Halfway down the Danube

Really for geeks only

The Alitalia flight was cancelled, so I'm stuck in Tirana for another day.

Stuck is maybe too strong. Tirana isn't horrible. (Well, if you're a foreigner, and have some money.) Still, I would rather be home with my family.

But anyhow. Since we're doing Albania, and also doing geek stuff, let me bring the two together.

I bought this month's Analog at a bookstore here in Tirana.

I have no idea what it was doing there. I've never seen an issue of Analog in Eastern Europe before. No, I take that back: I saw old ones, back issues from the 1980s, on sale at the second-hand book stalls along Knez Mihailova in Belgrade. But new ones? Hell, Analog isn't that well circulated in the United States any more. (I'm sure James Nicoll could give us the details.)

To make it even odder, that same magazine rack also included two American comic books: a recent issue of Bendis' Daredevil (which I'm told is very good, but have never read), and a recent issue of one of the X-Men books. (Couldn't tell you which one; what are there now, six of them? Milligan was the author.)

One issue apiece. No more.

Stranger still: the Analog cost only 300 Albanian lek, or about $3.25. That's less than its $3.99 US newstand price.

I haven't read much of it yet, but I did read the book reviews (not bad), the short story bashing NASA, and a Jeffrey Kooistra Alternate View column reviewing the book "Kicking the Sacred Cows", by James P. Hogan.

"Cows" is a book which debunks -- let me take a deep breath now -- evolution through natural selection, the Big Bang theory of cosmology, global warming, the idea that HIV causes AIDS, and, of course, the critics of Immanuel Velikovsky. Oh, and he also shows why Einstein's theory of relativity is "unnecessarily complicated".

Reviewer Kooistra thinks this is absolutely fantastic.

My other purchase: The Six Months' Kingdom, the memoirs of the private secretary of Prince William of Wied. William was a minor German prince who was King of Albania from March to September, 1914. I had no idea any of his staff had survived to write about his brief eventful reign, but there it was on the shelf.

It's not very well written, and not edited at all, but it's still darn interesting.

-- Though a bit sad, in parts. The author several times mentions the King's two small children, a girl of four years and a boy of one. The boy would eventually became a lawyer and died in New York in 1973 -- without issue, thus ending the House of Wied and any possible claim to an Albanian throne.

The little girl grew up to marry a German, who was killed in WWII; then she married a Romanian; then Ghirghiu-Dej threw her in a prison camp and she died there in 1948, aged 40.

So when the author mentions in passing that the little princess was restless because she was usually confined to a single rather small garden, and couldn't get outside to play... well.

Sometimes it's the little things.

5 am flight tomorrow, so off to bed with me.

A bit more about that bird

So, why should we care about the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker?

Well, I could say that it's because it was a priceless part of the natural heritage of America, and indeed of the world. Because every extinct species diminishes us a little. Because now my sons will have a chance to see an Ivory-Bill, something I never imagined they could have.

But let's try another reason: because it's SO FREAKING COOL, MAN!!!

Early white settlers gave the Ivory-Bill the nickname of “the Lord God Bird”. Apparently, upon seeing it for the first time — this huge bird, stark black and white with an enormous red plume, golden eyes, and the beak like a power drill — everyone’s first reaction was, “Lord /God/! What the hell is that thing?”

The Ivory-Bill was the world's largest woodpecker. This isn't ditsy little Woody. Try this: bend your arm at the elbow, maybe 45 degrees, while holding your wrist straight. Now extend your index finger at a slight angle, as if pointing. Got it? Now think of a bird as long as your forearm, with a beak like your index finger.

The Ivory-Bill had few predators, because one peck from that beak would see off anything smaller than an eagle. It was loud, fierce and fearless, and with good reason. In the 1890s, one wildlife artist discovered this the hard way, when he netted an Ivory-Bill, took it back to his hotel room, and then tried to put it in a cage so he could paint it at his leisure. The bird smashed the cage to pieces, gave him several deep puncture wounds, and blasted its way out the window in a shower of glass.

(Recent reports have been emphasizing how shy the bird is. If so, this is a learned behavior. 19th century reports of Ivory-Bills don't describe them as shy. Quite the opposite, if anything.)

All woodpeckers are living drills, but the Ivory-Bill was in a class by itself. It was basically a small chainsaw with wings. Even before it was seriously endangered, birders would travel for days to see it in action. You have to imagine this big bird just blasting into a rotten tree, BRRRRAAAAACCCK, chips and sawdust flying everywhere; then pausing to slurp up a grub or two with its six inch long, barbed and spiked tongue; and then BRRRAAAACCCK returning to the attack again, while the hole in the tree got visibly bigger.

It was huge. It was hardcore. It was quintessentially American. If this bird had been around in the '70s, someone would have put it on a heavy metal album cover.

So. Now what?

"Is the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker really, truly extinct" was always one of those questions that could get any three randomly selected bird enthusiasts in a hissing, shrieking, squawking dispute within a minute or two. But the International Ornithological Union said yes, and I was inclined to agree. It's a big damn bird, loud, and conspicuous -- black and white with a brilliant red crown. And while there are some pretty wild places in Louisiana and Arkansas, we're not talking about the jungles of the Congo here. If we could discover the last colony of Bulmer's Fruit Bat in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, you'd think we would have found the Ivory-Bill here in the US after 50 years of looking hard.

But it looks like we missed it. Maybe. I hope.

I'm sure those woods are about to be disturbed by dozens if not hundreds of birders. If it's really there, we should have something better than a blurry video soon.

Cross fingers.

Mutants and monsters

Male prostitute turned favored White House reporter James Guckert (aka Jeff Gannon) complained to the New York Post that he wasn't invited to the White House Correspondents Dinner. "Probably many who would want to extend such an invitation already assume I will be in attendance." Yes, that's it. Meanwhile, Halfway Down the Danube has learned that HDTD friend John Krewson will be in attendance, as will the comic stylings of Cedric the Entertainer. Remember, John, if things go south, who to take out first.

Meanwhile, Star Trek is rapidly sliding down the dark abyss whence no subculture returns. First there was the Trek-cannibalism connection in Germany. Now there's this horrifying story in the Los Angeles Times:

On one wall is a "Star Trek" poster with investigators' faces substituted for the Starship Enterprise crew. But even that alludes to a dark fact of their work: All but one of the offenders they have arrested in the last four years was a hard-core Trekkie.

Det. Constable Warren Bulmer slips on a Klingon sash and shield they confiscated in a recent raid. "It has something to do with a fantasy world where mutants and monsters have power and where the usual rules don't apply," Bulmer reflects. "But beyond that, I can't really explain it."

A gallant researcher at BoingBoing did a bit more digging:

I have now spoken to Detective Ian Lamond of the Child Exploitation Section of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit and he claims they were misquoted, or if that figure was given it was done so jokingly. Nevertheless, he does claim that a majority of those arrested show "at least a passing interest in Star Trek, if not a strong interest."

They've arrested well over one hundred people over the past four years. Det. Lamond claims they can gauge this interest in Star Trek by the arrestees' "paraphenalia, books, videotapes and DVDs." I asked if this wasn't simply a general interest in science fiction and fantasy, such as Star Wars or Harry Potter or similar. He said, while there was sometimes other science fiction and fantasy paraphenalia, Star Trek was the most consistent and when he referred to a majority of the arrestees being Star Trek fans, it was Star Trek specific.

Still tres creepy.

The Lord God Bird

Reported today in the online edition of the journal Science (the international science magazine so prestigious, it only has one name):

Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) Persists in Continental North America

Abstract: The ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), long suspected to be extinct, has been rediscovered in the "Big Woods" region of eastern Arkansas. Visual encounters during 2004 and 2005, and analysis of a video clip from April 2004, confirm the existence of at least one male. Acoustic signatures consistent with Campephilus display-drums also have been heard from the region. Extensive efforts to locate birds away from the primary site remain unsuccessful, but potential habitat for a thinly distributed source population is vast (over 220,000 ha).

