A convertible, a hot young mistress and a hot-air balloon

October 2nd, 2008 – A plane wreck has been discovered in the California Rockies. It is now confirmed that it was Steve Fossett’s plane, which disappeared over a year ago. An eccentric millionaire, Fossett was renowned for his death-defying stunts until it got the best of him in September 2007. He personally owned 100 world records including the first person to go solo around the world in an air-balloon. His last flight was performed solo in a small aircraft that was possibly swept up by a storm and smashed into the Rockies. Some people donate to charity and other go “Look what I can do!”.

Across the pacific, there is another eccentric man with too much money who loves to show off in the limelight. Richard Branson owns over 350 companies under his “Virgin” brand; it won’t stop him from risking his life in a hot air balloon (what is the deal with millionaires and balloons? A Phileas Fogg complex perhaps?). It is greatly surprising that he is still alive seeing that his own world record attempts such as the fastest crossing of the Atlantic and the circumnavigation of the globe by hot air balloon have been terribly unsuccessful. To be fair, Branson helped end South African apartheid along with Nelson Mandela and hosts a variety of environmental galas. Also to be fair, he is clearly a little bit bonkers in the head.

These two magnates have revitalized and even revolutionized economic sectors in the western world yet insist on nearly killing themselves for kicks. Is it simply because their life is not thrilling enough? Is it because they are constantly famished for fame? Is it because if YOU had a mid-life crisis and had a billion dollars in the bank, you would too? Is it because they are compensating for something..? All I know is that today, Steve Fossett is not a business man or a world record holder, he is a bag of spare parts strewn across Californian mountains that left a family in mourning to get his rocks off.

My point was short and sweet so I treat you to two more historical examples of money buying a nice sack of crazy instead of happiness.

The American Howard Hughes Jr. was a well-known industrialist in the early twentieth century. He also produced films, greatly advanced aeronautics technology and graciously funded humanitarian organisms. Then the mid-life crisis reared its ugly, crazy head. He became addicted to morphine, severely germophobic, a paranoid recluse and it has been said that his massive cash dealings with the Nixon family led to the Watergate scandal. In his home, he had his hair cut and nails trimmed once a year, surrounded himself with medical specialists and invited scores of Mormons to keep him company (even though he wasn’t one; he just had the feeling he could trust them). Most of this resulted from his numerous record attempts that often ended with a fiery wreck and a damaged Hughes. Today, we remember Mr. Burns’ portrayal of a crazy old man with Kleenex-box shoes in the Simpsons, not the philanthropist and visionary businessman.

Finally, taking a trip to ancient Rome, you may not be surprised that our last example is a Roman emperor. Although Nero and Caligula were notoriously unstable, Emperor Commodus better serves my point. Better known as Joachim Phoenix from Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator”, Commodus was the son of Marcus Aurelius and inherited a declining and severely threatened Empire. Nevertheless, this made him one of the richest men in the world and therefore a responsible and civically minded administrator…maybe not. He simply didn’t care for military life and instead, dedicated his reign to personally fighting in the Roman Coliseum. That’s right, chariot races, archery and gladiatorial combat; Commodus loved the crowd and certainly loved the figurative shooting of fish in a barrel. He particularly enjoyed slaying animals; he slaughtered, beheaded or impaled hundreds of lions, tigers, ostriches and elephants. He did not die in the Stadium yet we remember him as a creepy and unbalanced leader who permitted the downfall of Rome through Pride and Selfishness.

Two things to remember: people remember your death much more than your life, and money buys crazy.

(Pictured: Jules Verne's "around the World in 80 Days": source of rich-balloon fetish - What was found of Fossett and his plane.)

End.

... willow?

September 24th, 2008 - The presidential campaign of the United States may slow to a halt as Republican candidate John McCain wants to postpone all debates and electoral appearances. Mr. McCain feels that the current economic crisis is more important than the electoral campaign and therefore all should stop while the different branches of gouvernment establish a short and long-term solution. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party insinuates that this is only a campaign tactic in the midst of waining support for the Republicans. Furthermore, Democrats argue that the electoral campaign is crucial to acertain the motives and personal solutions of the next President who will be thrust into a financial nightmare very soon.

