Max von Sydow: "Given what people are, the question is "Why doesn't it happen more often?"" -- Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

 

Frederick: You missed a very dull TV show on Auschwitz. More gruesome film clips, and more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions. The reason they can never answer the question "How could it possibly happen?" is that it's the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is "Why doesn't it happen more often?"

...

[Frederick is talking about TV]
Frederick: You see the whole culture. Nazis, deodorant salesmen, wrestlers, beauty contests, a talk show. Can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling? But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers. Third grade con men telling the poor suckers that watch them that they speak with Jesus, and to please send in money. Money, money, money! If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his name, he'd never stop throwing up.

 

Nobody's Going to Mars Anytime Soon

A roundtrip mission to Mars would get you a minimum of 1 Sievert of radiation exposure (that's 1,000 mSv). Congratulations, spaceman -- you're in the pink. See here.

Popular Science

"You May Not Even Make It There At All

All of these scenarios only become critical issues if you actually make it to Mars in the first place. But the sad truth is you might not even survive the trip. Barring any complications with the spacecraft’s hardware or any unintended run-ins with space debris, there’s still a big killer lurking out in space that can’t be easily avoided: radiation.

Beyond lower Earth orbit, the deep space environment is filled with cosmic rays—highly energized particles. This space radiation easily penetrates the walls of spacecraft, and it’s possible that long-term exposure can have weird effects on human health.

A recent study on mice revealed that long-term exposure to cosmic rays might lead to some abnormal changes in the brain. After subjecting mice to simulated cosmic rays, researchers noticed the mice had lost many important brain synapses. Subsequent behavioral studies on the mice showed they exhibited less curiosity and seemed confused—an eerie result, with upsetting implications for a future trip to Mars."

NASA

"The greatest threat to astronauts en route to Mars is galactic cosmic rays--or "GCRs" for short. These are particles accelerated to almost light speed by distant supernova explosions. The most dangerous GCRs are heavy ionized nuclei such as Fe⁺²⁶. "They're much more energetic (millions of MeV) than typical protons accelerated by solar flares (tens to hundreds of MeV)," notes Cucinotta. GCRs barrel through the skin of spaceships and people like tiny cannon balls, breaking the strands of DNA molecules, damaging genes and killing cells.

Astronauts have rarely experienced a full dose of these deep space GCRs. Consider the International Space Station (ISS): it orbits only 400 km above Earth's surface. The body of our planet, looming large, intercepts about one-third of GCRs before they reach the ISS. Another third is deflected by Earth's magnetic field. Space shuttle astronauts enjoy similar reductions.

Apollo astronauts traveling to the moon absorbed higher doses--about 3 times the ISS level--but only for a few days during the Earth-moon cruise. GCRs may have damaged their eyes, notes Cucinotta. On the way to the moon, Apollo crews reported seeing cosmic ray flashes in their retinas, and now, many years later, some of them have developed cataracts. Otherwise they don't seem to have suffered much. "A few days 'out there' is probably safe," concludes Cucinotta.

But astronauts traveling to Mars will be "out there" for a year or more. "We can't yet estimate, reliably, what cosmic rays will do to us when we're exposed for so long," he says."

Z Med Phys. 2004;14(4):267-72.

Radiation hazard during a manned mission to Mars.

Jäkel O¹.

Author information

• ¹Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, Heidelberg, Germany.

Abstract

The radiation hazard of interplanetary flights is currently one of the major obstacles to manned missions to Mars. Highly energetic, heavy-charged particles from galactic cosmic radiation can not be sufficiently shielded in space vehicles. The long-term radiation effects to humans of these particles are largely unknown. In addition, unpredictable storms of solar particles may expose the crew to doses that lead to acute radiation effects. A manned flight to Mars currently seems to be a high-risk adventure. This article provides an overview on the radiation sources and risks for a crew on a manned flight to Mars, as currently estimated by scientists of the US National Administration for Space and Aeronautics (NASA) and the Space Studies Board (SSB) of the US National Research Council.





