkingly that they never even notice how it shapes their behavior. You may not notice how it shapes your behavior, for that matter; the best way to find out is to pick a technology that annoys, harms, or bores you, but that you use anyway, and get rid of it. + +Those who take that unthinkable step, and embrace the heresy of technological choice, are part of the wave of the future. In a world of declining resource availability, unraveling economic systems, and destabilizing environments, Sarah Chrisman and the many other people who make similar choices—there are quite a few of them these days, and more of them with each year that passes—are making a wise choice. By taking up technologies and lifeways from less extravagant eras, they're decreasing their environmental footprints and their vulnerability to faltering global technostructures, and they're also contributing to one of the crucial tasks of our age: the rediscovery of ways of being human that don't depend on hopelessly unsustainable levels of resource and energy consumption. + +The heresy of technological choice is a door. Beyond it lies an unexplored landscape of possibilities for the future—possibilities that very few people have even begun to imagine yet. My Retrotopia narrative is meant to glance over a very small part of that landscape. If some of the terrain it's examined so far has been threatening enough to send some of its readers fleeing into a familiar sort of paralogic, then I'm confident that it's doing the job I hoped it would do. + +[1]: http://www.vox.com/2015/9/9/9275611/victorian-era-life diff --git a/saved_articles/the hidden wonders of the united states you need to visit.txt b/saved_articles/the hidden wonders of the united states you need to visit.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3a3b3ba --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/the hidden wonders of the united states you need to visit.txt @@ -0,0 +1,151 @@ +--- +title: The Hidden Wonders Of The United States You Need To Visit +date: 2015-04-12T02:25:08Z +source: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/hidden-wonders#23 +tags: luxagraf, travel + +--- + +The Black Hills + +![Black Hills American Wonders][1] + +Native Americans have inhabited the Black Hills of South Dakota since at least 7000 BC. The hills were the site of gold mining and as you might guess, numerous battles between the government and Native Americans. Today, they are an annual gathering place for over 550,000 bikers. Source: [Matador Network][2] + +The Black Hills + +The Black Hills landscape is incredibly complex as well, featuring craggy rocks, grasslands and wet valleys. The environment is home to a wide array of animals, including buffalo, mountain lions and Bighorn Sheep. Source: [Matador Network][2] + +Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge + +Migratory birds have a friend in Delaware at the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge. Established in 1937, the 15,978-acre tidal marsh is one of the largest and most pristine expanses in the Mid-Atlantic region. Source: [Stephen L Tabone Nature Photography][3] + +Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge + +As high-quality habitats along the Atlantic Flyaway disappear, Bombay Hook has become increasingly important as a stop for migratory birds that travel north to their breeding grounds. Source: [Stephen L Tabone Nature Photography][3] + +Carlsbad Caverns + +Tucked in the Guadalupe Mountains of New Mexico is Carlsbad Caverns National Park, where caverns are king. The park contains 119 limestone caves that were carved out by sulfuric acid. Source: [Matador Network][2] + +Carlsbad Caverns + +The caverns were once a part of a primordial sea that existed 250 million years ago. Bones from ice age animals like giant sloths, lions and camels have been found around the entrances to the caves. Source: [Weird World Facts][4] + +Death Valley + +Though Death Valley is the driest and hottest area in North America, it actually sits over one of the world's largest aquifers. The valley's oldest rocks are over 1.7 billion years old. Source: [Matador Network][2] + +Death Valley + +Death Valley is also known for Racetrack Playa, where rocks seem to move without any intervention from humans or animals. Scientists recently discovered that the rocks don't use magic to move, but rather slide across thin sheets of ice that are pushed by wind whipping through the valley. Source: [Matador Network][2] + +Dinosaur Valley State Park + +Just outside of Fort Worth, Texas is a place where you can actually walk in the footsteps of dinosaurs. Dinosaur Valley State Park actually has fossilized dino prints along the Paluxy River that runs through the park. Source: [Dinosaur Valley State Park][5] + +Dinosaur Valley State Park + +Hiking trails take you back through time on rugged and steep pathways, but at least you're not running from a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Source: [Dinosaur Valley State Park][6] + +Hocking Hills State Park + +Picturesque waterfalls and rocky outcroppings aren't normally associated with Ohio, but they're definitely there. Hocking Hills State Park houses unique geographical features. Source: [Business Insider][7] + +Hocking Hills State Park + +Formed by glacial torrents, the park's rock formations also include deep gorges, a rock shelter and a "devil's bathtub," which is a cool way to describe a creepy hole with water in it. Source: [Bourbon Ridge Retreat][8] + +The Horicon Marsh + +The largest freshwater cattail marsh isn't in Florida or Louisiana, it's actually in Wisconsin. The Horicon Marsh is an important habitat for redheaded ducks, Canadian geese and great blue herons. Over 268 different species of birds have been sighted in the area. Source: [Adkotin][9] + +The Horicon Marsh + +The marshland remained unchanged until the arrival of European settlers, who modified it through draining and hunting. However, after it was deemed a wildlife refuge in 1927, water levels returned and it's once again wild. Source: [Birding is Fun][10] + +Craighead Caverns + +The United States' largest non-subglacial underground lake is located outside of the small town of Sweetwater, Tennessee. The lake is part of an extensive cave system called Craighead Caverns. Source: [Travel Mindset][11] + +Craighead Caverns + +Explorers have mapped 13 acres of water and discovered more cavernous rooms beneath the lake. The Lost Sea is marked by "cave flowers," a rare phenomena that worked to have lake named as a National Landmark. Source: [Lake Scientist][12] + +The Monument Rocks + +These beautiful rock formations aren't in the desert of Arizona, but rather in Kansas, in the middle of grassland. Oh, and they're made out of chalk. Source: [Tourist Destinations][13] + +The Monument Rocks + +The Monument Rocks also have the accolades of being named the first national natural landmark by the Department of the Interior. They rise up 70 feet and are estimated to have been formed 80 million years ago. The formations are important shelters for birds, particularly the American kestrel who hunts across the prairie. Source: [Nature's Arches and Bridges][14] + +Mount Desert Island + +Mount Desert Island looms over the water like a mountain, which is how it got its name. The island only has 10,000 year round residents, but visitors come to see Acadia National Park, which is located on the island. Source: [Matador Network][2] + +Acadia National Park + +The island dates back 550 million years ago when it was just a sea-floor mud deposit, created by volcanic ash. Eventually, the island rose and glaciers eroded its landscape, as visible in the extremely rocky landscape. Source: [Matador Network][2] + +Northern Lights, Alaska + +Alaska is one of the best spots on the planet to see the Northern Lights or the Aurora Borealis. Caused by solar winds, the aurora looks like a rainbow doing yoga as it moves across the sky. Source: [National Geographic][15] + +Northern Lights, Alaska + +The Northern Lights are best observed in the winter when it's darkest in Alaska. The displays take place 60 to 70 miles above the Earth, higher than a plane flies. Source: [National Geographic][16] + +The Okefenokee Swamp + +The Okefenokee Swamp covers 700 square miles in southeastern Georgia and northern Florida. The name comes from the Hitchiti Creek language meaning "Waters Shaking." Source: [Luxagraf][17] + +The Okefenokee Swamp + +The shaking waters could come from the sound of the male alligator as it bellows throughout the swamp. Be prepared for awesome paddling treks through 120 miles of swamp trail, just don't fall in. Source: [Luxagraf][17] + +Painted Hills, Oregon + +One of Oregon's 7 natural wonders are the painted hills near the town of Mitchell. Millions of years of history are exposed in the layered hills of the area like geological water painting. Source: [Love These Pics][18] + +Painted Hills, Oregon + +Many ancient fossils have been discovered in the area, including early horses, camels and rhinos. The red coloring of the formations is due to laterite that was created by floodplain deposits. Source: [Love These Pics][18] + +Palouse Falls + +Washington's Palouse Falls consists of upper falls at a drop of about 20 feet, which lead to the main drop and lower falls around 180 feet high. Rock benches, plunge pools and potholes have imprinted the surrounding landscape. Source: [Matador Network][2] + +Palouse Falls + +Kayaker Tyler Bradt ran the falls setting an unofficial world record for highest waterfall run. Lacking that kind of bravery, most of us just enjoy the pristine beauty of the locale. Source: [Reddit][19] + +Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore + +Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore runs nearly 40 rocky and sandy miles along the Lake Superior shoreline in Michigan. The colorful cliffs have been naturally sculpted into caves, peaks and arches. Source: [Random Space][20] + +Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore + +The colors of the painted rocks come from the large amount of minerals in them. The area contains most of Michigan's waterfalls and makes for great recreational activity or even video production. In 2010, Kid Rock filmed the video for his song Born Free at the lakeshore. If he knows about it, you should too! Source: [Random Space][21] + +[1]: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/hidden_wonders_black_hills.jpg +[2]: http://matadornetwork.com/ +[3]: http://stevetaboneblog.com/page/13/ +[4]: http://www.weirdworldfacts.com/ +[5]: http://tpwd.texas.gov/ +[6]: http://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/dinosaur-valley +[7]: http://www.businessinsider.com/ +[8]: http://bourbonridgeretreat.com/ +[9]: https://adkotin.wordpress.com/ +[10]: http://www.birdingisfun.com/ +[11]: http://www.travelmindset.com +[12]: http://www.lakescientist.com/ +[13]: http://www.tourist-destinations.com/ +[14]: http://arches.marbleart.us/ +[15]: http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/ +[16]: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/photo-contest/2011/entries/80665/view/ +[17]: https://luxagraf.net/ +[18]: http://www.lovethesepics.com/ +[19]: http://www.reddit.com/ +[20]: http://www-personal.umich.edu +[21]: http://www-personal.umich.edu/ diff --git a/saved_articles/the wheaton eco scale.txt b/saved_articles/the wheaton eco scale.