My 123 Days of Debate Travel in 2009

I put this together for my dean and department chair just because I thought I should. It is revealing about where and how I go. I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to do these things.

I was on the road for debate 123 days in 2009. During that time I feel like I was an active force on campus as well.

I have amazing opportunities and I appreciate so much what the University of Vermont has done for me in helping me pursue my work.

==================

2009 Travel Days for Debate

Here are my travel dates, events and locations for 2009. In parentheses after each I have indicated the funding source: LDU=Lawrence Debate Union, etc.

January – 12 Days

• World Universities Debating Championship, Cork, Ireland (LDU)

• USA-Thailand Friendship Debates, Bangkok, Thailand (USA Embassy, Thai Government)

February – 5 Days

• USA-Thailand Friendship Debates, Bangkok, Thailand (USA Embassy, Thai Government)

• Cornell Debate Tournament, Ithaca, NY (LDU)

• Baruch College Debate Tournament, NYC (LDU)

March – 14 Days

• Baruch College Debate Tournament, NYC (LDU)

• Teacher Workshop, Doha, Qatar (Qatar Foundation)

• Cape Cod Debate Tournament, Hyannis, MA (LDU)

April – 9 Days

• International Conference on Argumentation, Debate and Critical Pedagogy, Ljubljana, Slovenia (UVM professional development)

• International Public Policy Forum, NYC (Bickel & Brewer Foundation)

May – 0 Days

June – 17 Days

• National Forensic League High School Speech & Debate Nationals, Birmingham, AL (NFL)

• Piedmont College High School Debate Workshop (Piedmont College)

• Slovenia Summer Debate School, Rogla, Slovenia (ZIP Slovenia)

July – 20 Days

• Slovenia Summer Debate School, Rogla, Slovenia (ZIP Slovenia)

• World Schools Debate Academy, Zrece, Slovenia (ZIP Slovenia)

• Serbia Debate Camp, Divcibare, Serbia (US Dept of State)

August – 0 Days

September – 0 Days

October – 7 Days

• US Debate Open Tournament, Claremont, CA (LDU)

• Qatar Debate Academy, Doha, Qatar (Qatar Foundation)

November – 19 Days

• Qatar Debate Academy, Doha, Qatar (Qatar Foundation)

• Western Connecticut Debate Tournament, Danbury CT (LDU)

• International Debate Academy, Ormoz, Slovenia (LDU)

December – 20 Days

• International Debate Academy, Ormoz, Slovenia (LDU)

• Cape Cod Debate Tournament, Hyannis MA (LDU)

• Iraq Debate Academy, Duhok, Iraq (Iraq Debate)

• World Universities Debating Championships, Antalya, Turkey (LDU)

Howard Zinn Passes Away

From http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/01/howard_zinn_his.html

Howard Zinn, historian who challenged status quo, dies at 87

By Mark Feeney and Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as "A People's History of the United States," inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. He was 87.

His daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of Lexington, said he suffered a heart attack.

"He's made an amazing contribution to American intellectual and moral culture," Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, said tonight. "He's changed the conscience of America in a highly constructive way. I really can't think of anyone I can compare him to in this respect."

Howard Zinn.

Chomsky added that Dr. Zinn's writings "simply changed perspective and understanding for a whole generation. He opened up approaches to history that were novel and highly significant. Both by his actions, and his writings for 50 years, he played a powerful role in helping and in many ways inspiring the Civil rights movement and the anti-war movement."

For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand of history he taught. "A People’s History of the United States" (1980), his best-known book, had for its heroes not the Founding Fathers -- many of them slaveholders and deeply attached to the status quo, as Dr. Zinn was quick to point out -- but rather the farmers of Shays' Rebellion and union organizers of the 1930s.

As he wrote in his autobiography, "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train" (1994), "From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than 'objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble."

Certainly, it was a recipe for rancor between Dr. Zinn and John Silber, former president of Boston University. Dr. Zinn, a leading critic of Silber, twice helped lead faculty votes to oust the BU president, who in turn once accused Dr. Zinn of arson (a charge he quickly retracted) and cited him as a prime example of teachers "who poison the well of academe."

Dr. Zinn was a cochairman of the strike committee when BU professors walked out in 1979. After the strike was settled, he and four colleagues were charged with violating their contract when they refused to cross a picket line of striking secretaries. The charges against "the BU Five" were soon dropped.

In 1997, Dr. Zinn slipped into popular culture when his writing made a cameo appearance in the film "Good Will Hunting." The title character, played by Matt Damon, lauds "A People’s History" and urges Robin Williams’s character to read it. Damon, who co-wrote the script, was a neighbor of the Zinns growing up.

"Howard had a great mind and was one of the great voices in the American political life," Ben Affleck, also a family friend growing up and Damon's co-star in "Good Will Hunting," said in a statement. "He taught me how valuable -- how necessary -- dissent was to democracy and to America itself. He taught that history was made by the everyman, not the elites. I was lucky enough to know him personally and I will carry with me what I learned from him -- and try to impart it to my own children -- in his memory."

Damon was later involved in a television version of the book, "The People Speak," which ran on the History Channel in 2009, and he narrated a 2004 biographical documentary, "Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train."

"Howard had a genius for the shape of public morality and for articulating the great alternative vision of peace as more than a dream," said James Carroll a columnist for the Globe's opinion pages whose friendship with Dr. Zinn dates to when Carroll was a Catholic chaplain at BU. "But above all, he had a genius for the practical meaning of love. That is what drew legions of the young to him and what made the wide circle of his friends so constantly amazed and grateful."

Dr. Zinn was born in New York City on Aug. 24, 1922, the son of Jewish immigrants, Edward Zinn, a waiter, and Jennie (Rabinowitz) Zinn, a housewife. He attended New York public schools and was working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard when he met Roslyn Shechter.

"She was working as a secretary," Dr. Zinn said in an interview with the Globe nearly two years ago. "We were both working in the same neighborhood, but we didn't know each other. A mutual friend asked me to deliver something to her. She opened the door, I saw her, and that was it."

He joined the Army Air Corps, and they courted through the mail before marrying in October 1944 while he was on his first furlough. She died in 2008.

During World War II, he served as a bombardier, was awarded the Air Medal, and attained the rank of second lieutenant.

After the war, Dr. Zinn worked at a series of menial jobs until entering New York University on the GI Bill as a 27-year-old freshman. He worked nights in a warehouse loading trucks to support his studies. He received his bachelor’s degree from NYU, followed by master’s and doctoral degrees in history from Columbia University.

Dr. Zinn was an instructor at Upsala College and lecturer at Brooklyn College before joining the faculty of Spelman College in Atlanta, in 1956. He served at the historically black women’s institution as chairman of the history department. Among his students were novelist Alice Walker, who called him "the best teacher I ever had," and Marian Wright Edelman, future head of the Children's Defense Fund.

