Some of my more attentive readers may have noticed that in the last couple of years I’ve been reading and reviewing quite a few books that deal with how our country got into its current political mess, about how the people of the United States became so divided and distrustful of each other. The return of Donald Trump to a second term as President has only confirmed in me the idea that our experiment in democracy and a multi-racial, multi-cultural society has taken a wrong turn somewhere. In the United States today it just seems to me that the credo of ‘Every man for himself’ is dominant and that money, as much and as quickly as possible, is the only measure of success.
Cover Art for ‘The Longest Con’ along with Author Joe Conason. (Credit: Seminary Co-Op Bookstores)
‘The Longest Con’ by journalist Joe Conason is another such book and in many ways the worst. I don’t mean that the book is bad, far from it. No, what I mean is that ‘The Longest Con’ details some of the worst kinds of human behavior that have been committed over the last eighty or so years, all in the name of good, wholesome, conservative American values. ‘The Longest Con’ is the story of ‘How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism’ to quote the book’s subtitle.
I guess that pretty much sums it up. A Swindler is a thief who uses lies instead of a gun to rob you. (Credit: YouTube)
The author Mr. Conason begins by first describing what could be termed the ‘type specimen’ of the kind of fake ‘ultra-American’ fraudster that he claims has taken over conservatism and the Republican party, Roy Cohn. Cohn is best known as the lawyer who worked with Senator Joseph McCarthy to discover hidden communists inside the US State Department. Publicly Cohn portrayed himself as a patriotic American trying to protect his country from ‘red infiltrators’. In reality however Cohn and McCarthy never succeeded in finding a single communist. They just used false accusations, hate mongering and scare-tactics to ruin the reputations of a lot of decent people, both in and out of government, all while lining their own pockets at taxpayer’s expense.
Roy Cohn (r) first became a public figure as a hatchet man for Senator Joe McCarthy (l). The two of them destroyed the reputations on numerous innocent people by just making accusations without any evidence. Sounds a lot like what’s going on in this country today! (Credit: Free Speech Center MTSU)
After McCarthy’s downfall Cohn returned to private practice in New York where he continued his heavy handed methods of always attacking, using any kind of dirt against opponents, even if it wasn’t true, all while claiming he was the one being treated unfairly. Towards the end of his life Cohn would become a mentor in bad behavior to a young Donald Trump, who has surpassed his teacher in climbing to the top by whatever means was necessary.
Towards the end of his life Cohn (l) became a mentor in lies and frauds to a young Donald Trump (r). (Credit: BBC)
One other facet of Cohn’s life is worth mentioning because it is a trait that many other frauds within the conservative movement have also been guilty of. One of the most vicious attacks that Cohn used against his enemies was to accuse them of sexual depravity, especially homosexuality. The irony is that it was Cohn himself who was gay. Following in Cohn’s lead since then many other conservative rabble-rousers have charged liberals with sexual misconduct only to be later revealed as the true perverts.
Another right-wing Republican who raged against Gays while concealing his own sexual crimes was Dennis Hastert whom the republicans made Speaker of the House. (Credit: Open Secrets)
‘The Longest Con’ then goes on to detail the many, many scams and frauds that have been perpetrated by right wing organizations whether they be political, like the John Birch Society or Evangelical Christian such as the Praise The Lord TV network. The list of individuals and groups who have swindled the American public in the name of conservatism is almost endless. ‘The Longest Con’ covers them all right up to the recent ‘Tea Party’ movement and of course our Fraudster in Chief Donald Trump.
John Birch was an agent of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) the forerunner of the CIA who was killed in China during WW2, no one knows how. The John Birch Society considered him to be the first casualty of WW3 and that’s how they got their name. Like McCarthy and Cohn, the Birchers accused anyone and everyone while never providing any evidence, and made a lot of money doing it! (Credit: Financial Times)
Throughout ‘The Longest Con’ the techniques that the fraudsters use are described at length. Mostly the swindler sets up a fake charity, so that they can claim tax-exempt status. Then solicitations are sent out to conservatives around the country, either by mail or on the TV or nowadays through the Internet. So far it sounds just like any charity doesn’t it, but what happens then is that nearly all of the money taken in goes to salaries or expenses for the fraudster and their friends and family. Whatever money remains then goes for further fundraising while next to nothing goes to any actual charitable work.
Legitimate charities get most of the money they raise by direct appeals to the public, often by mail. The same is true for the fraudsters.
The worst part is that since these cons claim to be charities, law enforcement is often reluctant to investigate, let alone prosecute them. Even when the fraud is revealed the perpetrator(s) are generally only sentenced to a small fine and are soon free to start yet another con job.
There are thousands of fraudulent charities out there trying to take your money by simply lying to you. Learn how to protect yourself from such scammers. (Credit: Community Tax)
By the end of ‘The Longest Con’ the endless list of grifts and swindles actually becomes depressing, it’s becomes hard to imagine that so many people could be so corrupt. That’s one problem with ‘The Longest Con’ although I suppose it’s unfair to blame Mr. Conason for all of the con men we have in this country.
An Argument is one thing but today it seems as though all we do is yell and curse one another! (Credit: M-L-M Mayhem)
Another problem is that quite often Mr. Conason becomes a bit too polemic in his descriptions of the bad guys, often referring to them as “ostentatiously pious” or describing their actions as “deep fakery” for example. The use of such invective may be warranted but still it takes away from the objectivity in ‘The Longest Con’. So I do recommend ‘The Longest Con’, our country has gotten itself in a sorry state and Mr. Conason does a very good job of describing how we got here, and the sort of people who are pushing us ever further into the gutter.
As the 1960s came to an end and the Vietnam War withered to its foregone conclusion the ‘Hippies’, those radicalized college students who protested everything and everyone now faced a terrible reality; they had to get jobs and earn a living. Unlike their parents, who had normally lived a quiet life working for a single company and bought a home in the suburbs, they wanted something more exciting. They wanted a fast paced career where they could be a big success, and they wanted to move back into the cities where there were more and different kinds of people and just more things to do.
Cover art for ‘Triumph of the Yuppies” along with a picture of author Tom McGrath. (Credit: Philadelphia Magazine)
These ‘Baby Boomers’ would, in the decade of the 1980s create a new demographic called the ‘Young Urban Professionals’ or ‘Yuppies’. The new book by author Tom McGrath, ‘Triumph of the Yuppies’ details how during the 1980s this small percentage of the American population came to completely change our country, and not for the better. Now not every baby boomer became a yuppie, for the most part yuppies were the college educated boomers who used what they’d learned to transform the US economy from one based on manufacturing to one based on service and finance. As an example of how quickly this metamorphosis took place in 1960 there were only 4,500 Master’s degrees in Business Administration (MBAs) handed out by US colleges and Universities but by 1976 there were over fifty thousand every year and that number would continue to grow throughout the 1980s.
