Incomptence, Collusion, Watergate, and Impeachment

I have talked here before about how disastrous the current US administration is and I'm sure I will do so many times more, at least as long as they are still in power. The sheer bumbling incompetence of not only the guy at the top but most of those he has picked to work with (or serve) him should be disturbing to intelligent Americans of every political persuasion, but that same incompetence, along with strong resistance by the Democrats and many ordinary citizens around the country, is helping to hinder the administration in doing a lot of the awful things they have been trying to do. Unfortunately, they have still managed to set the country back in an unbelievably wide range of areas, and they will inevitably do more damage before they can be removed from office. While regrettably it will be impossible to get rid of the entire bunch until 2020 and not until 2018 do the Democrats have even a chance of taking back part of Congress, improving their ability to block some of the worst deeds of this gang of scoundrels, there is some chance that the narcissistic conman at the top of the gang can be removed from office before then. He may decide to resign on his own, as he is clearly not enjoying the job as much as he hoped he would, though given his ego this seems unlikely. Otherwise, at least until 2018, it will be necessary that a sufficient number of Republicans discover their spines and a minimal degree of principles, so that they join the Democrats in impeaching him for one or more of his "high crimes and misdemeanors". Possible impeachable offenses include his blatant self-enrichment and his violations of the emoluments clause, but currently the scandal most likely to result in his removal is the one related to Russian attempts to interfere in last year's election on his behalf, his campaign's attempted collusion with those efforts and the subsequent cover-up. While his defenders try to claim that there was no substantial collusion by the campaign and therefore the whole thing is being overblown, this ignores history. Even if the campaign's contacts with Russia were limited and they did no more than talk about colluding with Russia, and even if Don T. himself was ignorant of the tentative contacts at the time, the subsequent attempts to cover up those contacts and interfere with the investigation alone are enough to impeach him on. To see this, we need only look back at the only time in history a US president has been forced out of office - the Watergate scandal.

The story from the administration has evolved from "None of us had any contacts with Russian officials or agents" to "We did meet with a few Russians, but we didn't talk about the election campaign" to "We wanted to collude with the Russians to win the election, but they didn't give us anything useful." The recently revealed meeting between Don T. Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort on the campaign's side and a Russian lawyer with close Kremlin ties on the other proves that at least some people high up in the campaign were willing to acquire information damaging to Hillary Clinton from the Russians, and that they were made aware that this information was being offered as part of Russia's support for Don T.'s campaign. This alone is arguably damning enough. But let's just suppose that the administration's current story is true (unlikely, given how much they have lied in the past, but at least remotely possible). Let's say that in the meetings that have been uncovered between various Russians and Kushner, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, etc. nothing of real import was discussed, and that in the one meeting where collusion was proposed, the Russians really didn't offer anything of value and so no collusion actually occurred. In other words, let's say that all that really happened was a third-rate, aborted attempted at collusion, and Don. T himself really didn't know about it. Well, the Watergate scandal started with a "third-rate burglary" targeting the Democrats that President Richard Nixon apparently didn't know about at the time. So why was he forced to resign? Because he tried to cover up the involvement of members of his administration in the burglary and egregiously interfered in the investigation into the affair. Sound familiar? If Kushner, Sessions, Flynn and that lot had admitted to their contacts with Russians during the campaign, and if Don T. had not fired the FBI director in order to stop the investigation into Russian interference, then perhaps they could make a case that they were not guilty of anything of substance (again assuming that attempted collusion is no big deal as long as it didn't amount to anything in practice). But instead they have lied and interfered with the investigation. Perjury and obstruction of justice are crimes in and of themselves, regardless of whether there were any crimes committed previously. Nixon became a criminal when he obstructed justice, and the same is true of the current incumbent. Republican arguments that the original investigation was making a mountain out of a molehill (laughable coming from the party that spent years and millions in taxpayer money investigating things like Benghazi and Hillary Clinton's email server) are really irrelevant at this point.

Of course as long as the Republicans control Congress and collectively lack either the principles or the courage to impeach Don T. for his obstruction of justice and other misdeeds, he will be able to stay in office. Even if he is removed, we would most likely be stuck with Mike Pence as president, even though he has also told at least a few lies in regard to the Russian affair and may well be guilty of more than has been revealed. If Pence does manage to come out relatively unscathed from impeachment proceedings against his boss, then he would take over, which many argue might be even worse than what we have now. After all, while hardly a man of brilliance, he is not as totally incompetent, and yet ideologically he is probably even worse than Don T. on many issues. This is a guy who is known for his anti-gay, anti-women actions as governor of Indiana, and who has said blatantly absurd and harmful things such as that smoking doesn't kill. As I noted at the outset, the incompetence of the guy currently in charge has helped prevent him from doing more damage. Pence, simply because he is less incompetent, might do more harm. So does that mean we shouldn't push impeachment for fear of a Pence presidency? I would say no, partly because the process will inevitably drag out, and also because Don. T's erratic behavior and clear unfitness for office is dangerous in ways that Pence's more consistent evil is not. But also it's a matter of principle. If a president is clearly unfit and has committed obviously impeachable offenses, he should be removed, no matter who his prospective successor is. If Pence does become president, Democrats, activists and concerned citizens can continue to block as much of the Republican agenda as they can, just as they did with the Republicans' attempts to gut health care, which Don T. played little role in. And starting with the next election, hopefully Americans can begin to repair some of the damage.

The Family of Hamilcar Barca and Hannibal of Carthage

I had considered writing about one of a number of political topics that have been on my mind lately, or perhaps my long-planned essay on critical thinking (also related to politics, among many other things), but instead I decided to take a break from the modern world and write about ancient history instead. For some reason, when I first became fascinated with ancient history at the age of seven, I latched onto the story of Hannibal and his native city of Carthage in particular, reading pretty much every book I could find on the subject. Today I thought I’d write about a topic that even books on Hannibal rarely spend much time on (probably due to a lack of information), namely his family – not just his relatively well-known father and brothers, but other relatives who receive passing mention in the ancient sources.

The great Carthaginian general Hannibal, whose most notable achievement was crushing a series of Roman armies (particularly in the Battle of Cannae, the worst defeat Rome ever suffered until late Imperial times) and almost putting an end to Rome’s rise to power, but who is probably best known for taking war elephants along on his march over the Alps, was born in about 247 BCE. He was the son of Hamilcar Barca, who commanded the Carthaginian forces in Sicily in the last years of the First Punic War between Rome and Carthage. It is not certain whether “Barca” (which means “lightning” or “thunderbolt”) was a nickname applied only to Hamilcar or was used by the rest of his family as a type of family surname (in any event, there is as far as I know no evidence that the similarity between this name and that of the town Barca in Cyrenaica was anything other than a coincidence). On the latter assumption, in modern histories Hannibal is sometimes referred to as Hannibal Barca and his brothers are sometimes called Hasdrubal Barca and Mago Barca, but whether any contemporaries would have referred to them this way is unknown. The family is collectively called the Barcids by modern historians, though this term was a later invention. In any case, for the sake of convenience, I’ll also use the terms Barcid and, where necessary to distinguish any of the brothers from other Carthaginians of the same name, Barca.

