Bill's posts with tag: general
I’m somewhat amused – as well as a bit surprised – by something.
Now you know that as far as personal relations go I’m far from anti-American; Americans compete with Filipinos as the nationality most represented on my contact list, and both far outstrip my Indian compatriots. Right? So, I am kind of surprised at the number of Americans who take offence when I comment about their country. Even otherwise sensible people sometimes blow their tops when I say something that should have been innocuous. And I don’t mean just on this website. For instance, some time ago I had a contact (someone I thought balanced and intelligent, and whose world-view I broadly shared) turn abusive and delete himself from my contact list only because I had the temerity to comment on the Cho Seung Hui episode. Not being an American, how dare I talk about it? What right did I have? You’ll notice a couple of things: first, that I never spare anyone – least of all Indians – when I go posting stuff. Then, you’ll also notice that people like this gentleman I just talked about (no, I won’t say who he was, but he’s on the contact list of many of you) don’t have any problems when I say positive things about the US. It’s when I go criticising that they lose their cool. Also, this same gentleman and those like him have no problem criticising all other nations in the world as well. Again, and again, I hear of how everyone “gangs up” on the US. Fine. Let’s see why nobody “gangs up” on Burkina Faso or Tonga. Maybe because the President of Burkina Faso or the King of Tonga don’t act as if they are the rulers of the world? Without meaning to offend any person here, I want to say something to anyone who may be reading this and who happens to be an American: We, the non-American populace of the world, will continue to criticise your country. We will continue to criticise it for the obvious reasons (Iraq, climate change, loud American tourists, whatever) but for another and much more insidious reason. This is, that the US sees itself as being the leader of the world – and says so in loud tones to anyone who will listen. As subjects, then, of the US Empire, and without any say in what it does, we have only one realistic weapon. We can criticise. We can criticise, and we will keep doing it, because you have taken from us all the other weapons we may have used. Your nation has taken over our economies, you spend more on your military than the rest of the world combined, you have paid traitors and turncoats to come to power in our respective countries. Your Hollywood films, with their flagrant rewriting of history, play in our theatres; your mindless TV programmes (along with a tiny and rare smidgen of gold in a mountain of dross) invade our living rooms; your consumption levels destroy our environment; your nation attacks countries which have never posed a threat to anyone; you try and topple any government which does not kowtow to you, and you still say we should not criticise? You're pleased enough to accept our adulation when it comes. Take the rough with the smooth.
To quote the Indian author Arundhati Roy, we are subjects who question their king. You may ignore the questions, but you can’t tell us to shut up, because we won’t. Deal with it.
 No, this is not
a review of the film which got Forest Whitaker an Oscar – I have not watched it (if anyone has, I'd like feedback). But it did spark off a train of
thought.
In the first
place, Forest Whitaker, whom I first saw in “Platoon”, is someone whom I’ve
long thought underrated as an actor. Certainly, looking at some of the people
who have won best actor awards in recent years, one would get the idea that he
should have won some time earlier. Just like Denzel Washington, who, also, had
to wait inordinately long before winning an Oscar.
Of course, there
is the little fact that these two men had their own low points – if Washington acted
in “Glory” and “Malcolm X”, he also acted in “Courage Under Fire”; and Whitaker
may have done “Platoon” and “Good Morning Vietnam” but he also did “Phone Booth”.
That said, I must admit I enjoyed “Phone Booth”. It was so ridiculous it was
funny. I watched it more than once.
Well, to get
back to what I wanted to talk about, “the last king of Scotland”
was
"His Excellency
President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC,
DSO, MC,
Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of
the British
Empire in Africa
in General and Uganda
in Particular."
Rather a
grandiose title for a man who got noticed and promoted because of his gift for
sucking up to his British superiors, being a keen footballer and boxer, and
someone who got his nickname “Dada” because of his standard excuse whenever a
woman was found in his tent – she was his dada
(sister in KiSwahili). It’s kind of easy to think Amin was a cross between
buffoon and homicidal maniac, but it should be remembered that his predecessor,
Milton Obote, was so awful that the world heaved a sigh of relief when Amin
took over in a military coup; and that Amin’s fall did not end violence and
civil war in Uganda; and that the current Ugandan government of Youweri
Museweni is as responsible as anyone else in stoking the flames of Congo’s
never-ending civil war.
Nothing is ever as simple
as it seems.
 So, drug abuse claims one more celebrity victim, and a rather special one.
Anna Nicole Smith's dead, and there's a job vacancy.
Who'll be official jaw-dropper for us now?
 I don't normally go on the "year in review" kick (in fact I try to avoid it like the plague, to use a cliche) but this will be my last post of 2006...so I'll call it a "Year End Post". You have a problem with that?
A year ago I was nearly turned into a New Year's Eve statistic when I was almost rammed by a drunk driver - he missed me by millimetres. This time I spent the evening prudently at home. But then last year I was not on Multiply, so I had less to do.
OK, I was just thinking about the case the media are going on about (I do not mean the NOIDA child murder case, where 12, 34 or 100 kids were murdered - depending on whom you choose to believe - by a factory owner and his servant) - I mean the case in Chennai where three teenagers kidnapped (and murdered, by hitting him on the head with a brick) a 11 year old boy for ransom. They had planned to spend that ransom on mobile phones and New Year's Eve bashes, as the media reported with gasps of horror. Never mind that these same media are busy advertising the latest mobiles with ten thousand features or whatever, and are busy reporting the bashes the celebrities will be throwing and attending. Am I the only one who sees some kind of contradiction here?
All right, let's move on...
Love. What a word. From romantic, to sexual, to filial love, and so on to the rarefied heights of metaphysical "love for one's fellow man" the sages tell us is the highest endeavour of humanity.
Love?
Hogwash.
Hate is what comes naturally when we talk of our feelings towards our fellow man. Hate keeps us going. Hate for the other, be it our next door neighbour, or the man/woman on the other side of the world who looks different, prays different, and eats different . Not to mention has different sexual morals.
And don't tell me that religion doesn't recognise this. Hate is what keeps those same love suffused religions going - think Crusades, jehad, Gujarat pogrom. Think missionaries out to save the "primitive savage" from his "false gods". As for what it meant to the "primitive savage" himself, read Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" trilogy for an idea (Things Fall Apart, No Longer At Ease, and A Man Of The People, but especially the first two parts ).
I am a Bengali. We Bengalis are remarkably good at hating. We hate everything - each other (mostly on the basis of which part of Bengal we originally came from...since I am of highly mixed blood, that is one pitfall I avoid); other communities (especially those who are collectively more successful than ourselves) and most of all other nations (mlecchha, in the old terminology). If we are good at loving anything except what we refer to as kalchaar (most Bengalis are extremely bad at other languages and cannot pronounce the short u, as in "culture") I have yet to come across it.
Still...
There is a lot to hate. And of what there is to love, it's going the way of the Great God Pan (the only god ever worth a moment's worship, I always thought).
The hell with it. I have a copy of Scary Movie 4, and I'm going to go watch it now, and despise the actors for their stupidity as I laugh at them, and I'll wait for midnight to come around. I'm not going to review it, though.
And a Happy New Year to all of you.
 
 "Eh, toro, toro," as the matador said in countles Hollywood movies.
Well, no more.
What animal lovers, schoolchildren, and normal human beings failed to halt is now falling prey, ironically, to market forces - it costs far too much to hold a corrida nowadays, and far too many people stay away.
Here's an article about the demise of the bullfight:
|
Bullfighting future in doubt |
| FIONA GOVAN |
 |
| A horrible cruelty |
Madrid, Dec. 20: Bullfighting was facing an uncertain future in Spain yesterday with the announcement that the last bullring in Barcelona is to close after failing to draw enough spectators.
