Publication suspended

Finally. Summer has arrived in the Northwest Corner. The sun is bright. The sky is blue. The temperatures are in the high 70's. The breezes are soft and gentle, caressing lightly my arms, legs and face, as I stroll down the sidewalk in shorts and t-shirt.

Seattle at its finest: a summer paradise, short in duration, but generous in its gifts.

Well then! I guess it must be time to go hiking in the Scottish Highlands! Take a look at that ten-day forecast. Yes sir, that's one day of partial sunshine. Does this kid know how to pick 'em? And the midge forecast! -- for indeed there is a Scots webpage ominously reporting the midge forecast -- it's for high levels of biting midges, reaching their highest intensity in Glen Coe, a valley through which I'll be hiking. Silly Yank -- look at him trying to admire the scenery while desperately warding off rain and midge.

So be it. The Northwest Corner now shuts down for vacation break. Come back in mid-August, and see what's on its insane publisher's mind. Learn how his diluvial, rain-sodden hike actually worked out in practice.

(I'm kidding -- I'm gonna have fun, no matter how rebarbative the weather conditions may be!)

An icy mountain

To the north, beyond the main range of the Himalayas, emerging from the Tibetan plateau, stands an isolated peak called Kailas. Although only 22,028 feet high, quite low by Himalayan standards, no climber has ever stood on its summit (except, apocryphally, a mystic in ancient times). It may never be climbed.

Kailas is a holy mountain to a number of religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism.

To Hindus, Kailas is identified as the earthly manifestation of the mystical mountain Meru. Living on the summit are Lord Shiva, and his consort Parvati.

To Tibetan Buddhists, atop Kailas is the ice palace of Demchog, a demonic deity wearing a crown of skulls -- perhaps a manifestation of Shiva -- who is usually represented with a blue-skinned body, four faces, and twelve arms, and shown embracing his consort Vajravarahi. Demchog and his consort are locked in an erotic embrace, representing the union of "nothingness" and "compassion."

To the remaining adherents of Bön, the pre-Buddhist belief system of Tibet, Kailas represented the seat of all spiritual power.

Colin Thubron is a travel writer in his early 70's. Over his lifetime, he has written a number of well-received books describing his travels in Asia and the Middle East, beginning with publication in 1967 of his book, Mirror to Damascus. In recent years, he's watched his family die off, one by one. The death of his mother, the last survivor of his family, prompted him to undertake a trek to Kailas, leading to publication this year of his book, To a Mountain in Tibet.

If Eric Newby's book, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (discussed a couple of posts ago) was a young man's light-hearted treatment of a taxing and dangerous climbing and trekking expedition, Thubron writes as a much older man, stricken by the deaths of relatives and facing his own mortality. The trek is not easy, but it follows well known trails; Western trekking companies routinely lead treks to the holy mountain. Thubron's trek is far less a perilous adventure into the unknown than was Newby's.

But Thubron's pilgrimage results is a far darker book.

Thubron begins trekking in the far western region of Nepal. He walks over passes through the Himalayas, crosses into Tibet, and arrives ultimately at the foot of Kailas. He then undertakes the kora, the traditional Buddhist and Hindu circumambulation of the mountain, an exercise that will wipe one's soul free of sin. For those with the tenacity to complete 108 circuits during their lifetime, the cycle of reincarnation comes immediately to an end, and the soul enters nirvana.

Few beliefs are older than the notion that heaven and earth were once conjoined, and that gods and men moved up and down a celestial ladder -- or a rope or vine -- and mingled at ease.

Kailas is such a ladder. The mountain was flown to this remote area, according to Buddhist belief, staked in place before devils could pull it underground, and nailed in place by the Buddha himself, preventing the gods from returning it to its origin.

Thubron speaks with many Nepalis and Tibetans on his trek. They are usually friendly. Their lives are very difficult, and often short. Many have suffered at the hands of the Chinese Maoists. Whatever dreams they may one day have dreamt as children rarely survived their teens. Only their religious beliefs give apparent meaning to the limited number of years and opportunities allotted them.

Thubron describes in detail, throughout his trek, the cosmic views held by Buddhists (and to a lesser degree, Hindus). He looks for that same meaning. He longs also to believe.

