Last night I had the strangest dream, but it wasn't about a girl in a black bikini (sorry if you're too young to get that reference). One of my coworkers was going to be interviewed on public television by Yoko Ono. I won't mention who the interviewee was, but trust me, if there was a list of people who were likely to be interviewed by Yoko Ono, this woman would be near the bottom. So anyway, I was being driven to this event by our school psychologist, but we were going to be late because he had the sudden overwhelming need to find a grocery store so he could buy a bag of potato chips.
I won't go any further into it, because at that point it started to get a little weird.
It is an open question why people dream, but virtually everyone does. During the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep, there are parts of the mind that are as active as they are during wakefulness. This observation led brain scientists to call this stage "paradoxical sleep" -- paradoxical because while the body is usually very relaxed, the brain is firing like crazy.
Well, parts of it are. While the visual and auditory centers are lighting up like a Christmas tree, your prefrontal cortex is snoozing in a deck chair. The prefrontal cortex is your decision-making module and reality filter, and this at least partly explains why dreams seem so normal while you're in them but so bizarre when you wake up and your prefrontal cortex has a chance to reboot.
The content of dreams has been a subject of speculation for years, and all available evidence indicates that the little "Your Dreams Interpreted" books you can buy in the supermarket checkout lines are unadulterated horse waste. Apparently there is some thought that much of our dream content is involved with processing long-term memories; but equally plausible theories suggest that dreaming is a way of resetting our dopamine and serotonin receptors, or a way of decommissioning old neural pathways (so-called "parasitic nodes"). Probably, it aids in all three. Whatever it is, however, it's important -- all mammal species tested undergo REM sleep, some for as much as eight hours a night.
It's interesting that there is a fairly consistent set of content types in dreams, regardless of your culture or background. Some of the more common ones are dreams of falling, being chased, fighting, seeing someone who has died, having sexual experiences, being in a public place while inappropriately dressed, and being unable to attend interviews by Yoko Ono because of searching for potato chips.
A few well-documented but less common dreamlike experiences include lucid dreams (being aware that you're dreaming while it's happening), hypnogogic experiences (dreams in light sleep rather than REM), and night terrors (terrifying dreams during deep sleep). This last-mentioned is something that is found almost exclusively in children, and almost always ceases entirely by age twelve. My younger son had night terrors, and the first time it happened was truly one of the scariest things I've ever experienced. At 11:30 one night he started shrieking -- I jumped out of bed and ran down the hall like a fury, to find him sitting bolt upright in bed, trembling, eyes wide open, and drenched with sweat. I ran to him and said, "What's wrong?" He pointed to an empty corner of the room and said, "It's staring at me!"
I should mention at this point that I had just recently watched the movie The Sixth Sense.
When I finished peeing my pants, I was able to pull myself together enough to realize that he was having a night terror, and that there were in fact no spirits of dead people staring at him from the corner of his bedroom. When I got him calmed down, he went back into a deep sleep -- and the next morning remembered nothing at all.
I, on the other hand, required several months of therapy to recover completely.
Whatever purpose dreams and other associated phenomena serve, there is no evidence whatsoever that they are "supernatural" in any sense. Precognitive dreams, for instance, most likely occur because you dream every night, about a relatively restricted number of types of events, and just by the law of large numbers at some point you'll probably dream something that will end up resembling a future event. There is no mystical significance to the content of our dreams -- it is formed of our own thoughts and memories, both pleasant and unpleasant; our fears and wishes, our emotions and knowledge; so they are at their base a reflection of the bits and pieces of who we are. It's no wonder that they are funny, scary, weird, complex, erotic, disturbing, exhilarating, and perplexing, because we are all of those things.
So, next time you're in the midst of a crazy dream, you can be comforted by the fact that you are having an experience that is shared by all of humanity, and most other mammals as well. What you're dreaming is no more significant, but also no more peculiar, than what the rest of us are dreaming. Just sit back and enjoy the show. And give my regards to Yoko Ono.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Sending pucks to Bolivia
In yesterday's post, I made the claim that men don't necessarily always think only about sports or sex, that sometimes we think about other things, such as quantum mechanics. This caused a couple of my female readers to snort with derision, and remark that they've never seen evidence of any such thing. Just to prove that my statement was true, today's subject is: quantum mechanics.
Actually, I've been thinking about quantum mechanics a good bit lately, as I've been re-reading Brian Greene's awesome and mind-blowing book The Fabric of the Cosmos, surely one of the most lucid, readable books ever to be written on the subject of how completely freakin' weird the universe is. No offense to Stephen Hawking, but it beats A Brief History of Time by about a megaparsec. Even the illustrated version.
I think the thing that strikes me the most, every time I think about such things, is that our perception of the objects in our lives as ordinary misses how strange even everyday objects actually are. I have no claims to be an expert -- despite the "B. S. Physics" on my diploma, I was a lackluster physics student at best, and most of what I understand about such things has come in the last fifteen years when I really started reading up on the subject -- but what I do understand about it rocks my world.
Here are a few bits of physics weirdness, just to turn your Sunday morning inside-out. Please keep in mind as you read this that all of this isn't speculation -- it's hard science, experimentally verified over and over.
1) You never see the present. Everything you've ever seen is in the past. Even these words you're reading right now. You are seeing your computer screen as it was about a billionth of a second ago, when the light left the screen. The further away something is, the further back in time you're looking. You see the moon as it was three seconds ago; the sun as it was nine minutes ago; and the closest star (Alpha Centauri) as it was 4.3 years ago. If Alpha Centauri vanished at 8:00 this morning, you would have no way of knowing it for another 4.3 years.