Today, Hamilcar Barca is perhaps the second best known Carthaginian after his son, and the outlines of his career following his appointment to the command in Sicily, which occurred in about 247 BCE, up to his death in battle in Iberia (modern Spain) in 229 BCE are fairly well documented. Despite this, there is much we don’t know about him. Even the date of his birth is uncertain, though it is generally estimated that he was born in the 270s BCE (Cornelius Nepos, cited below, says that he was a young man when he took command in Sicily - "admodum adulescentulus in Sicilia praeesse coepit exercitui", a phrase which seems to have been left out of the English translation linked to below). However, I came across one piece of information about him that for some reason no modern historian I’ve read mentions. According to 1st century BCE historian Cornelius Nepos (this is possibly an abridgement of his work by 4th century CE writer Aemilius Probus, as there is seemingly some dispute about the authorship of some of the work attributed to Nepos), Hamilcar was “the son of Hannibal”. While when I first noticed this statement, I wondered if it was a typo or a mistake by the transcriber for “father of Hannibal”, a comparison with the Latin, even by a non-Latin speaker such as myself, shows that in the Latin Nepos also calls Hamilcar the son of Hannibal; Hamilcar is “Hannibalis filius” and his son Hannibal is “Hamilcaris filius”. I’m not sure why this little tidbit of biographical information on the Barcid family has been universally ignored. Perhaps some historians don’t consider it reliable, as it could be a mistake that crept into the text over the centuries. But given the apparent propensity for Carthaginians to reuse the same handful of names, it seems completely plausible that Hamilcar Barca’s father was indeed named Hannibal, and so the famous Hannibal was named after his paternal grandfather. Unfortunately, we know absolutely nothing about grandfather Hannibal except his name. It seems at least possible that one of the earlier Carthaginian commanders named Hannibal could have been this father of Hamilcar (say, for instance, the Hannibal who commanded at Mylae and was by one account later crucified by his own officers in Sardinia after a second defeat), but as far as I know there is no additional evidence that would help identify him.

Hamilcar Barca had three sons, Hannibal, Hasdrubal and Mago. A few modern historians say there was a fourth son named Hanno, and often identify him with the Hanno left by Hannibal in charge of Carthaginian forces between the Ebro and the Pyrenees. Though apparently one ancient writer, Valerius Maximus, did claim Hamilcar had four sons whom he referred to as his “lion’s brood”, he seemingly did not name them, and neither Polybius nor Livy, who frequently refer to Hannibal’s brothers Hasdrubal and Mago, mention a brother named Hanno. It is Polybius who says the officer left in charge north of the Ebro was named Hanno, but he doesn’t identify him as Hannibal’s brother. So the evidence seems to favor there being only three brothers, Valerius Maximus notwithstanding. All three played prominent roles in the Second Punic War between Carthage and Rome, though only Hannibal was consistently successful until his defeat in the final battle at Zama, and only he survived the war, though Mago died only shortly before the end, on his way back to Africa from Italy, from a wound suffered in a battle just before his departure. Hasdrubal had been killed in the Battle of the Metaurus, which had ended the last hope of a Carthaginian victory.

Hamilcar also had several daughters, though none of them is identified by name in any ancient source, and it’s not entirely clear how many there were of them. Chronologically speaking, the earliest mention of a daughter was in Polybius’s account of the Mercenary War (also called the Truceless War) between Carthage on one side and its rebellious mercenary soldiers and Libyan subjects on the other. A Numidian chief named Naravas offered his assistance to Hamilcar in his fight against the mercenaries, and according to Polybius Hamilcar was so pleased with Naravas’s assistance in battle that he promised to give him his daughter in marriage. Then when Hamilcar went to Iberia to expand Carthaginian power there, his chief naval officer and eventual successor was his son-in-law Hasdrubal. Finally, the 2nd century CE historian Appian claims in his account of Cannae that the Carthaginian officer Hanno who commanded the Numidian cavalry at Cannae was Hannibal’s nephew (Appian, Hannibalic War, 20). Since Polybius in an earlier part of his account (3.42.6) refers to one of Hannibal’s chief officers as Hanno, the son of Bomilcar the Suffete, it is often assumed that Bomilcar was another son-in-law of Hamilcar Barca. Thus, on the surface it would seem that Hamilcar had at least three daughters. However, there are a number of questionable assumptions involved in this count, so it’s worth looking at each of these supposed marriage relationships in turn.

First of all, Polybius only mentions Naravas a few times during his account of the Mercenary War and then makes no further reference to him, so it’s not at all clear that the marriage between him and Hamilcar’s daughter (whose name Polybius doesn’t give in the single mention he makes of her) ever took place. It’s possible that Navaras died, either later in the war or for other reasons, before the marriage could take place, and it’s also possible that Hamilcar reneged on his offer. Of course it’s also quite possible that the marriage took place; one argument in favor of it at least being a serious offer leading to a formal betrothal if not a marriage is the mere fact that Polybius mentions it, proving that it became widely known enough for Polybius’s source to be aware of it. Nevertheless, it is impossible to be certain that a marriage did take place, and if so how long it lasted. If no marriage took place or if it did but Naravas died not long afterward, it’s even conceivable that the daughter who married Hasdrubal was the same daughter who had been promised to Naravas. Another question the marriage offer gives rise to is how old Hamilcar’s daughter was at the time. I’m not aware of any definitive information on the ages at which Carthaginians typically got married, though if they were similar to many other pre-modern societies, it was likely to be quite young, at least for the women. Nevertheless, if Hamilcar had a daughter of marriageable age in about 238 BCE, she would have to have been born prior to 250 BCE, which unless he had children at the age of twenty or less, would in turn imply that Hamilcar was born by the mid 270s BCE or earlier. Of course, it is also possible that the daughter was not yet of marriageable age when Hamilcar made the offer, and that the actual marriage, if it happened at all, took place a few years later. In any event, there are a lot of unknowns involved. French writer Gustave Flaubert was able to take advantage of this to write an entire novel with this daughter of Hamilcar, who he named Salammbô, as the central character, but basically everything about her except her engagement to Naravas was his invention.

One marriage of a daughter of Hamilcar Barca that we can be certain did take place was the one that made Hasdrubal into Hamilcar’s son-in-law. But even here there’s a lot of uncertainty when it comes to details. For one thing, it is not clear when Hasdrubal married Hamilcar’s daughter, whose name again is not mentioned by any ancient historian. The only certainty is that it took place before Hamilcar’s death in 229 BCE. But it seems at least possible that it didn't occur until after Hamilcar, seemingly with Hasdrubal accompanying him, went to Spain in 237 BCE, though it seems more likely that it occurred just before their departure. Livy actually implies that Hasdrubal, who some accounts refer to as Hasdrubal the Fair due to his supposed beauty, had a homosexual relationship with Hamilcar, saying he “is said to have become a favorite of Hamilcar's owing to his personal beauty as a boy”, only later becoming his son-in-law (Nepos mentions this rumor as well, though he expresses some doubt about its veracity) and he goes on to imply that after Hasdrubal had become the Carthaginian commander in Iberia, that he requested Hannibal be sent to join him in part out of similar motives. But the generally more reliable Polybius makes no such hints, and Livy’s story about Hasdrubal requesting Hannibal join him seemingly contradicts the story first related by Polybius that Hamilcar agreed to take Hannibal with him to Spain back in 237 BCE after the boy swore on an altar never to be a friend of the Romans (later accounts exaggerated this into swearing enmity or eternal hatred), though it’s possible Hannibal could have returned to Carthage at some point in the intervening years. Regardless of the nature of the relationship between the three men and whether they all three were in Spain the entire time, it’s also unclear where the marriage between Hasdrubal and Hamilcar’s daughter took place, and whether she joined him in Spain either before or after the marriage. It’s also unknown whether the couple had children and when she died, though seemingly she didn’t long outlive her father, as Hasdrubal made a marriage alliance with a powerful Iberian tribe during his years in command (a bigamous marriage seems relatively unlikely, given the high rank of both women).

Finally, there is the question of Hanno. It certainly seems logical to assume that the Hanno son of Bomilcar mentioned by Polybius (and Livy as well) in the account of Hannibal’s crossing of the Rhone is the same one that Polybius says (3.114) commanded the Numidians on the Carthaginian right flank at Cannae, and most likely also the same one as the Hanno who Hannibal delegated to command separate Carthaginian forces in southern Italy in the years after Cannae. But was he really Hannibal’s nephew? It seems that only Appian, who doesn’t say he was the son of Bomilcar, made such a claim. Neither Polybius nor Livy ever say anything about Hanno being a relative of Hannibal. Appian is not considered particularly reliable by modern historians. Lazenby, for instance, is critical of his account of Cannae and Gregory Daly, for one, specifically expresses doubt about his identification of Hanno as Hannibal’s nephew, cautiously concluding that Hanno "may have been Hannibal's nephew". Basically, the case for Hamilcar having a daughter who married Bomilcar the Suffete and was the mother of Hannibal’s officer Hanno comes down to three assumptions: 1. Polybius is correct in saying Hanno was the son of the suffete Bomilcar. 2. The Hanno who led the troops at the Rhone is the same one who led the Carthaginian right at Cannae. 3. Appian is correct in saying that the Hanno who led part of the Carthaginian army at Cannae (though he says the left, not the right) was Hannibal's nephew. All three of these assumptions would have to be true, and while the first two seem likely, the third is at best uncertain.