But he views the beliefs he lovingly describes as an outsider; he sees them as myths that -- however beautiful and suggestive -- were evolved by a primitive civilization. He marvels at the quiet self-confidence of monks with whom he meets; but he asks himself, are they incredibly wise, or simply credulous? Scholarly, or lazy? Are the desperately poor Nepali and Tibetans whom he meets making their way through just one more incarnation on the road to ultimate enlightenment? Or are they leading short, desperate, meaningless lives, ending in wretched deaths.

Thubron completes the 32-mile circuit of Kailas, crossing over its high point, Dröma pass, at 18,200 feet. He feels a sense of accomplishment, but he attains no spiritual revelation, no peace.

The writhing image of Demchog -- the union of "nothingness" and "compassion" -- leaves him neither at peace with his mother's death, nor at ease contemplating his own. A Buddhist monk, in the Tibetan tradition, explains to him that, in reality, there are no gods. Or rather, that the gods are merely guides, helping to lead him to that enlightenment that is man's highest destiny.

I tried to imagine this, but the wrong words swam into my mind: rejected life, self-hypnosis, the obliteration of loved difference. Premature death.

He tells a monk that his understanding of Buddhism is that, at death, everything is shed.

He smiled, as he tended to do at contradiction. "That is so. Only karma lasts. Merit and demerit."
"So nothing of the individual survives. Nothing that contains memory?"
"No." He sensed the strain in me, and with faint regret: "You know our Buddhist saying?"
Yes, I remember.
From all that he loves, man must part.

Thubron has undertaken a fascinating adventure. He has written yet another excellent book. I doubt, however, that he came down from his mountain having achieved the wisdom, the peace, or the hope that he may have sought on its heights. Demchog, in his amalgam of compassion and nothingness, may appear to Western eyes a cruel god.
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Photo: Demchok, enthroned upon Mt. Kailas

Hoisted with his own petard

A young coyote, his head stuck in a plastic jar, is wandering around south Seattle, drawing tons of attention from the media.

The coyote apparently found something attractive about the jar. Once he got his head into it, however, he couldn't pull it back out. He's been stuck in his self-inflicted trap for about ten days, floundering around the countryside irrationally. He can't eat or drink.

The jar obviously distorts his view of the world, but so far he's eluded capture. He's terrified of the animal experts who are his only hope of extrication before he dies of thirst and hunger.

Time may be running out for the young pup.

Meanwhile, he's causing a lot of commotion and a lot of anxiety in the community.

Turning now to national news, let's look at the Republicans in Congress ....

Newby in Nuristan

By 1956, Eric Newby had devoted ten years of his life to working as a dress buyer for a London fashion house. Then one day, discouraged by his future prospects, he sent a telegram to Hugh Carless, a casual friend working as a British diplomat in South America, asking "CAN YOU TRAVEL NURISTAN JUNE?"

Nuristan -- which until 1896, when its people were forcibly converted to Islam, had been called Kafiristan (land of the infidels) -- is one of the most remote and backward provinces in Afghanistan, nestled in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, northeast of Kabul. Afghanistan itself, at the time, was a nation so primitive that it had virtually no paved roads. Carless suggested not only exploring Nuristan, but also bagging a first ascent of near-by Mir Samir (19,878 ft.).

Carless replied "OF COURSE." Newby walked away from his career in the fashion industry. And thus was born his best-selling travel adventure, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.

Although Newby's life to that point had been a bit more adventuresome than his account of it suggests -- distinguished military service, and shipping out as an 18-year-old apprentice on a four-masted sailing vessel carrying grain as cargo between Europe and Australia -- neither Carless nor he had any mountaineering experience. To prepare for their adventure, they took a short course in elementary techniques from some experienced climbers, mountaineers who appeared concerned not only for the pair's safety but also for their sanity.

Newby writes in a humorous, self-deprecating and understated style about their efforts to properly outfit themselves and prepare for what he increasingly realized would be a totally foolhardy ordeal. The early chapters read like "Laurel and Hardy Go Mountaineering." Carless appears insouciant and confident; Newby was in a constant state of panic and alarm.

Their travel cross-country from Europe to Kabul was in itself the adventure of a lifetime. Once past Kabul, and on the trail up into the Hindu Kush, Newby's account becomes less manically funny and more humorously observant of the real dangers and problems they encountered. Newby's feet were blistered and in bandages from the outset, and both suffered from chronic dysentary. The local helpers whom they had secured in Kabul were difficult to deal with, often obdurate and unwilling to do what was asked of them, and difficult to communicate with. (Carless did speak Persian, of which the local languages were variants or dialects; Newby spoke only English.) The pack horses were in poor condition, and often terrified by the trail they were forced to follow.