The ivory-billed woodpecker was sometimes known as "The Lord God Bird", because (it's said) early Southerners would exclaim, "Lord God!" when they saw one. Something to see.

The video of the Lord God Bird is available from the supplemental materials page to the Science article. I shan't direct link to it, because I suspect the AAAS's website will be slashdotted shortly by anxious amateur ornithologists. I've seen it, and yeah, that's a big damn bird all right. More trained observers had this to say:

Of at least 15 reported visual encounters between 11 February 2004 and 14 February 2005, seven contained sufficient detail for the authors to treat them as authentic. In addition to the two February 2004 sightings described above, these were:

5 April 2004 (James M. Fitzpatrick saw overflight along a lake edge; with naked eye at 100 m he noted large size, broad white trailing edges of wings, and steady "loon-like" flight of otherwise black woodpecker);

10 April 2004 (Melinda LaBranche saw overflight at site of 5 April sighting; through 10-power binoculars at 100 m she observed broad white trailing edges of wings and narrow red crescent on rear of folded crest);

11 April 2004 (Melanie Driscoll watched a large woodpecker fly across a 50-m gap in the forest where she was stationed, and through 10-power binoculars at 120 m she saw broad white trailing edge of wings, white line extending from wings up the long neck, and small flash of red on crest, with head otherwise black);

9 June 2004 (Harrison saw a large woodpecker flush from near the base of a bald-cypress, Taxodium distichum, about 15 m in front of him, and with naked eye he noted broad white trailing edges to wings, especially visible as the bird swooped upward to land;

14 February 2005 (Casey Taylor heard double-rap display drums for 30 min near power-line cut and then saw a large black-and-white woodpecker crossing the cut while being mobbed by American crows, Corvus brachyrhynchos. Through 8-power binoculars at 80 to 120 m, she noted broad white trailing edges to wings, long neck with white stripe running its full length, and black head with long bill.)

As I've mentioned before, I'm not the birder of this blog. But I still find this incredible news. (Perhaps the birder of this blog will copy some of his comments from Jim Henley's website and repost them here?)

Forty-Five White Headstones and Four Black Slabs

So I went for a walk in Tirana Park.

The Park is a square mile or so -- a couple of hundred hectares, say -- of wooded ground on a ridge south of the city. It's rather shaggy and overgrown, and many of the trails and paths are disintegrating. But I had a couple of hours unexpectedly free this morning, and I thought it would be nice to take a stroll.

It was. The morning was clear and warm. Albania has a climate like, oh, a slightly cooler Southern California. Mid-morning in late April, it was t-shirt weather. Lovely blue skies, sunny.

The park was full of people. Old, young, little kids, couples. Why so many on an ordinary Wednesday, I can't guess. Maybe it's always like that.

There's a small lake, which is quite lovely. To my surprise, the other side of it has not yet been built up with the villas of Albania's nouveau riche. Give it another couple of years, I guess.

There's also a children's amusement park, with a ferris wheel and various rides. Since I nearly fainted from terror the last time I was on a ride in this part of the world -- the small ferris wheel in Belgrade's Kalamegdan Park is far more terrifying than any roller-coaster -- I wasn't in a hurry to explore it. Still, it was full of happy kids.

And there's also a little enclosure with forty-five white headstones.

They mark the British war dead of 1940-45. Albania wasn't a major theater of action, but apparently things were happening, because forty-five British soldiers got killed. (I counted the stones.)

It was very moving. The stones were simple white limestone. Each had a regimental crest -- "South Lancashire Fusiliers," and such -- a name, age, dates, and a short line. Sometimes these were obviously dictated by the family ("Your wife and mother will cherish your memory"); more often, they were lines of poetry or Bible verses. The youngest soldier I saw was 22; the oldest, 37.

The whole enclosure wasn't more than twenty feet by thirty, tops. It sat at a wide spot in the path, overlooking the little lake. There was a small stela with some withered poppy-flower wreaths, presumably laid by the local British community.

One odd thing: the enclosure and stela were obviously new, not more than a few years old. But the headstones looked older, possibly old enough to date back to the war. The obvious conclusion would be that there was an original cemetery set up by the British just after the war, but that the Communist government shut it down after relations soured. (But then, why keep the headstones? Or did they simply move the whole thing to some isolated spot in the mountains for 45 years?)

That's not the end of it. Walk fifty meters further down the trail, and there's another enclosure. This one is set back a few meters from the path, and the fence around it is higher. Inside are four tall slabs of black marble, each one covered with names. This is the German war memorial, and these are the Germans who died in Albania.

There are a lot more of them. Hundreds, perhaps a thousand. They're in alphabetical order. The whole thing is clearly recent construction, not more than maybe five years old.

So: the Communist government didn't allow anyone in to commemorate their dead. (Probably not even the Soviets. Hoxha's Albania hated them too.) But in the last few years, the British have been allowed to move their headstones to a new memorial site on the little hill by the lake; and the Germans, who never had one, have been able to build one... a bit further down the hill, to be sure.

I don't really have anything to add to that.

Halfway down the Jumna

Over the weekend I fell in love with these short animated films by the cartoonist Nina Paley, based on Sita's story in the great Indian epic the Ramayana. They're set to the music of the 1920s American jazz singer Annette Hanshaw (whom I had not knowingly listened to before, and who has a lovely voice). The combination is utterly charming.

The original link is via BoingBoing, and there are bit.torrents (erm, whatever they are) available via Sepia Mutiny, both very cool sites in their own right.

How not to oust a top politician in one simple lesson

Joschka Fischer is Germany's foreign minister and if the opposition party CDU has anything to say, he won't be holding his job much longer.

Fischer is under pressure in the so-called "visa affair". The New York Time sums it up:

The scandal came to light in February last year when a regional court in Germany found a Ukrainian-born man guilty of trafficking in people and of smuggling. The court found that laxness in issuing German visas in Ukraine - about 300,000 between 2000 and 2002 - had made it easier for the defendant, Anatoli Barg, to commit his offenses.

Over time, it came to light that not only the embassy in Kiev but also German embassies in other (mostly former GUS) countries had been advised to "rather err on the side of freedom of travel" than applying stricter criteria when issuing visas. Ex-Ambassadors claim to have informed the ministry of foreign affairs in Berlin about the apparent misuse of those visas by traffickers, criminals and drug dealers, but no action was taken. Fischer, as the head of the foreign office, is not only nominally responsible for any sloppiness that might have occured in his ministry, he also has to explain why he didn't react to any of the faxes and emails that diplomats said they have sent him.

So Fischer appeared at a hearing yesterday. The hearing was instigated by said opposition party, the CDU. They are desperately trying to gain ground by ousting Fischer. I think the visa affair itself was serious enough to pose a severe danger to Fischer, so the stakes were a little in favor of the CDU.

Initially.

But they made a crucial mistake.

They allowed the hearing to be broadcasted live on national TV. Hans Leyendecker from the Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

Ein charismatischer Politiker wie Fischer, der die Medien braucht wie die Luft zum Atmen, und der mit der Kamera vertrauter erscheint als mit den Regeln der Amtsführung, ist im Vorteil.

[A charismatic politician like Fischer, who needs the media like he needs air to breathe, and who seems more familiar with the camera than the rules of his office, has an advantage.]

That's putting it mildly.

Fischer's appearance was an act. He talked into the cameras, to the people in his country, instead of the committee. He was witty, entertaining, and convincing. He even made fun of one of the members of the panel. Fischer is a brilliant rhetorician, he's very smart and he's fighting for his job. Why the CDU thought it was a good idea to allow the cameras is eluding me.

Yes, he confessed to errors. He said he's taking full responsibility. He also says that on the whole, his visa politics are sound.

The day after, the committee is sorting Fischer's statements he made in the course of a very long day. The hearing started at 9 am and finished up around 11 pm. The CDU still urges Fischer to resign. He won't hear anything of it.

Over 6 Million Germans have watched the broadcasts of the various TV stations at least temporarily.

