Note our glittering Facebook groups: Mensa Calgary and Mensa Calgary Under 30’s. Also, is there a volunteer or two somewhere to read a few puzzles and see if the answers make sense? I’m not good at puzzles this year for some reason. Just a few, contact the editor. AND…without further dithering, this month’s MensaMag features Austria and women. The question is whether violence lies beneath the Teutonic gender gap, or – more generally – whether secretive cults such as the American polygamist sects are breeding grounds for authoritarian lifestyles. Some might ask whether Canada doesn’t have similar groups, and indeed Alberta has closed rural communities, but we lack a robust investigative press at the moment. Ownership of the media by corporate empires plays no small role in our faded journalistic spirit. Whatever the truth about our researchers, however, it’s fair to say that we don’t know the pressures that govern individuals within Canada’s closed communities. In this issue of MensaMag, we - as always - sally abroad. Apart from Austria, we enjoy the spectacle of Japanese nationalists chanting for a free Tibet, using a liberal policy to achieve their ends and demonstrating – as though we required proof – that political programs can be tailored to suit any philosophy.

We revisit the mass slaughters of the American civil war, of which WW1 seems the inevitable sequel. We look behind the media canonization of Barack Obama, and the heroism of Irena Senlerowa. Speaking of Irena Senlerowa, we wonder what to think of Holocaust relics. And to preserve our sanity, or is it balance, there’s a ghost story in this issue and a note explaining the free electricity available in Ontario. A short piece reminds us that the Olympic torch relay is a ghastly relic of Nazi days. And we return to earth with Jeff Pugh’s eminently sane report from the Science Café.

Newsflash: Words Worth Books, that remarkable, ramshackle nest of second hand volumes at 928-6th Ave SW is moving at the end of June. Rather, the shop hopes to relocate. If it remains open, it will reduce stock, which we find presently on sale. Worth checking out.

Contact us with your comments, articles and queries.

General

Feel life is passing you by? Activities with fellow Mensans will turn this around. Think coffees, martinis, movies, dinners, quizzes, anything that ravels up the tired sleeve of care. We’re informal and unstructured, on occasion intellectually stimulating. Mensa Calgary is a community where members interact, network, support each other, and enjoy each other’s company. For further info, contact Patricia at kathleen4057@yahoo.ca ["There’s no pleasure on earth that’s worth sacrificing for the sake of an extra five years in the geriatric ward of the Sunset Old People’s Home." (John Mortimore)]

MensaTest

June date not selected yet. Contact Vicki Herd for further info: vherd@shaw.ca

MensaGenerationX

An under-30ish group is starting up, with a wing night to get the ball rolling. Viz Sunday, June 15th, at Bootleggers, 3444 - 32nd Ave NE at 7pm. Bootleggers has 45 different flavours of wings, including trad and non-trad. Branch out into herb and garlic, dill pickle, etc etc or the HOT flavours! Leslie Forward has also started a special Facebook group, Mensa Calgary Under 30’s, so feel free to check it out. The FB group doesn’t have much on it at the moment, but now’s the time to make it grow. Let a hundred flowers bloom, was that the expression? Email Leslie at august_83@hotmail.com with qs or comments, RSVP for the wings, or look her up on Facebook.

CoffeeFests

Diverting discussion at The Purple Perk, 2212 – 4th St SW, 7:00pm, Thursdays June 12 and 26. No subject too hot, no view too contentious, no humour too sublime. RSVP not needed. Look for Patricia’s Harry Potter book on the table.

DinnerNight

Saturday, June 7, 2008 @ 6:30 pm at Il Chianti, 277 – 20th Ave NE. A great resto for atmosphere and flavours. RSVP Patricia by June 3rd (kathleen4057@yahoo.ca).

BookClub

Recent books include Night, The Alchemist, Water for Elephants and A Thousand Splendid Suns. We’ll meet Friday, June 20th at 7:15. Place will be Emma’s home. The book is Daughter of the Forest, by Juliet Marillier. No more info available as at transmittal of this text to Beijing for the gnomes to load. Contact Patricia at kathleen4057@yahoo.ca or 212-1461.

SecondTuesdays(of the Month)

June 10th, for the calendar watchers among us. This is our monthly coffee and conversation chez Vicki Herd, 2469 Sorrel Mews SW (a couple of blocks south of 33 Ave, east of Crowchild Tr), 7:30pm. BYOB.

SpecialEvents

Tour of Johnston Canyon with adventurer extraordinaire Jeff Pugh, on Saturday, June 14th. Do not miss this. Contact Patricia fmi: kathleen4057@yahoo.ca   Here’s a photo of the upper falls:

Some members are taking the Alberta Ballet House and Garden Tour, the version on Saturday, June 21st. Purchase tickets through Ticketmaster and contact Patricia at kathleen4057@yahoo.ca for meet-up information.

Note: a fabulous time was had on Jeff Pugh’s excursion in May. Great social occasion and insights gathered on Dry Island Buffalo Jump, the Ellis Bird Farm, Bleriot Ferry (is this the fabled river Lethe?), Rosedale Swinging Bridge, and the Last Chance Saloon.

For other and general event queries, email Vicki Herd (vherd@shaw.ca).

1) Take two packs of cards. Shuffle each separately. Draw a card from the first pack and shuffle it with pack #2. Look at the top card of pack #1. If this is the queen of spades, what are the odds that pack 2’s top card is the king of spades? Ans: As one card in pack 1 is the queen of spades, the odds that a king of spades was transferred to pack #2 is 1/51. The odds that the top card in pack 2 is a king of spades is therefore the sum of two probabilities: first, the probability that the shifted card was a king of spades and the top card in pack 2 is one of the two kings of spades in pack two (1/51 times 2/53), and second, the probability that the shifted card wasn’t the king of spades (50/51) and pack 2’s top card is that pack’s only king of spades (1/53). The result is the sum of (2/53 x 1/51) and (50/51 x 1/53) which is 52/2703, ie a bit greater than 1/52.

