Sibling rivalry

Nurek dam

You know how it is.  You've never heard of a word -- like desuetude, for example -- until you read it somewhere and look it up.  Then you seem to run into it on a daily basis.

I suppose I'd heard of Tajikistan.  Usually as part of a list of the "stans" in Central Asia that had broken off from the Soviet Union.  But, taken alone, I knew nothing about it.  I had no idea who Tajikistan's neighbors were, or how large it was relative to its neighbors (answer: small).  We were never taught in fifth grade its capital, climate, and "principal products."

Then I signed up for a September trek in Tajikistan.  Suddenly, I see references to the little nation everywhere.  Well, not everywhere.  It's not a household word, like "France" or "Japan."  But the name occasionally pops out at me.

As in this week's Economist -- an article entitled Folie de grandeur.  The writer describes Tajikistan as "dirt-poor but water-rich," and its president, Emomali Rakhmon, as an autocrat with a slush fund in the British Virgin Islands.  Rakhmon wants to build a second dam (upstream from the existing Nurek dam) on the Vakhsh river, a tributary of the Amu Darya (Alexander the Great's "Oxus," the river that separates Uzbekistan and Afghanistan).  Rakhmon's fellow autocrat across the western border in Uzbekistan is opposed.  The dam, he fears, will deprive his country of irrigation water.

During the more placid days of Soviet hegemony, Tajikistan sold hydroelectric power (and released needed water) to Uzbekistan in the summer, and Ubekistan sold Tajikistan natural gas in winter.  Now the two neighbors are at each other's throats. 

These things sometimes happen, once siblings grow up and leave the nest.

After our Tajikistan trek, we motor across the border into Uzbekistan.  I can only hope that they haven't closed the border -- or entered into active hostilities -- by that time.  Of course, being caught in the center of a Central Asian war would make for good blogging material. 

But, no.  Mutual irritation between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan seems destined to remain a "cold war."  Especially cold in winter, when each country could use its antagonist's energy products for heat and light.

Spray Park

Spray Falls

My hike yesterday to Spray Park, in the northwest corner of Rainier National Park, was perhaps premature -- by just two or three weeks.

The first couple of miles were beautiful, and easy hiking, through dense old-growth timber.  The definite high point was a short side trip to the bottom of Spray Falls -- an unexpectedly high spill of water over rock, kicking up billowing clouds of the eponymous spray.

After Spray Falls, the trail begins a series of steep switchbacks, leading to the lower meadows of Spray Park -- the "park" being a series of alpine meadows that climb higher and higher to a ridge separating Spray Park from Seattle Park to the east, or, as my guide puts it, "a vast corridor of open meadows interspersed among rocky moraines, lingering snow patches, whistling marmots, and sun-basking hikers."

The snow has been melting rapidly in our unaccustomedly sunny weather, but still covers much of the path once the hiker has ventured into open meadows.  The lower portion of Spray Park, where I ended my hike and had lunch, is slightly more than half free of snow cover, but the snow was obviously more extensive as the path rose higher.  I had done enough hiking (and postholing) in soft snow a couple of weeks ago at Mt. Pilchuck. 


Rainier and avalanche lilies

The views of Mt. Rainier and surrounding hills and ridges were impressive, and themselves worth the hike.  And it was interesting to see the bare meadows at this point, shortly after the snow cover had melted.  The grass was still gray and bedraggled, but the eager avalanche lilies were already emerging and covering the ground in places. 

No "whistling marmots" to entertain me, but I did encounter "camp robbers" (these appeared to be gray jays), who carried on prolonged negotiations with me for bits of my sandwich.  (I know, don't feed the animals -- but this was just a little convivial breaking of bread together).

Camp robbers

No marmots and -- in response to nervous queries from hikers I met coming up as I was returning -- no bears.  Or cougars.  

Nor many "sun-basking hikers" -- a bit early in the season, even in mid-July, and the early sunshine had changed to a cloud cover by the time I reached Spray Park.

I returned to the car happy, but not quite satisfied.  If I'd waited about three more weeks, Spray Park probably would have been stunning -- snow-free trails and carpets of wild flowers.  A good incentive to return, only slightly negated by the need to negotiate a dusty  17-mile gravel road leading to the trailhead.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

I'm constantly amazed by the number of cars I see on the road bearing expired license tabs.  Now, this reveals a couple of things -- first, that I'm so interested in license plates that I study them, as opposed to passing scenery, while driving; and, second, the I am so obsessive that I check the month and year of these licenses for expiration.

