Strings-n-Things

I admittedly have a very narrow understanding of science… mostly because to be a true scientist requires levels of mathematical knowledge that I just can’t wrap my mind around. But I do enjoy reading and watching “pop culturilized” versions of scientific concepts. I recently posted a blog about my fascination with evolution as explained by prolific and eloquent authors such as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker. But lately my real fascination has come from the world of physics.

My intrigue began when I saw the movie What the Bleep Do We Know, which gives a very trippy yet accessible primer on the nature of Quantum Theory (though I thought the movie suffered by turning into too much of a new age “self-help” commercial a la The Secret). Less than a month after watching What the Bleep, I was hired to write a classroom video series about Quantum Theory. That’s when I realized that the movie really REALLY oversimplified the theory. I had to learn QT from the ground up and it wasn’t easy. I literally read the book they gave me about ten times from beginning to end and went through about five drafts of the scripts before I finally started to grasp not only the ideas but their implications. A few months later, the same company hired me to write another series about Relativity and the learning process began all over again. Briefly, for the uninitiated, Quantum Theory and Relativity are two very different aspects of physics. Overly-simply put, QT deals with the world of the very very small (atoms, electrons, quarks, etc) while Relativity deals with the world of the very very large (planets, galaxies, black holes, etc). The problem is that the two theories don’t jive with each other. Those equations and experiments that produce nice neat and tidy results when examining the forces of black holes, produce completely ludicrous results when examining the movements of electrons. And vice versa. In a universe that is supposed to obey strict, orderly and well-defined laws, the fact that there isn’t one universal set of equations to govern the very large and the very small has, quite frankly, been driving scientists batshit for the better part of the last century.

Enter String Theory. For the last thirty or forty years, this has been THE THEORY that was supposed to unify the two worlds. I’m not going to go into all the aspects of it (there is an awesome NOVA series online that breaks it all down), but overly simply put, the theory states that all matter and energy is made not of particles or waves but of infinitesimally small vibrating strings. Right now the theory is based entirely on complex (excruciatingly complex) math. There’s no way to test it simply because there’s no microscope powerful enough to observe something so small as a “string”. But the math, if it’s accurate, does two things. First of all, it seems to prove, mathematically, a lot of the trippy, f---ed up, whacked-out theories about parallel universes and diverging timelines that I have personally come up with over the years (often under the influence of THC). But more importantly for the world at large, String Theory seems to do what scientists have been hoping for by linking Relativity with QT… albeit with one caveat: the only way it works is if there are more dimensions than the four we know about.

Aside from one version of string theory (which puts the number of dimensions at 26) almost every other version puts the number at a much more familiar value: 10. Ten dimensions! If this turns out to be true, how freakin’ cool would that be? That would mean that the entire universe operates on a number that is the very basis for our entire numerical system. And the only reason that 10 is the basis for our entire numerical system is almost quaintly simple: because we have ten fingers. The bible says God made us in His image. Is that a literal truth? Does God look like a man? Or is God simply a Being of numbers and perfection – a 10^th dimensional being? Since He is considered to be All and Everything, is He essentially the embodiment of every dimension… numbering 10? Did he give us ten fingers to somehow represent that fact? We always think of Heaven as being “up in the sky.” Maybe Heaven won’t involve a three-dimensional “up”. Maybe Heaven (or Nirvana or Enlightenment) will mean rising to a higher dimensional plane. The Bible says that at the end of the world we will become like Jesus. Maybe that means we’ll be elevated from our three dimensions to something “higher” and more closely resembling God.

I can remember while studying for the Relativity series, reading something about the expansion of the universe. Again, overly-simply put, there were three ways the universe could have expanded immediately following the Big Bang. There could have been too little “bang”, causing all the density of matter to almost immediately collapse back into itself. Or there could have been too much “bang” causing all that matter to fling so far and so fast that it never had the chance to coalesce into galaxies, stars and solar systems. And then there’s the third way it could have gone. A perfectly balanced “bang” that allowed everything to fling outward and yet still come together into the order we see now. Physicists equate this to the idea of balancing a pencil on its tip. Theoretically it’s possible that you could do that. But you’d have to balance it absolutely perfectly and hope that no outside force (wind, bumping the table, a truck driving by on the street) altered its positioning by even a fraction of a millimeter. The Universe apparently formed like that. Perfectly. HOW THE HELL? Scientists check and recheck the math and they say it just doesn’t make sense that the universe should have formed this way. Like seriously, nothing in nature has ever formed in such harmony. I’m paraphrasing and probably (again) oversimplifying the matter, but the fact remains, the Universe formed PERFECTLY! How do you even begin to wrap your mind around how utterly amazing that is?

I find it disappointing that so many people interpret science and faith to be such disparate and incompatible concepts. For people of deep religious faith, so many scientific theories amount to little more than heresy, serving only to take glory away from God. On the flip side of that coin, it seems like a lot of scientists think that even entertaining the possibility of a supreme being somehow detracts from the beauty, wonder and logic of the Universe… and ultimately makes one a bad scientist. Yet so much of what I see in both science and religion seem to compliment each other in ways that are almost illogically perfect. It boggles my mind that more people don’t make this leap.

Insert Rocky Horror Lyrics Here

I've been thinking about time travel a lot lately. Well really I've been thinking about higher dimensions in general a lot lately and time travel goes right along with that train of thought. To know why my brain has been going down this road check out the following video: Imagining the Tenth Dimension. For those of you who don't have the eleven minutes to invest (first of all, you're missing out, it's a total mind trip) the basic gist of this heady heady video is all about visualizing higher dimensions as a series of "points, lines and folds." As a quick example, imagine an ant traveling across a two-dimensional piece of paper. As far as the ant is concerned the paper is just a long flat surface. It walks in a straight line trying to come to the "end" of the paper just as we would fly a ship through space trying to get to the "end" of the universe. But if you used three-dimensional space, and folded that two-dimensional paper to another point on the sheet, you could essentially make that ant "jump" instantly from one point to another point in its universe. Similarly if you could "fold" three-dimensional space through the fourth dimension, you could jump instantly from one point in the universe to a point billions of light years away...

As most anyone who has a basic understanding of Einstein (or even basic science fiction physics) knows, the key to time travel lies in the fourth dimension. Time is the dimension that exists above the length, width and depth we all comprehend. It is the dimension that connects "space" as we know it now to "space" as it will be a minute from now. Or in its broadest sense it is the dimension that connects the Big Bang to the very end of the universe. In theory the ability to time travel exists in the ability to move through the fourth dimension in the same way we currently move through the third. But rather than driving down the street or taking an airplane to Australia or a rocket ship to the moon, we are taking a very different kind of highway through minutes, hours or millennia.

Different movies depict time travel in different ways. The one that comes to the mind of most people in my generation, of course, is the Back to the Future trilogy. In those movies, time travel is presented as an instantaneous transition. Doc Brown and Marty McFly jump thirty, seventy and a hundred years in a seamless leap. I don't quite get how that could happen. We can travel through three dimensions but it takes a finite amount of time. And it requires us to travel across the space in between. We can't just suddenly move from New Jersey to Australia. That would violate Einstein's theory of relativity that says nothing can move faster than the speed of light. So it would stand to reason that we can also not move through time without it taking a certain duration as we cross over all that time in between (unless, as the video says, we could "fold" instantly through the fifth dimension to whatever point in the fourth we wish). Of course then again, moving through space requires time, a higher dimensional measurement. So perhaps moving through time requires a higher type of measurement we haven't thought of.

Another thought. What would it be like to "see" in four dimensions? Well how would a theoretical two-dimensional being see us? Figure a piece of paper bisecting your body and a 2D guy looking at you. He'd only be able to see whatever length of body he happened to be aligned with. If the paper was bisecting you from top to bottom, he'd only see a "cross-section" of your 3D self: a line that changed from brown to flesh colored to the white of your shirt to the blue of your jeans. In order to comprehend your entire body, you'd have to move across the line of paper entirely. The 2D man would have to compile each cross-section into an overall picture of what you might look like. Similarly we as 3D people can only see "cross-sections" of the fourth dimension. For instance, as I sit writing this, I can only see the man sitting across from me as he exist in this exact second. If I were to see him "fourth-dimensionally" I would see essentially a blurred three-dimensional line of every movement he made before now and after now. This is a topic they discuss in Imagining the Tenth Dimension as well as in the book Slaughterhouse Five (where the main character gets "unstuck in time"). Seeing in four dimensions allows you to see every moment of a person's life all at once...

But this is where I get stuck… though I'm certain I've already lost most of you well before now. Would seeing in four dimensions allow me to see every moment of his life. Would I see him simultaneously as a baby and as a corpse? Or is it like three-dimensional space where I can only see the parts I am also a part of? While I certainly have the ability to see Australia (since I can travel through space to get there) I can't actually see it unless I physically go there. Similarly, will I only see this man's full fourth-dimensional self for the duration of moments that I am also a part of… the moments where he and I are in the same proximity? He has been sitting here in the hotel lounge since I arrived here with my laptop and perhaps before I leave he will at some point walk to the elevator. If I were to see him in four dimensions, would I only see him that far? That would make sense to me.

But what about people I see all the time? Every moment I'm with Lauren, would I see every moment of fourth-dimensional time we have shared? Or would I only see the beginning and end of each individual meeting? When I return to our room will I see her simultaneously from the moment we met through the moment we die? Or will I only see her from the moment I come through the door until the moment one of us leaves?

Then again, the ability to see every moment of somebody's life in four dimensions wouldn't require time travel at all. All of those moments would exist in the present. This is one of the ideas explored in Slaughterhouse Five. For people who can see all moments of a person's life, death is not something to be scared of since you can always see and interact with a dead person as they were when they were alive. You can see and experience past good times even when you are currently experiencing bad times. They all exist simultaneously. But it seems to me that seeing the fourth dimension in this way would probably require command of an even higher dimension. At least the fifth and possibly even the sixth. Because again, even though I exist in three-dimensions, I can't see every part of the third dimension… I'm limited by barriers such as walls, trees, the horizon and just pure distance. Being a part of the third dimension only means I can travel through it. But being able to see all of three-dimensional space at once would require the use of a higher dimension or perhaps a higher plane of existence. Likewise existing in the fourth dimension would only allow one to travel through time, not see the entire timeline at a glance.

