The Bahamas Trip - Day 2 - July 25, 2011: There Be Sharks Here

The next day, I felt much better.  No more headaches and no more queasiness.

We found out the night before that we were doing the shark feeding dive on Monday.  I was surprised that it was scheduled so early in the trip, our second day of diving.  I figured it would have been held on Thursday as a build up to a climax.  Nevertheless, I was excited by the prospect of taking part in something that I had been wanting to do for quite some time.

The Aqua Cat conducts its shark feeding dives at a site called Split Coral Head off of Eleuthera.  Before we did the shark feeding dive, we did a regular dive at the site.  The Reef sharks were already there and I looked forward to trying out my new underwater camera to to snap some shots.  For those who are interested, the camera I used was a Sealife DC1200.

The photograph I took above was my first one.  Several Reef sharks were swimming around me as I began my descent, and I was able to get the shot above with a shark in the foreground and several of the divers in the background.

I was able to get this close up of a Reef shark, though owing to my novice underwater photography skills, I wasn't quite able to get the entire shark in the frame.

It was a good dive and the first one I ever did with sharks in close proximity to me.  I wasn't sure how I would react to find myself in the water with them, but surprisingly I didn't feel the least bit of trepidation.  It was more a sense of fascination and wonder at being able to observe them in their natural environment.   For those who are shark-phobes, these sharks seemed generally indifferent to our presence.

After the dive was over, we returned to the Aqua Cat for a surface interval and then attended Ian's dive briefing.  We would form a semi-circle on the sand, about 60 feet below sea level, while the fish would be lowered down the mooring line to about 15 or 20 feet from the bottom.   A few minutes after the feeding had begun, the crew would in turns take us one at a time to have ourselves photographed and briefly videotaped, and then guided over to the other side.   Ian stressed that we should under no condition try to touch the sharks, even on the tail, as they could bend their bodies so that their heads could reach back and bite you.  No argument with that here!

I replaced the memory card in my underwater camera, as I wanted to keep photographs separate from video.  I ended up shooting several segments of video.  The first one is at the beginning and lasts about two and a half minutes.  It is followed by a longer sequence that is more than 8 minutes.  Then there is another shorter segment of the aftermath.  Close to the feeding site was a small patch of coral and as I approached it, Ian pointed out to me one of the denizens of the coral, a spotted moray.  At one point in the video you will here me make a sound, which was my reaction to seeing the moray, as I wasn't sure at first what Ian was trying to show me.

At some points, the video points downward at the sand for seemingly no particular reason.  If memory serves, at various times I needed to clear the flooding in my mask, and at those points the camera would have been floating while tied to my wrist with a lanyard strap.   The camera was also sensitive to light, and I notice that sometimes when it pointed upwards towards the surface, everything took on a reddish hue.  What can I say, I'm not a professional at this.  But I think I did a decent job overall.  Enjoy.

Of course, I couldn't help but try to get a little bit of myself in the video by briefly pointing the camera towards me and giving a little wave.

At the end of the video when I pointed the camera at Tara, who had ended up to my left, she gave me the underwater signal for "shark."



You may notice at several points in this video some of the divers looking like they are crawling on the sea floor.  During the dive briefing, Ian explained how shark teeth are very loose and that at the end of the feeding, it would be possible to find some teeth on the sea floor underneath where they had been eating.  I was able to find two of them.

Besides Reef sharks, there were also a lot of Yellowtail snapper and Nassau groupers in the area that I also captured on film.  All in all, it was a good day of diving.





The Bahamas Trip - Day 1 - July 24, 2011: I Chum The Waters

Early Sunday morning, the Aqua Cat departed from Paradise Island to make for the Northern Exumas.  My kids had awoken early, as I did, to the sound of the engines, and we watched out of our cabin window as the Aqua Cat made its way out of the harbor.  Once it had gotten clear, the ship kicked it into high gear and after an hour or so, Paradise Island began to dwindle in the horizon.  In the picture I took above, you can just make out the tall buildings of the Atlantis resort.  The small boat trailing behind the Aqua Cat is the Magick, which the ship's First Mate John used to bring the passengers on land based excursions.  It would also prove very valuable to me on two of my dives.

While the previous day had been dominated by my intense migraine, the first casualty of this day turned out to be my daughter, who began to suffer the effects of motion sickness.   After first feeling it, she fell asleep in the cabin and awoke a little later on feeling much better.  But not long after waking up again, she began to feel the effects even worse than before.  One of the crew members ended up taking her to the bridge to have a better view of the horizon, which was supposed to help her relax and not feel nauseous.

I decided to skip the first dive of the day, a site called Barracuda Shoals near Allens Cay, because I had not set up my gear the evening before owing to my headache.  So, after watching my friends enter the water, I set about getting my gear ready so that I could participate in the next dive.  I was looking forward to trying out my new Hot Shot travel fins by Aqua Lung.  Since my last dive trip to Belize two years earlier, I scaled down my gear so that I could fit it all into my carry-on luggage.  Besides the travel fins, I ditched my wet suit and replaced it with a lycra full body skin.  I also brought a rash guard shirt and shorts.  To top it off, I switched to a foldable snorkel which I was able to fit into the pocket of my BCD.  I also had a new mask, as the one I had worn in Belize, while good, had developed cracks and needed to be replaced.

The next dive site was called Closemon Reef.  I was going to join Tara, Jeff and some of the other divers and just follow them wherever I went.  I was happy with the fins.  They were easy to put on and did not require dive boots.  I donned my new mask, lightly inflated my bcd, and made my giant stride into the warm waters.   After giving the ok sign to the crewman on the dive deck, I started to descend and followed the rest of the divers in our group.  The first thing I noticed is that we were swimming against a rather strong current, stronger than any I ever encountered before.  Still, with effort, I kept up with the group as we made our way towards the mooring line at the bow of the boat.  Then, I noticed my vision was getting cloudy, and suddenly it struck me.  In my excitement, I had forgotten to defog my mask!  I swam alongside Tara and motioned to her that I was returning to the boat and she acknowledged the signal.

I made my way back to the dive deck on the port side and told the crewmember Andy what had happened.  I handed him my mask and he kindly put in some defog for me.  I swirled it around and rinse it out and then donned the mask again and began my second descent.  Barely a few seconds had passed when I hit that current again.  I came to the realization that it would be foolhardy of me to try to struggle against the current alone in order to catch up with the rest of the group and decided to abort the dive but remain in the water.  I made my way to the yellow rope that tied the Magick to the Aqua Cat and held on to it, while remaining at roughly a depth of ten or fifteen feet.

And then I made my big mistake.  The site was shallow, only about twenty to thirty feet, so I decided to descend to the bottom because I was getting bored holding on to the rope.  But even with my knees planted on the sand, I was still getting pushed back by the relentless current, so I felt it prudent to surface before I was pushed too far away from the Aqua Cat.  But even as I ascended, I had an incredibly difficult time trying to reach the Magick.  I kicked furiously and groaned with each kick as I reached out for the hull of the Magick for support.  Of course, being constantly submerged in the water, the surface of the hull was incredibly slipper and I could not keep a grip on it.  I surfaced and called out for help, thinking, "Oh great, just like my first dive in Belize, when I had to be rescued!"  However, rather than waiting around to be rescued, I decided to take my fate into my own hands again and resumed swimming with all my might back to the Magick.  Again, my hands made contact with the slipper surface of the hull, but I managed to push myself slowly forward until I was able to grab the yellow rope.  I then pulled myself relentlessly toward the Aqua Cat, hand over hand, until I made it to the ladder a couple of minutes later.

Andy asked me what had happened and I answered him wearily as I handed him my fins and struggled up the ladder to the deck.  I was absolutely wiped out.  When Tara returned, I explained to her what happened.  Like Belize, my first dive was a clusterfuck.  It could only get better from here on.

Because of weather related concerns, Captain Mark decided to leave the Exumas and make for Eleuthera.  The next dive was going to be at a site called Cobia Cage.  On this dive, I was going to accompany one of the passengers, a man from Texas named Craig.  His wife Sherri was with him on the trip but decided to take a pass on this dive after participating in the two previous dives that morning.  Mikey, the crew member who would be the dive master for the dive, described the cage to us, but when we entered the water, what he told us did not begin to prepare me for the enormity of the structure.

A Cobia cage basically looks like some extraterrestrial space craft submerged in the water.  I didn't take my underwater camera on this dive, so I did not get to take a picture of it, but the photo I found above shows you how massive and strange looking the structure is.  Craig and I passed over it and then headed towards some nearby coral formations.  I had a tank banger and would look around us or peer into the nooks and crannies of the corals and let out a bang when I saw something that Craig could photograph with his camera. 

