The Fort Worth/Dallas Greater Metroplex

The Doc and I just got back from visiting the Dallas half of our grandkids.  As the oldest of the bunch was graduating from high school (yes, I’m that old), it was an excuse for both of my sons, What’s-His-Name and the The-Other-One, and me to play computer games together and drink beer.   Naturally, this upset the women, so we turned off the computers and binge-watched BeardMeatsFood on YouTube and drank beer.  

BeardMeatsFood ought to be compulsory watching at Weight Watcher meetings.  Where does such a skinny guy put all that food?  I watched the guy eat a 72-ounce steak and a monster basket of French fries, then ask for the dessert menu.   After that, I could barely finish a salad for dinner.  And is there anything more indicative of First World Problems than the existence of competitive food eaters?

After the graduation party, when he asked me what I wanted to do, I immediately dragged my son down to Dealey Plaza to go through the museums, particularly the excellent new Holocaust Museum next to the infamous School Book Suppository Building.   He really wasn’t surprised as I’ve inflicted museums on him in six countries.  So far.

Besides the museums, we took the compulsory walk along Elm Street and looked at the large ‘X’ painted on the tarmac.  As I turned and looked back towards the sixth floor, I couldn’t help but wish for the tree to have been that tall sixty years ago.

As I slowly walked towards the grassy knoll, I encountered a wild-eyed old man with crazy white hair and I knew instantly that he was some kind of half-witted conspiracy loon who was going to grab my arm, drag me to the top of the small hill, all the while lecturing me on “who really did it”.  Then, from the raised eyebrows and concerned look on his face, it suddenly dawned on me that the poor man was seeing the same apparition approaching him and fully expected me to behave the same way.  Luckily, we passed each other without incident.

It is probably a good thing that I don’t live near Dallas.  I would probably visit that grassy knoll once a month, hiding empty rifle shell casings like easter eggs for the fools who gather daily, intent on discovering the long-lost clue that has evaded everyone else for the last six decades.

“Look, Myrtle!  There it is, behind the tree!  I knew it all along…the real killer was here!”

Dallas has certainly changed in my lifetime.  I remember when, if you traveled east from Fort Worth on the newly completed turnpike, first there were fields and cows, then Arlington and the construction site where they were building Six Flags, followed by more cows and fields and then you hit Dallas.  Today, the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex spans than twelve counties and is the fastest growing metropolitan area in the United States.

A five-minute drive down any freeway shows what is probably more new commercial construction than exists in all of New Mexico.  One of the really striking features is the erection of vast warehouses and factory complexes with signs offering space to rent, meaning that investors are so confident of finding potential lessees that they are building large commercial buildings in advance of need.  The whole metroplex is attracting business and people eager to seek lower crime, relief from state income tax, and a business-friendly atmosphere.  

The area now has a population larger that eight million, it has an economy that is larger than Houston’s and only slightly smaller than Chicago’s, and it is still growing.  If the area were an independent country, the economy of the new nation would rank in the top twenty—right above Switzerland and the Netherlands.  And the economy is growing faster than most of those countries above it on the list.

Let’s project the current economic trends into the future just a little bit—say, 25 years.  This requires us to do a little guess work and to make a few assumptions.  If current trends continue, we are likely to see continued economic flight from New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles while we see continued growth in the already massive Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.  In just 25 years, both the economy of and the population of the area will be larger than Chicago’s, which will drop to fifth place in the nation (lower than Houston’s).  The top two spots will remain New York and Los Angeles, while the total economy of Texas will come close to tying the economy of California.  

This kind of economic growth invites comparisons with the economy of neighboring New Mexico, where economic stagnation is the rule.  It wasn’t that long ago that the headline story in my local newspaper heralded the opening of a new coffee shop.  Sadly, the most valuable export from New Mexico is neither energy nor green chile, but our educated children, who must leave the state in search of good jobs.

I hope New Mexico never becomes as populated as Fort Worth and Dallas are about to become, but we could use little more economic development, at least enough to create some jobs, raise the standard of living, and keep our children from leaving the state.  

Politically, New Mexico has looked to California as a role model for our economic policy.  Perhaps it is time we looked at what is working in Texas.

The Books Lost on the Titanic

When the Titanic sank April 15, 1912, there was, indeed, a tragic loss of life.  Of the  2,240 souls who sailed on Titanic, over 1500 men, women, and children went down with the White Star liner.  Widows and orphaned children mourned their losses, and the loss of an “unsinkable” ship caused a shock wave that is still rippling across our culture.  Since three times as many first-class men survived in the lifeboats as the number of steerage class children who drowned, the myths of class and male chivalry were severely challenged.

Note.  Everyone knows that Captain Smith went down with his ship.  Roughly 75% of the crew perished when the great ship sank.  Less widely known is that the crew included two children, Frederick William Hopkins (Plates Steward) and William Albert Watson (Bellboy), both only 14 years old.  Exactly what happened to the two children is unknown, but neither made it to the safety of a lifeboat.

Besides the immense loss of life, the sinking of the RMS Titanic also resulted in the loss of valuable cargo, including works of art, a valuable and rare book, and the property of all those who were traveling on the ship.  Did you know that part of that lost cargo included some important and irreplaceable books?

Probably the most valuable book lost with Titanic was a jewel-encrusted copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that was a unique and lavishly decorated edition.  This book, often referred to as “The Great Omar”, was so carefully crafted that it took the London bookbinders, Sangorski and Sutcliffe, three years to complete.

The book was breathtakingly magnificent, measuring 16 inches by 13 inches and it was encrusted with 1,050 jewels including specially cut rubies, topazes, and emeralds.  Over 100 square feet of gold leaf and some 5,000 pieces of leather were used in its creation.  The cover of Moroccan leather was inlaid with a depiction of three peacocks with their tail feathers spread dramatically, and included gold embroidery in the details.  Only black and white photos were taken of the valuable book, but a digitized color image of the book was created by the BBC in 2001 (right).

The book, nicknamed ‘The Great Omar’ was being shipped aboard the Titanic to a New York book collector but it never arrived and was never recovered.  Twenty years later, the same bookbinders decided to make a second copy of the book, using the drawings and notes created for the first volume.  It took years to remake the book and when finished, the book was promptly destroyed by German bombers in The Blitz.  The bookbinders are still in business today, but they do not plan to create a third copy of the book.

Among the casualties was the American journalist and author, Jacques Futrelle.  Futrelle had received great acclaim for his detective stories featuring Professor Augustus S. F. X. van Dusen, a scientist who solved the toughest cases through logic and scientific reasoning.  After publishing forty short stories under the title, “The Thinking Machine”, Futrelle traveled with his wife to Europe, to do research to write more stories.  Following their visit to London and Scotland Yard, they booked a first-class suite for their return to New York, where Futrelle was to meet with his publisher.

After the ship collided with the iceberg, Futrelle reassured his wife that there was no cause for alarm, but insisted she board lifeboat No. 9.  Futrelle, himself, refused to enter the lifeboat, even though it was only half full.  The last May Futrelle saw of her husband, he was calmly smoking a cigarette next to John Jacob Astor. 

