Assignment: Earth

The Large Hadron Collider is now smashing atoms (or more properly: colliding subatomic particles). All of this is happening in the Swiss-French countryside. Just imagine it—something out of an impressionist painting with a monster lurking just beneath the surface. And when I say lurking—I mean smoldering.

Protons are stimulated to more than 99 percent of the speed of light, with energy levels of 3.5 trillion electron volts apiece around a 17-mile magnetic corridor. So what does this mean? Well, they crash together to form little (and I mean little) microscopic fireballs which might reveal the forces and particles that might have appeared during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.

But up till now, there has been a hitch: it has kept breaking down. The reason for this is why I’m so fascinated with this subject, being such a sci-fi nut. And here it goes—some scientists believe that the forces that the collider will create will be so abhorrent to nature, that it is being sabotaged by its own future. They call it—Higgs boson hypothesis, which states that the collision or Big Bang would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make it happen.

Wow! And this coming from scientists (most notably Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan)--not just any run of the mill Star Trek geek like me. Oh Yeah—and for all you Nielson fans, also Holger Bech Nielson, of the Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen.

This influence from the future, they say, was also responsible for the cancellation of the completion of a super collider in the United States in 1993.

Scientists are so funny—some have said that the theory is crazy. Yet maybe, crazy enough that it might have a chance at being correct. This means that the fundamental laws of physics must be reversible. And I do believe that most scientists believe that they are. Now if you’ve seen Star Trek (Original Series) repeats as much as I have, you have no doubt concluded that it is in fact a Starfleet ship that has returned to sabotage the collider.

But the Large Hadron Collider just successfully made their first little explosions and nothing happened. They are in search of dark matter, which you are fully aware, is some tricky stuff. In fact it is too tricky for Neanderthals such as us. So I think that there is some Spock-like dude (from the future) who has infiltrated the site, and is keeping us from blowing up the universe.

Hey—this theory is just as valid as the one from the smarty-pants with big degrees.

And don’t forget what Albert Einstein once wrote to a friend: “For those who believe in physics, this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion.”

My Life of Crime

I am thy father’s spirit.
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood;
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine. (Shakespeare)

If the whole of the court and the whole of society is corrupt, and if there is a flaw running through the linear chain of humanity, then my contribution to it can only be termed a failure.

A well known fact is that, although corruption is birthed from somewhere in the middle of our double helix of DNA (probably stuck between scatology and cynicism strands), it is a concept usually introduced to us by our older brothers.

Biological or not, I fall into the later category. And boy was my brother a master.

This story about my fall starts with a brief word about the shoes I tried to follow. My brother Clyde and his good friend Rob took to shoplifting school supplies from a local bookstore.

Act casual.

A pencil (here).

A beautiful ink fountain pen (there).

Compasses. Rulers.

Next—almost every damn thing in the store.

The inventory must have shown that something was wrong. Somebody had to be opening a supply store nearby and didn’t want to purchase their stock.

Deep in Clyde’s closet, was a box with the booty. A treasure box hidden well from a mother’s prying eyes. He and his friend would take out the box and gloat over its contents. I was only given permission to look on rare occasions.

Of course, my privy eyes would bulge. This was incredibly neat stuff. The seed was planted. Their talk of thievery was so casual, it must be an activity worth exploring; must be relatively easy. Just look at their cache.

Yes, there is profit in transgression! There is perfect logic in it. One must imitate an older brother’s enterprise—his art.

So off I went, in pursuit of splendor. Off to start my life of crime. I was thy brother’s spirit, riding towards the store on my new bicycle.

The plan was perfect. I had a leather pouch with straps, hanging from the back of the seat. It was the ideal place to stash the goods. Such praise from Fagan.

I entered the store with the eyes of Artful Dodger, trained with amazing awareness. Yes, that would be nice. The clerk is not looking. The clerk is looking. This location is obstructed from view. Act like a browser. Casual demeanor disarms suspicion. If you act nervous horns will sound, Doberman Pinchers will come bounding down the aisle and make lunch meat out of you. Do they send boys to prison?