It felt good being on a dive where I didn't have to fight a current.  But as the dive continued, I started to feel queasy, though it was still tolerable.  As we headed back towards the Cobia cage, I motioned to Craig that I was returning to the boat, which was visible from the cage.  Besides, there were a number of other divers circling around, so Craig wouldn't be alone.  I gradually made my way to the hang bar and grabbed on to it and prepared to begin my safety stop.  The nausea got noticeably worse, and then without warning, I puked into my regulator.  I had done it once before when I was doing one of my open water dives in Fort Lauderdale in 2008.  I remained calm, trusting that my regulator could handle it.  And then I heaved again.  And again.  And again.  I think I overloaded my regulator, as I sucked in some vomit when I started to inhale.  I decided I had had enough and shot up to the surface, letting out one last upchuck in view of the crew member manning the dive deck (can't remember which one). 

Undeterred, I participated in the next dive, at Knuckleheads Reef.  While I still felt vaguely queasy, I did not get sick and I had my first good dive of the trip, though to my chagrin my mask was prone to flooding and I had to constantly clear it.  I was also pleased to see that my daugher was no longer suffering from motion sickness and was her old self again.  I dove with Craig again and managed the itinerary, finding him marine life to photograph.  This dive site was tricky, because there were lots of cuts and and turns and it is easy to get lost if one goes too far.  When my air supply got down to about 1700 PSI, I motioned to Craig that we would be making our way back.  After retracing our path, I felt a sense of relief when I could make out the bubbles of a number of other divers up ahead.   We made contact with the other divers and continued to explore the coral formations near the mooring line.  At one point, just as I was ready to begin my ascent, I spotted a Southern Stingray up ahead, but it was headed in a direction away from us and soon passed out of view.

The night dive was being held at the same site.  None of the group I went down with nor Craig and his wife were participating in this dive, so I just stuck with Ian the divemaster and three or four of the other passengers. 

When I did the night dives in Belize, the bottom of the Sun Dancer II was lit up like a stadium, making visibility near the boat very good, as well as providing a sense of comfort because it was easy to spot even if one went some distance away.  But with the Aqua Cat, there would be no such light, owing to the presence of sea wasps, which are attracted to the light and at night rise to about 10 feet below the surface.  I wore my full body skin again, having eschewed it for my previous two dives, as I found that the water was plenty warm enough to dive wearing only a t-shirt and shorts.

The dive itself was largely uneventful and I couldn't wait for it to end.  That urge became even stronger, as I found myself becoming increasingly nauseous again.  I signaled to Ian and when he looked at me, I made the hand sign for "not well" and pointed at my abdomen.  He must not have understood me, or if he did, he may have thought it was not terribly important, as he continued to go about poking about the coral and shining his light on it.  I tried to suck it up and tag along hoping the dive would soon end.  Then I felt myself nearing the point of no return.  I signaled to Ian again and this time, to make it unambiguous, I gave the thumbs up sign, which means "surface."  This time he understood, and as we made our ascent, I vomited several times again. 

I was so glad when I finally made it back to the Aqua Cat.  The dive deck was dark as I ascended the ladder, owing to the aforementioned sea wasps.  It ended up being a good thing, because as I found myself looking skyward, I stopped and looked in utter amazement at the night sky.  Never in my life had I seen so many stars.  There were so many that I barely recognized familiar constellations.  The real treat though was that for the first time in my life that I can recall, I saw the band of the Milky Way.

Later on, after the dive was over, I went up to the sun deck and they turned off the lights so that we could all admire the majesty of the night sky.  I spotted a couple of meteor streaks, and in the distance, the lightning from a far off thunder storm flashed in a fantastic display.

Back From The Deep

I can't believe it's been nearly two weeks since I returned from my scuba diving trip to the Bahamas.  While returning to work from a vacation is hard enough, I had the added burden of moving to another law firm, which is one of the reasons why it took me this long to return to blogging.   The change of work place happened rather suddenly, with the partner I worked under at my previous firm telling me the week before my vacation that she was moving to another firm several blocks away and that some of the clients were following her, including the client for whom I the majority of my work.  She told me that the new firm said she could bring a paralegal with her and asked if I would be interested.   It only made sense to do so, since a good chunk of my workload was leaving with her.  Plus, the new firm said they would match my salary, so I decided to make the move.

Anyway, back to the vacation.  It was on a liveaboard in the Bahamas called the Aqua Cat.  Above is a picture of the Aqua Cat at dock as seen from a nearby outdoor bar called The Green Parrot.  I had my two kids in tow so that my wife could have a week of peace and quiet to herself rather than having to stay home with them while I cavorted in the azure waters of the Bahamas.

The trip got off to a bit of a rocky start.  We all met at the house of Martha, one of the people going on the trip, at 4:30 in the morning to catch our ride to Newark Airport, where our flight to Nassau was scheduled to depart at 7:30.  I thought it might be cutting things a little too close, but figured we would make it in time.  But when we finally got to the group checkin area at Continental Airlines terminal at 6:30, the lady behind the counter told us that the computer would not allow her to check us in and that we would not make the 7:30 flight.  Sue, the wife of Larry, who used to own the dive shop where I took my lessons, pleaded with the lady to no avail and then demanded to speak with a supervisor. 

A few minutes later, a supervisor, a more pleasant Latina, had us move to a different counter where Sue continued to plead our cause.  Finally, when all hope seemed lost, the supervisor said she could take all but four of us.  So Sue, Martha, Tara, Nina, Bruce, Ira and Jeff checked in their bags, received their boarding passes and proceeded to the departure gate.  That left Larry, myself, and my two kids.  After a few minutes, the supervisor returned and after spealing with Larry, told him that she would put us on standby for the next flight for Nassau scheduled to leave at 8:55.  We checked in our bags, got our boarding passes, and then did the security screening shuffle and headed for the departure gate.   Fortunately for us, the agent at the gate told us that we would be able to board the plane.

Several hours later, we found ourselves in Nassau and the Aqua Cat arranged for us to be picked up.  We were dropped off at the Green Parrot, where the rest of the gang was already relaxing.   The Aqua Cat doesn't let passengers board until 6 p.m., which meant that we had to wait another four or five hours.  Normally, that wouldn't be so bad, but I developed a rip-roaring migraine that refused to go away.  I tried napping it off to no avail, and finally around 5 p.m. I asked for permission to go to my cabin on the Aqua Cat so that I could sleep on the bed in my cabin.  When I awoke a couple of hours later, everyone else had boarded and it would soon be time for dinner.  I still hadn't completely shaken the headache, so Martha's son Greg, who came down on a different flight, gave me a couple of Tylenol PM.

After the dinner, prepared by the Aqua Cat's Chef Kirk, we were treated to the orientation lectures by the ship's captain Mark and the lead dive master Ian.  I retired early that night, looking forward to waking up the next day feeling refreshed and ready to hit the waters.

Scuba Diving Hiatus

Yeah, I know, not that I've been blogging all the much lately anyhow.  But now I have a legitimate excuse.  In a few hours I will be jetting off for the Bahamas to spend a week on a live aboard diving at sites in the Exumas.  Also planning to do a shark feeding dive, which has been on my bucket list for quite some time.

In addition, I recently purchased an underwater camera, so hopefully I will have some pictures and video from below sea level, unlike my Belize trip.  So, take care for now and see you all at the next surface interval!

UPDATED - Pet Peeve of the Day: Jews For Jesus DON'T Promote Littering

Since writing the post below, a couple of J4Js have commented here, including quite possible one of the members I saw handing out literature the other day at the subway station @ 34th and 6th around 5 PM.  She and the first J4J commenter both insisted that they clean up any of their literature left on the ground by recipients who discard them.  

Most, if not all of us, are prone to episodes of confirmation bias.  In this instance, I, an atheist who also greatly detests littering, saw members of a particular religious group handing out literature in a public place and then seeing the same literature scattered all over the subway station steps and the sidewalk outside.   I guess for me it was a two-fer and I jumped on it based only on what I directly observed.

But, to quote Jerry Ohrbach's character at the end of the movie Dirty Dancing, "When I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong."   I hereby apologize to the Jews For Jesus of NYC for accusing them of enabling littering and for referring to them as assholes.  In instances such as this, it can be all too easy for a blogger to delete a post and flush it down the memory hole.  Instead, I will leave the original post below intact as a reminder, to myself and others, that we should be mindful of making hasty accusations, especially in a public forum.

That being said, of course, as an atheist, I find it odd that a being that presumably can communicate directly with every human being simultaneously needs to rely on a few people to hand out pamphlets in a subway station in order to get its message across.  However, I support their right to do so.

The original post follows:

It's not uncommon to see Jews For Jesus in New York City subway stations handing out flyers and pamphlets to passersby.   What really annoys me about them is that often just a few feet away from where they're standing are pamphlets they handed out that the recipient hastily discarded the moment they realized what had been given to them.  The J4Js (for short) know that most of the literature they hand out ends up as litter and yet they don't seem to care.  Great way to promote your religious beliefs, assholes!  Of course, the recipients who litter are assholes too, but the J4Js are culpable knowing that most of what they hand out ends up on the sidewalks or subway platforms.