 

And suddenly, guys my age are dropping like flies.

If you're old enough to remember this movie, you get it.

WSJ

"Seth Hamblin, the deputy global head of visuals at The Wall Street Journal, a driving force behind its analytical approach to graphics and a longtime champion of multimedia storytelling online, died Sunday.

Mr. Hamblin, 46 years old, collapsed while running a 5K race in Morristown, N.J., his wife, Tanya Prescott, said Monday. The race was a first for both of them, she said. He took off ahead, and collapsed near the finish line after having a heart attack, Ms. Prescott said."

NYT

"Joseph R. Biden III, the former attorney general of Delaware and the elder son of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., died on Saturday in Bethesda, Md. He was 46. 

The cause was brain cancer, his father said.

...

Mr. Biden’s death is a second tragic loss for the vice president, whose first wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident in 1972 when the station wagon they were driving in to go Christmas shopping was hit by a tractor-trailer. Beau Biden and his brother, Hunter, were also injured in the crash, but both survived."

WSJ

"David Goldberg, the chief executive of online-questionnaire provider SurveyMonkey and husband of Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, died suddenly Friday night. He was 47 years old."

CBS

"The husband of Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg died while on a family vacation in Mexico. Local investigators say it was the result of head trauma after he apparently fell off a treadmill. But CBS News has learned that autopsy results suggest Goldberg had a heart arrhythmia that may have contributed to his death, reports CBSN's Elaine Quijano."

 

 

 

 

Hester Prynne on suicide watch -- Chapter 4, The Scarlet Letter

 

"After her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was found to be in a state of nervous excitement that demanded constant watchfulness, lest she should perpetrate violence on herself, or do some half-frenzied mischief to the poor babe. As night approached, it proving impossible to quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of punishment, Master Brackett, the jailer, thought fit to introduce a physician. He described him as a man of skill in all Christian modes of physical science, and likewise familiar with whatever the savage people could teach, in respect to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in the forest. To say the truth, there was much need of professional assistance, not merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently for the child; who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish, and despair, which pervaded the mother's system. It now writhed in convulsions of pain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral agony which Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day.

Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment, appeared that individual, of singular aspect, whose presence in the crowd had been of such deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet letter. He was lodged in the prison, not as suspected of any offence, but as the most convenient and suitable mode of disposing of him, until the magistrates should have conferred with the Indian sagamores respecting his ransom. His name was announced as Roger Chillingworth. The jailer, after ushering him into the room, remained a moment, marvelling at the comparative quiet that followed his entrance; for Hester Prynne had immediately become as still as death, although the child continued to moan.

"Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient," said the practitioner. "Trust me, good jailer, you shall briefly have peace in your house; and, I promise you, Mistress Prynne shall hereafter be more amenable to just authority than you may have found her heretofore."

"Nay, if your worship can accomplish that," answered Master Brackett, "I shall own you for a man of skill indeed! Verily, the woman hath been like a possessed one; and there lacks little, that I should take in hand to drive Satan out of her with stripes."

The stranger had entered the room with the characteristic quietude of the profession to which he announced himself as belonging. Nor did his demeanour change, when the withdrawal of the prison-keeper left him face to face with the woman, whose absorbed notice of him, in the crowd, had intimated so close a relation between himself and her. His first care was given to the child; whose cries, indeed, as she lay writhing on the trundle-bed, made it of peremptory necessity to postpone all other business to the task of soothing her. He examined the infant carefully, and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case, which he took from beneath his dress. It appeared to contain certain medical preparations, one of which he mingled with a cup of water.

"My old studies in alchemy," observed he, "and my sojourn, for above a year past, among a people well versed in the kindly properties of simples, have made a better physician of me than many that claim the medical degree. Here, woman!  The child is yours,--she is none of mine,--neither will she recognize my voice or aspect as a father's. Administer this draught, therefore, with thine own hand."