A problem arises. I just can’t do it. I am too nervous. The anxiety within me is so intense that the booming of my heartbeat is reverberating from the walls. Books will start vibrating and fall from the shelves.

I can’t chicken out though. The humiliation would be even more painful than my cowardice. It is no longer a matter of how much to take, but more like what would be the easiest to conceal and how fast I can get out of there.

I can snatch and run. No—too risky. The minutes seem like hours.

Doesn’t this boy have a home? He must be lost. He must be waiting for his mother.

Finally, my eyes spy the object of my corruption; the singular article confining me to fast in fires. It is a Bic ball-point pen. It’s net worth: nineteen cents. Nineteen cents for a soul. It spoke to me.

Casual as an earthquake, I lifted it from the shelf. I inspected it. Yes, must be quite a fine pen. Try it out. Balances nicely! Walk down the aisle a bit. Nobody looking! In the pants. Better be safe and put it inside the underwear. Now just walk slowly towards the door. It is getting nearer. Keep your eyes straight. There was no tunnel when I came in here. Why was the damn door shrinking? Out the door! Walk slowly. Run! Yes—run like hell to the bike.

Once I got there, I burrowed into my pants for the pen. I put it into the leather pouch and rode home as fast as I could. The anxiety only got worse. I waited for the sound of police sirens in the distance. Upon entering our garage, I quickly closed the door, put my back to the cold brick wall and waited. Still no siren! I peered around through the window. The coast was clear. I did it!

But wait! Where was the pen? I frantically searched the pouch, but it was nowhere to be found. I searched again, but it was not there. I couldn’t believe it. This was all for nothing. Then my brother came up the driveway.

“What ya doing in there?”

“Nothing,” I returned.

To this date, the sight of a Bic ball-point pen causes each of my particular hairs to stand on end, like the quills upon the fretful porpentine.

My Top 10 CD's of 2009

Yes--I am a fan of music lists at the end of the year. I love to hear what David Dye has to say at the end of the year, as well as looking for what the NPR listeners pick on the "All Things Considered" list. But I have never ventured into the realm of making a list myself. This year I am changing that.

So here it goes--

1. Band of Skulls: Baby Darling Doll Face Honey

2. Meshell Ndegeocello: Devil's Halo

3. Devandra Banhart: What Will We Be

4. Rain Machine: Rain Machine

5. Other Lives: Other Lives

6. Heartless Bastards: The Mountain

7. White Denim: Fits

8. BLK JKS: After Robots

9. The Low Anthem: Oh My God Charlie Darwin

10. Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca

The First American in Afghanistan

In 1838, an American by the name of Josiah Harlan led an expedition against Murad Beg (prince of Kunduz and tribal war lord) in Afghanistan. His army included 1,400 cavalry, 1,100 infantry, 2,000 horses, and 400 camels. This rag-tag army crossed the Hindu Kush and followed the path of Alexander. Before unleashing his force on the region he unfurled the Stars and Stripes from the highest pass (Khazar) and had his troops fire a twenty-six gun salute.

Now, let’s back track a little. Who in the heck was this guy?

He was a soldier of fortune from Pennsylvania (and yes—had a Quaker upbringing), who sailed east in 1823 in search of adventure and ended up in India (with the Bengal Artillery) as an assistant surgeon. He had no medical training. He fought in Burma.

When the fighting ended, Harlan resigned and moved into northern India, where he hooked up with Shah Sujah (deposed Afghan monarch in exile). Once he had joined the royal circle, he disguised himself as a dervish and undertook a spying mission to Kabul. When he made his report (that the forces were too strong and well entrenched to attack) the Shah rewarded him with the titles of “King’s Nearest Friend” and “Companion of the Imperial Stirrup.”