Adam and Steve To Get Married In New York - The Backlash Begins

A town clerk here in my state of New York has recently resigned her position because, in her words, "There was no protection provided in the legislation of Town Clerks who are unable to sign these marriage licenses due to personal religious convictions, even though our US Constitution supports freedom of religion."

My response to that, well, don't let the door hit you on the way out, Ms. Fotusky.

Before same-sex marriage became legal in New York State, I wonder, did Ms. Fotusky ever wonder if any of the marriage licenses she signed for heterosexual marriages were for marriages that might have conflicted with her religious beliefs?

After all, some married couples have open marriages.  Did Fotusky bother to ask the bride and groom if they intended to fornicate with other people?   Perhaps one or both spouses entered into the marriage intending to engage in an adulterous affair behind the back of the other.  Maybe one married the other simply for the other person's money.  Given the prevalence of such behavior, it shouldn't come as a surprise that some of the people who had marriage licenses signed by Ms. Fotusky committed acts that went against her religion.

If these god fearin' town, city and county clerks are so worried about sinful behavior, why get all in a twist about same-sex couples, when quantitatively they have likely signed more marriage licenses for heterosexual marriages where immoral behavior will take place then all of the same-sex marriage licenses their offices will ever be asked to issue?

My Third Child

That's what I call my mom nowadays.

Not long ago, I discovered I was part of something called the "sandwich generation."  It refers to adults who are simultaneously raising children and finding themselves having to care for one or more parents. 

I joined the club a little over five years ago, when my father died from complications resulting from a surgical procedure in the hospital.  My mom had frequent bouts of anxiety and depression during the course of her life.  My dad was the type who handled all of the finances, so when my mom found herself a widow, she was woefully unprepared for the job of managing her own money.  Add those two factors together, and you have someone who is not consistently up to the task of managing her own affairs.

My uncle and I helped her out by setting up funds to provide her with an income stream to supplement her Social Security and pension checks, and we both had online access to her checking account so that we could monitor it.   So, from a financial perspective, my mom was in decent shape as long as she lived within her means.

For the first six months or so after my father's death, things were not so bad.  While my mom was understandably still in grief over the death of her husband the better part of half a century, she otherwise was doing okay.  That all took a sudden turn for the worse in December of 2006.  I have already recounted the details here in an older post, but to make a long story short, my mom experienced a double-whammy, catching pneumonia and injuring herself in a fall.

For the next three months, visits to the hospital and then the nursing home where my mom underwent physical therapy were part of my daily routine.  On weekdays, with my wife at work, this often meant having to bring my then 6 year old son and 4 year old daughter with me.   We also hosted my mom's dog Kiki, a Shi tzu-Maltese, until about June, when my mom had recovered from her injury.  She even seemed in good enough shape that I felt comfortable leaving her on her own for two weeks while the wife, the kids and I went to visit my wife's family in the Philippines.

Sadly, Kiki died a few months later.  Shortly afterwards, my mom bought a new dog, a seven month Pomeranian that was not potty trained.  About a month later, my mom ended up being hospitalized again,  which meant that yours truly got saddled with a dog that found my basement an all-too convenient place to take a frequent shit.  Finally, my wife and I got so disgusted, I took the dog to the Town of Oyster Bay animal shelter.  I had hoped that would be the end of my mom's dog days, but alas, some months later, she got herself a little Chihuaha.  Luckily, it took my mom little more than a week to realize she could not handle this new dog and it ended up being given away to someone.  Again, I dared to hope that my mom had finally come to her senses and understood that as much as she desired the companionship a dog offered her, she was not up to the task of handling the responsibility of ownership.

As for my mom herself, I was beginning to notice signs of mental deterioration, most worryingly with regard to her medications.  Every week, I would fill up one of those pill containers where you pop open the lid for each dose.  It also revealed to me the extent to which she was forgetting to take her medications.  When I would come by to fill the container at the end of the week, I would see that she would be missing several doses over the course of the week.   My uncle suggested getting a pill dispensing machine, so in August of 2008, I purchased one for my mom.   Every Saturday night, I would fill up the pill tray and stick it in the machine.  Twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, the machine would let out a beeping sound at the programmed time and deposit the medications into a pull out container.  It cost a lot of money, roughly $800 if memory serves, but it was definitely worth the piece of mind.

Around that same time, my mom was having recurring bouts of depression and anxiety, and for weeks at a time she wouldn't be able to fall asleep at night, despite taking anti-anxiety medication and Ambien.   In addition to the loss of her husband that she continued to mourn, she was also saddened that two of her lifelong friends had ended their friendship with her.  When brooding on it in my presence, she would chalk it up to them abandoning her, but I suspected there was more to it than that.  I spoke to one of them in person when I stopped by her house to sound her out on the possibility of visiting my mom to try to cheer her up.  She told me that my mom had been insensitive to her in a phone conversation they had.  As for the other friend, I can only guess that my mom must have said something that inadvertently offended her as well.  Sometimes my mom has a tin ear, and with her memory problems, I wouldn't past her that she said something to each of the two friends to upset them and then didn't remember the substance of the conversations, thus mentally insulating her from recognizing her culpability.

Fast forward to the summer of 2010.  My mom had come out of her depression and was entering another active phase.   She would drive herself to her doctor appointments, beauty parlor appointments and other local errands, though she did get into a couple of minor traffic accidents.

Then one day in September at work, my phone rings and I see on the caller id that it's her number.  I pick up the phone and greet her.  "Guess what, Thomas?" she said to me with a slightly jubilant tone.  I groaned inwardly and replied "Oh, please, no."  She had gotten herself another dog.  It was a Papillon.

Lacking originality with dog names, my mom called her Lola, the same name she had given to the Pomeranian.  And like the first Lola, this one had the same problem with peeing and defecating indoors.  And like the first Lola, soon after purchasing her, my mom ended up in the hospital for a few days, this time because she had problems swallowing something she ate and ended up becoming dehydrated after a couple of days of not being able to take her medication or hold down any food or drink.  Once again, yours truly had to pay host to another Lola, Lola 2.0.   No matter how often she would be taken outside, she would crap somewhere in the house moments after coming back inside, even if she was observed doing her business outside.  A couple of times, she even ran up the stairs to my son's room on the second floor and took a shit on his carpet. 

It was such a relief when my mom was released from the hospital and was well enough to take her again.  Don't get me wrong, Lola is a cute, friendly dog.  But in addition to the lack of potty training, she can be very noisy when she wants attention.  Not just barking.  She makes this whiny sound that can be very irritating when you are trying to sleep.

In what was another sign of the change in my mom was her toleration of Lola going to the bathroom frequently on her living room carpet.  It got to the point where the smell was almost unbearable sometimes when I entered her apartment.  When I was a child, my mom had always been a clean freak and as recently as a few years ago such a state of affairs was unthinkable for her.

A further development was a tendency for my mom to lose her balance and fall from time to time, though luckily none of the injuries were that serious.  At the beginning of this past June, she had told me about an incident at a department store where she felt pain in her legs and that she was going to fall, but held herslf up by holding onto a clothing rack.  Some store employees aided her and called an ambulance, but she refused to go to the hospital and instead had herself wheeled to her car.   She had dropped off Lola at the dog groomer earlier and had to pick her up.

About a week later on a Saturday, it was my birthday.  I had tried running in a 5K that morning at Muttontown Preserve, but the trail was muddly from the rain and after about a mile I had decided to just turn it into a nature walk.  I had gotten home around 11:30 and was looking forward to spending the rest of the day with my wife and children.  Then around noon the phone rang.  It was my mom's neighbor at the senior housing development.  My mom had fallen while walking her dog and had to be taken to the hospital.  Shortly after I got there, they had diagnosed her with a dislocated left elbow.  They did a procedure to pop it back in and discharged her.  But her left arm was wrapped in bandages and in a sling.

I ended up missing the next four days of work.  On Monday I tried to get an appointment to see her primary care physician but there were no openings.  As for Lola, who had caused the accident by running away after the leash slipped from my mom's hand, I decided it was best at least for the short term to put her somewhere so I wouldn't have to deal with her, so I brought her to a dog hotel out in Deer Park.  The next day I was on the way to work and called the doctor's office and was able to secure an appointment with her PCP later that afternoon, so I went into work for a couple of hours and left early.  Earlier that morning I had stopped by my mom's to check on her, and she was babbling about hearing people speaking in her apartment.  When I was helping her off the couch to go to the bathroom on the commode, she even told me to shut the door so that that wouldn't see her.  I told her that there was no one else in the apartment.