2) The guiltiest of three criminals will face death. While the Judges ponder and the days pass, criminal A asks a guard what’s going on. The guard replies, correctly, that the Judges haven’t considered A’s degree of guilt at all and that criminal B won’t be found worst. What are the odds that A will be executed? Ans: There are six possibilities of relative guilt among A, B and C: ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, and CBA. The guard’s reply eliminates all but ACB, CAB and CBA. A is the most guilty in only one scenario, therefore his odds of execution are one in three.

3) My grandfather’s village contained a Mr Carpenter, a Mr Machinist and a Mr Smith. One was a carpenter, one a machinist, and the third a smith, but naturally none followed the vocation indicated by his name. Each was assisted by the son of one of the others, but no son followed the trade corresponding to his name. Mr Machinist wasn’t a carpenter. What was the occupation of Mr Smith’s son? Ans: If Mr Machinist isn’t a machinist or carpenter, he must be a smith. Mr Carpenter is a machinist, and Mr Smith a carpenter. Smith Junior doesn’t assist his father or the smith. He must therefore be a machinist, helping Mr Carpenter.

4) With summer approaching, consider last year’s confusion. Mom had three daughters: Anne, Barbara and Connie. One yachted at Newport, one passed the summer at Bar Harbor, and the third enjoyed Woodstock. One played tennis, one (of course) yachted, and the third played golf. Anne wasn’t at Newport. Connie wasn’t at Bar Harbor, and whichever daughter played golf wasn’t at Woodstock. Connie didn’t go yachting. So who played golf and where? Ans: Let’s see. The girl at Newport went yachting, and Anne wasn’t at Newport. Since Connie didn’t go yachting, it follows that Barbara was on the boat at Newport. If Connie wasn’t at Bar Harbor, Anne must have been. Therefore Connie was at Woodstock and wasn’t playing golf. So Anne played golf at Bar Harbor.

AnswersToMayQuiz: 1) Destructive Obsession.  2) 17.5 days. The worm advances one foot per day. So at the start of the eighteenth day, the worm has progressed 17 feet. During the next twelve hours, the worm advances three feet, which puts it at the top 17 days and 12 hours into the climb. (ed: should we have expected the worm to turn?)  3) 123 – 45 – 67 + 89 = 100.  4) If R is the original number of red cards in portion A, 2R is the number of black cards. Portion B therefore originally consists of 26-R red cards, or 25-R red cards after the shift. The number of black cards in portion B is 26-2R. After the shift, the ratio of red cards to black in portion B is 2 to 1, so

(25-R)    = 2
(26-2R)     1

R is therefore 9, which means originally there were 27 cards in portion A (nine red and eighteen black) and 25 in portion B (seventeen red and eight black).

Here’s a little-known fact. OpEd writers do wake at 3 a.m. after a column has been published and realize that a piece can be incontrovertible and still have missed a target.

I’m referring to last week’s column advising readers not to tar all Austrians with the same brush after the revelations about Josef Fritzl, 73, who kept his daughter Elisabeth in a sunless, nearly airless dungeon beneath his house for 24 years for rape and procreation. I stand by it; damning entire nations is absurd and dangerous.

But relations between men and women in Austria are still a bizarre backwoods matter, as one reader e-mailed to inform me. Thank you for the article, she wrote politely, but I am Austrian-German, and you are wrong. Her traditional upbringing by an authoritarian father and passive mother had scarred her as well as her own children, she said, causing one of her brothers to commit suicide and leaving the other emotionally unable to cope with life.

The Austro-German style, she wrote, is to physically punish or shame children for any transgressions, however minor. Girls are singled out for particularly vicious treatment. Spontaneity, complaining, disobedience, reading too much, playing too enthusiastically, showing feelings, crying, being pretty, all these things are considered criminal in a girl. Her mother once told her that she should take care not to scream during childbirth.

It wasn’t until she found a Greek boyfriend that she observed families who embraced, praised and openly adored their children. This was a revelation to her. Her family’s eventual emigration to Canada was her salvation, she wrote. "I could learn to be an individual true to myself."

After hearing from this courageous woman, I looked at the Fritzl case from a different angle. A man in the now-notorious town of Amstetten named Paul Hörer has told reporters he was great friends with Fritzl for 35 years, calling him a "decent, outgoing and amusing bloke." But Fritzl was very strict with his children. "I had the impression Josef didn’t like [Elisabeth] as much as his other children. He hit her more (my italics). Every little thing meant she got dealt a few."

Here in Canada, if we saw a big man repeatedly slapping and beating a little girl, we’d step in, correct? But Hörer was fine with it. The only person who has yet spoken of Fritzl’s abuse of his family was his sister-in-law, Christine, who said she had always hated him for his constant verbal cruelty to his wife Rosemarie, 69. But even she never dared to confront him. That is not what Austrian women of her era do.

Daily news about the case was provided by a panel of six local and regional police officers. A female newspaper columnist had by then made headlines by advising Austrians to take a hard look at their society and the government had already begun planning a PR campaign to restore the international image of what they feared would become known as the "land of dungeons."

But the panel was all male. It’s as if Austrian women were wiped from sight. Police from the province of Lower Austria, politicians, spokesmen, they were always men. It was men who ruled that Fritzl’s rape conviction would be erased after 15 years, and men who subsequently allowed him to adopt three infants without fanfare. Fritzl had been raping Elisabeth since she was 11; it was male police officers who twice returned her to her father’s custody when she ran away.

