Decrepit Old Fool

A pack of Russian squirrels attacked a barking dog, killing same before intervening humans could save it.

A pine cone shortage may have led the squirrels to seek other food sources, although scientists are sceptical.

The attack was reported in parkland in the centre of Lazo, a village in the Maritime Territory, and was witnessed by three local people.

A “big” stray dog was nosing about the trees and barking at squirrels hiding in branches overhead when a number of them suddenly descended and attacked, reports say.

“They literally gutted the dog,” local journalist Anastasia Trubitsina told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

“When they saw the men, they scattered in different directions, taking pieces of their kill away with them.”
- BBC News: Russian squirrel pack ‘kills dog’

Yeah, I’ve had thoughts like that about barking dogs, too; but it seems there were no pine cones in the forest so the squirrels may have been exhibiting adaptive behavior in attacking such a large and dangerous prey.

No pine cones in a Northern forest?  Hmm…  That is odd.

(from Pharyngula)

” Heshu Yones, a West London teen, fought off her father for a frantic 15 minutes. She ran from room to room in her family home one Saturday afternoon until he cornered her in a dingy bathroom, held her over the tub and slit her throat.

The father, a onetime Kurdish freedom fighter from Iraq, told authorities that his only daughter had to die. The 16-year-old had sullied the family name, he said, by dating without his permission.”
- Chicago Tribune special report; For family honor, she had to die (free registration may be required)(AP photos shown)

The story goes on to describe how some 5,000 women are killed for honor worldwide in exclusively patriarchal societies.  More examples are given – including one in which a woman was shot by her teenaged brother because “she lacked morals”. In many families, the brother is chosen to carry out the killing. 

It is the cover story in today’s Chicago Tribune because Europe, with its growing immigrant Muslim population, is becoming aware of traditions that had previously been literally foreign to them.  Certainly where there are killings, there are many more beatings, and many more who simply live in fear.  The killings, like the top of an iceberg, reveal the presence of a much larger phenomenon.

And how superior we all feel about it.  How can those foreigners be so cruel towards their women?  How oppressive they are!  How backward!

Then I read how religious objections may keep women from receiving a vaccine that will prevent HPV, a common virus that causes cervical cancer.

“In the US, for instance, religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favour vaccinating their daughters. “Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV,” says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group that has made much of the fact that, because it can spread by skin contact, condoms are not as effective against HPV as they are against other viruses such as HIV.”
New Scientist: Will cancer vaccine get to all women?

I have not generally referred to the James Dobson and Pat Robertson wing of American religion as “Taliban” but it really isn’t that far fetched.  4,600 women a year die in the US from cervical cancer.  It is a lingering, painful, debilitating, agonizing death; and where there are deaths, there are many more whose lives are forever changed by surgery and chemotherapy.  Is it possible that anyone would really risk such a death for their precious child, on the hypothetical chance that being immune might allow looser sexual morals?

When I was a little boy, my mother told me seriously that “they don’t value life over there like we do here”.  She was repeating a common stereotype of third-world societies where religious leaders control every aspect of life.  Like all stereotypes, it contains some truth and a lot of distortion. 

But there is another stereotype, unfortunately not untrue, of Americans; as people who like to flatter ourselves as being morally superior.  No wonder documentarians and commenters who hold up a mirror to our society are scorned… we just don’t want to think about it.  And the high moral dudgeon of today’s Pharisees rings hollow as they accuse “liberals” of immorality.

“I saw signs of physical abuse by brutal beating, one or two detainees were paralysed and some had their skin peeled off various parts of their bodies ”
- Hussein Kamal, Deputy interior minister; BBC News,  Iraq detainees ‘found starving’

It seems a bunch of Sunni detainees were found tortured and starved by Shia-dominated security forces.  Those are the ones on our side, remember?

I have been saying for years, we hook up with monsters in pursuit of some higher goal, we lose the goal and share in the monstrosity.  We are not going to win this battle with guns alone.

Warning: long post, and not a cheerful one

Campus bulletin boards are covered with many announcements – apartment for rent, car for sale, a recital.  All useful things, and important too, measured against their temporal setting.

The poster

Then this poster appeared: “Missing”.  Olamide Adeyooye was last seen in the video rental store, but someone abducted her after that.  She didn’t show up for her job, or for classes, as friends tried frantically to get the police to understand that she wasn’t just another unpredictable college student.

I work on campus, and learned of her disappearance on a bulletin board.  As a parent of three college students, I stared at the poster as the awful reality sank in. 

Several questions and intuitions came to mind as I read the facts on the poster:

• She had an African name – was she a foreign student?  A child of immigrants?  In my experience these are often the hardest-working and most dependable students. 