What a stupid, stupid move.

(Me? I voted for him. I think he's a good foreign minister. I also think he's arrogant and flighty and deserves a whack on the head. I can't stand the CDU, though.)

The tower of Bable is nothing, folks

Overheard in a conversation between my sons:

"Te rog! Jos, aici!"
"Nu!"
"Te rog, aici! Da-ma asta!"
"Nu!"
"Mama! David will mir das nicht geben!"

At least they are polite to each other.

(It goes something like this: Please, down, here! No! Please, here! Give me that! No! Mommy, David doesn't want to give it to me!)

The Dukagjini Code, part 1.5

Doug is still in Albania. "I am still in Albania!" he says. And so, a further anecdote from Pietro Quaroni on the Code of Lek, before the comparative stuff:

One of the chivalrous rules of the vendetta enacted that it could not be prosecuted against anyone accompanied by a woman, a child, or a foreigner. Thus, if a man who knew he was the object of a vendetta -- who was, as they said, 'in blood' -- allowed himself to be accompanied by one of these three persons he was regarded as a coward, disqualified, and shunned by the entire community. This sometimes led to strange situations.

One evening our Legation doctor, Zucchi, was summoned for an urgent operation. A public-spirited man, he would undertake any journey, however distant, by night, in winter, in the depths of the mountains, to tend the sick. On the return journey, the young man who had summoned him suddenly began shrieking at the top of his voice: 'I'm with the Italian doctor! I'm with the Italian doctor! And my mother is ill'.

'Why do you shout like that?' said Zucchi.

'We're crossing the territory of a family with whom we are "in blood". I'm warning them not to attack you by mistake. And also, so they won't think I'm a coward.'

A 'mistake' was the only danger for foreigners, who were considered as outisde the rules of the vendetta, under a kinds of collective guarantee from the whole people. Two unfortunate Americans disembarked at Durazzo [Durrës -- CY], to cross Albania by car and pick up the boat again at San Giovanni di Medua [Shëngjin -- CY]. They were unlucky enough to drive a few minutes ahead of Zog (then President of the Republic) [and that's a bizarre story in itself -- CY] in his car, and were mistaken for him by a family lying in wait. They were killed in one of the many vendettas which then revolved around the person of Ahmed Bey Zogolli.

This incident was described to us many times, with much detail, by the Montenegrin chauffeur of the two unfortunate Americans. He was called Luca Barba, and whenever he passed the place of the crime, he started his account with the words, 'Look, the place where they cut me down...'

In general, as I say, foreigners were considered as ineligible for vendettas.

The Dukagjini Code, part 1

My co-blogger Doug is in Albania. "I am still in Albania," he says. And to think, I used to joke with him about that possibility. Thus, in Doug's honor, let me post an excerpt from Diplomatic Bags, the memoirs of the Italian diplomat Pietro Quaroni.

Some background: Quaroni was stationed in Albania during the interwar years, at a time when Albania was a cockpit for Yugoslav, Greek, British, and Italian (i.e. Mussolini's) influence, under the peculiar rule of King Zog.

As the saying goes, Zog did not so much rule as reign lightly. Much of the country still remained under traditional Albanian law, the unwritten code sometimes known as the Kanun of Lek Dukagjini.

One peculiarity of the Kanun is that it did not rely on state structures for enforcement, much like the early medieval Iceland so beloved by modern American libertarian theorists. In the same way, Albania under the Kanun could be a remarkably violent place, much as the Icelandic sagas describe (and said theorists ignore).

The Kanun has fascinated me for a long time, and I'm pleased as punch that I finally have an excuse to blog about it. So here's Quaroni on how this modern stateless law code operated:

On the city boundary where Cavaja Street begins, the ground rises and some way up the hill a barracks was being built. Perhaps this was why the road here was better maintained (in winter, most of Tirana became a sea of mud); it was a part of the town to which we often came for an afternoon walk. During one of these, my wife saw a peculiar object lying in a ditch at the side of the road; it proved to be a human corpse, a man half-immersed in a pool of water. This was a relatively busy street, and we were surprised that no one paid any attention to it.

When we returned the following day, it was still there, in exactly the same position. The local people were unable to explain what had happened; much gesticulation and a flood of Albanian dialect told us nothing. The mystery was solved that evening by Colonel Sereggi, the King's ADC.

'He must have been killed in a vendetta,' he explained. 'Only members of his family are allowed to bury him. If anyone else touches the body, that person becomes immediately involved in the vendetta with the family who killed him. In the same way, if he had only been wounded, only members of his family could have tended him.' Such was our initiation into that strange and complex institution known in Albania as the vendetta.

Actually, as in Italy, such things were known as matters of blood: gjak.

Since the days of the ancient Turkish empire the honesty of the Albanians has been proverbial. A woman could, it is said, cross the length and breadth of the land loaded with gold and jewelry, and no-one would life a finger against her. So honest are they that, again according to tradition, it is unnecessary to close the front door at night. After nearly three years in Albania, I could confirm some of this from personal experience.

Only in the bigger towns, where attempts were being made to introduce the benefits of Western civilization, were these sterling qualities disappearing. However, honest as an Albanian may be in some matters, he has an extremely quick finger on the trigger, particularly if his family is involved in a vendetta.

Every village has its vendetta. We in Italy are sensibly taught as children that the best way of dealing with a vendetta is to forget it, to pardon our adversary.

I really wonder what Leonardo Sciascia would have said to this. Anyway.

But in Albania the vendetta is deeply rooted in tradition, governed by a code of rules, known as the Kanun of Lek Dukagjini. To flout this is considered a heinous crime, and the transgressor is immediately regarded as an assassin. I doubt whether any Albanian, even among the gendarmes or magistrates, was really familiar with the directives of the new penal code [of King Zog -- CY]; but they certainly knew everything about the rules of the vendetta as a form of private justice, regarded as inevitable and indeed necessary in a country where, at least under Ottoman domination, State justice hardly existed. For centuries the vendetta has been an essential part of the social fabric, of family pride, respect for the rights of others, honour, honesty, etc.

Among the many new measures was Zog's attempt at moderating, if not altogether abolishing, the vendetta. Together with malaria, it was said to be the principal cause of the falling birthrate. Zog tried to persuade his subjects to use his new penal code, with its magistrates, judges, and police force. He was not very successful. The policemen who arrested the transgressors, as well as the judges who sentenced them, were Albanians, some no doubt victims or heroes of vendettas themselves. The churches, in particular the Catholic Church, had a little more success; but only because they did not try to abolish the vendetta, but simply to limit its violence. As in mediaeval times, the Albanian bishops would occasionally proclaim 'God's truce', and vendettas were forbidden on days of church festivals -- particularly at the Feast of the Madonna of Good Cheer, when the mountain tribes, Musselmen as well as Catholics, assembled in the little church at the gates of Scutari [Shkodër -- CY]. The vendetta flourished of course in the mountains, where the tribes were still attached to their old habits and ceremonial.

Next: more on the Icelandic connection.

Kid cuteness

Mainly for Doug in Albania, some cute and big kid pictures under the fold. We had a nice day at the park on Sunday, as one can see. The weather was delightful and the kids enjoyed every moment. Until it was time to go home...

Are you ready for some springtime?

Because it wouldn't be Halfway Down the Danube without the occasional incomprehensible post about American football (gridiron) from the guy with the coffee cup icon, now, would it?

It's spring in the US! which also means it's draft season for professional American football! Some explanation might be required for non-US sports enthusiasts.

Unlike professional soccer (futbol, calcio, whatever) US professional gridiron doesn't relegate or promote teams based on rank. In fact, there's an involved structure to keep the level of play between teams as even as possible. Part of this is done monetarily: the National Football League has instituted rules to limit the amount of money each team can spend on players (which the San Francisco 49ers shamefully abused during their years of glory, but I digress). And it works. It turns out that in a cross-country comparison of sports leagues, the NFL has the lowest correlation between money spent and performance, while professional Italian soccer has the highest.