During this time, Dr. Zinn became active in the civil rights movement. He served on the executive committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the most aggressive civil rights organization of the time, and participated in numerous demonstrations.

Dr. Zinn became an associate professor of political science at BU in 1964 and was named full professor in 1966.

The focus of his activism became the Vietnam War. Dr. Zinn spoke at many rallies and teach-ins and drew national attention when he and the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, another leading antiwar activist, went to Hanoi in 1968 to receive three prisoners released by the North Vietnamese.

Dr. Zinn’s involvement in the antiwar movement led to his publishing two books: "Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal" (1967) and "Disobedience and Democracy" (1968). He had previously published "LaGuardia in Congress" (1959), which had won the American Historical Association's Albert J. Beveridge Prize; "SNCC: The New Abolitionists" (1964); "The Southern Mystique" (1964); and "New Deal Thought" (1966).

He also was the author of "The Politics of History" (1970); "Postwar America" (1973); "Justice in Everyday Life" (1974); and "Declarations of Independence" (1990).

In 1988, Dr. Zinn took early retirement to concentrate on speaking and writing. The latter activity included writing for the stage. Dr. Zinn had two plays produced: "Emma," about the anarchist leader Emma Goldman, and "Daughter of Venus."

On his last day at BU, Dr. Zinn ended class 30 minutes early so he could join a picket line and urged the 500 students attending his lecture to come along. A hundred did.

"Howard was an old and very close friend," Chomsky said. "He was a person of real courage and integrity, warmth and humor. He was just a remarkable person."

Carroll called Dr. Zinn "simply one of the greatest Americans of our time. He will not be replaced -- or soon forgotten. How we loved him back."

In addition to his daughter, Dr. Zinn leaves a son, Jeff of Wellfleet; three granddaughters; and two grandsons.

Funeral plans were not available.

Arctic Methane Threatens Runaway Global Warming

This may be the most important story of 2009-10 and many do not realize it.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/14/arctic-permafrost-methane

David Adam, environment correspondentguardian.co.uk, Thursday 14 January 2010 19.00 GMT

Permafrost in Siberia.

Methane emissions from the Arctic permafrost increased by 31% from 2003-07, figures show. Photograph: Francis Latreille/Corbis

Scientists have recorded a massive spike in the amount of a powerful greenhouse gas seeping from Arctic permafrost, in a discovery that highlights the risks of a dangerous climate tipping point.Experts say methane emissions from the Arctic have risen by almost one-third in just five years, and that sharply rising temperatures are to blame.The discovery follows a string of reports from the region in recent years that previously frozen boggy soils are melting and releasing methane in greater quantities. Such Arctic soils currently lock away billions of tonnes of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, leading some scientists to describe melting permafrost as a ticking time bomb that could overwhelm efforts to tackle climate change.They fear the warming caused by increased methane emissions will itself release yet more methane and lock the region into a destructive cycle that forces temperatures to rise faster than predicted.Paul Palmer, a scientist at Edinburgh University who worked on the new study, said: "High latitude wetlands are currently only a small source of methane but for these emissions to increase by a third in just five years is very significant. It shows that even a relatively small amount of warming can cause a large increase in the amount of methane emissions."Global warming is occuring twice as fast in the Arctic than anywhere else on Earth. Some regions have already warmed by 2.5C, and temperatures there are projected to increase by more than 10C by 2100 if carbon emissions continue to rise at current rates.Palmer said: "This study does not show the Arctic has passed a tipping point, but it should open people's eyes. It shows there is a positive feedback and that higher temperatures bring higher emissions and faster warming."The change in the Arctic is enough to explain a recent increase in global methane levels in the atmosphere, he said. Global levels have risen steadily since 2007, after a decade or so holding steady.The new study, published in the journal Science, shows that methane emissions from the Arctic increased by 31% from 2003-07. The increase represents about 1m extra tonnes of methane each year. Palmer cautioned that the five-year increase was too short to call a definitive trend.The findings are part of a wider study of methane emissions from global wetlands, such as paddy fields, marshes and bogs. To identify where methane was released, the researchers combined methane levels in the atmosphere with surface temperature changes. They did not measure methane emissions directly, but used satellite measurements of variations in groundwater depth, which alter the way bacteria break down organic matter to release or consume methane.They found that just over half of all methane emissions came from the tropics, with some 20m tonnes released from the Amazon river basin each year, and 26m tonnes from the Congo basin. Rice paddy fields across China and south and south-east Asia produced just under one-third of global methane, some 33m tonnes. Just 2% of global methane comes from Arctic latitudes, the study found, though the region showed the largest increases. The 31% rise in methane emissions there from 2003-07 was enough to help lift the global average increase to 7%.Palmer said: "Our study reinforces the idea that satellites can pinpoint changes in the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from a particular place on earth. This opens the door to quantifying greenhouse gas emissions made from a variety of natural and man-made sources."Palmer said it was a "disgrace" that so few satellites were launched to monitor levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. He said it was unclear whether the team would be able to continue the methane monitoring in future. The pair of satellites used to analyse water, known as Grace, are already over their expected mission life time, while a European version launched last year, called Goce, is scheduled to fly for less than two years.The new study follows repeated warnings that even modest levels of global warming could trigger huge increases in methane release from permafrost. Phillipe Ciais, a researcher with the Laboratory for Climate Sciences and the Environment in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, told a scientific meeting in Copenhagen last March that billions of tonnes could be released by just a 2C average global rise.More on methaneWhile carbon dioxide gets most of the attention in the global warming debate, methane is pound-for-pound a more potent greenhouse gas, capable of trapping some 20 times more heat than CO2. Although methane is present in much lower quantities in the atmosphere, its potency makes it responsible for about one-fifth of man-made warming.The gas is found in natural gas deposits and is generated naturally by bacteria that break down organic matter, such as in the guts of farm animal. About two-thirds of global methane comes from man-made sources, and levels have more than doubled since the industrial revolution.Unlike carbon dioxide, methane lasts only a decade or so in the atmosphere, which has led some experts to call for greater attention to curbs on its production. Reductions in methane emissions could bring faster results in the fight against climate change, they say.

The End of the Innocence

You have memories and you store them away. Then, for some strange reason, they come hauntingly back to you. I have always had an ear for music, and I store songs away even though I did not really like them at the time. But, they are still there. I was glad when Pulp Fiction used Jungle Boogie because it was one of those songs.

Ten years after the Vietnam war had ended I had a dream and a vision and I had to do a 90 minute radio program about it featuring the music that had obviously made an impression on me at the time, it had been stored away and finally needed to be heard.

Here I am, on a trip from continent to continent, doing the work of my life, just finishing a debate workshop in Iraq, preparing for an online training for Palestinian youth, back to Vermont to kick off my class in African American Rhetoric before I go for a short course in Japan, and another set of lyrics come back to haunt me.