Yes friends, these are the kinds of thoughts that keep me up at one-thirty on a Sunday night. I have no real conclusion to this so I simply leave you to your own thoughts and confusion.

(also, I'm certain there are countless typos in this post but I have no energy or brain capacity after all this to go back an edit… perhaps later.)

One of these things is EXACTLY like the other

I know this statement is going to elicit a "well duh" from a lot of you, but conservative talk radio just doesn't make sense anymore. Let me qualify that statement by saying that I don't actually listen to most of talk radio. Glenn Beck is about the only show I will listen to, mostly because he is the only one who doesn't seem to be just a Republican stooge. But even he seems to have gone along with a lunacy brewing amongst all the conservative pundits lately in the form of an all out irrational fear and hatred of Barack Obama.

Look I get that conservatives would be against Obama. He is, after all, a Democrat and a liberal one at that. It's not that they hate him that has me puzzled. It's that they hate him SO MUCH MORE than Hillary Clinton. Like seriously, a lot of these guys are leading me and a lot of other people to believe that come November if the Democratic primary falls in favor Hillary, they will actually be voting for her instead of their own candidate, John McCain. You get that? They actually prefer Hillary to a Republican! But if the Democratic primary falls the other way, holy crap get ready for the apocalypse because apparenly if Obama becomes president everything in the world is just going to fall apart.

Can some rational person please please PLEASE explain this to me, because I have listened to both candidates. I've heard about where they stand on the issues. And save for a few minor details and the minutae of rhetoric, I see zero difference between the Hillary and Obama. Like none. Nothing. Zip. Don't believe me? These two graphics are from the very informative website ontheissues.org. It breaks down the political philosophy of every single senator and congressman based strictly on their voting record. Conservatives are trying to say that Obama is even more liberal than Hillary. Really?

Seriously, do you see a difference, because I really don't. Again, I get conservatives hating Obama. I just don't get how they can hate him so much more than Hillary. Really it's just a feat of logic that conservative radio has managed to dig down deep inside its soul and actually find positive things to say about a Clinton period. Isn't that a sign of the apocalypse right there? Hm... maybe they have a point about this Obama guy.

Science and Faith: The Real Missing Link

I preface this whole blog with the following statement. I am a Jesus-loving, God-fearing Christian with a firm belief that everything that we see (and a whole bunch of stuff that we have yet to see) was created by a sentient God.

That being said, I LOVE reading about evolution. I personally find the concept fascinating. And I cringe whenever I hear cases going before the Supreme Court where a well-meaning Christian dolt is trying to force a school district into teaching Intelligent Design. It’s not that I don’t believe in Intelligent Design. Quite the contrary. But I don’t understand how any reasonably non-moronic person can fail to grasp the essential difference between a science and a philosophy. You cannot test the existence of a Creator by scientific means – at least not yet – and I challenge anybody to state otherwise. Unfortunately for we Creationists, as of now evolution is the foremost scientific theory dealing with life on Earth and there is plenty of scientific evidence to back it up. And when a theory has that solid a foundation, the burden really does fall on dissenters to disprove it. And while, yes, there are flaws in the theory – which I think should be mentioned in textbooks right alongside the evidence – the fact is Creationists are going to have to present a bit more evidence of their own before they get rational school boards to allow a philosophy to be taught inside a science lab.

The book that first turned me on to how intriguing the science of evolution can be was the book How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker. Prior to that, I never really knew much about the topic beyond what I and everybody else learned in 10^th grade biology – which basically amounted to vestigal organs, a bit about dominant and recessive genes and something to do with finches and the size of their beaks. But what Pinker does in his book is to essentially “reverse engineer” a human mind, showing how every aspect of human life, from the way we see, to the way we think, to the way we interact, to the emotions we feel, to the way we “made up” the concept of “God” were all shaped by our evolutionary past. While the book was probably the hardest thing I have ever read voluntarily, it brings up a lot of fascinating points to ponder, even if you don’t fully agree with the concept of evolution (which I’m still not sure I do… for reasons I’ll get into later). It was a truly life-changing book that left me wanting to know more.

Well it’s been a couple years but I finally took another plunge into that wacky world of Charles Darwin. I just finished the book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins – perhaps the most famous Darwinist short of Darwin himself. In a nutshell, Dawkins presents evolution and natural selection from the point of view of the gene. He paints a probable picture of how life might have originated in the “primordial soup” and shows how DNA has become the very thing that controls every aspect of life everywhere on this planet today. One can’t help but conjure up images of The Matrix as Dawkins talks about a gene’s selfish, almost maniacal need to survive in the form of exact replicas and copies of itself – passing itself down through generations upon generations of engineered “survival machines” (a.k.a. “us”). Yes, according to Dawkins, humans, plants, insects, fungus, everything on earth that can be considered “alive” are nothing more than just elaborate “vehicles” designed for one reason and one reason only: to protect genes for long enough to produce more copies. Of course, unlike the machines in The Matrix, everything the genes do is unconscious and brought about purely by random chance. Nothing happens for a reason. It’s all accidental. Genes do nothing by effort or foresight. If a mutation gives its “survival machine” an edge on a competition, it’s purely by mistake, with natural selection giving it blind creedence.

Even as somebody who believes in God, it’s hard not to be swayed by people like Dawkins and Pinker. Beyond being brilliant scientists in their respective fields, they have such a way with words and metaphors that they break down highly mathematical concepts and make them so a completely science-illiterate person such as myself can understand. (Dawkins in particular weaves such stimulating prose, producing such droll and compelling lines like “Sex: that bizarre perversion of straightforward replication.”) What I often find myself saying is, “If evolution really happens, then it makes total sense that this is the way it would work.” But there is one thing that I have yet to glean from anything I’ve read about evolution thus far. It’s the one thing that gives me hope that the theory might one day be disproved: TIME.

There is an adage that if you give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time, they will eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. With just a bit of trivial mathematical understanding, this makes perfect sense. Sure, give anything an infinite amount of time and they’ll write just about any damn thing you want. The evolution of complex organisms such as ourselves seems to evoke that adage, with each successive generation (from primordial soup to all modern life forms) representing another “monkey keystroke”, and the long and intricate spiral of DNA representing their Shakespearian text of choice. Except in this analogy, the number of monkeys is FINITE, as is the duration of typing time. In this analogy, the monkeys haven’t had all the time in the universe to produce their magnum opus. And rather than banging out the complete works of Shakespeare just once, they have apparently done it a couple billion times – once for every complex species that has ever lived. How the hell does that happen, even once, purely by accident? Especially when, as Dawkins says, most mutations (which are necessary for evolution to happen) end up being a detriment to the new offspring, resulting in its death to natural selection. As near as I can see, in my admittedly puny scientific mind, there just doesn’t seem to have been enough time for evolution (as Darwinists present it) to have produced the insanely complex and diverse forms of life that exist today. The only thing that makes logical (albeit not scientifically verifiable) sense is if evolution was at least guided by an intelligent being.

I know to some Christians, even this is an unacceptable view of life on this planet. Anything short of the divine creation of the sun, the moon, and every living being on earth – completed in seven days less than 10,000 years ago – is a sinful mockery of God. I see their point, but I sometimes wonder if it’s necessarily an either/or thing. I personally look at evolution as being the “Helio-Centric Heresy” of our time. For those of you who flunked history, Galileo was nearly put to death for making the extremely sinful suggestion that it is the sun, not the earth, which is center of our universe. The faithful of that time thought it was a mockery of God to even suggest that we weren’t the very thing that all of Creation revolved around. Today we, of course, know the truth… turns out it was even worse than Galileo let on. But I daresay there isn’t a religious or secular person alive who thinks this scientific revelation in any way diminishes the power and majesty of God. And how silly do you think the scoffers of Galileo’s theory felt when they got to heaven and realized they had been invoking God’s name over a complete and total farce? I can’t help but wonder how many antagonists of evolution might end up getting to heaven and realizing the same thing. Yes, evolution may be wrong. We may have all simply appeared here in the blink of an eye. The devil may have even placed all those fossils just to throw us off the straight and narrow path. But won’t we feel silly to have spent so much time saying, “God does NOT work that way,” only to get to heaven and have Him say, “Uh… yes I do.”

Ben Stein is coming out with a documentary this year called EXPELLED which explores a growing group of scientists who are using actual science to try and prove Intelligent Design. Further, it explores how the science community as a whole has been systematically silencing anyone who even suggests that Darwin might have been wrong. While I’m initially leery of the film (based on research I’ve done into the blacklisted scientists) I am actually very intrigued to see what kind of new experiments are being done in this field. Short of a gloriously unexpected scientific revelation (like realizing our carbon dating methods were WAY off or, ya know, somebody inventing a time machine to actually go back into the primordial soup) I can’t imagine evolution will be disproved in our lifetime.

But that’s okay. The way I see it, somewhere between Science’s inherently flawed interpretation of the universe (the foremost theory in physics today can’t even be tested!) and Religion’s inherently flawed interpretation of the Bible (nearly every passage, according to scholars, can have as many as seventy possible interpretations!)… somewhere between these two extremes of thought lies the Truth. God is in there. Science is in there. There is room for both. We just need to figure out where they meet. Or not. When the end of our life comes and we meet Jesus in the sky, will any of these trivialities really matter? I doubt it. As such, I will continue to read about evolution (or quantum physics, or string theory or any other “ungodly” science), allowing myself to be fascinated and filled with wonder – while at the same time remaining skeptical of the evidence… the way any good scientist should.

Anyone? Anyone? Anyone know who Darwin is?