The rising cost of mounting a spectacle that a growing number of Spaniards view as a cruel and unnecessary part of their culture has forced the promoters of the Monumental Plaza de Toros to cut their losses and look for alternatives uses for the ring. The company which owns the bullring admitted that the falling number of spectators meant that it lost more than £16,000 each time it held a bullfight.
The closure next year of the last bullring in Catalonia’s capital city follows that of two others in recent years.
Promoters across Spain have seen their profits fall as it becomes ever-more expensive to stage the events. The Spanish Union of Fighting Bull Breeders estimates that it can cost more than £70,000 to stage a corrida with a big- name bullfighter.
There are 60 major venues used for bullfights in Spain but many are used more for other activities, such as rock concerts, than for corrida. The industry has been hardest hit in Catalonia, in part because of a growing animal rights movement that has sought to ban a sport it considers “a horrible cruelty”.
Two years ago, Barcelona declared itself “an anti-bullfighting city” following a series of public protests and a petition of more than 250,000 Catalan names. Another 38 Catalan municipalities have since followed suit and the Parliament has debated a bill to extend existing animal cruelty laws to include bullfighting.
“Historically, the people of Catalonia have been against cruelty to animals and we are at the forefront of a movement that is gradually growing across Spain,” said Manuel Cases, the director of the animal protection group ADDA.
|
| THE DAILY TELEGRAPH |
But shouldn't we mourn the passing of what is generally held to be a symbol of Spain, a part of the framework of the culture of the Spanish (and Spanish origin) people and nations?
No.
Despite all the (pardon the pun) bullshit spun by Ernest Hemingway (Death in the Afternoon, and more than a few stories) and later by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins (Or I'll Dress You In Mourning) bullfighting has never been other than a brutally cruel, senseless murder of almost defenceless animals.
In order to understand the statement, let's take a look at a typical bullfight.
(Extracts from the bullfighting article on Wikipedia):
In a traditional corrida, three toreros, also called matadores or, in French, toreadores, each fight two out of a total of six bulls, each of which is at least four years old and weighs up to about 600 kg (with a minimum weight limit of 460 kg for the bullrings of the first degree).
Each matador has six assistants — two picadores ("lancers") mounted on horseback, three banderilleros, and a mozo de espada ("sword servant"). Collectively they comprise a cuadrilla or team of bullfighters. However, the whole crew includes also an ayuda (aide to sword servant) and subalternos (subordinates) including at least two peones (pages, singular peón). The apoderado acts as a manager for the cuadrilla negotiating their tours.
(Remember that each of the three matadors will have the entire above team. There are also a lot of what would be called "stagehands" in theatre. Rather a lot of personnel to kill six bovines.)
To continue:
(T)he bull enters the ring to be tested for ferocity by the matador and banderilleros with the magenta and gold capote, or dress cape...In the first stage, the tercio de varas ("Lances third"), the behavior of the bull is observed by the matador by the way the bull behaves in the arena and how he attacks the capes, when banderilleros play with the bull with their capes.
After this the matador will himself pass the bull around with the cape (it is not red, incidentally. Bulls are colour blind, so it the common theory that they are infuriated by red is incorrect.) All harmless so far, and if it stopped at this level, why, I'd want to watch too. But hold on.
Then two picadores enter the arena, armed with lances or varas. Each is mounted on a heavily padded and blindfolded horse of unusually large stature. The bull is encouraged to attack the horse which is protected by its padding and generally treats the attack with stoic patience. The way the bull charges the horse provides further important clues to the matador on its bravery and persistence. The picador stabs a mound of muscle on the bull's neck, leading to the animal's first loss of blood. If the picador does his job well, the bull will hold its head and horns lower during the following stages of the fight. This makes him slightly less dangerous while enabling the matador to perform the elegant passes of modern bullfighting. More importantly, this tempering of the bull's strength allows the human to take on substantially more risk.
Actually, the horse is only stoical because it has not the slightest way of seeing the bull or knowing what is going on. In the past the horses were not padded and usually lasted one fight before dying of the goring they received. Note that this "pic"-ing is for the purpose of making the bull easier to fight - so much for the "valour" of the corrida.
In the next stage, the tercio de banderillas ("banderillas third"), the three banderilleros each attempt to plant two barbed sticks (banderillas, literally "little flags" as they are decorated with paper in the local colors) on the bull's flanks. These further weaken the enormous ridges of neck and shoulder muscle, which set fighting bulls apart from ordinary cattle, through loss of blood.
Whenever one reads of the corrida in the descriptions of journalists, they always gush about how "balletic" the placement of the banderillas is. In fact, as even the Lapierre Collins duo pointed out, it's an act of gratuitous cruelty that has little to do with
the last chance to correct or fine-tune the charging tendencies of the bull.
Anyway, sounds logical, doesn't it? You breed an animal with large shoulder muscles for fighting, and then try and cripple those muscles by blood letting and stabbing. Great logic.
Now we go to the terminal phase. By now the bull, hurt and tired, will probably have marked a territory, called querencia, out for itself in the ring and it will not want to leave that area. In this phase, the tercio de muerte ("death third")
the matador re-enters the ring alone with a small red cape or muleta in one hand and a sword in the other. Having dedicated the bull to an individual or the whole audience, he uses his cape to attract the bull in a series of passes, both demonstrating his control over it and risking his life by getting especially close to it. The red colour of the cape is a matter of tradition, as bulls are actually colour blind: they attack moving objects.
Well, about that "risking his life", I have a couple of observations to make. First, the bull is a stranger to fighting. Only such bulls are used that, apart from a test at young calfhood for suitability for fighting prowess, have never fought before - and any bull that survives the corrida is murdered quietly, and legally (I read that it was a pope who began that practice) to make sure it would never fight again. So, a bull suddenly finds itself in a place full of pain and blood, run ragged for a cause it cannot understand, not knowing what is its enemy. It would not exactly be all that much of a danger.
Secondly, a common practice is to shave off the tips of the horns. Although this produces an artificially sharpened point, it also destroys the bull's acute sense of its horns and the space around them. A fighting bull is very dependent on that sense for its use of its horns. If they are shaved, it takes several days before that sense returns. Therefore, the bull is even crippled further for the fight.
Thirdly, whereas the actual third phase is supposed top be sing a heavy sword and a heavy muleta, cheating using a wooden sword (except at the death) and light muleta is usual, thus improving odds further for the matador.
Anyway:
The faena ("work") is the entire performance with the muleta, which is usually broken down into a series of "tandas" or "series". A typical tanda might consist of three to five basic passes and then a finishing touch, or "remate," such as a "pase de pecho," or "pase de desprecio." The faena ends with a final series of passes in which the matador with a muleta attempts to manoeuvre the bull into a position to stab it between the shoulder blades and through the aorta or heart.
The act of thrusting the sword (estoca or estoque) is called an estocada. A clumsy estocada that fails to give a "quick and clean death" will often raise loud protests from the crowd and may ruin the whole performance. If estocada is not successful, the matador must then perform a descabello and cut the bull's spinal cord with a second sword called verdugo, to kill it instantly and spare the animal pain. Although the matador's final blow is usually fatal, it may take the bull some time to die. A coup de grâce is therefore administered by a peón named a puntillero, using a dagger to further pierce the spinal cord. The matador must kill the bull in fifteen minutes after the first muleta pass, at most.
Which means, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again, hack, stab, do what it takes, but finish the animal. If the bull is not killed within fifteen minutes, it is led off to the corral and murdered there at leisure. Only in very exceptional circumstances might an extremely brave bull be spared - but it is never fought again.
So much for the "spectacle" of the Spanish bullfight.