Despite unspeakable hardships, primitive food rations, and unfriendly villagers, the two adventurers dragged themselves up higher and higher into the Hindu Kush. Facing miseries that would cause many experienced climbers to give up, and needing to pull out a sort of "Climbing for Dummies" manual whenever they confronted a technical challenge, they somehow managed to reach a point just 700 vertical feet below the summit of Mir Samir. They could have continued successfully to the summit but for the lateness in the day and their lack of any equipment for an overnight bivouac -- even turning around at that point, they returned to their camp after dark.

Rather than then returning to England, tails between their legs, they proceeded onward with a difficult climb over a mountain ridge and down into the next valley, thus passing into Nuristan. They had a number of adventures among a people so isolated that they thought Newby and Carless must be Russians, with whom they were familiar as rifle salesmen -- and so wild and incomprensible that Newby feared they must be mad.

The book comes with a sketchy map, hand-drawn by the author, on which the reader can follow a dotted line marking Newby's route. The map, indeed the entire trek, brings to mind Frodo's quest in Lord of the Rings. Although no orcs or dwarves come bounding out of any of the many caves Newby and Carless pass, their adventure is odd enough, and divorced enough from how we picture the world of 1956, that we would hardly have been surprised. Newby even happens upon a faded inscription carved into stone in an unknown tongue -- strangely reminiscent of Tolkien's elvish runes.

Until I had read Newby's book, I'd never heard of Nuristan, despite the fact that the remote valley was the core sanctuary of the Afghan opponents to the Russian occupation in the 1980's. We think of Afghanistan as a bleak, ugly country filled with murderous fanatics. But before the Russian invasion in 1979, Afghanistan was a popular stop on the "hippie highway" to India. Newby's book reminds us of how beautiful and undeveloped much of Afghanistan remains, and of how primitive and isolated many of its people were as late as the Eisenhower era. And, for all I know, may still be.

Afghanistan as a tourist (or trekking) destination may seem improbable any time in the near future. It wasn't so long ago, however, that Americans felt the same way about Vietnam.
----------------------------------
Photo: Eric Newby climbing Mir Samir

Ruddigore

A witch burning at the stake. A cursed baronetcy. An old woman long ago driven mad by scorned affection. A gothic castle. Thunder and lightning. Bewitched paintings whose portraits step out from their frames. A black and red caped villain, sweeping about the stage like the alligators in Fantasia. A jaunty sailor, home from the sea, dancing hornpipes. Two young innocents, absurdly shy and absurdly in love. A background village chorus of singing bumpkins.

Allusions to grand opera: the gypsy scene from Il Trovatore, the mad scene from Lucia di Lammermoor. Gothic romance and Victorian melodrama. A tale of mistaken identity, love thwarted, love regained, happy couplings for all, and all's well that ends well -- all lifted out of Shakespearean comedy.

Yes, it's July again, and time for another Gilbert & Sullivan Society production. This year, it's Ruddigore, a production last presented by the Society in 1995.

In a sense, if you've seen one Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, you've seen them all. But each still has its own special brand of silliness, satire, and satisfying music. Each has its own lyrical tunes, declamatory quasi-recitatives, and an example or two of the trademark -- and highly enjoyable and unforgettable -- G&S patter.

Such patters are often satirical -- satirizing the politics and social mores of the Victorian era, sometimes supplemented by a few updated verses good-naturedly attacking the foibles of our own times and place. Ruddigore has a patter -- presented at a tempo even more breathless than usual -- that's almost post-modern in concept, with its amusing (if unintelligable) self-referential conclusion:

If I had been so lucky as to have a steady brother
Who could talk to me as we are talking now to one another –
Who could give me good advice when he discovered I was erring
(Which is just the very favour which on you I am conferring),
My existance would have made a rather interesting idyll,
And I might have lived and died a very decent indiwiddle.
This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter
Isn’t generally heard, and if it is it doesn’t matter!

The excellent feature of any work by G&S is that it really doesn't matter -- it has no notable redeeming social value -- and yet you walk out of the theater happy, whistling, chuckling, and with no doubt whatsoever that your evening's been well spent.

Ruddigore continues playing at Seattle's Bagley Wright Theater through July 30.