Let's forget about all that.  What's interesting is the degree of my irritation when I see a car with June 2013 tags on the road in July.  I'm irritated even though I know the owner probably has paid his fee and just hasn't got around to sticking the new tabs on the plate.  And when I see a car with 2012 (or a year or so older) tabs, my head is ready to explode.  Not only at the scofflaw who is pulling a fast one on those of us who religiously pay our fees and attach our tabs, but at the civil authorities who have not impounded this car and hauled its owner off to jail.  What the hell are the police doing, nowadays?  Mediating dog fights?

In calmer moments, realization of how ridiculous my outrage really is -- the tabs will get affixed, the taxes will get paid -- causes me some reflection.  While my anger at this particular "outrage" may be atypical, the nature of the anger itself seems to be a typical human reaction -- typical, if not of all humanity, at least of the middle class subset to which I belong.

Back in our nation's capital, even as I write, Congressmen are working themselves into a dither over whether to allow illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.  A large number of House members -- whether expressing their own private views or only those of their constitutents -- have adopted the mantra of "No Amnesty."  Illegal immigrants are in the country in violation of the law.  They should not -- must not -- will not -- be rewarded for their willful illegal entry. 

Taken to its logical extreme -- as, in fact, it usually is -- they argue that these immigrants not only should be refused a path to citizenship, but should be deported en masse.  Not only those who themselves crept across our Sacred Borders, defiling our Holy Motherland with their presence, but also their babes in arms who have since grown up speaking English, leading American teenage lives,  graduating with honors from college, and finding themselves now launched into respectable American careers.  "If they're so smart, let 'em go back to their 'own country'," I've read in comments. "They can be smart there, and help 'their countrymen'."

I'm appalled by these reactions, so lacking in compassion, so unreasonably callous as to the interests of immigrant families and so hostile to our own national interests.  But their emotional response is basically the same gut reaction I experience on the highway -- the law's the law!  Illegal immigrants violated the law; let them suffer the consequences.  In fact, let the consequences of the "iniquity of the fathers [be visited] on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations."

The proper answer both to me ("seize their cars and throw them in the slammer") and to the Republicans ("cast them hence, together with their mewling, snot-nosed brats") is pretty much the same:  Yes, the law is the law.  But a civilized society enforces its laws in a manner both reasonable and compassionate.

As we legal history buffs remember well, English courts of law in the early Middle Ages enforced the common law "by the book." The law was the law, by God, and appeals to fairness or reason were unavailing.  Over a period of time, however, England evolved a parallel set of courts -- courts of equity -- that applied the King's ultimate power to grant mercy in such a manner as to mitigate the rigors of the common law.

Congress is being asked, analogously, to apply equity in the enforcement of its own earlier immigration laws.  It is being asked, simply, to see the same need for flexibility and compassion that our English forebears had already discerned by the fourteenth century -- the need to temper justice with mercy.

But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the heart of kings;
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.

--Merchant of Venice.

And I, on my own part, will try to practice what I preach, the next time I find myself sitting in traffic behind a car with expired tabs.  "He's probably paid for the tabs, and they're sitting in an envelope on his dining room table," I'll tell myself, taking deep breaths.  "And even if he hasn't, he'll get the fee paid soon.  Not everyone has the luxury of focusing for long periods of time on their own and other people's license tabs."

And I'll certainly have a point.

Permission to enter

In his book of travel essays, Abroad, Paul Fussell observes dryly that passports were a nuisance first imposed on the British traveler in 1915.

The passport was the novel instrument by which England restricted travel during the war and by which, like all other countries, it has interfered in it ever since. Novel because before 1915 His Majesty's Government did not require a passport for departure, nor did any European state require one for admittance except the two notoriously backward and neurotic countries of Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

In America, the requirement was lifted in 1921 and not reimposed until 1941 -- and we've never looked back.

Since "9-11," Americans have needed some sort of passport to visit even Canada and Mexico. Visas, on the other hand -- issued by the country to be visited, not the traveler's own government -- aren't generally required for visits to the most commonly touristed nations.

And so -- when I do need to obtain visas for a trip, I'm at the same time irritated by the inconvenience (and expense), and thrilled that I'm somehow wandering off the most beaten paths and into regions that are (by Yankee standards, at least) obscure and mysterious.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I'm going mountain trekking in Tajikistan in September, followed by a few days of tourist travel in Uzbekistan. Both countries require visas (and charge plenty for the privilege of entering). Both countries require recent photos, typed application forms, bogus "letters of invitation" from a local tourist agency, and full itineraries (no wandering around the Steppes of Central Asia on your own, getting yourselves into trouble, if you please!). Both countries -- as I now know -- take their own sweet time as they mull over the advisability of granting you their precious permission to enter. To be sure, I wasn't holding my breath to the extent I did a couple of years ago, awaiting my Iranian visa. But, even so, the delay before this year's visas were granted -- about three weeks for each -- did make me somewhat nervous.