2) What the word "now" means isn't the same for everyone. Einstein did away with that notion. Not only does relativity predict that individuals traveling relative to each other experience differences in the rate at which time passes, they don't even agree on whether two events were simultaneous or not. So if I snap my fingers, and at that moment Steve and Joe were the same distance away from me but Steve was moving toward me and Joe was moving away from me, by Steve's clock the snap would have occurred earlier than it would by my clock, and by Joe's clock it would have happened later... and we'd all be correct. Further, if (by my perspective) Steve and Joe both snapped their fingers simultaneously, neither Steve nor Joe would think those two events were simultaneous at all -- both Steve and Joe would perceive his own snap as coming first! Three different measurements of the same events -- and once again, all three perceptions would be 100% correct.
3) Particles aren't hard little billiard balls. Remember the protons, neutrons, and electrons your chemistry teacher drew on the board, looking like little dots? Forget that. They don't exist. Or at least, that's not the most fundamental reality. Electrons aren't particles, they're fields of probabilities -- a smear of likelihoods that the electron is in one place or the other. It's convenient to say that "an electron is here" -- but what this really means is that "here" is the location where the probability field has its highest value. Now, don't misunderstand this; physicists aren't using "probability" to mean "it's definitely either here or there, and we just happen not to know," in the same sense that I could say that the probability of rolling a four on a fair die is 1/6, and that (even if I can't see the outcome) it either is or isn't a four. No, it's weirder than that: the electron is the probability field. If I use a detector, I can pinpoint its location for a moment, but before that moment and after it, the electron really is a spread-out haze of probabilities. The experimental confirmation of this idea, revolving around the mind-boggling principle called Bell's Inequality (after the brilliant Irish physicist John Bell), showed that until it hits a detector, an electron flying from a source takes all possible paths to get there. It's as if when Joe Nieuwendyk winds up for a slapshot, the puck travels between his stick and the net by all possible trajectories at the same time, including pathways that went from stick to net via Bolivia, Mars, and the Andromeda Galaxy. What we see -- that the puck goes straight from stick to net -- is just the average of all of the possible pathways!
(Drat, I slipped back into talking about sports, didn't I? And I was doing so well, up until that point.)
Again, recall that this is not just some metaphorical way of talking about things; this is the reality of the universe, experimentally confirmed every which way from Sunday. Even our conventional perception of objects as solid is an illusion -- most of matter is empty space, and the feeling of solidity when you give a passionate kiss to your significant other is just because you're feeling the mutual repulsion between the electrons in your lips and the electrons in your sweetheart's. Your lips never really touch, as peculiar as that sounds.
(Admit it: after I slipped up with sports, you knew I'd have to work in sex, as well.)
I wish I knew more about this subject (quantum mechanics, not sex). I find it fascinating that our simplistic understanding through classical physics can be simultaneously so useful and so wildly incomplete. I, for one, enjoy having my mind blown occasionally, to see that the world is amazing and beautiful and bizarre. Or, as J. B. S. Haldane once said, "The universe is not only queerer than we imagine; it is queerer than we can imagine."
Actually, I've been thinking about quantum mechanics a good bit lately, as I've been re-reading Brian Greene's awesome and mind-blowing book The Fabric of the Cosmos, surely one of the most lucid, readable books ever to be written on the subject of how completely freakin' weird the universe is. No offense to Stephen Hawking, but it beats A Brief History of Time by about a megaparsec. Even the illustrated version.
I think the thing that strikes me the most, every time I think about such things, is that our perception of the objects in our lives as ordinary misses how strange even everyday objects actually are. I have no claims to be an expert -- despite the "B. S. Physics" on my diploma, I was a lackluster physics student at best, and most of what I understand about such things has come in the last fifteen years when I really started reading up on the subject -- but what I do understand about it rocks my world.
Here are a few bits of physics weirdness, just to turn your Sunday morning inside-out. Please keep in mind as you read this that all of this isn't speculation -- it's hard science, experimentally verified over and over.
1) You never see the present. Everything you've ever seen is in the past. Even these words you're reading right now. You are seeing your computer screen as it was about a billionth of a second ago, when the light left the screen. The further away something is, the further back in time you're looking. You see the moon as it was three seconds ago; the sun as it was nine minutes ago; and the closest star (Alpha Centauri) as it was 4.3 years ago. If Alpha Centauri vanished at 8:00 this morning, you would have no way of knowing it for another 4.3 years.
2) What the word "now" means isn't the same for everyone. Einstein did away with that notion. Not only does relativity predict that individuals traveling relative to each other experience differences in the rate at which time passes, they don't even agree on whether two events were simultaneous or not. So if I snap my fingers, and at that moment Steve and Joe were the same distance away from me but Steve was moving toward me and Joe was moving away from me, by Steve's clock the snap would have occurred earlier than it would by my clock, and by Joe's clock it would have happened later... and we'd all be correct. Further, if (by my perspective) Steve and Joe both snapped their fingers simultaneously, neither Steve nor Joe would think those two events were simultaneous at all -- both Steve and Joe would perceive his own snap as coming first! Three different measurements of the same events -- and once again, all three perceptions would be 100% correct.