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..7ccbe33 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/the wheaton eco scale.txt @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +--- +title: The Wheaton Eco Scale (toxin-ectomy forum at permies) +date: 2014-10-07T17:03:01Z +source: http://www.permies.com/t/3069/toxin-ectomy/Wheaton-Eco-Scale +tags: environment, philosophy + +--- + +The time has come for me to more formally define this. I have eluded to this rough idea in the past with some numbers I pulled out of my butt. I now flush those numbers and clearly define these new numbers. + +Further, while in the shower this morning, I decided that I am obnoxious and arrogant enough to come up with something and put my name to it. I also give everybody else licence to come up with their own scales for whatever they want. I just need to express myself, so I need ..... SOMETHING! + +wheaton eco level 0: about 5 billion people +wheaton eco level 1: about a billion people +wheaton eco level 2: about 100 million people +wheaton eco level 3: about 10 million people +wheaton eco level 4: about a million people +wheaton eco level 5: about 100,000 people +wheaton eco level 6: about 10,000 people +wheaton eco level 7: about a thousand people +wheaton eco level 8: about 100 people +wheaton eco level 9: about 10 people +wheaton eco level 10: Sepp Holzer + +Observation 1: most people find folks one or two levels up took pretty cool. People three levels up look a bit nutty. People four of five levels up look downright crazy. People six levels up should probably be institutionalized. I find the latter reactions to be inappropriate. + +Observations 2: most people find folks one level back are ignorant. Two levels back are assholes. Any further back and they should be shot on sight for the betterment of society as a whole. I find that all of these reactions are innapropriate. + +Finally: I can put whoever I want at the spot of eco level 10. I choose the mighty Sepp Holzer and I don't give a damn if you think somebody else should sit in that spot on my scale! + +Here are some possible attributes of people on the scale + +Level 1: is thinking about the environment. Bought fluorescent light bulbs. Is trying to do a good job of recycling. Reads an article or two. Buys some organic food. Their power bill is less than average. + +Level 2: 30% of purchased food is organic + +Level 3: Has an organic garden and 80% of purchased food is organic + +Level 4: Grow 40% of their own food. Studying permaculture. Got rid of all fluorescent light bulbs + +Level 5: has taken a PDC and/or grows 90% of their own food + +Level 6: Living a footprint that is 10 times lighter than average. Maybe living in community. Maybe living in something very small. + +Level 7: Permaculture teacher + +Level 8: Doing things that are currently improving the world in big ways + +Level 9: masanobu fukuoka, paul stamets, art ludwig, bill mollison, ianto evans .... + +Level 10: the mighty, the glorious, the amazing Sepp Holzer
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/saved_articles/the worst.txt b/saved_articles/the worst.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..d0cfcab --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/the worst.txt @@ -0,0 +1,58 @@ +--- +title: Moxie Marlinspike >> Blog >> The Worst +date: 2012-11-30T01:44:55Z +source: http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/the-worst/ +tags: stuff + +--- + +I don't really know who Dustin Curtis is, but he blogs a lot, and those blog entries often end up on Hacker News. Not too long ago, he wrote [a blog post titled "The Best,"][1] in which he explains that he has _nice stuff_. That in fact, everything he owns is actually the very best of its kind. + +Dustin's blog post culminates in the triumph of his quest for the perfect set of flatware. Apparently, this is what the [perfect collection][2] of forks, knives, and spoons looks like, which we can assume Dustin Curtis has in his kitchen drawer at this very moment: + +![][3] + +## The Best + +Those five "instruments" are $50. Fifty dollars for a single fork, knife, and spoon (the smaller items are a salad fork and tea spoon — and I'm sure it would be strictly bush league to use them for any other purpose). Is the kitchen drawer that Dustin keeps these vessels in also the very best of its kind? We're left to wonder, but presumably so. + +Boasting expensive material possessions isn't really anything new, but Dustin Curtis does it while framing his pursuit of these things as some admirable combination of special skill and uncompromising hardship. Stranger still, his thesis is that this is somehow the path to a _liberated life_. That being able to trust in the "goodness" of your material possessions will free you. Heaven forbid having to suffer the uncertainty that a dinner fork could… _malfunction_, when going for a bite? + +But what absolutely blew me away was that the Hacker News readership seemed to agree. Or at least agree enough to not find it laughable, because it was the number one story on Hacker News for a fair amount of time. + +## The Worst + +So I'd like to respond with an alternate philosophy that I will call "the worst." _The worst_ stands in direct contrast to Dustin Curtis, and suggests that one is actually more likely to engender a liberated life by getting the very worst of everything whenever possible. + +The basic premise of _the worst_ is that both ideas and material possessions should be tools that serve us, rather than things we live in service to. When that relationship with material possessions is inverted, such that we end up living in service to them, the result is consumerism. When that relationship with ideas is inverted, the result is ideology or religion. + +Any reasonable person wouldn't feel liberated by a $50 fork, but constrained by it. One wouldn't be able to help but worry: is it being cared for correctly, is my friend going to mess it up when absentmindedly tapping the table with it, is it going to get dropped or stepped on if a dance party erupts in the kitchen? After all, it is _the perfect_ fork, what if something happened to it to make it… _not perfect_? The point shouldn't be the cutlery, but the meal — and more importantly the relationships involved with preparing and sharing it. + +Partisans of _the worst_ will get 15 sets of cutlery (out of a bucket that's an overflowing fucking sea of cutlery) for fifty _cents_ at the neighborhood thrift shop, and as a result, won't have the slightest reservation if five of their housemates simultaneously decide to start a band that uses nothing but spoons for instruments. Partisans of _the worst_ won't give a shit if someone drops a dish while people are hanging out in the kitchen. They can push their crappy bicycle to the limit without worrying if it gets scratched — without even being too concerned about it getting stolen. They can play a spontaneous game of tag in the park without worrying about their clothes getting messed up, or go for an impromptu hike without worrying about their shoes getting scuffed or dirty. Partisans of _the worst_ will have more fun occasionally sneaking into the hot tub on the roof of a random apartment building than owning a hot tub of one's own which is available for daily use. + +The logic of _the best_ is so pernicious because it's poised to monopolize — an emphasis on the consumption of material goods can easily translate into a life of generalized consumption. A whole language can start to develop around not just the consumption of goods, but the consumption of _experience_: "We _did_ Prague." "We _did_ Barcelona." + +## "The best moments of my life, I never want to live again." + +Dustin Curtis also suggests that as a partisan of _the best_, he is taking on the hardship of truly understanding a domain in order to identify the best consumer good within that domain. Presumably, this means he now knows more about forks than any partisan of _the worst_ ever will. + +But internet research isn't necessarily the same as understanding. No matter how much research they do, a partisan of _the best_ might not ever know as much about motorcycles as the partisan of _the worst_ who takes a series of hare-brained cross-country motorcycle trips on a bike that barely runs, and ends up learning a ton about how to fix their constantly breaking bike along the way. The partisan of _the best_ will likely never know as much about sailing as the partisan of _the worst_ who gets the shitty boat without a working engine that they can immediately afford, and has no choice but to learn how to enter tight spaces and maneuver under sail. + +_The best_ means waiting, planning, researching, and saving until one can acquire the perfect equipment for a given task. Partisans of _the best_ will probably never end up accidentally riding a freight train 1000 miles in the wrong direction, or making a new life-long friend while panhandling after losing everything in Transnistria, or surreptitiously living under a desk in an office long after their internship has run out — simply because optimizing for the best probably does not leave enough room for those mistakes. Even if the most stalwart advocates of _the worst_ would never actually recommend _choosing_ to put oneself in those situations intentionally, they probably wouldn't give them up either. + +## Green & Responsibility + +Some amongst _the best_ will resort to a resources perspective and say that in this increasingly disposable world, it's refreshingly responsible for those of _the best_ to be making quality long-term buying decisions. But we're a long way away from a shortage of second-hand forks in the global north — let's take care of those first. + +## Simplify + +Hacker News could possibly be drawn to Dustin Curtis' cutlery because it's reminiscent of "simplify." The makers of the cutlery took the concept to its core essentials, and nominally perfected them. But to me, "simplify" is about removing clutter — about de-emphasizing the things that are unimportant so that it's easy to focus on the things that are. We shouldn't be putting any emphasis on the things in our life, we should be trying to make them as insignificant as possible, so that we can focus on what's important. + +In a sense, _the best_ gives a nod to this by suggesting that getting the very best of everything will somehow make those things invisible to us. That if we can blindly trust them, we won't have to think about them. But _the worst_ counters that if we'd like to de-emphasize things that we don't want to be the focus of our life, we probably shouldn't start by obsessing over them. That we don't simplify by getting the very best of everything, we simplify by arranging our lives so that those things don't matter one way or the other. + +Perhaps P.O.S. [said it best][4] in their recent video: ["Fuck Your Stuff"][4] + +[1]: http://dcurt.is/the-best +[2]: http://www.momastore.org/museum/moma/ProductDisplay_Yanagi%20Flatware_10451_10001_15622_-1_26669_26672_15623 +[3]: http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/images/flatware.jpg +[4]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FY6VcJR2PE diff --git a/saved_articles/thoreau 2.0 xoxo conference talk.txt b/saved_articles/thoreau 2.0 xoxo conference talk.