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Conspiracies II

Filibustering is defined today as long-winded speeches by politicians mainly done to annoy opponents from rival political parties.  Back in the 19th century it was much different.

Filibusters were adventurers, men right of a comic book legend that went out and founded empires and made their own destinies.  Today we will review two of them from American history.

Aaron Burr

In 1805 former vice president Aaron Burr was a broken man.  He had dueled and killed Alexander Hamilton, one of the most popular men in America.  He was shunned by society, he was out of office, and he was nearly bankrupt.

But 19th century America was a land of opportunity and new beginnings and Burr sought his new beginning out west.  Back then of course out west meant Ohio and the Louisiana purchase.

Burr met with two men.  One was General James Wilkinson, a crooked army officer in charge of the army post in New Orleans, the other man was Harman Blennerhasset, an exiled Irish lord that set up an estate on an island on the Ohio river.

The three men decided that they would invade Mexico, which was then much larger and included Texas, California, and the southwest.  Using  a small army they would seize the frontier and set up their own country.  They began gathering men and weapons on Blennerhasset’s island and had nice little army ready by 1806.

However, fate stepped in.  Wilkinson as well as being crooked, was a spy for hire and he decided to cash in by telling the Spanish about the plot and to tell his own government as well and make himself look good in the process.

So the governor of Ohio called out the state militia and captured the island.  Burr was put on trial for treason.  Using every political favor he was owed and his own brilliant legal mind (he was after all one of the best lawyers in North America at the time) he was able to get an acquittal.

In his later life as he lay dying in Staten Island he heard about the Texas revolution taking place in 1836 and said “What was treason in my heart 30 years ago is now patriotism”.

William Walker

One of the most amazing and capable Americans ever, was born in Tennessee in 1824.  William Walker was a gifted student.  He excelled in all his studies and graduated from the University of Nashville (a precursor of Vanderbilt University) at age 14.  He then went on to study medicine and received a medical degree in Philadelphia.  Later on he traveled to New Orleans and studied law.  He soon got bored with these pursuits and in 1849 he joined the gold rush in California.

But soon even this adventure was not enough for him and he was soon working as a reporter in San Francisco,  One night sitting in a bar and talking to friends he came up with the idea of invading the west coast of Mexico.

With 45 men he invaded Baja California and captured the capital and declared the free republic of Sonora.  The Mexican government took notice and sent a force to kick him out.  Back in the US he was charged with inciting a war but such was his charm that a jury took only 8 minutes to acquit him.

He wasn’t done yet.  He had a bigger bolder plan.  Nicaragua was in the middle of a civil war and needed mercenaries.  Walker assembled a force of 300 men and landed in Nicaragua.  Once there he defeated the federal army and set up a local as president.  Walker ruled in all but name.

He angered the locals by re-establishing slavery and trying to impose English as the official language.  Walker’s idea was to expand his newly won empire around the Gulf and establish what was known in the South as the “Golden Circle”.  A ring of slave owning states and countries around the Gulf Of Mexico that included the Old South, Mexico, Cuba, and northern South America.

The local Nicaraguan people resented being made unwilling pawns in Walker’s grandiose plans.  This resentment soon boiled over and a rebellion to oust Walker soon began to take shape and got support from other Central American nations.

Walker got in contact with Cornelius Vanderbilt to set up a route to cross passengers from ships in the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean.  This would make millions for Vanderbilt.  But Walker got greedy and tried to offer the same deal to Vanderbilt’s rivals.

Angered by this, Vanderbilt got the US government to declare Walker a pirate and he also funded the Nicaraguan rebels to kick Walker out.  Soon an army of Central American troops banded together and kicked Walker out.  In fact the Anniversary of this battle is still celebrated in Costa Rica.

Walker decided to try his luck once more and with a force of men invaded Honduras.  This time his luck ran out.  The British had a colony next door called British Honduras (now Belize) and did not like Walker causing trouble.  So the Royal Navy seized Walker and turned him over the Honduran government who promptly had him shot.