Firstly, one would think that McCain's gesture is a noble one, embodying integrity and courage to adress the real issues. He seems to aknowledge the general boredom and indifference of the Amercian populace towards an endless election year filled with propaganda, super-delegates, debates, an electoral college and Bristol Palin. In parallel, he acknowledges that the small voter cares a lot more about his wallet, his mortgage and the potential evaporation of his retirement fund than this excercise in democracy. Conversely, these elegant realisations seem to explicitely imply that Mr. McCain offers a concrete solution to really engage and solve American economic preoccupations. He is not, it is a ploy. He will join the president in the White House and they will debate over a 700 billion dollar plan to bail out financial institutions that dug their own fiscal grave over the past decade. I fail to see how anything will change for the accountant or sales clerk in Montana if the proposed plan is successful and what Mr. McCain will contribute to it.

This brings me to another point. Very few senators and gouvernors have come to the apocalyptic realisation that if this insane amount of capital fails to refinance and rebuild America's financial institutions, this recession will inevitably progress into full-blown depression; the kind with suicides on wall street, massive bankruptcies and food coupons.

In the blue corner, there are two very valid arguments against postponing the upcoming presidential debate this Friday ; one of which they have not used and may find interesting if they read this blog. Firstly, president Bush may be ridiculed worldwide yet the man is president and has a full cabinet that administer the most powerful nation on earth; he has my respect for that. Having established my lack of animosity towards the character, even I have to admit that he is the last person that should be adressing the Nation about economic policy and fiscal resolution. Furthermore, his presidency ends at the end of this year and if anyone is certain of anything, it is that the US economic quagmire will still be there in 2009. This is why both candidates must establish their own economic foresight and convince the electors of their worth (Note to CNN – this will constitute what we actually want from you, not a 2 hour exposé on Sarah Palin’s glasses). This is not a time to postpone anything; it is actually the WORST time to postpone anything.

The second argument against halting this campaign brings us to the historical portion of today’s class. Mr. McCain declared that this financial crisis supercedes politics and that we must stop this campaign to adress it. After mush research, I have discovered that this has NEVER occured in the United State’s 232 years of existence.

That’s right, when James Madison won the presidency in 1812, the British and French were intercepting and sinking their commercial ships and funding Indian raids on the country (a few randy Canadians even took a boat ride down south and burnt down the White House). When Ulysses S. Grant campaigned and won his 1868 elections it was amidst a painful national reconstruction following a civil war and the secession of the South. In 1916, promoting an impossible agenda of neutrality, Widrow Wilson would not pause his campaign as tens of thousands of soldiers were dying in trenches. He won months before he sent his own troops to Europe. Perhaps the greatest president the Americans have ever had, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, courageously campaigned his way to four terms as president. First in 1932, he proposed a shiny « New Deal » to lift the country out of economic depression. He did not have the wait and see attitude that would have left incumbent Herbert Hoover (the president who clearly failed to prevent the crisis *wink) to dream up his own 700 billion dollar solution. Finally, if there was ever a time to halt a campaign and postpone a debate, it was in 1944 when president Roosevelt won his fourth term. Pearl Harbour had shocked American minds, dissipating the illusions that the war was confined to Europe and that the dreaded "Yellow Peril" was an uncivilised nuisance at best, as social darwinism had stipulated at the time. 10,000 people died every day during the war and conscription guaranteed that every American family was impacted in some way by the war effort. Nonetheless, the campaign raged on and two candidates proposed their plan of action to end the war victoriously, speedily and decisively.

Republican candidate McCain may have fooled the public into thinking he was a considerate genius but we can be sure that he underestimates the importance of the electoral process profoundly; no matter how drawn-out and boring people may find it.

(Pictured: President Roosevelt signing the declaration of war against Japan - John McCain, stopping a speech to point out a squirrel)

End.

THE END IS COMING...AGAIN!

September 15th 2008 – Hackers have attacked the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) or the biggest and most expensive scientific experiment ever devised. Although causing minimal damage, these attacks come mere days after the collider conducted its first successful tests. You may not know what a Hadron collider is (much less a very large one) therefore I will tell you a story of immeasurable horror and how it may simply be a historical sequel.

Built underground across the Swiss-France border, this monstrosity is a circular particle accelerator. The “large” aspect of it comes from its 27 kilometers in diameter. It will be used for extensive and breakthrough nuclear research by spinning and smashing atoms, molecules and subatomic particles at speeds unseen as of yet by humanity and quite impossible in our immediate sector of the universe. I purposely used the grandest and vaguest terms to describe it so that you may see the elusive and mysterious glow of uncertainty that surrounds the machine and that has terrified extremist groups.