Is there an alternative? Funnily enough, there is. Both the Portuguese and French have developed forms which are different. The Portuguse form is if anything more cowardly than the Spanish, because the bull is not openly killed in the ring (and there is none of the risk of the matador) but quietly assassinated later in the corral; and the animal's horns are not just shaved, but the tips are chopped off.
In the French form, though, there is no blood and no death. The "matador's" aim is to try and pluck a rosette off the bull's horns within a specified time. Skill and courage. No pain, and the bull can fight for years, and not infrequently carry its rossette undefeated. Now that is a bullfight I could appreciate.
As for the rest, I'll back the bull every time.
 
 I am against capital punishment under most circumstances, but I have had to take a look at the topic again...
With all the talk of executions performed, botched, planned or demanded, maybe we could take a look at the methods involved? And try and make some sort of choice?
Before beginning: I suppose we might as well leave out the options like necklacing, the guillotine, the garotte, or the electric drill (the favourite method today in Iraq's civil war), no matter how appropriate they might appear as desirable for certain individuals.
So, what are we left with?
Hanging: The rope is still touted in many countries as the quickest, most painless method to execute someone, using a long drop calculated according to the condemned person's weight. This is because it allegedly breaks the neck, leading to instant death, or vasovagal reflex which causes rapid unconsciousness and death. But if it is botched, with a too short drop, it can cause slow and agonising strangulation. And if the drop is too long it can literally rip the person's head off.
Here is a description of slow strangulation of a prisoner where the drop was inadequate
at San Quentin in California. Clinton Duffy who was the warden there from 1942 to 1954 described the execution of Major Raymond Lisemba on May 9, 1942 as follows: "The man hit bottom and I observed that he was fighting by pulling on the straps, wheezing, whistling, trying to get air, that blood was oozing through the black cap. I observed also that he urinated, defecated, and droppings fell on the floor, and the stench was terrible". (This is not abnormal in death by slow hanging as the person slowly strangles). "I also saw witnesses pass out and have to be carried from the witness room. Some of them threw up."
It took ten minutes for the condemned man to die. When he was taken down and the cap removed, "big hunks of flesh were torn off" the side of his face where the noose had been, "his eyes were popped," and his tongue was "swollen and hanging from his mouth." His face had turned purple.
Normally, hanging causes death like this:
Hanging with no or insufficient drop typically produces death by strangulation (asphyxia) due to the weight of the person's body pulling down on the noose, causing it to tighten and constrict the trachea (air passage) and applying pressure to the large blood vessels in the neck. The condemned person usually struggles for some time after suspension, due to the physical pain caused by the noose. It can take up to 3 minutes for the person to lapse into unconsciousness in this form of hanging, as the rope occludes the jugular veins and carotid arteries but the vertebrae protects the vertebral and spinal arteries which also supply blood to the brain. However, these arteries go outside the fourth vertebrae instead of inside it, which subjects them to blockage if the pressure on the neck is high enough (usually about 40-50 lbs. for a normal person) and this can cause the loss of consciousness in less than 15 seconds. Death can also come from sudden stoppage of the heart due to pressure on the carotid arteries which can cause a lethal carotid sinus reflex or from Vagal reflex (pressure on the Vagal nerve) which causes unconsciousness very quickly. This form of hanging is typical in suicides and it quite normal for the inquest to find that the victim died from heart failure rather than strangulation.
After suspension the face may become engorged and cyanosed (turned blue through lack of oxygen). The tongue may protrude and rippling movements of the body and limbs may occur which are usually attributed to nervous and muscular reflexes. There exist many pictures of actual hangings, both judicial and suicide, which seem to show that the person died quickly and quite peacefully.
In death, the body typically shows marks of suspension, e.g., bruising and rope marks on the neck and in some cases traces of urine, semen and feces. Male prisoners sometimes have penile erections and even ejaculate while hanging.
This form of asphyxial death is known, medically as anoxia, as the brain becomes starved of oxygen. Whole body death results usually within less than 20 minutes.
Where a measured drop is used, it takes between a quarter and a third of a second for a person to reach the end of the rope after the trap opens. The force produced by the prisoner's body weight multiplied by the length of fall and the force of gravity, coupled with the position of the knot is designed to cause a virtually instant fracture-dislocation of the neck which leads to death by comatose asphyxia. Typically brain death will occur in around 3-6 minutes and whole body death within 5-15 minutes.
The cause of death is still asphyxia but the condemned person is deeply unconscious at the time due to dislocation of the cervical vertebrae and the crushing or separation of the spinal cord. The face may come engorged and then cyanosed and the tongue may protrude. Some slight movements of the limbs and body may occasionally occur and are attributed to spinal reflexes. The prisoner may urinate and/or defecate as their muscles relax. The heart can continue to beat for as long as 25 minutes after the drop.
Although it's generally pretended that the executed person feels no pain in hanging, according to Harold Hillman, a British physiologist who has studied executions, "the dangling person probably feels cervical pain, and suffers from an acute headache, as a result of the rope closing off the veins of the neck. It had been generally assumed that fracture-dislocation of the neck causes instantaneous loss of sensation. Sensory pathways from below the neck are ruptured, but the sensory signals from the skin above the noose and from the trigeminal nerve may continue to reach the brain until hypoxia blocks them".
Translation: Yes, he does, in all but a tiny fraction of cases. Agonisingly so. In the opinion of Dr. Cornelius Rosse, the chairman of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Washington School of Medicine, the belief that fracture of the spinal cord causes instantaneous death is wrong in all but a small fraction of cases.
The Gas Chamber: Apart from the Nazi Zyklon B chambers in Auschwitz, this is a uniquely American - and uniquely sadistic - method. Also it makes the prisoner actively complicit in his own execution since his breathing makes him inhale the gas fumes. Not to speak of the expense of maintaining a meticulously hermetically sealed gas chamber with some means of removing the fumes afterwards and avoiding danger to everyone present at the execution.
Prisoners are advised to take deep breaths after the gas is released as this will considerably shorten their suffering. Easy for the Warden to say, no doubt, but much harder for the prisoner to intentionally inhale the gas designed to kill them, even if they accept the logic of the advice they are given.
A typical witnesses' view of gassing is as follows "At first there is evidence of extreme horror, pain and strangling. The eyes pop, the skin turns purple and the prisoner begins to drool."
In medical terms, victims of cyanide gas die from hypoxia, which means the cut-off of oxygen to the brain. The initial result of this is spasms, as in an epileptic seizure. Because of the straps, however, involuntary body movements are restrained. Seconds after the prisoner first inhales, he/she will feel himself unable to breathe, but will not lose consciousness immediately. "The person is unquestionably experiencing pain and extreme anxiety," according to Dr. Richard Traystman of John Hopkins University. "The pain begins immediately and is felt in the arms, shoulders, back, and chest. The sensation is similar to the pain felt by a person during a heart attack, where essentially the heart is being deprived of oxygen." "We would not use asphyxiation, by cyanide gas or by any other substance, in our laboratory to kill animals that have been used in experiments."
It's not exactly surprising that gassing is no longer a method of choice, though it remains on the books.
Lethal Injection: The world's favourite method, at least officially, right now. Sounds excellent in theory, doesn't it? The condemned person just "goes to sleep and never wakes up again". Well, as the case of Mr Angel Nieves Diaz has shown, lethal injection can get screwed up, and screwed up badly, so much so that Jeb Bush has put lethal injection executions on hold. When a Bush does something like that, you know it's not just a screw-up, it's a huge, enormous screw up showing an incredible level of incompetence. They missed the vein.
Opponents of lethal injection believe that it is not actually humane as practiced in the United States. Opponents argue that the thiopental is an ultra-short acting barbiturate that may wear off (anesthesia awareness) and lead to consciousness and an excruciatingly painful death wherein the inmate is unable to express their pain because they have been rendered paralyzed by the paralytic agent.(Wikipedia)
Yet there is a "controversy" on whether this method is too humane. I guess those people want something like the axe.