The last I saw of my husband he was standing beside Colonel Astor. He had a cigarette in his mouth. As I watched him, he lighted a match and held it in his cupped hands before his face. By its light I could see his eyes roam anxiously out over the water. Then he dropped his head toward his hands and lighted his cigarette. I saw Colonel Astor turn toward Jacques and a second later Jacques handed the colonel his cigarette box. The colonel screened Jacques' hands with his own, and their faces stood out together as the match flared at the cigarette tip. I know those hands never trembled.

Futrelle’s body was never recovered.  In 1913, May Futrelle filed a claim against the White Star Line for the loss of her husband, their property, and two lost unpublished book manuscripts.  The claim was never paid.  If you have never read “The Thinking Machine Stories”, you can read one of the best stories here.

Joseph Conrad, the author of Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, was not aboard the Titanic that fateful night, but one of his handwritten manuscripts was.  The short story, Karain: Personal Recollections, was being shipped to New York, to a bibliophile who was willing to pay the author $40 to add the manuscript to his collection.  Conrad, who was destitute at the time, had failed to take out insurance on the shipment, so he received no compensation for the loss.

The short story had been previously published in 1897, in the literary publication, Blackwood’s Magazine, and it deals with gunrunning and a Malay chief’s quest for revenge.  While the plot , in my opinion, is equal to similar adventure stories by Kipling or Haggard, it is also a stinging denouncement of English Imperialism.  You can read the original magazine article here.  

Financially pinched, Conrad struck back the only way he could: in print.  In a series of essays, Conrad blamed the shipping company, the shipbuilders, the Board of Trade, technicians in general, and just about anyone who had ever even seen the ship.  He even speculated about the reports of muffled explosions within the ship how does project—sounds that we now know were, in reality, the sounds of the doomed vessel tearing itself apart (a fact that the White Star Line went to great lengths to denounce).

The Titanic had two libraries aboard—one for the First Class passengers and a smaller “cozy” library, located at the aft end of C deck, for the Second Class passengers.  Evidently the White Star company decided that Steerage Class passengers either couldn’t or wouldn’t read, so no accommodation was made for them.  While called libraries, the rooms were more like tea rooms where passengers could drink tea, write letters, and read comfortably.  Unfortunately, no details remain about the books available in either of the two libraries, nor did any of the books from the libraries survive.  The photo of the second-class Library at left is from the Titanic’s sister ship, the RMS Olympic.

Let’s end on a positive note, however.  The loss of the Titanic did lead to the creation of one great library.  One of the first-class passengers was Harry Elkins Widener, whose collection of rare books included a Shakespeare First Folio.  As the Titanic sank, Harry’s mother made it into a lifeboat, but Harry, his father, (as well as his father’s valet) remained on the ship and perished.  In memory of her son, Mrs. Widener donated his collection, along with a bequest of $2 million, to his alma mater.  Today, the collection is part of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library at Harvard University.   Harry’s uncle, figuring that if Harry had lived long enough would have eventually purchased a Gutenberg Bible, donated one to the collection in his nephew’s name.

The Monument Mens' Other Story

There is an episode of the television show Justified, in which U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (played by Timothy Olyphant) is asked to investigate a possible neo-Nazi who is buying up the remaining artwork of Adolf Hitler.  Concerned about the possibility that the man intends to open a Nazi museum, the good marshal tracked the man down, only to discover that the art collection consisted of a dozen jars of ashes.  The man had been burning the remaining paintings of Hitler.

Justified is an excellent television show, but it very unlikely that anyone would ever make a career of buying and burning all of der Fuehrer’s paintings.  The few museums that have them don’t particularly like them but won’t sell them.  In addition, there are all those paintings by Hitler that the United States “stole” in World War II.  You know…the ones the Monument Men stole.

Assuming that you have seen the George Clooney movie, then we are all experts about the Monument Men, the U.S. Army group that President Roosevelt authorized to save and repatriate the artwork that the Nazis had stolen from all over Europe.  These men did an extraordinary job, saving tens of thousands of priceless pieces of art.  

It is not mentioned in the movie, but the Monuments Men were also tasked with removing artwork commissioned by the German government to glorify the Nazi leaders or the war movement.   Adolf Hitler was generally considered to be a failure as an artist.  (Or as a human, for that matter.). He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, and spent several years creating postcards and dabbling in street art.  Though unsuccessful as an artist, Hitler never lost in interest in creating (or stealing) artwork.  

Giving the devil his due, Hitler understood the use of artwork as a propaganda tool and how the German people would react to it.  Hitler commissioned a small army of artists to create paintings glorifying war, promoting the father land, and occasionally, portraying the Nazi hierarchy (particularly Hitler) as half man and half God.  After the paintings were copied into countless posters, the original works went to museums or were sold to high-ranking military officers.  

At Yalta, President Roosevelt had agreed to removing as much of this artwork as possible and after the war was over, the Army began scouring the German countryside to do just that, confiscating original artwork displaying the swastika that glorified war or depicted the Nazi elite such as Hitler, Goebbels, or Goehring.  The post-war Monument Men found paintings in cellars, in caves, in government offices, under the floorboards of mountain cabins, and in the homes of the Nazi hierarchy.  There is something ironic about the Monument Men, the guys that recovered so much stolen art, making off with the art of the defeated.  I understand why they did it, and approve, but it is still a little ironic.  I can understand why George Clooney left that part out of his movie.

When the propaganda art had been gathered, 8,722 pieces in all were shipped back home to the United States and hidden away at a military base in Virginia to prevent its being used to rekindle a far-right regime in Germany.  But, in the haste to gather the propaganda art, some of the legitimate artwork of German artists was also seized.  Within a few years after the artwork had been gathered and stored, some Germans were demanding that the non-political works be returned.

After carefully sorting through the artwork, the United States sent over 1500 pieces back to Berlin for return to their rightful owners.  The postwar German Republic was not exactly happy to have any reminders of the Nazis back, and simply warehoused the paintings away until the 1970’s, ignoring the claims of the rightful owners.

Three decades after the war’s end, most of the seized artwork was no longer deemed very threatening—the pompous over-the-top poses of “The Master Race” looked more comical than threatening.  Perhaps three decades of movies and television shows in which the Germans always lost to the Allies, had diminished the threat.  A painting showing the guards from Hogan’s Heroes was nothing to be worried about.  

So, the Army returned all but the most offensive pieces.   Today, almost eighty years after the war, Fort Belvoir still houses a three-foot bust of Adolf Hitler, hundreds of paintings showing the SS in heroic poses, statues of Nazis, and an undisclosed number of rather creepy watercolors done by Adolf Hitler.

What exactly should be done with such art is still a dilemma.  Who are the rightful owners?  If the owners could be located, would they even want the art?  Should this type of art even be exhibited in a museum?  There are probably no good answers to these questions, which explains why the US Army is still warehousing the art so long after the war.  For now, Hitler’s watercolors stay safely locked up in a filing cabinet drawer.