Remember in 1960 only 4500 MBA degrees were awarded by all the colleges in the US. How much damage has been caused by the enormous growth of professionals whose only training is in getting every penny of profit that they can! (Credit: eLerners.com)
In ‘Triumph of the Yuppies’ author McGrath follows the lives of many of the participants in that transformation, people like Peter Ueberroth who organized the 1984 LA Olympics, Bruce Springsteen whose song ‘Born in the USA’ became an anthem for a generation or Marissa Piesman whose ‘the Yuppie Cookbook’ helped popularize the name. These are only a few of the dozens of people who are mentioned because of their influence on the decade.
The 1980s also saw tremendous growth in the Celebrity Industry, allowing ordinary people to follow the wonderful lives of people better than they were! (Credit: ebay)
Three individuals stand out however as examples of their time. Jerry Rubin the 60s radical who in the late 70s decided he wanted to be rich along with Michael Milken, the investment wizard who turned risky and low valued ‘Junk Bonds’ into a multi-billion dollar business. The third was Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric (GE) who kept his stockholders happy by squeezing every penny he could out of two of the most famous companies in the US, and in the process destroyed one and while leaving the other a shell of its former self.
Once the most radical of Hippies starting in the late 70s Jerry Rubin became a high priest of the new religion ‘Money’! (Credit: The History Channel)
It was these individuals, along with thousands of others who actually accomplished the ‘Reagan Revolution’ a revolution whose real architect was the economist Milton Friedman. With the relaxation of regulations on banking and other financial industries the brand new MBAs began a series of ‘Leveraged Buy Outs’ and ‘Hostile Take Overs’ all of which made money for those in on the deal.
Michael Milken, on the other hand, was always devoted to the god Mammon! (Credit: Investopedia)
Meanwhile, those who weren’t MBAs or Yuppies of one variety or another saw jobs being sent overseas to counties with lower wage workers. McGrath even quotes Walter Mondale’s acceptance speech in the 1984 Democratic Convention “To those companies that send our jobs overseas, my message is: We need those jobs here at home.” So all the while that the dealmakers were lining their pockets the gap between rich and poor continued to grow.
In 1984 Walter Mondale (r) got clobbered by Ronald Reagan (l). But everything that Mondale warned us about has pretty much come true. We haven’t done much better ever since! (Credit: YouTube)
In their rush to make money as quickly as possible to keep shareholders happy the management at American companies cut back on long term investments in order to turn short term profits. One case in point is particularly tragic, RCA the leading US electronics manufacturer made the deliberate decision not to invest $200 million dollars in the technology and assembly lines necessary to build the new Video Cassette Recorders that everybody wanted. Instead RCA spent $1.2 billion buying a small financial bank so that management could show an immediate profit. That’s why today Sony and Sanyo and Panasonic own the household electronics industry while RCA no longer exists.
The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was once a leader in technology and industry. today it no longer exists. It is a victim of the ‘profit today instead of investing in tomorrow’ strategy. (Credit: Reason Magazine)
In ‘Triumph of the Yuppies’ author McGrath tells a hundred such stories, he relates the details of deals and mergers that, in hindsight, have led to many of the problems our country faces today. At the same time McGrath also reminds us of the culture of the 80s, the decade of excess. The fictional TV shows ‘Dallas’ and ‘Dynasty’ are mentioned along with the early reality shows like ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’. Other aspects of yuppie life are mentioned as well such as the exercise craze that Jane Fonda made a bundle on and gourmet food. In all ‘Triumph of the Yuppies’ does a great job of bringing the 80s back to life.
The 80s were a time of excess in all things, even exercise. Jane Fonda went from opposing Vietnam to helping everyone stay trim and fit, and made a bundle doing so! (Credit: Amazon)
And that’s the problem with ‘Triumph of the Yuppies’ it’s all tales with no context, no analysis. McGrath never manages to describe how the counter-culture of the 60s grew into the excesses of the 80s, and he never discusses what do we do now to try to fix our economy, our political system, our country. So while ‘Triumph of the Yuppies’ does detail where our country went wrong there are no solutions, no mention of a way forward.
Income inequality is a growing problem in our country today. Can we solve it, and can we solve our environmental problems without solving it? (Credit: Othering and Belonging Institute)
Nevertheless, I do give ‘Triumph of the Yuppies’ a thump’s up because it is really entertaining. Time and time again you will find yourself smiling at the antics of the selfish, looking out for number one bastards who truly believed that ‘Greed is Good!’
Around about the year 2200 humanity will once again be doing its level best to destroy itself. The environment is poisoned, civilization is in ruins and ideological wars are everywhere. It’s against this background that the starship, colony ship Arkhangelsk departs Earth on a mission to colonize the star system 974-33, a mission to try to save something of the human race. Arkhangelsk is one of those multi-generational ships whose original crew will never live to complete their 200 year long voyage, it will be up to their descendents to complete the mission by establishing a colony in system 974-33.
Interstellar ‘Arks’ like this one from Arthur C. Clarkes’ ‘Rendezvous with Rama’ are huge spaceships in which human beings will live for generations in order to be able to travel the enormous distances between the stars. Arriving at their destination the crew, all born on the ship during the journey, will colonize the planets circling another sun. (Credit: Medium)
That’s the history behind the novel ‘Arkhangelsk’ by author Elizabeth H. Bonesteel. As the story begins the people of the city of Novayarkha are the descendents of the crew of the Arkhangelsk. The city itself was built from the various sections of the starship Arkhangelsk, and with no contact with Earth for over 400 years the citizens of Novayarkha believe themselves to be the last remaining humans anywhere, and they are struggling to survive.
What if we humans established bases or colonies on other planets and then destroyed ourselves back here on Earth? How would those last remaining humans react? (Credit: Lifehacker)
You see the only ‘habitable’ planet in system 974-33 is hardly a paradise. The atmosphere is too thin, and contains traces of poisonous gasses as well, while the planet’s surface is a mixture of rock and ice. Even worse, the planet’s thin atmosphere and weak magnetic field provide little shielding from cosmic radiation. Add to that the fact that the builders of Novayarkha needed the Arkhangelsk’s reactor to provide power for the city and they placed that reactor too close to the city, increasing the background radiation level.
An Ice World orbiting the star 974-33 is the setting of ‘Arkhangelsk’ by author Elizabeth H. Bonesteel. (Credit: Amazon)Author Elizabeth H. Bonesteel. (Credit: Facebook)
It’s no wonder therefore that Novayarkha has both a high infant mortality rate and a high incidence of cancer. Another persistent problem is a high suicide rate; a lot of people seem to just walk away from the city to die in the ice. One last problem for the people of Novayarkha are the exiles, descendents of a group that rebelled when the city was being founded and who now occasionally raid Novayarkha to steal supplies. All in all the last remnants of humanity may not last too much longer themselves.
Everybody knows that nuclear reactors produce quite a bit of harmful radiation. So why did the inhabitants of Novayarkha put one in the middle of their city??? (Credit: Wikipedia)
Except the people of Novayarkha are not the last human beings in the Universe. Back on Earth people somehow managed to muddle through their difficulties and although not all of the problems have been solved humanity is once again pushing out, once more exploring the Universe. As the starship Hypatia enters system 974-33 both groups of humans are astonished to find each other, and are wary of how the other side will react.
Sometimes referred to as the ‘Last Pagan’ Hypatia of Alexandria was a mathematician and philosopher who was murdered by a mob of christians in the name of their god. (Credit: What is Social Studies?)