3) Particles aren't hard little billiard balls. Remember the protons, neutrons, and electrons your chemistry teacher drew on the board, looking like little dots? Forget that. They don't exist. Or at least, that's not the most fundamental reality. Electrons aren't particles, they're fields of probabilities -- a smear of likelihoods that the electron is in one place or the other. It's convenient to say that "an electron is here" -- but what this really means is that "here" is the location where the probability field has its highest value. Now, don't misunderstand this; physicists aren't using "probability" to mean "it's definitely either here or there, and we just happen not to know," in the same sense that I could say that the probability of rolling a four on a fair die is 1/6, and that (even if I can't see the outcome) it either is or isn't a four. No, it's weirder than that: the electron is the probability field. If I use a detector, I can pinpoint its location for a moment, but before that moment and after it, the electron really is a spread-out haze of probabilities. The experimental confirmation of this idea, revolving around the mind-boggling principle called Bell's Inequality (after the brilliant Irish physicist John Bell), showed that until it hits a detector, an electron flying from a source takes all possible paths to get there. It's as if when Joe Nieuwendyk winds up for a slapshot, the puck travels between his stick and the net by all possible trajectories at the same time, including pathways that went from stick to net via Bolivia, Mars, and the Andromeda Galaxy. What we see -- that the puck goes straight from stick to net -- is just the average of all of the possible pathways!
(Drat, I slipped back into talking about sports, didn't I? And I was doing so well, up until that point.)
Again, recall that this is not just some metaphorical way of talking about things; this is the reality of the universe, experimentally confirmed every which way from Sunday. Even our conventional perception of objects as solid is an illusion -- most of matter is empty space, and the feeling of solidity when you give a passionate kiss to your significant other is just because you're feeling the mutual repulsion between the electrons in your lips and the electrons in your sweetheart's. Your lips never really touch, as peculiar as that sounds.
(Admit it: after I slipped up with sports, you knew I'd have to work in sex, as well.)
I wish I knew more about this subject (quantum mechanics, not sex). I find it fascinating that our simplistic understanding through classical physics can be simultaneously so useful and so wildly incomplete. I, for one, enjoy having my mind blown occasionally, to see that the world is amazing and beautiful and bizarre. Or, as J. B. S. Haldane once said, "The universe is not only queerer than we imagine; it is queerer than we can imagine."
Friday, March 4, 2011
The UFO files
Yesterday, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced that it has declassified and released 8,500 pages of reports on UFO sightings in the United Kingdom.
As usual, it's a mixed bag. There are a few there I'd like an explanation for, most notably the "zigzagging lights" seen by more than one person in 2003, over Bromley, Kent. They were seen by a number of people, including a helicopter pilot - but they didn't show up on radar, and were never satisfactorily accounted for.
The released documents also contain the reports which led to a discussion in the House of Lords in January 1979 regarding whether aliens had visited the Earth -- the only such discussion, I believe, that has ever taken place in the governing body of a country. The subject was introduced by the amusingly-named Brinsley LePoer Trench, Lord Clancarty, who was a prominent UFOlogist and a general crank. Clancarty was a champion of the Hollow Earth Theory -- that there were highly advanced civilizations living inside the Earth, which is hollow (as you'd undoubtedly already gathered from the name of the theory), and those civilizations are able to exit through holes at both poles. Clancarty himself claimed to be descended from aliens, and was able to trace his lineage back to 63,000 BC. So you can imagine that with such impressive credentials, when Clancarty demanded that the House of Lords examine the evidence and come to an official answer as to whether aliens had visited Earth, they complied. (The answer the House of Lords came to was, "No.")
Also in the files are descriptions of the 1967 incident in which six small flying saucers were discovered in locations along a straight line in southern England, prompting a response by the RAF, firefighters, bomb disposal units, various local constabularies, and the British Intelligence Agency. They turned out to be the results of a project by engineering students at Farnborough Technical College.
Then, there's the guy who got up in the middle of the night for a glass of milk, and was terrified to see a huge, cigar-shaped UFO whose engines rattled the house. Afterwards, he reported that he had "gained a whole hour" and suspected that the aliens had beamed him up and made his biological clock, and his actual watch, lose track of the correct time.
MoD officials informed the man that because it was October, Britain had gone off Daylight Savings Time that evening, so everyone in Britain had experienced the same time discontinuity.
There are also drawings. My favorite is this one:
It shows how the updraft from a UFO could create crop circles, thus giving us information on two different phenomena at the same time. My first thought on seeing this photo was, "Why would aliens from another world have images of Kenny from South Park painted on the side of their spacecraft?" But maybe that's not what those are. Maybe they're supposed to be the aliens themselves, arms wide open in a gesture of welcome. Or maybe the aliens have hung their yellow rain slickers out to dry. I don't know.
In any case, if you're curious, the MoD is putting the documents online, available for the public, on a website (here). I encourage you to peruse them. I know I will.
As usual, it's a mixed bag. There are a few there I'd like an explanation for, most notably the "zigzagging lights" seen by more than one person in 2003, over Bromley, Kent. They were seen by a number of people, including a helicopter pilot - but they didn't show up on radar, and were never satisfactorily accounted for.
The released documents also contain the reports which led to a discussion in the House of Lords in January 1979 regarding whether aliens had visited the Earth -- the only such discussion, I believe, that has ever taken place in the governing body of a country. The subject was introduced by the amusingly-named Brinsley LePoer Trench, Lord Clancarty, who was a prominent UFOlogist and a general crank. Clancarty was a champion of the Hollow Earth Theory -- that there were highly advanced civilizations living inside the Earth, which is hollow (as you'd undoubtedly already gathered from the name of the theory), and those civilizations are able to exit through holes at both poles. Clancarty himself claimed to be descended from aliens, and was able to trace his lineage back to 63,000 BC. So you can imagine that with such impressive credentials, when Clancarty demanded that the House of Lords examine the evidence and come to an official answer as to whether aliens had visited Earth, they complied. (The answer the House of Lords came to was, "No.")
Also in the files are descriptions of the 1967 incident in which six small flying saucers were discovered in locations along a straight line in southern England, prompting a response by the RAF, firefighters, bomb disposal units, various local constabularies, and the British Intelligence Agency. They turned out to be the results of a project by engineering students at Farnborough Technical College.