These works are not shown to the public and by now, the Army probably wishes that they were elsewhere.  Most of the artwork has been photographed and I could show you a few examples of Hitler’s art….but I won’t.  Perhaps this is a case in which life should imitate art, and the paintings, at least those done by Hitler, should be burned.  

The Gordon Riots

Among the many reasons that America won their Revolutionary War are my top three:

First, there was the French Alliance.  Though it pains me to admit it, our victory was largely due to help from the French, who not only did not surrender during the war but actually fought well.  The French played a crucial role by providing the United States with a formidable navy and by spreading Britain’s forces thin across the world.  Before the French entered the war, the British could focus their attention on the rebellion without much fear of other global conflicts.  (Though we should remember that part of the France’s motivation was not only to harm its historic enemy, England, but also to be able to pick up new territories that the British military was too thinly stretched to defend.)

Second, there was the sheer impossibility of the Britain being able to logistically support its army so far from home.  As we become accustomed to modern transportation, we tend to forget that two hundred years ago a small wooden fort equipped with a single cannon and barrel of moldy flour could control a huge amount of territory primarily because of the flour.  The hardest task for generals of the era was to keep their armies fed well enough to be able to survive (never mind being well enough to fight).  England could never supply its army well enough for the forces to go on the offensive.

Last, America won because George Washington didn’t lose.  As asinine as that sounds, it is correct.  Washington could have blundered so badly that the war could have been lost.  The fact that he managed to keep his army supplied, trained, and largely undefeated until Great Britain realized that the war was unwinnable was an impressive strategic victory.

There are a host of other, smaller reasons.  Among those reasons are included the lack of Loyalist support in the colonies, the fact that Native Americans didn’t (for the most part) side with the British, that the colonists fought unconventionally, and the incredible incompetence of some British generals.  

A somewhat obscure reason for the British loss, however, is the impact of the London Gordon Riots of 1780.  The riots, the worst in a century, had prolonged effects in both domestic and foreign policy.

The root of the riot goes all the way back to the Popery Act of 1698, a hateful, discriminatory law that basically stripped all civil rights from Catholics—as evidenced by the actual title of the law, “An Act for the further preventing the Growth of Popery”.  The discriminatory provisions included a prohibition of Catholics attending school, of owning property, or of receiving an inheritance.  Catholic priests were to be perpetually jailed at the pleasure of the monarch and any British citizen lucky enough to apprehend a priest would receive a bounty of £100.

I wish I could tell you the riot was because concerned citizens were angry at the injustice of the act, but actually the people of London were furious that The Papists Act of 1788 lifted, ever so slightly, some of the harsher provisions of the previous act, specifically that if Catholics took an oath of allegiance to the monarch and rejected the authority of the Pope over English law, they could own property and enlist in the British Army.

The act was passed for two pressing reasons.  First, England was at war with practically everybody and the army desperately needed more recruits.  Second, England was terrified that Ireland might emulate the Americans and start its own revolution for independence.  The law formally recognized something of a settled fact—the Irish were already in the army and Naval Press Gangs were snatching up any men who were even close to physically fit, regardless of nationality or religion.  (Occasionally, as it turned out, some of those “men” were actually women.)

Note.  I have never understood why governments periodically decide that certain groups cannot join the army, whether it is because of their religion or sexual orientation.  Imagine the outrage if, in time of war, all those prohibited from serving went down to the docks and waved goodbye to the departing troops.  “Goodbye boys!  Have fun in the war!”

Terribly upset about the return of civil rights to Catholics, Lord George Gordon, the head of the Protestant Association, began making a series of inflammatory speeches to the poor of London.  (Think of this as George Wallace addressing the KKK, but without bedsheets.). Because the ongoing wars hurt trade, the poor were suffering from high unemployment and inflation, and according to Wallace/George, if Catholics were allowed into the military, there would be an inevitable return to absolute monarchy, enslavement to the Pope, watered down beer, and dogs would marry cats.  (This is not the famous General Charles George Gordon of Khartoum, but an altogether different British nobleman with a similar name.)

After two and a half centuries, there is a rather obvious effort by some historians to shift the cause of the riots to economic reasons, but in the end, the primary cause was religious persecution against Catholics.  (As you read that last sentence, try desperately hard not to think about the Lost Cause of the Glorious South.  I don’t care how many times you have read the books of Shelby Foote, the American Civil War was fought over slavery.) 

Lord George met with King George III and tried to convince the monarch to repeal the law, but the King was only periodically crazy, and not stupid.  Lord George marched his followers to Parliament and urged them to act, but even Parliament refused to listen to him.  Within days, the Protestant Association took to the streets and was quickly joined by a mob of 40,000 to 60,000 angry people who were eager to demonstrate their stupidity with violence.

The target of the mob was initially the poor Irish immigrant neighborhood of Moorfields.  Despite the pleas of prominent merchants in the area, the London Mayor refused to send troops.  The rioters quickly burned and looted Moorfields homes, then moved towards the center of London.  

The mob, wearing blue ribbons for identification, grew steadily in size and stormed Newgate Prison, freeing the convicts and destroying the prison.  When the government still didn’t move to stop the riot, three other prisons were destroyed, along with Catholic churches and the homes of prominent citizens.  

The riot lasted five days and it was only after the violent mob turned to the Bank of England that the King sent in 15,000 soldiers who had orders to fire at will on any group of four or more people who refused to disperse.  Almost three hundred people were killed and another two hundred were wounded.  

When the riot was over, about two dozen ring leaders were quickly charged with treason and executed, the Mayor was convicted of criminal negligence and fined £1,000, and Lord George was arrested and charged with high treason, but was acquitted. A few years later, George, the great defender of the One True Faith converted to Judaism, taking the name of Yisrael bar Avraham Gordon.

This riot had far-reaching ramifications.  England had been negotiating with Spain to stop supporting the Americans in their revolution, but the rise of anti-Catholic sentiment in London brought a sharp end to the diplomatic talks.  And Austria, also a Catholic country, decided not to aid England in the war against America.  

In London, the riots helped convince !merchants that the protracted wars, both in Europe and America, were bad for business.  There was also a growing cry for London to create a police force—an idea that was criticized because it would be copying something that had been done in Paris.  (This was more than forty years before Sir Robert Peel established Scotland Yard.)

There was, additionally, general agreement among the leadership of British Society that when a mob commences to use violence to achieve political  aims, a delayed response only encourages more destruction.  This seems to be a lesson we have to relearn at least once a generation.

The Lieber Code

Following the French Revolution, as the Army of the North began moving slowly across Europe, even before Napoleon came to power, the French government sent special agents to follow the army and search out artistic treasure to loot and send back to Paris.  While the Louvre had opened its doors in the 1750’s, the collection was small and the doors were open to the public only two days a week.  It was conquest and theft that made the Louvre great.

There was no existing legal pretense for this except for the sad custom of “To the victor go the spoils”.  The growth of national identity that started in the 17th century—and continues to this day—meant that, increasingly, people in a region believed that cultural artifacts like artwork were part of their identity and they resisted the removal of their treasures.