• Apparently taken while near her off-campus apartment in a tough neighborhood a few miles from campus
• Her ‘96 Toyota with the broken passenger seat (she wasn’t rich) was missing – a carjacking?
• Her friends were worried about her – the posters were everywhere.  Ergo: she has friends – but probably not a sorority.
• Laboratory sciences major – a pretty serious goal
• She was small; 110 lbs.  Could she fight back?
• From a suburb of Chicago, ergo her family lived in America

It turned out she was indeed from a loving family as her stricken parents pled for anyone knowing her whereabouts to help.  Their accents, phrasing, and word choices suggested they had come here from Africa.

Welcome to America, I thought.  Land of opportunity.  As I stood looking at the poster, I imagined how her parents must feel, and what lay ahead for them.

To some extent, I didn’t have to imagine, because one of my children was missing for over two years.  As far as I currently know, he’s alive and doing OK, but that is one part indirect information, one part wishful thinking and one part guess.  He left of his own accord and for over two years we couldn’t find him.  It turned out he had changed his name and made it clear he did not wish to be contacted.

The land of pain

I spent hundreds of nights awake, sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to get past the hole in my chest and find a rationale, or at least my breath again.  I know about feeling like a hollow man; where is my son?  My wife and his brothers wrestle with his absence.  People ask us; “How is Joe doing?  I haven’t seen him for a long time”, and we try to answer.

I kept telling myself: he’s probably fine.  Over, and over. 

Much worse lies ahead for Olamide’s parents.  I’ve had only a glimpse of the land of pain where they will live from now on.  I simply cannot imagine how they will ever again have a day of peace.  They sent their beautiful, promising daughter to school, and were looking forward to her graduation in December.  Then a phone call, I suppose… and after an agonizing two weeks, her remains were identified from dental records in a burned-out chicken house two states away.

There are certain tasks a normal parent is simply not equipped for.  After a while they will struggle not to imagine her last day, her last moments.  Just to keep breathing they will try not to think of some demon out there, preying on the innocent.  They will try to stop obsessing over news reports of missing persons.  And they will fail.

Grief culture

Hallmark has a line of “sympathy” greeting cards, but our culture is pretty short of recognized ways of grieving and caring to support those who have lost loved ones.

I read once about a culture where the village will gather to hear a person tell about their loss or injury.  Everyone listens attentively, and in a few weeks they gather again, and then later a third time.  The evolution of grief is shared.  It seems like a very good idea, but we don’t have anything like that.

Funerals only cover one occasion of grief, and then everyone pretty much steps back.  We have counsellors and advisors but professional help is, well, professional rather than personal.  We live in a fragmented society where families are scattered and contentious, friendships often weak and superficial.

Religion has the answer for grief, if you can whistle loudly enough in the dark to keep believing in a benevolent afterlife. 

Olamide’s father, Abiodun Adeyooye, said; “We are depressed.  It’s a sad moment to hear about the death of my daughter.  If God said this is how it’s going to be, I thank God.”

At some point, he may think; “Thank you, God.  Thanks, God.  Hey, thanks a lot, God.  Thanks a WHOLE HELL OF A LOT, GOD!”  But if he does think that, he may not say so, for one cannot hate God, cannot deny God.  And then he will be more alone than ever.

No wonder antidepressants are a 10.9 billion-dollar industry.  It is considered impolite to express normal feelings, or even to draw obvious conclusions.

Attachment and grief

On Wednesday I decided to include an image of Olamide’s poster in this post, but didn’t have my camera with me.  On Thursday I took my camera to work with me, but the news had broken that she had been found and most of the posters had been taken down.  Many were replaced by a poster about a lost dog.

The Buddhists are right that desire is the cause of suffering, and attachment is one kind of desire. Grief is the outcome of broken attachment, and the intensity of grief is closely related to the strength of the attachment.  What attachment is stronger than a parent to their child?  Children do not realize; as the popular song says;

And You, of Tender Years
Can’t Know The Fears, That Your Elders Grew By
And So Please Help, Them With Your Youth
They Seek The Truth, Before They Can Die

Don’t You Ever Ask Them Why
If They Told You, You Would Cry
So Just Look At Them And Sigh
And Know They Love You.

Teach Your Parents Well
Their Children’s Hell
Will Slowly Go By
And Feed Them On Your Dreams
The One They Picks
The One You’ll Know By.

- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: Teach Your Children

Community

My father was a professor at Central Washington State where a student was abducted from campus and murdered.  He didn’t know the victim well and it still weighed on him for the remainder of his life.  Students – your professors may seem busy, even cynical.  And a few may not care but trust me; most do, more than they can say without sounding maudlin.  Even the administrators, the grounds keepers, and the secretaries do care, a lot.  You seem like our own children to us.