US gridiron also balances team competition via the draft. Based on reverse standings, the worst team in the NFL has first pick of hot eligible players from (usually) university teams. The second worst, the next pick. And so on. (The US uses its university gridiron teams as a 'farm' system for its professional league. The upshot of this has been to democratize the universities, rather than to make gridiron more elite. It's a little peculiar.)

My own home team, the Green Bay Packers, made it to the playoffs last year, and so had a late pick in the draft for the first round. Weirdly enough, one of this year's hottest quarterbacks (roughly analogous to team captain; for two sports with the same roots, gridiron and soccer positions have diverged wildly) hadn't yet been chosen. While Green Bay already has a legendary quarterback named Brett Favre, truly one of the greatest in the game -- [far] better than Beckham is to soccer, in my opinion -- he's slightly older than I am, and will probably retire after this season. And so the Packers snapped up Aaron Rodgers as pick number 24. Not anyone's expected outcome.

Anyway, during the draft, potential players are subjected to all sorts of tests. Some of them are more rigorous than others. Carrie of Bad Mama sent me this link on testing player intelligence. (And you can try the test yourself!) This was my favorite part:

Some teams consider the test results critical. Others say they dismiss the results, except for players who score at the extremes. What's an extreme? Well, former Bengals punter and Harvard grad Pat McInally scored a perfect 50 -- the only NFL player known to do so -- while at least one player, it is rumored, scored a 1.

(Internal link mine.)

Before anyone begins to post about how American football is so incredibly boring (and I retaliate about the whiny, tedious nature of socker, which is an alien, imperialist transplant to most of the world anyway), let us agree that they fill different niches and satisfy different itches. In my opinion, basketball and baseball fill the roles in the US as soccer does elsewhere, while the gridiron is more of a cyborg sport, like NASCAR, Formula One, the Tour de France, mountaineering, weightlifting, and the Russian space program. I mean, what other sport looks for a fast 175-kg man, who will assuredly need corrective surgeries throughout his career?

(In related news, it looks like Monday Night Football is to be no more. And so passes an American TV tradition. Dennis Miller was probably the lethal wound, but then John Madden sat on it. Ah well.)

Easter Holidays

Alan's school has a two-week Easter break. Yes, Easter -- we celebrate Orthodox Easter here which is on May 1st. The teachers were so happy to get rid of the little monsters for a while that they organized a big carnival on the last day of school. It was a hat parade, although many children came dressed up in fancy costumes. It was a lot of fun, even though Alan doesn't look like it. I just couldn't get him to smile for a photo. When did that happen? Oh, and how do you like the hat?

Spring in Bucharest

Actually, it's been chilly and rainy those past days but the flowers and the blooms are out in profusion -- it's good for the soul, it is.

The World and the Pope

For those who are interested, the German Süddeutsche Zeitung has an interesting photo gallery of newspapers around the world reacting to the new pope. It's quite amusing even if you don't understand the German comments on the side. ("Nächstes Bild" means "next picture" - click here to take the tour.)

Structuralism and science fiction 2: the quickening

Wow. I've created a monster! I'm going to bring up some points that might have been lost in that Holbonically long comment thread. The basic idea, so far, is that there might -- or might not! -- be a Levi-Straussian "structure" in many otherwise unconnected science fiction novels. To wit:

There exists a lone bisexual world conqueror; if moral, he has a romance with a woman but has difficulties siring children with her; if immoral, he rapes and restricts the fertility of others in his conquest.

Syd Webb proposes functionalist reasons for parts of this. We want our heroes to have feet (or other organs) of clay.

David Allen on one hand sees a connection to Jung's idea of the archetype, specifically the Fisher King, and on the other suggests that the well-known phenomenon of sexually active characters being the first to die in American horror movies and crime dramas is related.

James B. brings up the possibility that Alexander is the vir classicus of this motif, so to speak.

Mitch H. compares Saul, the failed king, to David, the hero king, and suggests that the flawed conqueror stands in the same relation to Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces".

Doug is not entirely convinced. Specifically, he dislikes the lack of rigor this type of analysis can be subjected to. Is 'bigendered' the same as 'bisexual'?

Noel Maurer is confused, even though he is a long-time heavy reader of science fiction. Do structures even exist?

Many people suggested other historical figures in addition to Alexander. (I will bring up a few that weren't mentioned: George Washington, the childless "Father of His Country"; Elizabeth I of England, with "the heart and stomach of a king"; and Lord Byron, the bisexual clubfooted model of the Romantic anti-hero.)

Doug also wonders if such a pattern would exist in non-Western science fiction. Specifically, wouldn't the world conqueror be extremely fertile?

(No word from Claudia, even though she's read just as much SF as either Doug or I have.)

I think that does justice to the main line of the discussion.

I speculated that the bisexuality or bigendering of the conqueror was an attempt to show his universality. In the science fictional examples we've been discussing, either the conqueror is sexually attracted to men and women, is able to access female personas within his mind, or is carrying an egg to be hatched.

[At this point I will be a million lei that Doug is having a Grant Morrison moment.]

On the other hand, we don't see any hermaphroditic or transvestite world conquerors within SF (that I know of). There are Theodore Sturgeon stories about superior hermaphrodites, but it's a stretch.

An example I think just fits the general structure is Algis Budrys's Michaelmas. The main character, Laurent Michaelmas, is the secret ruler of the world, but, as Gene Wolfe put it, he's the secret president of the world. A newsman who programmed the earliest by far news aggregator -- which eventually becomes an artificial intelligence in its own right -- Michaelmas finds that his knowledge gives him power. Being a decent man, he's reluctant to use it. So he presides, and occasionally corrects.

Michaelmas is heterosexual, widowed in fact, but I think his access to all the world's information (through his AI, named DOMINO, which I suppose could be viewed as important), and his empathy, provides the character with enough symbolic universality.

He becomes enamored with a French woman journalist during a mysterious news event. He deduces that the event -- the resurrection of an astronaut who must surely be dead, burnt up on re-entry, at a Swiss clinic -- must be caused by an outside presence. He deduces that this presence is able to duplicate people to specifications by taking them from elsewhere in the multiverse. Michaelmas also realizes that the news event is bait to draw him out, even though the presence has no idea who or what he is. (It's an amazing short novel.)

He learns that the French journalist once stayed at that clinic.

So he has the dilemma: he can continue with the romance, with the possibility that this journalist's desire for him was specified by this presence; or awkwardly, without good reason, break it off. The journalist herself doesn't realize that she might be a duplicate (and on her world-line, would sense no duplication).

It's like the immoral rapist/infertile moralist crux, shifted to a very subdued key.

I also speculated that the need to "balance" the characters drives the structure I see. It sounds plausible enough (Doug agrees), but do we actually see this giving and taking away of character flaws and assets in composition? Well, here's China Mieville on the process in his Perdido Street Station:

If you kill a main character, then you’re obviously a ‘brave’ writer. Etc etc. This is the specious and middlebrow gravitas of charactercide. It’s not always an aesthetic con to do a protagonist in, of course, but it shouldn’t be an automatic brownie point.

This apparently most extreme thing you can do to a character, bumping her/him off, is easily assimilable by nebulous structures of comfort. (The question of what if anything is wrong with that is huge, of course, and fundamental to many of the issues here. For here, I’m just going to assert that all my writing tends to be sceptical of consolation and comfort.)

This is precisely why I’m not surprised by Belle’s resentment at the fate of Lin in PSS. It was, yes, precisely ‘uncalled for’. ‘That Lin should get killed,’ Belle says, ‘OK.’ Well quite. Had she been killed, it would have been ok. More than that, it would have presented us with one of the most trite figures in Romantic Art: The Beautiful Dead Female Lover. I didn’t want Lin to turn into Eurydice, which is why what happened to her had to be utterly foul and uncalled for. I maintain that it was more respectful of her as a character to give her a fate that vigorously resisted aestheticisation, than to subordinate her to the logic of myth, symbol and genre. (Particularly when (Ophelia in the water, consumptive beauties a-coughing) it’s a logic deep-structured with fetishised misogynist despite. Hmmmm… raping and mind-ruining a female character as striking a blow against the structures of gender essentialism? Well yes, actually.)