It wasn’t until management of the case was taken over by officials in Vienna that women were heard from. The investigating prosecutor is a woman (Fritzl won’t like that) and so is the justice minister. The latter, Maria Berger, was the first one to say that police gullibility had been a factor in a crime that continued uninvestigated for decades. But Vienna isn’t Austria. The humane Austrian novelist Thomas Glavinic wrote a column in The Guardian describing the male setup in Austria. He referred to Amstetten; to the 2006 escape of Natascha Kampusch, held in a dungeon for eight years; to the village mayor poisoned by a praline filled with strychnine; and to the bomb-building neo-Nazi who blew up four Roma in the Burgenland region in 1995.

"Initially, it might look as if there is no common basis to these cases. But these crimes reveal much about Austrian society. As far as we know, all were committed by men, by loners living in the countryside. Almost a quarter of the eight million Austrians live in Vienna. The rest spend their lives in smaller towns, hamlets or villages." It is a strangulating life under religious rule. As Edna O’Brien once wrote in a novel about rural Ireland, "I would like to live in a city because if you scream someone can hear you.”

The gap in pay between men and women is more than 30 per cent, one of the largest in the EU. Statistics show that Fritzl’s broken wife is typical of Austrian women her age. She did not finish school and was jobless when she married; she would have been socially and economically doomed without marriage. Whether this affected her ability to connect the dots in her husband’s odd behaviour remains to be discovered.

In this light, that all-male police panel began to look more sinister. In Austria, women are excluded from public life. What worries me is that no one notices it. And then it becomes apparent in the New World, too. The Austrian panel was a "wall of men," the phrase I use to describe Canadian journalism and politics among other things. The June issue of The Walrus is almost entirely written by men, from letters to the editor to columns to features to cartoons to fiction to book and art reviews to the crossword. I subscribe, but am struck by the Aspergian social inadequacy of this indeed walrusy magazine. The May 5 issue of The New Yorker is equally all-male. The Wall Street Journal has just named the top 20 influential business thinkers, not a woman among them. And of course Hillary Clinton is vilified by the media. I think she deserves to be, but not because she is a woman.

These are all spores of the same fungus, the continuing unwillingness of many men (and many women) to allow women equal power. Elisabeth Fritzl’s unspeakable life is merely a grotesque extension of a common tendency. It still reigns in Austria, less so here, but it’s only a question of degree.

(by Heather Mallick, CBC, May 9, 2008)

Japanese nationalists adopt Tibet as weapon against China

The last time the Olympic torch found its way to the sleepy ski resort of Nagano, its inhabitants remember a charming international jamboree where people swapped lapel badges with complete strangers.

Today [late April], as the troubled flame makes its journey through Nagano en route to Beijing, the city is a very different place from a decade ago: ultra-nationalists cruise the streets blaring messages of hate from giant loudspeakers and an unprecedented army of secret police is under orders to question all foreigners.

The Japanese Government knows that the Nagano leg of the relay is a tinderbox quite unlike the other cities through which the torch has passed.

Relations between Beijing and Tokyo are somewhat warmer than in the recent past but there is still a rich vein of straightforward anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan that has nothing at all to do with Tibet or human rights.

"Communist China dishonours the city of Nagano! Smash down the Beijing Olympics!" screamed a rightwinger from behind the darkened windows of a menacing "sound truck" daubed with nationalist insignia.

In an unlikely marriage of ideologies, the pro-Tibet cause has been espoused vigorously by the ultra-nationalist right wingers of Japan. As they marched through the streets - some in pseudo-military uniforms - the incoherence of the two political views was obvious.

"China is not qualified to hold a festival of peace because it is a country that murdered Tibetans," shouted one orator. "We must establish a true national army to protect against China," bellowed another.

To the authorities, the arrival in Nagano of the right wing from around the country poses a problem - especially since 2,000 Chinese students in Japan are expected to be bussed in to cheer the flame as it passes by.

For domestic political reasons the Japan’s Government refused publicly to let the paramilitary-trained Chinese "flame attendants" run with the torch as they had elsewhere in the world. Behind the scenes, says the foreign ministry, a deal has been struck that will allow two of the blue-tracksuited Chinese to run with the torch while Japan guarantees overall security.

To avoid embarrassment Japan has taken its side of the bargain so seriously that local residents say that they have, in effect, been subjected to "Chinese-style" policing. Pro-Tibet demonstrators complained bitterly that their rights to demonstrate had been suppressed by nervous Japanese police.

Motoki Noike, from the Nagano chapter of Students for a Free Tibet, said: "The message of the games should not just be for China to strengthen security to make them successful but to solve the problems that are causing the protests in the first place." Beyond what Japan’s foreign ministry admitted was an "extreme" security cordon, there are other contrasts with ten years ago.

When the Winter Olympics were held in Nagano in 1998, they were opened by the ringing of the bell of the iconic Zenkoji temple; today’s torch relay begins from a soulless car park next to a Japan Self Defence Force recruitment centre. Corporate sponsorship is all but invisible along the streets, the atmosphere has been killed by the 3,000 police officers and even the city’s proudest residents describe the scene as downmarket.

The problem arises from the sudden refusal by the Buddhist priests of the Zenkoji temple to let the relay start there - a reaction, they said, to the "unforgivable violence" that took place in Tibet last month. The priests plan to hold a memorial service for those who died in the violence at the same time as the relay begins.

"The symbolism of starting the torch relay from the temple was because it was where the Nagano Olympics began. There is now simply no meaning to having the relay in this city," said Seiko Hagiwara, who runs a noodle restaurant at the temple gates.

(Leo Lewis, The Times, April 26, 2008)

On my [Jim Szpajcher] recent visit to Virginia, I travelled for two days with a friend, who shares an interest in Civil War history. On a previous visit, in 2006, he and I had undertaken the drive to visit Gettysburg, the scene of the pivotal battle of the Civil War, which raged in Southern Pennsylvania in early July, 1863. This time around, we stayed in north-central Virginia, and our first stop was at Fredericksburg, roughly midway between Washington, D.C., and Richmond.