Today I clicked on perhaps my very first "targeted Google ad" ever, and found something profoundly interesting. Apparently Ben Stein ("Beuller... Beuller...") has made a documentary which is coming out later this year. The doc is called EXPELLED and it addresses a recent trend in academia whereby scientists, teachers, students and really anyone involved in the realm of academic thinking are ostracized for merely suggesting that Darwinism might be wrong. As someone who is an unapologetic Christian but who has read up on evolution and finds the ideas behind it intriguing and fascinating (if not necessarily foregone conclusions) I am very eager and curious to see this film.

I want to stress—and the website stresses over and over—that the aim of this film is NOT to preach Intelligent Design or to make a case against evolution. What it does is expose the “invisible hand” of “Big Science” which has been bullying otherwise intelligent researchers into accepting evolution as it is currently understood, or else. Well established scientists and college professors are being fired, denied tenure, and cut out of research funding simply for pursuing “fact” and “truth” no matter where the road may lead. It’s a trend that is disturbingly familiar in our current vernacular, something that transcends science and religion: anti-war voices being told to “just shut up” by conservatives or global warming skeptics being called “treasonous” by Al Gore acolytes just to name a couple.

If an idea or theory is self-evident why the need to discourage dissenting voices and research? No matter what your religious or scientific beliefs, if the idea of challenging the “Establishment” and encouraging “free thinking” intrigues you, then I encourage you to check out the film’s website. Watch the trailer and read the online literature. And when the movie comes out later this year, go see it with a truly open mind.

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/

How Ron Paul Cured My Apathy

I swore off politics over a year ago. Actually let me clarify: I swore off politicians over a year ago. Believe me, I've got opinions on just about every issue (global warming, healthcare, Michael Moore, Abu Ghraib, voting in general) that I'm always willing to share with anyone who will listen. There are all sorts of aspects about this country that I would like to see changed. The thing is, I've stopped believing that any real change would ever come about because of a politician. I mean did segregation end because of the politicians who were in office at the time? No, as near as I can tell it ended because the attitude of the public was finally starting to shift in that direction. Did the Cold War end because a Republican president figured out a way to bankrupt the Russian economy? No, it ended because the Russian way of government was inherently flawed and it bankrupted itself. Did our economy boom in the nineties because a Democrat took over as president? No, it boomed because the personal computer simplified entrepreneurship while the internet encouraged faster buying and selling. And did the Iraq War end because congress finally had a Democratic majority? No. In fact most of the Democrats who campaigned under the anti-war banner ultimately voted to keep funding the operation! As near as I can see, politicians don't tend to change things that aren't about to change anyway on their own.

As voters I think we understand this, at least subconsciously, which is why we tend to vote for politicians based more on what they believe than on what they'll actually do. We vote for somebody because they believe abortion should be abolished… even though they won't really push to overturn Roe vs. Wade. We vote for somebody because they think there should be a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage… even though they won't attend more than a token assembly on the matter. We vote for somebody because they oppose the war… even though they won't actually do anything to stop it when the vote comes up.

I have barely lent a moment's worth of attention to the presidential primaries these last several months. I figured all the candidates would be saying pretty much the same things anyway. The Republicans would emphasize the war on terror while the Democrats rallied us toward universal healthcare. The Red states would be placated with speeches about the 2^nd Amendment and the sanctity of marriage, while the Blue states would be whipped into a frenzy over global warming and taxes on the rich. Come November, I felt pretty confident that we would be deciding between two candidates who had been deemed "most electable" by their respective parties, but whose ideas wouldn't vary all that much from the status quo… or even from their opponent's talking points.

Then I started reading about Ron Paul. I'd heard his name mentioned before, mostly by conservative talkshow hosts who considered him to be the token fruitcake of the Republican Party. Even though he operates under the Republican banner, Ron Paul's voting record shows a philosophy centered more in Libertarian than Conservative thought. What's more, he apparently has no problem telling his compadres in the Grand Old Party exactly when and how he thinks they're wrong. And his ideas, doled out in convenient-for-TV sound bites, did sound ridiculous. I mean he wants to eliminate the income tax and not replace it with an alternative source of funding! He wants to cut back or completely dissolve various government agencies including the IRS, the FBI and the Department of Education! He thinks the federal government has no right to determine the legality of moral issues like abortion, drug use or even prostitution! And, perhaps most insanely, he wants to pull back all of our troops, not just from Iraq, but from every single foreign base we have! This guy is a Republican?!? I was ready to write Ron Paul off as just some political nut who would never make it past the primaries.

Still, there was something intriguing about a presidential candidate who was so unapologetically different from any of his opponents. More than anything, Ron Paul struck me as the kind of person who, given the chance, would actually follow through on his ideas… even if those ideas made him inherently "unelectable." Even though I didn't agree with everything he had to say (or even most of it), I went to the internet to learn more about him. I read about the issues on his website. I listened to his interviews on YouTube. I scanned the blogs that painted him in a good light and compared them against the ones preaching his insanity. And the more I delved into the logic behind his "crazy" ideas the more I found myself saying, "Hey, you know what, that actually sounds crazy enough to work."

Where will our country get money if we eliminate the income tax?
Well, eliminating the tax has to go hand-in-hand with cutting trillions of dollars from our budget by eliminating useless drains like our military presence overseas.

Won't pulling our troops back make the terrorists come fight us on our own soil?
It may briefly encourage the leaders and the true zealots. But if they can no longer point to an American base in their neighborhood and tell people, "That is the enemy!" it's going to be rather hard inspiring people to fly thousands of miles to blow themselves up.

But is he really going to cut education from the federal budget?
Well why not let the local districts decide how best to impart knowledge to the children of their particular demographics… as opposed to teaching everyone towards some federally (and subjectively) standardized test.

And he could actually pave the way for legalizing marijuana?
Hey, if a guy suffering from chronic pain can get relief from a ten-dollar bag of weed purchased in the free market, maybe it'll encourage the drug companies to stop their price gouging.

But how can the free market solve the entire healthcare crisis without government oversight?
When you look at it, the cost of healthcare didn't start going through the roof until the government got involved with HMO's during the seventies. Politicians are obviously incompetent with this sort of thing so why not go back to a working system?

The more I read, the more I watched, the more I listened, the more it became apparent that Ron Paul wasn't merely a "one issue" candidate. Rather, he seems to view all the issues as inextricably linked to each other. We need to cut federal programs like military and healthcare to retain enough money in the budget so that we no longer need the income tax… which will leave more money in the pockets of citizens to afford healthcare. By getting the government out of the global warming arms race, you let the market – with its inventors and entrepreneurs – find us a more efficient fuel source. The moment some privately held corporation can turn a lucrative profit by producing energy that is cleaner, cheaper and safer than oil, you better believe we'll be spewing less carbon into the air… which would eliminate our dependence on foreign oil… which would eliminate our need to police the Middle East… which, in turn, would save us trillions of dollars and produce fewer terrorists.

No wonder it's been difficult for the pundits to sum up Ron Paul in thirty-second sound bites! He's not suggesting falsely simple band-aids for individual problems. Instead he's proposing an entirely holistic approach to success, trusting that each and every reform (aided by nothing more than the spirit of capitalism) will naturally lend itself to the next, ultimately producing a cure for everything that ails us… well maybe not "everything", but a lot of things.

I can't tell you how long I've been waiting for a politician like this. A politician who understands that no issue exists in a vacuum. A politician who realizes that a strictly liberal or strictly conservative stance is not an effective way to solve complex issues. A politician who doesn't mind sounding crazy in thirty-second sound bites, but remains confident that the whole overall message will eventually get through to people… and that the message will appeal to a lot of them. What's more, this is a politician who doesn't sound like a politician, which I think I appreciate most of all. When somebody asks Ron a question, he doesn't launch into a circuitous line of rhetoric, striving for a happy balance of "electable ambiguity." He'll actually say, "Yes" or "No" before defining where that "yes" or "no" fits into his "big picture."

Even though my knee-jerk reaction has been to cringe at a lot of Ron Paul's ideas, I have found myself (quite unexpectedly, and in stages) agreeing with them wholeheartedly. Even more unexpectedly, I have found myself believing that this is a guy who will actually follow through on those ideas. That's right. After swearing off politicians altogether, I have found myself trusting in one to be my president. Oh the horror. I initially tempered that grinding shift of gears with the realization that Ron Paul would likely never make it past the primaries anyway. In an age where people want increasingly quick and easy fixes to their problems, a guy like Ron Paul, with all of his complex and un-sound-bite-friendly ideas, remains, as ever, unelectable.

But you know how buying a new car suddenly makes you notice the same make and model on the road everywhere you go? After deciding that Ron Paul was the kind of candidate I would actually vote for, I immediately discovered that I was hardly alone in my thinking. I started seeing his signs everywhere. I started hearing friends and family dropping his name into conversations. Even the talkshow hosts seemed to be giving him ample airtime now. According to news reports, even though Rudy, Mitt and Huckabee were routinely topping the official polls, Ron Paul somehow managed to raise more campaign money than any of them. To believe the buzz in forums like MySpace, YouTube and the always-lively blogosphere, Ron will likely command the entire market of Republicans (about 25% of them) who oppose the war, and may actually be the go-to candidate for all those "undecided" folks. The more I look into it, the more plausible it seems that this guy could be a real and viable competitor in the primaries, and not just someone with a small but vocal cult following.

I realized I could no longer be cavalier in my support of Ron Paul. If there was a legitimate chance that he could effect an upset victory in the Republican primary, well then it was my duty to help make it happen. I've donated money to the campaign. I'm registering Republican for the first time in my life so that I can vote in my state's primary. And I'm focusing as much effort as possible encouraging people to at least look into Ron Paul and see what he's about. It will require a bit of time and effort to understand the whole truth behind his positions. It will mean reading a few paragraphs on his website and not depending on those one-sentence blurbs from AOL's front page. It will mean watching an entire ten-, twenty- or even sixty-minute interview on YouTube, and not just those short-but-meaningless sound bites on Fox News.