If Hanno the son of Bomilcar was indeed the nephew of Hannibal, this would have other implications. Even with a bit of nepotism involved, it seems unlikely that Hannibal would have entrusted such an important operation as the command of the ambush force in the Rhone crossing to someone under twenty years old, and so it is probable that Hanno son of Bomilcar was born by 240 BCE at the latest. His mother would then probably have been born by 255 BCE, if not earlier, which if she was Hamilcar’s daughter would in turn imply that he was born in the early 270s BCE or before (which would contradict Nepos's statement that he was "very young" when he took command in Sicily). Granted, look at individually, it doesn’t seem too unlikely that Hamilcar had his first child by the age of twenty and that his daughter gave birth to her first before she was fifteen, but again, unless all three of these assumptions are true (that both Hamilcar and his daughter had their first children at a fairly young age and Hanno likewise received an important command at a relatively young age), Hamilcar would have to have been born somewhat earlier than is generally thought to be the case. In any event, if Hanno’s mother was indeed Hamilcar Barca’s daughter, she would have to be the oldest of the ones we know of, as she would have already given birth to Hanno before her sister was promised to Naravas or her other sister married Hasdrubal. Indeed, it is the difficulty in accounting for the relative ages of Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal, and Hanno son of Bomilcar, along with the failure of Polybius to mention any relationship, that leads the writer of the entry on Hanno son of Bomilcar in The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology to conclude that the statement that Hanno was Hannibal's nephew is "improbable".

Whether or not Hanno was Hamilcar Barca’s grandchild, he certainly had at least one. According to Livy, the Numidian king Oezacles was married to "a noble Carthaginian, daughter of Hannibal's sister" (Livy 29.29). After her first husband’s death, Mazaetullus, who had seized power by defeating Oezacles’s eldest son Capussa and making himself the guardian of Oezacles’s younger son, the boy Lacumazes, cemented his power by marrying her. Not long afterwards (these events all took places in about 205 or 204 BCE), Masinissa, son of Gala (the elder brother and predecessor of Oezacles) defeated the boy king and his guardian, and though they initially fled to Carthaginian territory, he soon after persuaded them to surrender to him. Mazaetullus was given his original lands back, but the fate of his wife is not mentioned. And naturally, the brief mention of her by Livy gives rise to several other questions. Who was her mother? Was she the child of the daughter of Hamilcar who (perhaps) married Naravas or perhaps of Hasdrubal and his wife? If Hanno was truly Hannibal’s nephew, then the wife of Oezacles could have been his sister. Or possibly her mother was some otherwise unknown sister of Hannibal. Another question is whether Oezacles’s sons were her children, or were progeny from a previous marriage. It seems plausible that at least Lacumazes, who was only a boy when his father died, was her son. If so, given that Lacumazes survived Masinissa’s takeover (unless the latter disposed of him later), it’s possible that Hamilcar had descendants among the Numidian royal family.

Yet another relative of Hamilcar and Hannibal was mentioned by Livy in his description of an event earlier in the war. When the Carthaginian admiral Hasdrubal the Bald was defeated and captured in Sardinia in 215 BCE, one of the other Carthaginian captives was someone named Mago, "a member of the family of Barca and closely related to Hannibal" (Livy 23.41). Unfortunately, this is the only mention Livy makes of him, so it is impossible to tell exactly how he was related to Hamilcar and Hannibal. Perhaps he was the son of a brother of Hamilcar and so Hannibal’s first cousin. His fate is likewise unknown, though it is possible that he was returned to Carthage in a later prisoner exchange, since we know such exchanges occasionally took place (Lucius Cincius Alimentus, a Roman historian used as a source by Livy and most likely Polybius as well, was a prisoner of Hannibal at some point in the war but was presumably exchanged).

Finally, there is Hannibal’s wife and possible son. We know from Livy that Hannibal married an Iberian princess from Castulo (24.41). The 1st century CE poet Silius Italicus in his epic poem on the Second Punic War names her as Imilice and says they had a son who was sent off to Carthage with Imilice at the outbreak of the war. But as Lazenby notes, Silius Italicus frequently invented names and people in his poem, which often had little connection to history (and is apparently considered one of the worst surviving pieces of Latin literature). No other writer mentions the name of Hannibal’s wife or says that he had any children. This doesn’t mean that he didn’t, but certainly there is no reliable evidence that he did.

As far as I can ascertain, this is the sum total of our knowledge of the family of Hamilcar Barca and Hannibal. While much is known about Hannibal and a fair amount about Hamilcar Barca and his other two sons, Hasdrubal and Mago, next to nothing is known about any of the other members of the family. As noted above, it’s possible that descendants of the Barcids survived into later centuries through Oezacles’s widow, or perhaps through other members of the family, even Hannibal himself (though this is less likely), but unless further evidence, such as an inscription or a manuscript of the histories of Sosylos or Silenos (both of whom accompanied Hannibal), is somehow discovered, we will probably never know anything more about this famous Carthaginian family.

What I've Been Reading: Early 2017

While my reading pace has been slow for the last few years, with too much time taken up by going through emails (mostly from political and environmental organizations and politicians), reading the news, and various other projects, I still manage to get through roughly a book a month, though I'm often reading more than one simultaneously. I always have one book, generally a novel, in my bag when I go out, even though many days I never get a chance to read it, and another one or two books - usually non-fiction or less gripping or more difficult fiction (e.g., Ulysses, The Sound and the Fury, etc.) - at my bedside to read before going to sleep, and I'll occasionally read bits out of various non-fiction or very familiar fiction during the day. The following are books I finished in the first four months or so of this year. The first of them I actually read most of in late 2016, as mentioned in my last post about my reading, but as I quite hadn't finished it then, I'm including my brief commentary on it here. A lot more could be and perhaps should be said about it, and the other books here as well, but I'd recommend that readers with sufficient time on their hands and interest in the topics covered read the books themselves.

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
A very interesting look at the question of why the historical pace of development has varied greatly in different parts of the world. Why has Eurasia and the Mediterranean area, rather than sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas or Oceania, been the home of the world’s most dominant civilization throughout historical times? Diamond explores a number of different factors in considerable detail, and makes a strong argument for his basic premise, that geography was the determining factor. For example, the West Asian region was home to a variety of grains and several animals that were particularly suitable for domestication, which is why it was the first to develop agriculture and civilization. Other parts of the world had much fewer easily domesticated crops, and many had no animals that could be domesticated for transport and as livestock (for instance, while the horse, native to Eurasia, could be domesticated, its relative the African zebra could not. Eurasia’s east-west orientation made it easier for crops domesticated in one part of the continental mass to spread to other parts, whereas the north-south orientation of the Americas and other geographic obstacles elsewhere made it harder for crops to spread. A similar series of factors resulted in Eurasians having more endemic disease germs that could devastate populations newly exposed to them with transmissions in reverse being much less common. While it’s possible that Diamond oversimplifies some points or exaggerates the importance of some factors, or that there are some alternate explanations for some of these things that I am not aware of, in general he makes a convincing case. One important takeaway is that the relative success of certain civilizations or ethnic groups has nothing to do with any inherent superiority they possess, but is due to a combination of factors that ultimately lead back to geography. All in all, it’s definitely a book worth reading.