It may recreate the Big Bang and destroy the universe, it may produce a microscopic black hole and destroy the universe, it may create “strange matter” which theoretically transforms all connecting matter into unstable goop, destroying the universe and finally it could simply create a nuclear explosion that will kill us all. Unfortunately for the radical fear-mongers, the scientific parameters of the machine have been developed over the past 13 years (and 15 billion dollars) to produce limited effects and reactions that will be controlled and studied underground. No wonder CNN has covered 3 hurricanes continuously for the past two weeksinstead of this. If the Americans aren’t spinning the possible end of the world, there mustn’t be much credibility to the threat. That being said, there is a small possibility that we may all die very soon.

You see, even the scientists that have spent decades on the project have admitted that there is an infinitesimal chance of these catastrophic phenomena occurring, destroying the universe. We are talking one in a billion or so but that is assuming we currently possess all scientific knowledge that exists. We unfortunately know very little of the universe and its physical laws (scientists have proposed that over 95% of the Universe is unaccounted for, seriously, check it out). That is to say that the European Organization for Nuclear Research may be the next Manhattan Project who’s aims are noble and concern scientific advancement yet could end in human annihilation if it falls into the wrong hands.

In the early 1940s, the United States, England and Canada were arduously battling the Nazi agressor (or waiting for the Japanese to provoke them into doing so) and therefore these nations collaborated in an important scientific endeavour of defense and progress. Directed by J. Robert Oppenheimer and assisted by a plethora of specialists such as Albert Einstein, the project not only aimed to research the nuclear weapons that Nazi Germany were potentially developping but to create them as an incentive for peace. Oppenheimer and Einstein would never have though that their ingenious creation would become the angel of death for tens of thousands of Japanese civilians. Furthermore, they probably never thought that their research would lead to a terrifying 50 year stalemate where all industrialised countries would practise nuclear shelter drills in the utmost terror and where belligerent nations could potentially annihilate each other within a single day and a few buttons pressed.

Don't get me wrong, the LHC will not shatter the fabric of space-time, it will probably not even reveal the very interesting things that we are promised. It will slowly go back to being an unknown project that is just very big and very expensive (or will it...).

Have a nice week (please keep in mind it could be your last so go spend those RRSPs)

(Pictured: Trinity test, the first atomic bomb developped by the Manhattan Project - The LHC, a cross-section of the 27 km tube)

End.

Wind, Rain and Fire

September 1st, 2008 – Hurricane Gustav has just made landfall in Louisiana. Funny enough, after the last 100 hours of constant coverage, we realize that we know very little of this hurricane, its trajectory or why people keep building homes in New Orleans.

Firstly, to address televised media, especially the Cable News Network (CNN), we only had to tune in during the past four days for an immediate and crucial update. An update of what you may ask? Of absolutely nothing I would say. We begin by visually sifting information from the two news tickers at the bottom and the blue storm watch bulletins on either side of the screen to be told that a hurricane hit New Orleans a while back and that this recent one will also contain winds and is going really fast. We proceed to see Anderson Cooper holding onto a telephone poll about 4 meters away from the hurricane screaming “This hurricane is windy and it’s raining sideways!”. Then, for the twelfth time in one day, the camera abruptly cuts out and the newsroom at CNN tells us not to worry; Anderson cooper may have been impaled by a Chevrolet but at least the population knows that a hurricane-prone region of the world currently has a hurricane and that it is a windy and rainy one. Lather, rinse and repeat. Lather, rinse repeat. Blah, blah, blah… You may think I am dramatically reducing their expert journalism to a minimum of cynical critique yet I promise you that in the last 4 days, CNN has not told us anything about Hurricane Gustav that a 10-year old couldn’t have guessed. It is important to know that there currently is a hurricane, several thousand citizens have been evacuated and there is a possibility of raising gas prices (exactly how and why, no one knows). But to pound out images, specialists and reports every hour, simply to promote fear should be below CNN and below basic journalistic integrity (obviously if we do not take into consideration the six months of non-stop fear mongering following September 11th, 2001).