It is the late 1980's, the fairy tales of the Reagan years are wearing off, so many lost opportunities. The world was changing but our cultural tools were so ill-suited to handle the changes. We were raised in the grip of an innocence culture that didn't exist in the 1950's and definitely didn't exist in the late 1980's. It doesn't exist now in 2010 but I still must say that I am a child of that era and its damaging mark remains on me.

Don Henley, The End of the Innocence. These last three weeks the song has been coming back into my mind. Maybe I think about the hope of the Obama administration being not that much better than the hope of the Clinton administration or the Reagan administration. Who knows? The wars continue, the empty call of commodification still pulls the masses towards emptiness, and still we have not reached that point ... where we can see who we really are and wash the myths away. We still often try to live them out and end with anomie.

The mind is an amazing thing. I never listened to that song when it came out, I would change the channel when it came on the TV (I still had TV then), but it obviously took root in me and now it is back. And it brings me close to tears. I am not sure why, but it does.

I think I really need to go to my house in Mexico and read Ivan Illich books AGAIN.

Remember when the days were long
And rolled beneath a deep blue sky
Didn't have a care in the world
With mommy and daddy standin' by
But "happily ever after" fails
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers dwell on small details
Since daddy had to fly

But I know a place where we can go
That's still untouched by men
We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind
You can lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

O beautiful, for spacious skies
But now those skies are threatening
They're beating plowshares into swords
For this tired old man that we elected king
Armchair warriors often fail
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers clean up all details
Since daddy had to lie

But I know a place where we can go
And wash away this sin
We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind
Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair spill all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

Who knows how long this will last
Now we've come so far, so fast
But, somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us
I need to remember this
So baby give me just one kiss
And let me take a long last look
Before we say goodbye

Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

"Gumby" Creator Goes into the Great Beyond

From http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2010/01/art-clokey-the-creator-of-the-whimsical-clay-figure-gumby-died-in-his-sleep-friday-at-his-home-in-los-osos-calif-after-b.html

'Gumby' creator Art Clokey, dead at 88, had an especially animated life

January 9, 2010 | 10:59 am

My Los Angeles Times colleague Jason Felch has written an especially insightful obituary for Art Clokey, who died Friday. Here's the piece along with links added by me and some video to take us all back to the days of clay. -- Geoff Boucher

Art Clokey, the creator of the whimsical clay figure Gumby, died in his sleep Friday at his home in Los Osos, Calif., after battling repeated bladder infections, his son Joseph said. He was 88.

Clokey and his wife, Ruth, invented Gumby in the early 1950s at their Covina home shortly after Art had finished film school at USC. After a successful debut on "The Howdy Doody Show," Gumby soon became the star of its own hit television show, "The Adventures of Gumby," the first to use clay animation on television.

After an initial run in the 1950s, Gumby enjoyed comebacks in the 1960s as a bendable children's toy, in the 1980s after comedian Eddie Murphy parodied the kindly Gumby as a crass, cigar-in-the-mouth character in a skit for "Saturday Night Live" and again in the '90s with the release of "Gumby the Movie."

Today, Gumby is a cultural icon recognized around the world. It has more than 134,000 fans onFacebook. As successive generations discovered the curious green character, Gumby’s success came to define Clokey's life, with its theme song reflecting Clokey's simple message of love: "If you've got a heart, then Gumby's a part of you."

"The fact is that most people don't know his name, but everybody knows Gumby," said friend and animator David Scheve. "To have your life work touch so many people around the world is an amazing thing."

Clokey was born Arthur Farrington in Detroit in October 1921 and grew up making mud figures on his grandparents' Michigan farm. "He always had this in him," his son, Joseph, recalled Friday.

At age 8, Clokey's life took a tragic turn when his father was killed in a car accident soon after his parents divorced. The unusual shape of Gumby's head would eventually be modeled after one of the few surviving photos of Clokey's father, which shows him with a large wave of hair protruding from the right side of his head.

After moving to California, Clokey was abandoned by his mother and her new husband and lived in a halfway house near Hollywood until age 11, when he was adopted by Joseph W. Clokey. The renowned music teacher and composer at Pomona College taught him to draw, paint and shoot film and took him on journeys to Mexico and Canada. Art Clokey attended the Webb School in Claremont, whose annual fossil hunting expeditions also inspired a taste for adventure that stayed with him. "That's why 'The Adventures of Gumby' were so adventurous," his son said.

Clokey served in World War II, conducting photo reconnaissance over North Africa and France. Back in Hartford, Conn., after the war, he was studying to be an Episcopal minister when he met Ruth Parkander, the daughter of a minister. The two married and moved to California to pursue their true passion: filmmaking.

During the day, the Clokeys taught at the Harvard School for Boys in Studio City, now Harvard-Westlake. At night, Art Clokey studied film at USC under Slavko Vorkapich, a pioneer of modern montage techniques.

Clokey's 1953 experimental film, "Gumbasia," used stop-motion clay animation set to a lively jazz tempo. It became the inspiration for the subsequent Gumby TV show when Sam Engel, the president of 20th Century Fox and father of one of Clokey's students, saw the film and asked Clokey to produce a children's television show based on the idea.

In the 1960s, Clokey created and produced the Christian TV series "Davey and Goliath" and the credits for several feature films, including "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini."

Gumby's ability to enchant generations of children and adults had a mystical quality to it, said his son, and reflected his father's spiritual quest. In the 1970s, Clokey studied Zen Buddhism, traveled to India to study with gurus and experimented with LSD and other drugs, though all of that came long after the creation of Gumby, his son said.

His second wife, Gloria, whom he married in 1976, was art director on Gumby projects in the 1980s and '90s. She died in 1998. Besides his son Joseph, Clokey is survived by his stepdaughter, Holly Harman of Mendocino County; three grandchildren, Shasta, Sequoia and Sage Clokey; his sister,Arlene Cline of Phoenix; and his half-sister, Patricia Anderson of Atlanta.

Instead of flowers, the family suggests contributions in Gumby's name to the Natural Resources Defense Council, of which Art Clokey was a longtime member. "Gumby was green because my dad cared about the environment," his son said.

-- Jason Felch

I Go to Iraq to Teach Debate

The flow of debate news will cease briefly while I travel to Iraq for a debate workshop.

We will land in Erbil and then go to Duhok for the workshop. 90 people, seven instructors. At the end we will hold the Mesopotamia Debating Championship. I am joined by Matt Stannard of the University of Wyoming, Bojana Skrt of ZIP Slovenia, Jason Jarvis of Georgia State University, Megan Harlow of Bard College, and Jonathan Borock of St. John's University.

I hope there is Internet in the hotel, but no promises. I will either post from Iraq or when I get to Amman, Jordan.