The PCP gave us a referral for an orthopedist in the area and an appointment was made for the next day.  When I brought my mom there, they took x-rays of the elbow and the doctor took one look at it and said "She needs surgery."  Then informed us that his office doesn't do elbow surgeries and referred us to another orthopedist in Great Neck, which is on the North Short of Nassau County near the Queens border.  I understand that orthopedics is a very specialized field, and it wouldn't surprise me if some orthopedists specialized only in the upper knuckle of the pinky finger.

So, day 4 (don't worry, we're getting close to the end!), and I have to bring my mom all the way to Great Neck.  And when we get there, I find out that the PCP's office had not sent the authorization, so the orthopedist could not see my mom until it went through.  After calling them on the phone twice, it finally came through nearly an hour after the time her appointment was scheduled.  The ladies behind the desk told me they frequently had this issue with my mom's medical group.  Anyway, after nearly an hour and a half wait, my mom finally gets seen.  They take some x-rays and the orthopedist tells us my mom might not need surgery, particularly since she is right hand dominant.  He tells us though that he would like her to have a CT scan.

Things finally seem to be returning to a state of normalcy.   Saturday night, the wife and I stayed up almost to 3 a.m. watching tv together.  I turned into bed a few minutes after her, chiding myself for staying up so late, but figuring I would just have to sleep late Sunday morning.  Then I drifted off to dreamland.   Alas, my stay there was cut short when I awoke to the phone ringing.  I looked at the clock to see what time it was and it was only 5:30 a.m.   I grumbled, because I knew it was my mom calling about something.

I'm sorry to say I wasn't in the best of moods when I answered the phone.  "What is is mom?" I asked.  She started telling me about how a top she was wearing got tangled on her left arm.  But that wasn't the real problem.   She also told me that her granddaughter Jamie was underneath her bed and wouldn't come out.   I could tell from my mom's voice that she was in a confused state.   Unfortunately, having barely two and a half hours of sleep in me, I was not exactly at my sharpest either.

Because my mom is hard of hearing, I had to practically shout back at her that I would be there in a few minutes.  I hung up the phone and, to my disappointment, let loose a litany of angry and profane words at having my life disrupted again.  I stormed into her apartment and found her sitting on the couch in her tv room naked save for the sleeve of a shirt on her left arm.  After I got it off her, I either helped her to a standing position or she got herself up.  She told me to put the shirt in her washing machine.  As I walked to the washing machine outside the room, I heard her cry out and looked to see her fall backwards onto the carpet, hitting the back of her head on the leg of a plastic chair behind her.  One of her implant teeth also came out, evidently being dislodged by the force of the impact.

I tried to help my mom up to get her back on the couch, but she was too heavy for me to move.  I called 911, not only because I couldn't get her up unassisted (and who exactly was I supposed to call at 5:30 in the morning on a Sunday for help?) but also I wanted her to have medical attention to make sure she did not suffer a serious head injury.  About ten minutes later, a police ambulance showed up, followed by two additional Nassau County police officers.  It took all three of them to lift my mom up and then sit her on a chair that they then used to wheel her out to the living room where they had placed a stretcher.   She was then taken to Plainview Hospital.

Fortunately, it was determined that my mom did not suffer any injury from the fall.  They discharged her around noon.  Before that point, I hit my nadir for the day, and the recent past for that matter.  At that point I just felt the crushing weight of all that had happened for the past eight days pushing down on me.  I sat down on the floor in the emergency room with my back against the wall and my head in my hands.   One of the staff, a nurse I think, saw me and asked me if I was alright.  She gave me the number for a hospital social worker to inquire about getting placement somewhere for my mom, for which I thanked her, though I ended up not calling the number.

Since then, things have gotten more tolerable.  I arranged for a home companion to be with my mom on weekdays from 9 to 5.  I have to take time off from work again for a follow up appointment with the orthopedist in Great Neck.  Her dog is back with her, though I had to take it for a few days because the home companion was complaining that the dog was pooping on the rug and making the apartment stink, which caused a bit of a brouhaha between mom, the home companion, and me.  Just what I needed.

As much as I complain about the burden of having to be a caregiver for my mom, I know that there are other adult children who are in much more difficult situations than I.  Some have parents who are in far worse shape than my mom.  Some caregivers are in poor health themselves.   I'm sure quite a few of them handle their situations with more grace and stoicism than I do.  With my mom, as the story above describes, it has not been a daily strain for the last five years.  Rather, there are periods, often lasting many months, of relative calm that is then disrupted by episodes that last anywhere from a few days to a few months.

In addition to being a member of the "sandwich generation," I also suffer from what I call The Curse of the Responsible Sibling.   Longtime readers of my blog might recall that I am the youngest of three siblings, but when it comes to caring for my mom, I might as well be an only child.   While my oldest brother Bobby calls my mom once in a while, he doesn't really do anything meaningful to help out.  His excuse is that he does not have a drivers license (taken away for drunk driving) and a car.   Lately he has also been hobbled by a foot injury incurred at work, which at present gives him a plausible excuse for not being able to help.  Then there is my brother John, who has barely been heard from in the past year.  He never calls mom or myself to inquire how she is doing and if there is anything he can do to be of assistance.  Therefore, the burden has fallen squarely on my shoulders.  I have coworkers and acquaintances who are in similar situations.  They have siblings as well, but those siblings seem to think nothing about washing their hands free of any responsibility of caring for their elderly parents and leaving it by default to the "Responsible Sibling."

What makes it even harder for me is that I am raising two school age children and I commute to a full time job in Manhattan.  My two brothers are both divorced and each has three children that neither plays any role in raising.  Like I wrote above, I might as well be an only child.  So, all I can do is carry on and do the best I can, knowing that the best I can do might not be the best that could be done.  With an elderly parent like my mom, the situation is not one of a very sick parent who requires lots of care.  Rather, it is more like trying to manage a steady decline over time, hoping that a placement in a nursing home or assisted living facility can be put off for as long as possible.   And I know that one day, the burden will end.

Updated: A Not Quite Such A Clusterbleep!

It turned out my initial reaction to the changes were largely unjustified. Plus, some of the changes to the blog are an improvement over the way it was before.  The problem with the followers seems to have resolved itself.  I'm still annoyed that I have to redo my sidebar links.  I managed to reconstitute two of them.  The template only seems to allow for one set of links, but I figured out a way create additional sets of links, but I won't be able to get to it tonight. 

When I logged on earlier, I noticed I had a new follower for this blog.  So, I clicked on Followers to see who it was, and then I got prompted to make a template change that (1) resulted in changing the appearance of this blog, and (2) wiping out the blogrolls in my sidebar and making it impossible to even see who my followers are, even though I added the thing it told me to add.

Is Blogger intentionally trying to dissuade people from using its services?  It would be a shame if I had to end my blog over this.

Le Fin de Weiner

I'm a couple of weeks late in commenting on this, partly due to factors in my life beyond my control, but wanted to throw my two cents worth in before the story completely vanished from the news cycle.

In my previous post on this scandal, I wrote that I wasn't sure if Weiner should resign and that it was between him and his constituents.  However, I believe that in retrospect his resignation was the right thing to do.

When you look at the matter in perspective, Weiner's resignation was not that terrible a loss for liberal Democrats.   For starters, even if this scandal had never happened, it was highly likely that Weiner would have ran for mayor of New York City in 2013, and if he had won, he would have assumed that office in January of 2014.  So as much as his supporters will miss him, Weiner only had, at most, a term and a half in the House left to him.

Second, due to population changes, New York State is slated to lose two seats in the House of Representatives, and Weiner's seat was on the cutting block.  If Weiner had not resigned, his district and seat would have been erased even sooner than 2013. 

What ultimately burns a lot of liberals about this affair is that it lent credibility to partisan smear merchants like Andrew Breitbart.  But as someone who considers himself more or less a liberal, I can't help but put 100% of the blame on Anthony Weiner for all of this.  No one forced him to behave the way he did.  His real fault, in my eyes, is that he lied about sending the pictures, claiming that his account had been hacked.  For over a week, Weiner's supporters publicly defended him because they believed he was telling the truth, only to have the rug pulled out from under them when he finally confessed the truth.  That, and the revelations that there were even more pictures, eroded whatever good will toward him that had remained.  

Maybe if Weiner had owned up to sending the pictures as soon as the scandal erupted, he might have salvaged some measure of credibility.  Then again, Weiner had a reputation as an abrasive personality who rankled even some of his Democratic colleagues.  I suspect not a few of them were glad to see him go.

A valid question that the Weiner scandal raises is to what degree should an elected official's (or even a candidate's) private conduct impact on that person's fitness for office?  In Weiner's case, his behavior was seen as weird or creepy, especially given that he was only recently married.  Did marriage bore him that quickly that sending pictures of his penis to women he never met seemed like a productive use of his time?   What was particularly embarrassing for Weiner, as Bill Maher pointed out on a recent episode of Real Time, was that the former congressman was the center of a sex scandal and he didn't even get laid.