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..6d57994 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/thoreau 2.0 xoxo conference talk.txt @@ -0,0 +1,207 @@ +--- +title: Thoreau 2.0 - XOXO Conference Talk +date: 2013-10-19T17:52:16Z +source: https://static.pinboard.in/xoxo_talk_thoreau.htm +tags: life + +--- + +![][1] + +This is a picture of me in 2009, right around when I started [Pinboard][2]. I'm standing on a balcony in Botosani county, Romania, in the poorest county in the European Union. + +I'm smiling in this photo, but in reality I was having a rough time. I was $50k in debt, didn't have a job, and the contract work I depended on for my living was drying up because the world economy had just exploded. And to top it off, the Russians were mad at Romania and had turned off the natural gas pipeline. + +I didn't realize it at the time, but this rainbow was the real deal. Pinboard took off much faster than I expected, and I was quickly able to make it my full-time job. Next month will mark four years since the last time I worked for anyone but myself. + +This was a dream come true for me, and lately I've been giving more and more thought about how to keep the party going. Bookmarking sites seem to have a life expectancy of four years, but I don't want to stop! I want to keep doing this for years. + +So in this kind of reflective spirit, I went back and re-read a book that had a profound effect on me when I was younger, that really lit a fire under me about being self-reliant and living a life on my own terms. I wanted to see if it still had anything to say to me now that I was actually doing it. + +And to my relief, it was even better than I remembered. It turns out there was all kinds of stuff I had missed because I was too young, or too callow, to really understand it. + +![][3] + +[at this point I troll the audience by displaying a huge slide of Ayn Rand] + +So today I want to talk to you about one of my biggest heroes, whose work I think will have a profound impact on anyone trying to create something on their own terms. + +![][4] + +Of course I mean this guy, Henry David Thoreau. + +For those of you who weren't forced to read him in high school, he was a content creator active in the 1850's, a pal of Emerson's, active in the Transcendentalist movement. + +We mainly remember him for an experiment in minimal living he conducted at Walden Pond. In 1845, he built himself a small cabin, moved in, and spent two years living and writing about the experience. + +You'll notice he's got a neckbeard going. Louisa May Alcott said of this neckbeard, + +> It will most assuredly deflect amorous advances and preserve the man's virtue in perpetuity + +And she wasn't wrong. But discovering the contraceptive properties of the neckbeard was not the only thing that put Thoreau ahead of his time. + +The man was a pescatarian, a locavore, probably the first environmentalist, a do-it-yourselfer. He practiced yoga, read Hindu sacred texts, and was a bit of a food faddist. He would frequently walk around in camouflage, since that made it easier to sneak up on wild animals. + +In short, he's the kind of guy who would fit right in in Portland. + +![][5] + +So today I want to rebrand Thoreau for the Internet crowd. I wish to present to you Thoreau 2.0. + +![][6] + +First, though, a word of warning. Thoreau is a wonderful writer and often extremely quotable. But when people are very quotable, it can make it harder to listen to what they actually have to say. + +Walden is a layered work. You can't just go in and strip-mine it for a bunch of Tim Ferriss-style life hacks, or inspirational quotes, without missing the entire point of the book. + +Since we have limited time, though, I've gone and picked out some Tim Ferriss-style lifehacks and inspirational quotes, which I will present as a set of bullet points. + +![][7] + +This is probably Thoreau's most famous quote, "Simplify, Simplify, Simplify" + +![][8] + +I like to paraphrase it as: "Simplify". + +You can see here a facsimile of the cabin Thoreau built for himself. + +I don't have to sell this audience on the virtues of simplicity. Over the last few years, it's been a pleasure to see simplicity in design take over. + +But Thoreau was concerned with a different kind of simplicity. He was obsessed with how complexity can creep into unexpected corners of your life, disguised as necessity. He gives the example of a farmer who convinces himself he must eat meat in order to stay strong. Since meat is expensive, the farmer tills more land in order to afford it. And the harder he works, the hungrier he gets, in a vicious spiral. Meanwhile, the ox that pulls his plow makes do with a vegetable diet, and is stronger than the farmer will ever be. + +I had an interesting run-in with this pattern three years ago. I was leaning over a mop bucket when I saw my telephone come tumbling out of my shirt pocket, in slow motion. Even in 2013, water for some reason is still Kryptonite to electronics, and so of course it died on contact. + +Out of a mixture of curiosity (20%) and laziness (80%) I elected not to replace the phone, and see what would happen. + +I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I could live without it. However, it made it impossible for me to get any kind of notification if something happened to Pinboard. + +After worrying about that for a bit, I realized that I was better off not being wakened in the middle of the night if my site was sick. My users probably didn't want me typing into a root console in sleep-deprived panic. Things could wait until morning. + +So that made life a little less stressful. And then I noticed a follow-on effect. Just knowing that there was nothing that could possibly wake me up in an emergency was making me sleep better. + +So what I had thought was a convenience had actually been the foundation for a little pyramid of anxieties. It made me wonder what other stuff in my life was behaving that way. + +But again — I was too lazy to investigate further. + +I'm not arguing, necessarily, that you all should give up your cell phones. But I'm intrigued by this idea of complexity being something adversarial, that sneaks into your life, like a cockroach, and you have to fight to eradicate. + +![][9] + +Thoreau's great problem was that he was a nature writer and an ecologist working at a time before either of those categories made any sense, partly because he was helping to invent them. To his friends and fellow writers, Thoreau was a disappointment, a talented writer who had chosen to squander his gifts picking huckleberries. + +Towards the end of his life, Thoreau actually got very systematic in the data he collected; he may have known more than any man alive about the ecology of New England. But this meant nothing to anyone but him. Nor was it obvious that his nature writing was on a par with the more 'literary' efforts of his time. + +I mention this because all of us in this room are very lucky to be present at the birth of a new medium. It may not feel new, but it really is early days. We get to define what kind of things it will possible to "be" online. That's an enormous privilege. + +But it comes with a price, a kind of centrifugal force you can feel tugging at your identity, pulling you towards other roles that already exist. It can be uncomfortable not to have a name for the thing you do. You have to make sure you plant your feet, and take care to pick the right spot to stand on. + +![][10] + +Thoreau's first book was a failure. He had it published himself, and at some point his publisher made him come down and fetch the rest of the print run, which was taking up too much space. Thoreau hauled it up to Concord, and told a friend at the time: + +> I have now a library of nearly 900 volumes, over 700 of which I wrote myself. + +But this hurt! He had to go back to work at his father's pencil factory (if you've ever used a Conté crayon, you have Henry David Thoreau to thank, since he re-invented the process for making them). And when that didn't work, he had to pivot to farm labor, and finally surveying. Surveying, at least, let him work outside and in the woods, but he was often working for people who wanted to cut down the forest he spent all his free time in. + +There's a pernicious idea that comes out of startup culture called "fail fast". I've always been a big believer in failing slowly. When you're not in it for the money, success doesn't come to you pre-labeled. It can look just like failure. Chasing money makes it easier, because then you can quantify success unambiguously. Otherwise, you may have a hard time telling the two apart. + +You can work on a lot of projects, but you will only get a couple of opportunities to work on something long-term. So I would say pick those carefully, do things that are intrinsically rewarding, and be very loath to abandon them. And work that day job if you have to! + +![][11] + +The best piece of advice Thoreau ever got was from Emerson, who told him to keep a journal. And Thoreau did, for decades, using it as a personal diary, a record of his botanical and scientific observations, and a kind of staging ground for his serious writing. He would go back and mine it years later for passages to use in his work. + +I don't think everyone needs to keep a literary journal, but I think it's vital to keep a work diary, for three reasons: + +First, because it's the only honest record of what you're thinking at the time. Your memory will lie to you, almost immediately, about what you thought was going to happen on any given day. The only way you can trust it is to write down your state of mind - what you're worried about, what you expect will happen. And then over time you can go back and look for patterns of thought that you might want to fix. Maybe you're always too optimistic, or maybe you choose to work with toxic people, or chronically underestimate what things will cost. Writing it down will help you understand your mental habits, and correct for them. + +Second, a work diary helps you track what you're actually doing. It's easy to get lost in the weeds from day to day, but are you ever spending time working on the things you think are most important? Thoreau was mistrustful of trivia the same way he mistrusted complexity, its capacity to take over our lives and push out what we value. An honest work record will tell you what you actually did, and what you spent your time thinking about. + +Finally, and most importantly, writing things down captures the details that you only glean from experience. The one thing separating me from the high-IQ theoreticians on a message board is the fact that I've actually been running a bookmarking site for four years. Experience is priceless, you can't get it except by doing it, so you want to be sure not to fritter any of it away, and document the details as they happen. + +They can come in useful later in the most surprising circumstances. + +![][12] + +A charming thing about _Walden_ is that Thoreau starts it straight away talking about money. He gives the full cost of building his house (around $24) and the total profit he got from cultivating his bean field, about eight bucks. + +If you're not motivated by money, it's easy to talk sometimes as if money is beneath you. But money is beneath us like the ground is beneath us; if it disappears, down we go. Only rich people have the luxury of not talking about money. + +As independent creators, trying to coax other people into striking out on their own, I think we have to take special care to be direct and honest about the financial aspects of our work. + +In working on Pinboard, I've benefitted from other projects that publish their expenses, especially in areas where these numbers would be really hard to estimate. And I've tried to do the same, sharing a spreadsheet with expenses for each year I've run the site. + +Sharing revenue, of course, is scarier. But I've discovered that the only people who really care are other people trying to start solo projects, and they find it helpful. + +So I'll go first - last year Pinboard earned $181,000. By my calculations, this makes me over 23,000 times as successful as Henry David Thoreau. + +![][13] + +> How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. + +In 1846, Thoreau was thrown into jail for failing to pay his poll tax for six years. This was his protest against the Mexican War, which he saw as an attempt to extend slavery into the Western Territories. + +After leaving jail, Thoreau wrote an essay called "[Resistance to Civil Government][14]", where he tried to reason out what we should do when the government compels us to do something morally wrong. + +It's not our job, Thoreau argues, to fix the world. We may not have the time for that. But we can't cooperate with injustice. If the law compels us to do something wrong, we have to break that law. + +This doctrine of non-cooperation with civil authority would have a powerful effect on Gandhi and Martin Luther King. + +Over the past few months, we've heard some shocking things about the extent to which our government is monitoring our online activity. To me more upsetting than the surveillance is the apparatus of secrecy that has been built around it, to make it impossible to observe, or honestly discuss, the full extent of what is going on. + +I've come to believe that it's time for us to take a stand, and refuse to cooperate with this apparatus of secrecy. We've already seen Lavabit, in an act of great moral courage, throw away ten years of hard work rather than acquiesce to blanket monitoring of its users. But the fact that Ladar Levinson wasn't