Of course, Mieville is simply falling into that structure of putting "women in refrigerators", well-known to comics readers. "What's the most utterly foul and uncalled thing we can do to Elongated Man's wife?" Although I don't think the people at DC thought of themselves as "striking a blow against the structures of gender essentialism".

Finally, I wondered if the conqueror figure could be fitted to Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces". I thought of several ways:

1) The Hero becomes the Conqueror.
2) The Hero is the father of the Conqueror.
3) The Conqueror is the father of the Hero. There's an asymmetry here, because the Conqueror is not very fertile.
4) The Hero and the Conqueror are friends.
5) The Hero and the Conqueror are rivals.
6) The Hero and the Conqueror are lovers. Again, an asymmetry here, since the Conqueror is typically bisexual, while the Hero, not as such.
7) The Conqueror becomes the Hero.

There's also room in the Hero's story for the elderly mentor.

All these plots, at least to my jaded eye, could stir the narrative viscera up a bit. However, I note that this is very guy-centric. It puts the woman's role -- very strong in Shards of Honor and Jaran, the first two books we started with -- into a very peripheral position. So further tweaking appears necessary.

Anyway. Thoughts, comments, manifestos?

Two movies about a bank robbery

Way back in 1959, there was a major bank robbery at the National Bank in Bucharest.

This was very strange for a couple of reasons. One, the robbers were stealing large amounts of a non-convertible currency that couldn't be used outside Romania. And two, bank robberies weren't supposed to happen in a Communist state.

And, generally, they didn't. Like most contemporary Communist states, 1959 Romania had very low rates of this sort of crime. Officially, this was because Communism had removed the incentive for such perverse behavior. In reality, it was because Romania was a police state.

Everyone had to carry an internal passport to move around the country. All telephones were bugged as a matter of course. Police informers, though not as pervasive as they would later become, were common. All personal records -- from medical files to bank accounts -- were open to state examination. There were still over 15,000 political prisoners. This was the bad old days under dictator Ghirghiu Dej, who was an unreconstructed Stalinist, old school. Police beat and tortured suspects as a matter of course, forced confessions were common, and draconic sentences were the norm. And criminal acts that could embarrass the state were pursued with merciless rigor.

Nevertheless, there it was: several gunmen had robbed the bank and made off with over a million lei in cash. In those days, that was... ohh, maybe half a million contemporary, 1959 dollars? So maybe three or four million dollars in 2005 money. (A million lei today is about $40, but that's a story for another post.)

The Romanian government went ballistic. The police and the Securitate swept up hundreds of people, interrogating and torturing with a free hand. Several victims died under the questioning. Eventually, six people -- the so-called "Ioanid Gang" -- were charged with the crime. I say so-called, because these people weren't professional criminals. They were all intellectuals, medium-ranking nomenklatura Party members. And they were all Jewish.

Here's where it gets weird. Just catching the crooks wasn't enough for the outraged state. The six were encouraged to make a "reconstruction" film, showing exactly how they planned and committed the crime. (Apparently they were told that this would allow them to escape the death sentence.) The film was made by one of Romania's best directors, and was, technically and aesthetically, a minor masterpiece; it's been described as "sinister", "deeply creepy" and "surreal". It was shown all over Romania, presumably to show the Romanian people that, no matter how clever the criminals, Crime Does Not Pay.

Then five of the six were taken out and shot. (The sixth, a woman, got off with a long prison sentence.)

Forty years passed.

In the last few years, there have been two documentary films about the crime. The first is "Reconstruction", by Irene Lusztig. Ms. Lusztig is Romanian-American, and the granddaughter of the sole survivor of the gang, the woman who was "let off" with a life sentence. The movie is her grandmother's story. Apparently it's quite something.

The second film, "The Great Communist Bank Robbery", came out just last year. It's about the crime, the investigation, the trials and the film. Apparently it includes interviews with former cellmates of the bank robbers, the cameraman for the "documentary" film, ordinary Romanians who saw the film in theaters... It's been shown in over twenty countries already, and has picked up rave reviews at international film festivals.

But it doesn't seem to be very popular here in Romania. I've asked half a dozen people about it -- colleagues, educated and literate Bucharesters -- and gotten back nothing but shrugs. Nobody knows about the old bank robbery, and nobody knows about the films about the bank robbery.

Some of this may be generational... hardly anybody that I work with is older than, oh, early 50s. (Which is a point worth a blog entry in its own right.) But it does seem a little odd that nobody has heard of the documentaries.

Romanian readers, thoughts on this? Has anyone seen either of these films? (Non-Romanian readers, can you even find them?)

The Pope and I

So, the new pope. German. Very conservative. And very old.

And the uncle of a good friend of mine. The friend is Protestant, btw.

Don't blame me, OK? I didn't vote for him.

Structuralism and science fiction; or, who is the true alpha geek of this blog?

So I have been bingeing on Claude Levi-Strauss lately. CLS is an excellent memoirist in his own right, and despite the subject's reputation for obscurity, his expositions on structuralism can be quite engaging. I personally think that the Native American subject matter of Mythologiques has contributed to this reputation. Let's face it, the Bororo and the Kwakiutl aren't exactly household names in most places.

The Pure Product of America: But Carlos, isn't this French theory? Of no relevance to anything other than itself? I know you, you like reading about epicycles too. What can you use this for?

Well. Hm. I'd say that structuralism can be an interesting organizing principle that can sometimes lead to new insights. I wouldn't call it the Holy Grail of human thought or anything, but here's an example.

I recently read Kate Elliott's novel Jaran. It's a culture clash anthropological romance, which means it's science fiction. A female offworlder and a complex yet fundamentally moral nomadic warlord fall in love; wackiness, as is said, ensues.

The set-up is formulaic, but there are unusual incidental details. The warlord, a fellow named Ilya Bakhtiian, is poised to conquer his world; and he and the heroine have difficult fertility issues.

Now, Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor -- which I will take a wild guess is somewhat familiar to certain readers of this blog -- is also a culture clash anthropological romance, where a female offworlder and a complex yet fundamentally moral warlord fall in love. We later learn that Aral Vorkosigan has already conquered a world, and the fertility issues in his marriage drive every subsequent book. (Whew, no spoilers.)

The specific internal explanation of these common elements differs markedly: there's an immunological incompatibility (somewhat like the Rh factor) between Ilya Bakhtiian and Tess Soerensen; on the other hand, Cordelia Naismith is exposed to a teratogenic chemical weapon while pregnant. And these differences flow from deep within the author's backstory.

Of course, the publication dates for these two books are 1994 and 1986 respectively, so it's possible that Shards of Honor influenced the basic plot of Jaran.

This is where structuralism comes in. Are there other novels that contain this structure, which pairs infertility with conquering the world? And if so, how do they develop it?

The first one that came to mind was M.J. Engh's Arslan. In this one, a Turkmeni general during the Cold War manages to use the logic of Mutually Assured Destruction to take over the world, and then renders the world's population infertile for crackpot ecological reasons.

There are commonalities in unusual incidental details. All three conquerors have strong affinities to Russia and central Asia: Ilya Bakhtiian (the nomads in Jaran nearly all have Russian names, although their language seems to be more Altaic); Aral Vorkosigan, with the Aral Sea referenced in his given name, and his last name derived from Vor + Kosigan ~ Kosygin; and General Arslan of Turkmenistan.

But, instead of being a romance, Arslan is a dystopia. The United States is conquered, and the novel begins with Arslan brutally raping two Illinois high school students as a show of his power.

(Incidentally, one of the students raped is male; and all three world conquerors are bisexual.)

So the romance is reversed, inverted. Instead of the moral conqueror, we have an amoral one; instead of love, rape; and instead of the conqueror's personal fertility being diminished, the world's fertility is diminished instead. It's a classical structuralist inversion.