The cynics and the pundits say the general public has neither the patience nor the interest to invest that kind of time into researching a candidate. The very fact that Ron Paul's ideas can't be expressed as TV-friendly blurbs would seem to be a crippling hindrance. Frankly I tend to think just the opposite. As a nation I think we're eager for somebody who is a bit more complex; somebody whose ideas can't be categorized with simplistic terms like "Red State" or "Blue State." We don't want to get into another election cycle where our only two choices for commander in chief are an apparent imbecile and a guy who can't seem to decide how he voted on something. I find it hard to believe that I'm the only one who has been waiting for a candidate like Ron Paul. I think there are a lot more like us out there.

I think my generation in particular has the unique desire and the ability to push for real change in this election year. We're in our mid-20's to late-30's – old enough to start caring about the issues, educated enough to sort out our own decisions, yet still young and idealistic enough to take a chance on something new and different. In a recent blog, I called this Generation X/Y hybrid "The MySpace Generation", and I defended our poor voting record and general apathy toward the current "Us and Them" state of politics:

Perhaps what looks like apathy is just "our generation" unconsciously biding its time, watching and waiting until "they" vacate the premises. We know there's nothing we can really do as long as "they" are still in control, so why waste "our" time and "our" energy on useless rallies and campaigns that will only serve to get another one of "them" elected?

I went on to suggest, completely tongue-in-cheek mind you, that perhaps MySpace would become "the platform where the new revolution begins." If numbers are anything to go by, that little joke may have been more prophetic than intended. Ron Paul's page on MySpace currently boasts over 107,000 friends. Compare that to frontrunners Rudy, Mitt and Huckabee, who have only 64,000 friends combined. There is a political passion running through the younger generation, and Ron Paul has tapped into it in a way that no other Republican has. And now that I'm on that bandwagon I can sense the momentum building. It's palpable and I'm daring to believe that we have not only a politician who is "crazy enough" to get the job done, but a fed up public who is ready and eager to embrace a little craziness.

I encourage everyone – but especially my proverbial "peeps" from the MySpace Generation – to spend an hour looking into Ron Paul. Look beyond the labels. Look beyond the sound bites. Look beyond the polls. Look at the big picture. And when you find yourself agreeing with his ideas for America (perhaps in spite of everything you previously believed) . Get registered now – not just as a voter, but as a Republican. Get out to the primaries and make your vote count for once by electing someone who promises real change and not more empty talking points. And while you're at it, encourage others to do the same thing. I think we can actually make a difference with the right person this time around – though it's going to require more than simply "friending" that person on MySpace.

So in the words of my generation: "Just Do It." Ron Paul cured my apathy. He made me believe again in the power of a politician. Maybe he can do the same for you. The Ron Paul revolution is on. Get in on it while there's still time.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED LINKS:

RonPaul2008.com - The official campaign site. Start by clicking on the Issues link and familiarize yourself with Ron's ideas.

The Ron Paul Library - Delve a little deeper into the issues with this archive of Ron Paul speeches and letters

The Google Interview - An hour-long dialogue with Google exec Elliot Shrage. Ron Paul takes the necessary the time to speak freely and fully about his stances on the issues.

The Glenn Beck Interview - A series of clips (5-10 minutes long) shot on December 18 where Ron once again has the time and freedom to express his views in more than just a sound bite.

Clip 1 - Our National Sovreignty Under Threat / A Grass Roots Majority
Clip 2 - The Economy and Government Spending
Clip 3 - The Currency Crisis / Eliminate the Federal Income Tax
Clip 4 - Iraq and the War on Terror
Clip 5 - Prosperity and the Power of the Free Market
Clip 6 - Ron Paul's Supporters
Clip 7 - Libertarianism and the Responbilitiy of Freedom

Hack me some global warming

I think of all the hack writers out there that America seems to love so much, Michael Crichton is my personal favorite. I say “hack writer” with all due respect. If you’ve read any of his books, you know that Crichton is a very intelligent, very well informed and very well researched man. And like the other hacks out there, Crichton simply uses the vehicle of fiction to present new and burgeoning ideas to the public in a way that is more palatable than a science book or lecture. Dan Brown uses the medium to present cult and religious ideas. Vince Flynn uses the medium to present the uncomfortable truth about the CIA and Black Ops. From a purely storytelling point of view, none of these guys are especially good writers. In fact if their stories didn’t incorporate some element of real life intrigue, nobody would even buy their books. Case in point: The DaVinci Code. This wasn’t a popular book because of its gripping narrative. It was popular because people were so intrigued by the new and scandalous ideas he was presenting… so much so that a lot of the public used nothing more than this work of fiction as the basis for arguing that Jesus and Mary Magdelene were married.

But as I said, out of all the hacks and bad storytellers, Crichton is my favorite. Yes, like those other hacks, I read his books more to learn about new ideas in a palatable way. The actual story is something I find myself slogging through as a necessary evil in order to glean the actual information he’s trying to present (the glaring exception to this rule being Jurassic Park, which ruled in every way possible. Even still, he does a better job than those other guys. First of all, there’s rarely a moment of dialogue that sounds contrived. The people speak like normal people, even when they are talking for multiple paragraphs about this scientific study or that misunderstood concept. His characters actually have a bit of depth to them. Even his villains have motivations for what they’re doing and aren’t mere stock characters who are just intrinsically evil. But most of all, I appreciate the fact that Crichton doesn’t feel the need to put in an obligatory but incredibly misplaced and often gratuitous sex scene – something those other hacks do with such uncomfortable, almost squeamish incompetence that you wonder if they’ve ever actually had sex before.

Anyway, that whole lead-up was to say that I just read another Michael Crichton book: State of Fear. This one is Crichton’s chance to express his thoughts on global warming. Like most of his other books, I found myself slogging through all the actual plot and story just to get to the parts where the characters would engage in debates about the science Crichton was presenting. And it doesn’t take you long to realize that Crichton really thinks the whole global warming movement is a bunch of crap. Pretty much every argument a global warming acolyte would throw out there as evidence, Crichton’s characters deftly smack down… with actual references and graphs, complete with footnotes to back it all up. By the time I got to the end of the book, I realized I didn’t actually need to read it. Pretty much all the points made in State of Fear were presented much more succinctly (without petty things like storytelling to get in the way) in a speech I’d read on Crichton’s website.

The basic gist is this: there is absolutely no consistent data indicating that global warming is actually happening. I could summarize several points here, but honestly, the tiny little bit of data I could regurgitate could just as easily be rebutted with rhetoric. Better that you go to his site, click on the speeches page and find the global warming speech yourself. It’s a long read (though certainly not the 500 pages of State of Fear) but it’s quite illuminating and Crichton backs up a lot of what he says with not only science but lessons from history. Besides, I’ve already presented a boatload of my own thoughts on global warming here and here.

One of the things that was in the book that you won’t find in the speech is a rant by an eccentric college professor about the politics of fear in this country – from where the book draws its name. Basically he says that if you look at the American media, the use of words like “catastrophe, crisis, disaster, dire, dreaded, unprecedented” has increased one thousand percent since 1985. In 1985 “catastrophe” was said on the news about as often as the word “budget.” But then the Cold War ended. The big fear of Russia and mutually assured destruction had been lifted, so there was nothing for those in power to use in order to keep the people afraid and in line. So they started making things up to be afraid of. DDT, food additives, foreign diseases, breast implants all became cause for alarm, even though the science was incomplete, and would later even prove to be false. According to this character, global warming is just the next in a long line of things designed to rally the public behind the easiest motivator of all: fear. And in ten years when the science finally catches up to everyone, it will be pushed to the side in favor of something else designed to scare the bejeezus out of us. But in the meantime, how much money will we waste on “solutions” that have no scientific viability; money that could have been used to feed god knows how many people.

Okay, I’m ranting. As I said, I’ve written my own thoughts on global warming before. Bottom line, check out Michael Crichton. His book. His speeches. It’s all good and will make you (gasp) think. He may be a hack, but he's very good at it.

An Inconvenient Following

I am seriously this close to being done with the whole Global Warming movement. I’m sure this will be an unpopular blog. Or who knows, maybe there is a quiet mob out there like me who will echo the sentiment. Who am I kidding though – most likely nobody but my MySpace contingent actually reads this crap anyway so why hold back? I should back up for a second and clarify that it’s not the Global Warming movement in and of itself that has inspired this latest of rants. Anyone who has read my essay “Is the Truth Really That Inconvenient?” knows that I haven’t closed off my ears to the debate entirely… or even a little. I simply have a lot of questions that nobody in the planet-hugger community seems willing or able to answer. Beyond that, I’m frankly suspicious that this whole movement, while it may have started out with good intentions, is being hijacked by disingenuous people more focused on money and power than actually fixing the problem. Where I really grind my axe these days is with two specific groups: A) Loudmouth global warming activists who are painfully (or willfully) ignorant of how global warming actually works; and B) Al Gore groupies. But it’s when you combine these two groups of earthy well wishers that I actually start to become afraid for the next few years.

Let’s start with Group A. All of us probably know at least one person in this group. I’ll set the scenario for you. See if you recognize it. You’re chatting amongst friends or shooting the breeze with somebody on IM when you make the mistake of making an offhand comment about the weather. The people of Group A don’t hesitate a beat before responding, “Well, that’s global warming for you.” It doesn’t matter what your comment is. It’s hot outside. Global warming. It’s cold outside. Global warming. It’s windy. It’s rainy. It’s dry. It’s muggy. Global warming… Okay, let me explain how global warming works. First of all, look at the first word: GLOBAL. You cannot gauge the plight of an entire planet by pointing to a weeklong heat wave in New England, nor is a freak cold snap in April indicative of glaciers melting and the impending ice age. In fact, if you have a week’s worth of unusually hot weather and then a week’s worth of unusually cold weather, as far as the GLOBAL temperature is concerned, nothing has changed. If January is five degrees warmer than usual and July is five degrees colder than usual, in the eyes of the overall climate, everything has balanced itself out. But the people in Group A either don’t understand that or are deliberately ignoring it so they can fuel their own activist fires. To listen to these people rant, you’d swear there was never any such thing as droughts, monsoons or hurricanes before the Industrial Revolution.