even able to give the reasons for shutting his project down, that we had to infer them from his silence, demonstrates the problem. + +If anyone is going to refuse to cooperate, it is going to be small independent projects, not large corporations. "The rich man—not to make any invidious comparison—is always sold to the institution which makes him rich". + +Larry Page is not going to go to jail. Marissa Mayer is not going to jail - she's already said she thinks [it's tantamount to treason][15]! The large corporations - whose own business model, after all, is surveillance - have folded their hands and said "we've done everything we can within the law to fight this". + +But Thoreau argued, and I agree, that there is a higher law. + +The reason I think it's vital we act now is that this state of affairs is still shocking, still disturbing. Let it persist and it will become the new normal (in other words, the "old shitty") and anyone trying to fight it is going to be branded a Utopian or hopelessly naive, unable to come to terms with modernity. + +We should commit to giving legal, financial and moral support to anyone who refuses to obey gag order, or publishes a National Security Letter. The secrecy exists because the programs it cloaks can't withstand the light of day. One good, timely push will break them. + +Whether or not you agree with me, I would urge you to read Thoreau's essay, and decide for yourself: where do you draw the line? What will it take to make you stop cooperating? + +![][16] + +You could make a cynical case that Thoreau was a bit of a phony. He conducted his experiment in self-reliance on land lent to him by a friend, limited his stay to two years, and received a stream of visitors the entire time. On Sundays, his mom and sister would come out with a basket of doughnuts and pies, which Thoreau devoured, presumably while they washed his socks and made his bed. + +Even his famous moral stand against the poll tax came after just one night in jail. Under cover of darkness, someone (probably his aunt) came by and paid the tax bill, and then paid it every year from then on. + +So Thoreau had all these people, mostly women, who silently enabled the life he thought he was heroically living for himself. + +But a gentler, more generous way to look at it is this. If you live a life by your own lights, and follow your principles, maybe once in a while someone will come and bring you a basket of donuts. And it's okay to eat the donuts! They're delicious! + +Thoreau said about his two years at Walden: + +> I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. + +Thoreau wrote this never having tasted any of traditional forms of success. He was thinking of a different, more fundamental kind of success, one that I wish for myself, and earnestly wish for all of you. + +But the greatest lesson, the one thing you should retain from reading Thoreau even if you forget everything else, is this: + +![][17] + +Go outside. It's a beautiful day, it's lunchtime, and Portland is a beautiful city! + +THUNDEROUS, PROLONGED APPLAUSE + +[1]: https://static.pinboard.in/thoreau/tp.001.jpg +[2]: https://pinboard.in +[3]: https://static.pinboard.in/thoreau/tp.002.jpg +[4]: https://static.pinboard.in/thoreau/tp.003.jpg +[5]: https://static.pinboard.in/thoreau/tp.004.jpg +[6]: https://static.pinboard.in/thoreau/tp.005.jpg +[7]: https://static.pinboard.in/thoreau/tp.006.jpg +[8]: https://static.pinboard.in/thoreau/tp.007.jpg +[9]: https://static.pinboard.in/thoreau/tp.008.jpg +[10]: https://static.pinboard.in/thoreau/tp.009.jpg +[11]: https://static.pinboard.in/thoreau/tp.010.jpg +[12]: https://static.pinboard.in/thoreau/tp.011.jpg +[13]: https://static.pinboard.in/thoreau/tp.012.jpg +[14]: http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil.html +[15]: http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-its-treason-to-ignore-the-nsa-2013-9 +[16]: https://static.pinboard.in/thoreau/tp.013.jpg +[17]: https://static.pinboard.in/thoreau/tp.014.jpg diff --git a/saved_articles/to have is to owe.txt b/saved_articles/to have is to owe.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..0444abf --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/to have is to owe.txt @@ -0,0 +1,603 @@ +--- +title: To Have Is to Owe +Triple Canopy +date: 2010-12-09T23:17:44Z +source: http://canopycanopycanopy.com/10/to_have_is_to_owe +tags: finance, money + +--- + +Mesopotamian usury, Vedic accounting, American Jubilee: excavating the +history of fiscal debt. Illustrations by [Joanna +Neborsky](/contributors#neborsky_joanna). + +“To Have Is to Owe” contains excerpts from David Graeber’s forthcoming +book [*Debt: The First 5,000 +Years*](http://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1933633867/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1291747069&sr=8-1), +to be published by Melville House in January 2011. It was produced by +Triple Canopy as part of its [Research +Work](/projectareas#project_areas) project area, supported in part by +the New York Council for the Humanities and the Brown Foundation, Inc. +of Houston. + +Payment Due +----------- + +For thousands of years, the struggle between rich and poor has largely +taken the form of conflicts between creditors and debtors—of arguments +about the rights and wrongs of interest payments, debt peonage, amnesty, +repossession, restitution, the sequestering of sheep, the seizing of +vineyards, and the selling of debtors’ children into slavery. By the +same token, for the past five thousand years, with remarkable +regularity, popular insurrections have begun the same way: with the +ritual destruction of debt records—tablets, papyri, ledgers; whatever +form they might have taken in any particular time and place. In the +throes of the recent economic crisis, with the very defining +institutions of capitalism crumbling, surveys showed that an +overwhelming majority of Americans felt that the country’s banks should +not be rescued—*whatever the economic consequences*—but that ordinary +citizens stuck with bad mortgages should be bailed out. This is quite +extraordinary, as Americans have, since colonial days, been the +population least sympathetic to debtors. (Back then, the ears of an +insolvent debtor would often be nailed to a post.) The notion of +morality as a matter of paying one’s debts runs deeper in the United +States than in almost any other country, which is odd, since America was +settled largely by absconding debtors. Despite the + +fact that the Constitution specifically charged the new government with +creating a bankruptcy law in 1787, all attempts to do so were rejected +on “moral grounds” until 1898, by which time almost all other Western +states had adopted one. The change was epochal.[1](#) + +Those charged with moderating political debate in our media and +legislatures have decided that this is not the time for another such +change. The US government effectively put a three-trillion-dollar +band-aid over the problem, changing nothing. Financiers were “bailed out +with taxpayer money”—in other words, their imaginary money was treated +as if it were real—while mortgage holders were mostly left to the tender +mercy of the courts, subjected to a bankruptcy law that, the previous +year, Congress had made far more exacting against debtors. We have even +seen a backlash against small-scale debtors, one driven by financial +corporations that have now turned to the same government that bailed +them out to apply the full force of the law against ordinary citizens in +financial trouble. “It’s not a crime to owe money,” reports the +*Minneapolis Star-Tribune*. “But people are routinely being thrown in +jail for failing to pay debts.” In Minnesota, “the use of arrest +warrants against + +1 The nature of money has always been particularly contentious in the +US, as evidenced by the endless battles between goldbugs, greenbackers, +free bankers, bimetallists, and silverites in the nineteenth century. +American voters were so suspicious of the very idea of central banks +that the Federal Reserve system was created only on the eve of World War +I, three centuries after the Bank of England was founded. Even the +monetization of the national debt was seen by Thomas Jefferson as a +pernicious alliance between warriors and financiers, though it opened +the way to government assuming the role of moral debtor, and of freedom +being perceived as something literally owed to the nation. + +Aristocratic debtors were wined and dined by liveried servants and +allowed to receive prostitutes. Impoverished inmates were shackled +together in tiny cells, where they “suffered to die, without pity, of +hunger and jail fever.” + +debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases +in 2009. In Illinois and southwest Indiana, some judges jail debtors for +missing court-ordered debt payments. In extreme cases, people stay in +jail until they raise a minimum payment. In January [2010], a judge +sentenced a Kenney, Ill., man ‘to indefinite incarceration’ until he +came up with \$300 toward a lumber yard debt.”[2](#) + +Despite all this, we hardly know what debt is. The very flexibility of +the concept is the basis of its power, and of the moral confusion +associated with it. Looking at the history of debt worldwide, one + +2 Throughout history, certain sorts of debts, and certain sorts of +debtors, have been treated differently from others. The British public +was scandalized in the 1720s when the popular press exposed the fact +that debtors’ prisons were regularly divided into two sections. +Aristocratic inmates, who often thought of a brief stay in Fleet or +Marshelsea as something of a fashion statement, were wined and dined by +liveried servants and allowed to receive regular visits from +prostitutes. On the “common side,” impoverished debtors were shackled +together in tiny cells, “covered with filth and vermin,” as one report +put it, “and suffered to die, without pity, of hunger and jail fever.” + +finds that most people have held that paying back money one has borrowed +is a simple matter of morality and, contradictorily, that anyone in the +habit of lending money is evil. Recently, the former position seems to +have trumped the latter, owing to a persistent refusal to question our +slavish devotion to creditors. But if the welfare state must be +destroyed in order, ostensibly, to settle our debts, we should ask +ourselves: To whom, exactly, are those debts owed? And where did our +creditors get the money that was loaned to us? (The answer, of course: +We owe the very financial institutions we recently bailed out for making +fraudulent and idiotic loans; they didn’t *get* the money anywhere, they +just + +made it up.) Whenever such questions have been openly asked in Europe, +riots have tended to ensue. + +Such eruptions make it clear that debt must be removed from that +rarefied sphere of morality arbitrated by transnational institutions +(whose representatives are also its main beneficiaries), where it has +become ensconced, and returned to the sphere of open political debate. +In the ancient world, it was not debt that was considered sacred, but +rather the power to make it disappear. We are, it seems, long overdue +for a contemporary Jubilee, one that would affect consumer debt as well +as international debt, and that would not only relieve a great amount of +human suffering but also remind us that money is not ineffable, that +paying one’s debt is not the essence of morality, that borrowing and +lending are human arrangements, and that if + +democracy is to mean anything, it is the ability to all agree to arrange +things differently. + +It is significant that, since Hammurabi, great imperial states have +invariably resisted this kind of + +politics. Athens and Rome established the paradigm: Even when confronted +with continual debt crises, they insisted on legislating around the +edges, softening the impact; they eliminated obvious abuses like debt +slavery and used the spoils of empire to throw all sorts of extra +benefits at their poorer citizens (who, after all, provided the rank and +file of