Sounds cool to me! Especially the second one.

He then moved on to the court of Ranjit Sing as a mercenary and bagman. Eventually he pops up in Kabul a year later as aide-de-camp to the Sikh monarch’s archrival, Dost Mohammad Khan.

Loyalty going to the highest bidder, you could say in this field.

His new boss had a rapacity for gold, and possessed a cruelty that doubted every motive but self interest. Oh yeah, and he was a drunk.

One wonders how Harlan’s Quaker upbringing reconciled with the perpetual and shameless bacchanals of drink, prostitutes, singers and actors.

Perhaps it was his sober reticence that impressed his boss, because he made him second in command of an expedition against Murad Beg.

After punishing Murad Beg, the army returned to Kabul in 1839. It was then that Harlan learned that the Government of India was sending an army to restore Shah Sujah to the Afghan throne. Dost Mohammed named Harlan as commander-in-chief of his army. But when his people heard of the size of the army advancing, they deserted their leader en masse.

This is when Harlan returned to Philadelphia (1841). He wrote a memoir, where he refers to himself as General.

He tried to promote the use of camels by the US Army. And during the Civil War, he raised a regiment known as Harlan’s Light Cavalry. After the war he got Congress to raise $10,000 for a Central Asian Expedition. It never happened, and Harlan ended his days in San Francisco, where he practiced medicine until his death in 1871.

Raising our Glass

branding irons are to be used
in the suture of our commutable contusions

only yesterday I exhaled your dingy smoke
and it irradiated like frankincense

we made a toast with Helena’s bowl
to the true nepenthes in Homer

and retired our sorrow and debt
to the aliment of all heart-eating vice

but ended up mutually misaffecting each other
with songs and slurs until you broke my skull open

which it turned out, no reparation would suffice
unless the injury remained rational

Solomon himself would have offered me his cup
because, the onlookers thought i was a ghost

although you and i knew different--that atheism
like ours could be maintained by heathens alone

Tase First, Ask Questions Later

Dear Mister/Ms Police Officer,

If I get pulled over for speeding in the future and I seem a little nervous, please understand—I’m not hiding anything—I’m only worried that you might stun me for no reason other than that you are lazy and incompetent.

This is because you have complete authority. And you don’t have to do any work, anymore. Open my mouth (you know you don’t have to take any lip from me) and –ZAP!

How does that power feel?

Yours Truly, John Q. Public

The Taser is shaped like a gun and is battery operated. It fires two fishhook like barbs into a person’s skin, discharging between 50k and 1000k volts of electricity, disrupting a person’s muscle control. The darts have a range of up to 21 feet. The tool can also be pressed directly against a person’s body to use in stun mode. About 6,000 agencies use the device.

That’s the technical scoop.

But here’s the real deal—the pain caused by the electricity is excruciating and freezes you on the spot. And it keeps you frozen, until someone hits the “off” switch.

And the troubling part of this story is that it is now the preferred method of resolving any issues between police and the community. No one is immune from the TASER. This includes people who don’t pose any serious threat, such as unruly school children, pregnant women, a 6 year old mentally disturbed boy in Miami, a handcuffed 9 year old girl in Arizona, along with the elderly (including a legally blind 71 year old woman in Portland).

And get this—69 people have died nationwide after being shocked by Tasers. Many of which were due to the “rush to tase and ask questions later,” according to Sheley Secrest of the NAACP Seattle chapter.

Those tased who were fortunate enough not to have been killed by the devise, includes a deaf man who couldn’t hear deputies ordering him to stop, and a teenager who ran after not paying a $1.25 bus fare.

In my day--kids were taken home to their parents and made to account for themselves.

Now we all know the reason Tasers were introduced to law enforcement. They could potentially end violent standoffs and subdue suicidal people. But, as they have become as ubiquitous as the handcuff, they are being routinely used in far less threatening situations.