Some background -

By December, 1862, the Union forces were receiving vast amounts of supplies and men, while the Confederacy was running short on these basics, without which a war cannot be sustained. The main problem for the Union forces was that the leadership of the army had been lacklustre and hesitant. The main problem for the Confederate forces was that their supply lines had been disrupted as the Union army was occupying Northern Virginia, and the importation of vital goods had been blockaded by the Union Navy. The Army of the Potomac was flush, with 120,000 well equipped and well-trained men under the newly appointed Major General Ambrose E. Burnside, while the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E. Lee, struggled to field 78,000 poorly armed, poorly equipped men.

Bruce Catton’s "The Army of the Potomac", in Volume 2 "Glory Road", recalls an exchange between two pickets along the Rappahannock River in late November or early December, 1862:

"The whole army chuckled over the answer one brash Federal got when, observing that the Confederate on the opposite bank was exceedingly ragged, he called across to know if Rebels did not have any decent clothes. The Reb looked over at him for a minute, then called back: "We-uns don’t put on our good clothes to butcher hogs." (P.33)

On December 11th and 12th, Burnside’s forces bridged the Rappahannock River while under fire, and forced the Confederates out of Fredericksburg, which had been largely evacuated of civilians just before the battle started. Union forces, that night, vandalized and destroyed the town, which had long been an important trading center in Virginia, while Lee’s forces pulled back and shivered in positions on heights to the west and south.

On the morning if December 13th, Burnside’s plan was to strike the southern end of the Confederate positions, south of the town, while employing a smaller attack to the west out of the town as a diversion. The Union forces moved forward in late morning. During intense fighting, the attack on the south moved forward, then faltered, as there was confusion over following up an initial success against the Confederates.

In the meantime, the forces coming westward out of Fredericksburg, from the II Corps, commanded by General Darius N. Couch, did not have a clear path to advance - and Confederate soldiers had lined a road bed below a north-south ridge named after a local lawyer who lived there: John L. Marye (pronounced as "Marie"). Below Marye’s Heights, the main road between Washington and Richmond had been dug into the lowest slopes of the Heights, and lined with stone to shore up the sides. This stretch was known as the "Sunken Road", and was lined with thousands of Confederate soldiers, while on the heights behind the road, Confederate artillery was positioned to fire over the heads of the soldiers.

Between Fredericksburg and the Sunken Road were 600 yards of open ground, whose undulating surface concealed a canal, which could only be crossed by three small bridges - whose plank decking had been torn up from them. The Federal forces formed up to attack, and moved toward Marye’s Heights, only to find that they had to break up, cross the canal, and reform, before continuing to advance the final 400 yards to the Sunken Road, where General Longstreet had 4 ranks of riflemen waiting for them.

General William H. French was ordered to attack, and sent his three brigades forward in separate attacks, into blistering fire from the Confederate troops. The first attack went in at 11:30 in the morning. None of the attacks closed more than 100 yards from the road, and littered the open field with dead and wounded men. The survivors pulled back and went to ground.

General Winfield Scott Hancock had been ordered to follow French into action, and he formed up his men, sending his three brigades toward Marye’s Heights and the Confederate forces lining the Stone wall. Bruce Catton records Hancock’s Division attacking as:

The plain was covered with smoke, and men on each side saw the fighting only in glimpses, and what they saw was always the same. Up in front, in that last deadly zone between fifty and one hundred yards from the stone wall, one firing line would be crumbling and going to pieces under the fearful Confederate fire; farther back, while this was happening, the broad blue lines of a new brigade would be coming up into view on the high ground near the canal; and back by the town, compact columns would be marching down the parallel highways, making their way toward the canal. There never seemed to be any end to it, and the Confederates lost all track of the number of separate assaults they had repelled.

Units from the III, V and IX Corps were fed into the battle. General Howard’s Division went next, trying to skirt to the north, but the low terrain and a long slough, known as Gordon’s Marsh, forced his brigades back over in front of the Sunken road, to be devastated in succession.

General Sumner’s three brigades went forward, each failing in succession. While these rows of men were being scythed down, General Lee, watching from his position on the heights, turned to General Longstreet and is reported to have said: "It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it."

By this time, about 3:30 in the afternoon, a comparative lull settled over the field. Towards 4 o’clock, General Hooker’s brigades started moving forward.

Shelby Foote wrote of this attack:

Down in the sunken road, Tom Cobb had been hit by a sharpshooter firing from the upper story of a house on the edge of town; he had bled to death by now; but his men were still there, reinforced by several regiments of North Carolinians from Ransom’s Reserve division. Shoulder to shoulder along the wall, they loosed their volleys, then stepped back to reload while the rank behind stepped up to fire. So it went, through all four ranks, until the first had reloaded and taken its place along the wall, which flamed continuously under a mounting bank of smoke as if the defenders were armed with automatic weapons. This attack, like the three preceding it, broke in blood. The Federals fell back, leaving the stretch of open ground between the swale and a hundred yards of the wall thick-strewn with corpses and writhing men whose cries could be heard above the diminishing clatter of musketry.

After sunset, General Andrew Humphreys, from V Corps, led an attack with two of his brigades of untried Pennsylvanians, ordering his men not to stop and fire volleys, but to fix bayonets and charge the Confederate positions.

Shelby Foote recorded:

From behind it [the wall], all this while, the rebels - many of whom were shoeless, without overcoats or blankets to protect them from the penetrating mid-December chill - taunted the warmly clad Federals coming toward them in a tangle-footed huddle after their encounter with the bog: "Come on, blue belly! Bring them boots and blankets! Bring them h’yar!" And they did bring them, up to within fifty yards of the flame-stitched wall at any rate. There the forward edge was frayed and broken, the survivors crawling or running to regain the protection of the swale, which by now they were convinced they should never have left.