I’m going to say this just as clear as I can. Even if we take this “environmental crisis” at face value, the day-to-day effects of global warming are not dramatic enough to be noteworthy. Pointing to floods, tornadoes, heat waves or even glaciers collapsing in slow motion does nothing to prove your point. The things that lend credence to global warming aren’t sensational or visual at all. You know what they are? Numbers. Statistics. Data from all over the world painstakingly compiled into hugely boring tables and graphs that show the GLOBAL temperature rising by fractions of a degree. One quarter of a degree on a boring chart like that is far more damning than ten degrees on a bank thermometer. That is where the inconvenient truth really lies… even if it isn’t as compelling to look at. So please stop invoking global warming every time I decide to make small talk about the weather.

Okay, now for Group B. The Al Gore groupies. These people infuriate me more than Group A, who at least have the luxury of just being ignorant. The Gore groupies are different in that they really do seem to understand the causes behind global warming and are willing to condemn people, countries and corporations for all the damage they’re causing via their actions. Yet when it comes the actions of Al Gore, they turn a blind eye to that inconvenient bit of truth. In his movie, Gore urges everyone to make sacrifices to reduce energy consumption and lessen their carbon footprint on the planet. Yet when Gore’s own energy consumption habits were examined, it turned out that his house consumed nearly twenty times more electricity than the average American home. Twenty times! Add to that the fact that he flew around the country promoting his movie in a private jet and one has to wonder just how seriously Gore takes his own message. These aren’t groundbreaking revelations I’m making here. Pretty much every conservative radio show in the country has used this information against Gore over the last several months. But what continually strikes me as so odd is the way the Goreists consistently absolve their fearless leader of his conduct simply because he is the one getting the message out. “The private jet’s emissions are worth it if it means he can speak at more assemblies,” they urge. What other committed following would say that? If some Christian evangelist traveled the country preaching against, say, homosexuality and then it turned out he had been getting it on with male prostitutes after the show, would his followers say, “Well that’s okay because he’s out there spreading the right message”? Of course not! They would disavow themselves of him and his actions immediately.

The one argument I constantly hear being made in defense of Al Gore and his carbon footprint is that he “buys carbon credits” to offset his pollution. Essentially he pays a certain amount of money to companies with low carbon emissions, or to companies developing renewable energy technologies, or to organizations who do things like plant trees. Something to that effect. I’m exactly not sure how it all works, but the bottom line worth focusing on here is that Gore is validating his sins against the planet by paying money for them. Is it just me or does this all vaguely similar to the medieval Catholic doctrine of “Indulgences” where rich people could pay money to the church who would then give them (no joke) a “pre-emptive license to sin.” If a man knew he was going to have an affair, he would pay a certain amount of money to the diocese, and then his priest, rather than encouraging him to turn from his sinful ways, would simply absolve him of all future adulteries. The inherent hypocrisy wrapped up inside this doctrine was one of the primary triggers for Martin Luther’s grievances and the resulting Protestant Reformation. So why, just because Al Gore has more money than the rest of us, is he allowed to pollute at will? If he's supposed to be at the forefront of this movement, why doesn't he pay out that carbon credit money in addition to reducing his carbon footprint? (And just to be completely forthright here, it’s actually Paramount Pictures, the film’s distributor who pays those credits, not Gore himself.) And why oh why doesn’t Gore’s entourage at least acknowledge the inconsistencies between his doctrine and his daily life and demand that their leader hold himself to higher standard?

This blog has been a long time in coming. It’s been on the tip of my (fingertips?) for months now but without the time to actually sit down and hammer out my thoughts. Then I heard something, actually two things, that finally made me take the time to get this out there. The first thing I heard – which really was reason enough – was a speech made by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Live Earth concert on July 7 where he flat out accused people who don’t believe the warnings about global warming to be guilty of “treason.” Treason! As in being a traitor to the country, perhaps the utmost crime somebody can be convicted of. Sadly, Kennedy’s comment was merely the most visible example of a scary trend I see developing in this country, where any opinions on global warming other than the ones espoused by Al Gore and those like him are opinions that are, at best, not valid. And at worst, if Kennedy can be taken at his word, those opinions can apparently make a person subject to anything from censure to death. We’re not there yet. For the time being there are voices who are countering the “Al Gore’s Way or the Highway” mentality. People like Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck who, love ‘em or hate ‘em, do make valid defensible points on the opposing side. The danger could exist however, if and when someone like Al Gore, somebody with his single-minded committedness to global warming, gets into a position of real power and opens up a new round of neo-McCarthyism.

I know that last remark sounds like I’m just being sensationalistic for effect, but I am dead serious. I wouldn’t have believed it myself except for the fact that I was also listening to the audio book version of Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. The book is a memoir of sorts using Bryson’s childhood as a jumping off point for talking about America in the 1950’s. Bryson spends several minutes (pages?) in one chapter talking about America’s fear of Communism and how that fear was personified and ultimately manipulated by Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy instigated a nationwide witch-hunt for anyone and everyone who might be perceived as collaborating with communists in any way. As Bryson explains, well respected scientists, businessmen, humanitarians and, of course, Hollywood artists were accused of being communists and couldn’t find work simply because they had once had a conversation with somebody who had once written a paper expressing what was narrowly interpreted as sympathy toward the communist party. Lives, careers and reputations were ruined for anyone who was even remotely suspected of advocating philosophies that strayed from the accepted American capitalist ideal.

As I listened to this recording I felt an eerie sense of foreboding over the similarities between then and now. As I said, we are not to that point yet, but the fact that somebody like Robert Kennedy can so openly and so easily accuse others of treason – not a light choice of words by any stretch of the imagination – simply for disagreeing with the most popular views on global warming… The signs are all there. McCarthy played on the country’s fears and people went right along with him, even as he made claim after increasingly ridiculous claim. The fears surrounding global warming are also building and are already being played upon. For the time being it seems to be mostly corporations who are reaping the benefits of those fears, with the sales of hybrid cars, fluorescent light bulbs and whatnot. But as the government changes hands over the next few years, who knows who might come into power and what ridiculous things might they get the country to agree to in the name of global warming? Al Gore claims we have ten years to change “or else.” If the threat is truly that dire, what will believers do to ensure that change? Surely shutting up dissenters à la Joseph McCarthy will be the first step. And then what? America’s fear of communism almost put us into all out nuclear war. What could our fear of global warming push us into?

As I’ve said all along (and I feel compelled to keep restating), I am not denying the claims of the global warming camp outright. But neither will I simply be pushed along by the rising current without asking what I feel are pertinent questions. Blindly agreeing with popular opinion doesn’t help any of us. In fact it could end up causing us to focus our efforts in exactly the wrong areas as projects and programs get green-lighted unchallenged, only to realize the mistake several years too late. At best we could end up wasting money. At worst we could end up taking measures that would alter whole eco-systems, something that, as humans, we’ve never had much success with. Better that we all take the time and ask these questions now. So show your dissent. Challenge others. Don’t let offhand, “Look what global warming is causing” comments go unchallenged. That’s how it starts, but eventually it could become, “Do you now or have you ever owned or operated an SUV?”

I, for my part, am showing my own personal dissent through typically passive-aggressive techniques. Blogs like this for one. And deliberately sarcastic mockery and oh-my-god-is-he-really-serious apathy for another. To that end, I need help designing a few bumper stickers. The prototype slogans are:

BURN MORE COAL!
...because penguins are EVIL!

GLOBAL WARMING:
…because it’s too damn cold out there anyway.

STOP GLOBAL WARMING:
Shut your big fat mouth.

And my personal favorite:

GLACIERS ARE MELTING! …so?

Anybody with graphic design abilities, feel free to collaborate.

3:16 Unplugged

So Easter has come and gone for another year. Lauren and I hung close to home since she was on call, so we missed out on the big ham dinner with the family. But as we ate our own holiday feast of pork chops and potatoes (What is it about Easter that makes us revel in eating food that Jews can’t touch? Are we trying to say, “We’re saved by the blood of the lamb so we can be as non-kosher as we want to now”?) we popped in a video that I try to watch at least once a year, usually right around this time. It’s called “Saint John in Exile” and it is a video recording of a one-man stage show performed during the 1980’s. The star of the show, Dean Jones plays the apostle John (writer of the Gospel of John, not to be confused with John the Baptist) in his old age, imprisoned on the island of Patmos. Over the course of ninety minutes, speaking directly to the audience, John proceeds to tell the story of Jesus, his crucifixion and his resurrection from his own (John’s own) point of view. What unfolds ends up being the most personal, most compelling, most strike-directly-to-your-heart account of the Gospel of Christ I have ever experienced.

The show begins with John dictating a letter to one of the local churches of Ephesus only to be interrupted by a Roman guard who he has apparently been locked in an ongoing battle of words with. And right away you can see that John isn’t your typical soft-spoken, dewy-eyed saint who preaches Jesus with calm faith and a gentle heart. He alternates between shouting at the guard for his lack of compassion and “accidentally” leaving illegal scrolls containing the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke on the floor, which the guard conveniently discovers and confiscates. “There’s more than one way to get a pagan to read The Word,” John laughs after he is once again alone with the audience. Taking a few creative liberties with scriptural dialogue, Jones as John then begins to tell how he met and began to follow Jesus. “From the first moment I saw him I said, ‘He needs a friend,’ and I felt that I could be that friend.” John speaks of miracles, of feeding the multitudes and realizing the Lord’s personal message in it for him: “Little could be much in Jesus’ hands.”