Chill in Seattle

I'm not wise at all. I told you, I know nothing. I know books, and I know how to string words together -- it doesn't mean I know how to speak about the things that matter most to me.
--André Aciman

Every self-appointed member of the blognoscenti soon finds himself pontificating on topics about which he knows little, but on which he doesn't hesitate to speak at length. Such a self-appointed expert may within a few weeks time spew forth, for example -- in pompous bursts of High Academic English -- unreadable essays on journalism, economics, Shakespearean pot smoking, constitutional theory, the political status of colonial dependencies, and -- as his delusions of grandeur become ever more divorced from reality, and his sentence structures ever more strained -- mathematical discourses on irrational numbers and absurdly simplistic comments on quantum mechanics.

The only cure, aside from psychoanalysis or, perhaps, electroshock therapy, is for the blogomaniac to sit back, breathe deeply, and demand of himself an essay based on his own personal experience -- not on his half-baked book learning. Speak about things that really "matter most to me," in other words.

Take the weather, for example. (In Seattle, that last sentence elicits immediate Henny Youngman-esque rejoinders, ones that I'll now ignore.)

Our relationship with the weather is never abstract, always direct and personal. I understand that most of you fellow Americans are suffering from the much-denied outcome ("liberal pseudo-science!") of global warming. Y'all seem trapped under a one million square mile "heat dome", making your lives a living hell, if news reports are to be believed. But here in the Northwest Corner? Au contraire, mes amis. We're still waiting for summer to arrive.

According to the Seattle Times, we've had 78 minutes of summer so far in 2011 -- right up until this, the 20th day of July. To be precise, we had 12 minutes of summer on July 2, and another 66 minutes (hooray!) of summer on July 6 -- "summer," for our purposes, being defined as any temperature of 80 degrees or higher. This morning, I was so chilly when I got up that I almost turned on the furnace, which would have been in utter violation of my personal furnace ban, running from June 1 to October 1.

Even when it's been "warm" this year -- i.e., over 65 degrees -- it's often been sprinkling.

But here in the Northwest, we resemble our climatic cousins, the English. Like the Brits, we might mutter about the weather, but we'd never move away. When someone tells you that he's leaving Seattle because of the rain, or the lack of sunshine, you can bet he wasn't born here. He's a carpetbagger, an interloper who came here because he was unhappy somewhere else, and who's now moving on because he's unhappy here. But he carries his unhappiness around with him, a little rain cloud above his head. It ain't gonna get no better, no matter where he runs to next.

In my neighborhood -- as in most Seattle neighborhoods -- it's a matter of environmental pride that we not water our lawns in the summer. We watch them turn gradually brown during June, stay brown throughout the summer (needing no mowing!), and come back green and healthy when the rains return in September. But today, I look out my window and what do I see? I see that my lawn, and everyone else's, is as soft and green as though it were April. Rain. Precip. Mother Nature's own sprinkler system. When she slams one door in your face, she hands you a silver lining with the other. So to speak.

It may be cool out this summer, but it isn't cold. I can walk out the door anytime I want, wearing only (above the waist) a t-shirt, and not feel uncomfortable. Just cool. And pleasantly non-sweaty. It may rain, but it rarely pours. I can walk in a summer sprinkle -- still wearing that non-sweaty t-shirt -- and get only pleasantly damp. Wet t-shirts do dry without complication, by the way; that's their big advantage over silk business suits. Which Northwesterners rarely wear. Not even CEO's like Bill Gates.

If this were a "normal" hot summer, spring would have been long over. Only the occasional hardy dandelion would still be displaying a bit of color. But as I walk around the neighborhood today, I'm swimming in vernal abundance, engulfed in sweet smelling floral displays. The flowers began blooming in late January -- a mild winter -- and many are still blooming today.

Sure, we'd like it to be warmer. And sunnier. But we adjust. We still hike -- cool temperatures are great for hiking, and a little rain never hurts. We picnic -- well, yeah, the potato salad does get a little runny, the sandwiches a little soggy, but we just duck for cover. "Someone left the cake out in the rain" -- ah, who cares? We still camp -- we just build the campfire up a little higher, and stake the rain flies a little more securely. The Mariners still play baseball (as if anyone still cared) -- they just close the dome.

Northwest weather teaches us to temper our expectations. To avoid being devastated when the barometer drops. To enjoy the beauty of forests and mountains when they're touched by fog and drizzle, as well as when kissed by the sun. To enjoy what we're doing and the people we're with -- even when the weather isn't "perfect," even when not everything's gone exactly according to plan. To enjoy life all the more, many times, just because it doesn't always go according to plan.