In near total darkness, one brigade from IX Corps tried one last attempt to gain the Sunken Road. Bruce Catton records:

It was almost entirely dark when Rush Hawkin’s brigade from IX Corps made one final assault, coming up from the railway cut and swinging out into the open ground comparatively undamaged, and then getting the worst of it in one tremendous blast that seemed to shake whole regiments apart. The colonel of the 13th New Hampshire wrote that "with one startling crash, with one simultaneous sheet of fire and flame, they hurled on our advancing lines the whole terrible force of their infantry and artillery." Others who saw the charge said that the whole field lit up as if by sheet lightning when the Rebels opened fire. For a few moments, there was a wild melee as the broken lines swayed back and forth; some of the men unhurt by the rebel fire, were injured simply by being knocked down and tramped on in the unendurable confusion… Part of the brigade overlapped the left of the II Corps line and was shot by Federal bullets, and finally what was left of it sagged back into the shelter of the railway cut, and it was too dark to fight any more that day.

The Federals had lost 12,653 men, killed, wounded and missing, in the battle of Fredericksburg, with casualties averaging over 1,000 an hour in front of Marye’s Heights. Eighteen Brigades had charged in 7 major attacks to no avail. Confederate losses were documented at 4,201, a rate at which the South could not sustain. On the morning of December 16, the plain between Fredericksburg and Marye’s Heights was empty. The Union forces had retreated back across the Rappahannock.

Lee was angered at the vandalism that had been done to the town. And when a staff officer asked "What can we do?", while viewing the destruction of Fredericksburg, Stonewall Jackson replied, "Why, shoot them."

As the war progressed, however, the South could not find its feet, and no number of such battles could gain the recognition of independence that the Confederacy was fighting for. The long, grueling, slog continued on for another 2 years and 4 months, before grinding to a halt at Appomattox Court House, in April, 1865.

Over fifty years later, British and French generals would be trying to use tactics which had failed at Fredericksburg. On the first day of the Somme Offensive, July 1, 1916, the British General Haig, sent hundreds of thousands of men against the German machine guns, in human wave attacks as futile and valiant as those of the Army of the Potomac in December, 1862. At the Somme, however, the British Army’s casualties totaled over 59,000 in a single day - 19,000 killed, and over 40,000 wounded.

The old adage about history, and being doomed to repeat it, should have been studied more closely.

(by jim szpajcher)

First it was Kennedy… now the US media are prostrating themselves before the new saviour.

Every decade or so the people who control the way we see the world anoint some American politician the Redeemer of a Troubled Planet.

In the late 1960s the media placed the halo on Robert Kennedy, the tragic dynast whose antiwar and civil rights credentials made him in life - as he remains to this day in death - a kind of devotional figure for most political journalists.

Kennedy at least had charisma and intelligence. But to prove that these were by no means necessary preconditions for the honour, it was conferred a few years later on Jimmy Carter, the plodding nonentity elevated by a willingly compliant press into Everyman, brandishing his steely sword of Truth against the Manichean mendacity of Richard Nixon’s Republican legacy.

Partly because of the Carter embarrassment, the 1980s were barren years for the idolators. Try as they might, they couldn’t work themselves into much ecstasy over Walter Mondale in 1984 or Michael Dukakis in 1988, though they had little flings with bit-part players Gary Hart and (I kid you not) Bruce Babbitt, a genial former Governor of Arizona.

But by the 1990s a new Democrat, or rather a New Democrat, was come among us, a man the media told us would lift our eyes from our selfish greed and rid the world of the ineffable misery left by 12 years of reactionary rule. It’s hard to imagine now, after the battering he’s taken from his old friends in the press these past few months, but Bill Clinton was once their idol. His cleverly cynical balancing act - promising a return to high-minded tolerance while executing mentally ill prisoners in Arkansas, for example - was lauded as a brilliant synthesising of traditional liberal ideology with the political realities of the modern age.

The alert among you will have noticed by now that what all these spiritually uplifting leaders have in common. They are all Democrats. Never in any of the chapters of this hagiography does a Republican, a conservative, appear in a remotely similar light. These alien creatures by contrast have always been portrayed as cartoonish representatives of the Dark Side of humanity, or, if they were really lucky, simply idiots, failed B-movie actors and irredeemably ignorant hicks with embarrassingly neanderthal views on women, religion and communism.

It’s been a while coming - neither Al Gore in 2000 (before the luminescence created by his recent joint Nobel/Oscar triumphs) nor John Kerry in 2004 quite fit the bill. But it’s fairly clear now that, with the near-certain nomination by the Democrats of Barack Obama everything is in place for the media to indulge in one of the greatest, orgiastic media fiestas of hero-worship since Elvis Presley.

You will not see a finer example of the genre than the cover story of this week’s Newsweek, which was entitled "The O Team". This rhapsodic inside account of Senator Obama’s campaign reads a little like a cross between Father Alban Butler’s Life of St Francis and the sort of authorised biography of Kim Jong Il you can pick up in any good bookshop in Pyongyang.

Mr Obama is portrayed throughout as an immanently benevolent figure. Not human really, more a comforting presence, a light source. He is always eager to listen to all aides of an argument, always instilling confidence in the weak-willed, resolutely sticking to his high principles and tirelessly spurning the low road of electoral politics. I stopped reading after a while but I’m sure by the end he was healing the sick, comforting the dying, restoring sight to the blind and setting prisoners free.

The panegyric included the now conventional wisdom in the media that Republicans have only ever won elections in the past 40 years through lies and fearmongering - smearing their opponents and spreading false fears that a vote for a Democrat would open the country to foreign invasion.