Then, there's the guy who got up in the middle of the night for a glass of milk, and was terrified to see a huge, cigar-shaped UFO whose engines rattled the house. Afterwards, he reported that he had "gained a whole hour" and suspected that the aliens had beamed him up and made his biological clock, and his actual watch, lose track of the correct time.
MoD officials informed the man that because it was October, Britain had gone off Daylight Savings Time that evening, so everyone in Britain had experienced the same time discontinuity.
There are also drawings. My favorite is this one:
It shows how the updraft from a UFO could create crop circles, thus giving us information on two different phenomena at the same time. My first thought on seeing this photo was, "Why would aliens from another world have images of Kenny from South Park painted on the side of their spacecraft?" But maybe that's not what those are. Maybe they're supposed to be the aliens themselves, arms wide open in a gesture of welcome. Or maybe the aliens have hung their yellow rain slickers out to dry. I don't know.
In any case, if you're curious, the MoD is putting the documents online, available for the public, on a website (here). I encourage you to peruse them. I know I will.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Rapture watch
I just took a look at the Rapture Index site (here) to find out how long it's going to be until the Rapture, the moment predicted in the Book of Revelation at which all of the righteous are bodily assumed up into heaven, and all of us godless heathens will be left behind to throw big parties and to finally be able to teach evolution in the schools without fear of harassment and/or death threats, or, by some accounts, to be submitted to agonizing tortures by the Antichrist, the Beast, Satan, and other Cosmic Bad Guys.
Of course, the Rapture Index site itself has a disclaimer that it's not trying to predict the Rapture. That's god's provenance, after all. Matthew 24:36 says, "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." Which is a pretty clear and unambiguous statement, unlike most of the apocalyptic prophecies in the bible. In any case, the Rapture Index takes world news and attempts to distill it down to events which might have some place amongst the predictions in Revelation, and assigns a number to how serious those events are. The Rapture Index is the sum of all of the individual numbers, and the higher it is, the closer to the End Times we're supposed to be. (Anything over 160 is interpreted as "Fasten your seatbelts." I didn't just make that up, it's right from the site.)
Currently, we're at 177.
We got bumped up a couple of notches by the recent earthquakes and the unrest in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. A few of the individual indexes are understandable, based even on my admittedly slim knowledge of biblical prophecy -- the focus on happenings in the Middle East, any stories about anti-Christian stuff, and so on. A few of them are peculiar, however, and one has to wonder how they're measured. How, for example, do you measure "The Mark of the Beast" (index #32)? Many of the indexes are annotated, but that one isn't, and it's hard to fathom why they assigned that one a 3. Did they go around looking for people with the number 666 tattooed on their foreheads, or something? "Beast Government" (index #33) at least has an annotation, but it isn't especially enlightening; it's also given a 3, and they state, "Europe is facing its worst economic crisis." Which, I suppose, is rather beastly, but I don't think that's how they meant it. I know that a lot of the Beast Stuff has to do with one-world government and so on, so maybe they figure that the European Union is a sign of the End Times.
Most of it seems to be random numbers assigned to things that are hardly, um, revelations to most of us. "Crime Rate" (index #17) is given a rating of 4, because "Violent crime dominates the news," but when doesn't it? It's not like that's a big change, or anything. Also from the Teachings of St. Obvious of Duh comes index #30, "The Peace Process," in which we are told that "The Israelis and the Palestinians are not talking to each other." They even rank "Date Settings" (index #35) at 3 because "There is a huge increase in the number of books focused on 2012 AD." So we now have the Mayan nonsense mixing in with the fundamentalist nonsense to create a whole new, synthetic brand of nonsense.
Another peculiar one is "Civil Rights" (index #39), which is given a 4. There's no annotation, so we're left wondering if civil rights are a good thing or a bad thing, Rapture-wise. I think that would be worth knowing, don't you? How else would we know if it's okay to discriminate or be racist or bigoted?
Although 177 is quite high, you may be interested to know that it's not the highest the Rapture Index has ever been. It reached a record high of 182 on the 24th of September, 2001, right after 9-11, the day that then-President Bush froze the assets of hundreds of suspected terrorists and took the first steps toward the invasion of Afghanistan. Despite that, the Righteous are still with us. So I guess Matthew 24:36 was right, they really don't knoweth the hour.
Sitting where I am, it's kind of hard to worry much about this. What with all of the social unrest, economic problems, and climate chaos, we have enough things to keep us up at night already. (Although we're told, under "Climate," index #43, that "Record cold temperatures have put the freeze on the global warming hype.") So my philosophy is a little like the one on the bumper sticker, have you seen it? A few years ago, fundamentalist-types started putting bumper stickers on their cars that said, "Come the Rapture, this car will be empty." Which triggered a response -- bumper stickers that said, "Come the Rapture, can I have your car?"
Of course, the Rapture Index site itself has a disclaimer that it's not trying to predict the Rapture. That's god's provenance, after all. Matthew 24:36 says, "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." Which is a pretty clear and unambiguous statement, unlike most of the apocalyptic prophecies in the bible. In any case, the Rapture Index takes world news and attempts to distill it down to events which might have some place amongst the predictions in Revelation, and assigns a number to how serious those events are. The Rapture Index is the sum of all of the individual numbers, and the higher it is, the closer to the End Times we're supposed to be. (Anything over 160 is interpreted as "Fasten your seatbelts." I didn't just make that up, it's right from the site.)
Currently, we're at 177.