Obtaining visas for countries like Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran -- and even India, to a lesser extent -- requires a certain amount of preparation and patience. Quite different is securing a Turkish visa -- a visa requirement imposed only relatively recently. (I'll be spending a couple of nights in Istanbul, before flying on to Central Asia.) The Turkish visa is obtained on-line, the main objective apparently being to charge twenty dollars to your credit card as quickly and painlessly as possible.

But I now have them all. My "papers are all in order," as officials in the old black and white movies used to say. I leave Seattle in 53 days (but, hey, who's counting), needing only to get my trekking equipment (and my lungs and leg muscles) in order before that date!

Henry in the Park

On St. Crispin's Day (October 25), 1415, English forces routed the French in the Battle of Agincourt.  Shakespeare, in his play Henry V, puts the French losses at 10,000 men; the English at 25.  A near miracle, an awestruck King Henry declaims:

Was ever known so great and little loss
On one part and on the other? Take it, God,
For it is none but thine!

More cautious estimates, both English and French, are less incredible, but by all accounts it was a dazzling victory for "King Harry's" forces.

Agincourt, this afternoon, was not a bloodsoaked field near Calais, but a lush amphitheater lawn in Seattle's Volunteer Park, surrounded by dense trees, with a blue sky overhead.  It was a beautiful day to sit on the lawn (or in chairs, for those clever enough to have brought them), surrounded by hordes of kids and the usual Seattle complement of urban dogs.

Seattle Shakespeare Company presented Henry V -- a well-received, free performance -- one of a series of summer performances in public parks throughout King County.  The Company will present The Tempest in Volunteer Park tomorrow night.

My youthful experiences with free public performances in public parks led me to expect (and fear) a campy, revised version of the Shakespearean text, lots of slapstick physical comedy, and a not-at-all subtle message opposing war in Afghanistan or Syria, or wherever.  Instead, although apparently condensed in places, the text was straight from Shakespeare.  The English and French forces did seem to be dressed like combatants in World War II, carrying automatic weapons not yet in general use in 1415.  Although the English competency with the longbow is generally accepted as a major factor in the scale of their triumph, not a longbow (or a short bow, for that matter) was to be seen in Volunteer Park.

There were a number of satisfying explosions, however.  (Cannon were in use by the fifteenth century, after all.)  Also, a somewhat anachronistic execution of a looter by a pistol shot to the head.  Hey, gotta keep the young'uns interested, too.

But the acting was fine, several of the actors, including the one playing King Harry, being members of Actors' Equity.  The sound system was quite good, overcoming the usual problem of muddled lines arising in outdoor productions.  And Shakespeare was glorious Shakespeare.

Which of us doesn't hope to live forever in the minds of our progeny?  The words of King Henry's "St. Crispin Day" speech  resonate today as emotionally as they did in Shakespeare's time:

Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;...

Even those of us with anti-military biases couldn't help glowing as we left the amphitheater, walking in the soft afternoon air, with those stirring words ringing in our minds.

Inspector Javert (USA)

China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, South Sudan, Taiwan, Singapore, Palestine Authority, Afghanistan, Belarus, Egypt, UAE, Malaysia, and Syria.

And the United States of America.

Those are the countries that made use of the death penalty in 2011.  Gives you sort of a warm and fuzzy feeling doesn't it?  To find ourselves in such enlightened company?  According to Wikipedia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are the only other developed countries, aside from the U.S.A., to have the death penalty on their books, regardless of whether they ever make use of it. 

In New York, the federal government is trying to persuade a federal jury to find that an unsavory murderer named Ronell Wilson should be put to death.  On federal racketeering charges, since murder is generally considered a state offense. 

It seems that New York's death penalty was held unconstitutional under state law after Wilson did his deed.  Therefore, Wilson could receive "only" the maximum penalty of life in prison without parole.  So the feds took over the case, convicted Wilson in 2007, and secured a verdict of death.  But the federal attorney got a little too excited and vigorous during closing arguments, and the death penalty -- but not the conviction -- was reversed on appeal.  Wilson has been serving his life sentence in a federal prison, while waiting for the Justice Department to decide whether to retry the penalty portion of the case. 