The Martian by Andy Weir
In general, if a movie is based on a novel, I prefer to read the novel first. This is not always possible, of course, particularly if I hadn’t been aware of the novel until the movie came out, in which case I usually wouldn’t have time to read the book before the movie’s theatrical run ended, assuming I was even able to find a copy. Such was the case with The Martian. The movie was quite good, and when I came across a used copy of the book, I snapped it up (even though the copy I got had a cover based on the film, something I dislike). The book turned out to be as good as the movie, which was pretty faithful to it. The parts of the story that take place on Mars are told through a journal written by the Martian himself, astronaut Mark Watney, with other parts told in third person from the viewpoint of various people at NASA as well as Watney’s fellow astronauts. The story is engaging, and Weir manages to get quite a bit of technical and scientific stuff in without slowing things down appreciably. Watney’s wisecracking personality is perhaps not what one would expect in a scientist-astronaut on a mission to Mars, but then it is in large part that same characteristic that keeps his journal entries more readable than one might expect from the typical scientist or astronaut, even one in such a dramatic situation. All in all, the book is an entertaining read as well as a pretty realistic-seeming look at what it might be like trying to survive on Mars.

Balthasar’s Odyssey by Amin Maalouf
This historical novel is set in the 17th century (in the years 1665 to 1667, to be precise) and its geographic setting ranges from Lebanon to Istanbul to the Aegean to Italy to London and back to the Mediterranean. As the title implies, the book follows the journeys of the protagonist Balthasar, who tells his story through a series of journals (it was an interesting coincidence that I read this just after The Martian, which also featured journal entries by the titular protagonist). Despite his first name, Balthasar is not of native Lebanese ancestry but is a descendant of a Genoese family that arrived in the Levant during the Crusades and ended up staying, though unlike his early ancestors, who were lords of an entire town, he is a seller of antiques, though still a respected member of the community. A mysterious book is the initial impetus for his journey, but events along the way lead him on a much longer trip than he had originally planned on. Balthasar himself is a rationalist who nevertheless becomes infected with superstitious worries about an impending apocalypse, though he constantly tries to maintain his rational outlook. Though he suffers all sorts of unexpected setbacks – some due to his own mistakes, others due mostly to bad luck – he mostly keeps his head, though he often suffers self-doubt, especially when faced with major dilemmas. In general, he’s a character that most readers will find easy to relate to. His story is gripping and the book paints a fascinating picture of the world of that time. The only minor disappointment for me was that the ending left a number of loose ends unresolved. However, this minor flaw doesn’t detract much from what is otherwise a quite good historical novel.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
This novella by Truman Capote is one of his best-known works, and the basis for the well-known movie starring Audrey Hepburn (which I haven’t seen). It is centered on the young woman Holly Golightly, who the narrator became fascinated with when the two were living as neighbors in an apartment building in New York. Published in the late 1950s and set in the early 1940s during World War II, it has a definite mid-20th century feel, but is a lot more straightforward about sex than I might have expected for a book from that era, though admittedly it only takes place off-camera, as it were – the narrator and Holly are comfortable enough with each other to be nude in the other’s presence at points in the story, but they are never lovers and the narrator’s occasional fits of jealousy over Holly are more like those of someone who worries about another stealing away their best friend (in fact, one gets the feeling, though it is never stated, that the narrator may be gay, like Capote himself was). While Holly is perhaps almost too much to be wholly believable, she is certainly a memorable character, and this short novella paints evocative picture of her. The book I have also includes three similarly evocative short stories by Capote, “House of Flowers”, “A Diamond Guitar”, and “A Christmas Memory”.

Life in a Medieval Castle by Joseph and Frances Gies
As the title states, this non-fiction book describes different aspects of life in a medieval castle. It talks about the structure of a typical castle, the lords and ladies of the era, their households, a typical day in a castle, hunting, the villagers who worked for the castle’s lord, knights, warfare involving castles, and how castle life varied over a course of a year. As it happens, the castle they use as their prime example is one of the few I have actual been to, Chepstow Castle, on the border between Wales and England (and a cool castle it is). While the book may not be as engrossing as an adventure story, it is still quite interesting, and worth a read for anyone interested in castles or medieval times.

Earth Day and What Science Can Teach Us

Today is Earth Day. So what do we know about Earth? Terra, to give Earth its Latin name, is the third planet out from Sol (aka the Sun), a medium sized yellow star in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Earth is a rocky planet of 12, 756 km in diameter and it orbits 150 million kilometers from the Sun. It is approximately 4.6 billion years old and has a single, relatively large satellite named Luna (aka the Moon). The present atmosphere of Earth is about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and 1% water vapor and other gases. The most notable feature of Earth is that it is home to a huge variety of life that has dramatically shaped its physical features. Life appeared very early in Earth’s history, perhaps as early as half a billion years after the planet’s formation. However, it took several billion more years for multicellular life to appear and evolve into more complex forms, with one of the most recent to appear (only a few hundred thousand years ago for the present species) being a type of ape that in the last few millennia has developed an agricultural civilization and in the last couple of centuries has seen explosive population growth and rapid advances in technology. I refer, of course, to our own species, Homo sapiens, i.e., humans.

Virtually all the information in the previous paragraph is well established fact, and all of it we know due to science. In the last couple of centuries, our understanding of the planet we live on and its place in the universe, as well as the history of our own species, has advanced hugely due to science. Science is distinct from belief systems such as religions, as it is based on observation, evidence and analysis. That isn’t to say that science (or more accurately, scientists, who after all are only human) never gets things wrong, much less that it has answers to everything. But over time, science has given us a very good, if still incomplete, understanding of many aspects of reality, and since it is firmly based on logic and evidence, it is far more reliable than any other way of explaining things.

The above may seem self-explanatory to most knowledgeable people, but it is still necessary to emphasize it, because not only is there still a very large segment of humanity who doesn’t accept significant portions of our scientific understanding of the world, but the US government itself has largely fallen under the control of people with an anti-science attitude. This is why Marches for Science have been organized for today around the US and the world, because despite the self-evident benefits that science brings to humanity and the obvious advantages of having a more accurate, science-based understanding of the world around us, there are many people in power (and ordinary people who support those people) who deny scientific explanations of reality.

Climate change is just one example of an issue where this anti-science attitude has caused and continues to cause great damage, but as it is the most important and urgent, it is worth special attention. In fact, it isn’t necessary to be a scientist or have a detailed knowledge of climatology to understand the basics of climate change. Simply put, certain gases in our atmosphere trap heat, causing Earth’s atmosphere to act as a blanket that raises the planet’s surface temperature. Essentially, the atmosphere is transparent to visible light, the form which most of the energy Earth gets from the Sun takes, but the Earth radiates most of the energy back in the infrared, i.e., as heat, and like the glass in a greenhouse, these gases – naturally referred to as greenhouse gases – are opaque to infrared radiation, so they trap the heat, making the planet’s surface hotter. This is not a bad thing, as without this greenhouse effect Earth would be much colder, certainly too cold for human life. But too much of a greenhouse effect is not a good thing either, as the example of Venus illustrates. Venus is physically very similar to Earth, but due to a runaway greenhouse effect it has an extremely thick atmosphere primarily consisting of carbon dioxide and surface temperatures of over 450 degrees Celsius, far higher than temperatures on Mercury, even though the latter is closer to the Sun. The chief greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane (the gases that make up most of the atmosphere, nitrogen and oxygen, are not greenhouse gases). Of the three main greenhouse gases, water is the least efficient at trapping heat while methane is the most efficient, but because water is by far the most plentiful, it contributes the most to the greenhouse effect, followed by carbon dioxide. Methane does contribute substantially, despite only being present in trace amounts, though unlike the other two gases it breaks down into its component elements relatively quickly, so it doesn’t accumulate as easily.