All this preamble does it’s job of drawing you into the story and letting you identify with each character – all just regular men like you and me who somehow found themselves drawn into events and circumstances they couldn’t understand yet tried to embrace with everything they had. But it’s when Jones begins the narrative of the Passion – alternating seamlessly between portraying not only John, but Jesus, Peter, the Romans, people in the mob and Satan himself – that the story truly begins to grip you. It starts with Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem with all the people shouting praises of “Hosana” the traditional greeting for victorious kings. “If Jesus wanted the people to make him king,” says John, “all he had to do was say so…” and the religious leaders knew it. Goosebumps break across your skin with the gravity of that statement as you immediately understand how this moment would set off a chain reaction of the events to come. John tells of the haunting experience in Gethsemane and the saddened look on Jesus’ face when, in his moment of greatest personal torment, he, John had fallen asleep. John recounts Peter’s anguish at the realization that he had denied ever knowing Jesus, even though he’d swore that he would die for him, and even though Jesus himself had told him that this would happen. Free of props, makeup, sound effects, theme music or any special effect other than stage lighting, Jones depicts the horror of the crucifixion with far more truth and gut-wrenching realism than anything Mel Gibson ever drummed up. “It… is… finished,” Jones as John as Jesus gulps out hanging from an invisible cross before exhaling a long and wheezing terminal breath, and for a good fifteen seconds the theater remains dead silent. The first act ends with John weeping for himself and the other apostles, because unlike the Romans who Jesus had forgiven, claiming “They know not what they do,” John understands that he and the disciples were different… “WE KNEW WHAT WE DID!” he cries, horrified and ashamed of how they, despite the miracles they’d seen, despite all the time they’d spent together, had abandoned Jesus, denied him, let him down in his final hours. And finally John weeps for Jesus, remembering his final moments of suffering when it seemed like even he, their Lord, had lost faith as he cried out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” John collapses in a heap on the floor and the lights fade.

Act Two opens with a bit of humor involving locusts and wild honey and the impression that Peter, for as great and holy a man as he would become, was also a loveable but loudmouthed bumbling idiot who couldn’t walk and sing at the same time without falling into irrigation ditches. John then conveys the alternating feelings of grief, wonder, disbelief, hope, fear and ecstasy as he and the other disciples realize that not only has Jesus risen, but that he has come back to them just as he said he would. If their faith had been shaken by the crucifixion it was restored and solidified by his return, such to the point that they went out and preached his message wherever they went, earning for their troubles execution of every horrible means, which John recounts one by one over a choir of voices singing “Glory… Glory…”. As the second act winds down, a scroll is delivered to John at Patmos, saying that the Roman persecution of Christians has ended. John is free to go. He hastens to make preparations to leave until the Roman guard from Act One asks him to stay on Patmos and assist him with his own Christian teachings. “Lord, why do you answer my dearest prayers at the worst possible times?” John shouts to the audience’s laughter. The story ends on an inspirational note, with John relaying Jesus’ overriding message to us… so simple yet so profound: “Love one another.”

The story is not a new one. The message is not a new one. And yet this show manages to infuse both with such life, such character, such personality that few works of drama or literature have ever been able to achieve. The writing is intelligent, witty and moving. John’s monologue is never preachy, never judgmental, and yet the message is never sacrificed or watered down. And never do you feel like you’re simply hearing the same old tired lines a thousand preachers and televangelists have said and regurgitated for years. Dean Jones acts the part – all the parts – with such absolute Truth that you never doubt for a minute that he is feeling every instant of joy, pain, sorrow and rapture. He shows impeccable comedic timing, amazing dramatic choices, and you immediately accept the transitions whenever he goes back and forth between various personalities. I don’t say this lightly or cavalierly, but this is, hands down, the greatest dramatic performance I have ever seen played out by any actor on TV, film or stage EVER. Ever. Everybody should see this video if only for the artistic merit that permeates the entire production. But beyond that, people should see it for its message. It’s not a message of condemnation but of inspiration, of hope, of love. We see the passage from John 3:16 thrown around all the time these days: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not die but have everlasting life.” The words lose their meaning after a while when every kook with a placard holds them up inside football stadiums or outside abortion clinics. But when you watch “Saint John in Exile” the true gravity, the true sincerity, the true Truth of these words becomes so plain and simple – stripped of politics, stripped of religion, stripped of hypocrites who would pervert the message. “Love each other as I have loved you.” Though we always try to make it more difficult, it really is that simple. He loved us. Share that love with others so the world might know that you are His.

I highly encourage anybody to find and purchase this video. Or if shelling out $25 bucks for the DVD of a twenty-year-old play isn’t your idea of a good expense, check out a local library or church. One of them is bound to have a copy to lend. However it has to be, find a way to see this show and experience the gospel told in this way. I guarantee it will be a moving experience that will stick with you for a long time.

Global Warming? - Discuss

This is the discussion page for my essay "Is The Truth Really That Inconvenient?" If you have something to say, something to add, something to correct, tell me here.

Crosses, broken children and the French

In Week Four of the Road Trip I talk about (amongst other things) our drive across the Big Sky state of Montana. Ten years ago, Montana had no official speed limit. "Reasonable and Prudent" were the magic words on the open highways. With so much freedom of speed out there, bad judgment and a lack of prudence was inevitable, so in an effort to convince people to slow down, the American Legion has been erecting crosses on the side of the road, marking the sites of fatal accidents since 1954. In the travelogue I couldn't decide if this was a more subtle or less subtle way of controlling speed demons than say a bulky automated radar detector that flashes your speed next to the current speed limit. All I knew was that it was effective. When a sobering reminder of death whips by you every half-hour or so, you can't help but look down and say, "Oh crap how fast am I going?"



As it turns out, no matter how morose or non-subtle you think the Montana highway cross program is, it is actually a THOUSAND times more subtle than what they've been doing over in France since 2000. Apparently French drivers are among the most reckless in the world... certainly in all of Europe according to the Brits. In an effort to curb their own driver mortality, the French have elected to start putting up roadside death markers of their own. But rather than little white crosses, they went with big black human-shaped cutouts. These cutouts are about four feet tall and painted black with red lightning bolts through their heads and chests. They look like silhouettes of children whose bodies have cracked open upon impact.



At first I was thinking that this should be another addition to my several-years-old humor column that talks about how the French are the silliest people on earth. But now I'm thinking that this should actually earn them a checkmark in the positive column. What an awesomely non-PC way of getting an important job done. I'm sure people bitched and complained about it (they are French after all), but in the long run, I bet you these morbid silhouettes are working. I imagine they are impossible to miss, and with their gruesome implications I imagine they are impossible to ignore. So kudos to France for doing something crazy and way out there that pisses people off but actually has a positive outcome.

To whet your appetite

It's 1am, I'm exhausted and fried from editing all night. Don't have the brain capacity to edit anything else. But I also have two cups of coffee coursing through my veins and ain't falling asleep anytime soon. So I figured I'd be SEMI-productive and post a little sneak peak at what's to come in ROAD TRIP - WEEK FOUR. This snippet has a little bit of everything, history, narrative, commentary, self-righteous preaching. It's a good example of what you can expect, hopefully, within the next month when I, hopefully, post the final chapter of the Road Trip on my site.

So... enjoy.

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Caused by a freak surge of magma that cooled and fractured under the ground sixty million years ago, Devil's Tower is truly a sight to behold. Ribbed all around with deep grooves - like a paper fan turned into a cylinder - it stands alone, surrounded for miles by small hills and grassland, and looking as out of place in Wyoming as the Monument Rocks do in Kansas - which, as we recall, look as out of place as a desert in the state of Maine (which incidentally also exists). But where the Monument Rocks rise a mere seventy or so feet off the ground, this lone sentinel towers nearly nine hundred feet above you; looming, ominous and downright eerie.

According to a Native American legend, two young girls were out walking one day when a giant grizzly bear started chasing them. They ran from the bear for a while until they could run no more, at which point they stopped and prayed to the Great Spirit for help. That Old Guy really knew how to grant a wish because just as the bear was about to pounce on the two girls, the ground they were standing on began to rise and lift them into the air out of the grizzly's reach. Enraged, the great beast jumped and scratched at the new obtrusion, leaving behind his claw marks in the rock. Other legends suggest that the enormous supernatural bear still lives inside the monolith and has come to the aid of tribes against enemy war parties. Local tribes have variously named the site Bear's Lodge, Bear's House, Bear's Lair, Bear's Peak and Bear's Tipi. Other names included Aloft on a Rock, Mythic-Owl Mountain, Tree Rock and, interestingly enough, Penis Rock. The obelisk and surrounding area became a deeply holy place to more than twenty tribes who lived here. Every kind of sacred ceremony - funerals, prayer offerings, sweat lodge ceremonies, vision quests, sun dances - were performed here.

So I suppose it was only a matter of time before some white guy came along and desecrated the whole thing. And that's essentially what Colonel Richard Dodge did when he arrived with a regiment of soldiers searching for gold in 1875. He took one look at the strangely shaped mountain and called it "Devils Tower." And for reasons I wouldn't be able to fathom if they weren't so familiar and characteristic of over five hundred years worth of American history, that is the name they used when the tower was dedicated as the nation's first national monument in 1906. I suppose Devil's Tower just sounded cooler and was better for marketing, but could you imagine if somebody decided to rename the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, "Place of the Bastard"? What if we changed Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem to "Satan's Ridge"? Or for that matter, how about if they changed the name of Stonehenge to "Jesus' Circle" or the Parthenon to "Trinity Plaza"? How long before somebody, religious or not, stepped up and said, "You know what, that's just not right."

There have been a few feeble attempts made by various Native American groups to have the tower returned to its original name, Bear Lodge. These have been met with resistance, anger and outright ignorance by people who are afraid the renaming is merely a way of masking a deeper agenda: namely returning control of the tower back to the local tribes. God forbid. But that fight has largely been buried and you'd have to do a fair amount of digging to read anything of substance about it. After all, nobody really wants to know about anything American Indians are trying to accomplish unless it involves building another casino.