their armies) so as to keep them afloat. They did all this in +such a way as to fend off any challenge to the principle of debt itself. +The US has taken a remarkably similar approach: eliminating the worst +abuses (e.g., debtors’ prisons), using the fruits of empire to provide +subsidies, visible and otherwise, and, recently, manipulating currency +rates to flood the country with cheap goods from China. Never has the +governing class allowed anyone to question the sacred principle that we +all must pay our debts. That principle has recently been exposed to be a +flagrant lie. As it turns out, we *all* don’t have to pay our debts. +Only some of us do. + +**Mesopotamia, 2400 BCE**\ + Usury was common practice by 2400 BCE. Officials or merchants advanced +loans to peasants and, if they were unable to pay, began to appropriate +their possessions, starting with grain, goats, and + +furniture, then moving on to fields and houses, then family members. +First went the servants, followed by children, wives, and even the +borrower himself, all of whom were reduced to debt peons until the money +was repaid. This threatened to rip society apart: If for any reason +there was a bad harvest, large proportions of the peasantry fell into +debt peonage. Indebted farmers in fear of repossession abandoned their +fields. + +Faced with the potential for complete social breakdown, Sumerian and +Babylonian kings periodically announced general amnesties. All +outstanding consumer debt was declared null and void (commercial debts +were not affected), all land was returned to its original owners, and +debt peons were returned to their families. Before long, kings made a +habit of declaring such amnesties upon assuming power. (The sovereign +saw himself as literally re-creating human society, so he was in a fine +position to relieve all previous moral obligations.) In Sumerian, these +were called declarations of freedom. The Sumerian word *amargi* is the +first recorded use of “freedom” in any language; it literally means +“return to mother,” since this is what freed debt peons were allowed to +do. + +The Fabled Land of Barter +------------------------- + +When economists speak of the origins of money, debt is always something +of an afterthought. First comes barter, then money; credit develops only +later. Even if one consults books on the history of money in, say, +France, India, or China, what one generally gets is a history of +coinage, with barely any discussion of credit arrangements at all. For +almost a century, anthropologists like myself have been pointing out +that there is something very wrong with this picture. Credit system, +tabs, and even expense accounts existed long before cash. These things +are as old as civilization itself. History tends to move back and forth +between periods dominated by bullion, when it’s assumed that gold and +silver *are* money, and periods in which money is assumed to be an +abstraction, a virtual unit of account. The standard version of this +history has little to do with how economic life is actually conducted in +real communities and marketplaces, where everyone is likely in debt to +everyone else in a dozen different ways, and most transactions take +place without the use of currency. + +Some of it is just the nature of the evidence: Coins are preserved in +the archaeological record, credit arrangements usually are not. Still, +the problem runs + +Missionaries, adventurers, and colonial administrators fanned out across +the world, carrying copies of *The Wealth of Nations*, expecting to find +the land of barter. None ever did. + +deeper. The existence of credit and debt has always been something of a +scandal for economists, since it’s almost impossible to pretend that +those lending and borrowing money are acting on purely “economic” +motivations (for instance, that a loan to a stranger is the same as a +loan to one’s cousin). Therefore, they begin the story of money in an +imaginary world from which credit and debt have been entirely erased: +“Once upon a time, there was barter. It was difficult. So people +invented money. Then came the development of banking and credit.” The +logical, inexorable progression of humanity + +from Stone Age barterers of mastodon tusks to wielders of complex +financial instruments has become common sense. + +We now know from ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian records—discovered +after Adam Smith, for whom economic history began with Homer—that credit +systems (what is today called virtual money) preceded the invention of +coinage by thousands of years. Money was actually created by bureaucrats +to track state resources and spread unevenly, never completely replacing +credit systems. Barter, in turn, is largely an accidental byproduct of +the use of coinage or paper money, a refuge for people operating in cash +economies where currency has for some reason become inaccessible. +Nevertheless, nearly every introductory economics textbook in use today +takes the same approach: “To see that society benefits + +from a medium of exchange, imagine a barter economy,” write Begg, +Fischer, and Dornbuch in *Economics* (2005). “Imagine the difficulty you +would have today if you had to exchange your labor directly for the +fruits of someone else’s labor,” write Maunder, Myers, Wall, and Miller +in *Economics Explained* (1991). “Imagine you have roosters, but you +want roses,” write Parkin and King in *Economics* (1995). “One can +imagine an old-style farmer bartering with the blacksmith, the tailor, +the grocer, and the doctor in his small town,” write Stiglitz and +Driffill in *Economics* (2000). + +There is a simple reason why everyone who writes an economics textbook +feels the need to tell us the same story. For economists, it is in a +very real sense the most important story ever told. It was by telling it +in 1776 that Adam Smith, professor of moral philosophy at the University +of Edinburgh, + +effectively brought the discipline of economics into being. He objected +to the notion that money was a creation of government, and insisted that +property, currency, and markets not only existed before political +institutions but also were the very foundation of human society. It +followed that insofar as government should play any role in monetary +affairs, it should limit itself to guaranteeing the soundness of +currency. It was only by making such an argument that he could insist +that economics was itself a field of human inquiry with its own +principles and laws—as distinct from, say, ethics or politics. The +economy, in his formulation, operates + +by rules of its own that are separate from moral and political life; it +is where we indulge in our natural propensity to truck and barter. We +are still trucking and bartering, and always will be. Money is simply +the most efficient means. + +For centuries, economists have searched for the fabled land of barter. +Smith set his story in aboriginal North America, and its lack of realism +reflects the dearth of reliable information on Native American economic +systems in Scottish libraries. But by the middle of the nineteenth +century, Lewis Henry Morgan’s descriptions of the Six Nations of the +Iroquois had been published and read widely; they made clear that the +Iroquois’s goods were stockpiled in longhouses, then allocated by +women’s councils, without anyone ever trading arrowheads for slabs of +meat. Economists ignored this information. Stanley Jevons, for example, +wrote *The Principles of Political Economy*, his classic study of the +origins of money, in 1871. He took his examples straight from Smith, +describing Indians swapping venison for elk and beaver hides. Around the +same time, missionaries, adventurers, and colonial administrators were +fanning out across the world, many carrying copies of Smith’s *The +Wealth of Nations*, expecting to find the land of barter. + +None ever did. They discovered an almost endless variety of economic +systems. But to this day, no one has been able to locate a place where +the ordinary mode of economic transaction between neighbors takes the +form of “I’ll give you twenty chickens for that cow.”[3](#) + +**Madagascar, 1990** \ + In the town of Arivonimamo, Madagascar, I had the privilege of +interviewing a Kalanoro, a tiny, ghostly creature that a local spirit +medium claimed to keep hidden away in a chest in his home. The spirit +belonged to the brother of a notorious loan shark, a horrible woman +named Nordine. I was a bit reluctant to have anything to do with the +family, but some of my friends insisted; this was, after all, a creature +from ancient times. The creature spoke from behind a screen, in an +eerie, otherworldly quaver. But all it was really interested in talking +about was money. Finally, slightly exasperated by the whole charade, I +asked, “What did you use for money back in ancient times, when you were +still alive?” + +The mysterious voice immediately replied, “We didn’t use money. In +ancient times we used to + +3 This hardly means that barter does not exist—or even that it’s never +practiced by the sort of people that Smith referred to as savages. It +just means that it’s almost never employed between fellow villagers, as +Smith imagined it to be. + +barter commodities directly, one for the other.” + +We all owe an infinite debt to humanity, nature, or the cosmos (however +one prefers to frame it), but no one else can possibly tell us how to +pay it. + +IOU All +------- + +What gave early nation-states the right to levy taxes? Nowadays, we all +think we know the answer to this question. We pay our taxes so that the +government can provide us with services, starting with military +protection. The arrangement is said to go back to an original social +contract, though no one really knows when it was made or by whom, or why +we should be bound by the decisions of distant ancestors on this one +matter when we aren’t by their decisions otherwise. + +An alternative explanation is primordial-debt theory, a school of +thought developed largely in France by economists, anthropologists, +historians, and classicists; its foundational text is Michel Aglietta +and André Orléan’s *La Violence de la Monnaie* (1992). Adherents insist +that monetary policy cannot be separated from social policy, that the +two have always been intertwined. Governments use taxes to create money, +which they are able to do because + +they have become the guardians of the debt that all citizens have to one +another. This debt is the essence of society itself. + +At first, the argument goes, this sense of debt was expressed not +through the state, but through religion. The hymns, prayers, and poetry +collected in the Vedas and the Brahmanas, the foundations of Hindu +thought, constitute the earliest-known reflections on the nature of +debt, which they treat as synonymous with guilt and sin. According to +the commentators of the Brahmanas, human existence is itself a form of +debt: A man, being born, is a debt; he is born to death, and only by way +of sacrifice does he redeem himself from death. Two famous passages in +the Brahmanas insist that we are born as a debt not just to the gods (to +be repaid in sacrifice) but also to the sages who created the Vedic +learning (to be repaid through study), to our ancestors (to be repaid by +having children), and, finally, to the whole of humanity (to be repaid +with + +hospitality to strangers). + +The first explicit theory of the debt owed by each living person to the +society that makes his or her existence possible was formulated by +Auguste Comte in his last work, *The Catechism of Positive Religion* +(1852), in the form of a lecture on what came to be known as primordial, +existential, or social debt, delivered by the priest of an imaginary +Religion of Society. Asked for his view on human rights, the priest +scoffs at the very notion. It is nonsense, he says, an error born of +individualism. Positivism understands only duties. After all, + +> We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our +> predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. After