So we know that carbon dioxide and methane are greenhouse gases. This is a fact that has been known to science for a very long time and is clearly demonstrable experimentally. Furthermore, these two gases are major contributors to the greenhouse effect. This is also well established. We also know that human industrial activity, mostly involving the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, produces large amounts of carbon dioxide, and that other types of human activity, such as livestock raising and leaks from natural gas (i.e., methane) production results in the release of methane. What’s more, we know that the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has gone from around 270 or 280 ppm (parts per million) in pre-industrial times to around 400 ppm today, a very substantial increase. Finally, we know that average global temperatures have increased by a significant amount over the past century, with a particularly rapid increase over the last few decades. Though some try to question this latter fact, they can only do so through cherry-picking of data, and even that has become pretty hard to manage as the data showing warming becomes more overwhelming.

To repeat, we know the following facts:
1. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to the greenhouse effect, as is methane
2. Human industrial activity produces large amounts of carbon dioxide and significant amounts of methane
3. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from less than 300 ppm in pre-industrial times to about 400 ppm now
4. Average global temperatures have also increased significantly over the same period, particularly in recent decades.
The conclusion is obvious. Human activity is warming the planet at a rapid rate. While an increase of 1 degree Celsius or so, which is approximately how much warmer the last couple of record-breaking years have been over the 20th century average, may not seem like much, it is actually a very large amount, as changes of just a few degrees can make the difference between an ice age in one direction and the melting of the polar ice caps in the other. This is why we have to take climate change seriously and do so now.

Those who want to challenge this obvious conclusion attack the science in different ways. One is to emphasize the uncertainties. Of course there are always some uncertainties; in a sense, science is all about uncertainties, as it involves trying to find answers to all the things we don’t yet know. What’s more, good scientists always acknowledge the uncertainties that exist, because claiming to be sure when the evidence doesn’t support it is bad science. So, for example, there is still some uncertainty about the exact ratios of the three main greenhouse gases’ contributions to the greenhouse effect. But that doesn’t change the fact that carbon dioxide and methane are both major greenhouse gases. Some cite the fact that we still can’t predict the weather with a high degree of certainty to cast doubt on climate models. But in fact it’s easier to identify long-term climatic trends than to predict day-to-day variations in chaotic weather systems. Some talk about how “the climate is always changing” or how there have been times in Earth’s past where the planet has warmed and carbon dioxide levels increased without humans being present. This ignores the obvious points that just because the climate has changed for reasons other than human action in the past doesn’t mean the current changes aren’t caused by humans, any more than the fact that forest fires happened before there were people means that humans never cause forest fires, and that very slow, gradual change is one thing, rapid change that is too fast for us or individual ecosystems to adapt to is something else entirely.

Then there’s the frequently repeated claim that a few decades ago scientists were talking about global cooling and that they only recently started talking about global warming. This one is just plain false. As far back as the 19th century it was pointed out that human burning of fossil fuels could lead to an increase in global temperatures, and more than half a century ago this was widely acknowledged among scientists. The media stories in the late 1970s about the possibility of an impending ice age did not represent a widely held consensus among scientists, and in fact the very idea was prompted in part by the well understood fact that in the absence of other factors human production of carbon dioxide would cause temperatures to rise. Temperatures had risen slowly but steadily for most of the first half of the 20th century, but they stopped increasing for a few decades after that. So one suggestion, if not a widely accepted one, was that a natural cooling trend was counteracting the human effects on temperatures, and if it continued it might lead to an ice age. But there were other explanations, such as that other pollutants, such as those that made up the smog so commonly seen in industrial nations in the 1960s and 1970s, were blocking sunlight and balancing out the effects of carbon dioxide and methane production. This latter explanation seems more likely, though I don’t know if it is the one most climatologists accept today. In any case, the warming trend started up again by the 1980s and is now proceeding at an unprecedented pace, so whatever the explanation for the pause in the warming trend in those decades, the planet is clearly not cooling.

Of course science tells us many other things that we need to pay attention to, such as the effects of human activity on ecological systems (e.g. through overfishing, elimination of predators, introduction of invasive species, and so forth), the effects of chemicals and other substances we produce on human health (e.g. pesticides, chemicals in food and other products we use daily, and lead and other pollutants in our environment), the effects of overuse of antibiotics on the spread of diseases, and much more. Again, some people may want to deny what science can tell us on these issues due to ulterior motives, while many others simply prefer to ignore it because that’s easier than doing something about the problems. But we ignore science at our peril, as the long-term consequences of letting these problems fester are sure to be much worse than the difficulties of tackling them now.

But coming back to the planet that we celebrate on Earth Day, science tells us more things about it. One is that Earth itself is in little danger from anything we may do. The planet will be here for billions of years more, whether humanity survives or not. Another is that life on Earth is almost sure to survive in some form even if we drastically alter the environment for the worse. Life on Earth is pervasive and appears even in the most seemingly inhospitable environments. Unless we somehow set off a runaway greenhouse effect like that that transformed Venus into the place it is today, some life will survive the worst we can do. Life on Earth has been through a number of mass extinctions like the one that killed off the dinosaurs (and most other species on Earth at the time) and has always rebounded; at worst humanity will just be the first species to cause a mass extinction of other species on its own. Even the global warming we cause won’t be permanent, as the carbon cycle will eventually result in the excess carbon dioxide getting absorbed into limestone (though as this takes thousands of years, our transformation of the environment can easily destroy our civilization and wipe out many other species in the meantime). But if we as a species want to survive, and if we want to maintain our present day civilization, we’d best heed what we can learn from science.

A Short Rant on the Disastrous New US Administration

I’ve commented here and elsewhere on the historic nature of the current US "president" and his administration – that is, how historically terrible he, and it, is – but I always feel like I’m understating the case. Whether it’s the lack of ethics, the terrible nominees and appointees to various key positions, the complete disregard for the truth, the lack of respect for basic political norms such as press freedom, the horrible executive orders, the insanely destructive budget proposal, the signing of awful bills passed by the similarly awful and unprincipled Republican Congress, the stonewalling and misdirection on investigations into Russian interference in the elections, or just the sheer incompetence, there are no parallels in modern US history for an administration or a chief executive this bad. It’s gotten so it’s almost impossible to keep track of all the outrages, since there are so many of them, and a lot of them are quickly buried by new ones.

For example, one of the popular vote loser’s very first acts was to sign the repeal of a regulation requiring fossil fuel and mining companies to report payments to foreign governments. This was a fairly straightforward anti-corruption measure. Of course the big oil companies like Exxon who pushed for its repeal claimed that they were not against transparency in principle, just this particular regulation, but their reasoning was dubious at best. More disturbing was the Republicans’ great eagerness to the companies’ bidding; likewise for their recent repeal of regulations preventing internet providers from selling users’ private information without permission, or the administration’s moves against fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, or to not finalize the new rule put forth by the Obama administration against retirement advisors from giving advice that serves their own interests over those of their customers, or its lifting of the moratorium on leasing federal land for coal mining (the latter not only put in place because of climate change concerns, but because the old system allowed coal companies to pay almost nothing for their use of the land, meaning the taxpayers were being ripped off), or their lifting of the new rule requiring federal contractors to be in compliance with federal wage and safety laws. It’s hard to imagine how anyone who cared anything about the public interest, as opposed to the interests of a narrow group of private companies or individuals, could possibly support any of these things. And yet most people probably didn’t even notice that these things were done, because there has been so much else going on.

It occurs to me that I should keep a list, that whenever I see some appalling thing that these people have done or are trying to do I should write it down, but usually I only remember that idea when I’m trying with mixed success to recall some examples. I have a pretty good memory, but even I struggle to remember the details of all that has gone on, and I’m sure most people are even more unclear on it, if they are even paying close attention at all. One reason such a list would be particularly useful is that a number of the things that have been done are unlikely to meet with approval even from most Republican voters, if they could be made aware of them. Likewise, some of the examples of ethical lapses or incompetence are the sort of thing even most staunch conservatives would find disturbing. Of course, some of them might simply refuse to believe the information, though a lot of it is very easily confirmed, while others might resort to misdirection or arguments based on false equivalence. But at least a few of them, if presented with the right examples, might start to see things differently.