No, when it comes to Devil's Tower, what interests people most - far from any minor Indian corpse-raping for the sake of preserving the Christian-American way of life - is the fact that this was the location where the aliens landed in Steven Spielberg's blockbuster, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That's why we came here. Well, that's why I came here. Lauren could honestly have given a damn. But we'd just spent an entire week stopping at about every lighthouse along the Pacific seaboard, so now it was her turn to indulge my petty obsessions. I don't know why exactly I wanted to see Devil's Tower. I never really liked Close Encounters all that much and, to be perfectly honest, couldn't even remember what the movie's key location looked like. I think my motivations were more along the lines of simply being able to send postcards back to all my movie geek friends who would appreciate where I'd been. People who would recognize the location immediately and say, "Holy shit, I didn't even realize that was a real place!"

I was honestly expecting just another mountain. A lone mountain standing out in the middle of prairie, but a mountain nonetheless. Well even from a good ten miles away, it was obvious that Devil's Tower was not just another a mountain. Even the Rocky Mountains, which shoot straight up out of the plains, still have the everyday features of mountains; slopes, peaks, uniform angles. Devil's Tower on the other hand had an irregularly curved, almost logarithmic, pitch culminating in a wide flat top and looking more like the smokestack to a nuclear power plant than anything naturally occurring. But it's not until you get closer and see the tower's signature grooves, which really do look like they were put there by giant bear claws, that you begin to realize just what intrigued the Indians so much about this place.

There was nobody manning the Devil's Tower entrance station and we probably could have driven in without paying the ten-dollar fee, but we paid it anyway knowing somebody had to help keep the park service funded, since it certainly wouldn't be the United States government. Though in retrospect, I would much rather have given that ten dollars to any grassroots Native American movement who wanted only to reclaim something that means far more to them than it does to the Department of the Interior. The park road circles around the tower, passing alongside a rather large prairie dog town on the way, and ending at a parking lot and trailhead. After Lauren made use of the bathroom, we made our way onto the Tower Trail, a 1.3-mile loop around the national monument's main focal point.

At the risk of being annoyingly repetitive, a red flag went up in my head as soon as I saw how easily accessible from the parking lot this place was. It was like begging punks and interstate tourists, "Paint on me, litter on me, ruin me for everyone else." But Devil's Tower is saved from this fate by several factors. As I said before, this place is incredibly out of the way by most any standard. And unlike Yellowstone National Park on the other side of the state, there actually isn't that much to see here. There aren't dozens of turnouts each offering a different panoramic view of mountains, cliffs and canyons. There aren't bubbling mud pots or big holes that shoot water into the air at regular intervals. At Devil's Tower, all you get is the tower. And you can see that from your car from the main road. Most car bound tourists probably don't feel the need to walk over a mile around the big thing to get the idea. They drive in (shirking the entrance fee most likely) take a picture from the parking lot, maybe walk a few dozen feet into the trail to take a picture that isn't obstructed by trees, then head back to their car and back to the interstate less than thirty miles away. The tower is spared the disrespect of more committed tourists and vandals by a very natural, very formidable barrier: rocks. All around the base, separating the walking trail from the main tower by a good two hundred feet are piles and piles of boulders. You'd have to do some pretty serious, and often dangerous, scrambling to actually get to the tower and spray-paint or carve something onto it - which would likely be too small to see from the trail anyway - after which you'd have to climb your way back down without twisting an ankle.

The Tower Trail retained the perfect combination of convenience and beauty without the requisite ruination that usually accompanies it. Lauren and I enjoyed our leisurely walk, having the trail mostly to ourselves. The scale of this thing was truly impossible to express, much less capture on film, but I was determined to try. Under that guise of research and exhibition, I left Lauren on the trail and started scrambling up the boulder pile. It was as good excuse as any. The truth is, I love scrambling. I missed scrambling. It was an activity I had engaged in often during my time in California. One time while hiking through a desert canyon, I took a wrong turn that dead-ended into a tall mountain of boulders. Rather than attempting the tedious and probably futile process of retracing my steps and rediscovering the trail, I simply started climbing. Up and over the mountain on a more or less direct route back to my car. Sure, it was harder going, but it was way more fun than just trudging along on flat even ground. Lauren knew this about me, so when I suggested climbing to the top of the Devil's Tower boulder pile for the sake of a picture, she simply gave me a knowing smile and said, "Go ahead."

And so I climbed. I jumped. I scampered. I reveled. Up, up, up, I went as high as I could go without the assistance of climbing gear. From the trail, Lauren snapped a picture as close up as the camera's lens would allow, which showcased far better the scope of this place than any full length shot could have accomplished. At first glance, the picture just looks like a close-up of rocks at the tower's base. We often have to point out to others the tiny little person standing at the bottom of the picture. "Yeah, that would be me." Even at the very top of the rock pile, I was still a good fifty feet short of where the grooved part of the tower actually starts, a sheer rock wall preventing me from going any further.

I was surprised to find out that mountain climbing is actually allowed on Devil's Tower, and I have never wished more that I had taken the time and money to learn how to do it. How awesome it must be to scale that nearly vertical pitch. To make it to the top. To camp out high above the world on a throne the size of a football field. To share that kingdom with only the falcons and the eagles who nest up there as well. I can't imagine a more powerful feeling. I'm not sure what process is involved in the naming of a climbing path, but judging by some of the actual names in the trail register - Spank the Monkey; Calculus Affair; Pee Pee's Plunge; Ants On Angel Food; See You In Soho; Billie Bear Cranks the Rod - I suspect it is not the park service coming up with them.

We weren't able to see it, but there is apparently a metal rung ladder running the entire vertical length of the tower that has hung there for untold generations. Back in the days when this place still belonged to the Indians, it was considered a rite of passage, a sign of manhood to climb that ladder all the way to the top. No ropes, no carabineers, no room for mistakes. Just a solid steel set of balls and, I imagine, a strict warning not to look down. And after you actually got the top, manhood proven and all that, then you had to climb back down. My god, my palms are sweating even now just thinking about it. If that didn't get a brave laid back in the day, there was something seriously wrong with women in that society. Though it kind of makes you wonder, if the legend of this place is true, how did those first two girls get down from this thing after the giant bear finally left?

Huh, I'd like to pulse her tilla...

Homeopathy continues to amaze me. I just started learning about this whole practice last summer and as near as I have seen and experienced thus far, if used properly, homeopathy works just as well, if not better, than conventional drugs for treating just about anything that you would normally take a pill for. While the remedies are symptom specific, homeopathy doesn't treat symptoms (the way most drugs do). What it does is actually trigger your body to fight back against whatever happens to be plaguing it. It actually helps you heal faster, and heal naturally, with your body’s own defenses. A few of the remedies that we use in our house often are:

Arnica Montana – Great for bruises and sore muscles and has all but replaced Ibuprofen in our medicine cabinet.

Nux Vomica – Exactly like it sounds. It’s good for stomachaches, indigestion and all around ickiness due to overeating or overdrinking. If you let a few of these dissolve under your tongue after you’ve been out drinking all night it will usually save you not just the puking but also the hangover. I also took the Nux whenever my hernia started hurting or poking out and it was a good temporary fix until I got in for surgery.

Hepar Sulphuris Calcareum – This is an awesome remedy for dry congested coughs. It’ll cause the phlegm in your lungs to break up and allow you to get to sleep.

Chestal – This is the brand name of a homeopathic cough syrup made by Boiron and it’s good for wet, croupy coughs. What’s better, it tastes like honey. No I mean it REALLY tastes like honey. It’s not some false NyQuil promise, “Oh sure it tastes like grape,” but really still tastes like battery acid. We have no problems getting Allison to take this syrup. In fact she usually keeps asking for more.

Ambrosia Artemesia Folia – This was a godsend last September. Ragweed season always kills me, so last year, rather than suffer through another zombie-like month hopped up on Benadryl, I took Ambrosia which is literally ragweed. Taking in a little bit of ragweed several times a day made me right as rain all season with zero drowsiness. I’ve found that it also works when I’m having an allergic reaction to dust or other pollens as well.

Well the newest homeopathy to truly flip my lid and say, “Wow this stuff really does work doesn’t it,” is a remedy called Pulsatilla. I’ve heard Lauren mention this remedy before. At the birth center where she works they give it to women whose babies are presenting breech. Supposedly it helps the baby turn.

Okay, sure, it was always just one of those stories I heard about and said, “Oh that’s neat,” and didn’t think about further. Well then last Saturday Lauren got an email from her friend Lacey who was nine months pregnant. The mass email said that their baby was breech and the doctors didn’t want to do an ECV to try and turn it. They told her that unless the baby magically turned on its own, they would have to do a C-section on Tuesday.

Lauren immediately shot off an email to Lacey and told her to head to her closest natural food store and pick up some Pulsatilla. I honestly wasn’t expecting much. Even if Lacey got the message, she wouldn’t have had a whole lot of time to let the Pulsatilla do it’s work and would probably still be breech come Tuesday. My impression of most natural remedies is that they aren’t quick fixes. They generally need time to percolate in your system and do their work. I was again doubting homeopathy, which had shown me time and again to be the real deal.

Well apparently Lacey did get the message and went out on Sunday to pick up the remedy. And by Monday, the baby had turned! Her doctors were justifiably amazed and she went on to have a natural childbirth afterward. I’m not sure what the stats are on babies that turn after a certain point in the pregnancy and how those stats change for mothers who take Pulsatilla. Academically, I don’t know how well homeopathy stands up to conventional medicine. But it’s anecdotal cases like this that continue to make me a believer in this practice and make me want to learn more and more about it.

Yeah, but were there peanuts?

It's funny the way history has to be written so that it gives you no real perspective on the immediate and personal impact that certain events made on the world. Since most history is presented as simply a matter of dates, census figures and longitude and latitude coordinates, it's nearly impossible to truly understand why a particular battle, bill or discovery was important, not just to the world, but to the individuals living in that world. And you certainly can't get any kind of feel for the social, political and historical backdrop against which these events took place.