Our weather is flexible, and that may have taught us a bit of flexibility in response. As a result, I submit that we're less apt than many folks living elsewhere to whine at every setback, to complain at every obstruction, to feel devastated at each of life's vicissitudes, to constantly fear we're missing out on something to which we're entitled. We're chill. We go with the flow.

Life in the Northwest Corner's good, very good, even if not perfect.

And that's something I didn't have to learn from books.

Cheers for the gray lady

I walked out to the sidewalk this morning, picked up my copy of the New York Times, and removed its plastic cover -- soaked with Seattle rain -- with special care. Today, the newspaper seemed more precious and exceptional than usual.

Last night, I'd gone to watch the documentary, Page One: Inside the New York Times, now playing in theaters. The movie, centered on the work of David Carr, media columnist for the NYT, gives an exciting picture of what goes on behind the scenes at the paper. The film focuses especially on the financial crisis resulting from a drop in paid subscriptions and an even more drastic recent drop in advertising revenue, and on the growing rivalry between traditional print newspapers and on-line rivals such as the Huntington Post.

Carr and other Times spokesmen make a compelling case that aggregators of bits of news from all over (which adequately describes most on-line competiters) are no substitute for traditional news organizations that not only collect the news but support correspondents and news bureaus that actively seek it out.

Although the Murdoch scandal had not yet become news when the documentary was filmed, Sam Zell's purchase of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times were used to illustrate what happens when journalism is viewed primarily as a profit generating business rather than as a profession -- when "give the public what it wants" supersedes editorial judgment as to what is newsworthy. As Carr wrote last Monday in his regular column, discussing the press's role in uncovering the Murdoch scandal:

The Guardian stayed on the phone-hacking story like a dog on a meat bone, acting very much in the British tradition of a crusading press, and goosing the story back to life after years of dormancy. Mr. Murdoch, ever the populist, prefers his crusades to be built on chronic ridicule and bombast. But as The Guardian has shown, the steady accretion of fact — an exercise Mr. Murdoch has historically regarded as bland and elitist — can have a profound effect.

Everyone recognizes the value today's internet resources -- YouTube videos, tweets, citizen reporting -- provide in uncovering facts that otherwise would remain hidden. The Times itself is making increasing use of blogs on its on-line version. But significant stories need more than presentation of a melange of uncoordinated facts. They need the tenacity, organization, and editorial judgment that a good newspaper can bring to bear. (And the film discusses certain self-acknowledged lapses in such editorial judgment that have hurt the Times's credibility.)

The documentary perhaps tries to touch too many bases in an an hour and a half. Its reliance on filmed conversations among editors and writers, and on apparently unrehearsed interviews, may cause the viewer some difficulty in following its argument, and some dismay as topics change just as they are becoming interesting. But the movie -- by these very conversations in the face of deadlines and by the often tense interviews -- strongly conveys the excitement of working for a news organization with a history of excellence, one that considers itself America's "newspaper of record."

The Times editors interviewed in the movie seem optimistic that the NYT will continue as the country's leading newspaper, despite acute pressures upon it, financial and otherwise. An outside expert on media affairs was less sanguine, warning that while print newspapers provide valuable services to the country, and therefore "should" survive, it's a mistake to assume that "should survive" necessarily implies "will survive."

A glance through this morning's New York Times reveals one lengthy story after another, covering complex and crucial national, international, and business news issues. These are factual stories and analytical pieces that I doubt exist elsewhere -- except when blogs, aggregators, and lesser newspapers themselves rely, as they often do, on the original work done by the New York Times.

For years, I've subscribed to the Times's Saturday and Sunday editions. I'm now seriously considering signing up for daily delivery. Maybe that's more daily reading than I can handle -- my original reason for the limited subscription -- but I figure it's the least I can do.

I'd hate to live in a country that relied solely on CNN and Fox News for its understanding of the world.

Da capo al fine

I returned, this morning, from my final piano lesson of the "school year," having now completed 1½ years in my latest reincarnation as a piano student. No more lessons until the end of August.

My reaction to my upcoming "vacation" is multi-faceted: First, there's my good, old fashioned "no more classes, no more books" sense of relief. Second, a determination to maintain some sort of regimen of practice throughout the summer, even though I'll be lacking the incentive of preparation for my next weekly lesson. And finally, a contemplation of the past year -- looking back at the progress I've made to date.