It’s hard to imagine that men with such grandiose dreams once dared to act on these dreams and nearly got away with it.  How might the present look like if these empires had been allowed to flourish.

male vanity

Social media lives from the advertising revenue that they generate.  I can usually block most of it on my desktop or laptop but it comes straight through on my tablet and smartphone.  Ads for local businesses, for services, and for goods.  I try to ignore most of it.

Lately though they’ve been bombarding me with ads for hair restoration products and services.  Maybe it’s due to my age bracket or maybe their advertising algorithms are sophisticated enough to note my receding hairline on my profile picture.  Whatever the case may be, it finally made me curious enough to look into it.

I’ve known for a long time that it was genetically probable for my hairline to recede as it’s a prevalent condition for the men on both sides of my family. My nephews however seem to have escaped the curse so if I had a son he would have probably escaped this as well.

Oh well.

As I said I always figured it would be inevitable.  So I’ve pretty much expected it and learned to accept it.  My hair has never been all that important to me anyways.  I’ve always kept my hair trimmed short as it never looked good long.  Nowadays it looks even worse if I let it go for too long.  So I’ve learned to ask for the simple short back and sides and to trim up the top.  Other than that I really don’t care all that much about my hair.

When I was growing up hair restoration consisted mainly of elaborate toupees and wigs and very primitive hair transplant operations.  Minoxidil came along in the early 90s and gave limited but definite results.  All of these options were horrendously expensive and seemed impractical to me, so I ignored them.

Things in this field have changed in the last 20 years so I decided to do some independent research.

Firstly are wigs, weaves, and toupees.  Basically artificial covers for bald spots.  Some groups claim that they’re undetectable, some people snicker and say no hairpiece is ever totally undetectable.  I’ve seen ads and actual people and to me they look terrible.  They need regular maintenance and replacement and some say they actually promote balding, though they’re not too clear on how.

Next is surgery.  Transplants used to look horrendous, even in “successful” transplants back in the early days.  The technique has been refined and results do look better nowadays.  After some operations you will actually lose hair at first before it starts growing again.  The whole process can take between 6 months to a year.  And of course as it is a surgical procedure it is extremely expensive.

Then there are the drugs.  Minoxidil and Propecia.  Minoxidil seems to be the more widespread of the two.  The effects are limited.  I mean you won’t have flowing locks of hair sprouting overnight.  The effects usually take about 4 months to occur and you may actually lose some hair in the intervening time.  You will most likely get some results but they won’t be overwhelming.  The main problem however is that if you stop taking the drug then the effects wear off in a month or two.  So you’re stuck taking this for life.  I priced the drug and found that at best it would be $120 per year for life.

I look at my hairline in the mirror and see what I have left.  Not great but not the worst either.  All of this new information pretty much reinforces my previous belief that I am going to leave things as they are and let nature take its course.  Once my hairline recedes too far back I may even get rid of the rest and go totally bald.

I have more important things to worry about than this.

speak up, quiet down

I find personal communications to be extremely important to most things that I do.  If I can’t express myself properly to others around me then it really doesn’t matter how good my ideas are. No one will listen to them.

I feel that my main problem is that my voice is too high-pitched and quiet. I don’t believe that gives my ideas enough weight or gravitas. I often find that I get much better results when I present my arguments in a written form.

If I find that I must discuss an issue orally, specially with people who I don’t know I find that I must force myself to deepen my voice and speak more forcefully.  This “voice” seems to fit my appearance and personality a little better than my normal speaking voice.  The voice lends the necessary force to my words and imbues them with the importance that they deserve.

At the same time though I don’t like to use this ‘voice’ when dealing with people I know on a personal level.  They seem more reluctant to open up about themselves if they feel that I might dominate the discussion.  So in those situations I tend to quiet down and let them carry the conversation.

I hope to one day refine and find a happy medium that I can adopt and don’t have to “assume”.  Something that I don’t have to don and find natural enough to wear every day.

conspiracies I

Most people in the world see only the surface of events.  We can accept simple explanations of events and be satisfied and indeed most news is as reported.  The But throughout time there have been groups and individuals that have tried to change the course of events by acting in secret.  Then of course there are events that don’t seem to fall into a simple category and beg for a more elaborate explanation.  These are the conspiracies that I will address in this series.