Secondly, just as the inhabitants of southern Japan, Hawaii’s Western Islands, most of Florida and the Swiss Alps, the denizens of New Orleans inhabit a natural hazard zone…on purpose. Safe for the Third World deserts and flooding deltas of Southern Asia, the regions including frequent earthquakes, cyclones, avalanches, typhoons and volcanic eruptions are inhabited by people who have the means to move; especially if it means avoiding a violent death at any given time. I understand nationalism and regionalism. I understand a sense of belonging and community. I even understand a sense of tradition or a fear of change. What I will NEVER understand is someone believing that any one of the former justifications is enough to risk their life and their family’s life every day.

Taking into account modern transportation, internationalisms and globalization, uprooting your family and moving around is as easy as 123. Take these things away and you are left with the early modern cities of XVIIth and XVIIIth century Europe. Moving required braving the elements, disease, days or weeks of walking to the next towns and ultimately being shunned for being an outsider. Instead, generation after generation of very poor people littered the streets and overcrowded the few urban centers of the Old World. Ghettos sprouted like mushrooms and thus the great epidemics and deadly fires (being the greatest “natural” disasters of the time) of the last 700 years took place.

As an example, ironically not fitting my own profile, is the great fire of London in 1666. Burning down 90% of all houses, the fire spread rapidly throughout the poor districts of the city. It destroyed millennia of historical heritage from the Roman walls to the medieval infrastructure for 3 days, sparing the aristocratic domains. This was certainly not the first nor the last fire of London yet they rebuilt on top of the rubble for lack of options. This example does not fit my rant simply because of the adjective “deadly”. Somehow, this epic conflagration killed 8 of the city’s 80,000 inhabitants.

To New Orleans I say be strong, be careful and MOVE!

To CNN I say: If the people are watching you give the same 5 facts about rain and wind for four straight days, you must be geniuses.

End

(P.S.: Another more intangible reason for which people didn’t move after natural disasters during the Modern Ages was that they believed God did it. They obviously deserved it and God would do it again no matter where they would be.)

(P.P.S.: I always found it suspicious that the Great Fire of London happened in 1666. It is very possible that it never actually happened and was invented by the King to scare people out of smoking in bed.)

(Pictured: The Great Fire of London - Hurricane Gustav, CNN caption reads "Hurricane knows where you live and is coming to get you!")

The best Olympics ever

August 19th 2008 – After 10 days of Olympic competition, three aspects of Beijing’s Games have maintained international attention. Firstly, the pretty little girl that didn’t sing as opposed to the ugly one that did. Secondly, the unfathomable amounts of money spent by the Chinese gouvernment to hold these Games. Finally, the mutant called Phelps and his status as greatest person to ever do anything in the universe.

Let us begin with the supposed controversy that the opening ceremonies involved trickery and deceit. Apparently, the little girl who sang the Chinese people’s anthem was only lip-synching to the lyrics of another little girl backstage. The western world has understood the concept of a pretty face presenting the work of an intellect in the shadows for at least a century. All western politicians have legions of speechwriters, image consultants, clothing experts and media liaisons to make the man (or black man) in power SEEM like the cleanest, best, friendliest and most confident leader possible. Furthermore, new media technologies now offer us the possibility of only seeing pretty people on television and in movies. They are not necessarily singing or acting as much as posing and mouthing at the camera. Fortunately, that is all we really want. We know of their marketing and manipulation tactics yet we are not outraged at MTV because they airbrushed an artist or at the shopping network trying to sell us a steak knife that cuts through cement. Why is China evil when they employ the exact same marketing tactics we’ve had for decades? And NO, it is not different because they are children. Regardless of what people say, not all kids are beautiful and you will notice that only the pretty ones have their faces displayed in the picture frames at Sears.

Also, some of the fireworks we saw on television during the ceremony were actually pre-recorded rather than live. Fireworks are unpredictable (wind, humidity, fog, misfires) and thus they backed up their multimillion-dollar display with recorded footage. Of the two billion people who watched the event, only a handful of zealous journalists noticed and exactly no one cared until the media told them to. The only difference it made was that we were much more entertained than if the thick smog hid the fireworks display.

On another note, the other day I saw Hugh Laurie stick his hand in someone’s open chest and pull out a tapeworm. I surprisingly still enjoyed the episode of house, knowing it was a plastic torso and worm. I also watched professional wrestling and could totally see that their punches weren’t landing. I was so disillusioned that I vowed to only watch sports that weren’t fixed in advance like boxing, televised poker and Baseball. My naïve self expected non-stop live presentation of realistic people in realistic situations from my television. I was sorely disappointed that Star Trek was not live feed from the International Space Station. Television is the fakest presentation of fake things happening to fake people (double all the fakes for reality television). There is nothing wrong with that, otherwise we would look out the window or go out instead of watch a fat person lose two pounds and cry for 35 minutes.