Yes, I'm still working primarily on the same Beethoven sonata. To my readers my progress must seem painfully slow. But learning a sonata is a bit like reading a serious novel: each re-reading reveals something new about the author, about his plot and characterization, about the complexities of life -- and about oneself.

No matter how many times I play a passage, my instructor -- while generous with compliments -- has suggestions for how I might play it better. Or observations: Note how the composer returns, over and over, to B-flat, until he finally resolves the extended phrase with a C-minor chord. Or questions: Why do you think Beethoven wrote this phrase as he did? Or analogies: Think of yourself as playing all four parts of a string quartet; give each instrument an adequate opportunity to show off its own performance.

In other words, while helping me to master a sonata, she is also subtly teaching me a tiny bit of musical theory.

"Master a sonata" -- believe me, I have a long way to go. If I were a kid, preparing for a recital, I'd feel that my situation was hopeless. But I'm doing this simply for my own gratification (although, I suppose that someday I'll force family members to sit quietly for 19 or 20 minutes, and listen to the whole shebang.)

Nineteen or 20 minutes. Such a short sonata, compared to the amount of practice and the number of lessons it's taken me to get just this far.

But is it worth it? You bet!

Running the asylum

If I haven't commented so far on the partisan shooting match in Congress over the raising of the federal debt limit, it hasn't been out of lack of interest. The economic issues are difficult, and economics isn't a field in which I pretend much competence. (Too bad a few of the idiots -- I'm using the term in something close to its technical definition -- who spill their vituperations all over the internet don't exercise similar restraint.)

I do have political preferences -- the growth in the federal debt should not, in the long term, exceed growth in gross domestic product; spending cuts should not damage programs that maintain and improve the nation's infrastructure and/or will lead to future growth in employment; the rich should pay taxes and suffer loss of benefits in a manner proportionate to the demands placed on the poor.

How we get there is the technically difficult problem about which I have uncertainty.

I rely primarily on analysis by The Economist for my limited economic insights. Although the magazine's bias is toward the laissez faire economic principles traditionally advocated by the Republican party, its data seem objective and its analysis transparent. If the magazine has a secret -- as opposed to open and acknowledged -- political agenda, it isn't apparent to me.

The past few issues have lambasted the Republicans on their handling of the debt limit increase. "Lexington," the magazine's commentator on American affairs, notes (7-2-11) that the new Republican members of the House have elevated "a preference" for not raising taxes "into a fetish."

Even Reagan, a supply-sider persuaded by Arthur Laffer's pretty curves that his tax cuts would pay for themselves, raised taxes when they did not. To non-partisans, the idea of taming the deficit by spending cuts alone flies against both common sense and arithmetic.

The magazine pointed out last year that federal taxes, adjusted for inflation, are now at the lowest level since before the Korean war.

Lexington concludes, reminding us of the Republican outrage when the Democrats used their majorities, and their hold on the presidency, to "ram" health care reform through Congress and into law.

Now the Republicans are using the spectre of a debt default to impose their own radical vision of how to reform America, before having won control of the Senate, the White House or even, many will say, the argument. That strikes some Americans as nothing less than blackmail.

This week (7-9-11), The Economist editorializes in a leader ("Shame on them") that America's present debt load -- at 65 percent of GDP -- is "perfectly affordable," and that the closer you look, "the more unprincipled the Republicans look." The leader concludes:

Both parties have in recent months been guilty of fiscal recklessness. Right now, though, the blame falls clearly on the Republicans. Independent voters should take note.

This is strong language from a publication that normally aligns with Republicans on economic issues.

Republican behavior in Congress calls to mind the warning from another newspaper that the Republicans are in danger of transforming themselves from a normal political party into an extremist cult.

"Bye-bye, sci-fi"

The summer I was 12, I spent a day at the beach in bed with badly sunburned legs, reading my parents' copy of The Exploration of Space, by Arthur C. Clarke. (The very same Arthur C. Clarke who wrote Sentinal of Eternity, the short story upon which the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey was loosely based.)

I was thinking that I still had Clarke's book on my bookshelves, but a frustrating search just now has failed to locate it. It's been a number of years since I last glanced at it -- a non-fictional discussion of space travel, written in 1951, at a time when earth satellites still seemed a distant dream. But I remember the strong fascination it had for my young mind. Much of the book explained in simple terms the physics of rocket propulsion in the vacuum of outer space -- many non-scientifically trained people at the time still believed that rockets wouldn't work unless they had some atmosphere "to push against" -- and how a satellite, once in orbit, would continue circling the earth indefinitely without needing any further propulsion.