Wilson's life sentence apparently wasn't enough to satisfy federal prosecutors.

Although most prisoners sentenced to death languish in prison for years or decades while their appeals wend their way through the courts, someone up there feels that it's important to put yet another guy on death row.  Since 1988, according to the New York Times, the federal government has obtained 280 death sentences against convicted criminals, and executed a total of three of them.  It ain't just me who wonders what this is all about -- especially with Wilson already serving a life sentence.  According to the Times, United States Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis

insisted in open court that they [federal prosecutors] get approval from the new attorney general, Mr. Holder.  "If I'm going to spend four months of my career and millions of dollars of taxpayers' money trying another one of these penalty cases, I need to know that this attorney general wants to try it," Judge Garaufis said.

He summoned four thousand prospective jurors, from which 12 jurors were ultimately selected.

If  Attorney General Holder and the Assistant Attorney General for the Eastern District of New York have a lot of spare time and money on their hands, then instead of pursuing Ronell Wilson further, they might better have devoted their attention to deciding how to balance the civil liberties of American citizens against the rather frightening surveillance techniques now in the hands of the federal government.

Opening arguments in Wilson's trial started Wednesday in Brooklyn.

Mason Lake

 Two teens, one from Mukilteo and the other from Edmonds, are missing after a day hike Sunday to the Mason Lake area in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, according to the King County Sheriff’s Office.
[The two teens, ages 18 and 19]... left at 7 a.m. yesterday for a hike and swim. When they didn’t return last night, their parents reported them missing.
King County Search and Rescue and the sheriff’s office are looking for the hikers, who are described as inexperienced.
--Seattle Times (7-1-13)

Gosh, a mysterious disappearance in the Washington wilderness.  I'd been looking for a hiking destination this weekend, so why not Mason Lake?  Like Sherlock Holmes, charging off to Baskerville Hall?  "The game is afoot!"

(Spoiler: The boys were found, lost but well, the following day.  But, I'd made my decision. Mason Lake it would be. The show must go on!)

Mason Lake is about six miles west of Snoqualmie Pass, north of (and high above) I-90.  It lies about a half mile within the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area, which necessitates filling out an additional form at the trailhead.  The trailhead parking area was jammed; the trail itself was busy, but not uncomfortably so.  

The trail follows the grade of an old logging road for the first couple of miles -- steep, but smooth hiking through beautiful forest.  At times, the trail seems less like a trail than an old lane in rural England, winding its way through overarching trees, leading to an unseen country estate.  Then a narrower and even steeper trail takes off for the final mile to the lake.  

The three-mile hike up took me an hour and a half -- a short hike, but a good workout.  Getting lost on this trail would be like getting lost driving from Seattle to Tacoma on Interstate 5.  But apparently, the two "inexperienced" young hikers decided to go beyond Mason Lake to explore another nearby lake.  A decision easy enough to understand -- Mason Lake is surrounded by numerous other small lakes. Two of them -- in opposite directions -- lie within a mile's distance from Mason.  Good trails appeared to lead on to these lakes, as well.  Even if you got off the main trail, it would seem easy enough to return to it, especially with the crowds in the area.

Detective Jason Stanley said there are a lot of hikers in the area where the two went missing. This made the search more difficult.
“There are so many hikers up there, which may work against us,” Stanley said. “We haven’t found anything.”

I guess that out in the woods, anything can happen.  But all's well that ends well.  The two friends will have a story to tell on themselves in future years -- "Dude, like Search and Rescue was out all day looking for us, and then they helicoptered us out when they found us!  It was soooo cool!"

As for me, I only wished I had a skateboard -- and knew how to use it. The lower two miles of trail was so smooth I could almost have skated all the way back down.

To kill a mocking bird

But Mr. Snowden's profile will now be carefully studied by intelligence officials for clues about how to hire skilled young hackers without endangering the agency's secrets.
--New York Times

The National Security Agency, exposed with its hand wedged tightly into the cookie jar, is struggling to figure out how this could have happened.  Not how its hand got into the jar, as we might hope, but how someone managed to take a photo of it.

The New York Times carries a front page story today describing "Civil Libertarian Hero" and/or "Despicable Traitor" Edward J. Snowden's professional and personal background.  In large part, the article discusses how Snowden was able to circumvent whatever security protocols the Agency had in place to prevent theft and revelation of its domestic and foreign surveillance activities.  A former N.S.A. official states that the Agency's background investigation of Snowden was "clearly flawed."