To be fair, the Newsweek credo was only the latest and perhaps most shameless phase of the pro-Obama liturgy in the media. Some cable TV channels prostrate themselves nightly before him. Most newspapers worship at the altar. They have already set up a neat narrative for the election between Senator Obama and John McCain in November - the Second Coming versus Old Grouchy, The Little Flower of Illinois up against the Scaremongering Axeman from Arizona.

There’s a special irony here. Senator McCain is the Republican who has received probably the single most favourable treatment from the media in the past 40 years. He has been a favourite because he conformed to the first law of contemporary political journalism: the only good conservative is a bad conservative. His willingness to defy his party on everything from taxes to global warming, to take on George Bush, has earned him at least an honourable mention in the martyrology of American politics of the past 40 years.

But now that he’s up against Oh! Bama! he will have to be recast in the more familiar Republican mould of villain and scaremonger-in-chief.

This media narrative is not only an outgrowth of the journalists’ natural enthusiasm for a Democrat such as Mr Obama. It is also a clever ploy to pre-emptively de-legitimise any Republican critique of the Democratic nominee. It is designed to prevent Mr McCain from asking reasonable questions about Mr Obama’s strikingly vacuous political background, or raising doubts about his credentials for the presidency.

The idolatry of Mr Obama is a shame, really. The Illinois senator is indeed, an unusually talented, inspiring and charismatic figure. His very ethnicity offers an exciting departure. But he is not a saint. He is a smart and eloquent man with a personal history that is startlingly shallow set against the scale of the office he seeks to hold. It is not only legitimate, but necessary, to scrutinise his past and infer what it might tell us about his beliefs, in the absence of the normal record of achievement expected in a presidential nominee.

If the past 40 years have taught us anything they have surely taught that premature canonisation is an almost certain guarantee of subsequent deep disappointment.

(by Gerard Baker, The Times, May 16, 2008)

This hero received no parade

The Talmud says that "whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world." Irena Sendlerowa, who died Monday at the age of 98 in Warsaw, saved some 2,500 worlds.

During the Nazi occupation of her country, this Polish Catholic woman risked her life and endured unspeakable torture to rescue Jewish children from the Holocaust. As a member of "Zegota," the organization set up by the Polish underground to help Jews, she masterminded a daring rescue operation: Posing as a nurse, she and about 20 other Poles smuggled about 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto.

Spirited out in ambulances, coffins, sacks and through sewers and tunnels, the kids were given Christian names and placed with Polish families, convents and orphanages. Sendlerowa meticulously recorded the children’s real names and their new identities so that they could be eventually reunited with their parents. Most of them, though, had no family to return to after the war.

In 1943, the Germans arrested Sendlerowa. They broke her legs and feet to get her to divulge the names of her helpers and the children’s whereabouts. She told them nothing. Sentenced to death, Sendlerowa narrowly escaped after Zegota bribed a guard. She continued her underground work until Germany’s defeat.

Recognition, which she never sought, came late in her life. Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, honored her in 1965. The Communists didn’t let her travel to accept the award. In 2003 she received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest civilian decoration. Polish President Lech Kaczynski lobbied hard for her to win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. But Al Gore got the award.

Ill health prevented Sendlerowa from attending a Polish parliament ceremony last year that recognized her as a national hero. Instead she told the lawmakers in a letter: "Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory."

(from the Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2008, brought to our attention by Jim Szpajcher, a bringer of enlightenment)

As we approach Holocaust Remembrance Day on May 1, I’ve noticed the reemergence of Holocaust denial.

I am reminded of the day two years ago, when I visited the Auschwitz death camps in Poland to meet the ghosts of a million dead souls. There I was, a Muslim woman entering a place where the attempted extermination of the Jewish people took place more than 60 years ago. I was there to see the dark side of humanity for myself.

Conflicting emotions overcame me as I walked towards the iron gate. Was I coming to pay tribute to the millions killed by the Nazis or was I a tourist coming to check off one more world historic site? I decided this was to be a private sojourn and I would not talk or write about it. And so I didn’t, until now - when I’ve begun to realize that Holocaust deniers continue to insist that the event never happened; that it is a Jewish conspiracy. In denying the Holocaust, we fall prey to the same evil that almost wiped out one of humanity’s most ancient people.

Auschwitz and the sister camp Birkenau are located in a small town called Oswiecim, where huge apartment buildings are just a few metres away from one of history’s worst death camps. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would want to live here, but I read that after the end of the war, some Jews returned to this area and still live here. An act of defiance to the German master plan, I suppose. At the Auschwitz entrance is the infamous gateway that reads "Arbeit Macht Frei" which translates into "Work shall set you free." I wondered what the purpose of that sign was. Was it a way to throw off the Jews, so that they might actually believe freedom was a possibility? Or did the Nazis erect it as some sort of cruel joke?

Tourist mecca or tourist trap?

Auschwitz is a surprisingly small area, only 40 square kilometres and containing about 40 sub-camps where the captives worked and slept. Despite its size, thousands and thousands of people lived, worked and died in this tiny, confined area. It’s dark, dusty, and damp - an appropriate atmosphere for a place like this. The place feels hollow and empty. But Auschwitz is hardly empty. It is teeming with tourists.

The former living and working quarters have been converted into a museum, and people from all walks of life come to see this historic relic. And again, this is where my discomfort comes in. Outside the gates to Auschwitz are dozens of tour buses with camera-happy travellers pushing their way through the gate. It didn’t seem right - why would Sunshine Tours and Safeway Travels and their palm-tree, smiley-face logo-ed buses come here? I wonder what the survivors of Auschwitz think about people like us, spending a few hours here, before we move on to our next tourist attraction.

The museum houses several huge aquarium-like displays that encase the belongings of the Jews who lost their lives. One display was filled with eyeglasses. Another was brimming with toothbrushes; another, with dishes and bowls. There was an entire room filled with shoes, all of which were torn and ripped and looked fit for the trash. A tour guide from Spain explained that the Nazis only kept the ugly shoes at Auschwitz. All the beautiful, expensive shoes were immediately sent back to Germany and distributed to "real" Germans. As a Jew, you weren’t even fit to have a decent pair of shoes.