This book was intended for the general reader, and for the general reader in 1951 the science involved in space travel seems to have been novel.

So most of the book would now be outdated, although its science still accurate -- material that today's reader with only a casual knowledge of science already understands. Pushed by competition with the USSR, moreover, rocket and satellite technology developed perhaps even faster than Clarke had anticipated.

But what I really remember from the book are the beautiful color plates with imaginative renderings of domed colonies on the Moon and on Mars. As I recall, Clarke forecast a moon base by about 2000, and a colony planted on the Martian surface not too many years later. I was excited to realize that my generation would live to witness these achievements -- maybe not yet to visit foreign colonies, but at least to read about them in magazines and to watch activities within them on television.

After all, as Clarke said himself -- in a quotation from the book that I found on-line:

If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.

So -- here we are in 2011. Where is our colony on Mars? Where is the permanent Moon base? Where are signs of Clarke's "laughably conservative" prophesies?

Today, in the 135th launch of the space shuttle program, the shuttle Atlantis lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center. It was America's last launch. The program now ends. Last week's cover of the Economist showed a photograph of a space shuttle against the curvature of the Earth, overprinted with the legend, "The End of the Space Age." The magazine's leader editorializes, apparently with some satisfaction:

It is quite conceivable that 36,000 km [the orbit of communications satellites] will prove the limit of human ambition. It is equally conceivable that the fantasy-made-reality of human space flight will return to fantasy. It is likely that the Space Age is over. ... There is no appetite to return to the moon, let alone push on to Mars, El Dorado of space exploration. The technology could be there, but the passion has gone. ... [H]umanity's dreams of a future beyond that final frontier have, largely, faded.

Well, screw you, 21st century mankind, for spitting a 12-year-old in the face, and grinding his dreams underfoot.

I imagine darkly an alternative universe, where a Lisbon business-oriented newspaper might have written, snidely, 500 years ago:

Now that we have explored the Azores, there is little appetite for further exploration. The dreamers -- with their incessant chatter about a spherical Earth and of distant lands of gold and spices -- have had their day. We have the ships to sail farther, but not the passion. So, stop dreaming, Portugal. Smother your childish excitement, and teach your own children to be hard-nosed realists. Nothing beyond the Azores is worth thinking about. Let's all learn to just be the best farmers and wine-makers that we know how.

Highland ghosts

As I prepare for my Highlands walk in Scotland, now only 24 days away, I'm repeatedly impressed by the bleakness, the barrenness, the desolation -- the atmosphere of gloom -- of some of the areas through which I'll be hiking. Austerely beautiful, yes, but also cold and unforgiving.

A striking example is Glen Coe. That name sounds deceptively gentle and pretty to our Yankee ears, perhaps because of its association with a number of pleasant American towns named "Glencoe" after the Scottish original. But Glen Coe is a narrow glacial valley, and, until quite recently, isolated and remote . The river Coe runs through the glen. The meaning of its name is lost to history, "Coe" (or "Comhan" in Gaelic) most likely arising out of some unknown, pre-Gaelic language.

The hiker comes down into the glen off of Rannoch Moor to the east, itself a wild and dampish spot, drenched by over 100 inches of rain a year. The names of surrounding mountains and other physical features sound as though they were drawn directly from Tolkien's Middle Earth: Meall a'Bhuiridh, Stob Dearg, Aonach Mor, River Etive. I'll spend my night in the glen at the isolated Kingshouse, an eighteenth century hostelry which played its part in the salt smuggling trade of days long past.

But Glen Coe is best known to history for the infamous Glen Coe Massacre of Clan MacDonald in 1692.

The horror of that massacre began with political events at the highest level. When William of Orange was summoned to become king of England, he succeeded the deposed James II, who had also been James VII of Scotland. The Jacobite uprisings followed, anti-English rebellions by Scots -- especially Highlanders -- whose loyalties remained with James. Once the uprisings were put down, William gave each Highlander clan a January 1st deadline by which it could swear allegiance to his rule and be pardoned for its part in the uprising.

The MacDonald chief was a few days late in swearing his oath; this tardiness resulted from several causes, including adverse weather and the unavailability during the holidays of a proper English authority to hear the oath. It was assumed that the chief had fulfilled the spirit of the requirement and that the clan would receive its pardon. But the cabinet member responsible for Scottish affairs, a Scot himself who felt that the Highlander clans posed an obstacle to good government, had other ideas.