So, lets start with some conspiracies that are actually real and did happen and later on we will discuss some more contemporary unproven conspiracies.

Lets start 400 years ago with the Guy Fawkes conspiracy.

At the beginning of the 17th century Britain was a religious powder keg.  Catholics and protestants were openly fighting and jockeying for power.  King James I had just ascended to the throne and angry Catholics plotted against him and the English parliament.  Feelings were still raw over the reign of Tudor Dynasty.

when James ascended to the throne there were immediately 2 plots to remove him and to put a catholic monarch on the throne.  Both plots failed and the Spanish became reluctant to continue plotting.  So the CIA was not the first spy agency to try to subvert a foreign government.

Oddly enough most of these plots failed due to the efforts of Francis Walsingham who ran Britain’s first intelligence service and who made current efforts by the NSA to intercept private communications look benign by comparison.

So we have a case of one spy agency trying to do some very unethical things aimed at removing a lawful ruler from power, being foiled by another spy agency doing some very unethical things concerning privacy rights to stop them.  weird.

Guy (or Guido) Fawkes was a catholic convert that along with the Wright brothers formed a plot to overthrow the government.  Guy had been a soldier in the continental religious wars and was an expert with explosives.

Fawkes appealed to the Spanish to invade England but got no support.  Along with the Wrights and Roger Catesby, he formed a plot to strike a shocking blow and force the Spanish to act.

They rented a building next to parliament and began mining a tunnel under parliament and got into the basement and filled it with explosives.  This was in the carefree days when one could dig mines in the middle of London for no reason at all and purchase large quantities of gunpowder.

One member of the group however (unknown to this day) wrote a friend, a Lord Monteagle, to stay away from parliament on November 5th.  This Lord was no fool and alerted the proper authorities.

Guards arrived just in time to see Guy with torch in hand about to blow up the building.  He was caught, tried, and basically tortured to death.

For years this event has been celebrated as Guy Fawkes day in Britain, and the more serious aspects of the event have been forgotten or glossed over.  Until its become almost a joke.

I have to wonder what history will make of the current round of religious wars sparked by 9/11.  Will we as a species gloss over, and forgive each other and look back on this as a series of misunderstandings or will we keep these wounds open and fresh.

rain

The storm comes on.  Steadily approaching the house.  I wait with anticipation.   You can tell when it’s going to be a good one.  Taste it in the air.  Rain, a good hard rain, has an earthy sharp smell.  I don’t need anything more than a whiff of that scent to know that it’s coming.

A steady patter at first.  The best storms build up slowly but surely over time.  I remember one Summer on the Outer banks of North Carolina.  A hurricane was coming in.  A near miss on the clean side of the storm.  Just a little category 1 so I knew I didn’t have much to worry.  I sat in a reclining couch with a glass of ice tea in the glass covered front porch of my grandparents house and just watched the storm roll in from the Atlantic over the next 3 hours.  Watched the waves rise out by the dock and the rain come down in sheets.  Somehow it was soothing watching it all.

The storm intensifies.  Distant thunder.  The old kids trick of counting between the lightning flash and the thunder. 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 miss….  The next time I barely finish 2 Mississippi before the rumble.  Getting closer.  I see in my mind’s eye a Spring afternoon in New Mexico on top of a mountain with the rest of my scouting friends.  In the distance we could see the lightning strikes of a storm hit the ground.  We could track the storm’s progress as the lightning strikes got closer and closer.  We knew we had to hurry down off this bald mountain and find cover before it arrived.

The storm has arrived.  Lightning in its full glory with thunder accompanying it immediately.  The lights flicker on and off nervously.  Finally as a particularly close bolt lands they go totally off.  Lightning itself is purple when it’s up close.  Driving the back roads between College Station and Houston one Saturday morning.  Miles from anywhere.  No choice but to keep driving.  Literally no one around to ask for help or shelter.  Ahead of me a tree next to the road gets hit.  Less than twenty feet away.  My eyes are saturated by the brightness of the lightning bolt.  A purple after glow dances across my field of vision and I have to struggle to stay on the road.  Wonderstruck by how vivid it was. I don’t even remember the boom of the thunder.