Thanks to Muhammad Ahmad and all of his supporters in Iraq who will make this possible. The poster being circulated now is above. Click to enlarge.

YouTube is Actually Getting Better! See "Panic Attack"

Wow. Nice job here on a low budget.

Threats to Barack Obama's Life

Image via Wikipedia

I am not totally satisfied with him, but he is doing a much better job than Bush 2 and he has had a very tough sitution to deal with.

What I am totally upset about is the continuing maniacal railing against Obama -- as a socialist, a muslim, a community organizer, a demon ("Yes we can" backwards is apparently "Thank you Satan"), and more.

Now, fundamentalists are trolling with the line from the Bible, Psalm 109:9 which reads, “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.” It also says, "“Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” That sounds to me like a threat on his life.

This drumbeat is like a continuing invitation for some unstable individual to decide that he or she has some holy duty to kill the President of the United States. I am not the only one afraid of this continuing public relations effort. Frank Schaeffer is definitely concerned in this clip, and frankly, I give his concern more weight because he’s a reformed high-ranking fundamentalist figure.

I think that it is very important to speak out against this now in the hope that it will not happen.

My Birthday is the End of the World

Image by shapeshift via Flickr

My birthday is 28 October 1950. In 2011 I will be 61 years old.

From http://www.calleman.com/content/articles/end_of_creationcycles.htm

Why the Creation Cycles do not end
December 21 2012, but October 28, 2011

Over the decades much discussion has focussed on finding the exact correlation between the Mayan Long Count and the Gregorian calendar. Most researchers in the field have now come to agree that the so-called GMT correlation, placing the beginning of the Long Count 4 Ahau 8 Cumku on the Julian day 584 283, August 11, 3114 BC, is correct. This means by consequence that it will end on December 21, 2012 and most students of the calendar of the Maya, such as Jose Arguelles, John Jenkins and Terence McKenna, have endorsed this date as the end of the current cycle.

I do not dispute that the GMT correlation for the Long Count with the Gregorian calendar is the correct one. And clearly, the Long Count is an approximately (within a year or so) correct reflection of the divine process of creation. There are however strong reasons to believe that the Mayan Long Count itself does not exactly reflect the shifting energies of the divine creation cycles that we today are interested in. What in this regard is most compelling is that the exact Long Count beginning date ultimately is calibrated based on the date of solar zenith in Izapa, which occurs on August 12. (Izapa is the ancient Mayan site in southern Mexico where the Long Count was first devised.)

This solar zenith day was since long, long before the Long Count was implemented, considered as the day of the year when “time began” and considered as a holy date in the location of Izapa. There is thus every reason to believe that the solar zenith was the reason the initial day in the Long Count, 4 Ahau 8 Cumku, was set on this day, although obviously the date of solar zenith in Izapa has nothing to do with the real beginning of the corresponding divine creation cycle. (Not to use the solar zenith date as the beginning of the Long Count would have been considered as heresy. We may make the comparison with the date of Christmas, which was taken from old solstice celebrations, and has not been changed, despite the fact that few, if any, believes that Jesus was born then).

That the end date of the Long Count falls on December 21, 2012 is thus just a necessary logical consequence of the beginning date chosen by the Izapans and not something that the Maya had intentionally targeted. The creation cycles described by the Maya, including the tzolkin, are fundamentally of a spiritual, non-astronomical, nature. Thus, any theory that implies that the Mayan Long Count would have been designed to reflect astronomical phenomena, be it the precession of the earth or a solar zenith, is a warning signal that its originator is off the mark. It should be obvious that if the Mayan calendar is a prophetic calendar describing cosmic energy cycles of a universal nature then the particular date at which the sun was in zenith in the particular location of Izapa is totally irrelevant for us who live today and must be considered as nothing but a result of a tradition too strong to be changed.

Another equally compelling reason why December 21, 2012 cannot be the true date of completion of creation is that this day is 4 Ahau in the tzolkin count. Since the Long Count consists of exactly 7200 tzolkin rounds then the true end of creation must fall on a day that is 13 Ahau in the tzolkin count so that the tzolkin rounds even out. If we want to find out what is the real date of ending of the creation cycles we must therefore look for a day around the year 2012, which is 13 Ahau in the tzolkin count. The inscriptions in Palenque, written about a thousand years after the Long Count was devised in Izapa, seem to indicate that the date of relevance is October 28, 2011, which in fact is 13 Ahau in the tzolkin count.

The issue of the exact correlation between the creation cycles and physical time may not have been as critical in the age of the Maya as it is to us, since creation is currently operating at a 400 times higher frequency. A discrepancy of a year or so may have meant less earlier than it does to us who live today. If we make a mistake of 420 days in calibrating the end date of the creation cycles we will be totally out of phase with the rapidly evolving Galactic Creation Cycle where the Yin/Yang dualities in the cosmos are switched off and on every 360 days. These energy changes are what a spiritual calendar should reflect if it is to serve humanity in its current phase of evolution.

It should be said also that those who propose December 21, 2012 as an end date, such as Terence McKenna and John Jenkins, are basing their entire interpretations of the Mayan calendar on this particular date of ending, as if this was what the entire calendar was about. I feel however that what is most important for us to know today is the processes leading up to the completion of creation and the attainment of Cosmic Consciousness. This process is driven forward by the roller-coaster-like Galactic Creation Cycle, and for those seeking to understand this process and its many manifestations an exact calibration of this cycle is imperative. This is now available in calendar form.

Baktun no Duration (Corrected) 1. 3115-2721 BC 2. 2721-2326 3. 2326-1932 4. 1932-1538 5. 1538-1144 6. 1144-749 7. 749-355 8. 355- AD 40 9. AD 40-434 10. 434-829 11. 829-1223 12. 1223-1617 13. 1617-2011 Corrected durations of the Thirteen Heavens baktuns of the Long Count

Burlington Vermont is Way Cool

CNN calling it among the coolest university towns in the USA.

http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/americas-coolest-college-towns/6?label=americas-coolest-college-towns

Burlington, VT (University of Vermont)

College towns don’t get more scenic than Burlington, where a 7.5-mile bike path on old railroad beds provides wind-riffled views of Lake Champlain. It’s understandable, then, that outdoor activities figure prominently here. Rent a kayak from Umiak to explore bays fringed with pines, or hike Burrow’s Trail to the summit of nearby Camel’s Hump, whose bald-faced 4,083-foot summit offers living-map panoramas.

Local Taste: Dine on local delicacies at the Green Room, which offers locavore favorites like Vermont lamb braised with green peppercorns.

Some were fairly obvious, while others were a surprise. It bears consideration how things have changed in such a short time.