I thought of another potential scenario that I want to throw out for consideration.  Pretend a group of partisan activists looking to take down a firebrand politician from an opposing party smuggled a web cam into a hotel room where that politician was spending the night.  Perhaps they're hoping to get footage of him cheating on his wife by having sex with a prostitute.  But instead of hiring an escort, the politician is filmed unpacking a sex doll and then spends the next hour using it for sexual gratification.

There's no doubt that such footage, if made public, would be highly embarrassing.  But is it really something that should destroy a politician's career?  Granted, sex dolls aren't exactly in the mainstream.  However, is anyone really harmed by what is little more than an act of glorifed masturbation?  Or, to put it another way, should we hold politicians to a higher standard than we hold other people when it comes to sex?  After all, if you found out the morning shift manager at your local Starbucks pleasured himself with a sex doll, are you going to demand that he be fired?

As for the sex doll scenario, the inspiration for it came from me remembering an episode of Nip/Tuck wherein series regular Kimber had a sex doll made in her likeness.  Below is a scene from the episode in which Kimber solicits Sean and Christian to make some improvements to her doll's vagina.



I couldn't find the clip on YouTube, but later on in the episode, a drunk and emotionally distraught Sean has a graphic encounter with the Kimber doll.  To date, I believe that Dylan Walsh's performance in that scene is one of the bravest ever filmed for a television program.

Adam and Steve to Get Married in New York

Tonight, the New York State Senate passed the marriage equality bill.  With that achieved, all that remains is for Governor Andrew Cuomo to sign the bill into law.  This is a big victory for same-sex couples, because (1) marriage equality was achieved by a majority vote in the legislature, and (2) New York is one of the more populous states in the country with a larger gay population that can benefit from the law.  A high school classmate of mine who is gay and has been in a longtime relationship with another man expressed on Facebook a short while ago how happy he was that the possibility of marriage for him and his partner had become real.

I believe 30 years from now, when marriage equality will likely have been achieved nationwide, a lot of people will probably wonder why some opponents of same-sex marriage were so hysterical over the prospect of two people of the same gender being able to tie the knot.  Our civilization will not have been destroyed because Adam was able to marry Steve instead of Eve.

However, we also need to acknowledge that the picture will not be a completely rosy one.  Gay marriage will inevitably lead to gay divorce.  In some instances, child custody issues will arise, either because of adoption or because one of the partners in the marriage had a biological child from a previous heterosexual marriage or relationship.   As with some heterosexual marriages, some same-sex marriages will be fraudulent.  For example, gays who are American citizens will be able to bring in immigrant spouses so that the latter can obtain permanent residency and citizenship in the United States.  It shouldn't come as a surprise that some of these marriages will be merely marriages of convenience to enable an immigrant to acquire American citizenship.  That being said, these are no more reasons for barring same-sex marriage than they are for banning heterosexual marriage.  It is simply a recognition that equality before the law is meant to provide equality of opportunity without guaranteeing perfect outcomes.

Failure to Launch

"Momentum Builds In Iowa."  That was the title of an e-mail I received this past May 20, 2011, from Newt Gingrich's campaign manager Rob Johnson.

Johnson went on to declare:

"One thing is clear: Americans are ready to put our country back on the right track. Newt visited seventeen cities across Iowa this week. At each and every stop people packed into overflowing halls to hear what we can do to put the right policies in place so we can get the right results for our country."

"We’re ready. We launched our campaign just over a week ago, and we are already seeing an outpouring of support. Volunteers have signed up in all 50 states. Next week Newt will campaign in both New Hampshire and South Carolina."

Fast forward three weeks later to today, June 10, 2011.

From Politico:

"[C]ampaign manager Rob Johnson, strategists Sam Dawson and Dave Carney, spokesman Rick Tyler and consultants Katon Dawson in South Carolina and Craig Schoenfeld in Iowa quit to protest what one called a “different vision” for the campaign."

“To be successful in Iowa, you need to be here, [and] taking a look at the way the schedule was, he’s not scheduled to be here in June at all, and he’s got very few appearances in July,” said Schoenfeld. “You want to make sure that you give yourself a chance to be successful.”

So, what went wrong?

"One official said the last straw came when Gingrich went ahead last week with a long-planned cruise in the Greek isles with his wife."

I couldn't help but get a chuckle about the "trip to the Greek Islands" thing.  It's right up there with "santorum."

About a month or so ago, several Republican leaning people I interacted with, when discussing possible GOP candidates, mentioned Gingrich as a good candidate, with one of them even saying what a "bright" guy Gingrich is. 

I'm sorry, but I'm just not seeing that.  What I see when I look at Newt Gingrich is a narcissistic, hypocritical and undisciplined man with pretensions of being an intellectual.  I suspect that a lot of evangelical Christian voters are also not impressed with Gingrich and see him for the shallow opportunist that he is.

To the other person I had an exchange with, I replied that Gingrich was merely pretending to run for president just so that people would pay attention to him.  Newt's presidential campaign will probably limp along for a few more weeks before he admits the inevitable and bows out.  Over a decade ago, Long Island Republican Congressman Peter King called Newt "political roadkill."  I don't see that anything has changed for Newt since then.

Can I Talk To Dead People on My Cell Phone?

The other day I was looking at the events calendar in the Plainview-Old Bethpage Herald and saw an announcement that a local psychic medium named Robert E. Hansen would be conducting a session of his Love Never Dies program at the Plainview Jewish Center on Monday, June 13 for $35 per person.

My first thought, me being the skeptical guy that I am, was to wonder, "Has the Plainview Jewish Center conducted some kind of test to determine if this Robert Hansen can actually do what he claims to do, that is, to be able to communicate with the spirits of dead people?"  After all, if you are hosting and charging admission for such an event, if the person is not the real deal, aren't you essentially facilitating an act of fraud on gullible people?

I'm not going to get into the subject of whether or not I believe that part of us survives the death of our physical body here.  However, I find it interesting that nobody ever seems to be able to communicate directly with their own deceased relatives and friends, and yet somehow complete strangers can supposedly accomplish such a feat on our behalf because they have a special gift the rest of us lack.

How does that work anyway?  Do the souls of the departed swarm around the privileged few who can hear them, whispering their names into the medium's ear, with only the first letter being clear?  "I'm hearing 'Dave?'  'Dan?', or is that 'Donald?'"  Or is it more like tuning into a radio station with constant static in the background, preventing the words from being heard clearly?  On his website, Hansen compares it to "lying on the bottom of a 6' deep swimming pool and someone was trying to yell down to you."

Back to the testing part, one possible way of going about it would be if a number of people who were terminally ill (but still functional) were to bury boxes with a messages in secret locations, tell their family members that they buried something for them somewhere, but that they would have to visit a medium after they died to find out the where the boxes were buried.  If the medium was legitimate, he would tell them the secret location of the box.  If the medium could provide the location of the box, then it would be solid evidence that the dead can communicate with the living, and that the particular medium who provided the location was in fact the real deal. 

It would probably not be easy to coordinate such an experiment with a sufficient number of terminally ill people to form a large enough group in a fixed geographical area so that the family members of the different deceased participants could consult the same mediums.   If one medium succeeded in providing accurate locations for multiple boxes, while other mediums could not locate any, it could provide a benchmark for determining which mediums were true and which ones were bullshit artists.

Pet Peeve of the Day - June 6, 2011

Wow, it's been over two years since I did one of these.

As a daily commuter on the Long Island Rail Road to and from work in Manhattan, I see a lot of things that annoy me. 

One of my greatest sources of irritation are people who I have dubbed "Aisle Seat Assholes."  If you ride the rails like I do, you might know the kind of people I am describing.  They are the ones who as soon as they enter the train, plop themselves down onto the nearest aisle seat, even if the middle and/or window seat next to them is empty.  But they are not just assholes for their choice of seat.  It's what they do no next that really puts them in the asshole category.

Many of them, immediately after their posteriors have settled onto the seats, whip out their laptop computers, portable dvd players or other mobile devices and plug in their ear buds to drown out the world while people are still boarding the train.  And then when you tap them on their shoulder or otherwise get their attention so you can get to the empty two seats to the right of them, they give you this look of annoyance like "How dare you bother me!"

What makes it worse is that if there are a dozen people trying to board the train through one door and the first person tries to get a seat in the first row which already is occupied by an Aisle Seat Asshole (hereinafter "ASA"), everyone has to wait while the ASA gets up, steps out into the aisle, lets the passenger by to occupy the middle or window seat, and then sit down again.  Mutiply that four or five times, and sometimes you can find yourself being blocked from getting to a seat for a minute or more.

Maybe it's a quirk of my personality, but to me it seems to make more sense if the first people to enter a train car were to move to the middle of the car and occupy the window seat and the last people get the seats closer to the doors.  That way, everyone would get a seat virtually immediately, even if it is not necessarily the exact seat they wanted to get. 