Execution by lethal injection takes much longer from start to finish than any other method, typically 30-45 minutes depending on the execution protocol and ease or otherwise of locating a vein. In the U.K., a hanging took around 15 seconds to carry out in the later part of the 20th century. For the majority of this time, the condemned person is fully aware of what is happening to them and able to experience their execution. They know that they will be dead at the end of it and the fear of suffering (particularly in front of an audience) and of the unknown is strong in most of us. It is difficult to see, therefore, how it can be considered more humane, as the prisoner is subjected to far more mental anguish over a longer period.
A personal observation, incidentally: for an excellent cinematic depiction of the trauma a lethal injection prisoner goes through, watch the Sharon Stone movie Last Dance.
The Electric Chair: Here is what happens to someone who is executed by this method:
After electrocution, the body temperature rises to about 138 degrees F and is initially too hot to touch. Heating destroys the body's proteins and "bakes" the organs.
Physical reactions include heaving chest, gurgles, foaming at the mouth, bloody sweat, burning of the hair and skin, and release of urine and faeces.
The body has to be allowed to cool before an autopsy can be performed.
According to Robert H. Kirschner, the deputy chief medical examiner of Cook County, Illinois, "The brain appears cooked in most cases."
According to Judge Brennan, the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and rest on his cheeks. The prisoner often defecates, urinates, and vomits blood and drool. The body turns bright red as its temperature rises, and the prisoner's flesh swells and his skin stretches to the point of breaking. Sometimes the prisoner catches on fire, particularly if he perspires excessively. Witnesses hear a loud and sustained sound like bacon frying, and the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh permeates the chamber.
Electrocution, in fact, is the most easily and spectacularly botched method of all. Famous instances such as
on May 4, 1990, in the case of Jesse Joseph Tafero in Florida. According to witnesses, when the executioner flipped the switch, flames and smoke came out from around the helmet and mask on Tafero's head. Twelve inch blue and orange flames sprouted from both sides of the mask. The power was stopped, and Tafero took several deep breaths. The superintendent ordered the executioner to halt the current, then try it again. And again. The helmet used artificial sponge (which was initially blamed for the problem) because it is uniformly conductive as it has a uniform thickness. The subsequent enquiry found that the solder joint on the head electrode had separated causing a major high resistance connection. This was proved in court by the two burns on Mr. Tafaro's head. The electrodes had not been checked but this was “hushed up” by the state. According to the state prison medical director, Frank Kligo, who attended Tafero’s execution, it was "less than aesthetically attractive."
Another electrocution in Florida went seriously wrong in 1997 when Pedro Medina was executed on March 25th. Witnesses saw a blue and orange flame shoot 6-10 inches out of the helmet covering Medina's head. It burned for about 10 seconds, filling the chamber with acrid smoke and the smell of burning flesh.
An investigation by prison officials blamed the flare-up on a corroded brass screen used in the helmet.
Michael Morse and Jay Wiechart, both experienced in electric chair design and operation, blamed the malfunction on a dry sponge used in conjunction with a wet sponge in the helmet.
Although it is not considered, by the US legal system, cruel and unusual punishment, it's not that much of a surprise that it's hardly used.
Shooting: Ah, my personal favourite. I'd have loved to be executed this way, but there is another alternative I'll talk about right at the end of this post...something better. Anyway, this is probably, all told, the most actually used method worldwide.
Shooting can be carried out in two ways: in the first, by a single executioner who fires from short range at the back of the head or neck as is the case in China. The intention of shooting at short range is to destroy the vital centres of the medulla (lower brain stem). Although, of course, denigrated in propaganda terms because of its use by China (I do agree that forcing the condemned person's family to pay for the bullet is unnecessarily sadistic), it is actually far less messy and probably infinitely more humane than the other method, the firing squad. Firing squad executions are much more famous but have sharply declined in popularity these days because of the difficulty of gathering enough willing individuals and finding a place to carry out the execution without risking other peoples' lives by stray bullets. (Thailand used to use a hybrid method, a single executioner firing a machine gun, as shown here.)
The firing squad is the favourite military method of execution (photo here), but many countries continue to use it (all, in fact, that continue to shoot condemned prisoners, except China and Uzbekistan) on civilians.
The traditional firing squad is made up of 3 to 6 shooters per prisoner who stand or kneel opposite the condemned who is usually tied to a chair or to a stake. Normally the shooters aim at the chest, since this is easier to hit than the head. A firing squad aiming at the head produces the same type of wounds as those produced by a single bullet, but bullets fired at the chest rupture the heart, large blood vessels, and lungs so that the condemned person dies of haemorrhage and shock, not a destruction of the brainstem as in the Chinese method. It was not unusual in earlier times for the officer in charge of the firing squad to have to give the prisoner a "coup de grace" - a pistol shot to the head to finish them off after the initial volley failed to kill them, and this is still standard in Vietnam. Persons hit by bullets feel as if they have been punched - pain comes later if the victim survives long enough to feel it.
One of the myths surrounding firing squad members is that there is one rifle handed out at random which is loaded with a blank bullet, so each individual member (typically a volunteer) can tell himself he did not fire the fatal shot. In reality, the recoil produced by a blank is so much less any experienced rifleman ought to be able to tell the difference unless he is wilfully deluding himself.
When all goes well, shooting can provide a quick death but there are many recorded instances of it failing to kill the condemned person immediately. There are also instances of people surviving their execution. Probably, one of the problems of the firing squad is that it is, typically, composed of volunteers rather than professional executioners and it is a task that many people would not find easy to perform when the time comes to actually squeeze the trigger (though they're always eager enough to volunteer when it comes to that). While shooting is always a gruesome and bloody death, Americans who have a lifetime of hunting behind them should be able to bear up better (my two cents here).
OK, so which would you prefer? One for the people you would execute, and one for your own execution? Truth time folks...as I said, for myself, I have a better method than shooting.
And that is extreme sexual exhaustion.
 All right, already. I never liked Vomitabh Bachpan. Not that I'd ever be caught dead watching Bollywood, it's just that this particular creature sticks in my craw. Why?
Could it be his aura of wide-eyed innocence when he and his son bought farmland which of which its original owners had been dispossessed? When the duo submitted photocopies claiming to be professional farmers? Yeah, right. I'd challenge them to distinguish the underground end of a carrot from the other. Farmers, oh yes.
Could it be his martyr act when he was in hospital last year? When he was served with a tax notice, he played it up for sympathy all it was worth..."I was in ICU and they still handed it to me there. Oh, well, the tax people have to do their jobs."
Could it be his political shenanigans and footsie with the Samajvadi Party of Amar Singh (Mulayam Singh Yadav being the frontman) while pretending to be apolitical?
Or could it be his visit to temples with his (non-) prospective daughter in law, Aishwariya "The Taj is even more beautiful than I am" Rai, to placate her "evil" star? (Manglik or some such rubbish, if I remember right, whatever that might be. He's a full-fledged astrologer's disciple now, and that weak minded lot who worship him will do the same.)
Or is it his comment that he wanted his son to marry quickly and produce a male heir? Remember that little one?
Or could it be his Kaun Banega Crorepati, pronounced Karorpati, with his infuriating "are you sure?' to ultra-simple questions while his audience ghasped about how the real honour was in meeting him? This KBC incidentally was in the news in February 2006 (just when Vomitabh refused to continue) for irregularities in the selection process of contestants.
No, none of that. I'm just jealous of his looks and baritone and histrionic abilities, though I wouldn't watch his films to save my life, and because he's such a celebrity at his age.