From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6133903/50-things-that-are-being-killed-by-the-internet.html

50 things that are being killed by the internet

By Matthew Moore

Published: 7:00AM BST 04 Sep 2009

The web is changing the way we work, play and think Photo: REUTERS

Tasks that once took days can be completed in seconds, while traditions and skills that emerged over centuries have been made all but redundant.

The internet is no respecter of reputations: innocent people have seen their lives ruined by viral clips distributed on the same World Wide Web used by activists to highlight injustices and bring down oppressive regimes

Below we have compiled - in no particular order - 50 things that are in the process of being killed off by the web, from products and business models to life experiences and habits. We've also thrown in a few things that have suffered the hands of other modern networking gadgets, specifically mobile phones and GPS systems.

Do you agree with our selections? What other examples can you think of? Please post your comments on the bottom of the story – we hope include the best suggestions in a fuller list.

1) The art of polite disagreement
While the inane spats of YouTube commencers may not be representative, the internet has certainly sharpened the tone of debate. The most raucous sections of the blogworld seem incapable of accepting sincerely held differences of opinion; all opponents must have "agendas".

2) Fear that you are the only person unmoved by a celebrity's death
Twitter has become a clearing-house for jokes about dead famous people. Tasteless, but an antidote to the "fans in mourning" mawkishness that otherwise predominates.

3) Listening to an album all the way through
The single is one of the unlikely beneficiaries of the internet – a development which can be looked at in two ways. There's no longer any need to endure eight tracks of filler for a couple of decent tunes, but will "album albums" like Radiohead's Amnesiac get the widespread hearing they deserve?

4) Sarah Palin
Her train wreck interviews with NBC's Katie Couric were watched and re-watched millions of times on the internet, cementing the Republican vice-presidential candidate's reputation as a politician out of her depth. Palin's uncomfortable relationship with the web continues; she has threatened to sue bloggers who republish rumours about the state of her marriage.

5) Punctuality
Before mobile phones, people actually had to keep their appointments and turn up to the pub on time. Texting friends to warn them of your tardiness five minutes before you are due to meet has become one of throwaway rudenesses of the connected age.

6) Ceefax/Teletext
All sports fans of a certain age can tell you their favourite Ceefax pages (p341 for Test match scores, p312 for football transfer gossip), but the service's clunking graphics and four-paragraph articles have dated badly. ITV announced earlier this year that it was planning to pull Teletext, its version.

7) Adolescent nerves at first porn purchase
The ubiquity of free, hard-core pornography on the web has put an end to one of the most dreaded rights rites of passage for teenage boys – buying dirty magazines. Why tremble in the WHSmiths queue when you can download mountains of filth for free in your bedroom? The trend also threatens the future of "porn in the woods" – the grotty pages of Razzle and Penthouse that scatter the fringes of provincial towns and villages.

8) Telephone directories

9) The myth of cat intelligence
The proudest household pets are now the illiterate butts of caption-based jokes. Icanhasreputashunback?

10) Watches
Scrabbling around in your pocket to dig out a phone may not be as elegant as glancing at a watch, but it saves splashing out on two gadgets.

11) Music stores
In a world where people don't want to pay anything for music, charging them £16.99 for 12 songs in a flimsy plastic case is no business model.

12) Letter writing/pen pals
Email is quicker, cheaper and more convenient; receiving a handwritten letter from a friend has become a rare, even nostalgic, pleasure. As a result, formal valedictions like "Yours faithfully" are being replaced by "Best" and "Thanks".

13) Memory
When almost any fact, no matter how obscure, can be dug up within seconds through Google and Wikipedia, there is less value attached to the "mere" storage and retrieval of knowledge. What becomes important is how you use it – the internet age rewards creativity.

14) Dead time
When was the last time you spent an hour mulling the world out a window, or rereading a favourite book? The internet's draw on our attention is relentless and increasingly difficult to resist.

15) Photo albums and slide shows
Facebook, Flickr and printing sites like Snapfish are how we share our photos. Earlier this year Kodak announced that it was discontinuing its Kodachrome slide film because of lack of demand.

16) Hoaxes and conspiracy theories
The internet is often dismissed as awash with cranks, but it has proved far more potent at debunking conspiracy theories than perpetuating them. The excellent Snopes.com continues to deliver the final, sober, word on urban legends.

17) Watching television together
On-demand television, from the iPlayer in Britain to Hulu in the US, allows relatives and colleagues to watch the same programmes at different times, undermining what had been one of the medium's most attractive cultural appeals – the shared experience. Appointment-to-view television, if it exists at all, seems confined to sport and live reality shows.

18) Authoritative reference works
We still crave reliable information, but generally aren't willing to pay for it.

19) The Innovations catalogue
Preposterous as its household gadgets may have been, the Innovations catalogue was always a diverting read. The magazine ceased printing in 2003, and its web presence is depressingly bland.

20) Order forms in the back pages of books
Amazon's "Customers who bought this item also bought..." service seems the closest web equivalent.

21) Delayed knowledge of sporting results
When was the last time you bought a newspaper to find out who won the match, rather than for comment and analysis? There's no need to fall silent for James Alexander Gordon on the way home from the game when everyone in the car has an iPhone.

22) Enforceable copyright
The record companies, film studios and news agencies are fighting back, but can the floodgates ever be closed?

23) Reading telegrams at weddings
Quoting from a wad of email printouts doesn't have the same magic.

24) Dogging
Websites may have helped spread the word about dogging, but the internet offers a myriad of more convenient ways to organise no-strings sex with strangers. None of these involve spending the evening in lay-by near Aylesbury.

25) Aren't they dead? Aren't they gay?
Wikipedia allows us to confirm or disprove almost any celebrity rumour instantly. Only at festivals with no Wi-Fi signals can the gullible be tricked into believing that David Hasselhoff has passed away.

26) Holiday news ignorance
Glancing at the front pages after landing back at Heathrow used to be a thrilling experience – had anyone died? Was the government still standing? Now it takes a stern soul to resist the temptation to check the headlines at least once while you're away.

27) Knowing telephone numbers off by heart
After typing the digits into your contacts book, you need never look at them again.

28) Respect for doctors and other professionals
The proliferation of health websites has undermined the status of GPs, whose diagnoses are now challenged by patients armed with printouts.

29) The mystery of foreign languages
Sites like Babelfish offer instant, good-enough translations of dozens of languages – but kill their beauty and rhythm.

30) Geographical knowledge
With GPS systems spreading from cars to smartphones, knowing the way from A to B is a less prized skill. Just ask the London taxi drivers who spent years learning The Knowledge but are now undercut by minicabs.

31) Privacy
We may attack governments for the spread of surveillance culture, but users of social media websites make more information about themselves available than Big Brother could ever hoped to obtain by covert means.

32) Chuck Norris's reputation
The absurdly heroic boasts on Chuck Norris Facts may be affectionate, but will anyone take him seriously again?