Arslan was first published in 1976. I don't think it influenced Shards of Honor much.

Moving further afield, I think Orson Scott Card's early Ender novels might also fit this pattern.

Originally, "Ender's Game" was a short story about a child genius whom the Earth's military uses to wipe out an alien race by having him play 'video games'. According to Card, its genesis had to do with the dramatic problems of presenting the mechanics of a space battle on stage. Card later expanded it into a young adult novel, and then wrote a sequel (and then another, and another, until the Enderverse is now its own cottage industry. But I digress).

In the novel Ender's Game, the young Ender wipes out all the insect-like "Buggers", again through the power of video games. (By this point, Card had become a columnist for COMPUTE! magazine, where he reviewed new game releases.) He's a Third, a third child in a future world where the goverment limits couples to two children. The elimination of the Bugger threat -- and man, I sound like John Derbyshire here -- allows humanity to settle their worlds, which is done along ethnic lines, and breed like bunnies.

So fertility and world conquering are again linked. (I dunno what happened to the demographic transition in the Enderverse; perhaps Card's Mormon background has something to do with its absence.)

But Ender feels remorse; and at the same time discovers the last egg of the Buggers, from which they can rebuild their civilization. He becomes an itinerant eulogist, beginning with the Queen of the Buggers, going anonymously from ethnic world to ethnic world, looking for a place to hatch his egg. His eulogies become something like a religion, while Ender himself remains single and celibate. (But not bisexual! Though I don't know about you, but the egg thing sounds a little gender-bendy to me.)

In Speaker for the Dead, Ender ends up on a Brazilian-settled world (Card did his missionary work in Brazil) that happens to have the only other intelligent race discovered up to that time. For plot reasons, the population of the settlement is limited; if it grows beyond a certain point, the excess will be ferried off by the interstellar government. There's also an order of married but celibate Catholics located there. I think it's safe to say human fertility is a dominant theme in this novel. Anyway, assorted killings and revelations occur, but in the first editions of the book, Ender finally settles down with a feisty widow with a passel of kids, and they start work on the next generation of Enders immediately. It's a charming ending.

Card changed this ending with the publication of a sequel, and new printings of Speaker for the Dead contain his revision. Now, Ender and his new wife don't have marital relations, and are (understandably, in my opinion) incredibly bitchy to each other.

Would it surprise you to discover that this sequel is about Ender's stand against further human acts of xenocide? It's called, oddly enough, Xenocide. Once again, the moral world conqueror has restricted personal fertility; while the amoral world conqueror would restrict the fertility of others.

I wonder if this structure can be traced back to the early days of modern science fiction, to Isaac Asimov's Foundation stories of the 1940s. There, the ambiguously presented world conqueror is called... the Mule, and is personally sterile. It seems to be Asimov's personal innovation, since he intended the Mule's role in the Foundation stories to be roughly analogous to Muhammad's role in European history. And Muhammad (as Asimov knew) had descendants.

Anyway. Any thoughts, or (better yet) other examples?

Feast or famine

Apparently it is possible to fall asleep after drinking three cups of strong coffee and having jackhammers wielded by laughing Caribbean men operate less than ten meters from one's head.

Darn allergies. (Or maybe it is age! Woo-hoo!)

Fourth cup. Mmmm.

Over the Top

David can climb out of his crib.

In theory, the crib is only guaranteed up to 18 months. David is 21 months old. In practice, though, the manufacturers put pretty huge margins of error. If a 17 and 1/2 month old child falls out of their crib and hurts himself, the liability is immense. So, usually, "safe to 18 months" means "save until sometime after age 2".

But David started climbing out this weekend.

He does it very deliberately. One leg up, up, to rest on the bar. Pullup on the other bar. Squirm and heave until his center of gravity is on the bar. Then, very carefully, lower himself until he's hanging off the bar on the outside. Drop the last inch or two to the floor.

He definitely knows he's being clever. Grins like a thief the whole time.

I'm hoping we can post some pictures.

Happy belated birthdays

First, we missed to announce publicly that Carlos celebrated his birthday this past week. We did send him a nice present, or so we hope, but the readers of this blog might want to add a wish or two for him, so there you go.

Then, we also missed our own birthday - the 2-year-anniversary of this blog. If you don't read German - the first entry was done by my brother Hajo who set the blog up for us (I had so no clue how to do this!). He was wondering what this was all good for, blogging being a relatively new thing for him and for us. Thanks again, Hajo! And thanks to our readers for perusing this blog - without readers, we wouldn't write. We'll try to be better about posting daily, promised.

Dungeons and Dragons in Romania (1)

I have become a sort of consultant to the Romanian Dungeons and Dragons community here in Bucharest.

There's a whole long backstory here. Short version: I used to play Dungeons and Dragons. Started back in high school, more than 20 years ago. Was on-and-off with it for a long time afterwards. Years might pass without playing, but I always got back to it.

(If you don't know what D&D is... hm, better google it than have me try to explain. It is a geeky hobby. Very geeky. So? I've mostly made peace with my inner geek. I also like birdwatching. What can you do.)

I was running a campaign when we lived in Serbia. (Oh yes, there are D&D players in Serbia. Quite a few of them.) I had to give it up when we moved here. By that time David was joining us, and we were pretty busy. So I put roleplaying games out of my mind.

But I occasionally wondered if there were D&D players here in Romania. I asked around, but nobody seemed to have heard of any. Google showed nothing. Oh, well, I thought. I don't have the time anyway.

But then...

(More in a bit, if people are interested.)

Davidspeak 101

David, 20 months old, has his own language. It's a mixture of English, German and Romanian, with a few words all his own.

Here's a short glossary.

chocolate - chocolate
bonbon - any sweet food that's not chocolate
supa -- soup. From either Ger. Suppe or Rom. supa
chicken -- chicken
Nudeln! -- noodles, pasta. From Ger. Everything else that's edible and hot.

moo - cow
wau wau - dog. From German wauwau, "doggie"
keeka - cat. May be from English kitty cat, or possibly from Rom. pisica, cat.

ja - yes. German.
nei - no. German.
ba da -- oh yes, certainly. Romanian.
ba nu -- but no. I think not. Romanian.
(The two latter ones are usually used in a screaming match with his brother.)

aua (owa) -- ouch. German.
heiss -- hot. German.
Hoppalala -- oopsie. From Hoppla, "whoops!" German.

moon -- moon
Sonne -- sun. German.

runter -- From German herunter, "come down". David uses it for any kind of vertical motion, also for "go up" and "pick me up".

jakka -- jacket. Ger. Jacke, or Rom.
boots -- boots. But always said with great emphasis. "BOOTS!"
keys -- keys.

badda -- bath. From Ger. bad, bath. The extra syllable is because he usually hears it as a modifier (badewasser, bathwater) or conjugated (baden, take a bath).

backhoe -- any kind of construction equipment that's not a truck.
truck -- truck, bus, any big vehicle that's not a backhoe.
auto -- car, but not a taxi.
taxi -- taxi.
up -- pick me up.
bubbles -- bubbles (in the bath).
bingo -- sing to me. From "B-I-N-G-O", an American children's song.
pizza! -- the sound of the doorbell at dinner time. (No, we don't order out for pizza that often. But he really likes it.)

(The observant reader will have noticed this cluster of English words are all sort of... Doug-related.)

meins -- mine, give me, I want. German.
kuss -- kiss. German.

copii -- children. Romanian. Makes sense, right? He usually sees lots of children at the playground, and he usually goes to the playground with Vali.
gata -- finished. Romanian.
mai mai - more. From Rom. mai mult, more.

yeeeh! -- You are paying too much attention to my brother Alan, and not enough to me. Etymology unclear, but it seems to be a word (rather than a squeal of outrage).

Annan -- Alan, his brother
Bali -- Vali, the babysitter

His passive vocabulary is much bigger, and more completely trilingual. So you can ask for his Augen or his ochii, and he'll point to his eyes.