Accordingly, as Napoleon moved his army across Italy, conquering individual states, he began writing clauses into his peace treaties that allowed France to seize a specified number of paintings, sculptures, and precious manuscripts.  There is, of course, a special place in hell for people who steal books.  In Napoleon's case, it was St. Helena.

In 1797, Napoleon marched towards Venice after having successfully conquered Northern Italy.  Accepting the inevitable, the Venetian Doges and Grand Council surrendered without a fight, allowing the French army to enter the city unopposed.  This surrender effectively ended the 1100-year-old Republic of Venice, becoming official with the Treaty of Campo Formio in May, 1797.

Though the treaty gave Venice to the Austrian Empire, it specifically allowed France to take 20 paintings and 500 books and manuscripts back to France.  Since Napoleon was deliberately slow in actually turning over the city to the Austrians, the number of paintings seized and looted was in excess of this number.  In addition, paintings and sculptures that glorified the rule of the doges were deliberately destroyed. 

Napoleon ordered removal of the Horses of San Marco, that had spent more than five centuries atop Saint Mark’s Basilica after they had been looted by Venetian soldiers of the 4th Crusade during the sack of Constantinople in 1204.  These were sent back to Paris in a convoy that included the looted works of Rome.

When the convoy arrived in Paris in the summer of 1798, the wagons of untold wealth became a victorious parade, with garlands decorating the wagons, public officials walking beside each wagon, and bands playing festive music.  The San Marco horses—the only objects unpacked for the crowd to admire—were not taken as part of any treaty, but had simply been looted and were intended to adorn the top of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, still under construction.

Using the pretense of peace treaties to seize the great works of art, Napoleon looted the great art museum of Europe, stole every ancient manuscript in the Vatican, and even emptied the zoos of the provinces he conquered.   The Louvre, renamed the Museum Napoleon, became the greatest concentration of art in the world.  

After the Battle of Waterloo, the coalition nations sought to repatriate much of the stolen artwork, and repatriation clauses were integral to the multiple treaties between European countries and France.  In some cases, military forces simply seized their stolen art and took it home.  The Horses of San Marco were returned to Venice in that way. 

King Louis, grateful to the be back on the throne in Paris, promised the allies he’d return all of the stolen art, but he simultaneously promised the people of Paris that the artworks would remain in the renamed Louvre.  To the people of Paris, the artworks had been given to France legally by treaty, while their removal from Paris by the coalition forces was simple theft.  Accordingly, King Louis did assist in the repatriation of some artworks, but in many cases he moved as slowly as possible (or simply ignored certain requests).

An example of this stalling process would be the “return” of the famous Veronese painting, The Wedding at Cana.  Though it was scheduled to be returned to Venice, director of the Louvre refused to send the painting back, claiming it was too delicate to survive the trip.  Interestingly, the painting had been sturdy enough to be moved to the site of Napoleon’s wedding, and had survived  being rolled up and hidden twice during subsequent wars (the Franco-Prussian War and World War II).  Despite Venice still demanding the return of its painting, the artwork remains in the Louvre matter now settled.  The original painting has suffered minor damage twice while at the Louvre, through carelessness of the museum staff.  In 2007, the painting, not the original but a high resolution full-size digital reproduction, was finally returned to Italy and France said the matter was settled.  (Evidently, if you steal something in France, you can settle the matter by giving the owners a photograph of what you stole.)

And since there was no existing international law governing the military theft of art, there was little that could be done about it, but this changed because of one veteran of the Battle of Waterloo.

Franz Lieber was a German-American jurist, political philosopher, and scholar, born on March 18, 1800, in Berlin, Germany, who fought for over two years in the Prussian Army during the Napoleonic Wars and was wounded at the Battle of Waterloo.  After studying law and philosophy at the University of Jena in Germany, Lieber participated in the attempted revolution of 1848, that sought to bring democratic reforms to Germany.  After the revolution was crushed, Lieber made his way to the United States to avoid being tried for treason in Germany.  

When the Civil War started, Lieber was a professor of history at Columbia University, (all the really good men have taught history) where he spoke publicly  about "Laws and Usages of War" proposing that the laws of war correspond to a legitimate purpose for the war.   At the request of the Commanding General of the Union Army, Henry Halleck, Lieber authored General Orders 100 (1863), commonly referred to as the Lieber Code, that established the legal conduct for the military during warfare.  Among the provisions is the following:

"All wanton violence committed against persons in the invaded country, all destruction of property not commanded by the authorized officer, all robbery, all pillage or sacking, even after taking a place by main force….”

I wish I could tell you that that Lieber's Code made a profound difference in how the Civil War was fought.  It didn't, as even a passing knowledge of Sherman's march to the sea will prove.

This was the first recognition of cultural property by any nation in war.  The Lieber Code led to several international treaties and served as the basis for the Hague Agreements of 1899 and 1907.  The Lieber Code is still referenced by name in the United States Department of Defense Law of War Manual of 2023.

The Fastest Object in History

Back in September 1977, NASA launched Voyager I, a probe to study the outer reaches of the solar system and interspace (the area beyond our solar system).  After flybys of both Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager is continuing on her way at a speed of 38,000 miles an hour relative to the sun.  

Voyager I is the first object designed to leave the Solar System, so it carries a message from Earth to whomever—or perhaps whatever—may discover the itinerant spacecraft.  We will have to wait a while, however, since Voyager will reach the first star system, Gliese I, in only 40,000 years.

At some 15 billion miles, Voyager is the manmade object farthest from earth.

Or is it?

After 1945, the US military had a brand-new toy:  atomic weapons.  Naturally, they wanted to play with them (all in the name of research, of course).  Altogether, we did 1,054 nuclear tests above ground, underground, underwater, in the air, and in space.  The first, back in 1945, was just a little north of my home here in New Mexico.  (You know, where the jackrabbits glow in the dark so we can hunt the varmints at night!)

Some of the weirdest experiments were done in Operation Plumbbob—a series of 29 nuclear tests done in the Nevada desert back in 1957.  Both civilian and military structures were exposed to blasts to test the amount of damage they would suffer.  Surprise!  They were knocked flat.   Over 1200 pigs were left in cages at various distances to see what happened if you let a nuclear bomb go off at a barbecue.   And several tests were done with devices placed down deeply drilled shafts.  This was the same time when our government was thinking of building a new version of the Panama Canal by using nuclear bombs to blast a bigger canal across Nicaragua.

On July 26, 1957, the Army conducted Pascal-A, a test explosion down a 500-foot shaft.  This was supposed to be a relatively small test but the bomb yield proved to be much higher than expected, resulting in a jet of fire erupting from the hole, blasting hundreds of feet in the air.  This not being exactly what the Army wanted from what was supposed to be a secret test, they came up with a cunning plan:  they would weld a thick plate of armor resistant steel plate over the top of the bore hole and redo the test.