Unfortunately, I’m unlikely to get around to combing back through the last couple months’ worth of news to compile a truly comprehensive list, but maybe I’ll discover a satisfactory list compiled by someone else (there are bound to be some out there, though they may not include everything I’d want to see on such a list, or I may consider some of their explanations of what was done or what was wrong with inadequate). If I had infinite time, of course, I would not only make a list but write in detail what exactly is so terrible about their actions. The budget proposal alone is worth one or more long commentaries on how it is not only cruel and destructive, but idiotically counterproductive it is even with regard to much of what its proponents claim to want to accomplish (e.g., getting rid of Energy Star, cutting job training programs, making major cuts to diplomacy and foreign aid). If Congress seriously considers it, then I may really write more about it. For now, we’ll just have to hope that even congressional Republicans won’t be willing to go that far. Then there’s the ridiculous attempts to references to and steps taken to deal with climate change, as if denying its existence will somehow prevent it from continuing to happen.

How did the US get into this mess? How could a substantial minority not only vote for such a president (and his cohorts in the Republican party) but persist in supporting him –while his approval rating is lower than Obama’s ever was and worse than any recent president has ever had this early in their term, it is still far higher than it should be – despite how unsuitable he clearly is for the job? The real problem is a lack of critical thinking ability, a deficiency which is not exclusive to Americans and which affects a multitude of issues. This is something I’ve been thinking about frequently over the last few months, and I intend to eventually write a lengthy essay on the topic. For now, however, here are a couple of other writers’ ruminations on the related subject of how people get their news and how they digest it. The first deals with how people can end up believing entirely different things about the same event based on where they get their news. A second editorial explicitly talks about the importance of critical thinking, in this case focused on how it’s a necessary skill for news consumption. But there’s a lot more to be said on these topics, and I hope I’ll get around to getting some more of my own thoughts down.

The Planets of TRAPPIST-1: Multiple Potentially Habitable Earth-like Worlds in a Single System

Though there’s plenty happening on Earth to write about, considering how grim much of it is, it’s something of a relief to be able to instead comment on some fascinating astronomy news. I’m of course referring to the announcement that seven apparently Earth-like planets have been identified orbiting a single star, and one that is on a cosmic scale quite close (though on a human scale the star and its planets are still very, very far away, a point I will come back to later). To put this in perspective, prior to this discovery, the star with the greatest number of terrestrial (i.e., rocky and relatively similar to Earth in size) planets was our own Sun with four, namely Mercury, Venus, Earth itself, and Mars. There are no doubt other systems with multiple terrestrial planets, but due to the relative difficulty of spotting such planets, most discoveries to date have been of larger planets, though there are a few known systems with one or more super-Earths (planets somewhat larger than Earth which may also be rocky). What makes this newly discovered system even more fascinating is the fact that several of the worlds appear to be in the star’s habitable zone, and the relative closeness of the system and the nature of its parent star means that we will be able to study their possible atmosphere is in the near future, and maybe determine if the gases present in those atmospheres indicate the presence of life.

The star that the newly discovered planets are orbiting is called Trappist-1 (technically it should be capitalized as TRAPPIST-1, but I will use the lower case form) and it is located 39 light years away. Though most of its planets seem to be similar to Earth in mass and radius, the star itself is nothing like the Sun. It is a very cool red dwarf star, which means that it produces far less energy than the Sun. One of the charts used in some articles about Trappist-1 and its planets compared the orbits of the latter not only to those of the four terrestrial planets orbiting the Sun but also to the orbits of the four Galilean satellites of Jupiter. This makes sense when you realize that Trappist-1 is in many ways as similar to Jupiter as it is to the Sun. In fact its diameter is only slightly greater than Jupiter’s, and the orbits of its planets resemble those of the Galilean satellites more than they do those of the four terrestrial planets in our Solar System, though they are still considerably further out from the star than Jupiter’s moons are from Jupiter. The ratio of their masses in comparison to their star is also similar to that of the Galilean moons in comparison to Jupiter. Nevertheless, while Jupiter is just a planet (though a very big one), Trappist-1 is a star powered by nuclear fusion in its core, and it is still more than 80 times as massive as Jupiter, though it is only 8% as massive as the Sun. So it gives off enough energy that many of its planets, given their close orbits, could potentially have liquid water on their surfaces, unlike the moons of Jupiter, which remain frozen on their surfaces (though Europa at least almost certainly has liquid water underneath its icy crust).

The planets, designated b to h in order of their distance from the star, orbit at distances that are a fraction of Mercury’s distance from the Sun. They were discovered by the transit method, which involves observing the dimming of the star’s light as a planet passes in front of it. Trappist-1b orbits the star in just 1.5 Earth days, and even the most distant planet, Trappist-1h, takes only about 20 days to complete on orbit (though this planet is the one about which there is the greatest uncertainty). Though at this point we only have rough estimates of the planets’ masses and diameters, it appears that c and g are somewhat larger than Earth but not by very much, and the other planets are slightly smaller than Earth, though even the smallest two, d and h, are larger than Mars. The planets are likely to be tidally locked so that they always show the same face to their star, just as the Moon does toward Earth. However, if they have atmospheres the temperature contrast may not be as great as it would be otherwise.

The planets d, e and f receive similar amounts of energy from Trappist-1 as the Earth does from the Sun, putting them in what is known as the habitable zone. Some of the other planets could potentially have moderate temperatures and liquid water, depending on their particular circumstances (for instance, if g has a thick enough atmosphere it might retain enough heat to stay above water’s freezing point). However, there is a lot of uncertainty involved. If Earth didn’t have an atmosphere with a greenhouse effect, it would be frozen despite the amount of energy it receives from the Sun (of course our problem now is that we are increasing the amount of greenhouse gases, which could disrupt the climate’s equilibrium in the other direction). It is uncertain how many of these planets have atmospheres or how thick they might be. Red dwarf stars are prone to violent flares, which may strip atmospheres from close in planets. The planets closer in may also have lost all their water or have undergone a runaway greenhouse effect like that on Venus in our solar system. The ones further out may have ended up like Mars if their atmospheres are too thin.

Despite these caveats, given the number of planets, it seems likely that at least one or two have moderate, Earth-like temperatures and high potential for liquid water on their surfaces. What’s more, since these planets are much closer to us than many other exoplanets (planets orbiting stars other than the Sun) that are in their star’s habitable zones – for example, the probable super-Earth Kepler-452b, which orbits a Sun-like star, is about 1400 light years away – and they orbit close to a dim star and transit it frequently, they are much easier to study. With slightly improved telescopes such as the ones that should be coming online in the next few years, it should be possible to analyze the components of these planets’ possible atmospheres and determine whether gases commonly produced by living things are present. There are a few other potentially habitable exoplanets that are closer these ones, notably the one orbiting the closest star other than the Sun, Proxima Centauri (or Alpha Centauri C), but not all of these transit their stars from the perspective of Earth (for example, Proxima Centauri b, which was discovered by the radial velocity method which measures changes in a star’s apparent velocity due to the gravitational effects of a planet, apparently does not transit its star), and most are super-Earths, rather than being truly Earth-like. What’s more, the presence of multiple Earth-like planets in the habitable zone of the same system makes it a uniquely attractive target for study.

Of course, just because the planets are potentially habitable does not mean that they are actually inhabited by any form of life. As noted, they may be in fact either too hot or too cold, too lacking in water, or too heavily irradiated, for life to have developed. We still don’t know what conditions are required for life to appear, though from what we see on Earth we know that life is amazingly tenacious and adaptable once it does appear. Furthermore, even if one or more of the planets has some form of life, the chances that they have intelligent life are much smaller, and the chances of a technological civilization like that of humanity are even smaller. As I have argued before, I suspect that the real reason we’ve seen no signs of advanced alien civilizations all over the galaxy is that while life itself may turn out to be common, multicellular life (which only appeared on Earth billions of years after single-celled life forms) is much rarer, and intelligent life that happens to evolved the physical characteristics for building a civilization (a condition that prevents, say, dolphins from making tools or building spaceships) and lives on a planet with the right resources (a lack of iron on the planet’s surface, for instance, would make it hard for even human-like creatures to get very far towards developing advance technology) may be so rare that it only exists on a few planets out of all the billions in the entire galaxy at any given time. But even evidence of “primitive” life would be an incredibly exciting discovery, and these planets give us the best chance of discovering it outside our solar system in the near future that we have yet seen.