Amnesty International has released a report saying that police nationwide are abusing the stun gun. They advocate that officers stop using the device until independent tests prove they’re safe (The company that builds them insists they are). Some studies have indicated that not enough scientific data is available to determine whether Tasers are safe for use in all circumstances.

Several chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union have urged police to use Tasers only in the most serious situations. This is because there are no rules and standards that apply to their use. There are only suggestions. And some police departments are starting to clamp down on abuses by their officers. The Las Vegas Police Department recently had to ban the use of Tasers on handcuffed people and “discouraged” multiple shockings.

According to Amnesty International, Taser use has been followed by death in 277 cases. They are concerned that the weapons are being used on unarmed people, where there is no imminent threat to the officer or other people in the situation.

Only recently, I was channel surfing the old television, and came across the beginning of a new police reality series, featuring female officers in Broward county, Florida. One of the officers said something about how much she enjoyed stunning people with her trusty Taser, as an introduction to her character. It was sadistic and perverse. She thought that it was funny.

Tell that to the 15 year old boy in Michigan, who shortly after a Taser was used on him Tuesday, died. And of course, I wonder how funny those three officers in Laredo, Texas, think it is after the death of man they shocked with a Taser gun. They are on administrative leave, pending an investigation. My money is on a slap on the wrist and they’ll be back to abusing their authority very soon.

What I find particularly troubling about all this, is that there are no standards with something that can cause such harm. Our police are using the threat of excruciating pain to its citizens instead of civil discourse.

And this, in a democracy that touts its freedoms.

Scotland Yard Wants Your Stuff!

Recently, British police began combing an upscale London neighborhood. It was not to catch criminals though. It was to commit crimes themselves. They were in search of things to steal. They were checking for unlocked cars for items and taking them.

The rationale: to teach the owners a lesson to keep their doors locked, and their windows closed.

They were to “remove the property for safekeeping,” and a note would be left to explain what happened.

I guess that this type of thing could be referred to as the weird cousin of “focused deterrence.” Normally, the principle of this form of crime fighting is to force criminal activity to another jurisdiction. Criminologists refer to this as “displacement.” In Madison Wisconsin, campus police understand this fundament, and have been successful in deterring crime with their “bait bike” program. A GPS device is attached to such bikes. Since the program started, 18 people have taken the bait, ending in 16 arrests in two months. The police, in this situation, attempt to make the criminal evaluate the risk of apprehension; contemplate the seriousness of the expected punishment, along with their immediate need for criminal gain.

This has led to evidence of sizeable crime reduction on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Unfortunately, it did not shift crime to surrounding areas. But, it did put a dent in crime without putting a strain on police-community relations. I can only imagine the strain on police-community relations in London when the folks discovered that their valuables had actually been nicked by the police.

Perhaps the police in London have come to the conclusion that studies usually indicate that traditional crime deterrence programs, like that being employed in Madison, do not cause criminals to move to other areas. They resist movement to other sites, because of the natural tendency to stay with what is familiar. Movement would cause demand that they encounter new and less familiar conditions. Criminals simply change their methods in order to continue their activities without getting caught. So, instead the coppers focus their attention on the prospective victims by making them victims.

Yet, from where I come from, the state is responsible for maintaining order and preserving the common good through a system of laws—not the audacity to commit crimes in order to educate the populace about possible future crimes. The police in London need to achieve their objectives through policies that convince criminals (not victims) to desist from criminal activities, delay their actions, or simply avoid a particular target.

To do this, they must develop strategies which focus on future behaviors of criminals, and preventing them from engaging in such crimes by impacting rational decision making processes.

To put it another way—if criminals choose to continue their disruptive and threatening behavior, they deserve to be punished. The citizen, though, does not deserve to be punished (by having their property seized by the police) because of the activities of a few deviants.

As crime rates increase, police resources always are stretched and the certainty of apprehension decreases. Come on folks—let’s use our money more efficiently!