Just recently, he's started to "code shift". That means he's beginning to sort words into groups -- languages -- depending on who he's talking to. For instance, today we drove past Herestrau, the big lake in Bucharest's suburbs. He turned to me and said "Wasser!" (water). Then he turned to Vali, the babysitter, and said "Apa!" And he's starting to say "Bye-bye", "Tschüss", or "Pa!", depending one who he's talking to.

I guess that means soon his David-language will sort out into English, German and Romanian. Which is wonderful, but... we'll miss it.

Bye-bye.

A couple of suggestions for CFR

I've had reason to ride on Romanian trains several times recently.

This has made me think of a few simple ways that CFR, the Romanian state-owned railroad, might perhaps improve its services.

1) Schedules. There's one big train schedule, up on the wall of the station.

And that's it. Oh, paper schedules, in the form of a little booklet, are theoretically available from one window. In practice, they always seem to be out. And they're not available anywhere else but that one window.

The big schedule on the wall is of limited value, because it just lists arrivals, departures, and destinations. Like,

DEPARTURE

10:42 Ploesti, Sinaia, Brasov, Sighisoara

-- plus a color code to tell you what category of train.

That's nice, but it doesn't tell you (for instance) what time the train gets into Sighisoara; or whether it has first class compartments or couchettes or a dining car; or what other trains it might connect with. The paper schedule tells you those things, but, well.

So, if you want to make a connection... tough. Or if you're wondering when your train will arrive... better ask the conductor.

Now, in most European countries there are big poster-sized schedules all over every train station. They give all that information, and more. This isn't something unique to rich Western countries, either; they're in the train stations in Zagreb and Belgrade.

Would it be so hard to do this in Bucharest? Or -- might it be possible for kiosks in the station to sell the paper schedules?

2) In the "International" ticket office, might it be possible to have someone who speaks English?

I recently had to make a moderately complex booking: night train from Bucharest to Cluj, then a different train from Cluj to Budapest. This took nearly half an hour. The woman at the counter was friendly, but... it went sort of like this:

"As a foreigner, you will undoubtedly want the rather nice Train A, which is an Intercity train with a dining car. It goes through Timisoara."

"Actually, I prefer Train C, because it gets into Budapest at 2:00 pm instead of 4:30, and I would like time to get to my hotel and rest before my wife and children arrive around 6:00."

"Train C does not exist."

"Yes, it does. It leaves from Cluj. I want to take Train B from Bucharest to Cluj. It leaves at 10:45 in the evening and arrives at 6:00 am."

"But then you would have to take Train C from Cluj to Budapest."

"Yes, that's right. That's what I want."

"No, you should take Train A. It is a direct train."

"No, please, I prefer Trains B and C."

...in recounting this, I've come to wonder if there was a subtext that I missed at the time. Train C, it turned out, was small, crowded, and not very clean. It didn't have couchettes or sleeping cabins or a dining car. It took 7 hours to go from Cluj to Budapest. Now I wonder if she wasn't trying to gently guide me towards the direct international route, with a "nicer" train.

Still: that conversation took half an hour, because nobody in that office spoke more than ten words of English. (Nor German either.) So it was all in my limited Romanian.

On the plus side, everyone was perfectly friendly. If they were being deliberately stubborn, they were politely so.

It could be a bit more user friendly, is all.

The truth must be told

You don't know what the world has come to if you haven't heard of the Unitarian Jihad yet.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

And I want it right now

A followup to this recent post by my dear wife.

She's right. Americans are squeamish about pain; Germans are squeamish about painkillers. Asking for painkilers, unless you're clearly in agony, is seen as moral weakness.

Exaggeration? Two data points.

(1) Eight hours after double hernia surgery, lying in the hospital bed. Nurse comes in. Hello nurse: can I have something for the pain, please? Nurse frowns. Well... we have eebu proFEEN. You can have one.

Pause while I process this. Eebu... Ibuprofin. Known to my people as Tylenol. We buy them at the drugstore in big American bottles, 200 at a time. I'm post-op for abdominal surgery and she's offering me a Tylenol. One Tylenol.

But do not argue with the German nurse, Doug, so "Yes, please, I would like an Eebuprofeen."

A couple of hours pass. Food is served. Let me add here that the service at the hospital -- a small one, in a German town of about 20,000 people -- was excellent in every other respect. Everyone was professional, the surgeon came to visit me twice, and when I woke up hungry at midnight the nurses scrounged up a snack for me. When food got served, I ate it and my plate got whisked away... no staring for two hours at the congealing remains of a poached egg. I asked for tea, got a big pot of really hot water and a selection of tea bags. And two weeks later, when I had some mysterious post-op symptoms, I called the hospital and the surgeon called me back (in Romania!) half an hour later. It's a good system.

Except: after dinner I ask the nurse again. Maybe something for the pain, please?

A deeper frown, this time. "I see that you have had an eebuprofeen already!"

I hang my head. Yes, it is true. I am weak. It's been nearly twelve hours since my abdominal surgery, and I want ANOTHER Tylenol. "Yes, please."

She breaks out a little push-packet of four pills. "Well. Here are eebuprofeens. Take one now. You can take another one in the morning." She looks at me a little dubiously -- who knows what the foreigner will do? Can he be trusted to handle three of these pills? -- and then puts them on the night table.

Can I just say? My dear wife's point about allowing a little pain... enough to keep you on your back when you should be on your back; enough to keep you from doing something stupid -- is valid. But the night after abdominal surgery, this is so not an issue. You could be doped to the gills on Flintstones Chewable Morphine, and you still would be lucky to manage a slow shuffle to the bathroom and back.

After the surgery, I stayed with my in-laws for three days before flying back to Romania. (Which was probably not such a great idea, but that's another story.) Later, my mother-in-law said to my wife:

"Yes, Doug was in a lot of pain! He was taking painkillers!"

(2) Two years ago, I made the mistake of going to a German dentist. I did not know then about the "anesthesia is a luxury" rule. These little cultural differences! Who can keep track of them all!

I'm going to make a long story short by saying, there are four words you really don't want to hear from your dentist:

"Now... be a hero!"

Possibly I've had two unusual encounters? German readers are welcome to comment.

(My limited experience with Romanian medicine is that they're closer to Americans than Germans in this respect. But it's very limited experience, and I welcome correction.)

Because my friends can never have too much shameless promotion

I don't usually do link posts. But hey, it's the weekend, and I have a place to sleep that isn't someone's living room, bathtub, or minivan. So I will live a little.

John Krewson, formerly of Verona, Wisconsin, has a KAMANDI story in the latest Bizarro World comics collection (and Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer were somehow involved too). For those not in the know, KAMANDI is the Last Boy on Earth, as imagined by Jack Kirby, who apparently saw The Planet of the Apes under the influence of a psychedelic egg cream. In the future, the animal people have taken over! And only KAMANDI can save them! But KAMANDI is tired of his role:

Yesterday the greedy Snake Men of Las Vegas! Last week the Blind Mole Men of the Midwest! Last month the Brightly Tie-Dyed Ferrets of Boulder! I have problems of my own, y'know!!!

Joe Garden, formerly of Richland Center, Wisconsin, is campaigning to fill Conan O'Brien's late night talk show host position in 2009. Vote Joe!

Tim Harrod, who used to live in Madison, Wisconsin, is now writing for Conan himself. Mighty thews indeed.

I'd be remiss in not mentioning Johnny Pez's Wojtyla fanfic at this time. Never fear, it's not slash.

And finally, Bad Mama's Peanut, currently of Madison, Wisconsin, has her casts off, yay! And now she wants to eat your brains, I guess because they're good for growing bodies. I trust Bad Mama will substitute some other high phosphorus food, like fish sticks, in place of brains. Mmm, fish sticks.

Hostages

Romania has three hostages in Iraq.

They're journalists, and they went to Iraq on a reporting trip -- one of them interviewed Prime Minister Allawi, the day before they were kidnapped -- and they got grabbed on March 28. So this has been a continuing story in Romania for the last two weeks.