Hypatia is not a colony ship, rather her mission is to construct a faster than light (FTL) transceiver network in system 974-33 to assist other Earth vessels as they explore this sector of the galaxy. However Hypatia is not in very good shape either. As the starship was coming out of one of its hyperspatial jumps it collided with an asteroid killing most of her crew and destroying a good part of the ship.
Like the people of Novayarkha the crew of the Hypatia are in need of some help. Can these two groups work together for their mutual benefit? (Credit: X)
I’m certain that you can see plot here. Both groups of humans need each other but neither group really trusts the other, after all there’s been no contact between these two branches of humanity for over 400 years. The story is very much an allegory on how much more successful we humans are when we do work together.
Trust is always a key ingredient to working together. (Credit: LinkedIn)
There’s a darker undercurrent in ‘Arkhangelsk’ as well however for the city of Novayarkha holds sinister secrets, secrets that it’s authoritarian rulers would prefer to keep from their people. So another ethical problem illustrated in the novel is the struggle between the individual and society.
Finding the right balance between the rights of the Individual and the needs of Society has been a never-ending problem in Civilization. (Credit: Young Leaders for Legal Literacy Foundation)
I do have one problem with ‘Arkhangelsk’ and that is a problem I have nowadays with a lot of SF novels, too much filler. The modern publishing business seems to feel that novels have to be 400 or more pages in order to convince their customers that it’s worth paying $12-$20 dollars for a book. That means that an author has to add in a lot of stuff that isn’t important to the plot and really isn’t interesting. ‘Arkhangelsk’ suffers a bit from this problem as it could use a good editing to remove some of the less interesting material.
Edit, edit and then edit some more. Even the best novel can still use a little bit more editing! (Credit: BookBaby)
But ‘Arkhangelsk’ is interesting; it is a good take on the old theme of two very different cultures colliding, with all the conflicts and opportunities that entails. If you like those novels that tell stories about humanity traveling to and colonizing the stars you will enjoy, ‘Arkhangelsk’.
With all of the evidence for Climate Change that’s accumulating, with all of the extreme weather that’s adversely effecting people’s lives everyday a growing number of people are now hoping that something can still be done to avert the coming climate disaster. The problem is that we are all just individuals; it so often appears as if our opinions just don’t matter to the politicians and billionaires who seem to run the world. Many of us want to see change but have no idea what we as individuals can do to make a difference.
Good advice even today. When one person gets up and starts doing what they think is right eventually others will follow, it’s the only way to make a better world! (Credit: LinkedIn)
That’s the whole purpose of ‘The Climate Action Handbook’ by Doctor Heidi A. Roop of the University of Minnesota’s Climate Adaptation Partnership. In her book Dr. Roop details one hundred actions that each and every one of us can take that will a have a positive effect on our environment. The actions described in ‘The Climate Action Handbook’ are broadly divided into ten categories:
Cover art for ‘The Climate Action Handbook: By Heidi A. Roop. (Credit: Amazon)
Starting and Sustaining your Climate Action Journey
Energy Production and Transportation
Travel and Work
Food and Farming
Shopping and Consumer Choices
Actions Around the Home
Nature Based and Natural Solutions
Health and Well-Being
Civic and Community Engagement
Education and Climate Information
Dr. Heidi A. Roop of the University of Minnesota. (Credit: University of Washington)
Each of these categories is then sub-divided into specific actions that anyone can at least attempt and in which any degree of success is a definite contribution toward the goal of mitigating Climate Change. While it maybe true that governments and corporations have a far greater influence on the Climate than any individual, if each of us begins to take a few of the actions suggested in ‘The Climate Action Handbook’ we can make a difference and in the long run those individual actions will help to force governments and corporations to take action as well.
Everything doesn’t have to be a fight. Setting an example by doing the right thing, either individually or as part of an organization can often succeed better than fighting! (Credit: University of Central Florida)
So what are the actions outlined in ‘The Climate Action Handbook’. Well, they vary from large scale efforts such as installing solar panels on the roof of your house to such simple things as combining several car trips into one in order to cut down on CO2 emissions. Whether large or small a little bit of up front thinking and effort can reduce your own carbon footprint, and often save you some money as well. Planting trees is another example of something simple anyone can do that will take carbon out of the air, while providing shade to help cool down our cities while just giving us all a little greenery to enjoy.
Installing solar panels on your home is an investment, not an expense. You can lower your energy bills for years to come, saving money in the long run! (Dominion Energy Solutions)
Many of the actions suggested in ‘The Climate Action Handbook’ are pretty obvious once you think about it. For example did you know that a 16 oz. plastic bottle of water requires more than one thousand times as much energy to produce, package and transport as 16 oz. of tap water does! That’s actually a lot of carbon going into the air just for a quick drink, and that plastic bottle your water came in will likely just become plastic pollution as well. Another easy one is fast shipping on the items we all buy online. It’s true, not only does same day shipping cost a lot more than 3-4 days shipping does, but it also has a much bigger carbon footprint, and do you really need to have that latest Taylor Swift CD right now, you can’t wait a couple of days?
Yes, same day shipping is available but do you really need it? Can’t you wait a couple of days for that video game? (Credit: Shippo)
And speaking of plastic pollution many of the actions recommended in ‘The Climate Action Handbook’ also deal with the incredible amount of plastic that we simple throw away causing harm to the environment and our own health. Food waste is another issue that produces greenhouse gasses while filling up our landfills; all while many people go hungry even here in the US.
With all of the food that gets wasted here in the US we could easily end hunger in this country! (Credit: Student Work – School of Information)
I do have a few complaints about ‘The Climate Action Handbook’, for one thing, in her effort to get to exactly 100 actions Dr. Roop has several that really overlap to a great extent. For example, Action 4: Be privy to the Politics of Climate Change has a lot in common with Action 96: Look to Community Leaders. Also, the book is formatted in a style similar to a live seminar being projected onto a screen in front of an audience. That is, each action is discussed on one page while on the page opposite what was discussed is repeated in bullet-form. Because of this there are several actions that should really be discussed at greater length while the discussion of other actions hardly manage to fill up their single page!
Are there really just 100 climate actions? And shouldn’t some topics deserve greater attention than others? Still ‘The Climate Action Handbook’ is meant to be a handbook, not an exhaustive study and in that it succeeds. (Credit: Amazon)
Nevertheless ‘The Climate Action Handbook’ is a great resource for how ordinary people can help to save our planet, and what could be more important than that! One last point, throughout ‘The Climate Action Handbook’ other resources, websites, organizations, other books are highlighted to help the reader go further, to find out more about how they can help solve the climate crisis.
I’m not certain as to whether or not to classify ‘A City on Mars’ by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith as Science Fiction. You see ‘City on Mars’ is actually an overview of the many problems we humans are going to have to overcome if we really want to settle outer space. Right now we are at the very beginning of that endeavor; we currently have two small, emphasis on small, space stations that are crewed by rotating teams of astronauts about every six months. In other words nobody is actually living in space at this moment. So in a sense that makes ‘A City on Mars’ kinda fictional, doesn’t it?