our +> birth these obligations increase or accumulate before the point where +> we are capable of rendering anyone any service. On what human +> foundation, then, could one seat the idea of “rights”? + +Comte doesn’t use the word *debt*, but it is clear what he means: We +have already accumulated endless debts before we get to the age at which +we can even think of paying them. And by that time there’s no way even +to calculate to whom we owe them. The only way to redeem ourselves is to +be dedicated to the service of humanity. + +Comte’s notion of an unlimited obligation to society + +crystallized in the notion of social debt, which was taken up among +social reformers and, eventually, socialist politicians in many parts of +Europe and abroad. In France the notion of a social debt soon became +something of a catchphrase, a slogan—and, eventually, a cliché: “We are +all born as debtors to society.” The state, according to this + +view, was merely the administrator of the existential debt that everyone +owes to everyone. + +Theories of existential debt always end up justifying—or laying claim +to—structures of authority. What we really have in the idea of +primordial debt is the ultimate nationalist myth. Once we owed our lives +to + +the gods who created us, paid them interest in the form of animal +sacrifice, and, ultimately, paid back the principal with our lives. Now +we owe our lives to the nation that formed us, pay interest in the form +of taxes, and, when it comes time to defend the nation against its +enemies, pay back the principal with our lives. This is a great trap of +the twentieth century: On the one side is the logic of the market, which +insists that we don’t owe one another anything. On the other is the +logic of the state, which insists that we are born with a debt we can +never truly pay. In fact, the dichotomy is false. States created +markets, markets require states, and neither could continue without the +other. + +The true ethos of our individualistic society may be found in this +equation: We all owe an infinite debt to humanity, nature, or the cosmos +(however one prefers to frame it), but no one else can possibly tell us +how to pay it. All systems of established authority—religion, morality, +politics, economics, the criminal-justice system—are revealed to be +fraudulent ways of calculating what cannot be calculated. Freedom, then, +is the ability to decide for ourselves how to pay our debts. + +\ +\ +**** + +**England, twelfth century CE**\ + One of the most important forms of currency during the reign of King +Henry I was the notched “tally stick” used to record debts. Each party +to a transaction would take a twig, notch it to indicate the amount +owed, then split it in half. The creditor would keep one half, called +the “stock” (hence the origin of the term “stock holder”) and the debtor +would keep the other, called the “stub” (hence “ticket stub”). Tax +assessors used such twigs to calculate amounts owed by local sheriffs. +Often, though, rather than wait for the taxes to come due, Henry’s +exchequer would sell the tallies at a discount, and they would circulate +as tokens of debt owed to the government. The king also issued tallies +in lieu of payment to soldiers, farmers, and others owed money by the +state; these, too, were sold at a discount and circulated among stock +holders. + +There is one puzzling aspect of this equation: The IOU can operate as +money only as long as Henry never pays his debt. This is precisely the +logic on which the Bank of England—the first modern central bank—was +founded. In 1694, with public finances weak and the state's monetary and +credit systems precarious, a consortium of English + +bankers made a loan of £1.2 million to King William III. In return they +received a royal monopoly on the issuance of banknotes. Practically, +this meant the bankers had the right to advance IOUs representing a +portion of the king’s debt to any inhabitant of the kingdom willing to +borrow from them, or willing to deposit his own money in the bank. The +effect was to monetize the royal debt. This was a great deal for the +bankers, who charged the king 8 percent annual interest on the original +loan and, simultaneously, charged clients who borrowed money interest on +that same debt. But the arrangement could only work for as long as the +original loan remained outstanding. Which is why, to this day, the loan +has never been paid back. It cannot be. If it ever were, the entire +monetary system of the United Kingdom would cease to exist. + +God’s Money +----------- + +In today’s world, paying one’s debts can seem the very definition of +morality, if only because so many fail to do it. When faced with a debt, +large corporations and even some small businesses will almost +automatically wait and see what happens if they do not pay, complying +only if goaded or presented with a legal writ. The principle of honor +having been almost completely removed from the marketplace, debt +acquires the halo of religion. (One might speak of a double theology, +one for creditors and another for debtors.) It is no coincidence that +the current phase of American debt imperialism has also been accompanied +by the rise of the evangelical right, which has bucked the past two +millennia of Christian thinking on the subject and enthusiastically +embraced supply-side economics, taking the position that creating money +and giving it to the rich is the most biblically appropriate way to +bring about national prosperity. Perhaps the most ambitious theologian +of the new creed was George Gilder, whose book *Wealth and Poverty* +became a best seller in 1981, at the dawn of the Reagan revolution. +Those who felt that money could not simply be created were mired in an +old-fashioned, godless materialism, Gilder + +argued; they didn’t realize that just as God could create something out +of nothing, his greatest gift to humanity was the ability to do so in +the same fashion. And to do so was not hubristic, but in keeping with +God’s intentions: The creation of money was a gift, a blessing, a +channeling of grace; a promise, yes, but not one that can be fulfilled, +even if the bonds are continually rolled over, because through faith +(“in God we trust”) their value becomes real. “The United States,” +Gilder writes, “must overcome the materialist fallacy: the illusion that +resources and capital are essentially things, which can run out, rather +than products of human will and imagination which in freedom are +inexhaustible.” Such effusions inspired evangelists like Pat Robertson +to declare supply-side economics “the first truly divine theory of +money-creation.” + +This new breed of capitalist evangelicals failed to acknowledge that the +vast majority of the money being “created” was in fact a product of +deficit spending to fund the mushrooming US military, a practice that +was avidly pursued by Reagan and that reached its pinnacle under George +W. Bush. Furthermore, until China became our chief creditor, money was +“borrowed” almost exclusively from + +West Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia—all nations that were +under US military protection. The “products of human will and +imagination” were backed by material forces after all: not so much +fields, factories, or even oil wells, but aircraft carriers and +laser-guided missiles. All + +the more curious is Christian fundamentalists’ obsession with waging war +on Iraq—which they often referred to, among themselves, as “Babylon”—the +birthplace of the debt-forgiveness decree and the interest-free +commercial economy. + +**Islamic world, Middle Ages**\ + From the beginning, Islam had a positive view of commerce. (Muhammad +himself had been begun his life as a merchant.) The prohibitions against +usury did not mitigate the growth of commerce, or even the development +of complex credit instruments. To the contrary, the early centuries of +the caliphate saw an efflorescence of both. Credit instruments were so +essential that traders tended to keep their wealth on deposit and make +everyday transactions using checks (*sakk*) instead of coins. Checks +were countersigned and transferred, and letters of credit (*suftaja*) +traveled across the Indian Ocean and the Sahara. These promissory notes +operated independently of the state (and the deals made with them were +beyond the purview of government enforcement): They never became paper +money, could not be used to pay taxes, and their value remained based +almost entirely on trust and reputation. If a trader was wronged, he +could appeal to the Islamic courts, but commissioning a + +poet to compose verses deriding the debtor would have a much greater +effect. + +Networks of trust were largely responsible for the spread of Islam over +the caravan routes of central Asia and the Sahara and across the Indian +Ocean, which became the main conduit of world trade. Islam gained a +toehold in trade emporia from Aden to the Spice Islands, largely because +Islamic courts were perfectly suited to provide those ports with legal +infrastructure: the means of establishing contracts, recovering debts, +and creating a banking sector capable of redeeming or transferring +letters of credit. The resultant level of trust between merchants in the +great Malay entrepôt Malacca was legendary. The city had Swahili, Arab, +Egyptian, Ethiopian, and Armenian quarters, as well as quarters for +merchants from regions of India, China, and Southeast Asia. Yet it was +said that its merchants shunned enforceable contracts, preferring to +seal transactions with, as the saying went, “a handshake and a glance at +heaven.” + +Money Bags +---------- + +How many times have we been told that the advent of virtual money, the +dematerialization of cash into plastic and dollars into blips of +electronic information, has brought us into an unprecedented financial +world, completely uncharted territory? That very assumption made it easy +for Goldman Sachs, AIG, and their cohorts to convince people that any +effort to understand, much less regulate, their dazzling new financial +instruments was futile. But the moment one casts matters on a broad +historical scale, it becomes clear that there’s nothing fundamentally +new about the reign of virtual money, which would be recognizable to +ancient Mesopotamian bureaucrats and Islamic traders alike. + +The new global currency—the free-floating dollar—is rooted in military +power even more firmly than before. Debt peonage continues to be the +main principle of recruiting labor globally—either in the literal sense, +in much of East Asia and Latin America, or in the subjective sense, +whereby most of those working for wages or even salaries feel that they +are doing so primarily to pay off interest-bearing loans. New +transportation and communications technologies have made things + +easier for creditors: They can charge domestic laborers and factory +workers thousands of dollars to be transported to distant countries +where they are forced to work off their debt, lacking legal protections. +The overarching institutions that have been created to regulate these +activities—those whose cosmic scale echoes the divinely inspired +authority of kings of the ancient Middle East and the church of the +Middle Ages—do not protect debtors, but rather enforce the rights of +creditors. They all operate on the principle that one has to pay one’s + +debts (unless one is the United States Treasury), since the prospect of +default by any country is assumed to imperil the entire world monetary +system. Joseph Addison described that fear of collapse, which acts to +buttress the system, in his 1711 essay “Public Credit,” recounting a +nightmare in which Britain’s national wealth has disappeared. “There was +as great a change in the hill of money-bags, and the heaps of money, the +former shrinking, and falling into so many empty bags, that I now found +not above a tenth part of them had been filled with money,” he writes. + +> The rest that took up the same space, and made the same figure as the +> bags that were really filled with money, had been blown up with air, +> and called into my memory the bags full of wind, which Homer tells us +> his Hero received as a present from Æolus. The great heaps of gold on +> either side of the throne now appeared to be only heaps of paper, or +> little piles of notched sticks, bound up together in bundles, like +> Bath faggots. + +We need to understand what philosophers in the Middle Ages, from Italy +to India to China, already understood perfectly well: Money is not a +thing, and is certainly not a scarce resource. Money is a promise. And +it is a promise we keep to those we value and break to those we do not. +In Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, sovereign-debt default + +seems ever more likely. If it occurs, then what will happen? Certain +promises will be kept, and others will be broken. As we learn from +politicians every day, it is rarely possible to keep all promises +exactly as one has made them. Today, in the United Kingdom, many +politicians are saying, “I know I was elected on a solemn pledge not to +raise tuition fees, but now that I’m in power I realize that was +unrealistic. We will have to triple them.” What they in fact mean is, “I +have decided that promises made by this government to repay bankers, at +an agreed-upon interest rate, for money they fabricated, are more +important than promises made to my own constituents.” And if promises +made to legal abstractions are always to be given priority over promises +made to what we still occasionally, whether fondly or cynically, call +the people, we might well ask ourselves why our system of government is +still deemed democracy. + + diff --git a/saved_articles/track every penny you spend.txt b/saved_articles/track every penny you spend.