We got bumped up a couple of notches by the recent earthquakes and the unrest in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. A few of the individual indexes are understandable, based even on my admittedly slim knowledge of biblical prophecy -- the focus on happenings in the Middle East, any stories about anti-Christian stuff, and so on. A few of them are peculiar, however, and one has to wonder how they're measured. How, for example, do you measure "The Mark of the Beast" (index #32)? Many of the indexes are annotated, but that one isn't, and it's hard to fathom why they assigned that one a 3. Did they go around looking for people with the number 666 tattooed on their foreheads, or something? "Beast Government" (index #33) at least has an annotation, but it isn't especially enlightening; it's also given a 3, and they state, "Europe is facing its worst economic crisis." Which, I suppose, is rather beastly, but I don't think that's how they meant it. I know that a lot of the Beast Stuff has to do with one-world government and so on, so maybe they figure that the European Union is a sign of the End Times.
Most of it seems to be random numbers assigned to things that are hardly, um, revelations to most of us. "Crime Rate" (index #17) is given a rating of 4, because "Violent crime dominates the news," but when doesn't it? It's not like that's a big change, or anything. Also from the Teachings of St. Obvious of Duh comes index #30, "The Peace Process," in which we are told that "The Israelis and the Palestinians are not talking to each other." They even rank "Date Settings" (index #35) at 3 because "There is a huge increase in the number of books focused on 2012 AD." So we now have the Mayan nonsense mixing in with the fundamentalist nonsense to create a whole new, synthetic brand of nonsense.
Another peculiar one is "Civil Rights" (index #39), which is given a 4. There's no annotation, so we're left wondering if civil rights are a good thing or a bad thing, Rapture-wise. I think that would be worth knowing, don't you? How else would we know if it's okay to discriminate or be racist or bigoted?
Although 177 is quite high, you may be interested to know that it's not the highest the Rapture Index has ever been. It reached a record high of 182 on the 24th of September, 2001, right after 9-11, the day that then-President Bush froze the assets of hundreds of suspected terrorists and took the first steps toward the invasion of Afghanistan. Despite that, the Righteous are still with us. So I guess Matthew 24:36 was right, they really don't knoweth the hour.
Sitting where I am, it's kind of hard to worry much about this. What with all of the social unrest, economic problems, and climate chaos, we have enough things to keep us up at night already. (Although we're told, under "Climate," index #43, that "Record cold temperatures have put the freeze on the global warming hype.") So my philosophy is a little like the one on the bumper sticker, have you seen it? A few years ago, fundamentalist-types started putting bumper stickers on their cars that said, "Come the Rapture, this car will be empty." Which triggered a response -- bumper stickers that said, "Come the Rapture, can I have your car?"
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Shwe-et transvestite
Next in our series of "Public Officials Who Seemingly Don't Mind Acting Like Loons," the news comes in that General Than Shwe of Myanmar has been appearing at official functions dressed in women's clothes.
Shwe, who is the leader of the military junta that runs Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, was shown on a nationally-televised film of a ceremony, dressed in a sarong. So were a few of his other generals. This last bit doesn't surprise me. Than Shwe is not someone to trifle with. He is only slightly less of a homicidal maniac than the Roman emperor Caligula, who had his horse elected to the Senate and who once burst out laughing at a dinner, stating that it had just occurred to him that he could have all of the dinner guests killed and no one could do anything about it. Than Shwe is one of those people who, if they tell you that it's now the fashion to walk around wearing nothing but glow-in-the-dark body paint, you should respond by asking him, "Which color paint do you think would be most flattering to my eyes, sir?"
But as for Shwe himself, it's a little peculiar. Note that I have nothing intrinsically against dressing like a woman, if that's what floats your boat. Me, I'm perfectly happy with a shirt and trousers, but if you're a male and prefer a skirt and blouse, knock yourself out. Shwe, on the other hand, is known to place a high value on masculinity and virility. The fact that he has appeared in public in female clothing is certainly pretty weird.
The story, however, gets weirder.
In Myanmar, many people, including the leaders and the well-educated, are highly superstitious. There is a widespread belief in yadaya, which is their version of astrology and fortunetelling. A former leader, General Ne Win, once shot his own reflection in a mirror because he thought it would foil an assassination attempt. (As he died in 2002 of natural causes in the age of 91, I think we have a complete vindication of the validity of yadaya, don't you?) There is now a rumor going around that Than Shwe hasn't suddenly gotten in touch with his feminine side -- many think he's practicing yadaya.
Evidently, several years ago an astrologer predicted that one day, a woman would rule Myanmar. Most think the astrologer was referring to Aung San Suu Kyi, who was only recently released after 21 years of being under house arrest. Suu Kyi, who is an outspoken advocate of democracy and whose activities won her the Nobel Peace Prize, is Than Shwe's worst nightmare. His hatred of her is universally known, and the international pressure to release her cast his regime in the worst possible light. So the last thing Than Shwe and his cronies want is everyone going around believing that an astrological prediction is going to ultimately bring down his government, and put Suu Kyi in his place.
A lot of Burmese think that Than Shwe's donning of fabulous fashion isn't because he's a closet transvestite -- it's because he thinks that by dressing like a woman, he'll foil the prophecy and stay in power. So he's not simply a loon; his actions have their own strange, byzantine logic.
It's always a little risky to make fun of strange beliefs in other countries. Americans so often come across as boors, going elsewhere in the world and demanding to have properly cooked hamburgers and beer that's served cold and cars that drive on the right side of the road. (And that's just when we've gone to England.) So it's all too easy to come across sounding like the American way of doing things, and American beliefs and customs, are the only right way.