In February, 120 soldiers were sent to Glen Coe to be billeted with the local clansmen, supposedly while they went about collecting a routine tax. They were greeted as guests by the MacDonalds. Soldiers and clansmen fraternized in a friendly fashion for about two weeks, until the order was received by messenger from Fort William: Put to the sword every member of the clan under 70 years of age. The English commanding officer sat up playing cards with his hosts the night before the massacre, wished them all a good night upon retiring, and accepted an invitation to dinner the following day.

At 5 a.m., the English forces arose silently from their beds and killed the Highlanders in their sleep or while they attempted escape. Thirty-eight men were thus killed. The soldiers then burned every house and drove off all the livestock, leaving another 40 women and children to die of starvation and exposure. Some MacDonalds escaped with their lives into the hills only because English reinforcements, with orders to kill all fleeing members of the clan, were late in arriving on the scene.

The bleakness of Glen Coe therefore lies not entirely in its solitude and in its stark physical features. Although the area is now accessed by a modern road, and serves as a popular hiking and climbing center in summer and as a ski area in winter, ancient wrongs hang like a mist over the narrow glen, wrongs that remain forever unrequited.

I'll be disappointed if I don't feel surrounded by the restless ghosts of the men, women and wee bairns of Clan MacDonald as I lie fitfully abed in Glen Coe, Scotland.

The tao of τ: bidding farewell to π?

"Pi" is absolutely amazing!

That was my reaction in grade school arithmetic class. I learned you didn't have to take a ruler and somehow measure the distance around a circle: You could simply measure the diameter and multiply by pi. C = πd, as our books presented it. It was an equation taught us long before we entered algebra, along with the even more miraculous equation for the area of a circle: A = πr².

The value of pi was usually given as 3.14, making our calculations easy. It wasn't until later -- maybe 7th grade -- that we learned that pi was an irrational number -- i.e., a number that couldn't be expressed as a fraction, and a number whose decimal expansion went on forever. Pi, therefore, could be expressed ever more precisely with each added digit, but no matter how many digits you added, it still wouldn't express with complete perfection the ratio between the diameter and the area of a circle.

Pi was an ideal, but an unattainable ideal: one that couldn't be described precisely with the numbers we had available.

People with strange mental abilities have memorized the decimal expansion of pi to incredible lengths. According to one source, a fellow from Pennsylvania named Mark Umile holds the record. In 2007, Umile recited from memory the first 15,314 digits of the pi expansion. I'm tempted to exclaim to this gentleman, "Sir, get a life!" -- but then, I have to ask, do I spend my days all that much more productively?

Anyway, this clutter of trivia has been prompted by a news story today, advising us that many mathematicians aren't happy with pi. It's not that they think it's incorrectly used, or that its value has been incorrectly calculated. They simply don't like using the diameter of a circle as the starting point for defining a universal constant.

The diameter is virtually never used in higher mathematics. All equations are expressed in terms of the radius -- one half of the diameter. So, once past grade school arithmetic, C = πd is often written C = 2πr. Consequently, mathematicians would feel more comfortable describing the constant in terms of the ratio between the circumference and the radius, rather than between the circumference and twice the radiuis.

Therefore, according to the news article, we should adopt 2π as our basic constant, and call it "tau," another Greek letter, one that is written "τ". Using tau as the constant is not only more elegant, they contend, but certain uses of pi that students begin running into once they get beyond fifth grade or so would be understood more intuitively if pi were replaced with tau. They hope to be reasonable -- they don't want to eliminate pi, they assure us, they just want to teach students to think in terms of tau, rather than pi. Start 'em off in grade school with C = τr, and their lives will be much easier as they get older.

This all sounds sort of reasonable, I suppose. It makes more sense than changing AD and BC to "CE" and "BCE." But these nice professors are explaining their views to a country whose citizens insist on seeing the world about them as one measured in miles, pecks, bushels, furlongs, quarts, and acres. You think they're going to adopt tau any more readily than they adopt liters instead of gallons? Good luck with that! I don't think they're going to buy it. Call it American exceptionalism, if you will. "That's not what they taught us when I was a boy," they'll exclaim. "Why fix it if it ain't broke?"

And the deal breaker: "If God wanted us to use tau, why did he give us pi?. I'll just stick with the good ol' time arithmetic, thank you much!"