Hester repelled the offered medicine, at the same time gazing with strongly marked apprehension into his face.

"Wouldst thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe?" whispered she.

"Foolish woman!" responded the physician, half coldly, half soothingly. "What should ail me to harm this misbegotten and miserable babe? The medicine is potent for good; and were it my child,--yea, mine own, as well as thine!--I could do no better for it."

As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state of mind, he took the infant in his arms, and himself administered the draught. It soon proved its efficacy, and redeemed the leech's pledge. The moans of the little patient subsided; its convulsive tossings gradually ceased; and in a few moments, as is the custom of young children after relief from pain, it sank into a profound and dewy slumber. The physician, as he had a fair right to be termed, next bestowed his attention on the mother. With calm and intent scrutiny, he felt her pulse, looked into her eyes,--a gaze that made her heart shrink and shudder, because so familiar, and yet so strange and cold,--and, finally, satisfied with his investigation, proceeded to mingle another draught.

"I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe," remarked he; "but I have learned many new secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of them,--a recipe that an Indian taught me, in requital of some lessons of my own, that were as old as Paracelsus. Drink it! It may be less soothing than a sinless conscience. That I cannot give thee. But it will calm the swell and heaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea."

He presented the cup to Hester, who received it with a  slow, earnest look into his face; not precisely a look of fear, yet full of doubt and questioning, as to what his purposes might be. She looked also at her slumbering child.

"I have thought of death," said she,--"have wished for it,--would even have prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should pray for any thing. Yet, if death be in this cup, I bid thee think again, ere thou beholdest me quaff it. See! It is even now at my lips."

"Drink, then," replied he, still with the same cold composure. "Dost thou know me so little, Hester Prynne? Are my purposes wont to be so shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could I do better for my object than to let thee live,--than to give thee medicines against all harm and peril of life,--so that this burning shame may still blaze upon thy bosom?"--As he spoke, he laid his long forefinger on the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch into Hester's breast, as if it had been red-hot. He noticed her involuntary gesture, and smiled.--"Live, therefore, and bear about thy doom with thee, in the eyes of men and women,--in the eyes of him whom thou didst call thy husband,--in the eyes of yonder child! And, that thou mayest live, take off this draught."

Without further expostulation or delay, Hester Prynne drained the cup, and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herself on the bed where the child was sleeping; while he drew the only chair which the room afforded, and took his own seat beside her. She could not but tremble at these preparations; for she felt that--having now done all that humanity, or principle, or, if so it were, a refined cruelty, impelled him to do, for the relief of physical suffering--he was next to treat with her as the man whom she had most deeply and irreparably injured."

General Petraeus's Secrets to Success

"Let me whisper in your ear the secrets of counterinsurgency operations, baby. First, buy off the Shi'a militias (that's easy, 'cause they know they're winning and they also know that you'll be bugging out soon enough). Then buy off the Sunni militias (that's a little harder because they've got a lot of spilled blood to avenge). And then, declare the "surge" a success, accept the command of CentCom, go to Afghanistan to work the same magic there (except that didn't work out), and accept the directorship of CIA (until you get accused of passing classified intel to your lover -- that's you, baby)."

Washington Post

"Petraeus had entered the war as something of a skeptic. In March 2003, as he led the 101st Airborne Division toward Baghdad, he posed a rhetorical question to the Post's Rick Atkinson: "Tell me how this ends." He added, "Eight divisions and eight years?" in a reference to the U.S. military's early, and dead wrong, assessment of the Vietnam War's costs. Two years later, he ended up at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where he ran the army's general staff college, which gave him distance from the declining war in Iraq and its ugly side-battles in Washington over blame and responsibility. He published on counterinsurgency, an idea that earned him some attention in D.C. policy circles – including some conservative think tanks with access to the White House – and would later guide his "surge" approach in Iraq.  