Perhaps inevitably, a number of articles about this discovery mentioned jokingly the possibility of escaping the growing mess created by the new US administration and the threat of right-wing populism in Europe by colonizing these potentially habitable planets, or alternately sending all the troublemakers on Earth to them and thus ridding ourselves of them. Unfortunately, direct exploration of these planets, even by robotic spacecraft, remains an extremely distant prospect. As I explained in my commentary on the discovery of Proxima Centauri b, we are a long way from being able to travel to other stars in a reasonable time frame. One article on the Trappist-1 planets noted that one of the fastest spacecraft ever launched, the New Horizons probe that explored Pluto (reaching that distant planet in a little less than 10 years after its launch from Earth), would take about 750,000 years to reach Trappist-1. It’s possible that an effort like Breakthrough Starshot might actually see miniature spacecraft traveling to the closest star systems, such as Alpha Centauri, before this century is over, but even if that ambitious project succeeds, it would still take a couple of centuries for spacecraft traveling at the speeds targeted by the project to reach Trappist-1, which is almost 10 times as distant as Alpha Centauri. Nevertheless, simply by studying the planets from Earth, we may be able to discover if any of them host life. If we do find solid evidence of life on any of them (which, it must be emphasized again, is not guaranteed), it may provide the motivation for even more intense efforts at finding better methods of starship propulsion. Even the knowledge that life exists on a planet or, even more excitingly, multiple planets orbiting a nearby star would have a dramatic effect on our view of our place in the universe.

Theme Songs for the Incoming Administration of Deplorables

As the United States prepares to inaugurate the least qualified, most heavily compromised president in its history, everyone is wondering what the future will bring. My own take on Don tRump (aka Pumpkin Hitler) is that not only is he appallingly ignorant and so detached from reality that he (and many of his voters) genuinely cannot tell fact from fiction, but for those reasons he is easily swayed by those he chooses to listen to (mostly those who stroke his massive ego or in some other way help feed his narcissistic view of his own self-importance). His opinions on many important topics seem to reflect those who he last spoke to on that topic. While in theory that would mean that if someone with progressive views managed to get his ear, he might be persuaded to actually do some good, a look at the people he has surrounded himself with so far shows that this is a forlorn hope.

How bad is it? His chief strategist and his main speech writer have white nationalist ties and his national security adviser is an Islamophobe who promotes absurd conspiracy theories. His proposed budget director has such a poor understanding of financial matters that he has suggested that the US could default on its debt without serious consequences. As for his cabinet nominees, they include a business-over-country fossil fuel CEO for Secretary of State, a sexist racist anti-gay anti-voting lock-‘em-up-and-throw-away-the-key hardliner for Secretary of Justice, the unethical and possibly criminal “foreclosure king” for Secretary of the Treasury, an anti-worker fast food CEO for Secretary of Labor, a climate change denying anti-environmentalist for director of the Environmental Protection Agency, an anti-public education billionaire extremist for Secretary of Education, a clueless ex-governor for Secretary of Energy, a clueless doctor who himself said he wasn’t capable of leading a government agency for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, an unethical profits-over-patients former doctor for Secretary of Health, and more. Where they aren’t completely lacking in any relevant experience, they are diametrically opposed to the purposes of the departments and agencies they have been nominated to lead. To say putting them in charge is like the fox guarding the henhouse is an understatement. It’s more like appointing a known pyromaniac as chief of the fire department or putting a known thief in charge of bank security. So the first order of business for not just progressives but anyone who wants to have a functioning government instead of one run by people who will destroy it and most likely take the environment, the economy, health care, voting rights, civil rights and more down with it is to speak loudly and repeatedly against these nominees in the hope that at least some of them can be blocked and replaced with people at least a little less extreme. After all, even past Republicans usually didn’t appoint people this awful (compare GW Bush’s EPA directors with Scott Pruitt, or Reagan’s budget director David Stockman with Mick Mulvaney).

In the meantime, since tRump has had such trouble finding acts willing to perform at his inauguration, I thought I’d go through my music collection and come up with some suitable music for him and his proposed cabinet of deplorables. Unfortunately, even the most ironically exaggerated of these songs could turn out to be scarily accurate if the worst tendencies of the incoming administration are left unrestrained. If they are to remain in the realm of satire rather than prophesy, it will take the collective efforts of all people of conscience and good sense.

Theme Songs for the New Administration

Political Science (Randy Newman) – Randy Newman himself commented that this song is “never out of date, unfortunately.” But this sort of ignorant, nationalistic jingoism is especially reminiscent of the attitudes of tRump and a number of those around him.

Deportee (Woody Guthrie/Martin Hoffman) – It was hearing Cisco Houston's version of this song on a Guthrie compilation I have that inspired me to put together this list. Though it’s more than half a century old, its lyrics (which Guthrie originally wrote as a poem, inspired by a news report about a plane crash that killed several Americans and more than two dozen Mexicans who were being sent back to Mexico and who were not listed by name but just referred to as “deportees”) attack the same kind of dehumanization of undocumented immigrants that characterizes tRump and his followers. Of course we should also remember that Guthrie also wrote a set of lyrics titled “Beach Haven Ain’t My Home (Old Man Trump)” about his greedy, racist landlord Fred Trump – Donnie’s father.

Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) (Marvin Gaye) – This Marvin Gaye classic will unfortunately be an even more accurate depiction of the way we’ve polluted our environment if people like Scott Pruitt, tRump’s nominee for EPA director, get their way.

Pollution (Tom Lehrer) – Another good description of what even a few years of Republican dominance of government is likely to do to our environment. The line about what comes out of the taps is eerily close to what the people of Flint have had to put up with already, and that sort of thing will just get more common in the next few years.

Send the Marines (Tom Lehrer) – This would work as a theme song for a Defense Department headed by "Mad Dog" Mattis.

Murder by Numbers (Sting/Andy Summers) – While this song is more broadly targeted at all political leaders and the ease by which many of them give orders that lead to others’ deaths, it also is a scary reminder of what such power can become if wielded by someone unrestrained by conscience or empathy (neither of which tRump or many of his top nominees seem to have much of).

It's Money That Matters (Randy Newman) – A perfect fit for tRump and his cabinet of greedy billionaires, especially people like Mnuchin, DeVos, Tillerson and Ross, not to mention all the "coddle the wealthy" Republicans in Congress.

Trigger Happy (“Weird” Al Yankovic) – While Weird Al Yankovic, unlike Tom Lehrer or Randy Newman, rarely does songs with a political slant, this original song (a “style parody” of the Beach Boys) is the perfect theme song for all the gun nuts who will run rampant if the “guns everywhere” policies supported by tRump and the Republicans actually become law.

Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) (Roger Waters) – This grim portrait of a twisted education system seems rather fitting as a theme for what we might expect of education under Betsy DeVos, with her hostility to public schools and promotion of unregulated charter schools that “advance God’s Kingdom”.

Which Way to America (Vernon Reid) – This Living Colour song contrasts the America of the wealthy (and usually white) population and that of the poor (and often minority) population, the sort of inequality that will only get worse under tRump. Their “Cult of Personality” from the same album in some ways fits tRump, though I think of him as belonging to a slightly different category than leaders like Hitler or Stalin, whose evil was more calculated.

Subcity (Tracy Chapman) – A lot of Chapman's songs are about America's neglected underclass, but this song, with its lines about not being able to get any government relief and of course "Please give the President my honest regards/For disregarding me", is particularly appropriate considering the cuts to food stamps and other programs that can be expected from the Republicans.