While ‘A City on Mars’ is definitely not this kind of Science Fiction it’s still a book about the future, so it is sorta Science Fiction! (Credit: OverDrive)
No matter, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith are a pair of space enthusiasts who have done a lot of delving into the challenges that humans are going to face trying to settle, they don’t like the term colonize because of its political baggage, outer space. Having started out as proponents of space settlement they freely admit that the number and scale of those challenges has made them a lot more cautious.
Cover Art for ‘A City on Mars’ by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. (Credit: Wikipedia)
In ‘A City on Mars’ the problems of space settlement are classified into three broad categories, Physiology or can humans live and multiply long term in space, where to live in space and how, and finally, what are the legal aspects of building a settlement in space. You might wonder about the inclusion of that third class, after all isn’t space the final frontier and therefore kinda lawless? However the legal challenges may be the toughest of all, if we’re going to do it without starting any wars between space powers, nations that just happen to be nuclear powers as well.
Most people’s idea of what a city on Mars would look like. Actually if you read ‘A City on Mars’ you’ll find out that there are a few problems with this sort of design! (Credit: Asia Times)
Starting with the question of whether humans can live long term in space it’s worth remembering that back in the 1950s, right before the space age began, many medical experts were convinced that humans could not survive for more than a few minutes in zero gravity. Without gravity, they said, you couldn’t even swallow, you’d get disoriented, dizzy and be unable to perform any task. Finally, without gravity your heart would race at double the normal pulse rate until before long you’d have a heart attack.
In the 1950s no one had ever been into space so we had no idea if even the toughest person could survive more than a few minutes there. Because of that ignorance the original Mercury 7 astronauts were subjected to a battery of medical tests to ensure they were in the best of health. (Credit: NASA)
Fortunately it didn’t work out that way. By the time the first men walked on the Moon it was obvious that people could survive zero gravity for several weeks with the only impediment being some temporary weakness when you returned to Earth.
Readjusting to Earth’s gravity after a year in space isn’t easy, as Scott Kelly can tell you. Zero gravity causes your muscles and bones to weaken so that a lifetime in space may simply not be physically possible. (Credit: Geekwire)
However, living in zero gravity for the rest of your life may be another matter. You see, thanks to our space stations we now have lots of data about people living in zero gravity for six months to a year at a time and it’s becoming clear that our bodies aren’t built for living there. Bone mass loss appears to be the biggest problem but there is muscle loss as well, and that’s despite astronauts putting in several hours of exercise every day. There’s also the way that fluids in your body redistribute themselves in zero gravity and that includes the shape of your eyeball causing vision problems. Of course NASA is doing a lot of medical research to find treatments to remedy these problems but it’s clear that our bodies are not built to live in zero gravity long term.
The astronauts who landed on the Moon did not so much walk on its surface as hop like bunny. Still the Moon has some gravity. Whether or not it’s enough to prevent our muscles and bones from deteriorating is still questionable. (Credit: WHYY)
But what if we if build settlements on the Moon or Mars, they have gravity after all, it’s not as strong as Earth’s but it’s still more than zero gravity? Well the problem there is that the longest anymore has spent in partial gravity was about three days on the Moon. We have no idea about whether Lunar or Martian gravity is strong enough to prevent or even lessen any of the problems stated above.
In the Movie 2001: A Space Odyssey a Lunar base is already well established. That obviously didn’t happen and it may take a long time to come! (Credit: Kitbashed)
There’s another big issue about which we have no data at all and that’s the question of trying to have children, and raise them in outer space. While it’s true that a fetus in the womb is kinda sorta in zero gravity still there’s that business of the mother’s fluids being redistributed along with her loss of bone and muscle. Then, once the child is born how will they grow in zero or partial gravity, could a child born and raised on Mars ever acquire enough muscle to be able to visit Earth? To date no experiments related to breeding and raising animals have been conducted in space so we literally know nothing about whether it can be done.
The biggest medical question however is, can a human being, born and raised on the Moon or Mars, ever grow strong enough to come home to Earth and survive our planet’s strong gravity! (Credit: Raising Children Network)
Assuming we can live and multiply somewhere in space the question now becomes where and how. After a quick review of the various choices in our solar system ‘A City on Mars’ settles on the Moon and Mars because the two of them are the closest to Earth in both distance and conditions. The problem is that even then the Moon and Mars are horrible places to live. As far as trying to live there is concerned they are both airless, waterless deserts where even the sky and ground are trying to kill you. Any people living there will have to build themselves strong shelters equipped with the means of providing air, water and food while keeping a livable temperature, oh and shielding its inhabitants from cosmic radiation.
There’s been a lot of talk over the last few years about water ice at the bottom of some Lunar craters. Probably more talk than there is water ice! If that ice is there it would make a small fraction of one percent of the Moon’s surface extremely valuable! (Credit: YouTube)
‘A City on Mars’ also takes a chapter to discuss the choicest real estate on the Moon. You may have heard recently about how space nations are really interested in the Moon’s south pole. That’s because it’s thought that the bottom of some of the craters there may have been in complete darkness for billions of years so that there may be water there in the form of ice. Also, some of the peaks of those craters may be in almost perpetual sunlight making them the perfect places to build solar arrays for power. The fact that those areas represent less than one tenth of one percent of the Moon’s surface makes them extremely valuable, valuable enough to be the cause of violence?
Everybody loves ‘Star Wars’ don’t they. If we start fighting over the Moon or Mars however most of the fighting will probably be here on Earth! (Credit: Forbes)
Which brings me to the legal aspects of settling space. Of course so far there hasn’t been much need for the long arm of justice in space. That’s because there are only three nations that have the ability to send people into space and those nations have all made certain that the people they send are law abiding and can be expected to behave themselves while in space. Nevertheless, as more actors gain access to space, such as Space X, the race to obtain what little resources there are in space may lead to conflict.
It’s amazing how quickly the private corporation Space X has come to dominate space exploration. In the future there is going to be more private investors in space, more guests at the table wanting more of the few resources readily available. That could certainly provoke violence! (Credit: Dreamstime.com)
The governing legal document covering the exploration of space right now is actually called the Outer Space Treaty or OST and it was ratified in 1967 by the only two space powers at the time, the USA and the USSR. Since that time another 110 countries have signed on including all of the major space nations. Shortly after its creation the OST was supplemented by several other agreements known as the Rescue Agreement, the Liability Convention and the Registration Convention.
Yes there really is an “Outer Space Treaty’ and here’s the first page. (Credit: Alamy)
So how are these treaties going regulate the way that human beings settle space? The short answer is that the OST forbids anyone from owning any part of any celestial object, in other words no ‘I claim this crater in the name of King and Country’. On the other hand anyone can explore and make use of space, so Ireland for example has the right to set up a exploratory outpost basically anyway on the Moon, but they don’t even control the ground directly beneath that outpost! Obviously that could lead to a fair amount of misunderstanding if Vietnam decides to set up their outpost in exactly the same spot as Ireland’s!