Yeah, I guess that must be it.
What is the greatest risk to an Indian’s life and limb? Terrorism, so beloved of politicians and media? Think again. Have any of you ever even been in the neighbourhood of a terrorist strike? You’re more likely to die of bee stings or dog bites. Disease? Better, but not even close. Riots? Gujarat pogroms don’t happen every year, do they?
Well, none of these, obviously. But you are risking your life every day, I assure you. Every time you step out of your house. Because our beloved country, the best in the world, the best culture and the best food and the best language and the best education and the best everything, also has the most efficient method of killing you on the roads.
How many people died of terrorism related causes, in all of last year in India? A thousand? Two thousand at most, including terrorists and "collateral damage" inflicted by the security forces (that is probably a wild overestimate, frankly, but let’s take it as 2000). A "horrendous toll," we’re told, which constitutes the biggest threat to the nation. And how many people are killed by road accidents? A mere 100,000. That’s right. You are fifty times more likely to be killed by traffic than you are by a terrorist or by a soldier shooting at a terrorist. That works out, according to September 2005 figures, at one person dying and ten being injured every six minutes, somewhere in this great land.
Even the army loses a thousand soldiers per year (twice the official toll, which incidentally I don’t believe, in the Kargil "war" of 1999) in traffic accidents alone…
As more and more cars come on the road, the figures can only rise.
First let me talk about what I myself see:
In a decade of a terrorist campaign visited on the people of Meghalaya state by the Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council, the yearly toll was at its peak perhaps fifteen people. Within the last two months, not less than a dozen people have been killed in and around Shillong city alone simply from having overloaded trucks overturning on their cars…so much so that one doesn’t want to drive past these trucks. On hill roads, they are a weapon of mass destruction. I do not even mention more mundane accidents. These trucks mostly carry coal from the privately owned and totally unregulated coal mines in the Jaintia Hills. They are allowed officially to carry a maximum of ten tons per truck. Of course, with the usual Indian attitude towards laws, the owners first get the engines adjusted for more power (at the expense of more inefficient fuel usage and shorter engine life, but who cares about that?) and after that the drivers take on not less than fifteen or sixteen tons per truck. (These are of course rigid-framed trucks like the ones in the photo. Not articulated giant trucks which would have more of an excuse to overturn but which are actually safer, since they crash much less frequently.)
This load is not just blatantly illegal; it is stowed any old how, without knowledge or any attempt to load keeping the centre of gravity low, thrown in with the use of wooden slats to increase the height of the sides of the truck. There are supposed to be weigh bridges to make sure the trucks aren’t exceeding their loads. These are "managed" (got round) in two ways: either by the payment of the usual bribe money (at so much per ton extra), or by unloading the surplus coal before the weigh bridge to local people and then retrieving it from them at a commission when the truck’s past the bridge (this is a good way of making a living by many Jaintia villagers).
The coal, thus stowed, shifts around with ease and on slopes is so unstable that if one is driving behind a truck one can actually clearly see its body shift on the chassis at an angle. On any inter-city trip one might see not less than five or six trucks toppled over. Most of the time they don’t fall on people; yet that is now happening more and more frequently, and will continue happening because free road space will continue to decline owing to the large numbers of cars coming on the roads every day.
Which brings us to another cause of accidents; everyone seems to want to own a personal vehicle and since the number of driver training facilities are not exactly overwhelming in India (Shillong, for example, has just the Don Bosco driver training school which is unofficially reserved for Catholics alone) people learn by trial and error or under the tutelage of those who know nothing much about driving themselves. All instructors in India are either ignorant of the laws of the road or know of them but are "practical" about following them (which means of course that they ignore them utterly).
As for the truck drivers, they don’t even have the knowledge imparted by "practical" instructors. Truck drivers in India start out as cleaners and handymen and learn "on the job", driving especially at night while the "ustad" (official driver) takes a kip on the back bench of the cabin.
How do they get their licenses, you ask? Do you really need to ask? You don’t even have to know how to drive to acquire a license in this country…
And of course for everyone, the alcohol flows like water - for everyone. It’s been estimated that 80% or more of Indian road fatalities are caused by drunk drivers. What chance has the law when even the policemen responsible for implementing the law are dead drunk themselves?
In the North East we don’t yet have too many incidents like Mumbai of drunken rich brats in big cars crushing people on pavements to death every weekend, but rest assured, it will happen here too, sooner rather than later. Possibly next Saturday.
A few days back I was stuck in traffic on my motorcycle. I was at the side of the road, stopped at a relatively healthy distance behind a large truck. The truck was not moving at all, the whole line was jammed solid. Suddenly a blue Tata Indica came up on my right side, at full speed, missed me by perhaps ten centimetres, and screeched to a halt within kissing distance of the truck. There was nowhere the car would be able to go anyway; the truck was not moving, but the car would not want to let the couple of metres of road space go waste. This is absolutely typical.
What did I do? Nothing. I don’t want to be turned into a road rage statistic.
And as a driver, I’d also point out the fact that Indian pedestrians do not know how to walk on the road. They don’t even use pavements when these are ready to hand and have not been encroached on by stalls. Jaywalking is hardly a crime in India; "everyone does it", and pedestrians are not considered road users by law. And in the Indian context, envious pedestrians are always ready to gang up on a car owner if there is an accident (they wish they had their own cars as well) even if it is not the car owner’s fault.
Of course, seat belts might as well not exist, going by the vanishingly small numbers who use them, and as for helmets, the less said the better. It’s usual to see scooterists carrying plastic caps which they pass off as "helmets", and which they only clap on when in sight of traffic police, and whip off again when safely past. One would think the laws are there not for their safety but only to harass them, and that they are pulling a great trick over the police by their antics with these "helmets".
So, if we’ve done talking about the problems, what is to be done?
There are many solutions to the problems. The biggest problem is however the lack of a will to implement them.
Still, let’s suggest a few:
First, implement the existing laws. Easier said than done in the Indian context where the payment of a few hundred rupees in bribes can work magic, but there are still a few honest characters buried in the woodwork.
Second, toughen the laws up. A drunken driver gets a maximum sentence of six months in India or a Rs2000 fine. This is no deterrent to a rich brat. Six months would never have to be served; Rs2000 is pocket money.
Third, establish a database of driving licenses. This may amaze one, but in India one might lose one’s license yet be able to get one issued from a neighbouring state, perfectly legally. Make it illegal to issue a license unless the applicant goes through a recognised driving school, which should have definite guidelines. Private coaching should not be acceptable.
Fourth, improve the road condition. Broaden them, relay them if possible. Make driving less fatiguing.
Fifth, impose at least a thousand per cent tax on alcohol. This is one fast and effective way of reducing drunken driving.
Sixth, impose fines on motorists driving without seat belts and motorcyclists or scooterists driving without helmets or with plastic caps which are passed off as helmets. I realise that Indian police are intrinsically corrupt, so I suggest that they should be given a substantial percentage of the fine money as an incentive to collect the fine rather than take a bribe.
Seventh, discourage private transport by encouraging the use of buses. For this buses have to be better in both quality and comfort, as well as numbers. Bus networks have to be increased. Private cars have to be heavily taxed. There is no justification for using a car to travel when the distance is less than a kilometre or so. Yet one sees every schoolchild being dropped by car if the family owns a car, even if the child lives within visual distance of the school.
Eighth, since truck drivers are not just a law unto themselves but probably beyond correction, they should be made to take bypasses round cities so they kill only themselves when they crash. In the meantime better trucks and proper driver training should be introduced (in St Petersburg, Russia, I saw for myself how disciplined even very large trucks can be with well-trained drivers at the wheel).