You only know that in such and such a year, Lincoln made his emancipation proclamation and then in such and such a year the war ended and then in such and such a year this bill was introduced giving blacks the right to vote. But you have no idea that Lincoln was one of the most hated men in the country and considered one of the worst and most divisive presidents ever. And that was by the people in the NORTH. I mean, the things they're saying about George Bush would probably seem tame compared to the things they were saying about Lincoln at the time. But history doesn't express that. They just give the stats that show it was Lincoln who freed the slaves. It makes you wonder how history will paint George Bush in the future once all the current and petty political squabblings have died away.

Another event that you don't get to fully appreciate in history class is the Wright Brother's historic first flight. We have dates and we have distances but the history books don't do much in the way of conveying what it must have been like that day at Kittyhawk. It's not until you actually visit the site of the first flight that you begin to understand what the feel of that day must have been. The Wright's needed a lot of wind for their experiment to work. Anybody who's ever spent time on North Carolina's Outerbanks has already begun to understand just why they chose this particular area. The wind never seems to stop around here. Even on a warm day it can make the temperature seem twenty degrees cooler. The Outerbanks wasn't the populated vacation spot, peppered with beach houses and crab shacks that it is today. In fact, it was a pretty remote, desolate location at the time, populated more by sand dunes than anything else. That was good for the Wright's who were secretive to the point of paranoia with their flyer that they didn't want to risk the press stopping on on their experiments.

The Wright's made their historic first flight on December 17, 1903. That's a long way from Ohio, their home, just over a week until Christmas. I remember coming down here for work as part of the TV crew covering the First Flight Centennial in December of 2003. I remember how much it sucked leaving home for just a week so close to Christmas. But neither of the Wright's were ever married, so they didn't have any familial ties keeping them from getting down here when the wind was at its best. Kind of makes you wonder if the Wright's just weren't able to find women who would put up with their all-consuming passion for flight - which undoubtedly would have kept them from their familial duties... or if the Wright's were just so into their passion that they never had the time to meet, much less court any women. Either way, it was probably because they didn't have the distractions of family that they were able to be the firsts in the history books.

We took a morning to check out the Wright Brother's National Memorial at Kittyhawk while we were on vacation in the Outerbanks. The park is fairly minimalist which I think serves it well. There are two visitor centers with artifacts and murals explaining the history surrounding the first flight. But other than that, most of the park's 430 acres is just wide open grassland which can kind of give you an idea of the isolation the Wright's experienced in their stay here.

The historical stats tell you that the Wrights conducted four flight tests on that historic day. The first three went anywhere from 120-200 feet and lasted less than 20 seconds. Orville is always credited with the first official flight, having won the famous coin toss between he and his brother. But it was Wilbur who truly flew that day, going over 800 feet in a flight that lasted nearly an entire minute. On paper, even at the Kitthawk visitor center itself, those numbers don't mean a whole lot. But then you go outside to that wide open field and stand in the very spot where the first flight took off and you begin to understand what it must have felt like that day. There are four concrete blocks marking the landing point of each flight. From the starting point, the first three markers seem almost embarrassingly close. The famous first flight went a mere 120 feet. From the point of liftoff, it really seems as thought the plane must have gone up and crashed right back down again. The next two flights look equally abrupt.

But then you look down the field, 800 feet away to the fourth marker and even in our modern world where everything is just supposed to work, and where we take airplanes for granted, you say "Wow, now THAT was a flight." I can only imagine Orville's reaction upon watching his brother go and go and go after three modest attempts. It probably went something like:

"Wow....... holy shit......... holy shit..... HO-LY SHIT!"

Orville may have been the one to go in the history books as "the first" but it was Wilbur who actually gave them something to write home about that day.

One other thing I found interesting being at Kitthawk is the photograph of the first flight. This is truly a unique picture. This picture was obviously taken before the days of digital cameras, before every schmuck with ten dollars could walk down to the CVS and buy a disposable point-and-shoot. The world didn't yet have the fanatical need to capture everything on film or tape that we have today. On the whole, important historical moments weren't photographed. Unless somebody in the press had a big heads up that something big was about to happen, nobody on the scene generally had a camera with them. But the Wright's did have the foresight. What's more they had the knowhow. The displays at Kitthawk say that Wilbur had a budding interest in photography and he meticulously documented their time at Kittyhawk. He likewise spent a lot of time taking artistic shots of the surrounding area and whatnot. He was exactly the kind of person you would have wanted around if you wanted a visual record of something as big as what they were about to attempt.

But when the moment came for the first flight, Wilbur couldn't be the one taking the picture. Even though Orville was the one actually flying, Wilbur had to run alongside the plane and steady the wing until it actually took off. He had to turn the camera over to somebody else. He had to trust somebody else to take perhaps the most important picture of his (Wilbur's) life. Other than the Wrights, there were only five other men present to witness the first flight. Local guys. None of them reporters. Wilbur had to turn control of his camera over to an amateur, a guy who likely had never even seen a camera, much less operated one. I'm sure Wilbur set the thing up on a tripod and took great pains to focus it exactly as it needed to be, but still, he had to express in no uncertain terms to this guy,

"Okay, now wait until the plane is off the ground before you press the button. As soon as you see it lift off, press the button. Now repeat back what I just said."

Can you imagine the pressure that guy must have felt - both Wilbur AND the photographer? It's hard enough to get a tourist at Disney World to take your picture without cutting your head off. Yet somehow he got the shot perfectly. The whole plane is visible. Orville and Wilbur are visible. It is the perfect shot to capture this historic event.



I thoroughly enjoyed Kittyhawk. It's not the kind of national park that you can spend more than a couple hours in, and honestly isn't one you go back to again and again. But it is definitely worth a single trip, if for no other reason than it's minimalist nature truly let's you experience history firsthand.

The Hatteras Gestapo

I don't think it's possible to spend an entire week in the Outerbanks and not go to at least one lighthouse. Especially if your wife is a lighthouse enthusiast. Fortunately we got our lighthouse fix out of the way early in the week. We drove an hour south to arguably the most famous lighthouse in the entire world, Cape Hatteras.

The Hatteras light has a semi-interesting history, especially its recent history. The original light was first placed here in 1803 to warn mariners of the dangerous Diamond Shoals that were constantly causing shipwrecks in what became known as "The Graveyard of the Atlantic." The light was your typical-looking tower, nothing special. The light was damaged considerably during the Civil War and Congress decided it would be less costly to just build a whole new one. The Outerbanks is the victim of constant, relentless erosion from the pounding ocean and the builders rightly decided to build the new light 600 feet farther inland. The original plan was to paint a diamond pattern on the light to remind mariners that it was the "Diamond Shoals" they were being warned against. But there was a logistical goof and the Cape Lookout light got the diamond pattern. Rather than repainting, they decided to give Hatteras its now trademark spiral "barber pole" pattern. Honestly, I can think of no other reason, other than its "pretty design", why this light should be so famous. The average American tourist doesn't really care about history or marine geography so much as nice photo opportunities for their digital cameras. But there you are.

The constant erosion of the Outerbanks put the famous light in danger once again, so back in 1999 a huge and ambitious project began to MOVE the lighthouse 1600 feet inland in order to protect it from inevitable death as the ocean continued to weaken the shoreline it stood on. I know there are enthusiasts out there who want to do everything they can to protect lighthouses and keep them as an indelible icon of the mariners way of life, but mostly they're just trying to make sure there's enough money to keep the lights shining and not torn down to put up beach front property. But this was an outlandish preservation effort for even the most committed lighthouse nut. I seriously wonder if this much money and effort would have been committed to save the Cape Hatteras light had it not been given its pretty spiral pattern way back when, casting it hopelessly into the hearts of enthusiasts (and people who otherwise wouldn't have given a shit) for generations.

But enough history. These days the Hatteras light is open for business once again to those who want to endure the gruff employees, rushed atmosphere and gestapo-like regulations they've placed on the thing. My last experience with a lighthouse was in Oregon on our road trip. The Oregon folk know how to maintain a lighthouse. And we visited several in our drive through that state. Each one is operated by volunteers who have been educated in the rich history of the particular light. They will spend the time talking, explaining and telling anecdotes from each light's hundred-year-plus history. Lauren and I spent a good half-hour chit-chatting with the volunteer at the top of the Coquille River Light. He pointed out the hazards of the area, told us stories about tsunamis (which he called "sneaker waves") and fascinated us with tales of local mariners.

Compare that to the workers at Hatteras whose only job appeared to be reciting the long list of rules one must obey while in the lighthouse, as well as the lengthy list of what you could and could not bring with you into the lighthouse. There was no interaction with the workers except for when they told you exactly how much time you had left before you had to leave the lighthouse. The Hatteras organization DID make a token attempt at education via a series of displays set up in the old keepers quarters a few hundred feet away from the actual light. But again the workers (volunteers?) had an air of people who are bored to tears with their job and are just waiting for the clock to hit 2:00 so they can punch out. They didn't strike me as the kind of people you'd feel comfortable asking questions of expecting a friendly, informative answer.

To these people's credit, again, this is probably the most popular lighthouse in the world. It gets over a million visitors per year. People visit this lighthouse who don't give two craps about lighthouses. You get average Joe Public with his fat obnoxious wife and their six bratty children coming to this lighthouse asking questions like "how come there's no video arcade?" rather than people with a genuine interest in the magnitude of the lens and how many shipwrecks are out on the shoals. It's got to get aggravating. And it's these people (who I have termed "interstate tourists" in my road trip travelogue) who are the troublemakers, the people with no respect for anything, and the people most likely write their names on the walls or sue to Hatteras organization should they have a coronary trying to climb to the top of the 12-story tower. So I really do understand it. And actually I don't fault the Hatteras folk for anything. In order to keep this place open to the public, they really do have to cater to the lowest common denominator and that means creating rules for people too stupid to have common sense.

But it's exactly this kind of mass consumer tourism that I hate, and the reason why I will stick to less popular lighthouses in the future. I'm sure the Hatteras light is taller and "prettier" than the one at Coquille River, but I have much fonder memories of that short, plain-looking light with its friendly staff...

And if I ever get off my ass and finish Week 3 of the Road Trip, you too will read about it some day.