Land grabs here on Earth have caused more than a few wars. It would be naive to think that we’ll behave any better in outer space. (Credit: Grain.org)
What the authors of ‘A City on Mars’ have discovered is that there isn’t a lot of rules and regulations that will govern how we settle space, which could lead to a ‘wild west’ scenario complete with shoot outs that trigger full-scale wars, between nuclear powers, back here on Earth. Remember Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and England fought a number of wars in Europe that began in the New World.
What we call the French and Indian War and Europe calls the Seven Years War was just one of the many wars started over disputes for land in the New World by Old World Powers! By the way it was a young George Washington, on the white house above, who started the French and Indian War. (Credit: American Battlefield Trust)
So there are a lot of problems that are going to have to be solved before humans settle space and most of them do not involve rockets or robots or spacesuits or cool technical things like that. If you’d like to know more about those nasty little details, and some of the possible solutions I think you’d like to read ‘A City on Mars’.
I never knew there were so many ways to subvert democracy. ‘Tyranny of the Minority’, the new book by Harvard professors of Government Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt is a detailed and sobering account of the many ways that a democratic nation, a nation that at least tries to apply the rule of law fairly and equally to all its people can be derailed and even destroyed by an authoritarian minority. Although the main thrust of the book is the current state of our American democracy the authors use examples from nations around the world and times past to illustrate their arguments.
History textbooks will tell you that the idea of Democracy first started in ancient Athens. It didn’t last too long! (Credit: Wikipedia)
Democracy is a risky thing for a politician, losing an election can mean no job, an uncertain future and worst of all no power. In a democracy however a politician has to be willing to accept the choice of the people. If a politician losses they must congratulate the winner and plan for the next election, that’s the only way to learn from their mistakes. It’s no wonder therefore that many politicians try to seize power against the will of the majority, not only by violent means but by cheating as well.
Despite all the recent ballyhoo about voter fraud the actual evidence is that only a very few illegal votes are cast in any election. Claiming voter fraud is just a excuse for the losers! (Credit: Shutterstock)
Professors Levitsky and Ziblatt begin by looking at examples of coup d’etat over the last hundred years or so to discover both the rules that a loyal supporter of democracy must follow as well as the techniques that authoritarians use to sabotage a working democracy. As the authors see it a politician who values democracy and wants to see it thrive must accept three rules:
Cover art for ‘Tyranny of the Minority’ by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. (Credit: Amazon)
1. They must accept their losses. This is primary because without one side accepting defeat, even if they feel irregularities have cost them, then the peaceful transfer of power, which is the greatest benefit of a democratic system of government, will soon descend into violence. An example of this was when Al Gore accepted his defeat in 2000 even though the final vote counting in Florida was not yet completed. He accepted his loss for the sake of America’s democracy and the peaceful transfer of power.
Even the best of us lose sometimes. Refusing to accept those losses not only makes you an ill mannered lout but it will make further losses more likely because you refused to learn from your mistakes. (Credit: A-Z Quotes)
2. Every politician loyal to democracy must immediately sever all ties to any other politician who even attempts to overturn the results of an election, whether by violence or by cheating. Toleration of authoritarian politicians, even if they are popular with your party’s base, only empowers them leading to further attacks on democracy. Recent examples of this form of toleration are the many Republicans who remain silent about the attacks on our democracy by Donald Trump.
Kowtowing to a authority figure has been commonplace throughout human history. Here in the United States we thought that we had eliminated that degrading practice. Not any more! (Credit: South China Morning Post)
3. Politicians of all parties must be willing to work across party lines in defense of democracy, even at the risk of their own politician ambitions. Examples of this are the way that the conservative politicians Liz Chaney and Adam Kinzinger worked with liberal Democrats to investigate the January 6th attack on the Capitol that was instigated by Trump, a choice that cost them both their seats in the US House.
Bipartisanship in defense of Democracy used to be considered honourable and praiseworthy. Today bipartisanship of any kind is considered a weakness if not actually treason! (Credit: Yes! Magazine)
At the same time ‘Tyranny of the Minority’ also details the playbook of those politicians to seek to cheat, who try to obtain some slight advantage over their opponents. Of course in the end this cheating continues until democracy is gone and a dictatorship has been established. Some of the techniques used by extremists include:
Who does this immediately make you think of? (Credit: Marriage.com)
1. Exploiting gaps in the law. As an example, over the more than 200-year history of the American Presidency many holders of that office have had to make many difficult decisions, decisions that were later often criticized by both their opponents and historians. In all of those years however no President has ever claimed immunity from legal prosecution, no President has ever had to, ever wanted to. Until Trump, who is currently arguing that a President must have immunity in order to do their jobs. Of course Trump’s real desire is to escape the consequences of his actions in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
No president has ever asked for let only demanded immunity from the law until Trump. I wonder why he thinks he needs it!!!! (Credit: YouTube)
2. Excessive or Undue use of the Law. An example of this would be the use by the President of his power to pardon in order to keep co-conspirators from giving evidence against him. During Watergate President Nixon never pardoned any of those who were involved in the burglary or cover-up. Trump however has promised to pardon all of those who have been convicted of crimes committed during the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
Racial profiling is a classic example of overuse of the law. If you concentrate your law enforcement efforts against any particular group you will find some law breaking in that group that you can then use to justify your initial prejudice against them. A self fulfilling prophesy.(Credit: Notes from an Aspiring Humanitarian)
3. Selective enforcement of the law, especially voting laws. This one is insidious. During the Jim Crow era in the Southern US laws requiring voters to pay a Poll Tax or pass an Intelligence Test were strictly enforced against black voters while white voters were simply allowed to vote without any of those requirements being enforced against them.
Obviously denying any citizen the right to vote is the antithesis of democracy. We do it anyway! (Credit: Center for public Integrity)
4. Lawfare. This is a new term created for those laws that are intended for no other purpose than to give one party in an election an advantage against the other. Examples of this include the Poll Taxes and Intelligence Tests of the past that are now being replaced by Voter I.D. laws. The process of Gerrymandering, the creation of political districts in such a way as to put all of your opponents supporters into a few districts while your supporters are spread out over a large number of districts is a prime example of Lawfare.
Elbridge Gerry, governor of Massachusetts and the contorted congressional district he designed. Gerrymandering is the practice of putting all of your opponents into just a few districts so that you can win all of the others, giving a minority all of the power! (Credit: Fair Districts Pa)
Simply reviewing these anti-democratic practices brings to mind much of the politics of the last 40 years here in the US. It’s at this point that ‘Tyranny of the Minority’ goes into the process of how the Republican Party, a party than once prided itself on its adherence to democratic principles has become distorted into the party of Trump. To be certain Trump did not start the process, it really began in earnest in 1992 when the Democrat Bill Clinton won the Presidency. Rather than try to learn a lesson and reform their party in order to win in a later election the Republicans decide to start cheating, to “win at all costs” as they did in Florida in 2000. Then, when Barack Obama, the first black president was elected the Republicans simply went crazy, a madness from which they have still to recover.