I suppose it is too much to expect the bulk of the riders on the Long Island Rail Road to think that way.

What A Weiner!

As anyone who has been following the story probably knows by now, Anthony Weiner (D-NY) has fessed up and admitted that he sent pictures of his bulging underpants and such to women who were not his wife.  After initially denying sending the pictures, while strangely not denying they might be pictures of him, the liberal firebrand from Brooklyn has tarnished his credibility and possibly destroyed his career in politics.

Disappointingly, several commenters (see the excerpts below) in the Crooks & Liars article I linked to appear to be more upset with right-wing operative Andrew Breitbart, the man who released the photo and claimed to have others, than with Representative Weiner. 

I believe these anonymous women (if you believe they are women) were paid handsomely for their involvement in this BREIBART set-up, otherwise ask yourself, why take it to Breibart and not the attorney General.

I believe Briebart deliberately, with malice and fore-thought, entrapped Weiner.

Breitbart is a dirt bag. Doesn't that fucktard have anything better to do with his time? I'm more embarrassed for him than Weiner.

Liberals can gripe about Breitbart all they want, but no matter how you cut and slice it, Weiner put himself in the situation he is in and the responsibility lies 100% with him.

To put things in perspective though, what Weiner did was hardly the worst thing a politician has ever done.  Just about all of us have said and done things that would be tremendously embarrasing if it became a matter of public record.  We're only human, and so are our elected officials.  That being said, when you run for and get elected to public office, you should know that the public will hold you to a higher standard of behavior.

When you make yourself a lightning rod, as Representative Weiner did by being a brash, outspoken Democratic politician, you have to be aware that there is a well funded right wing apparatus dedicated to examining your life under a microscope and sifting through your activities with a fine toothed comb.   President Clinton should have been a cautionary example in this regard.   Knowing full well that conservatives were looking for anything they could find to take him down, Clinton foolishly fooled around with Monica Lewinsky, leading his impeachment.  And like Weiner, Clinton initially denied what he had been accused of, only to have to come clean when damning evidence surfaced.  Then again, maybe these guys just can't help themselves.  Perhaps their egos delude them into thinking that they won't get caught, or if they do get caught, that they can somehow weasel their way out of it.

While Weiner is from New York, he is not my representative, as his district covers Brooklyn and Queens.  I did have an exchange with him years ago during a meet the candidates event in Queens when he first ran for the office he holds today and I was sharing an apartment in Queens with my wife before we married.  At the time, I was quite active in the immigration restrictionist movement (and I hope to one day write a post about how I came to be involved in the movement and why I ultimately left it) and I remember asking Weiner if he would support legislation to deny citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants.  He snapped at me and made some remark about how did my parents get here or something to that effect. 

I have since moved on with my life and gotten over that exchange.  As my political views shifted from conservative to liberal over the years, I did admire Weiner's gutsiness and appreciated his vocal support for womens' reproductive rights.  That being said, I am not going to reflexively defend him for engaging in behavior that I would condemn had it been done by a conservative politician.

As to whether he should resign, I think it depends on whether he did anything illegal.  If not, then it is up to his constituents to decide come Election Day in 2012.  After all, if Republican Senator David "Diaper" Vitter of Louisiana can be re-elected by the people of his state, then who am I to complain if the people of Brooklyn and Queens want to give Anthony another chance?  Whether his wife will remains to be seen.

An Open Letter to Gideon

Dude, why do you keep coming back here and leaving comments that I will never publish because you have been banned? Why the obsession on your part with my blog, which, you yourself have described as "a rather bland and ignominious blog"? What do you hope to accomplish? Is your time of so little value that you spend it by stalking a D-list atheist blogger who hardly anyone reads? You really should raise your ambitions higher and visit the popular atheist bloggers, because, to borrow from Willie Sutton, that's where the atheists are. Some of them are in my sidebar, including Atheist Revolution, Daylight Atheism and Pharyngula. So, go have at em'! Or keep wasting your time trying to post comments here that will never see the light of day because they amount to nothing more than the unhinged rantings of a raving lunatic.

Saturday Night Trance

Kirsty Hawkshaw's "Just Be" as mixed by DJ Tiesto.

Judgment Day - The Aftermath

Here's the quote of the day from Robert Fitzpatrick, the poor, deluded fool who blew $140,000 of his savings plastering the subway trains and buses of New York with his ads about May 21, 2011 being Judgment Day:

"I can't tell you what I feel right now," he said, surrounded by tourists. "I don't understand it. I don't know. I don't understand what happened.

"Obviously, I haven't understood it correctly because we're still here," he said.

Let me explain it to you Bob.  You didn't understand it correctly because you turned off your critical thinking skills.  A million people could have tried to dissuade you, implore you, to not buy into Harold Camping's bullshit and piss away your retirement savings.  It would not have made a difference, because you were so dead set on believing what you wanted to believe.

Here is the plain, simple truth.  The Bible tells us absolutely nothing about our future.  Zilch.  Nada.  Rien.  Zip.  It doesn't tell us when the world will end or how.  So, anyone who tells you that the world will end because of how he or she interprets the Bible is automatically wrong.  Take it from me.  It's financially sound advice.  And the best part?  It's free.

Update on the Alleged Rapture

Well, it's a few minutes past 6 p.m., and as I expected, no earthquake here in New York.  It did start raining about a half hour ago, but it's been raining off and on every day this past week.

Move along now.  Nothing to see here.

May 21, 2011 - It's A Beautiful Day

In honor of the Rapture that did not happen, here's "It's A Beautiful Day" by Sarah Brightman.




Apparently, there was supposed to be a rolling earthquake commencing in New Zealand at 6 pm local time. Well, it's been five hours and no such earthquakes were reported. There was that earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand on February 22, 2011 (I guess having the name Christchurch didn't magically protect them!), so maybe Harold Camping was off by about 3 months. Nor have "all the dead that have ever died" risen up from their graves.

I checked the Family Radio web site but thus far it gives no acknowledgment that Camping's long touted prediction has not come to pass.

Sadly, this whole affair has proven rather costly for some people.

This fellow Long Islander has been refusing to pay his bills, so convinced is he that he will be raptured. Unfortunately for him, not only will he not be raptured, neither will the collection agents for the phone and electric companies!

A former MTA employee spent $140,000 of his own money plastering MTA subways and buses with his ads proclaiming May 21 as Judgment Day. That's $140,000 less that he will have to see him through his retirement.

According to this article, Camping's Family Radio spent "millions of dollars on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the doomsday message. In 2009, the nonprofit reported in IRS filings that it received $18.3 million in donations, and had assets of more than $104 million, including $34 million in stocks or other publicly traded securities."

Our old friend Marie Exley, "said the money helped the nonprofit save as many souls as possible. She said she and her husband, mother and brother planned to stay glued to the television Friday night in Bozeman, Montana for news of an earthquake in New Zealand."

I don't know how many "souls" were saved by these clowns, but a lot of fools were certainly parted from their money. It remains to be seen now what the fall out will be in the coming days when so may of the true believers realized they have been duped. Will they double down and insist that the prophecy is true but that Camping must have been off a little in his dates, or will some of them start to question their beliefs and develop some critical thinking skills?

Barack Obama Sends Armed Thugs to Murder Devout Middle-Aged Muslim Man in his Home in Pakistan

Osama bin Laden willingly allowed himself to be killed by US Special Forces in order to enable Barack Obama's secret plan to impose sharia law on the United States. Well, that's probably what Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are going to say tomorrow.

Updated: The Age of Discovery

Those of use who are history buffs tend to have a particular interest in certain specific time periods or places. For example, especially here in the United States, there are Civil War buffs. Others are fascinated by Tudor England, the Italian Renaissance, World War Two, the Roman Empire, ancient Greece, and so forth.

While I enjoy reading about the history of just about any place and any time period, of late I have focused my attentions on an era that is both very broad and yet still can be put into a specific framework that ties the disparate events and locations into an interconnected whole. That era encompasses the entire 16th century, beginning with the voyages of exploration of the 4th quarter of the 15th century and ending in the early years of the 17th century. Thanks to the invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century, the written accounts of explorers, novels, plays, religious tracts, and philosophical works, among others, could be disseminated widely and rapidly. François Rabelais makes note of this in his popular book Pantagruel (1534) in this passage:

"Now all disciplines have been brought back; languages have been restored: Greek - without which it is a disgrace that any man should call himself a scholar - Hebrew, Chaldean, Latin: elegant and accurate books are now in use, printing having been invented in my lifetime through divine inspiration just as artillery, on the contrary, was invented through the prompting of the devil. The whole world is now full of erudite persons, full of very learned teachers and of the most ample libraries, such indeed that I hold it was not as easy to study in the days of Plato, Cicero nor Papinian as it is now." (Underlined and bolded for emphasis).