Hammer to Fall (Brian May) – This apocalyptic Queen song seems fitting as a description of the sword of Damocles we’ll all be living under with tRump in charge. Queen’s “White Man” (also by May) would also be appropriate in reference to Standing Rock and similar disputes.

American Idiot (Armstrong/Dirnt/Cool) – This one is an obvious one, fitting for both tRump and those who voted him into office.

Putin (Randy Newman) – I only discovered this new Newman song today, but it's the perfect theme song for the guy who helped put tRump into office.

We Will All Go Together When We Go (Tom Lehrer) – Let’s just hope this one doesn’t turn out to be prophetic.

Update:
I'm Dreaming (Randy Newman) - I just ran across this song today, and I just had to add it. As a Randy Newman fan, I'm a bit embarrassed to have missed hearing this, since it apparently dates back to 2012. He seemingly wrote it in character (as he often does), in this case the character being an Obama-hating tea party type. As such, it makes the perfect theme song for the tRump voter.

What I've Been Reading (Late 2016)...and a Brief Farewell to 2016

This year has been a strange one. Not all of it has been bad: Taiwan's elections turned out pretty well, quite a few major discoveries were made in astronomy, some progress was made in fighting climate change, and on a personal note, my music related endeavors (such as my radio show and my Taiwanese aboriginal music related activities) mostly went well. But there's been a lot of bad news as well. Personally, I suffered a broken leg (perhaps more on that another time - at any rate I am mostly recovered), climate change is becoming much more serious, and much of the international political news has been bad or downright terrible. There have also been what seems like an unusual number of deaths of famous people: aside from many people in the world of popular music, some of whom I've written about in my music blog, people ranging from King Bhumibol of Thailand and Fidel Castro of Cuba to the recent deaths of actress/writer Carrie Fisher and her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds. Of course people die every year, and it is pure coincidence that these people died in a year in which many other things have gone badly. Still, it's no surprise that many people are saying that it's been a terrible year and are in a hurry for it to end. Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that 2017 will be better. In fact, it may be worse, since we have yet to face the real consequences of at least one of the worst events of 2016, the US presidential election. But rather than dwell too much on all this, I am going to talk instead about a few of the books I've read over the latter part of this year, as promised in my last post on my reading. This doesn't quite cover everything; I wrote about Keith Richards' autobiography in my music blog, and I'm almost finished with Jared Diamond's fascinating and educational Guns, Germs and Steel, but that will have to be covered in a later post.


The Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock
Elric of Melnibone is one of the classic characters of fantasy (more precisely, its subgenre swords and sorcery). The original saga was published in bits and pieces and out of chronological order, but was later organized into six books, though most of them consist of essentially separate episodes, reflecting the way they were originally published. These books, in internal chronological order, are Elric of Melnibone, Sailor on the Seas of Fate, The Weird of the White Wolf, The Vanishing Tower, The Bane of the Black Sword and Stormbringer. Elric of Melnibone, though first by internal chronology, was published later than the other material, and was also the first full-length Elric novel, as the other books consist of novellas and short stories originally published separately. Many years later, Moorcock wrote several additional Elric books, but as I don’t have any of these, they aren’t considered here.

I had read Elric of Melnibone and The Weird of the White Wolf in the past, but it was only later that I acquired most of the other books in the series (I still don’t have The Vanishing Tower). I decided to read all five books that I had in internal chronological order. The most obvious comparisons to be made are to Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories and Fritz Leiber’s stories of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Elric is (I think deliberately) almost the polar opposite of Conan, as rather than a black-haired, muscular barbarian with a strong distrust of magic, Elric is a physically weak albino with substantial sorcerous abilities who is the last of a long line of emperors of a civilized but extremely decadent race. As such, he is certainly a more unique character, and in many ways a more interesting one. Moorcock’s stories also have the advantage of lacking some of the vaguely racist pseudoscience that Howard incorporated into his tales, such as the idea that humans or other creatures could “devolve” into less advanced species (though even Moorcock and for that matter writers like J.R.R. Tolkien rather overemphasized the idea of inherent racial characteristics). The female characters in the Elric stories are not completely helpless or incapable, though they still far too often end up needing to be rescued from villains who have kidnapped them. In this respect as well as others, Leiber’s stories are superior. One major distinction (though whether it makes one or the other better is of course subjective) is that Leiber’s tales have considerably more humor and plain fun. The Elric stories are suffused with grim melancholy, in keeping with the anti-hero who is their focus. Fafhrd and Grey Mouser are not exactly paragons of virtue – they are mercenaries and thieves – but Elric can be callous and cruel, even if he is more troubled by something resembling a conscience and has more of a sense of right and wrong than most of his people. His friend and companion Moonglum bears a bit more resemblance to the Grey Mouser in particular, but even he can’t keep up his optimism and wit in the face of some of the particularly unpleasant situations the pair encounter.

Ultimately, the Elric stories (and particularly their distinctive protagonist) are intriguing and present an interesting twist on standard fantasy fare, but while at least some of them should be read by anyone who wants to get a full grounding in classic fantasy, I wouldn’t put them at the top of my list of fantasy books to recommend to someone unfamiliar with the genre, unless I knew them to be the type of person who was likely to appreciate their dark and melancholy tone.

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man is one of several classic novels by the early science fiction writer H.G. Wells, only slightly less famous than the two I’d read in the past, War of the Worlds and The Time Machine. Nevertheless, I was completely unfamiliar with the story, and was somewhat surprised by the character of the titular invisible man and the uses he makes of his discovery. Though he sometimes seems to be a bit exaggerated, and at times the very British behavior of some of the other characters may strike modern readers as a bit odd, they are all distinct and colorful. Wells also obviously gave a lot of thought to both providing a believable explanation for the process by which the invisibility formula was discovered and its potential consequences. The story is not exactly a cheerful one, but it is an interesting one, and the story is well worth reading for anyone interested in classic science fiction.

The Bridge by Iain Banks
This Iain Banks novel is not one of his science fiction novels (which were credited to Iain M. Banks), but rather one of his mainstream, “real world” novels. In fact, he first gained critical fame through the latter, and wrote both types of novels throughout his career (he once said literary types who were dismissive of science fiction would often assume that he wrote science fiction for the money and would be taken aback when he’d tell them that if anything the reverse was true: he wrote mainstream fiction for the money, but sci-fi was what he enjoyed writing most). I’ve read several of his mainstream novels, all of which I’ve found to be quite good, but this one might be the best. It is certainly the most imaginative. This is in part because while the basic frame story is set in the real world, the majority of the novel unfolds in settings that are not part of the real world at all, but part of what might best be described as a dream world, or rather multiple dream worlds folded into each other. As I’d rather not give away too much of the story, I will simply explain this by saying that much of the story centers around a character living on a bridge that seems to go on almost forever in both directions, and is basically a city in itself, with homes, offices, restaurants, hospitals, bars and more, densely populated by apparently normal people. The protagonist suffers from amnesia and doesn’t remember where he came from or what his original name was. From time to time, he experiences vivid dreams, including a series of them featuring yet another protagonist who appears to be a powerful but amoral barbarian warrior who tells his story in some type of Scottish dialect. Interspersed among the bridge-centered story and the dreams of its protagonist is the story of the other chief protagonist, who lives in our real world.

The real world protagonist has much in common with the protagonists of most other mainstream Banks novels. He is Scottish and politically leftist, though he struggles to reconcile his principles with his lifestyle and is often self-centered in spite of his ideals. He is a recreational drug user and is in a long-term relationship, though the relationship is not without its problems. While many of these characteristics are found in other Banks protagonists, each manages to be distinct, and this novel is even further distinguished by the other strands of narrative, which have only the most tangential relationship to the real world. Like Banks’s sci-fi Culture novels (or his occasional non-Culture sci-fi novels), The Bridge shows a highly imaginative writer at work, one who manages to be in turns clever, witty, and philosophical while telling a very engaging and entertaining story.