When people began to insist that Obama’s Hawaiian ‘Certificate of Live Birth’ wasn’t a ‘Birth Certificate’ partisanship turned into a mental illness! (Credit: The New York Times)
Because of this obstinacy the Republican Party has slowly but surely become a minority party. In the last eight Presidential elections the Republican candidate has won the popular vote only once, but thanks to the antiquated Electoral College, which as recently as 1970 the Republicans wanted to get rid of, they have won the Presidency three times. Republicans have become welded to their low taxes on the rich while distracting people with culture wars policies. They know that they cannot achieve a majority with those principles so they can only cheat, and by cheating subvert and eventually destroy democracy.
In the year 2000 George w. Bush lost the popular vote and only managed to win the electoral college because the Supreme Court ordered the vote counting in Florida to end. Rather than accepting the divisions in the country and trying to govern in a bipartisan manner he proceeded to push a hard conservative agenda that left our country more divided than it has been since the Civil War! (Credit: BBC)
‘Tyranny of the Minority’ is a very sobering book but at the same time that it details to dangers to our democracy it also offers the hope of those people, those politicians who will work for, and when necessary fight for democracy. If you support democracy I can only hope that you will take the time to read ‘Tyranny of the Minority’.
‘The Space Between Worlds’ is the debut novel for author Micaiah Johnson and she’s got a good solid hit for her first at bat. The Space in the title specifically refers to traveling to alternate Universes across the Multiverse. Cara, the main character in the novel, is traverser, one of the few people who can safely travel to some of those alternate worlds.
Cover art for ‘The Space Between Worlds’ a novel by author Micaiah Johnson. (Credit: Amazon)
You see there are a couple of catches to traversing, one is that travel is only possible to Universes that are closely similar to our own and second, if you try to go to an alternate Universe where you are still alive that Universe will reject you and send you back to Earth zero either dead or dying.
Most of us have been rejected by a lover but being rejected by a Universe, that must be really tough! (Credit: wikiHow)
That’s what makes Cara so valuable, on the 380 Universes that can be reached by the inhabitants of Earth zero; she’s already dead in 372. That means she can visit more Universes than anyone else. Part of the reason why Cara has died so often is that she grew up in Ashland, the ‘poor side of town’ where life is hard, violent and short and Cara’s early life was hard even for Ashland.
In ‘The Space Between Worlds’ Cara, the main character grew up in the slums of her world. (Credit: Habitat for Humanity GB)
Now however she lives and works in Wiley, a walled city where life is comfortable and rich, and she plans on staying right where she is. I don’t know if author Micaiah Johnson was thinking about a future where an ecological disaster had turned our present day ‘gated communities’ into walled cities like Wiley while the rest of Earth turns into an Ashland but that’s definitely how I pictured the novel’s Earth zero, Cara’s Universe. Ms. Johnson is quite good at describing just enough of Earth zero, and the technology of Traversing to let your imagination do the rest.
Now she lives with all of the rich folk in the wonderful, and exclusive walled city of Wiley. (Credit: Diamond Art Club)
Ms. Johnson is also good at plot twists, I lost count at how many there were in ‘The Space Between World’s’ but the first one was a real duzzy, it grabbed me and definitely made me want to finish the story. Indeed, the whole novel is pretty fast paced with more than a few memorable scenes.
Author Micaiah Johnson with her new novel. I’m going to have to check it out! (Credit: Orange County Register)
There’s a bit of romance in ‘The Space Between World’s’ as well with Cara yearning for a relationship with her handler Dell. This attraction brings a bit of classism and racism into the story because while Cara is dark and from Ashland, Dell is light and from a rich Wiley family leading to a lot of sexual tension between the two women.
Hollywood may love stories of romance between rich and poor but how often do you think that really works out? (Credit: Empire Magazine)
I do have a couple of criticisms of ‘The Space Between World’s’, for one thing you know right from the beginning that Cara and Dell will wind up together and sure enough while at the end it’s not quite ‘happily ever after’ there’s a good possibility that it eventually will be. More importantly, after a terrific beginning and an exciting middle I found the ending to be a bit of an anticlimax, not bad, but not really as grabbing as the first two-thirds of the novel.
The ending of ‘The Space Between Worlds’ wasn’t that bad but it wasn’t an SF ending either. After a terrific start and middle it was a bit trite. (Credit: Thesaurus.plus)
Nevertheless, ‘The Space Between World’s’ is certainly a good debut novel for author Micaiah Johnson, telling a story that’s both interesting and exciting. I heartily recommend ‘The Space Between World’s’ and I’m looking forward to Ms. Johnson’s next novel.
Apocalyptic disasters that destroy all but a small handful of human beings have been written ever since the flood story in the Lay of Gilgamesh, from which the flood story in the Bible was derived. Such catastrophe epics became even more popular after the invention of nuclear weapons when humanity gained the ability to cause our own destruction. Whether by an act of God or by our own technology apocalypses are a definite genre in SF.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Why are so many people actually anxious for the ‘End of the World’ to come. Do they really think that they’re going to be better off somehow?????? (Credit: World History Encyclopedia)
‘The Ark’ by Christopher Coates is such an end of the world story. Astronomers have discovered a comet that will approach Earth in three years. It’s not going to hit us, but it will pass very close and its tail is extremely radioactive. Material from that tail will go into orbit around our planet, slowly seeping into the atmosphere for twenty years, killing every living thing on the surface. So ‘The Ark’ is an Act of God type of apocalypse. I have quite a few problems with this ‘radioactive comet’ scenario but I’ll save them for later.
Cover Art for ‘The Ark’ by Christopher Coates. (Credit: Amazon)Author Christopher Coates. I think he’s the one on the left. (Credit: Next Chapter)
By a sheer coincidence I started reading ‘The Ark’ at the same time as the 60th anniversary of the Stanley Kubrick movie ‘Doctor Strangelove’. You may recall how, at the end of that movie a Soviet ‘Doomsday Device’ is going to blanket the entire world with enough radioactive fallout to kill every living thing.
It was just a coincidence that I rewatched the movie ‘Doctor Strangelove’ as I was started to read ‘The Ark’ but the idea of people surviving radiation by going into mine shafts is a big part of both. (Credit: American Cinematheque)
“Mister President,” Strangelove announces as the doomsday device is triggered. “I would not rule out the possibility of preserving a nucleus of human specimens.” His plan is to set up living quarters for a few thousand people deep underground in mine shafts until the radiation is gone. I have to wonder if author Christopher Coates got his theme from Strangelove because that’s pretty much the plan in ‘The Ark’.
Yes, the United States does have a lot of mine shaft space but it’s not exactly the kind of place I’d like to spend the next hundred years or so! (Credit: Tripadvisor)
Of course in the novel the plan is a great deal more detailed and it also includes the idea of human hibernation, in fact a good deal of the story concerns the development of hibernation technology. So 10,000 carefully selected people, experts in various fields that will be required in order to rebuild civilization are buried beneath the Rocky Mountains, along with a lot of equipment in a great big sleep chamber. At the same time smaller groups of people will try to survive for twenty years in mine shafts throughout the country.