To be fair, the Army didn’t conduct the test without doing a little research:  they brought a scientist, Robert Brownlee, from Los Alamos National Laboratory for advice.  Brownlee promptly told them the idea was ridiculous and wouldn’t work, so the army went ahead and welded several tons of steel plating over the top of the tube and conducted the test anyway.  If you get the impression that the Army acted like a bunch of schoolboys playing with fireworks, gleefully ignoring what Brownlee said…. well, you’ve been reading closely.

On August 27, 1957, the test known as Pascal-B was detonated and the resulting nuclear blast, not knowing any better, went straight up the tube ripping the steel plate off, rocketing it into the stratosphere at 150,000 mph—about six times the speed needed for an object to reach escape velocity.  By the time the story made its way into print, that two-ton massive steel cap had been transformed into an ordinary manhole cover.  Well, it was steel and did cap off a round hole, so I guess that technically makes it a manhole cover.  The important thing to note was that the manhole cover was no longer on Earth.

This means a little rewriting of the history books is in order.  First, this was more than a month before Russia launched Sputnik, so technically, an American manhole cover was the first manmade object in space.  And while Sputnik remained in orbit for only three months before its orbit decayed and it burnt up reentering the atmosphere, the American manhole cover never reentered the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, that manhole cover wasn’t tracked because the technology for tracking objects that far out in space did not yet exist (nor did anyone at the test site expect to need it).  At the speed that chunk of steel was traveling, unless it collided with something, it would be even farther from Earth than Voyager I…And still moving.

You can find the story on any number of websites, and it was reported in magazine articles and reputable newspapers and… it’s mostly bullshit.  

There really was an Operation Plumbbob, and the two test explosions really did happen as reported.  What was not reported was that Robert Brownlee predicted exactly what would happen, that the steel plug would be blasted loose and sent soaring into the air.  Brownlee even calculated the top speed the steel cap would reach.  What is generally not reported is the rest of what Brownlee predicted.

The velocity of 150,000 mph was an initial velocity of an object traveling in a vacuum.  Since the steel cap—almost, but not quite a manhole cover—was at ground level it was immediately subject to a lot of air resistance.  The jet of heated plasma coming up that burr hole would have superheated the steel plate and turned it into the exact opposite of a meteor—instead of burning up as it entered our atmosphere, that steel cap burned up trying to leave it.  Until it burnt up, however, it was the fastest manmade object in history.

So, nothing was left of the steel plate long before it could have reached space?  Well, the that’s what the math says.  Or maybe Brownlee made a simple math error?  After all, there is nothing to prove that the steel cap actually burned up before it left Earth.  Maybe the first object to leave the solar system really was a manhole cover launched from Nevada!

Presidential Oaths of Office

Every few years, several thousand people stand in the freezing cold of Washington D.C. and listen to a couple of people recite the following:

 “I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Well, technically, the Vice-President takes a slightly different oath.  The oath the president takes comes straight from the constitution, the one for the Vice-President is the same as for Congressmen and Senators as the Veep’s only real job, besides attending funerals and waiting for the boss to croak, is to preside over the Senate.  And if the incumbent President is reelected, he gets a second inauguration, and though he technically doesn’t have to, take the same oath a second time.

So, if Biden wins the coming (looming) election, he doesn’t have to, but will take advantage of the good photo opportunity to take the oath a second time, but if Trump wins, he will have to take the oath again.  Which brings up the obvious—at least to me—question:  Though the constitution does not mandate that during the oath that the president’s left hand rest on a book, most presidents have elected to use a Bible to symbolizes the importance of the oath and the commitment to uphold the Constitution.  Since Donald Trump is now selling the “God Bless the U.S.A Bible” for only $59.95, will he elect to use one if he is elected?

Technically, the Bible Trump is endorsing is a rather standard large print King James translation of the Bible with a copy of the U.S. Constitution added at the end.  So much for the separation of church and state.

There would be a precedent for Trump using his own Bible.  Thomas Jefferson meticulously extracted and rearranged passages from the New Testament to focus solely on the teachings and moral principles of Jesus, excluding all supernatural elements and miracles.  Though his Bible is commonly referred to as the Jefferson Bible, the actual title is “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth”.  On March 4, 1801, when Thomas Jefferson was sworn in as president, this was the Bible he used for the ceremony.

Both versions of a presidential Bible would have been upsetting to President John Quincy Adams.  An ardent supporter of the separation of church and state, Adams chose to be sworn in on a law book.  Adams also started a fashion trend that remains to this day—he was the first president to wear long trousers at his inauguration, foregoing the traditional knee breeches.

This must have made an impression, since even though we are not sure what kind of book was used by the next four presidents), we do know that immediately after the oath was administered, Andrew Jackson kissed whatever book was used.  Considering the character of Jackson, the book might have been an artillery manual.

Franklin Pierce was sworn in on a law book.  Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in on a Catholic Missal as he was sworn in on Air Force One following the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  And if you are wondering, Kennedy, as the first Catholic president, was sworn in of a Catholic Bible, meaning that it has seven more books than the 66 book Protestant Bible.  The specific Bible he used was an 1850 leather-bound edition of the Douay-Rheims tome, which had been handed down from his mother’s side of the family.

There are a handful of presidents who were sworn in with no book present at all.  These are all vice-presidents who suddenly became president on the sudden death of the President, including Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Johnson, and Calvin Coolidge.

Some presidents doubled down and used two Bibles, one placed on top of the other.  Harry Truman used his family Bible placed on top of the Gutenberg Bible.  Both George H. W. Bush and Richard Nixon used their family Bibles and the Washington Bible.  Dwight D. Eisenhower used the Washington Bible and the Bible issued to him at West Point.

Which brings us to the Lincoln Bible, probably the most famous Bible used in Presidential inaugurations.  Donald Trump used it atop his family Bible in 2017 and Barack Obama used it along with the personal Bible of Dr. Martin Luther King.  And most famously of all, of course, Abraham Lincoln used it in 1861.  That was before the book was known as the Lincoln Bible.

After Lincoln won the election in 1860, the South moved slowly towards succession.  Due to the threats of violence, Lincoln had to sneak into Washington, leaving most of his family possessions, including his family Bible, to make their way slowly to Washington.  For the inauguration, he borrowed a Bible from the clerk of the Supreme Court, William Thomas Carroll, who kept the Bible in his office for official use.  

This means the Lincoln Bible is actually the Carroll Bible since Abe only saw the book that one time.  When Lincoln was sworn in again in 1865. Just weeks before his assassination, the Bible used was probably one provided by Chief Justice Chase, who administered the oath.  Later, Chase said the Bible was presented to the Lincoln family, but according to information left by Robert Todd Lincoln, the president’s eldest son, the family never received it.  The location of that Bible is still a mystery.

Sometime after the president’s assassination, the Carroll family donated the Bible used in Lincoln’s first inauguration to the Lincoln Family.  In 1928, Robert Todd Lincoln’s widow gifted the Bible to the Library of Congress where it still remains.

Visitors to the Library of Congress can see a copy of the Lincoln Bible, which is the 1853 Oxford University Press edition of the King James Bible.  These copies are not exactly rare:  if you are interested in owning your own “Lincoln Bible”, they sell for about $50 in the used book market.  Search for an Oxford University Press 1853 edition of the King James Bible to locate one.