In many ways, Petraeus's approach was more about helping Iraqis than it was about the American troops and their numbers, an idea not quite conveyed in the "surge" moniker.  Iraqis "felt disrespected, dispossessed, and disgusted," Ricks quotes him as saying. Petraeus had troops move out of the giant bases into smaller outposts across the country; there were 75 just in Baghdad, which helped to fill the security vacuum that had allowed militant groups to run wild and shut down civilian life. He negotiated a ceasefire with the hugely influential Moqtada al-Sadr, a fiery Islamic figure who nominally ran a number of Shia militias in Iraq and today leads a political party with a number of seats in the Parliament. Separately, his team purged police and military forces thought to be riddled with Shia militiamen. 

Controversially, he even started putting some Sunni groups – including some that had previously fought the U.S. – on the American payroll. The "Anbar Awakening" of Sunni groups willing to cooperate with the Americans had begun in 2005, but at a smaller scale. Petraeus recognized that the groups had real community influence and ability to bring security, whether he liked them or not, and brought them on board. At the program's peak in 2008, the U.S. had "contracted" 103,000 fighters who were now ostensibly paid to assist an American-dominated peace rather than the disrupt it. That same year, according to Ricks, the U.S. signed ceasefire deals with 779 separate Iraqi militias.

Petraeus also littered Baghdad with onerous blast walls and checkpoints, making it more difficult for car bombers and separating some Sunni and Shia neighborhoods. He was too late to stop much of the Sunni-Shia violence in the city, though, and the drop-off was due as much to Sunnis having fled or been killed as to any U.S. action. Still, the violence eased enough that American diplomats were able to start putting Shia and Sunni leaders in the same room and have them at least talk productively.

American casualties began dropping precipitously in the fall of 2007 and declined throughout 2008, ending that year one-third of what they'd been the year before. In September 2008, Petraeus handed over command to his successor. The New York Times' Dexter Filkins wrote that he left "Iraq a remarkably safer place than it was when he arrived. Violence has plummeted from its apocalyptic peaks, Iraqi leaders are asserting themselves, and streets that once seemed dead are flourishing with life." Petraeus was lauded in Congress and confirmed to head U.S. Central Command, responsible for all U.S. forces in the Middle East, which he ran until President Obama asked him to lead his own "surge" in Afghanistan in 2010. That effort was not nearly as successful, but he was nonetheless confirmed as CIA director the next year."

Oranges - Gary Soto (1987)

The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted -
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickel in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn’t say anything.
I took the nickel from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady’s eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.

Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl’s hand
In mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.

Kiss Off -- Violent Femmes (1983)

Gordon Gano wrote the lyrics to the songs on the album Violent Femmes while he was still in high school. I bought this record at the Harvard Coop in 1985. My roommate in school thought that "Nine for my lost God" was the best line. I still think it's "I forget what Eight was for."

I need someone, a person to talk to
Someone who'd care to love
Could it be you, could it be you
Situation gets rough then I start to panic

It's not enough, it's just a habit
Hey, kid your sick well, darling this is it
You can all just kiss off into the air
Behind my back I can see them stare

They'll hurt me bad but I won't mind
They'll hurt me bad, they do it all the time
Yeah, yeah, they do it all the time
I hope you know this will go down

On your permanent record
Oh yeah, well don't get so distressed
Did I happen to mention that I'm impressed
I take one one one cause you left me and

Two, two, two for my family and
Three, three, three for my heartache and
Four, four, four for my headaches and
Five, five, five for my lonely and
Six, six, six for my sorrow and

Seven, seven for no tomorrow and
Eight, eight I forget what eight was for and
Nine, nine, nine for my lost God and
Ten, ten, ten, ten for everything
Everything, everything, everything

 

You can all just kiss off into the air
Behind my back I can see them stare

They'll hurt me bad but I won't mind
They'll hurt me bad, they do it all the time
Yeah, yeah, they do it all the time

Songwriters
GANO, GORDON