But here, I hope I can state "Than Shwe is a superstitious nutjob" and not fear contradiction, nor accusations of racism or Americo-centrism. And as Aung San Suu Kyi is one of my heroes, I can't help but hope that some day very soon, he will find out that it takes more than wearing women's clothes to stop rationality and virtue from winning in the end.
Shwe, who is the leader of the military junta that runs Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, was shown on a nationally-televised film of a ceremony, dressed in a sarong. So were a few of his other generals. This last bit doesn't surprise me. Than Shwe is not someone to trifle with. He is only slightly less of a homicidal maniac than the Roman emperor Caligula, who had his horse elected to the Senate and who once burst out laughing at a dinner, stating that it had just occurred to him that he could have all of the dinner guests killed and no one could do anything about it. Than Shwe is one of those people who, if they tell you that it's now the fashion to walk around wearing nothing but glow-in-the-dark body paint, you should respond by asking him, "Which color paint do you think would be most flattering to my eyes, sir?"
But as for Shwe himself, it's a little peculiar. Note that I have nothing intrinsically against dressing like a woman, if that's what floats your boat. Me, I'm perfectly happy with a shirt and trousers, but if you're a male and prefer a skirt and blouse, knock yourself out. Shwe, on the other hand, is known to place a high value on masculinity and virility. The fact that he has appeared in public in female clothing is certainly pretty weird.
The story, however, gets weirder.
In Myanmar, many people, including the leaders and the well-educated, are highly superstitious. There is a widespread belief in yadaya, which is their version of astrology and fortunetelling. A former leader, General Ne Win, once shot his own reflection in a mirror because he thought it would foil an assassination attempt. (As he died in 2002 of natural causes in the age of 91, I think we have a complete vindication of the validity of yadaya, don't you?) There is now a rumor going around that Than Shwe hasn't suddenly gotten in touch with his feminine side -- many think he's practicing yadaya.
Evidently, several years ago an astrologer predicted that one day, a woman would rule Myanmar. Most think the astrologer was referring to Aung San Suu Kyi, who was only recently released after 21 years of being under house arrest. Suu Kyi, who is an outspoken advocate of democracy and whose activities won her the Nobel Peace Prize, is Than Shwe's worst nightmare. His hatred of her is universally known, and the international pressure to release her cast his regime in the worst possible light. So the last thing Than Shwe and his cronies want is everyone going around believing that an astrological prediction is going to ultimately bring down his government, and put Suu Kyi in his place.
A lot of Burmese think that Than Shwe's donning of fabulous fashion isn't because he's a closet transvestite -- it's because he thinks that by dressing like a woman, he'll foil the prophecy and stay in power. So he's not simply a loon; his actions have their own strange, byzantine logic.
It's always a little risky to make fun of strange beliefs in other countries. Americans so often come across as boors, going elsewhere in the world and demanding to have properly cooked hamburgers and beer that's served cold and cars that drive on the right side of the road. (And that's just when we've gone to England.) So it's all too easy to come across sounding like the American way of doing things, and American beliefs and customs, are the only right way.
But here, I hope I can state "Than Shwe is a superstitious nutjob" and not fear contradiction, nor accusations of racism or Americo-centrism. And as Aung San Suu Kyi is one of my heroes, I can't help but hope that some day very soon, he will find out that it takes more than wearing women's clothes to stop rationality and virtue from winning in the end.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
O Canada!
When you think of countries where public figures give evidence of belief in wacky ideas, Canada is not the first place that comes to mind. No one was particularly surprised when Nicolas Sarkozy flipped his beret when someone made a voodoo doll in his likeness; and given the level of woo-woo in the United States, Nancy Reagan's regular consultations with psychics and astrologers hardly raised an eyebrow. Even when the wife of the Japanese prime minister claimed to have taken trips in a spaceship to Venus ("It was a green and pleasant place," she said), it elicited more amusement than incredulity.
But Canada? The home of hockey, lumberjacks, over a million moose, and not very much else? The country that brags about having 50% of the world's supply of tar? The country whose capital city, Ottawa, has listed as one of its major historical events the "Great 1929 Ottawa Sewer Explosion?"
Yes, Canada. The Honorable Paul Hellyer, former deputy prime minister and the longest-serving member on the Queen's Privy Council, has come out with a serious accusation: that aliens regularly visit the earth, and that an American "shadow government" is (1) covering it up, and (2) is in cahoots with the aliens, offering to allow the aliens to take over parts of the world in exchange for extraterrestrial technology.
I'm fairly agog at this claim, for a variety of reasons, only one of which is surprise that it comes from a Canadian official. My first question for him would be, "Have you been doing sit-ups underneath parked cars, or what?" My second, of course, would be to ask for his evidence.
Hellyer's reason for his beliefs is that apparently he and his wife saw a UFO. He was spending Thanksgiving with some friends north of Toronto, when one evening they spotted a strange object.
"The two of us stood there transfixed for twenty minutes, looking up at this thing moving first in one direction, and then another," he stated. "By process of elimination, we determined it wasn't a star or satellite and it wasn't the space station, so there was really no explanation for it other than it was, in fact, a UFO."
All right so far; the "U" in "UFO" stands for "unidentified," after all. But then he grabs his observation, and runs off the edge of a cliff with it:
"It looked like a star, but it maneuvered in a way that stars don't. I must admit that when I saw this one, I wondered whether it was extraterrestrial or American. And I guess the thought that occurred to me was that if it is American, then they have learned some pretty big secrets about acceleration, because it accelerated at a pace that nothing I've ever known about that was built here is capable of."