The college community is fragmented by its nature but it is a unique time of life and students (when the situation calls for it) do rise to the occasion.  Hundreds of students have put up posters, phoned in information, and met on campus to pray and share.

Ours is not a culture that encourages caring but people care anyway.  We just don’t have many ways to show it – again a lack of ritual and formal relationships places an enormous expressive burden on our community.  How to say how we really feel?  A horrible tragedy like this one breaks the cover, if only for a moment.

That is how we know that most people are good and decent, whatever their personalities and culture.  And it is the reason a crime like this one is truly a crime against the whole community.

Justice

At a press conference, just before breaking into tears, Olamide’s father said;

“The person who killed her will be brought to justice.  Whoever killed her, Olamide’s spirit will find him out and he will be brought to justice.” …
This is a sad moment, but I want justice to take place…”

In 2000, Illinois Governor George Ryan rightly placed a moratorium on the death penalty when it was found that many death-row inmates were innocent.  But on occasions when guilt can be certainly determined, a case such as this demands it.  The murderer is a total waste of valuable oxygen, and I say we don’t give him any more. 

Spare me any sophistry about “justice vs. vengeance” or how it is cruel and unusual punishment to execute a murderer.  A crime such as this is a permanent wound on hundreds of people, and can even destroy the lives of close survivors.

Notice Olamide’s father didn’t say; “I want deterrence to take place.”  It isn’t complicated.

I could go on…

I’ve written for hours, covering a scant 173 lines, trying to convey the mix of feelings and connections I make from this crime.  Now it’s your turn.  Keep your eyes open for weakening of the community thread and try to strengthen it in small, personal ways.  Look out for your neighbors, especially the young, just starting out in life.  Take care of your children the best of you can, and watch out for other people’s children too.  It is the kind of world we should live in, where if you cannot be there to protect your children, someone else may be.

Notes:

• UPDATE: I found indirect information about my son after writing the original text of this post, and three comments regarding him had been posted.  The editorial problem is: only a couple days have passed since the original post and it really should be changed.  But I want to preserve the context of the original three comments.  An imperfect solution was to edit those three paragraphs and post their original text here:

  To some extent, I didn’t have to imagine, because I have a missing child.  As far as I know, he’s alive and doing OK, but that is part wishful thinking and part guess.  He left of his own accord over two years ago and we can’t find him.

  I have spent hundreds of nights awake, sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to get past the hole in my chest and find a rationale, or at least my breath again.  I know about feeling like a hollow man; where is my son?  My wife and his brothers wrestle with his absence.  People ask us; “How is Joe doing?  I haven’t seen him for a long time”, and we try to answer.

  I keep telling myself: he’s probably fine.  Over, and over.

  Future updates to his situation, if any, will be posted here in the notes (and certainly in a whole new post) – the current text of this post will remain as it is.

• For a rough analog of what happened with my oldest son, read Siddhartha, and note the part toward the end where his son leaves.  I think it was something like that, and the book helped me a lot.
• The phrase “land of pain” is shamelessly stolen from a book about Alphonse Daudet entitled In The Land Of Pain by Julian Barnes. 
• Olamide’s friends tried in vain for what seemed several days to convince the police that something was terribly wrong.  The police apparently felt it was normal for a college student to disappear leaving her cell phone on the couch, lights on, food in microwave.  The Chicago Tribune was referring to the case as a homicide before the police even issued a statement; “It appears certain that criminal activity has occurred” (when they found her personal effects in a dumpster).  To be fair to the police, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference, and they are in full-bore investigation mode now.
• The comfort offered by organized religion is double-edged, because it includes the possibility your lost loved one is burning in hell.  Nice.

Note to Bill O’Reilly (and the rest of Fox News): let others apply adjectives to you.  If you report and we decide, that means we get to decide if you are “Fair & Balanced™” or not.  You aren’t doing yourself any favors by repeating the phrase ten times an hour.

To help you understand how it works, imagine a comedian who prefaces each gag by telling you that he is funny, and that the joke he is about to tell, is also funny.  Comedians get a reputation for being funny by being funny, not by saying “I am funny.”

“Good evening, everybody!  Welcome to my show – I’m Bob, the Funny™ comedian, with the Funny™ jokes the elite mainstream comedians just won’t deliver.  Now here’s a Funny™ joke:  Hey, why did the chicken cross the road?  Anyone?  TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE!!!  Haw Haw Haw!  Wasn’t that Funny™?!!  That’s just the kind of jokes you get with Bob, the Funny™ comedian…

I only know one case in recorded human history of a commentator’s self-description pulling any weight; The Best Web Page in the Universe.  But Bill; what works for Maddox does not necessarily work for you.