Or wait until you are elected president and they’ll let you use the real one.

Elder Math

There was a time when I was very good in math.  Not to brag, but I was particularly good in geometry, especially at visualizing geometric forms in my mind and calculating angles of sides and the area of shapes.  I probably should have studied more math instead of history, since being a history teacher was an occupation only slightly more honorable than being a towel boy in a Turkish bath house and a little lower than being a piano player in a whorehouse.

Unfortunately, somewhere in the last half century, I have forgotten a lot of what I knew about math.  Now that I’m retired from teaching, I have gone back to school to sort of fill in some of the blank spots in my education.  Since retired faculty do not have to pay tuition to attend Enema U, I have discovered that Bachelor’s Degrees are kind of like potato chips—it’s hard to stop after the first one…Or the third…Or the fourth.  If I can hold out another couple of decades, I intend to collect the entire set.

Currently, I’m a senior (pun intended) in Economics—a field that uses a lot of math.  Accordingly, I decided to retake Calculus to try and brush up on what I had forgotten.   In the half century since I took the course, we have stopped using slide rules and have evidently renamed everything.   No matter what we study, I seem to suddenly remember it about three days after the test.

Being the oldest person in the room, by a factor of at least e^.69 (including the instructor) does have a few benefits.   The rest of the people in the room were raised with calculators and seem incapable of doing any math in their heads.  Did they stop teaching the multiplication tables in school?  

So, for the last couple of weeks, I have been refreshing myself on various math terms, trying to jog an aging memory.  Somewhere along the line, I came across the Kaprekar’s Constant, and I thought I would share it with you.

Kaprekar’s Constant is a strange little routine that inevitably produces the number 6174.  Let me explain how it works.  Pick any four digit number that uses two or more different numbers.  5483, 9888, or 1234 or all valid numbers while 1111 or 7777 are not.  Then arrange the four digits in descending order, subtract from that number the four digits in ascending order and note the remainder.  If necessary, add zero’s to the beginning of the number to produce four new digits.  

If you do this a maximum of 7 times, the product is always 6174.  Let me give you an example starting with 6810.

8610     The numbers in ascending order.
0168     The numbers in descending order.
8442     The difference

8442     The numbers in ascending order.
2448     The numbers in descending order.
5994     The difference

9954     The numbers in ascending order
4599     The numbers in descending order.
5355     The difference

5553     The numbers in ascending order.
3555     The numbers in descending order.
1998     The difference

9981     The numbers in ascending order.
1899     The numbers in descending order.
8082     The difference

8820     The numbers in ascending order.
0288     The numbers in descending order.
8532     The difference

8532     The numbers in ascending order.
2358     The numbers in descending order.
6174    The difference and Kaprekar’s Constant

It always ends up with a difference of 6174, and if you keep using the sequence, the difference stays the same.  (7641 − 1467 = 6174.)  The name comes from the Indian mathematician D. R. Kaprekar who discovered the sequence.

Naturally, I had to test this for myself, but didn’t want to sit around all day with a pen and paper, so I wrote a program in Basic to test the sequence.  Yes, I know, Basic is a poor programming language and damn near obsolete, but I first learned to program in Fortran and since Basic is descended from Fortran, I find it the easiest to use while writing simple programs on my Apple iPhone.  (Sue me, I’ve already established that I’m both old and nearly obsolete.)

Thankfully, a company called Misoft has an excellent Basic Interpreter App for the iPhone that allows you to write, execute, and store programs.  I frequently amuse myself by writing useless little programs to pass the time.  Just in case you are interested, I’ll give you the little program I wrote to play with Kaprekar’s Constant.

10 PRINT "Enter a 4-digit number:" 

20 INPUT N

30 IF N < 1000 OR N > 9999 THEN PRINT "Invalid input. Please enter a 4-digit number.": GOTO 10

40 PRINT "Starting number: "; N

50 REM Sort digits in descending order

60 A = INT(N / 1000)

70 B = INT((N - A * 1000) / 100)

80 C = INT((N - A * 1000 - B * 100) / 10)

90 D = N - A * 1000 - B * 100 - C * 10

100 N = A * 1000 + B * 100 + C * 10 + D

110 PRINT "Descending order: "; N

120 REM Sort digits in ascending order

130 A = INT(N / 1000)

140 B = INT((N - A * 1000) / 100)

150 C = INT((N - A * 1000 - B * 100) / 10)

160 D = N - A * 1000 - B * 100 - C * 10

170 N = D * 1000 + C * 100 + B * 10 + A

180 PRINT "Ascending order: "; N

190 REM Calculate the difference

200 DIFF = N - INT(N / 1000) * 1000

210 PRINT "Difference: "; DIFF

220 REM Repeat until Kaprekar's number (6174) is reached

230 IF DIFF = 6174 THEN PRINT "Reached Kaprekar's number!": END

240 N = DIFF

250 GOTO 50

For what it’s worth, Kapreskar also came up with a constant for three digit numbers, but I’ll let you discover it for yourself.

Is This Really the Best We Can Do?

A dozen years ago, the late P. J. O’Rourke said, “Don’t vote.  It just encourages the bastards.”  I cannot imagine what the political satirist would say if he were watching the current presidential campaign, but it might be unprintable.

In the last 48 hours alone, the poor American voter has been treated to the spectacles of Donald Trump selling Bibles while Joe Biden castigates the rich for not paying an elusive “fair share”, even as he charges folks $100,000 to have their pictures taken with him, Obama, and Clinton.  We should all note that the only other living president, George W. Bush, has wisely decided to stay distant from all this nonsense.

There is a third presidential candidate, Robert Kennedy, Jr., who evidently has spent the last 48 hours reshaping his tinfoil hat.  If there is a wacky conspiracy theory that Kennedy hasn’t endorsed, it is only because he hasn’t heard of it yet.  Without a doubt, the craziest theory he believes in is that he has any chance of actually being elected.

Are these really the three best men in America to lead the nation?  Obviously not, since according to a recent poll, a majority of Democrats want someone other than Joe Biden and a majority of Republican voters would prefer someone other than Donald Trump.  Think of that:  NEITHER candidate is the first choice of his own party members, yet somehow BOTH still have become their parties’ candidates.  There is obviously something wrong with the way our country’s parties choose OUR prospective leaders.

In case you are wondering, since Kennedy doesn’t really have a party behind him, we can only conjecture that the majority of his supporters would prefer a pony in their back yard.  I totally understand the impulse to vote for a third party candidate as a form of protest, but wouldn’t it be better to have that be a candidate who didn’t learn his science from the National Enquirer?

Ignoring the third and fourth-party candidates, why have the two major parties chosen two men that most of us would not buy a used car from?  Both men are clearly far too old and both have a long history of lying, plagiarism, and going back on their words.  Nor can either man really claim to be a leader since both are deliberately divisive, frequently calling voters who disagree with their policies such names as ‘ultra-MAGA” or “low information voters”.  Real leaders are uniters, whose first priority (not to mention several subsequent priorities) is something better than throwing red meat to their political base in an endless effort to attract campaign contributions.