The storm abates.  Somewhat sad to see something so mighty patter out into a measly drizzle.  So tame now compared to what it was moments ago.  Walking cross the polo fields of A&M trying to get home.  No car, no ride, no other way to get home but walk in the storm.  The driving rain lashing at my face stings.  It’s pitch black out.  The only light coming from the lightning.  In the distance the lightning makes all sorts of crazy patterns as it dances in the skies.  Thunder making everything shake.  Every inch of me soaked in rain.  Nothing for it but to put my head down and walk on.  As I get to my apartment complex the rain suddenly stops, the skies open up and a small shaft of sun comes through the clouds.  I have to stop and laugh.  All that drama for nothing.  If I’d waited half an hour I could have been dry right now.

 

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”                                      – Macbeth

 

Dreamers of the day – book review

Last weekend marked the 100th anniversary of the assassination of arch-duke Franz Ferdinand that precipitated the First World War.  In many ways we still suffer the aftermath of that war and the peace settlement afterwards.  The peace treaties signed after the war sowed the seeds of future wars for the next three generations and many of the problems we have in eastern Europe, the middle east, and southern Asia are a result of that so-called peace.  This reminded me of a book review I did a few years ago.

 

I rarely do book reviews since most people don’t like the type of books that I like.  But I decided to do one on this novel I recently finished since its so poignant to our world situation and due to the writer’s easy style of writing that made it enjoyable to soak up history.

Dreamers of the day (by Mary Doria Russel) is a novel set just after World War I in Ohio.  The narrator’s family had all just died of the massive flu epidemic of 1919.

Many people have all but forgotten how devastating that flu epidemic really was.  This plague was easily as globally devastating as the war was and reminds us that as mighty as humans can be that nature can be just as mighty.  Russel’s vivid descriptions of the disease itself and of all the deaths it caused really gave the reader a sense of the scope of this outbreak.

After she recovers from the flu and finds that her entire family is now dead she must decide what to do.  Being left alone in the world she decides to take the money she has inherited from her parents and visit Cairo to meet a friend of her late sister’s that just happens to be Lawrence of Arabia.

She arrives just in time for the Cairo peace conference of 1921.  The interesting bit (at least to me) is that this is the time and place where all the troubles and all the headaches we have right now in the middle east were created.

Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait.  How the Europeans carved up the middle east into their own little kingdoms just for the hell of it.  Never mind what the locals wanted or what was best for them.

I find it odd that nearly 100 years later were still paying for the mistakes made at one little meeting and not just paying for these mistakes but seemingly making things worse.  It’s clear from the narrator’s descriptions that the main players at the meeting knew that what they were doing was wrong but they could not see beyond their self-interest to do something else.  Unfortunately all too familiar and all too relevant in today’s world.

The ending of the novel is a bit of a let down and delves into the fantastical but overall it is a very enjoyable historical novel.

sports empathy

I suppose I get it now.

The glazed looks, the ho-hum attitude, the feeling that you’d rather hear about anything else.  The way I feel after people on social media or people around me go on about the World Cup.

I have to admit it has created a bit of a buzz this go around.  Not just the guys that are full-time soccer fanatics but even everyday sports nuts have been discussing it.  With basketball season over and baseball going through the long dull summer season there is not much sports news out there so this neatly fills the gap in sports news until football starts in early September.

I have to say right off-hand that I really don’t like soccer.  I find it a bit of a toss-up between golf and soccer as to which is the more boring sport (golf has a slight lead at the moment).  I don’t get at all what the big deal is.  A couple of people will rehash old plays, and referee decisions, or talk about this player or that and I have to poke myself to stay awake.

Then the other day it hits me.  This is what people around me feel like when I go on about college football.  They don’t care about the fine points of the game or the peculiarities of the sport or any of it.  They’re being nice in that they don’t tell me to shut up.