I saw a display filled with the empty cans that once contained the gas that was used to kill millions of Jews. But even more disturbing than that was a display filled with human hair, millions of strands of hair. Hair, shaved off the heads of the women who were brought to Auschwitz, just before they were sent to the gas chambers. Their hair was used to make clothes and blankets for Germany. It is thought that many of those blankets must still be in German basements and closets.

One of the last displays holds thousands of pieces of luggage, each one with the owner’s name and address written in chalk. I can only imagine what the owners of the luggage were thinking. Coming here with all their belongings, unaware of the hell awaited them. Ever single name on every single piece of luggage represents a life, a family, a neighbourhood, a community, part of all of our communities - stolen from us.

A 15-minute walk from Auschwitz is Birkenau, the sister camp, which is where most of the Jews were gassed. I stood outside the camp, staring at the bunks and rooms, and the towers from which the guards must have kept an eye on their captives 60 years ago. But even all these years later, it doesn’t seem like we’ve learned much.

Just two years after allied troops liberated Auschwitz, in faraway India, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs butchered each other in a religious frenzy that produced one million dead bodies in just three months of bloodbath. Had they not learned anything from the holocaust? Today, genocide continues to take place in Darfur, where fairer skinned Muslims slaughter their darker skinned African bothers and sisters. Will anyone learn from history? Not if we continue to deny the Holocaust and let the memory of six million dead vanish into thin air.

(by natasha fatah, CBC, April 29, 2008)

[The CBC’s comment omits discussion of apathy and a murderous disposition in humanity. Not surprising really, the omission I mean, though a pity. Apathy and the inclination to kill might be sisters to ignorance in a new pantheon, because they so often accompany each other. Ignorance was the excuse, we remember, of Germans who did nothing to oppose the death camps. The CBC commentator wonders whether the Hindu-Muslim-Sikh slaughter of the late 1940s shows we learned nothing from the Holocaust. Of course it does. And she refers to the Sudan today. She might have continued with other killing fields: Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, the list is endless. Consider also related horrors such as slavery and apartheid, perhaps cultural genocide as in Tibet, the first approach to our own First Nations (through disease among other causes, the Blackfoot nation was reduced to about 200 souls in 1900). It isn’t ignorance of the past that permits new atrocities, but something less remediable. We’ve learned to accept corruption in government and commerce; lack of integrity is simply business as usual for us. Death seems hardly extraordinary, a mere extension of this traffic in the immoral. The CBC asks about "Arbeit macht frei". The answer is it’s irony. If you follow orders, you die. And the same happens if you don’t. (bb)]

These events took place a decade ago in Dublin, and – improbable though they are – they should be given some credence, because participants and onlookers alike have sworn to the truth of the story.

John Bradford, a Dublin University student, stood beside a country road hitchhiking on a dark and stormy night. Rain pelted down, and in the midst of cataracts of moisture he could see few signs of life.

The night rolled on and not a car passed.

The storm gathered strength and John could hardly see a few feet ahead of him. But just as he was beginning to despair, a car slowly come towards him and stopped. I’ve said car, though vehicle would be more accurate. John couldn’t make out its shape. Desperate for shelter, however, and without thinking about what he was doing, John got in and closed the door. Only then did John gaze about the interior of the vehicle and realize that there was nobody behind the wheel. Only then did he notice that the engine wasn’t on!

The car started moving slowly ahead. John looked through the windshield and saw a curve approaching. Fear gave way to panic. John was sure he was going to die. He started to pray.

But just before the car hit the curve, a hand entered through the window and turned the wheel to the left. The vehicle stayed on the road. Paralyzed with terror, John repeatedly watched as the car approached one turn after the other, and at each one in succession, a hand came out of the darkness and guided the car aright. Yet the mysterious hand never touched or harmed him in any way.

In due course, as is the custom in the Irish countryside, John saw the lights of a pub appear ahead. Gathering strength and courage, he pushed his way out of the car and ran through the rain to the welcoming lights. Drenched and out of

breath, he rushed inside and, after a pause to order refreshment, began to regale everyone with the ghostly experience he’d just had. Eventually, however, John realized that silence had enveloped the pub. He paused in his story. At which point, the pub’s door slammed open, and two more people, soaked to the bone and out of breath, entered from the storm. Looking around, and seeing John Bradford quaking at the bar, one said to the other, "Look, Paddy… there’s that idiot that got in the car while we were pushing it!!"

(folk tale)

Ontario’s biggest electricity consumers found themselves paying negative prices for power on Sunday [May 4th] - an anomaly that stems from too much supply and too little demand, the province’s Independent Electricity System Operator said Wednesday.

At one point, large consumers - those that pay market prices for electricity and consume more than $2,000 worth of power a month - were actually earning $9.41 for every megawatt hour.

In other words, utilities that had no choice but to maintain production, like nuclear power plants that require time to slow down or speed up generation, were actually paying consumers to buy their electricity.

"That is the highest negative price we’ve seen since the market opened in 2002," spokesman Terry Young said.

The anomaly occurred between 5 and 7 a.m. and again at midnight Sunday.

The last time it happened was on February 18, Family Day and before that, last Labour Day, Young said, adding Ontario’s "never seen this much on one day."

"What we had was a surplus generation and low demand for electricity," he explained, adding consumption tends to be lower on Sundays and early mornings. That’s also true of the so-called shoulder season, when people have their heat off and aren’t yet using air conditioners.

"Sometimes when you have more power you can also export it and we probably weren’t exporting a lot of it at that hour as well."

Noting the province’s supply has "improved significantly" in the last few years, Young said provincial plans to add another 5,000 megawatts of supply to the grid in the coming 18 months could mean more negative pricing in the future.