Ninth, start teaching schoolchildren how to walk on the roads. By the time they reach adulthood it’s too late. And also begin fining jaywalkers; the same incentives as applicable for driving fines should apply.
Tenth, of course, improve vehicle safety features. Indian cars have very few, so few indeed that when a car has what would be considered a standard fitting in the West (an air bag, for instance) this it touted as a USP here. A Maruti hit by another vehicle tends to end up looking like a crumpled cardboard box. One can only wonder at the condition of the occupants.
There is yet another solution which will never be implemented despite being proven to be effective: this is driving on the right of the road, not the left. This should have been implemented in the fifties; far too late now. It is safer because drivers reflexively steer the vehicle to the side of their dominant hand in a sudden emergency. Since most people are right handed, they would tend to steer the vehicle to the side of the road in any country where people drive on the right; but in those countries where people drive on the left, they would simply swing it towards the middle of the road and increase the chances of a crash. It’s been proved that switching to the right brings down accident rates. Sweden switched in the seventies and accident rates dropped sharply.
OK, that’s asking for the moon, sun, and stars. But what about the rest of it? I know it’s more electorally effective to spout off about terrorism, and that road reforms cost money and take time, but still…
All I’m asking for is the chance to be relatively sure of coming back alive after driving to a day’s work and back.
Is that too much to ask?
 It's so nice to be proved right after all...
In these pages, almost two months ago, I'd already talked about La Jolie and her entourage (which all in all gave me the Pitts) and how they enjoyed breaking rules like cobwebs - and now, at last, at last, everyone is sick of the lot of them. Beating up paparazzi, threatening them with guns, landing helicopters on hotel lawns without permission, rumoured plans (now denied) for an illegal adoption (read buying of a child), all this wasn't enough. I guess, though, even the most wormy worm can turn.
Even a Jolie is the Pitts when she goes around shooting in a school without official permission, and one (or three) of her bodyguard(s) shoves around kids and abuses their parents when they try to get their children home. (I doubt he actually said "bloody Indians", though, unless he is British or Australian. If, as is most likely, he is American, he would have said "fucking Indians" or "Indian assholes" or any of a plethora of other abuses, but not "bloody" which is a peculiarly British abuse. I think the media was trying to do a bit of Jolie whitewashing here.)
The predictable media line was already laid out by India's most mercenary newspaper, The Times Of India: that Jolie should not have to take permission from so many sources before shooting, that the Indian filming experience is over-regulated. The hidden agenda,of course, is total deregulation. While I am against that, even the votaries of that will agree that the law stands now, and the Jolie menagerie has no right to throw its weight around in what is a foreign country. Also, for anyone who says it isn't much of an abuse, let's try and imagine Jolie's bodyguard yelling "You fucking rednecks" at Texan parents. Kind of hard to imagine, isn't it?
So the people are sick and tired of this, and as far as I know shooting permission has been temporarily suspended although the bodyguards have been released on the humongous bail of Rs 25,000/- each (gasp! How will they ever survive? Twenty five thousand! Ha!). And I heartily hope the Jolie cabal has "internalised" the message....
"Thanks for your visit, now you've more than overstayed your welcome. Scram. Vamoose. Buzz off. Don't let the door clip your ass on your way out."
As I said, it's nice to be proved right.
But it's even nicer to be proved right in advance...
 A Tamil/Bengali/Assamese walks into a store and tells the Sardar at the counter...
And so it goes, usually at the expense of the Sardar, or whoever is the man at the counter. How many times have we heard "jokes'' like this and tittered along? Now you tell the character narrating the joke one about his own community and see him swell with indignation like a bullfrog.
It's universal. We Indians laugh at things no one in their right minds would feel is funny - a man slipping on a banana peel still draws giggles for instance. And our jokes are all ethnically loaded. We love to laugh at stereotypes of what we are not - the stereotyped Sindhi or Marwari or Sikh; but let the sterotyping be turned on us, and without exception we would be outraged.
It's at its most vicious when a person chooses to lampoon his own ethnic community. I have seen this myself. I am free to satirise Assamese or Khasis or Marathis; yet let me turn the lamp on Bengalis and I'm treated as a traitor to the race.
At the same time, the standards of comedy on Indian TV, which has perforce to stay free of stereotyping because it's supposed to be palatable to all Indians, is so low it makes "Friends" (which makes me, personally, cringe at its brainlessness) and other moronic American sitcoms look as hilariously funny as British masterpieces like "Are You Being Served?", " 'Allo 'Allo", "Yes, Prime Minister" or "Fawlty Towers". And the standards are falling - even mid-eighties fare like "Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi" looks intellectual compared with the present lot.
Not that it matters, our bloody politicians give us our daily laugh quota anyway.
While I'm in no sense religious, I do understand that some minds require the presence of a deity or similar focus for their lives, if demonstrably false, because it gives them solace. Though usually weak, such minds should not be dismissed; they are, after all, what keeps the entire mythological-religious-spiritual farce going, whether it is garbage like Reiki or Feng Shui or that monster of illogic, the Catholic Church, or animal sacrifices in Hindu temples or Id.
One of the odder manifestations of this kind of illogic, and the pervasive desire to believe, against all odds, is the Loch Ness Monster. I'm sure anyone who's reading this will have already heard of this beast, so instead of going into a long and convoluted explanation I'll just do a brief recap:
There is, so the story goes, one or more gigantic monsters of an unknown species in a lake called Loch Ness in the Scottish highlands. Ness is a long and deep lake, but so narrow that even on a cloudy day with poor visibility one can see clear across it. This is significant for purposes of observation. In any case, the monster is supposed to have been around at least since the time of St Columba in the sixth century, who is alleged to have saved (in 565 AD) a swimmer who was about to be eaten/bitten by the monster by shouting "Halt thou and think not to touch that man. Quick go back!" which promptly caused the monster, believe it or not, to submerge and disappear. After that there were a few garbled accounts of the monster emerging from the lake and smashing things up with his/her/its tail, but then only in the 1930s did the story suddenly gain prominence again with some characters claiming to have seen a monster walk across the road at night, briefly, in their car headlights. They did not stop for a closer look. (This is a recurrent feature. No one ever gets back for a closer look, and the researchers seem never to be able to get close enough for any look that would produce unambiguous evidence.) After that there was a sudden splurge of sightings, and tourist interest was already aroused (nowadays the Loch's economy is almost entirely tourism-, and hence monster-, driven, and includes stunts like this). Photographic evidence was produced, though what exactly those photos showed was wide open to interpretation...logs? Fish? Wave patterns? Otters?
The composite picture the monstereers (if I can coin a term) produced was of an animal, variously from six to twenty metres in length, resembling (though not necessarily being) a long-necked plesiosaur, but with bizarre features including
1. humps on the back, with variable numbers and forms. According to one researcher, the monster believer Tim Dinsdale, the humps could be seen to change shape and number as one watched (now I'd be inclined to believe that humps that changed numbers and shape would likely be no humps at all, but otters swimming in line, shadows on water, or logs, but then I'm a non-worshipper at this particular shrine)
2. an equine fringe at the back of the neck (I guess this was to reconcile stories of a crest with the plesiosaur hypothesis)
3. Rough, warty skin like that of a toad. I'll come back to this one later.
4. the ability to submerge vertically (to explain away abrupt disappearances of the "phenomenon" when viewers shifted position?)
OK.
In 1934 Dr. Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London physician,allegedly photographed a plesiosaur-like beast with a long neck emerging out of the murky waters.