I suppose we all have our own little sport that we love and love to discuss.  We also all have our long-suffering friends and relatives that do their very best to keep from walking off when we start going on and on about it.

What can we do to keep up our own interest and subtly share it with the world while not annoying others around us?  Not a heck of a lot really.  You never know who is going to react positively to your conversation and join in.  I think that’s why we go on and on about these things.

The only thing we can really do is what we’ve been doing on the receiving end.  Grin and bear it.

The Rover – movie review

Standard Spoiler – This discusses details of the movie The Rover.  If you don’t want to know what happens then stop here

 

Last week I posted on Facebook that “The rover is the Australian version of The road and makes the Mad Max movies seem quaint by comparison“.  The more I think about it, the more apt the comparison is.

The movie is set in the near future after what is described as “an economic collapse”.  Most people will immediately equate this with the Mad Max movies but really this comparison isn’t too accurate.  The Mad Max franchise is set after a nuclear war and a total collapse of civilization.  The Rover is set after what might be termed a great depression.  Although things are bad, they haven’t totally collapsed.

But don’t kid yourself, things are terrible.  The film was shot to make the barren outback terrain look even more bleak and desolate and to give the viewer a feel for a world that has taken a serious wrong turn.

Eric, the main character, has just pulled into what passes as a bar in the middle of nowhere and is having a drink.  He says nothing to anyone in the bar and drinks quietly.  He seems quite detached and apart from everyone around him.  All of a sudden, three men in a truck crash nearby.  Eric takes no notice.

The 3 men pile out of the truck.  They appear to be thieves or robbers.  They break into Eric’s car and take off with it.  Eric rushes out to see his car drive off and gets into the smashed truck.  Somehow he starts it and takes off after the men.  He catches up to the robbers and confronts them, demanding his car back.  The robbers beat him savagely and leave.

When he comes to, Eric continues his pursuit.

Meanwhile at the scene of the robbery a young man is shown getting up.  He is the 4th robber that was left behind.  He has been shot but is still alive.  He appropriates a police truck and takes off.

Eric comes across a roadside market and asks if anyone saw the robbers.  No one has.  He asks if anyone has a gun for sale.  A midget does and offers him a pistol for a large sum of money that Eric doesn’t have so Eric casually murders the midget and takes the gun.

At this time the 4th robber, Rey, shows up barely alive.  Eric takes him to a doctor in the outback and gets him patched up.  The doctor is really a veterinarian.  She keeps dogs in her surgery and Eric is oddly fascinated by this.  Some of the midget’s friends arrive and are looking for revenge.  Eric kills all 3 of them and he and Rey continue on looking for the robbers.

They stop for the night in a small town.  Rey sees a soldier on the street and hides in a hotel room.  He hears a knock on the door and shoots his gun.  He finds he has accidentally killed a little girl. The shots draw the real soldier and a firefight ensues.  Eric hears the gunfire.  He casually strolls up behind the soldier and murders him.

Eric has no empathy at all for anyone.  All he is focused on is getting his car back.

Rey on the other hand has softened and has come to accept Eric as his leader.  He tells Eric where to go and together they set out to find the robber’s hideout.  They spend the night in an abandoned factory where Eric is found by soldiers and arrested for the murders he has committed.

Rey could easily leave him behind but decides to rescue Eric.  At  the soldier’s camp Eric admits to other murders that he has committed and that he doesn’t care if he lives or dies only that he find his car.  Rey bursts in and kills the soldiers and saves Eric.

Finally they find the robber’s hide out.  Eric surprises 2 of the robbers while Rey holds his brother at bay.  The two brothers pull guns on each other and argue.  Finally Rey’s brother shoots him.  Eric kills the two men he had captured and proceeds to kill Rey’s brother.

In an act of remorse he takes all the bodies and douses them in gasoline and burns them as a sort of funeral pyre.

Eric drives off in his car. He goes out into the deep desert and opens the trunk of the car.  Inside is the reason why he was so obsessed with the car.  Inside is a blanket with a body.  A dog.  He takes out a shovel and buries it.