"For years, N.S.A. and now the Cyber Command have struggled with how to relate to the hacker community," he added.  "It's obvious that some sort of arrangement to allow hackers to work for N.S.A. and the intelligence community in a systematic way is needed."

Lots of luck.

The N.S.A probably has no problem in obtaining reliable employees, graduates with good grades from good schools, who can handle most of its routine computer network activities.  But for its most critical work -- both defensive and offensive -- the Agency needs "hackers" who are highly creative, whose every instinct is to think "outside the box."  These hackers are the very experts least likely to follow orders blindly and ignore their own, personal sense of right and wrong.

Hackers -- young people in general, but hackers in particular -- have little sympathy with secrets or, for that  matter, with government.  They are willing to work for government because of the interesting challenges and the access to complex network security issues that such work provides.  They are valuable to government so long as their interests and the interests of government coincide. Hackers are essentially mercenary soldiers.  They'll accept pay to fight loyally -- until a compelling reason to stop doing so comes along.

Scan the social media.  The sympathy for Snowden among people under 40 or so is overwhelming.  Even those who question Snowden's motives, integrity and judgment feel that he has helped the country by shining light into dangerously dark corners of American government.  Snowden has the sympathy of the libertarians, the anti-government enthusiasts, the civil liberties advocates, those supporting a free and unregulated internet, and perhaps most liberals in general.  Not many young people who are interested in computer technology and programming fall outside all of those categories.

The government has always found a conflict between security and loyalty on the one hand and creativity on the other.  I'm reminded of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, who probably did more than any other single person to save America from the need for a horrendously costly invasion of Japan.  But once we had the bomb, once we had the fruit of his creative and unorthodox mind, his sort was no longer needed.

After the war came the legendary security hearings — what a government lawyer reviewing the case later called “a punitive, personal abuse of the judicial system.” No evidence came out that he had engaged in espionage. An Atomic Energy Commission personnel board concluded he was a loyal citizen. But he was not above suspicion. That was enough for them to strip him of his security clearance.
--George Johnson, NY Times (June 28, 2013)

Dr. Oppenheimer did what he was asked to do, despite his moral qualms.  ("Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.")   But young Snowden didn't just express qualms, as did Oppenheimer -- he acted on them.  The American government merely destroyed the remainder of Oppenheimer's career as a physicist.  I'm nervous about what's in store for Snowden.

But our government should be concerned as well.  What wildly creative young hacker -- the prime target of the N.S.A.'s recruitment efforts -- will want to work for a government so willing, as he or she will view it, to crush dissent and conscience?

Using the old noggin

So you say you're 5'7", and have always dreamed of being 6'3"?  Or you're 75, still sharp as a tack, and would like a 25-year-old body to match your youthful brilliance?  Or maybe you're unhappy with your gender, and would like an instant  change to the body of the opposite sex, a change that fulfills your self-image?

Well, do we have a solution for you!  The kind of thing you may have joked around about as a kid, but never dreamed would be available!  But it's here.  Or soon will be.

I speak, of course, of head transplants.

Fox News takes a breather from denouncing Obamacare and illegal immigrants, and reports on the ultimate in plastic surgery.  Citing a neurosurgical medical journal,¹ Fox states that head transplants now seem technically feasible.  Or soon will be.  Two (presumably) willing candidates need only show up in the operating room at the same time, eagerly awaiting the Big Switcheroo.

In order for the process to work, both the donor and recipient must be in the same operating room, and the donated head must be cooled to between 54.6 and 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, surgeons must rapidly remove both heads at the exact same time, reconnecting the new head to the recipient’s body and circulatory system within one hour.

What could possibly go wrong?

The problem until now has been that both survivors (I'm assuming two survivors, but more realistically one donor would be performing his final good deed) would be paralyzed from the neck down.  But now, by use of an "extremely thin knife," neurosurgeons can achieve a "clean cut" that permits the body's natural healing process to achieve a proper fusion of all the axons contained within the spinal cord.

Don't show up at your local O.R. just yet.  Doctors probably will want to try this out on monkeys first.  And there's always the problem of finding a 6'3" 25-year-old who's always had a hankering to be transformed within hours into a a 5'7" 75-year-old.  But once a sufficient amount of money changes hands, this obstacle probably can be overcome.

Still, as the article concludes, "the ethics surrounding this type of surgery are hotly debated."  Again, however, if you have enough money, this ethical debate will soon enough seem somewhat academic, if not hopelessly naïve.
----------------------------
¹Surgical Neurology International