The 16th century period was a time not only of expanding physical frontiers, but of mental frontiers as well, with the former often stimulating the latter. It was an era that saw, from at least a European perspective, the discovery of two vast continents and the peoples who inhabited them, and the first circumnavigation of the globe. Though other continents and geographical regions remained to be found by European navigators, such as Australia, Antarctica, and the Polynesian Islands, the circumference of the Earth had at last become truly known.

As I wrote above, the discovery of hitherto unknown lands and peoples challenged previously held assumptions about the world held by European societies whose understanding of it was based on the Bible. How come the Bible did not account for the Americas and the people and creatures that lived there? One hint of this can be found in a report by Amerigo Vespucci:

“What should I tell of the multitude of wild animals, the abundance of pumas, of panthers, of wild cats, not like those of Spain, but of the antipodes; of so many wolves, red deer, monkeys, and felines, marmosets of many kinds, and many large snakes? We saw so many other animals that I believe so many species could not have entered Noah’s ark.” (Underlined for emphasis)

Though the voyages of discovery were initiated by Europeans, the process of discovery was itself a two way street. The natives of the Americas were discovered by the Europeans, but at the same time the Native Americans, as well as other indigenous peoples, discovered that they too were part of a world that was greater than they had realized.

For the most part, the written accounts we have are from the perspective of the European explorers. Many of my upcoming posts will based on my reading of these works. While they are of course of immense value to us, we also need to be mindful that what they tell us influenced by their own biases and misunderstandings. Fortunately, we are not entirely without written records of the people visited and impacted by the Europeans. From the Kongo Kingdom of Africa, for example, we have a letter by the King of Kongo complaining to the Portuguese king about the activities of Portuguese slave traders in his kingdom. In Japan, the introduction of firearms by two shipwrecked Portuguese men is remembered in a written account of a Japanese witness some sixty years after the event.

In another example of the opening of mental horizons, the 16th century was also the time of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Western Christendom would no longer be synonymous with the Roman Catholic Church, an event that would reverberate beyond the confines of Europe. It was also the time of the Moguls in India and the Ottoman Turks under Suleyman the Magnificent, to name but a few.

It must also be noted that while this period, which saw the birth of today’s global economy, was a period of great discovery, it was also a period of tremendous violence and destruction, especially for the indigenous peoples of the Americas. I’m reminded of a line by Jeff Goldblum’s character in the movie Jurassic Park, “What's so great about discovery? It's a violent, penetrative act that scars what it explores. What you call discovery, I call the rape of the natural world.” We are certainly still living with the scars of that period today.

What's the Difference Between Religious Filipinos and Crazy People?

Yes, it's Good Friday, and that means it's the time of year in that most Catholic country of the Philippines when a few dozen of the deeply devout and deluded reenact the crucifixion of Jesus Christ by literally having themselves nailed to a cross. However, they must be doing it wrong, because the picture above shows the nail being driven through the man's hand rather than by the wrist.

But interviews with some of the participants in this ghastly ritual suggests that there is more to it than mere religious devotion.

"I hope the Lord will grant my wish to make me win big in 'jueteng' this year," Alex Laranang, a 55-year-old food vendor who said he can't read or write, told Reuters before two 5-inch nails were driven into his hands on a scorching hot day.

Laranang, a father of five, said he had won 3 thousand pesos ($70) twice in the five years he had himself crucified on a cross.

Okay, so Mr. Laranang has had a 40% success rate in winning the lottery in the past five years. However, we do not have any statistics for the success rate of his non-crucified (is that even a word?) friends and neighbors who also may have won the lottery in the last five years. And three thousand Philippine pesos? Shit, I have 1,820 pesos in my filing cabinet left over from my last trip to the Philippines. I would have been happy to have given it to Mr. Laranang if it would have kept him from having himself nailed to a cross.

But maybe there's more to this crucifixion thing than winning the lottery. Health benefits, perhaps?

Roli Pantoja, a construction worker, said he felt much better after getting down from a wooden cross. This was his sixth crucifixion.

"I feel very fresh, like a new-born baby. I can't feel any pain," he said.

Damn! But if it feels so good, why only do it once a year? How about once a week? That way Mr. Pantoja can feel like a new-born baby all the time.

The Catholic Church in the Philippines officially condemns these crucifixion reenactments. After all, wasn't the whole point of the Crucifixion was that Jesus supposedly did it for us? I thought the message of Christianity was to take up the cross, not to be nailed to one.

Then again, the Catholic Church in the Philippines has more pressing issues, like opposing the Reproductive Health Bill.

A Catholic priest has set off a rumpus when he urged churchgoers during his homily to leave if they were supporters of the controversial reproductive health (RH) bill.

ABS-CBN in a report on its website quoted the priest as saying in a mix of Filipino and English: “If there is anyone in the Mass here who are pro-RH bill…please, go out. It’s useless.”

“What is this Mass for if you are pro-RH bill? What is going to Church for if you’re pro-RH bill?” Ilano was also quoted as saying.

I would be willing to pet my 1,820 pesos that at least some of the congregants who were in attendance at that mass were having adulterous affairs or engaged in other activities considered by the Church to be sinful. But the priest didn't say to his congregation, "If you are engaging in acts of adultery, thievery or corruption, please go out." No, instead he attacks those who support a piece of legislation which "promotes information on and access to both natural and modern family planning methods, which are medically safe and legally permissible."

Which leads me to my next question, why does an institution controlled by celibate men get to have so much say over matters involving the sex lives of other people?

Denialism and Shoddy Historical References

The book I'm currently reading during my commute back and forth to work on the Long Island Rail Road is Denialism by Michael Specter. The subtitle of the book is "How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives."

One of the laudatory blurbs on the back cover of Denialism is from David Baltimore, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, who praises Specter for describing "the increasing public willingness to deny the hard-won facts of science in favor of myths and shoddy investigation."

Earlier today, while reading the chapter in Denialism about the anti-vaccination movement, which for the most part was pretty good, I winced when Specter writes the following:

"In 1421, China was far ahead of the rest of the world in sophistication, in learning, and particularly in scientific knowledge. It was the least ignorant society on earth. Then the newly completed Forbidden City was struck by a lightning bolt just as it opened, and the emperor reacted with horror. He interpreted the lightning as a sign from the gods that the people of the Middle Kingdom had become too dependent on technology - and were not paying enough attention to tradition or to the deities." (Bold emphasis mine).

Specter then references 1421: The Year China Discovered America by the crackpot Gavin Menzies and states that "the Chinese burned every library, dismantled their fleets, stopped exploring the globe, and essentially shut themselves off from the outside world." While Specter might have seen it as a convenient historical reference to bolster he point he was trying to make, if he were to dig a little bit deeper, he would have seen that most of the claims peddled by Menzies are a load of nonsense, as per the website 1421exposed.com. Talk about "shoddy investigation."

Specter baldly states that early 15th century China, as I highlighted above, "was the least ignorant society on earth." But what does he base this on? By virtue of its population, which included a large imperial bureaucracy drawn from men who passed civil service examinations, Ming China certainly did not suffer from a shortage of literate, educated people. Quantitatively though, I don't know how one can say that a Ming scholar or civil servant knew more about geography or the natural wold than a contemporary educated man in Europe or the Middle East.

While it is true that the Forbidden City was struck by a fire in 1421, the last of the great Ming Dynasty treasure fleets set out ten years later in 1431. The voyages came to an end not because of a palace fire, but for reasons that seemed entirely pragmatic to those who favored their termination.

For one thing, the treasure fleets were enormously expensive and offered little in return except for generating tribute missions from the kingdoms they visited. Second, and more important, the greatest threat to Ming China's security was a land based threat, the Mongols north of the Great Wall. In 1449, the Mongols even managed to capture a Ming emperor in battle. By way of comparison, 15th century Portugal, which had a more or less stable border with Spain on the Iberian Peninsula, and having no other alternatives for expansion, had the incentive and the means to devote its energies to exploration and overseas conquest.

The decline of the Chinese navy also had its roots in the conflict between the court eunuchs and the Confucian bureaucracy. Louise Levathes writes in When China Ruled the Seas, "Seafaring and overseas trade were the traditional domains of the eunuchs, and in striking down those enterprises the Confucians were eliminating a primary source of their rivals' power and income."

Levathes adds, "With the opening of the Grand Canal in 1415, there was no longer a need for oceangoing junks to carry southern grain supplies northward to feed the capital." Besides, while the Europeans wanted to sail to China and the Indies beause those places had things the Europeans badly wanted, Europe did not have anything that the Chinese wanted, or at the very least China evidently did not know enough about Europe to even consider whether it had anything to offer China.