 That photo, on the left, created quite a fuss. Before the photo, Loch Ness was the stuff of legend and myth. The locals knew the ancient history of the sea serpent. But people came to the lake more to relax than to go on expeditions looking for mythical beasts. After the ph oto, the scientific experts were called in. First, they examined the photo itself. Could be a plesiosaur. Yes, but it could be a tree trunk, too. Or an otter. Dinsdale, in his book, The Loch Ness Monster, devotes an entire chapter to that photo, and "proves" it genuine to his own satisfaction (because wave patterns prove that there is something underwater behind that neck, which they do; but that does not necessarily prove, to any normal person, that that "something" is a monster's body). Unfortunately, the photo, shown in its entirety on the left and not in the cropped form as above, is fake, fake, fake. Christian Spurling, who died in the autumn of 1993, made a deathbed confession of his role in the prank. The fake photo was not taken by Wilson--his name was used to give the photo stature and integrity--but by Spurling's stepbrother, Ian Wetherell. Ian's father, Marmaduke Wetherell, had been hired by the London Daily Mail to find the monster. So he constructed a small model of a sea serpent made of plastic wood attached to a 35 cm toy submarine...
The little prank created such a huge fuss that the pranksters decided that the best thing for them to do would be to keep quiet. Poor Dinsdale. Unfortunately he died six years before the hoax was exposed, or else I'd have loved to have read his reaction.
And there are of course, deliberate hoaxers, like this one, not dupes like Dinsdale, who in 1960 took a grainy, indistinct, black and white 16mm film allegedly showing the monster's hump in the water. To an unprejudiced observer it resembles a small boat with a wake, but among monstereers it's an article of faith that it proves the existence of Nessie. Dinsdale himself was a true believer. Another weak mind.
Oh, for "heaven's" sake:
1. The story of Loch Ness' monster is riddled with contradictions. Sometimes it appears on land; yet it is, most of the time, a flippered creature which would have a difficult time on land. And when it appears (just occasionally) on land, it seems to be really mobile and is sometimes said to have claws.
Sometimes it has large and glittering eyes, and sometimes none.
It is shy, yet "St Columba" allegedly had to save a man from being eaten by it.
2. What is it? A mammal? Yet a mammal, being warm blooded, would have to
(a) Come up to breathe, and hence shown itself every day. Same problem with a reptile, such as the plesiosaurs probably were.
(b) Unlike reptiles, mammals need large quantities of food for temperature maintainence. The most optimistic estimates say the Loch can't support more than 30 tons of fish. So, if the monster is as huge as described, why has it not eaten the Loch empty by now? Also, taking a minimum breeding population of 10 monsters, and a maximum predator mass of 10% of prey mass, the monsters can't weigh more than 300 kg. NOT the giants of many tons.
A reptile? Besides the breathing problem I mentioned, a reptile or amphibian would not find life easy in the cold water. Most reptiles do not live that far north.
A huge invertebrate? A giant mollusc? A fish? I suggest they modify their shapes!
A plesiosaur? Plesiosaurs became extinct, as per fossil records, at the end of the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago. And Loch Ness formed just 10,000 years ago...and 15000 years ago it was buried under ice during the last ice age. And here is what Wikipedia has to say about plesiosaurs, which were not dinosaurs and this not even theoretically warm-blooded:
Contrary to many reconstructions of plesiosaurs, it would have been impossible for them to lift their head and long neck above the surface, in the 'swan-like' pose that is often shown. Even if they had been able to bend their necks upward, to that degree (they could not), gravity would have tipped their body forward and kept most of the heavy neck in the water.
3. What does it eat? if fishes are the prey, where are the numbers to support a breeding population? I assume no one says Nessie is immortal.
4. And where, for whatever's sake, are the corpses?
5. Why have serious sonar studies failed to show Nessie? If the idea is that there is a connection between Loch Ness and the sea, some tunnel through which Nessie only sometimes came to the Loch, one would need to ask how such a tunnel would be not just large enough for Nessie but also not so large as to empty the water of the lake because its outflow would be larger than inflow from the river!
Here is a site discussing hoaxes, some of which are still worshipped by the fan site here. And the famous "Flipper Photo", worked up to the skies by the "scientist" Dr Robert Rines, is taken apart here.
While I'm on this subject, here is a possible explanation for the original "Nessie" sightings, which would also tie in with the rough skin I mentioned:
Loch Ness mystery solved?
SCOTLAND. The Loch Ness Monster may have been an elephant. That’s the word from paleontologist Neil Clark of the University of Glasgow, according to the UK newspaper the Sunday Mail (March 5, 2006). Clark has learned that in the 1930s, when the first reports of the monster came in, a circus had been travelling in the area and had stopped to let its elephants take a dip in the large, deep lake. Upon seeing their backs and trunks above the surface, the ringmaster apparently launched a publicity stunt by offering a reward to anyone who could deliver the “Loch Ness Monster” to the circus. | |
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Come on. A monster that has no evidence, no credibility, no existence outside of anecdotes, and you want to believe it? Yet people do, and insist they do. Which is why this post is called "Exercises in Belief".
The Loch Ness Monster is considered just as an example in blind belief...as for the rest, fill in the blanks yourself.
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 Am I sick of philosophy?
Does the sun rise?
Is the Pope a Catholic?
Friends, humans, people of the world, lend me your ears. I come to inform you, not to praise them. The evil that philosophers do lives after them; the good is always bunt to ashes with their bones. So let it be with this question.
If you really, really want something to be warped, twisted out of shape, and destroyed, get a philosopher. They say a politician is the ultimate means of turning a simple question convoluted. I tell you - a politico, no matter how dedicated to that effort, can't hold a candle to a philosopher.
Let's take solipsism. I actually thought up this nifty philosophy as a joke as a teenager, where I claimed that nothing existed except what I imagined, so that the world, this computer, my body, everything would be just a figment of my imagination and would disappear the moment my attention would turn away from it (so why the fuck am I a sexually frustrated unknown approaching middle age, huh?) . Imagine my surprise when I discovered this had actually been advanced as a serious philosophy. Well, live and learn. I guess one should (to quote my friend Caio Abramo) beat a Solipsist unconscious and then remove one of his legs, letting him explain away the amputation occurring while his consciousness was rendered inoperative.
Now, again, the chicken and egg question. Everytime I hear anyone call something a chicken and egg problem I want to scream. Trust philosophy to make a helpless confusion out of something so simple. Even though the problem can be scientifically solved, as here described, it does not even need that. Common sense would solve it, if one just applies a little reasoning. A chicken is a multicellular organism, right? An egg is a single cell. Multicellular organisms developed from unicellular organisms. The chicken, as a multicellular organism, was preceded by the egg at every stage of its evolutionary history. QED.
Now, how about getting a philosopher to advise and aid Bush in his plans for Operation Unending War? Forecast: total, abject, unconditional Bushie surrender inside twelve months.
Go to it, people.
 I guess we didn't have enough problems to be getting on with, so Pope Benedict XVI (the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, nicknamed the Rottweiler of God) had to throw his two cents in. Samuel Huntington must be jumping in glee at how his "clash of civilisations" theory is being aided and abetted by precisely those who should be working their asses off trying to avert this from happening.
Seriously, what was Benedict thinking? Even assuming his private views coincided with the rhetoric of a Byzantine emperor six centuries dead, Manuel II Palaeologus, he would have been advised by even a half-sane person to keep his trap shut. His alleged "apology", after the damage is long since done, is hardly adequate. Why on earth talk about what a Byzantine obscurantist said many hundred years ago?
And, in any case, what is the rationale behind the assertion that Muhammad brought nothing new into the world but religious violence and evil? Religion is, in my estimation, evil enough as an institution, and Christian, specifically Catholic crimes, throughout the Middle Ages are well enough known, from the Crusades to the persecution of the Cathars to the burning of heretics, something still defended by some, not to mention the similar murder of scientists like Giordano Bruno for going against church doctrine. And may I also mention that the chief architect of the Holocaust was a devout Catholic named Heinrich Himmler? If anyone says the Holocaust's actions were not dependent on Himmler's Catholicism, or that medieval Christian intolerance has no relevance today, I could equally well say that medieval Islamic jehad or the actions of Osama bin Laden to capture power by using Islam as a tool are equally not relevant to Islam. The same goes for any religion.