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..d249e7e --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/track every penny you spend.txt @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +--- +title: Track Every Penny You Spend +date: 2009-01-11T14:26:08Z +source: http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2006/09/22/track-every-penny-you-spend/ +tags: economics, finance + +--- + +**I struggled with debt for years.** I couldn't get a handle on where my money went. I made a decent wage, but I was always broke! Where did I spend it all? Then I read [Your Money or Your Life][1] and heeded the book's advice to "keep track of every cent that comes into or goes out of your life". The results were startling. + +What does it mean to keep track of every penny you earn? [Your Money or Your Life][1] recommends that you keep a Daily Money Log. This log can take any form. + +* a pocket-sized memo book +* a 3×5 card (or the [hipster PDA][2]) +* an _actual_ PDA +* an appointment book +* a computer text file +* a checkbook register +* personal finance software +* a spreadsheet + +The most important thing is to _use_ the log. Every time you get money — whether it's from a paycheck or a garage sale or picking up change from the ground — write it down. Every time you spend money — whether it's paying bills or buying coffee or paying bus fare — write it down. **Keep track of every penny that enters or leaves your life.** + +Tracking your spending helps to demystify money — you begin to perceive it as a tool. You gain a sense of power — you no longer feel that money controls you, but that you control money. Your awareness of your money habits is sharpened, allowing you to make changes to improve your situation. This is an essential money skill, and it's _easy_. **Try this for two weeks and you'll find that it becomes second nature.** + +When you track your spending, it's important not to make judgments. This activity is meant to _describe_ your money habits, not to change them. (You do want to change them, of course, but that's a separate task.) + +Here are some things I've learned over the past few years of tracking my own spending: + +* **Be careful with transactions that are easy to forget.** Some transactions — cash transactions, online transactions, transactions without a receipt — are quickly forgotten. Take special steps to remember these, such as… +* **Get a receipt for _everything_.** It's easy to forget were you spent your money on just 24 hours later. Make a habit of putting all your receipts in one place so that you know where to find them. +* **It's best to process your transactions daily.** I find this hard to do. I process my transactions weekly. If I go longer than this, something invariably gums up the works: I can't remember a transaction, can't find a receipt, etc. +* **Make it a routine.** If you get in the habit of tracking your spending, it becomes second nature. +* As always, **do what works for you.** No one system is perfect for everybody. The important thing is to track your spending. How you do this is up to you. + +Here's what works for me: + +1. I try to get a receipt for every transaction. If one is unavailable, I jot a note to myself as soon as I can. +2. I tuck these receipts (and scribbled notes) into my wallet. My wallet essentially serves as my Daily Money Log. +3. At least once a week, I take my wad of receipts and enter the transactions into Quicken. + +**This process paints a picture of your spending habits as they actually exist**, not as you think they exist. You can use this information to create a budget. Or, at the very least, to serve as snapshot of where your money goes. Without this method, it's difficult to know exactly how much you really spend on [thneeds][3] or [zizzer-zoof seeds][4]. + +This article is about [Basics][5], [Hints and Tips][6] + +[1]: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140286780/ref=nosim/getrichslo-20/ +[2]: http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-the-hipster-pda/ +[3]: http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~cjermain/thneed.htm +[4]: http://www.getrichslowly.org/v +[5]: http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/category/basics/ "View all posts in Basics" +[6]: http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/category/hints-and-tips/ "View all posts in Hints and Tips" diff --git a/saved_articles/what being a handyman has taught me about male insecurity.txt b/saved_articles/what being a handyman has taught me about male insecurity.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..3992d74 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/what being a handyman has taught me about male insecurity.txt @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +--- +title: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity +date: 2013-03-29T11:17:49Z +source: http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/what-being-a-handyman-has-taught-me-about-male-insecurity/274426/ +tags: + +--- + +Some guys feel really bad about the fact that they don't know how to hang crown molding. + +![hinds_timtaylor_post2.jpg][1] + +ABC + +When I was five years old, my two sisters, my parents, and I lived in a canvas tent on the side of a mountain in Western Montana for a month and a half. During that time, and with the help of our extended family, we built most of the cabin that would become our family vacation home. One of my jobs, which I took to with great enthusiasm, was to pound every nail that held the plywood flooring to the log beams on the second story. We barely got the cabin roofed-in in time for my dad to report to his new Army post, and, as I like to say, 40 years later we're still putting the finishing touches on it. + +In the course of his career, [my dad was an infantry officer][2], a military attaché, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, and an arms-reduction negotiator. At home, he was a wrench. Dude could fix anything. + +Up until the time my parents were approaching retirement age, I can hardly recall a "professional" ever working on any of the houses they owned over the years. Dad built walls and sidewalks, installed woodstoves, laid tile, added electrical circuits and plumbing fixtures, fixed furnaces, and, at the cabin, ten years after it was first built, contrived an indoor plumbing system featuring an elaborate pump rig that sent the waste up the mountain to a septic tank. His only training in construction and mechanical work had been summer jobs on the railroad and growing up in a time and place where men didn't own things they couldn't fix. (My mom, a Montana farm kid, is no slouch with a hammer and saw, either.) + +When I graduated high school in the suburbs of D.C. and "took a few years off" before going to college, it was easy enough for me to find work on a construction site and start swinging my hammer with the big boys on day one. I had been my dad's apprentice for years, after all. Later, when my friends came home from college over the summer and wanted me to get them jobs on the site, I was shocked to discover that some males grew up never having learned how to build and fix things. I looked on in horror as my foreman taunted my friend who seemed to be driving a nail for the first time in his life: "Aw, c'mon, sister! Why don't you just hit it with your purse?" + +Since then, it's been 25 years that I've made part or all of my living as a carpenter and contractor, despite having earned a couple degrees along the way. I love the work, and, let's face it, the pay is much better than my "hobbies" (as my wife calls them) of teaching and writing. + +For the past ten years, I haven't worked with a crew, but rather, have been doing smallish remodeling, repair, and improvement jobs that allow me to arrange my schedule around teaching or, more recently, [taking care of my kids][3]. + +In interacting with my clients, who are, in general, not very handy around the house, I've been fascinated to observe the different strands of tension and awkwardness surrounding the process of ceding control of what was considered, not too long ago, to be the birthright and responsibility of a male homeowner. + +## Related Story + +[ ![][4]][5] + +When working with female clients, I've rarely noticed any signs of chagrin at having to pay someone to do manual labor. But the expectation that men should be able to perform the traditionally "masculine" work around the house still exists, to some extent, even if the social infrastructure doesn't; and sometimes the discomfort it causes is evident in conversations I have with men who hire me. Even if their own fathers were in the trades, my male clients, especially those who are younger than me, tend not to have worked alongside their dads, much less taken a shop class. They're more likely to have taken AP classes and played sports. + +But believe it or not, I'm the last one to judge another man for not being able to hang a door or install crown molding. If he can hold down a job that allows him to pay his mortgage and hire someone to fix his house, I'm duly impressed. + +[1]: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/hua_hsu/hinds_timtaylor_post2.jpg +[2]: http://www.betadadblog.com/2010/06/happy-patriarchy-day.html +[3]: http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/being-a-stay-at-home-dad-can-make-me-feel-like-a-petulant-10-year-old/266457/ +[4]: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/hua_hsu/ochs_chores2_moreon.jpg +[5]: http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/the-difference-between-a-happy-marriage-and-miserable-one-chores/273615/ diff --git a/saved_articles/what does geography have to do with personality.txt b/saved_articles/what does geography have to do with personality.