I found the film’s stark and brutal exterior shots fit perfectly with the grim and gritty reality of a world that was meaner and more vicious than the one we live in.  The movie violence is understated and nowhere near as spectacular as the Mad Max movies but somehow that makes the scenes seem that much more intense.

Eric is this brutalized and disconnected character that doesn’t care about anything at all except burying his only friend and he is determined to do that no matter what happens.

I found that this stark reality and determination made this film much more powerful than any of the dystopian movies I have previously seen.  Not a happy movie but something I would recommend seeing.

 

 

Why I don’t support pressuring the Redskins to change their name and why they should do it

It’s no secret that I am no fan of censorship in any form.  I do not agree with any forms of restriction on speech in any format.  Whether it’s censorship in some sort of art form or in actual words.  Using the threat of force or law to alter or diminish speech is wrong no matter what the intention.

Many people will say that when the subject becomes objectionable that it becomes difficult to justify my stance on free speech.  People will say that some things need to be curtailed or dissuaded for the greater good of society as a whole.  Another argument is that pragmatism demands that although ideally we should be allowed to say what we want that reality demands that some sacrifices be made for the greater good.

These are the arguments of those that already have made up their minds and are just casting about for an excuse to justify censorship.

Nowhere is there a greater need to allow free expression than in those things that we deem objectionable.  The unpopular opinion, mindset, or idea needs to be present and readily accessible in the public discussion.  It may seem a small, insignificant point to exclude those ideas that we don’t like but any disruption to the stream of ideas that are available to the public creates a rift, a chasm that will ripple outwards towards other ideas that you may agree with.  Maybe not today or tomorrow but eventually.

If for no other reason these ideas have to be expressible and accessible to future generations at the very least as educational examples of the way that humans can be cruel to each other and may be cruel again in the future.  The key to not committing the errors of the past is to study them in the future.

Now as to the Redskins football team in particular, why should they voluntarily change their names?  Well, the very property that they seek to protect (the name, the logo, etc) is now damaged beyond repair.  It’s now well established that a large number of people find the name objectionable and that they consider it to be something hurtful and downright insulting.

The fan base that treasures the brand is going to age and slowly disappear over time.  The younger fan base will not support the brand and as a result they will lose fan support.

The pragmatic argument to change the brand is that it is no longer tenable or desirable to keep.  Changing the brand to something else is the smart course of action to maintain the fan base of support and keep the franchise going for the long-term.  But whatever they do, they should do it on their own.

 

 

 

 

responding to blogs

I probably spend way too much time reading other blogs.

It’s fascinating to see how other people think and I find it special that they’re willing to share those thoughts in a forum where not just they or their friends and family can read but where perfect strangers can come in and read and respond to the writer.

The comment section is where readers can come in and interact with the writer and maybe extend the conversation in ways that not even they thought about.  I think it’s a duty of the reader to respond in a meaningful way.

 

Don’ts

1.  The “me too” response.  Like buttons and favorite buttons exist for a reason.  Use them.  Don’t just parrot what some other reader has already responded with.

2. The grandma or bro response.  I really hate one sentence or one phrase responses.  They’re the equivalent of grandma’s “that’s nice, dearie” or a bro-dude saying “cool story, bro”.  Not just meaningless but downright condescending.

3. The secondary blog.  Something I’m guilty of myself.  Take a look at your response.  If it’s longer than the original post then you should probably should make a blog of your own on your own blog and link it to this other person.  Just rude to steal the spotlight.

4. Straying off topic.  Happy that you’ve had life experience but if it has nothing to do with the topic then it’s meaningless.

 

Do’s

1.  Add something to the dialogue.  Think of this as you having a discussion with the blog writer.  Exchange ideas, make this an interactive experience.

2.  Really try to listen.  Ingest what they’re saying before responding.  Read it over a few times and let it sit for a day or two if necessary.

3. Don’t be shy about maybe being wrong.  You’re here to learn after all.

 

Responding to blogs should be something that you enjoy and that benefits you.  More importantly it’s a way to reach out to another person and to start-up a really meaningful conversation.