Romania participates in the occupation of Iraq. There are about 850 Romanian soldiers there -- one full battalion, with the catchy name of "The Red Scorpions",deployed in the Al-Nasyria area -- and this number was scheduled to rise to about 1000 by the end of this year.

It probably still will. The involvement in Iraq is not particularly popular in Romania; a recent poll showed 55% of Romanians indifferent or opposed. Nevertheless, President Basescu has said that the Romanian troops will remain "until democracy is established". Former PM Nastase said much the same thing, so it appears that support for Romania's participation crosses party lines.

Why? Well, Romania places a high value on the security relationship with the US. (A cynic might suggest that they're keeping up the payments on their national security insurance policy.) The numbers involved are not large, and no Romanian soldiers have been killed yet, so up until now it hasn't seemed like a very expensive investment on Romania's part. So, while there's not much popular support, the political class is pretty solidly behind it.

One interesting effect of this is that by the end of this year, Romania may be the fourth largest coalition partner in Iraq, after the US, Britain and South Korea.

Back to the hostages: there are some weird aspects to the case. It's still not clear who kidnapped them. They were accompanied by a fourth person, an Arab-American who may also have had Romanian citizenship (or maybe not); it's not clear what his involvement is. A videotape of the hostages surfaced; it has some peculiarities (like, hostage guards who don't seem to know how to hold their guns) that make some people wonder if the whole thing is some sort of set-up.

As to what happens next... it's really not clear. More than 150 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq over the past year. (Many more Iraqis, of course.) Most have been freed after negotiations or payment of ransom, but about a third have been killed.

More on this when there is more.

Morphine to the rescue?

I'm a German married to an American. You'd think that these two cultures are similar enough that we don't keep running into cultural misunderstandings or even problems.

And the truth is, we don't - much. Whatever problems we have, we can usually solve without too much agony. This is not the case for our families, though. Some of those problems are funny or comical, most are simply annoying, a few are dead serious and have almost caused a rift.

Politics and religion are now forbidden topics in the US family whenever I'm present. I think you can imagine why.

Raising kids is another area of friction. It's amazing how much even modern concepts of childcare differ between Germany and the US. I would think the fact that both sides manage to raise their children without killing them off in large numbers indicates that there is more than one right way.

A favorite is always health care. Long hospital stays after childbirth in Germany cause frowning in the US. Heh, we just believe that a woman should thoroughly recover after birth and get a few days to adjust and rest. It's not as if we restrain new mothers in their hospital beds. If they want to go, they can go. If they want to stay for some days, they can stay. I find this concept utterly convincing.

A recent heated family discussion involved my dear husband and his double hernia surgery. His family was indignant that he was given ibuprofen for his post-surgery pain and not morphine. My family was horrified by the idea of giving morphine to anyone but terminal cancer patients. My sister-in-law told me that she was given morphine after her c-section. I've had two c-sections and I was just fine with less drastic pain killers. If the pain got too much, I would ask for higher dosage or something more potent, but morphine was never on the menu. We were both more or less openly horrified at the other doctor's choices.

While my family thought Doug was popping pills like candy, his family was upset about him never being offered morphine.

"But he just had major abdominal surgery! Ibuprofen is ridiculous! He was in pain!"

Well, yes, he was. I am the last person who wants to see Doug in pain but I understand the concept of some pain to prevent post-surgery patients from running marathons. Knocking them out with morphine is not a good idea, I don't think.

Granted, morphine is generally administered too late in Germany. My country is one of the strictest in that respect and palliative medicine is somewhat, hm, backward. At German dentists, you have to ask for anasthesia, otherwise you won't get any. It's also not paid for by the health insurance since it's not deemed necessary, unless the dentist suggests it for root canal treatments and such.

On the other side, my conception is that in the US there is an over-treatment of pain to the point where every single little itch has to be eliminated. Topically numbing the gums before the anasthesia shot is administered? How ridiculous is that? We call that shooting at sparrows with cannons.

It's one of those "you'd have to grow up with it" cultural concepts. Now I wonder what my boys will turn out to prefer.

BTW, the new icon is taken from this site. Copyright remains with them, of course.

We're back - and back online

We're back in Romania and after some frantic days, we're even back online, as of today. (Long story, and yes, it involves Astral and a threat of going to another service. How'd you guess?)

Blogging shall resume shortly. Really. I promise.

(I have lots to tell, indeed. Like, how my flight to the US had to turn around halfway across the Atlantic for a medical emergency. How I got the flight attendants on the shuttle from NY to WAS really, really nervous. How USCIS, formerly known as INS, has become efficient and yet, not. I also have about 30,000 spam messages accumulated in my inbox and important bills and things hidden in-between. So, first things first. But: we're back, and we're online. Yay.)

Desert apartment picks

My limited carrying capacity during the recent move pared down the garbage apartment library in an interesting way. Here's what I deliberately kept with me:

The Princeton Bollingen edition of Dante's Divine Comedy (six volumes)
Empire and Information: Intelligence gathering and social communication in India, 1780-1870, C.A. Bayly
Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit
Mother Nature: Maternal instincts and how they shape the human species, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
The collected works of Lorine Niedecker
The Horse Has Six Legs: an anthology of Serbian poetry, edited by Charles Simic

And the CDs:

Chopin: Favorite piano works, Vladimir Ashkenazy
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Moanin'
Alex Skolnick Trio, Transformation
Dizzy Gillespie y Machito, Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods
Mary Lou Williams, Black Christ of the Andes
Fela Kuti, Coffin for Head of State / Unknown Soldier

I ain't complaining.

There and back again

Finally settled in, at least for this month. The new apartment is a converted rec room, complete with wood panelling, padded minibar, mirrors all over the damn place, and (best of all) speakers embedded in the walls. Built before plasma TVs, otherwise there would be a special cabinet. If I were twenty, I'd think it was the most bitchen place imaginable.

Anyway, I have a new-found appreciation for the traditionally nomadic peoples, like hobos, waitresses, Mongols, and international consultants. I'd also like to give a big shout-out to the good people at Brooklyn's Fourth Avenue and Flatbush Avenue U-Hauls for their patience and professionalism.

I saw Robin Williams filming in a restaurant on Twelfth Street this morning in Brooklyn. His hair was perfect.

Incidentally, see Sin City see Sin City see Sin City. I'm finally part of a target demographic!

A humble blogger asks for recommendations

I've been a little burned out the last few days -- nothing like living on coffee and aspirin while apartment hunting -- and so I turn to you, the readership of Halfway Down the Danube, for recommendations regarding various items. You decide so I don't have to!

a) a cheap good quality all-area DVD player

b) a collection of Romanian poetry, single or multiple authors, in a good translation or bilingual edition (preferably both)

c) new luggage advice. All of mine has deteriorated markedly over the past few days.

d) interesting new music. I am suffering from mp3 withdrawal. Astonish me!

Thanks in advance,
Carlos

The missing posts, or, I won't be fooled again

There were things that I was going to post about in the past two weeks, posts which will have to be postponed, since my source materials are now scattered across two boroughs of New York City. But the basic theme was, "Why Jared Diamond is a jackass". Here are the main sections:

1) What Diamond knows about Chinese history could be written on the back of a matchbook

2) A foray into Sino-Tibetan linguistics

3) A foray into the concept of the Sprachbund

4) Southeast Asia a millennium ago, or those swarming Indians are wiping out native cultures left and right!

5) The strange case of Taiwan

6) The Nicobar and Andamanese languages, or what the hell?

7) The historical settlement of Fujian province, or how Diamond can't be expected to read the references he gives

8) The Austronesian languages

9) Blust and Bellwood's accomplishment, and Diamond's free ride on their express train

10) Why do people take a New Guinea bird guy like Diamond seriously on subjects far outside his expertise?

Mind, this only covers two chapters of Guns, Germs, and Steel. Don't even get me started on Collapse.

This fuellow won a Pulitzer. Why?