(I am kidding, nothing could ever convince me to watch baseball).

Moving on.

The Chinese Olympic Committee and the Chinese government have allegedly spent billions of dollars on these games. Just the opening ceremonies cost a cool 100 million dollars for a 4-hour show. Some people may frown upon a third-world nation that spends a percentage of its GDP on a two-week party but I say nay. The Chinese have an image to keep up and doing so requires them to spend more money, use more performers and win more gold medals than we can possibly imagine. In a measly four years, they have built massive sports infrastructure and developed competitive talent in sports they hadn’t even heard of a few years ago (see canoeing). I will not be ethnocentric and impose my values of democracy, human writes and feeding children on Hu Jintao and the Communist Party of China.

That’s right, we must not forget that China is a communist nation. As such, China spends more on international image than on rural infrastructure or long-term economic development (It worked well for the USSR). It is unfortunate but the evidence is there. Actually, they are not necessarily hypocritical about their designs by hiding them. It’s just that very little people speak Mandarin in the Western World and so we may instinctively think they are hiding something. We might have to wait a century before Chinese languages prevail over English and thus we will be one happy homogenous family (unlike the failure of the British, German, French, Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Russian, Swedish, Japanese and American empires before).

Finally,

These Olympics, we have been treated to the greatest amount of Gold Medals by a single athlete in a single Games ever. Michael Phelps has continuously volunteered for drug testing on top of mandatory tests therefore we cannot accuse him of any wrongdoing (Unless American chemists have developed undetectable performance-enhancers… I am just being paranoid, it could never happen). He seemingly deserves these medals and congratulations to him. It was exhilarating to see him swim and win until I noticed an odd trend. People are huddled around televisions to see the human-dolphin hybrid swim and are overwhelmed with emotion when he shatters the world record in a particular event. The thing is, he DESTROYED the Olympic record in one event and shattered the world records in the other 7. Furthermore, the other competitors that would invariably finish on the silver and bronze medal positions would also smash their personal best, national best and world record… I thought that world records where these limits of human performance that were only rarely pushed by a small increment… Have these swimmers been holding back dramatically during practice and competitions in the last decade or is there something more nefarious at work here. My suspicion is based on metaphysics rather than facts but here goes: I insinuate that the Chinese desire for ratings and notoriety is behind this. By somehow reducing the water resistance in their pool, even by a percent or two, they could guarantee the establishment of new and unbeatable records. Hence, we would be talking about the Beijing swimming events for the next few decades. Think about it, it sounds like they would have the resources and motive to do this… they are clearly hiding something.

Michael Phelps has the most gold medals and this criterion seems to be enough to designate him as the best Olympian of all time. Here are some other factors to be taken into account:

- Today’s wet suits have substantially decreased record times.
- In the first few Olympic games, swimming events took place in open sea.
- For an athlete competing in the triathlon, he would have to compete for 32 years to get 8 gold medals. There is one triathlon per Olympics and 497 swimming events.
- Half of the planet’s countries have little access to water (Africa), much less an Olympic swimming delegation. However, every country can run the 100 meters.
- The Chinese did something with the water.
- Former Olympians Pieter Van Den Hogenband and Ian Thorpe were not competing, leaving Phelps with relatively no competition.

I am not saying that Phelps’ accomplishment is not among the greatest athletic achievements of all time. I am just trying to nuance the absolutist terminology used by worldwide media this week (best, legend, God, Greatest, fish-boy).

My Gold medal for BEST Olympian still goes to Jesse Owens, a black man who won 4 gold medals (athletics) under Hitler’s nose in the 1936 Berlin games. He was constantly berated and jeered by the spectators celebrating their official German racism yet ran and jumped well ahead of his Aryan competitors. Once he came back to the United States as an Olympic hero, he was generously rewarded with a lucrative and dignified career racing against horses on a track. Life and History are generally unfair but it definitely sucks more for some.

Happy Olympic season, it is the greatest…

(Pictured: Jesse Owens, One-upping the Nazis - Freedom officers looking on at the pre-recorded fireworks display - Michael Phelps, NOT experiencing the side-effects of performance-enhancers)

End.