Take the time to think about it for a few minutes.  Who would you really prefer to be our next president?  How do the two current major party candidates compare with your choice?  Personally, I can think of potential candidates in both parties who would make better leaders than any of the candidates currently vying for the office.  The reason why better candidates don’t end up as the eventual candidates is probably mainly a function of the way the political parties are run.

Political parties end up selecting candidates who are perceived as less suitable or effective for various reasons.  For too often, party candidates are not really selected by the voters but by the  complex interplay of internal party dynamics, including power struggles, factionalism, and influence from special interest groups.  These internal dynamics can lead to compromises and backroom deals that prioritize political expediency over candidate merit or qualifications.

Moreover, the candidate selection process within political parties often involves multiple stakeholders, including party leaders, elected officials, party elites, donors, and activists.  Conflicting interests and competing agendas among these stakeholders can result in candidates being chosen based on loyalty, fundraising prowess, or ideological alignment rather than their leadership abilities or policy expertise.

These various factors frequently end up resulting in a system in which the potential candidate is chosen by seniority.  A good example of this would be the presidential candidacy of Robert Dole back in 1996:  instead, it was widely viewed that he was chosen/should be chosen simply “because it was his turn”.

Party rules about selecting delegates—particularly in the Democratic Party—allow Party insiders to heavily influence who will eventually become the candidate.  In a proportional allocation system, delegates are awarded to candidates based on their share of the vote, allowing multiple candidates to accumulate delegates over time.  This can prolong the nomination process and give candidates with strong grassroots support a chance to remain competitive, even if they don't win outright in early contests.  Conversely, a winner-takes-all approach awards all delegates to the candidate who wins the most votes in a state or district, potentially allowing a front-runner to quickly amass a substantial delegate lead and secure the nomination early in the process.

Perhaps the most egregious sin of political parties is the practice of selecting superdelegates who are not bound by the results of primaries and caucuses.  These party elites, including elected officials and party leaders, have the autonomy to support any candidate they choose at the party convention, regardless of what the voters want.  Superdelegates have enormous influence—far more than their numbers would suggest—on whom the convention eventually selects as their candidates.

Until we change the current party system, we will probably continue to have elections in which we aren’t really voting for someone we want, but in which we are voting against the other party’s candidate.  

That’s no way to run an airline…or a nation!

The Tiara

When Queen Victoria married in 1840, she wore a white wedding dress, thereby setting a fashion trend that continues to this day. 

At least that is the popular version.  The fact that other members of royalty had previously worn white to their nuptials as far back as Mary Queen of Scots in 1558 is just one of those inconvenient facts that we should ignore.  As every native Texan knows, never let a few facts get in the way of a good story.

A score of years later, Abraham Lincoln, after being elected to the presidency, used the four months waiting time before the inauguration to grow a beard.  On the advice of his wife, his advisors, and Grace Bedell (an eleven-year-old supporter who famously wrote Lincoln suggesting he grow whiskers to conceal a weak chin), the president-elect adopted a style of beard known as the chin curtain beard.  The style caught on, and beards became a symbol of his determination and leadership during the Civil War.  (In the case of the author, a beard is a symbol of laziness and an aversion to using sharp implements near the throat before consuming coffee.)

In early twentieth century America, every well-dressed man wore an undershirt beneath his dress shirt.  Usually cotton, they served two functions:  they absorbed sweat, keeping the wearer cooler, drier and more comfortable when wearing a wool shirt.  The fashion quickly died out in 1934 when Americans went to the movie theater and watched Clark Gable take off his shirt in the movie It Happened One Night to reveal a bare chest.  While no documentation exists, sales of the undershirt dropped between 45-75% depending on which version of what may be an urban legend you choose to believe.

In January 1961, John F. Kennedy famously didn’t wear a hat at his inauguration, breaking tradition.  Almost immediately, the haberdashery industry was dealt a death blow, ending the popularity of men wear formal hats.  That’s the popular version anyway.  Actually, JFK did wear a hat to the inauguration, but took it off at the inauguration.

Kennedy was actually being heavily lobbied by the hat industry to wear hats more frequently  in a probably futile effort to revive a dying fashion trend.  In the years before his election, the trend to wear formal hats was already dying out in both Europe and America, perhaps because men in both continents, tired of wearing uniforms during the war, were just rejecting formal hats.  In the end, the Kennedy inauguration wasn’t the death of hats, it was the funeral.

And then there was Audrey Hepburn and that little black dress in Breakfast at Tiffany’s…. Well, you get the idea.  Sometimes it only takes a single event to rewrite the rules of what is fashionable.

All of the above is an introduction to what I really want to talk about:  tiaras.  You know, the shiny jewelry doohickey that women and little princesses-in-training wear whenever there is even the slightest justification.  I suppose it is scientifically impossible, but this weird craving for all things sparkly shared by women, crows and pack rats might indicate a hidden genetic link of some kind.

The origin of the word tiara comes from ancient Persia where cloth or metal bands were worn by the chiefs or nobility.  From there, the fashion quickly spread to Egypt and Greece.  The Greeks gave the victors in athletic competitions like the Olympics were awarded wreaths made of laurel or olive branches.  As the Roman Empire grew, they, too, adopted the tiara or diadem as a mark of rank, using gold or silver to create the head band.

Note.  Tiara?  Diadem?  What’s the difference.  Well, the tiara is much fancier and might have jewels (think of a grand crown, but smaller and designed to sit on the forehead rather than the entire head).   A diadem is a decorated head band or a simple circlet worn around the head.  Still confused?  Rocky Balboa wore a diadem while running through the streets of Philadelphia, Wonder Woman wears a tiara.

From the Roman Empire, the tiara spread across Europe, its use usually reserved for the highest royalty.  Over time, however, the tiara slowly fell out of fashion until the beginning of the nineteenth century and the rise of Emperor Napoleon.  Wanting the grandest empire in Europe, with the most formality and grandeur, Napoleon gifted his wife, Josephine with many jeweled tiaras, some of which are still the proud possessions of some of Europe’s royal families.

In Europe, as tiaras became popular again, aristocratic women began to wear them to formal occasions.  Etiquette dictated certain rules, however (and pretty much those rules still apply in certain circles today).  A woman could wear a tiara to any “white tie” event. An unmarried woman never wore a tiara, but on her wedding day, she wore a tiara owned by her family.  After the wedding, she wore either a tiara that was her personal property or a tiara owned by her husband’s family.  There was an exception made for royal princesses, who could wear tiaras belonging to the royal family after their eighteenth birthdays.

The height of the popularity of the tiara was the last two decades of the nineteenth century up to the start of the first World War.  The terrible death toll of the war, followed by a depression and yet another war, made the ostentatious wearing of jewelry unfashionable for all but the royal families.  