33) Pencil cricket
An old-fashioned schoolboy diversion swept away by the Stick Cricket behemoth

34) Mainstream media
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News in the US have already folded, and the UK's Observer may follow. Free news and the migration of advertising to the web threaten the basic business models of almost all media organisations.

35) Concentration
What with tabbing between Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and Google News, it's a wonder anyone gets their work done. A disturbing trend captured by the wonderful XKCD webcomic.

36) Mr Alifi's dignity Mr Tombe's dignity
Twenty years ago, if you were a Sudanese man who was forced to marry a goat after having sex with it, you'd take solace that news of your shame would be unlikely to spread beyond the neighbouring villages. Unfortunately for Mr Alifi, his indiscretion came in the digital age – and became one of the first viral news stories.
As pointed out in the comments, Mr Alifi was just the goat's owner. It was another man, Mr Tombe, who actually did the deed. Apologies and thanks to readers for drawing attention to the error. (#51 Unchallenged journalistic inaccuracy?)

37) Personal reinvention
How can you forge a new identity at university when your Facebook is plastered with photos of the "old" you?

38) Viktor Yanukovych
The Orange Revolution in Ukraine was organised by a cabal of students and young activists who exploited the power of the web to mobilise resistance against the old regime, and sweep Viktor Yushchenko to power.

39) The insurance ring-round
Their adverts may grate, but insurance comparison websites have killed one of the most tedious annual chores

40) Undiscovered artists
Posting paintings to deviantART and Flickr – or poems to writebuzz – could not be easier. So now the garret-dwellers have no excuses.

41) The usefulness of reference pages at the front of diaries
If anyone still digs out their diaries to check what time zone Lisbon is in, or how many litres there are to a gallon, we don't know them.

42) The nervous thrill of the reunion
You've spent the past five years tracking their weight-gain on Facebook, so meeting up with your first love doesn't pack the emotional punch it once did.

43) Solitaire
The original computer timewaster has been superseded by the more alluring temptations of the web. Ditto Minesweeper.

44) Trust in Nigerian businessmen and princes
Some gift horses should have their mouths very closely inspected.

45) Prostitute calling cards/ kerb crawling
Sex can be marketed more cheaply, safely and efficiently on the web than the street corner.

46) Staggered product/film releases
Companies are becoming increasingly draconian in their anti-piracy measure, but are finally beginning to appreciate that forcing British consumers to wait six months to hand over their money is not a smart business plan.

47) Footnotes
Made superfluous by the link, although Wikipedia is fighting a brave rearguard action.

48) Grand National trips to the bookmaker
Having a little flutter is much more fun when you don't have to wade though a shop of drunks and ne'er-do-wells

49) Fanzines
Blogs and fansites offer greater freedom and community interaction than paper fanzines, and can be read by many more people.

50) Your lunchbreak
Did you leave your desk today? Or snaffle a sandwich while sending a few personal emails and checking the price of a week in Istanbul?

The Top Ten Hidden Satan Message Songs

Image via Wikipedia

Great job by funkyjelly.com in putting this together.

From http://funkjelly.com/2009/07/16/the-10-most-satanic-hidden-messages-in-songs/

Oh, my sweet Satan! We have come to bow at your feet and drink of your unholy red drank from your tippy toes of hell.

That’s not a pick up line, that’s what we transcribed when we played David Archuleta’s latest single backwards. Don’t believe us? Check it out for yourselves!

Ever since the kids started listening to that damned devil rock, Satan has been making his way into their hearts and minds. Subliminally, through backmasking. Everyone knows about Led Zeppelin, but there may be some you don’t know about in the 10 Most Satanic Hidden Messages in Songs.

10. Lady Gaga
We’re pretty sure Gaga actually makes more sense, backwards.

9. Buddy Holly
That wasn’t no plane crash that took Buddy Holly. It was just the devil collecting his payment.

8. Weird Al
What goes good with Cheese Whiz… in HELL?

7. Soulja Boy
We knew Soulja Boy wrote really wack lyrics, but who knew he was on his emo walk with Satan?

6. Bloodhound Gang
Thank evilness for Chef Boyardee!

5. Barney
Yeah, is anyone actually surprised, here?

4. Led Zeppelin
It’s always the songs about Heaven that turn out the most Satanic, backwards.

3. Jonas Brothers
Wait, what happens when they put on their magical underwear backwards?

2. Chicago
Little Nicky is the most underappreciated movie of Adam Sandler’s career, and this is our favorite scene.

1. Jay-Z
Forget about Jay-Z selling his soul to Satan. When did churches start getting Macbook Pros? Time to start holding back on the collection plate.

If you liked this, be sure to check out the Most Awkward Songs to Sing in Church, and the Creepiest Album Covers of All Time.

News for Today

Image via Wikipedia

Taking some time to cruise through the information architecture of planet Earth today.

• 60 years after inventing the electric toothbrush, the guy who changed brushing your teeth turns his attention to inventing a newer and better sex toy: [2]
• Clove cigarettes to be banned in the US at the end of September: [4]
• 50 things that are being killed by the Internet: [12]
• This Web site is not endorsed by Google: [22]

From http://www.modemac.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/Bulldada_Newsblog_RSS

Health Care & Teddy

I have been a strong supporter if national health care coverage since 1970, when I did a lot of research about it and determined that the current system is bankrupt. We spend twice as much as the UK and yet millions of people are without protection. The rich are fine, those with good jobs are fine, and the poor have medicaid (which at least protects them) but people in the lower middle class are left out. The National Medical Association estimates that 50,000 people in America die each year because they did not seek needed care because of lack of coverage (such as early diagnosis and prevention).

Teddy Kennedy died this morning. For all of his weaknesses and things he did that I did not like, he and I were always on the same side with this issue. Someday, I hope that everyone can get the care that saved his son's life.

My Phone is a Mosquito Repellant

Image via Wikipedia

Last Spring I got an iphone and I have been very happy with it. It is multifunctional and easy to use. I love the way it grabs trusted wifi networks and uses those whenever it can to save me money. Not sure that it saves me money overall but I love it still.

The offerings at the app store have been interesting but not shocking. At least, until now.

There is an app that, when you turn it on, emits a sound that you cannot hear, but that mosquitos can hear, and they hate it. I had my doubts but I plunked down $.99 and bought it. I took it out on the porch and watched the sun go down. This is the time when the pesky bloodsuckers will find you and do their grisly work. I sat there for 45 minutes in prime mosquito time (I got some bites the previous night) and got not a single bite nor did I see a single mosquito.

Here is what the website says:

http://www.apptism.com/apps/mosquito-repellent

"Definitely the best Mosquito Repellent app out there!"

Mosquito Repellent brings the most user-friendly and beautiful app to repel mosquitos flying around.

It allows you to choose from 5 different sound frequencies to frighten away mosquitos.