Really, Ratzinger should remember he's no longer a Hitler Youth. And that there are times when one should keep one's mouth shut. "Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubts," as they say.
I never particularly liked Steve Irwin, not just because he willingly welcomed Bush the Bastard on the orders of Howard the Coward, but also because he was a self promoter and I detest that breed. All the same, no one can reasonably deny that the man loved animals, unlike the other two specimens mentioned above. It strikes me as really bizarre, therefore, that after his death by stingray - a total accident ascribable to Irwin's foolhardiness - his fans are taking "revenge" by murdering and mutilating stingrays, sometimes chopping off their tails. At least ten stingrays have been found, till yesterday, killed in this fashion, and I wonder how many more are still undiscovered. I thought this sort of moronic idiocy was reserved for Americans of the sort who went around assassinating sharks after watching the film "Jaws". Australians, whose history includes the White Australia policy and the forced abduction of Aboriginal kids, I guess, should not have been imagined to be different. But I wonder what Irwin would have thought of these "fans" of his.   
Now, when after events such as the bomb blasts in Malegaon or even after floods or other natural disasters in India, I always get extremely irritated when I hear women wailing about how their only breadwinners have been taken from them and how they have to take care of eight (or whatever) children alone. This is followed by a demand for compensation.
When this happens I always want to ask, "Why don’t you women work?" The obvious answer is that they are not capable of working. In fact they are trained for nothing except housewivery. I accept that they might have no control over their sexual rights and might not actually be able to control the number of kids they have (albeit there is ample scope for getting a copper T or other IUD fitted secretly at a hospital, not to speak of getting a tubectomy done). But at the same time, it is pathetic and rather contemptible that they be forced to whine about how they are bereft of their economic support.
As my friend Shruti pointed out, what can you expect of a social order where "weak, defenceless" women are told by their religious and social overlords that working is a sin? This is true not just of poor families but more than a few upper class ones. (Bharti Yadav, daughter of DP Yadav of the Nitish Katara murder case, is one such example. She was given an education but prohibited from using it.)
Although I live in a part of the country where the majority ethnic group is the Khasis, of whom every single woman works – be it as a maidservant or as a magistrate – I have seen many non-Khasi women, here as well, being totally dependent on the earnings of their menfolk and refusing to work. Not all are like my uncle’s wife who told him "It’s your job to earn. You have no right to ask what the money is spent on." (After he died she had to learn handling business in a hurry and even now has to depend on her brother to help her run her business – and everyone knows the brother is robbing her blind). But there are many who seem to think working is beyond their capabilities. And their parents have never given them any cause, since childhood, to think otherwise. For them marriage and child bearing (not rearing; these women have too many kids to rear them adequately) is the only achievement.
Shanti – another friend - said that parents would be loath to spend on daughters who would leave the natal home after marriage and thus be lost to the family. Although this is true to a limited extent, even these people would not want their daughters to starve to death after marriage when the husband dies. If that had been so, no complaints about dowry deaths would ever have been registered. Even supposing these people would want their daughters dead in bomb blasts to claim compensation, the very fact that the selfsame daughters would spend almost all their lives cloistered indoors would mean that it would rather be the much more "valuable" sons and husbands who would be the ones who die – as amply demonstrated in Malegaon and elsewhere.
If the terrorist bombs provoke at least some parents into training their daughters for life in the real world where they may well have to fend for themselves, they would have done the country a signal favour. But don’t hold your breath.
 | Miracles | Sep 7, '06 10:16 AM
for everyone |
We live in an age of miracles. In this land where the monkeyman walked not too long ago, to the hoots of derision of everyone not part of the manufactured hysteria, everything is possible. After all, this is where astrology was supposed to be taught as a course in universities and few found such a suggestion odd.
Thus, when the sea turned "sweet" near an old Muslim tomb and shrine in Mumbai, it was not the raw sewage being pumped into the sea or the overflow of rainwater that turned the sea less saline, and that too temporarily; it must have been "divine intervention". So people in the thousands waded into the filthy water and not just drank it themselves but fed it to their babies in arms. So, it was not simple capillary action that is behind the "drinking of milk" by idols in Hindu temples, in a relatively muted replay of the mass hysteria of ten years ago. It was again because of divine intervention, and no matter that the humble cobbler’s last can be similarly made to "drink milk".
The Hindus and the Muslims have got their home-grown miracles. Why should the Christians be left behind?
In the Malki Presbyterian Church in Shillong, therefore, a new "miracle" has been wowing the faithful...a crucifix has been emitting mysterious light every night, and thousands of people are going every night to pray. Scientific checking was - of course - refused. At this point it might be worth pondering what the vendors of this "miracle" are afraid of? If the miracle they are touting is genuine, it would not only stand up to scientific scrutiny but would also be all the stronger for it. As with the Vatican and the Shroud of Turin, they should have the moral courage to submit their "miracle" to independent scrutiny…if they believe the "miracle" is genuine.
Is it?
In the first place, even the photographs printed in the newspapers seem obviously dodgy, with a backlit glow following exactly the arms of the crucifix. Why would a genuine halo look just exactly like lights on behind the crucifix?
A personal examination of the crucifix, which nearly ended in being assaulted by the guardians of the "miracle", revealed seven zero-watt bulbs behind it connected to a plug-point. One challenged the purveyors of the "miracle" to take out the plug and said one would believe in the miracle if the light was still in existence...and, as I said, almost got beaten up. One was accused of playing with peoples’ faith. I would like to ask, is such a shoddy fraud not playing with faith? Just how long can this pretence be kept up? Will the story not come out sooner rather than later, and will people then not be disillusioned? I predict that the "miracle" will suddenly and dramatically cease to manifest itself in a couple of days’ time, before people begin to ask awkward questions.
Also, one would like to ask, why is the press so intent in following the "party line" and playing up this shoddy fraud for all it is worth without checking the facts? Do they have no other topic to cover? Or has the word gone around with the promise of concrete reward?
What, in any case, is the point of this sort of miracle-mongering? The Mumbai "miracle" is explicable in terms of superstition and mass hysteria. The Hindu temple one is a replay of the previous occasion and similarly is pitched to temple donations. I would be certain that the thousands thronging the "miracle" would lead to a pick-up in churchgoing and more than likely an increase in collections. Faith is a most saleable item.
I include an image of an Islamic "miracle": Allah's name allegedly written by clouds. How silly can one get? In another picture is a tree allegedly in the posture of Islamic prayer. Well, I include a photo of a tree in the form of the female genitalia as well. Another miracle?
We live in miraculous times, truly we do.   
 There was this e-mail story going around,which most of you have probably read. It tells of how after Apartheid ended in South Africa, a plane bound on an international flight had a white woman in economy class who refused to sit next to a black co-passenger... and as a consequence, with the applause of the passengers, the crew upgraded the black man to first class.
I don't know if the story's apocryphal, but in view of recent events, it deserved another look.
So nowadays it's "reasonable" of passengers to do their own "racial profiling" and refuse to fly if they don't like the racial origins of their fellow passengers, and then it's the racially profiled who are ordered off. It would be rather too logical and egalitarian to suggest that those who do not want to fly with brown people should themselves get off, would it not? And too logical to suggest that terrorists would likely not act like the typical long bearded mullah? Was even one of the Sept 11, 2001 terrorists, assuming they existed, bearded and long haired?
In April, 2005, I was on a flight from Del |
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