I particularly liked two things about this statement: (1) The phrase, "... it maneuvered in a way that stars don't." In my experience, stars don't maneuver at all. This is a little like saying, "Usain Bolt runs in a way that supermarkets don't." (2) That if what he was seeing wasn't a star, satellite, or the space station, there were only two choices left; an alien spaceship or something American. I suppose we should be flattered, down here in the States, that he ranks our abilities up there with the Vulcans and Klingons, but honestly, I think we have to admit some other possibilities are more likely.
He goes on to ask that world leaders fully disclose their knowledge about aliens. That world leaders already have such knowledge is taken for granted. "That is my belief. I do not have proof of that, but I believe that they have developed energy sources, and publicly I'm saying that if they do not exist in commercial form, that extraterrestrials would certainly give us that information if we would ask them for it and stop shooting at them."
So there we have it. He sees a light in the sky after one too many bottles of Moosehead on Thanksgiving, and decides that this means that highly advanced aliens have reached earth, contacted the American government, and begun to trade technology for secret plans for collaboration during a global takeover.
"Basically, I'm a full-disclosure person," Hellyer states. "People keep talking about transparency and still not telling the truth, and this applies in various other areas as well as UFOs, and it's just about time that we started getting open with each other and trying to get along and live together."
Which, I have to admit, are words to live by. Even without the UFOs.
But Canada? The home of hockey, lumberjacks, over a million moose, and not very much else? The country that brags about having 50% of the world's supply of tar? The country whose capital city, Ottawa, has listed as one of its major historical events the "Great 1929 Ottawa Sewer Explosion?"
Yes, Canada. The Honorable Paul Hellyer, former deputy prime minister and the longest-serving member on the Queen's Privy Council, has come out with a serious accusation: that aliens regularly visit the earth, and that an American "shadow government" is (1) covering it up, and (2) is in cahoots with the aliens, offering to allow the aliens to take over parts of the world in exchange for extraterrestrial technology.
I'm fairly agog at this claim, for a variety of reasons, only one of which is surprise that it comes from a Canadian official. My first question for him would be, "Have you been doing sit-ups underneath parked cars, or what?" My second, of course, would be to ask for his evidence.
Hellyer's reason for his beliefs is that apparently he and his wife saw a UFO. He was spending Thanksgiving with some friends north of Toronto, when one evening they spotted a strange object.
"The two of us stood there transfixed for twenty minutes, looking up at this thing moving first in one direction, and then another," he stated. "By process of elimination, we determined it wasn't a star or satellite and it wasn't the space station, so there was really no explanation for it other than it was, in fact, a UFO."
All right so far; the "U" in "UFO" stands for "unidentified," after all. But then he grabs his observation, and runs off the edge of a cliff with it:
"It looked like a star, but it maneuvered in a way that stars don't. I must admit that when I saw this one, I wondered whether it was extraterrestrial or American. And I guess the thought that occurred to me was that if it is American, then they have learned some pretty big secrets about acceleration, because it accelerated at a pace that nothing I've ever known about that was built here is capable of."
I particularly liked two things about this statement: (1) The phrase, "... it maneuvered in a way that stars don't." In my experience, stars don't maneuver at all. This is a little like saying, "Usain Bolt runs in a way that supermarkets don't." (2) That if what he was seeing wasn't a star, satellite, or the space station, there were only two choices left; an alien spaceship or something American. I suppose we should be flattered, down here in the States, that he ranks our abilities up there with the Vulcans and Klingons, but honestly, I think we have to admit some other possibilities are more likely.
He goes on to ask that world leaders fully disclose their knowledge about aliens. That world leaders already have such knowledge is taken for granted. "That is my belief. I do not have proof of that, but I believe that they have developed energy sources, and publicly I'm saying that if they do not exist in commercial form, that extraterrestrials would certainly give us that information if we would ask them for it and stop shooting at them."
So there we have it. He sees a light in the sky after one too many bottles of Moosehead on Thanksgiving, and decides that this means that highly advanced aliens have reached earth, contacted the American government, and begun to trade technology for secret plans for collaboration during a global takeover.
"Basically, I'm a full-disclosure person," Hellyer states. "People keep talking about transparency and still not telling the truth, and this applies in various other areas as well as UFOs, and it's just about time that we started getting open with each other and trying to get along and live together."
Which, I have to admit, are words to live by. Even without the UFOs.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Traveler's guilt
Last night, Carol and I were discussing our vacation over dinner, and the subject of poverty came up.
Trinidad & Tobago is not a wealthy country. The median yearly salary for men is $12,000; for women in comparable jobs, it is only $5,500, an amount and an inequity that still astounds me. We saw many signs of poverty there -- from the tin-sided shacks lined up one against the other on the waterfront at Port of Spain to the clapboard boxes people were living in along the south coast of Tobago.
And here we were, obviously wealthy tourists, coming into the islands to enjoy briefly their beauty, like hummingbirds flying in to a feeder to sip the nectar, then zipping off.
I'm of two minds about this. Probably more than two minds. On the one hand, I can make the claim that the influx of money from people like us benefits the islands. We bought things from street vendors, spent money in shops, even paid travel taxes into the governmental coffers. We asked our driver, Dale, if he thought that the locals resented tourists, and especially, expats who moved there primarily from the US, Canada, and Germany.
"Of course not," Dale said. "They bring business to the islands. Why would we resent them?"
Yes, but.
They drive prices up, so native Trinidadians can't afford to buy property. They flaunt their affluence, without even meaning to, sometimes. The cruise ships docking in Scarborough and Port of Spain represent an expenditure of money on a single vacation that most Trinidadians won't see in a lifetime. They use up far more than their share of resources while they're there.
Who can blame the locals for any resentment they feel?