Look, somebody’s already written a book with all the knowledge we need to rebuild civilization! So I guess we’re all ready then! (Credit: Bug Out Bag Builder)
I have several problems with ‘The Ark’ and I’ll start with the radioactive comet that triggers the whole thing. Intense radioactivity implies short-lived radioactivity. The intense radioactive element Radium is extremely scarce just because it is so radioactive. After a few billion years in the Oort cloud at the outskirts of our Solar System no comet is going to be extremely radioactive. Still, O’k for the sake of the story I’ll let that pass, suspension of disbelief after all. But then add in the bit about the radioactive material going into orbit and slowly seeping into our atmosphere. Finally, although US astronomers and NASA scientists realize the danger three years before the comet gets here no other country ever figures it out. In fact the rest of the world is pretty much ignored, only Americans are going to survive this apocalypse, we don’t even let the Brits or Canadians in on the end of the world.
The element Radium is extremely radioactive. That’s why it doesn’t last long! The idea of a comet that’s been out in the Oort cloud for billions of years being intensely radioactive at least needs some sort of explanation! (Credit: YouTube)
Still, suspension of disbelief for the sake of the story, that’s where the second problem comes in because the story in ‘The Ark’ is really pretty dry. There’s no conflict to speak of and the few plot twists don’t generate much suspense. In fact the whole novel reads more like a manual for surviving an apocalypse than a story about one.
‘The Ark’ has little personal conflict or actual fighting so there’s about as much drama in it as there is in a survival manual! (Credit: Karate Mart)
I’m not saying that ‘the Ark’ is a bad novel, it is a quick read and pretty much kept my attention. It certainly needs more work however. At least it could have a plausible reason for why the comet is so radioactive and add in some international intrigue to introduce some degree of conflict, some suspense. Finally the novel ends just as the rebuilding process has begun which makes me wonder if a sequel is already in the works.
In ‘The Ark’ the United States never even tells its closest allies about the radioactive comet! That’s a bit implausible and a little Foreign Intrigue over that fact might have made the story a bit more exciting! (Credit: Wikipedia)
So if you’ve got a few hours to spare for an interesting, if not exactly perfect end of the world novel you might enjoy ‘The Ark’ by Christopher Coates.
We all are aware of how the economic conditions in this country have changed over the last 30-40 years. Where once assembly line manufacturing was the main driver of the GDP here in the US now it’s high-tech engineering, microchips and software, industries that require far fewer employees but those with greater education. These changes in the economy have brought with them demographic changes as millions of high school graduates lost well paying jobs with benefits while people with a college degree were in ever greater demand, and therefore saw at least a modest increase in their income and wealth.
I could have picked any of a hundred different graphs all saying the same thing. The higher the education a person attains the higher the average salary they will earn throughout their lives! (Credit: Fox Business)
One unexpected outcome of these economic changes is the effect on the overall health of the American people caused by a massive growth in ‘Deaths of Despair’ that is drug overdoses, suicide and alcoholism. ‘Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism’ by Anne Case and Angus Deaton examines the increase in drug overdoses, suicide and alcoholism from both an economic and sociological perspective, both authors are retired professors of economics at Princeton University and Professor Deaton was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2016.
While the difference in salary between College graduates and High School graduates may be understandable the difference in Life Expectancy is harder to grasp. That’s the thesis of ‘Deaths of Despair’ by Anne Case and Angus Deaton. (Credit: World Socialist Web Site)
‘Deaths of Despair’ begins by demonstrating just how large a problem drug overdoses, suicides and alcoholism have become. In fact these social diseases were actually causing a decline in the average life expectancy of Americans before the Covid-19 pandemic. The book then goes on the show how these ‘Deaths of Despair’ reside almost exclusively in the white male population without a college degree, exactly the part of the population that has seen the most economic turmoil in the last 40 years. That turmoil being the driving force behind the despair a large part of our population now feels.
Cover art for ‘Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism’ by Anne Case (l) and Angus Deaton (r). (Credit: YouTube)
The central portion of the book is a detailed examination of how the economy has changed over the last 40 years and why damage generated by those changes seem to have almost targeted white males with only a high school education or less. In addition to the lost of income in going from a well paid factory job with benefits to a low paid service job with few benefits ‘Deaths of Despair’ also considers such factors as the loss of pride and community that accompanied the switch from buildings cars at General Motors to flipping burgers at McDonald’s. At the same time social changes of the last few decades added to the despair of white, blue-collar males. The advancement of both woman and minorities only increased the feeling of lost prestige and privilege.
Symbol of a population left behind economically, a factory that once drove American prosperity left to rust and decay. What happened to the people who once worked here earning a good life for themselves? (Credit: Wikipedia)
Then, at just the time when these changes were generating despondency within a large section of the population the pharmaceutical industry began a campaign of selling synthetic, non-addictive opioids as a cure all for any kind of pain. Of course we now know that OxyContin and its relatives are actually highly addictive and can even act as gateway drugs to worse opioids like heroin and fentanyl. The callous greed of the drug companies who made billions by turning millions of Americans into addicts, or in all too many cases corpses is graphically detailed.
As a large portion of the American working class saw their once comfortable life disappearing many of them got caught up in the opioid epidemic. Notice how the number of overdoses among men is nearly twice that among women. (Credit: Wikipedia)In ‘Deaths of Despair’ the authors cover the effects of suicide, alcoholism and the opioid epidemic on those with less than a college education. However they completely miss the equally tragic effect of education on smoking rates with high school graduates smoking, and dying because of smoking at more than twice the rate of those with a college degree. (Credit: Medical Express)
In the final section of ‘Deaths of Despair’ the authors give their recommendations on how to rebalance the economic system so as to better serve all Americans not just the top 1% or even the better educated. To be honest however the authors are academics and as such they are cautious in their suggestions.
While since 1975 many nations have seen the top 1% grab a larger share of the wealth here in the US that increase is significantly greater. Leaving that much less for the average person. (Credit: Wikipedia)
The most fundamental change put forward in ‘Deaths of Despair’ is a complete reform of the healthcare system in the US, which the authors contend does not even meet the criteria of a true capitalist marketplace. Not only are the drug companies and health insurance corporations criticized in detail but hospitals, ambulance services and even doctor’s associations are shown to be guilty of acting as an Oligopoly. (An Oligopoly is a small group of merchants or corporations that by colluding together rather than competing virtually become a monopoly, raising prices while using their power to destroy any competitors) According to the Authors this is why Americans spend more for their healthcare than any other nation while both life expectancy in the US and approval of our healthcare system rank amongst the lowest for any industrialized, wealthy country. In ‘Deaths of Despair’ the authors estimate that a through reform of the health care system could free up as much a a trillion dollars a year in GDP that could be used to maintain our infrastructure, improve education etc, etc, etc.
As a fraction of our countries wealth (GDP) the costs of Health Care have more than tripled since 1960! Are we living three times as long or has the Health Care Industry simply become inefficient and wasteful? (Credit: Kaiser Family Foundation)
While reform of the healthcare system is the author’s main recommendation they also suggest a stronger social safety net for those who lose their jobs due to changes in the economic system, the safety net must be of longer duration and include retraining for newer jobs. On the other hand they do not recommend simply raising taxes on the wealthy as a means of fixing income inequality nor do they endorse programs like the Universal Basic Income (UBI).