Features include:
- You can keep it working when you lock your device
- Choose from 5 different sound frequencies
- Choose a special sound that combines different frequencies to hurt most mosquitos around

The 21st Century surely is a strange time, and it will get stranger. As Captain Jack says, "The 21st Century is when it all changes."

Skyfish are Everywhere!

From http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/26-10-2006/85214-skyfish-0

Invisible poisonous skyfish fly at 300 km/h all around us

26.10.2006 Source:

Recently many reports appeared talking about the weird creatures, the so-called skyfish. It remains unclear whether the animals are fish, birds or worms.

	Mysterious creatures are caught on film everywhere

The mysterious beings have long worm-like bodies with wide projections on their sides (like those of fish). The trouble is, they don’t live in water – they live in the air.

No one has come up with a decent name for the animals as of yet. Some suggestions include “flying sticks,” “solar entities,” and “skyfish.”

The first time skyfish was photographed ten years ago by a film director Jose Escamilla. He originally thought that it was a UFO but then he realized that it was some living thing moving at a very high speed.

He began studying them and realized that the animals invade the space everywhere. Besides he discovered that the creatures began reproducing at a much faster rate as a result of the global warming.

Without a specimen in hand to examine, it's impossible to determine whether or not skyfish are living organisms, but it's Escamilla's best guess that they are.

Skyfish have only been captured on film and videotape. No one knows what they are, where they come from, but there are already specialized people – the catchers of skyfish, who mainly live in Japan.

They say that their hobby is not very safe: the animals are terribly poisonous during the fall season. In Japan the skyfish are extremely fast and fly at 300 km/h.

Analysis of film and video of skyfish from around the world indicate that they might range in size from just a few inches to perhaps over a hundred feet in length! How could something that large be unknown? That’s the essence of the mystery.

Source: agencies

Translated by Natalia Vysotskaya
Pravda.ru

Rabbit Obsessed Woman WIll Not Stop

From http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/rabbitobsessed-woman-sent-back-to-jail-1729987.html

Rabbit-obsessed woman sent back to jail

Associated Press

Friday, 3 July 2009

An Oregon woman obsessed with bunnies has been ordered back behind bars after police found her in a hotel room with more than a dozen rabbits.

Washington County Circuit Judge Gayle Nachtigal ruled yesterday that 47-year-old Miriam Sakewitz violated her probation by having the rabbits. The judge sentenced the woman to 90 days in the county jail.

Police arrested Sakewitz on 16 June after she called a maintenance worker to her room in the Portland suburb of Tigard to fix a broken television set. The worker saw and smelled the rabbits, some of them hopping free.

The woman's legal problems began in 2006 when police found more than 150 rabbits in her home and dozens more bunny bodies in freezers. She was arrested on accusations of animal neglect. After pleading no contest, she was placed on five years' probation, with one condition being that she stay away from rabbits.

Tigard Police spokesman Jim Wolf said Washington County animal control officers removed eight adult rabbits, five young ones and a dead one from the hotel room in the latest incident.

Washington County probation officer Bob Severe said Sakewitz had undergone a court-ordered mental evaluation but that no treatment was recommended.

Five Weeks in Mexico 2009

As many of you know I try to vacation at my home in Baja California as often as I can. I usually go in May as soon as school is out and there are times when I also go in December. For those of you who are interested my Baja Blog is at http://debate.uvm.edu/debateblog/mex/Blog/Blog.html and has a lot more detail.

This May's trip was super fantastic. There are a number of reasons for this:

• The stay was longer than usual, as I got there very early in May and stayed until 8 June. This was a great five weeks.
• The weather was awesome. Usually as the May-June stay gets longer the weather gets hotter and there are times when I have left a few days early for this reason. There can be some very warm days and then it can cool off a little but. But, this time there were two warm nights early on and then the rest of the stay was very cool, with weather in the high 80's most days. It was very, very nice.
• I had lots of time to just relax. I quite often will bring a major writing project with me and work on them for an hour or two a day. Several of my recent books have been written there. This time, I had no such big project, so I was able to really do whatever I wanted all day long.
• The books I took with me were paricularly excellent this time. They also seemed popular with my friends, with Bob taking two and Cliff taking one after I finished them. I really enjoy being able to sit on the porch, often in the sun, and read a great book. The ones I especially liked were reviewed here on this website.
• The new truck is excellent. I got a great deal, it really fits my needs and it is really nice to be able to haul things so easily. I am also glad to have made a good relationship with Victor Gomez through the purchase.
• There were very few people around. We were often the only people (or so it seemed) there. There were a number of days in which we saw no other human being.
• Bojana escaped injury this year. Last year she got stung by a ray in the bay and it healed very slowly. This time, she did not even get a hint of sunburn.
• The last week was the best as I had finally totally become mellow and could really enjoy myself.
• I have a small electric generator that I turn on to charge ipods, laptops and my XM satellite radio. In five weeks I used six gallons of gas. Wow.
• I ate well AND lost weight. Nice combination.
• I was very sad to leave. I could have easily stayed on for quite a while longer. I think I will be able to spend a lot of my future retirement time there when I finally do retire.

So, it was a great trip. I am extremely tan, relaxed and recharged for my next year.

BOOK REVIEW: Honor: A History, by James Bowman (2006: Encounter: New York)

BOOK REVIEW: Honor: A History, by James Bowman (2006: Encounter: New York)

As a professional debate coach I try to understand that the process of disagreement can be productive and I can learn from those I disagree with. This book was an opportunity for me to reinforce this idea.

I am very interested in “social history,” where you take one concept, idea or institution and follow it through a number of centuries and/or societies. I have always enjoyed the work of Philippe Aries (In the Hour of Our Death, Centuries of Childhood) as well as simple examples like salt (Salt: a history) and hygiene (The Dirt on Clean). This book claims to be a history of the concept of honor. I had assumed that it would cover more than just the west, but it did not.

The author’s main concept is that the idea of “honor” has seriously declined in the culture of the west. He goes through the period from the Middle Ages until the present, and monitors the reasons why honor has been eroded. The list was fairly compelling, including the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the individual, the way war has lost its glamour and glory, the emancipation of women, and a variety of other factors. His documentation of this process was very interesting, informative and entertaining. I found myself cheering at almost every step as honor declined, especially about the change in the way war is viewed and the decline in the need to defend the “honor” (willful subjugation) of women.

Now, as we are in a post-honor society, we find ourselves confronting very strong pro-honor societies (Islam is his example) and we will not be able to deal successfully with the challenge without a workable concept of honor. Therefore, we need to reconstruct and regain honor.