While we were in the islands, we were approached twice by beggars. We'd been warned against giving money -- that many of the beggars were alcoholics or drug addicts, and that giving money to them only encourages them to become more aggressive toward other visitors. The first time, a man came up to us while we were driving through the little town of Plymouth, and claimed to have no money for food.
"Only twenty dollars," he said. "That's all I need."
Twenty Trinidad dollars -- a little over three dollars US.
I told him we didn't have any money to give him. A lie. I knew it was a lie, and so did he. He persisted, and we drove off, with him still clinging to the car until he couldn't keep up.
Why didn't I give him anything? I could have given him ten times that amount and it would have done me no lasting financial harm whatsoever. All of the rationalizing that "he might use it to buy drugs," or "it will only encourage him to beg more," or whatever, sounds pretty hollow.
Should I feel guilty simply for being affluent? By American standards, I'd say we're solidly upper middle class; a teacher and a nurse, we own our own home and have two cars (both paid for). Our gains are hardly ill-gotten; both Carol and I inherited some money from our parents, and this has certainly helped us, but we work hard for our salaries.
But the fact remains that we are more wealthy than 90% of the people on earth.
We talked last night, over our t-bone steaks and fine red wine, about poverty. Carol pondered the establishment of a "guilt fund" -- you could pay into a charity when you travel to a poor country, to buy off some of your guilt feelings for being lucky. It's kind of a funny idea -- it reminded me of the medieval Catholic practice of buying indulgences, of paying the church penance money ahead of time so you could sin without fearing retribution from god. Still, it's a nice idea. Perhaps picking a charity that directly benefits the country we visit might help us to be more aware of our being so fortunate, and not taking for granted how easy our lives are when compared to most of the world's inhabitants.
If this idea appeals to you, or if maybe you were just looking for good charities to support, here are two to check out: Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement, which supports environmentally-sound practices and small, locally-owned businesses in poor countries, and Doctors Without Borders, a group of volunteer medical professionals who bring health care to areas ravaged by war, poverty, and natural disasters.
In any case, I doubt I'll stop traveling. I also doubt I'll stop feeling guilty about it. But at the same time, if the practice keeps my eyes open, keeps me grateful for what I have and more willing to give from the bounty that I enjoy, then it's not altogether a bad thing.
Trinidad & Tobago is not a wealthy country. The median yearly salary for men is $12,000; for women in comparable jobs, it is only $5,500, an amount and an inequity that still astounds me. We saw many signs of poverty there -- from the tin-sided shacks lined up one against the other on the waterfront at Port of Spain to the clapboard boxes people were living in along the south coast of Tobago.
And here we were, obviously wealthy tourists, coming into the islands to enjoy briefly their beauty, like hummingbirds flying in to a feeder to sip the nectar, then zipping off.
I'm of two minds about this. Probably more than two minds. On the one hand, I can make the claim that the influx of money from people like us benefits the islands. We bought things from street vendors, spent money in shops, even paid travel taxes into the governmental coffers. We asked our driver, Dale, if he thought that the locals resented tourists, and especially, expats who moved there primarily from the US, Canada, and Germany.
"Of course not," Dale said. "They bring business to the islands. Why would we resent them?"
Yes, but.
They drive prices up, so native Trinidadians can't afford to buy property. They flaunt their affluence, without even meaning to, sometimes. The cruise ships docking in Scarborough and Port of Spain represent an expenditure of money on a single vacation that most Trinidadians won't see in a lifetime. They use up far more than their share of resources while they're there.
Who can blame the locals for any resentment they feel?
While we were in the islands, we were approached twice by beggars. We'd been warned against giving money -- that many of the beggars were alcoholics or drug addicts, and that giving money to them only encourages them to become more aggressive toward other visitors. The first time, a man came up to us while we were driving through the little town of Plymouth, and claimed to have no money for food.
"Only twenty dollars," he said. "That's all I need."
Twenty Trinidad dollars -- a little over three dollars US.
I told him we didn't have any money to give him. A lie. I knew it was a lie, and so did he. He persisted, and we drove off, with him still clinging to the car until he couldn't keep up.
Why didn't I give him anything? I could have given him ten times that amount and it would have done me no lasting financial harm whatsoever. All of the rationalizing that "he might use it to buy drugs," or "it will only encourage him to beg more," or whatever, sounds pretty hollow.
Should I feel guilty simply for being affluent? By American standards, I'd say we're solidly upper middle class; a teacher and a nurse, we own our own home and have two cars (both paid for). Our gains are hardly ill-gotten; both Carol and I inherited some money from our parents, and this has certainly helped us, but we work hard for our salaries.
But the fact remains that we are more wealthy than 90% of the people on earth.
We talked last night, over our t-bone steaks and fine red wine, about poverty. Carol pondered the establishment of a "guilt fund" -- you could pay into a charity when you travel to a poor country, to buy off some of your guilt feelings for being lucky. It's kind of a funny idea -- it reminded me of the medieval Catholic practice of buying indulgences, of paying the church penance money ahead of time so you could sin without fearing retribution from god. Still, it's a nice idea. Perhaps picking a charity that directly benefits the country we visit might help us to be more aware of our being so fortunate, and not taking for granted how easy our lives are when compared to most of the world's inhabitants.
If this idea appeals to you, or if maybe you were just looking for good charities to support, here are two to check out: Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement, which supports environmentally-sound practices and small, locally-owned businesses in poor countries, and Doctors Without Borders, a group of volunteer medical professionals who bring health care to areas ravaged by war, poverty, and natural disasters.
In any case, I doubt I'll stop traveling. I also doubt I'll stop feeling guilty about it. But at the same time, if the practice keeps my eyes open, keeps me grateful for what I have and more willing to give from the bounty that I enjoy, then it's not altogether a bad thing.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)