"You could see that," he said. "At this point it’s hard to predict. It just depends on what generation is available, but there’s no question we are in a better supply picture than we were, and the supply picture is improving, and the supply picture does play a factor with the price."

Because most residential consumers pay regulated prices for power, Sunday’s cost savings is averaged out over a period of time and won’t likely be noticeable to the average customer.

"Those who would benefit last Sunday would be those who are really the larger customers. The industries, the manufacturers, the businesses that might have been operating at that time," he said.

What it does show is just how much people with smart meters, which track when electricity is consumed, can save if they pay attention to when they’re using electricity, he said.

"You have the ability to benefit if you run your laundry on the weekend or run your dishwasher at night," he said.

"Electricity costs less at different times and I think last weekend you saw just how much less it can cost."

(by Tobi Cohen, The Canadian Press, May 7, 2008)

I don’t quite understand how we have forgotten that the "Olympic Torch" ceremony was invented by Hitler and his chums.

If ever there was an "invented tradition" well worth stamping out, it is this ridiculous, Fascist-inspired waste of money – which sends a Bunsen Burner around the world at tremendous cost for several months before the Games, manned (and womanned) by people dressed up in pseudo-ancient Greek costume, no doubt feeling very silly.

In London, we are now told, it will soon be doing a mini tour, carried by a London bus, Docklands Light Railway and Dame Kelly Holmes (inter alios).

I can’t quite work out whether most of the press reports are pleased at the pro-Tibetan protests which dented the hi-tech assisted, sunbeam lighting ceremonial (plucky little Tibet poking the Chinese dragon where it, for once, might hurt); or whether they are a touch censorious at this upsetting of the peaceful, non-political programme of the Olympic Games that we have inherited from the ancient Greeks; or whether they are wondering what might happen to the UK in the ceremonies to come in 2012 (don’t forget Iraq, Mr Blair/Brown….).

Hardly any commentator stops to mention that this silly torch ceremony has nothing to do with the ancient Greeks, and was really invented to be a magnificent shot in Leni Riefenstahl’s movie (choreographed by Carl Diem). This is one of Hitler’s most pervasive legacies.

They also don’t stop to mention that the ancient Olympics – far from being that sweet haven of peace — were pretty political anyway. Even in their hay-day, they were often interrupted by the rough hand of Politics.

The classic case is the eligibility of Alexander the Great’s ancestor, Alexander 1 of Macedon. When he turned up to compete in the early fifth century BC , the other Greeks said that he was a foreigner and so wasn’t eligible. Eventually the gate-keepers allowed him to take part, but – although he finished first (equal) – he didn’t get his name written into the official list of winners. (Hence, he is an awkward example on both sides for the modern argument about whether "Macedonia" is "Greek". Does Alexander 1 prove the Greekness of the Macedonians, or vice versa?).

But there were plenty more political controversies. The worst was in 364 BC when the Games happened while Olympia was under enemy occupation, or more accurately in the middle of a war zone. In fact, the Arcadians (Olympia’s neighbours in the Peloponnese) invaded during the Pentathlon event and some of their soldiers looted the sacred treasures. So much for the "Sacred Truce".

That was only the tip of the iceberg. In the 380s Lysias, the Athenian orator and democratic hero, harangued his fellow countrymen, urging them more or less to wreck the Olympic village. Four and a half centuries later, the Olympic officials appear to have turned a blind eye and let the emperor Nero win whatever competition he wanted — in return for some rather generous investment at the Olympic site.

We may not like the politicisation of the Olympic games, but let’s not pretend that this is a modern invention.

(by Mary Beard, The Times, March 26, 2008)

Tuesday, April 22^nd, 2008

Science Café is an exceptionally popular venue for guest speakers to entertain and educate the science-interested public. Hosted by Telus at the Unicorn Pub on 8th Ave downtown, this is a regular event worth adding to your monthly list. Upcoming topics can be found at http://www.calgaryscience.ca/courses/adultprograms/sciencecafe.php.)

The pub’s rooms were filled to bursting, even though the topic had been abruptly changed from the ‘Superbugs’ listed on the website. Instead, we were treated to a trio of discussions on recent advances in biomedical technology.

The first speaker, Jeff Dunn, discussed imaging advances and non-invasive diagnostic techniques. After MRI technology, the next step is the ‘cave man’. Essentially a virtual room for instructional purposes, the cave man presents holographic 3-D images of the interior of a human being, through which one can walk to learn about bodily systems and functions as an aid to learning. Insertion of devices into a patient transforms the educational function into diagnosis.

The next two speakers discussed the revolutionary and evolutionary aspects of biomedical engineering. Of especial interest to me was the comment that advances in brain imaging – what part thinks what and for what reason – would make psychology a dead science within 30 years, and all mental issues would be dealt with through surgery (invasive and non-invasive) and drugs. No more mental illness, no more therapy.

What’s a joint like you doing in a girl like this? Two thirds of the population will endure osteoarthritis after age 65, and we have no idea why! The discussion ranged from material failure to the body’s resources allocation strategy. Engineered tissues may replace our old, worn-out ones, whether they derive from synthetics or grow from stem cells as a custom order. Current research focuses on regenerative tissues – ligament, heal thyself! This research path seems the ultimate solution, though it will require a great deal of time and expense to see through to fruition.

Based on the time and cost, a question of medical ethics was raised – who gets the benefits of all this effort – only the rich who can afford it? Just because we can do something, should we do it?

The talks were fascinating and educational, but not as entertaining as the prior opium discussion. Still, I am impressed that Canada is a world leader in this research and technology. Curiously, just as extraordinary advances are being made in medical technology, our politicians have promised to eliminate medical premiums. Query: who is going to pay for these biomedical innovations, and how will they be undertaken?

(by Jeff Pugh)