Another thing that needs to be considered is that one of the factors that contributed to China falling behind may have been because it was one large state covering a territory that was greater in size than Western Europe and which was vastly more poweful than its immediate neighbors. If Chinese government policy shifted towards hostility to overseas trade and exploration, there was no alternative power base to turn to for patronage and support. Western Europe, on the other hand, consisted of numerous smaller kingdoms in competition with one another. So, in late 15th century Europe, a Genoese navigator named Christopher Columbus believes that he can reach China, Japan and the East Indies by sailing westward into the Atlantic. He can travel from one kingdom to another, pitching his idea to their respective monarchs, until at last Ferdinand and Isabela of Spain decide to support his venture. Then once it becomes apparent that vast, previously unknown lands have been found, just about every other European country with the means to build oceangoing ships wants to get in on the action.

Part of the problem in criticizing the Ming for turning inward in the 15th century is that it presupposes that the Ming should have had the foresight to see what is so clear to us today with the benefit of nearly 600 years of hindsight. Yes, they allowed their naval technology to decay at precisely the time when the seafaring kingdoms of Europe were beginning a series of voyages that would culminate in the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1522. But it would not be until the Opium War in 1839, a little over four hundred years after the last treasure fleet returned home, that the reality of their backwardness became apparent to the Chinese. You have to know you're in a race before you can realize that you've fallen behind.

But to circle back to the main point of this post, if Specter is going to rightly criticize people who base their beliefs on incorrect information or forgetting the past, then he shouldn't rely on the work of pseudo historians and lazy generalizations to make his point. It only serves to undermine his own credibility.

Miura Baien and The Disinterested Study of Nature

One of the criteria I use to determine if religious claims are a product of human invention rather than a divine revelation is my human egocentrism test. What I mean by that is that the religion elevates humanity to a position of central importance in the affairs of the divine being credited with creating our universe.

For example, the Abrahamic God, having created a universe filled with billions of galaxies each filled with billions of planets and stars, takes an inordinate interest in the affairs of the species homo sapiens on the planet Earth. What we eat, what we drink, what clothes we wear, and who we have sex with, to list a few behaviors, are all supposedly done under the eye of a ceaselessly vigilant being who wants us to obey its rules and love it with all of our hearts.

From my perspective as an atheist, I view our species and the world we inhabit as part of a larger universe rather than being the reason for the universe. I don't rule out the possibility that our universe is the creation of some higher intelligence, but even if it is, all I can know about such a creator is that it is very powerful and very intelligent.

I was pleasantly surprised recently to see my view echoed in an unlikely place. Like a lot of college graduates, I still have some of the text books I purchased when I was in college. One of them was a book I had to purchase for a class on Chinese and Japanese history. The book, titled Sources of Japanese Tradition, Volume 1, contains excerpts of mostly original documents from Japanese history from ancient times up to the latter years of the Tokugawa Shogunate. For most of the past couple of decades, the book sat largely undisturbed on the shelf amidst my collection of history books.

A couple of weeks or so ago I found myself perusing it, and looking at the table of contents under a chapter titled 18th Century Rationalism, I saw something called "The Disinterested Study of Nature." Turning to the page, it turned out to be an excerpt of a letter written by a Japanese philosopher of the late Tokugawa era named Miura Baien. A fair chunk of the letter, or at least the portion of the letter printed in Sources, addresses the issue of human egocentrism with regard to the study of nature and the universe.

"Now the universe shelters all things in it, and man is just one of those things.... All beings exist together with us, and we are just one of them. Realization that Heaven (nature) is universal, while man is individual, must be the starting point for all discussion of humanity. This is what I call opening the window of the human sphere. The reason men have remained in the dark about the universe is that, remaining fixed in the human sphere, they have considered their own position to be of the highest dignity and their own intellect to be the most exalted. To view Heaven-and-earth in this way, or to study creation and its manifold objects with this attitude, is exactly the same as brewers of sake, su, moro, and amasake who consider rice only in terms of taste and flavor. In the comprehension of the universe, knowledge is most important. But as long as students approach creation without opening the windows of the human sphere, and persist in keeping a smug sense of their own importance and intelligence, their approach is certain to give rise to delusions, as a mote in the eye casts a shadow on what one sees.

Concern for the world and compassion for the masses is benevolent in motive, but the study of creation in human terms is not conducive to true knowledge. Those whom the world acclaims as leaders in thought and action take humanity and human motives as the basis of their thinking and speculation in order to set up standards for what is to be believed and done. But human minds are like human faces; their preferences differ from one another. Each considers what he has arrived at to be right, a revelation from Heaven or a deposit of truth from antiquity, and thinks those who do not accept his standards should be exterminated. It is my conviction, therefore, that there is no systematic truth or logic except that which enables man to comprehend the universe without setting up standards conceived in terms of humanity or human motives...."

I don't know if Miura Baien had ever read the Bible, though he likely did not.* Based on what he wrote above, if he did read the creation account of Genesis, he would object to it on account of it being expressed in terms of human needs, with the stars being created to provide us with light at night, and with God creating the fish and the animals so that man could exercise dominion over them. It would be like the flora in our intestines telling each other that humans only exist so that microbes could live in our digestive tracts.

*In 1637-38, there was an uprising of Christians in Shimabara that was brutally put down at the cost of some 37,000 Japanese Christians. Japan was closed off to the outside world except for the presence of a small Dutch presence near Nagasaki. Japanese Christians after that conducted their worship mostly in secret and proselytization by foreigners was no longer possible.

Tominaga Nakamoto, in his "Testament of An Old Man" (1738) wrote "In the world today there are three religions: Buddhism, Confucianism and Shinto." None of the other excerpts of Japanese philosophers or historians in Sources during the 18th century period make reference to Christianity and focus primarily on Confucianism. It suggests that the ban on foreign contacts and the suppression of Christianity was such that most educated Japanese in the 18th century knew little or nothing about it, or if they did, that they lived in a climate where even discussion of Christianity could engender the risk of punishment.

Collecting More of the Wisdom of the Ancients

Recently, the Borders bookstore in Westbury announced its closure and in its final weeks sold off its stock of books at discounts that rose as the supply of books shrank.

In the course of several trips there prior to its final closing, I purchased a number of Penguin Classics and other translated works of ancient historians and philosophers. As I wrote in a post I did on reading the works of Saint Augustine, when you read the writings of educated people from the past, it is a fascinating opportunity to see the world through their eyes. Often times, what you get is a combination of profound ignorance mixed with tremendous wisdom and keen insight, and the occasional surprise when you see that a person living some two millennia ago knew of something that you did not expect them to.

For example, one of the books I purchased was a Penguin Classics collection of some of the writings of Cicero, a Roman orator and statesman, called On The Good Life. One of the selections is from Discussions At Tusculum, which is written in the format of a dialogue between two persons, though one of the speakers, presumably meant to represent Cicero himself, tends to monopolize the discussion. At one point, the Cicero character talks about the experience of physical pain and of people who willingly embrace pain even to the point of death.

In one of his examples, Cicero describes the Indian practice of sati, "And Indian women too, when the husband of one of them dies, compete with one another to decide which of their number he loved the best (because each man usually has more than one wife). Whereupon the woman who is proclaimed the winner, escorted by her relations, joyfully joins her husband on the funeral pyre, and the loser goes sadly away."

Since the Discussions At Tusculum were written sometime in 44BCE, Cicero's description of sati is evidence that the tradition of Hindu widows joining their deceased husbands on the funeral pyre dates back at least to the 1st century BCE, if not longer. Given the tremendous distance that separates Italy and India, it is also indicative of how trade networks connected disparate places and served not only as conduits for the exchange of goods, but for information about far away places and peoples where the trade goods originated.

Another ancient classic I am currently in the middle of readings is The Modern Classic Library's edition of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. More a collection of random jottings of whatever came into the second century Roman emperor's mind than a coherent work, the Meditations is a mixed bag of wisdom, melancholy, and occasional morbidity, such as when Marcus writes "The stench of decay. Rotting meat in a bag. Look at it clearly. If you can."

Nevertheless, there are quite a few nuggets of practical wisdom and observations that resonate just as well today as they did when Marcus wrote them. When it comes to the topic of confronting injustice and oppression in the world, it is not uncommon for someone to quote Edmund Burke's famous line "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." The emperor Marcus Aurelius was ahead of Burke by some 1,600 years when he wrote a simpler version of the same thing, "And you can also commit injustice by doing nothing."

Since I'm not quite finished reading the Meditations, I can't say yet what my favorite passage is, but among the ones I have underlined*, the following is probably a leading candidate:

"Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren't packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human - however imperfectly - and fully embrace the pursuit that you have embarked upon."

*Yes, I have not yet made the leap to buying a Kindle, Nook or other kind of e-reader. Eventually I will probably get around to it, but I still like to hold a physical book in my hand and underline or circle passages that interest me. Since many of the books I read are history books containing maps and pictures, I don't know how well they fare in e-book format. If anyone knows, please feel free to share in the comments section. Lastly, one thing you can't do with an e-book that you can do with a physical book is to get it signed by the author.