Huh? His analysis convinced me that the decline of honor has produced many benefits. Contrasting the silly ways in which honor is written about in the myth of King Arthur (where Lancelot feels he is true to his king if he defeats anyone who accuses him of sleeping with the queen in combat, even though he is guilty) to the way in which combat is seen by soldiers surviving the first world war is clearly many steps in the right direction. The question for me is, why would we want to go back?

Going back to the old days is very much what he proposes. He argues that what we need to do is to regain an appreciation of the role of the warrior, reinforce a spirit of aristocracy and social stratification, destroy the cult of celebrity and step back from the unqualified emancipation of women so that they can regain a status of submission and chastity.

This is the section that really needs elaboration, and yet he saves it for the last few pages of the book. He proves so compellingly that modern war is evil and dehumanizing, why would we want to try and glorify it? He talks about the evils of Islamic honor killings and veil compulsion, and yet he wants women to return to the background as cherished vessels of chastity and controlled reproduction.

One of the major reasons why this entire effort of reconstructing honor seems of little worth is his analysis that the west’s confrontation with Islam will result in a triumph of the west, while another is that he freely admits that the changes that need to come to regain honor will never come about. If we don’t need it and can’t do it, why yearn for it so passionately? He is very critical of various “utopian” approaches to social organization, yet he posits a similar solution to his honor quandary.

I found his use of different forms of media to be useful in illustrating his points, especially about the decline of honor, but he gets a bit selective at times. I understand that the works of Spencer were important in their time and that the Arthurian legend was important in the case of honor, but as we get closer to the present I find these media examples less compelling. He seems to be more self-serving in his choices as we get closer to the present. I was particularly disturbed by his use of a 1968 movie called “If…” in which school children gun down their schoolmates and teachers.

His analysis of the way in which western societies have evolved seemed to come back again and again to the concept of “power” being all important. I would have expected a discussion of Michel Foucault’s work but it was not to be found and is not cited in the bibliography.

This book was interesting and well worth reading, but its conclusions were fairly vexing. I think he might have been better off to just stick with the social history and pass on the social recommendations. As a side note, I see that the book is dedicated to his father (who served in the military) and to his son (who serves in Iraq). This may explain why he feels that we must regain honor, perhaps because he has not experienced the “glory” or fighting for honor. He makes quite a point about those who did not get to fight feeling left behind and feeling like they “missed out” but he did not apply this concept to himself. He does note that his father and son can do more about honor than he does, which is only to write about it.

A post-honor society as described by the author seems just fine to me.

BOOK REVIEW: Cicero: the life and times of Rome’s greatest politician, by Anthony Everitt

BOOK REVIEW: Cicero: the life and times of Rome’s greatest politician, by Anthony Everitt (2001: Random House, New York)

I enjoyed this book or a number of reasons. While I knew of Cicero I did not have a very organized knowledge, and so it is good to read a biography. I am familiar with some of his works and theories about rhetoric and related subjects, but I did not know about the person Cicero. Finally, as a debate coach and a teacher of rhetoric I am also professionally interested. From all I can tell this is a balanced, well-researched and engaging history of an amazing life.

The source material provides considerable perspective here. One huge feature is the bulk of the letters that Cicero wrote to his friend Atticus, telling him the story of his life as he went along. His perspective of course, biased it, but it allowed one to get a real flavor for the person and how he thought. A wide variety of other materials are used, such as letters, plays, poems, ancient books as well as more modern sources. The research done by the author was excellent and displayed nicely.

As a debate coach it was interesting to read that most higher education at the time would be in rhetoric and public speaking (p. 30). An individual teacher (“rhetor”) would be engaged for this purpose, and such individuals had quite high standing in the community. It was also interesting to read about the way in which proceedings in the law courts were handled (pp. 32-33) in that they almost exactly outlined a debate the way that we would stage one today, especially a public debate. It is in both these fields that Cicero got a very fast start.

In the last days of the Roman republic public speaking skill was the key to success. It always helped to have some impressive military victories (Pompey) and it didn’t hurt to have lots and lots of money (Crassus), but ultimately to make things happen in the center of power public speaking skills, both in the senate and in the broader public assembly) were essential. Since Cicero did not have much military skill (shown during his governorship of Cilicia) and was always running a little low on money, his public speaking skills were hat he had plenty of and was able to deploy them. He practiced in the courts and made a name for himself, and then began rising through the ranks of various offices and duties. Often he was cursed for his speaking abilities, but more often he was sought as an ally because of them.

This book has indicated to me that I need to review some of his more common texts (Oratore and Inventio) but also that I should read some that I have not experienced (such as Good and Evil and the Nature of the State). He was a clever and highly strategic communicator, and I probably could learn some “old” tricks.

Cicero could tell a story and repackage a situation as well as anyone, but his supreme skill was the crushing put-down. During a discussion of some issue in response to another speaker he might insert jabs into that person’s past, the preferences for his dalliances, to whom he owed money as well as a reference to any number of mistakes that person had made. Cicero seemed to remember them all and deploy them with subtle glee. The audiences loved it, and often remain engaged with his discourse because one of these critical gems might be added ay any time.

The book also serves as a useful insight into others who were on the political battlefield with, against and perhaps with again Cicero. Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, Caitilina, Marius, Sulla, Hortensius, Cato, Mark Anthony, Octavian and even Cleopatra were thrown into the mix and revealing points about them were made, often in Cicero’s own words. I especially apreciated the insight into Pompey and Caesar.

The life of Cicero is also a good timeline for the collapse of the old Roman republic. He was always it champion, and worked to bring people together for his dream of a republic within which many groups could participate. He valued the balance of powers, the veto system and the changing of offices hat tried to keep it a government of people and not of any one man. Ultimately, this struggle was lost to Caesar, Octavian and the tide of history as a vast empire called for a more efficient and centralized authority.

Two stories:

Caesar and Cato are debating in the senate about whether to give the death penalty or banishment to some who have conspired against the senate. Caesar is merciful, Cato wants them dead. Cato accuses Caesar of being in league with them. When a letter is delivered to Caesar during the debate Cato claims that this is a letter of instruction from the conspirators. Without looking at the letter, Caesar hands it to a senator next to him, who reads it aloud. It turns out to be a love letter to Caesar, and the audience explodes in laughter as the writer is named at the signing, and turns out to be Cato’s sister.

Cicero is fleeing Italy after having been put on the condemned list by Octavian (who not long before had asked Cicero to be his co-consul for the year). When you are on that list, the state will pay you if you kill or capture that person, and the state takes all their property (quite a “death tax”). Having been apprehended by some bounty-hunting soldiers, Cicero is proud as ever. Cicero stepped out of his litter, saying, “I am stopping here. Come here, soldier. There is nothing proper about what you are doing, but at least make sure you cut off my head properly.” The soldier faltered, and Cicero made a jibe about whether he was his first such killing, and then the soldier slit his throat.

I really enjoyed this book and would commend it highly.

RATING: 4.75 stars out of 5