This suddenly changed when Elizabeth Taylor was given a diamond tiara by her husband, Mike Todd.  If you are counting, he was the third of seven husbands, and the one who probably started her fascination with diamonds.  As she later wrote in her autobiography:

“When he gave me this tiara, he said, ‘You’re my queen, and I think you should have a tiara.’ I wore it for the first time when we went to the Academy Awards. It was the most perfect night, because Mike’s film Around the World in 80 Days won for Best Picture. It wasn’t fashionable to wear tiaras then, but I wore it anyway, because he was my king.”

The tiara was created by Cartier sometime in the 1920's for Florence Gould, the wife of Frank Jay Gould, the famous owner of French Riviera Casinos and the son of the infamous railroad tycoon Jay Gould.  The tiara, known as the "Tiara of Nine Flights" was part of Florence Gould's extensive diamond collection that was sold after her death.

Liz wore the tiara everywhere.  She wore it to film openings; she wore it to Hollywood parties.  She would have worn it to grocery stores if she had stooped to go to grocery stores.  And as a fashion icon, she made the tiara popular again.  I spent a few minutes playing with Google this afternoon.  Think of a woman famous in the last fifty years, then google their name with ‘tiara’ and almost immediately, a photo of her wearing a tiara pops up.  Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Sara Jessica Parker, Ivanka Trump, Angelina Jolie, Madonna, Oprah…. Evidently, everyone.  Even my wife, The Doc, has one, but she won it in a bowling tournament.

When Liz passed away in 2011, her famous jewel collection (which included not only the tiara but the famous pearl known as La Peregrina) sold at auction for $156 million, of which slightly over $4 million was for the tiara.  The identity of the anonymous buyer remains a secret, at least for now.

Sooner or later, someone will show up wearing it.

Alantropa

My eldest son, What’s-His-Name, was helping me install a security camera in the backyard.  Hidden behind a mass of English Ivy climbing the back wall, it was so camouflaged than if either of us turned to pick up a tool, it took us a few seconds to relocate where in the mass of dense green leaves we had hidden the camera.

Finished, the two of us sat down at the patio table to enjoy a couple of beers, (respectively, root and Tecate), as a reward for our work just as my younger son, The-Other-One, came home from school.  

“Hey,” he said, “When did we get a security camera?”

The-Other-One is red/green colorblind, and this was another example of how most forms of camouflage simply didn’t work on him.  There were a lot of things he couldn’t see—like the large piece of red cellophane he hit with the lawn mower, that scattered red confetti all over the front yard—and evidently, things he could see that we couldn’t.  I’ve often wished I could briefly see through his eyes, to see the world differently.

Fresh viewpoints challenge our assumptions and offer new ways of looking at the world.  They can spark creativity and innovation by breaking us out of conventional thinking.

Sometimes, the most important discoveries come from those who see things differently.  Eccentric thinkers might notice patterns or connections that others miss, leading to breakthroughs in science, art, or problem-solving.

Or to put it succinctly, the nut point of view is frequently valuable.  People who see the world differently and come up with new ideas are the essential yeast that keeps society rising.

Herman Sörgel, a German architect in the 1920s, was an entire cake of such yeast.  He came up with a brilliant plan on for preventing another cataclysmic world war by providing so much wealth and resources to Europe that such a war would never again be necessary.  His plan was to provide sufficient Lebensraum by damming up the Straits of Gibraltar and substantially draining the Mediterranean Sea.

Sörgel forsaw a future world that was dominated by the Americas and by an inevitable Pan-Asian Union.  For Europe to compete in such a world, it would be necessary for Europe to acquire more land and resources.  By damming up certain key points around the Mediterranean, and allowing evaporation to lower the water level, there would be  substantially more land in both Europe and North Africa available to colonize.  Sörgel’s plan called for the creation of three large freshwater lakes in the Sahara with canals linking the new farmland to the now smaller Mediterranean Sea.  

At right is an artist’s drawing of what the area would look right after the sea had dropped sufficiently.  If you have a little trouble orienting yourself, slightly to the left of the center is an enlarged Sicily connected to what is now the boot-turned-galosh of Italy.  Greece, upper right, is substantially bigger.

A little over 5.3 million years ago, the sea first crashed through the Straits of Gibraltar, creating a tidal wave that roared across the Mediterranean area in what geologists call the Zanclean Flood.  What Sörgel had in mind was to reverse most of that flood.

The plan had five major components.  A massive hydroelectric dam across the Straits of Gibraltar that would, over the course of the next century, allow the sea level east of the dam to drop by more than 600 feet.  Three additional dams, one located at the Dardanelles to hold back the Black Sea, a second on the Congo River creating the freshwater lakes in the Sahara, and the last between Sicily and Tunisia creating a highway between Italy and North Africa and lowering the water level even more to the east.  Lastly, the Suez Canal would have to be deepened and extended northward through the new area uncovered by the receding water.  The Suez Canal would cease to be a sea level canal, but one requiring a series of massive locks to lower the ships down to the level of the Mediterranean.

Not only would there be new land, prompting new settlements along the newly created coast, there would be expanded canals linking the newly created arable farmland in the Sahara to ports along the sea.  Highways and railroads that crossed the dams at Gibraltar and Sicily would promote trade between the two continents.  Imagine bullet trains connecting Paris with the Congo or Berlin with Kenya.

For Sörgel, the project, which he named Alantropa, had almost endless benefits.  The new land would help alleviate overpopulation, the construction would provide jobs, and the expansion of European political culture into Africa would promote stability and peace.  How could it miss?—after all, since as we all know, Europe has a history almost free from warfare.

Though Sörgel first introduced his plan shortly after the first World War, it was later supported by Adolf Hitler, who firmly believed in acquiring new territory and frequently justified the war by Germany’s need for lebensraum.

Okay, it is a great and ambitious project, but there are a few small problems.  First, it just assumes that all of Africa would go on cheerfully content to be the colonial possession of European powers.   Nor is it likely that every coastal town along the Mediterranean Sea would have been happy to find themselves miles inland.

The scope of the project is enormous, perhaps impossibly so.  When Sörgel first proposed his series of massive dams, there was not enough concrete in the world to complete the project.  Even today, a century later, it would be a massive project, one that would dwarf even the American undertaking of landing a man on the moon.

There are also a few other problems.  It would, of course, be an ecological nightmare, destroying vast numbers of ecosystems.  It would alter enough land that it would change worldwide climate patterns and probably alter the Gulf Stream.

Sörgel passed away in 1952, and with his death the popularity of the project slowly vanished.  Today, the only place where Alantropa is mentioned is in a few Science Fiction books, particularly those that deal with alternative realities.  If such a book interests you, I suggest  “The Atlantropa Articles” by Cody Franklin and Joseph Pisenti.  In their book, the second World War never occurs, and after Hitler creates Alantropa, the protagonist travels through a Europe united under the swastika

There is, of course, one last problem with the plan.  Sörgel was not entirely correct in his belief that most wars are fought over resources, such as land, oil, or (as becomes increasing likely for the near future), water.  Sörgel believed that if he created more resources, this would end the need for conflict, but he failed to realize that what nations really fight over is not the resources, but the control of those resources.