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..02f33ca --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/what does geography have to do with personality.txt @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +--- +title: What does geography have to do with personality? +date: 2009-01-10T17:19:31Z +source: http://www.vagablogging.net/what-does-geography-have-to-do-with-personality.html +tags: society, culture, psychology, maps + +--- + +Whenever we make general observations about people from a specific state or country, we're a step away from stereotyping or, at worst, racism. But anyone who travels extensively tends to make their own generalizations about an area's personality, regardless of how inaccurate our own observations might be. + +[The Wall Street Journal recently featured a study][1] led by Peter Jason Rentfrow, a lecturer in the University of Cambridge in England. The study shows the different personality types prevalent in each state in the USA. The personality types evaluated in the study were extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. + +Although some results were somewhat expected based on common generalizations, there were some surprises. For example, West Virginia was the state that came out as most neurotic, and North Dakota was the most extroverted. + +Because it touches on personality types, the study could be easily used to reinforce negative stereotypes, but it all depends on perspective. Here's an excerpt from the article: + +> It's also a wake-up call for proud residents of the great state of wherever — some of whom aren't fond of the findings. Mr. Rentfrow said he's had to help some of them feel better. Yes, North Dakota and Wyoming rank quite low in openness to new ideas. But why label them narrow-minded and insular? Say, instead, he suggests, that they value tradition. New York may be neurotic, but he offers another way to put it: "It's a state in touch with its feelings." +_Source: ["The United States of Mind"][1] by Stephanie Simon, The Wall Street Journal_ + +The article also [features an interactive map][2] that allows readers to look at the results of the study a bit deeper. + +Do you think geography has an effect on one's personality? Does the research reflect or contradict any of your experiences when traveling in America? + +[1]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122211987961064719.html +[2]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122211987961064719.html#articleTabs_interactive diff --git a/saved_articles/why ad blocking is not a moral dilemma.txt b/saved_articles/why ad blocking is not a moral dilemma.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..378dfc5 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/why ad blocking is not a moral dilemma.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +--- +title: Why ad blocking is not a moral dilemma +date: 2012-02-07T14:42:14Z +source: http://www.less-broken.com/blog/2011/11/why-ad-blocking-is-not-moral-dilemma.html +tags: economy, morality + +--- + +# Why ad blocking is not a moral dilemma + +_(These are my own views.) _ + +A common meme doing the rounds these days is that blocking advertisements on sites that depend on it is immoral. I don't believe so mainly because fundamental issues like [user sovereignty and control][1] override anything else, but some take the more practical stance that it hurts site owners. I don't think this view is valid. Here's why. + + +* **Web advertising is a relationship among three entities.** It's not just the user and the site owner who are part of it, it's the advertiser too. +* **Using ad blockers means the user's not interested in advertising in the first place.** Clearly, if she were interested in viewing and clicking on ads, she wouldn't be using an ad blocker. Saying that she should _become_ interested in advertising is not a morally tenable position. +* **Loading ads without being interested in them hurts the advertiser.** Assuming a cost-per-impression model, what would benefit the advertiser more: a thousand impressions to people, all interested in advertising, or ten thousand impressions to people, only 10% interested in them? +* **A user not interested in advertising has to "hurt" either of the other two in the relationship. **Either the site owner is hurt because the user doesn't load advertisements, or the advertiser is hurt because the user loads advertising that she was never interested in in the first place. Deciding which one is hurt can't be left to either the owner or the advertiser because both have vested interests – so it has to be done by the user. I don't think there's a way to morally distinguish between the owner and the advertiser. +* **But what about visual impressions?** The argument here is the mere sight of advertising, without a click-through, builds up brand recognition and is therefore of value to the advertiser. However, using this as the basis for some sort of normative argument ("you should subject yourself to advertising so that advertisers can build brand recognition in you!") is basically advocating mind control, hence this isn't morally tenable either. +**Update:** Speak of the devil. A Blogger message just popped up asking if I'd like to add advertising to my blog. + +[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2udd765yVMc + diff --git a/saved_articles/why americans are turning against stuff.txt b/saved_articles/why americans are turning against stuff.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..878ec32 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/why americans are turning against stuff.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +--- +title: The Untouchable Economy: Why Americans Are Turning Against 'Stuff' +date: 2012-08-28T18:46:42Z +source: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/the-untouchable-economy-why-americans-are-turning-against-stuff/261652/ +tags: stuff + +--- + +_Young people are thinking entrepreneurially, viewing themselves as microbusinesses operating in a highly uncertain economic environment_ + +![615 woman picture iphone.jpg][1] + +Reuters + +[Millennials are shifting][2] from tangibles (cars and homes) to intangibles (education and access to data), but they are not alone. In today's data-driven economy, the business sector is moving along the same tangible-to-intangible path as the Millennials, perhaps at an even faster pace. Business spending on nonresidential structures, other than mining-related, is roughly 30% below the 2007 pre-recession highs, while investment in software is up almost 20% over the same period. + +In fact, Milliennials are responding to the same trends as businesses, and for much the same reasons. Members of the younger generation are being forced -- or encouraged -- to think entrepreneurially, to view themselves as microbusinesses operating in a highly uncertain economic environment. Why buy a home or car if there are lower-risk, lower-cost options? Why invest in physical capital if spending on human capital and data can have bigger payoffs? + +This shift changes corporate strategy and marketing aimed towards Millennials. If Millennials are operating like microbusinesses, then companies must reframe their appeal in terms of business values such as security, collaboration and competitiveness. So they will be open to companies that create products and services to help them protect themselves, find allies, or prosper economically. + +For example, Millennials have a right to worry about the financial risk associated with buying a home. After all, they've seen home prices collapse unexpectedly, leaving millions of people with immense debts. + +So to lure the younger generation back into the market, homebuilders need to broaden their definition of what they sell. Instead of just selling a physical product (the new home), homebuilders have to address the intangible core needs of security, collaboration, and competitiveness. One possibility: A sales contract that gives the buyer the right to sell back the house to the home builder at the original price for the first five years, minus an implicit cost of renting (obviously this simple version suffers from some moral hazard problems, but they can be fixed). + +Or take cars. If Millennials want to socialize, they compare the cost of driving with the much lower cost of digital contact. That means automobile makers have to attract buyers by reducing auto operating costs--namely, dramatically increasing fuel economy. What's more, cars have to be positioned as essential tools for maintaining effective contact with other people. + +As we further consider marketing to Millennials as microbusinesses, two interesting questions immediately arise. First, will they continue to consume data at ever-increasing rates? The answer would seem to be yes, if the cost of data keeps falling. We are already seeing people effectively starting to invest in their own personal databases, using cloud-based storage service such as Dropbox. + +More difficult to assess is the question of whether this microbusiness mindset will persist into the childbearing years. From Gary Becker onwards, economists have formulated the decisions about whether to form households, to have children, and how to raise them, in economic terms. Yet it was never clear that people actually made their family decisions that way. + +But Millennials may approach the decision about how many children to have, and how to educate them, with more of a business approach. Will this cause the number of children to rise or to fall? Children are a heavy investment, especially given the cost of college these days. Yet in a data-driven economy, they may be a valuable asset as well--which will open up whole new marketing opportunities. + +Of course, it's possible that as the economy improves, Millennials will retreat from their microbusiness mindset. But even so, companies that want to sell to Millennials will likely do better if they try to understand what young Americans need to prosper in the business sense. + +> + +[1]: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/615%20woman%20picture%20iphone.jpg +[2]: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/the-cheapest-generation/309060/?single_page=true diff --git a/saved_articles/you are being lied to about pirates.txt b/saved_articles/you are being lied to about pirates.txt new file mode 100755 index 0000000..19281b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/saved_articles/you are being lied to about pirates.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +title: Johann Hari: You are being lied to about pirates - Johann Hari - Commentators +date: 2009-01-19T17:12:02Z +source: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html +tags: sailing, politics, history + +--- + +Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage Bluebeard that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often saved from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains Of All Nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence. + +If you became a merchant or navy sailor then – plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry – you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked often, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages. + +Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century". + +They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal Navy." This is why they were romantic heroes, despite being unproductive thieves. + +The words of one pirate from that lost age, a young British man called William Scott, should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirateing to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas. + +Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. + +Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention." + +At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters." + +This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence". + +No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters – especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But in a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali: "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas." William Scott would understand. + +Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We won't act on those crimes – the only sane solution to this problem – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 per cent of the world's oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats. + +The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail – but who is the robber? + +[j.hari@independent.co.uk][1] + +[1]: mailto:j.hari%40independent.co.uk |