A dream of Socialists since the 19th century Universal Basic Income would make certain that no one falls into poverty despite lack of education, layoffs, sickness or any other circumstance. Conservatives counter that it simply promotes laziness. (Credit: The Nation)
Now, back in May of 2019 I reviewed the book ‘Dying of Whiteness’ by Jonathan M. Metzl, see my post of 5 May 2019, which covers much the same subject as’ Deaths of Despair’. Mr. Metzl however was a state health official while Professors Case and Deaton are among the world’s leading economists so there is a very different perspective in the two books, to my mind in a way that they compliment each other.
Jonathan M. Metzl and his book ‘Dying of Whiteness’ (Credit: Seminary Co-Op Bookstores)
So while I do highly recommend ‘Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism’ I do so with the proviso that it is a very technical book written by scholars who are among the best in their profession. Those readers who really want to understand the complexities of our current situation, both economic and political will gain a great deal from it.
One subject that appears quite often in Science Fiction novels and stories is the difficulty of trying to establish communication with an alien intelligent lifeform. In H. G. Wells’ ‘The First Men in the Moon’ Doctor Cavour tries to communicate with the Selenites by starting with geometric shapes, all intelligent creatures would recognize them after all. The same technique was used in the novel ‘Planet of the Apes’ (Of course in the movie they skipped that whole problem by having the apes speak perfect English!).
In the novel ‘The First Men in the Moon’ by H. G. Wells the Moon People, Selenites, are depicted as being somewhat like social insects. Dr. Cavour tries to communicate with them by starting with geometry, which he thinks is universal. Problem with that is social insects, at least here on Earth, mostly communicate by scents not speech or pictures. (Credit: Deviant Art)
Some SF stories use a shortcut to get past this difficulty. In ‘The Day the Earth stood Still’ the alien Klaatu speaks perfect English because his people have been monitoring our radio and TV broadcasts while in the old ‘Star Trek’ series the crew of the Enterprise had a “Universal Translator” that allowed conversation with all kinds of alien lifeforms. The main plot of the recent movie ‘Arrival’ (2016) was actually about the problem of learning how to communicate with aliens.
In ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ the alien Klaatu spoke English the moment he stepped out of his saucer because his people had been monitoring out radio and TV broadcasts. (Credit: IMDb)
The new novel ‘The Mountain in the Sea’ by Ray Nayler is also concerned with learning to communicate with an alien intelligence but this one is not extraterrestrial, and if you’re thinking chimpanzees or dolphins you’re wrong. The aliens in ‘The Mountain in the Sea’ are our planet’s most intelligent invertebrates, octopuses.
Cover art for ‘The Mountain in the Sea’ by Ray Nayler. (Credit: Amazon)
Author Ray Nayler looking rather dapper. (Credit: Poets and Writers)
Set in the near future Doctor Ha Nguyen has been studying octopuses and other cephalopods her entire career. She has been sent to the island of Con Dao by a multi-billion dollar, International Corporation named DIANIMA to study the local octopus population in an effort to determine if they are beginning to develop the basics of a primitive culture. DIANIMA has turned the island into a into a nature preserve in order to protect the intelligent octopuses in a world on the brink of environmental collapse due to climate change, overfishing etc, etc. The only two other inhabitants of Con Dao are Altantseseg who is in charge of security for the preserve and Evrim, the world’s first, and by law only, android.
Much of the action in ‘The Mountain in the Sea’ takes place on the Island of Con Dao off the coast of Vietnam. Looks like a nice place to me!!! (Credit: Travopo)
Of course the octopuses have developed not just the beginnings of culture but have a well developed language consisting of symbols that they cause to appear on their skin. Remember octopuses, along with other cephalopods, use chromatophores in their skin for camouflage. At the same time they can alter the very texture of their skin making it smooth like a stone or rough like sand or even bumpy like a piece of coral. In addition to a sophisticated language the octopuses in ‘The Mountain in the Sea’ have also mastered the making of primitive tools from sea shells and coral entering what Dr. Nguyen christens their ‘Sea Shell Age’.
Octopuses are well documented for their ability to figure out how to solve puzzles such as opening containers to get at the food we put inside. They are considered to be the most intelligent of all invertebrates but it is also recognized to be a form of intelligence quite different from our own! (Credit: The Universe of Discourse)
It’s the work of Dr. Nguyen that is the central portion of ‘The Mountain in the Sea. Her discussions with the Android Evrim about the difficulty of understanding a creature with such different senses than we have are the crux of the story. Despite evolving on the same planet as us octopuses are true aliens with no real hard parts for structure, with eight tentacles, each of which has a rudimentary brain of its own and can behave semi-independently. In many ways they are creatures whose ‘umwelt’ see my post about the book ‘Immense World’ by Ed Yong, whose mental view of the world is so much different from our own. At the same time I have a feeling that the character of the android Evrim was added into the novel in order to show how difficult it could be to understand and communicate with a creature of our own making.
The book ‘Immense World’ by Ed Yong is a wonderful exploration of the different type of senses that exist in the animal kingdom, many very different from ours. (Credit: X.com)
This subject of other animals here on Earth having the beginnings of culture is actually a hot topic right now. Over the last several decades considerable evidence has been discovered indicating different speech patterns, let’s not quite call it language, among different populations of dolphins, those in the Atlantic ocean as opposed to those in the Pacific or Indian oceans. The same appears to be true between Orcas who live close to the shorelines of the continents versus those who live in the deep ocean. And most interesting of all may be the fact that different populations of Chimpanzees in different areas of Africa not only differ in their vocal calls but even differ in their use of tools! (See my post of 16 March 2019).
It was Jane Goodall who first documented the use of tools by Chimpanzees. Now we recognize that our cousins not only have the beginnings of culture but they actually have several distinct cultures in different parts of Africa. (Credit: BBC Wildlife)
There are subplots in ‘The Mountain in the Sea’ as well. The island is closely guarded by Altantseseg using a variety of lethal drones because of poachers who try to invade the reserve in order to plunder its resources, mainly fish. There is also another entity, corporation or nation state, which is trying to perform a hostile takeover of DIANIMA for unknown reasons. In fact some parts of ‘The Mountain in the Sea’ are almost written like a spy novel or conspiracy theory.
In the news nowadays we often hear about drones being used as weapons in Ukraine or Gaza. Such military use of drones is a large part of the action sequences in ‘The Mountain in the Sea’. (Credit: Drone Elevations)
For the most part however ‘The Mountain in the Sea’ is a story about what it means to be an intelligent creature, to have a culture, a civilization. Because of that ‘The Mountain in the Sea’ is not an exciting book, not a novel for those who are looking for a lot of action. It’s a thought provoking book and when it sticks to that aspect of its story it does a good job. The spy stuff or the poacher part falls kind of flat however. Really ‘The Mountain in the Sea’ could have used one more edit to try to tighten up what are supposed to the action sections.
In ‘The Mountain in the Sea’ an old Octopus is telling stories to a group of young octopuses just as Homer must have told his tales to his audience. Such is the beginnings of culture. (Credit: The Imaginative Conservative)
Nevertheless ‘The Mountain in the Sea’ is worth reading, both for its viewpoint on the harm we’re doing to our fellow creatures here on Earth as for its thoughts on communication.