Everyone’s mad at Barbara Bush (that’s the old one, for those who don’t pay attention to such things), for saying;

“What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality,” she said in a radio interview from the Astrodome in Houston, Texas.

“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — this is working very well for them,” she said
- Japan Today

First of all, she’s eighty years old.  She might not be up on the latest fine nuances of political correctness.  Let it go.

Second (and this isn’t directed at her, but at people who promote the use of this odious term,) what the hell does “underprivileged” mean, anyway?  Look up “privilege”:

Privilege, n

1. A special advantage, immunity, permission, right, or benefit granted to or enjoyed by an individual, class, or caste.

2. Such an advantage, immunity, or right held as a prerogative of status or rank, and exercised to the exclusion or detriment of others.

Being just generally interested in machinery, I was thrilled to see an illustration in the Chicago Tribune about the huge pumps in New Orleans.  Hoping to understand them better, I poured a cup of tea and sat down to disappointment…

The first illustration is of a flooded pumping station.  Looks like it has three outputs and the caption says, “Each station can pump about 29 billion gallons per day.”  OK, that’s about 9.67bn gallons per pump per day, which works out to 6.72m gallons per pump, per minute.  I’m not buyin’ it.

The next illustration shows a pump impeller about three feet across.  To move that much water through a 3-foot tube, the impeller would have to turn at a speed far beyond where cavitation would occur and efficiency would drop.  Designers of submarines and ocean-going ships would be beating a path to the pump manufacturer’s door. 

OK, so how much can the pumps really move?  (I wanted to get some idea of the horsepower involved.)  The second illustration says each pump moves up to .25m gallons of water per minute.  That’s 1/26^th of the amount in the first caption, but still a hell of a lot through a 3-foot tube – about 80 feet per second or 54 miles per hour.  Minumum horsepower (just lifting the water the 30 feet in the illustration and ignoring turbulence, friction, etc.) is roughly 1,800.  There are electric motors in that range and more, but by this time you wonder if the writer has any clue.

Something is not right here.  Not only do the illustrations contradict each other, moving water that fast gets wasteful of energy.  Did the paper lose track of the differences among the capacity of one pump, all the pumps in a single pump house, and the combined pump houses in the city?

Hey Chicago Tribune, why even print numbers if they just don’t add up? Why not just say; “The pumps are really big!  See the big pretty pumps?  Can you say, ‘pump?’”

One problem the pumps now face is the amount of debris in the water, including, well, human remains.  I wonder if a steam-condensation PDX pump (which has no moving parts) could be adapted to the purpose?

Notes:

• These are literally back-of-envelope calculations.  If I made a mistake of more than ten percent, let me know and I’ll correct.

• The title of this post was originally “…newspaper diagrams” but discussing it over breakfast this morning with MrsDoF I realized there was nothing wrong with the illustration itself.  The artist did an admirable job showing how the pump worked as simply as possible.  The problem lies in the numbers themselves – hence the name change.
• Maybe Cajun will stop by and help us out.  He knows all about high-powered equipment and he lives in Louisiana.

You remember Oprah, the self-absorbed talk-show diva who got all bent out of shape because some fancy store in France wouldn’t stay open late just for her?  Well she’s doing a photo-op on Katrina, even visiting the Superdome with a bunch of other celebs.

To be fair, she forked over something like a million bucks (“pocket change” in the language of her income bracket), which is a very good thing.  But the sight of her wearing a bright pink top and a wireless microphone, looking pissed off with storm rubble behind her is just too much.  Seems she wanted to “go get the real story” or some such.  I feel ill.

Maybe she could just send “Dr. Phil.”  He could slip on a bannana peel, fall into the flood waters, and be eaten by an alligator.  Yeah, I know… I’m always trying to find a silver lining…

Well HERE’s a hero – Houston Chronicle: 6-year-old becomes a hero to band of toddlers, rescuers
“BATON ROUGE, LA. – In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of evacuees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader…”

Rest easy, America: president Bush, anxious to make sure no repeat of the Katrina response occurs, vows to lead the investigation himself.

Here’s a place to start, Mr. President – your head of FEMA, Mike Brown, is a complete hack in a job that’s too big for him.    The guy was fired from his last job organizing horse shows, but his college roomate brought him on at FEMA and you bumped him up to director.  Of FEMA!

Was he unaware of this?

Actually, here’s a whole bunch of places to start.