majrodgers

This morning I filled up my car’s gas tank and received the accompanying ticket; $1.99 for a gallon of gas! A fill-up for $26.11! Where will it end?

“Who can explain it, who can tell you why?

Fools give you reasons, wise men never try.”

Some of you may recognize the above as a linking piece, a type of mini-recitative, in the song “Some Enchanted Evening” from the musical show “South Pacific”, by Rodgers (no relation) and Hammerstein. The 1949 Broadway show was adapted into a musical film that was released in 1958 and shown in a movie house in my home town of Chesterfield some time later. Being the gullible romantic that I was, and still am, many of the songs, including this, have stuck in my memory all these years – half a century and more.

Why, you may ask, do I bring this up at this particular time? My response to you is that it seems a perfect response to the question, “What the heck is happening to the price of oil?”

In the middle of September I left these shores for a two month sojourn in my second home on the Tuscan coast. At that time I was paying something in the region of $3.25 for a US gallon of unleaded (maybe there is no other these days) regular gasoline at my neighborhood gas station. This was a price that seemed to be independent of time, at least for the past several years-and we had all got used to it. In the middle of November I arrived back in Bowling Green and at some point in the next few days my attention was drawn to the pricing feature at the same gas station and I was astonished to see that it was listing the price of one US gallon of unleaded regular gas at $2.70. My first thought was that a mistake had been made on the price board, and the price was really $3.70 for a gallon, representing a small increase. That evening at the Reverend’s bar and grill, aka gastro pub (http://reverendsbarandgrill.com/) where most days Tom Kinstle and I while away the tedium of old age, I was able to confirm that $2.70 was indeed the current price.

Today, some four weeks later, the local motorist is enjoying a price of nearer to $2.30 per gallon and it seems to be continuing on the slippery negative slope. Of course the price at the pump is related in some arcane way to the price of a barrel of crude oil and if we care to investigate, we indeed see that crude has fallen to below $60 per barrel; it seems just yesterday that we were hearing of prices that were double that figure. From the law of supply and demand we might assume that the fall in price is because of lowered demand and if this is the case then you would think that OPEC would crank back the spigot to produce less and buoy up the price. However, Saudi Arabia is refusing to do this-maybe it is playing a game of its own- and so the prices continue to fall. The losers in this game are the countries who rely heavily on oil exports to fund their economies, the alternative energy industries who find it hard to compete when oil is so cheap, and the fracking fraternity who lose for the same reason. The winners, for once, are the little people who are delighted that low prices at the pump mean we have a little more to spend on the consumer goods that we love so dearly.

I’ll drink to that!

Here on the beautiful Tuscan coast as November approaches the year is noticeably drawing to a close. When I arrived in mid-September, the tourist season was still in full swing; the restaurants, bars and tourist traps around the town were open seven days per week, as were the regular stores, which tended to stay open until 9 in the evening. The weather was warm, in fact too warm for me as the sirocco was much in evidence.Here is a wind rose for you to view:

This wind is from the south east and carries with it hot and humid air from the eastern Mediterranean. Around the equinox the temperatures in CDP were somewhat lower than they are at the height of summer, so it was not so bad overall and caused only a few grumbles. At the beginning of October the wind moved around to the West (the ponente) and the air was much drier and the days have been cloudless and pleasantly warm for most of the month and no complaints have been heard from your correspondent.

October is the season for the Porcini mushrooms and this year one has seen an abundance of this tasty fungus. They grow in the woods above and around the town and many locals go out searching for them. Most of my local friends related their own stories about the size and quantity that they had collected. Here is Loreano presenting a prize one that he had discovered; it weighed about 14 ounces (400 grams), and here is Greta, of Bistro 22, hamming it up with the same treasure.

Loreano is the village reprobate with whom I have a delightful mutual friendship; he has some land in the countryside where there are fruit trees and the like. He brings me quantities of apricots, peaches, prickly pears, pomegranates, whatever is in season, and of course the porcini. In exchange he will accept a glass of wine or a vodka-tonic, and we are both all square and happy.

Last Thursday and Friday the wind had moved around to the northwest (maestrale) and the air was super-clear, so much so that the islands of the archipelago looked as if you could reach out and touch them. Not only that, but the mountains on the northern finger-like peninsula of Corsica, some 120 km distant were clearly visible against the setting sun.

In all the time that I have spent here, I have never witnessed such atmospheric clarity. The accompanying photos show this and my delightful companions who were similarly enchanted by the vista. These last two days the maestrale has brought much lower temperatures and when I go for my morning exercise walk I wear my warmer clothes.

Now the season is surely over, I think that I am the only non-resident still around; many restaurants are closed for the winter, as are the shops that sell beachwear and the like. The town is closing in on itself and becoming a seeming ghost town; at least until next Spring!

In one week’s time the vote is to be taken as to whether Scotland should depart from the United Kingdom, a political and economic union that has lasted for many centuries. According to the polls, the decision is too close to call. So the beauteous land of lochs, braes, glens and single malts is hankering for independence from the evil (former) empire. In other parts of the world, people wanting independence from some union or other, take up cudgels and go into the streets to fight mano-a-mano; the Brits, being more refined, employ the ballot box to settle their differences. My readings on the matter tell me that the two big issues are oil revenues and currency, i.e. it is all about money, surprise, surprise!

The oil is that which is buried under the North Sea between northeast Scotland and Norway and could bring to an independent Scotland tax revenues of some £1Bn per year for as long as the oil lasts, an estimated 30 to 40 years, clearly an amount not to be sniffed at. And they have to do nothing for it as it is a tax – they just have to hold out their grubby little hands and BP and the other extraction globals, who do all the work and take all the risk, will simply hand over the cash; such is the splendor of taxation. Nice work if you can get it.

Then there is the currency; for whatever reason, the independents want to retain the British pound sterling as their monetary unit. I suppose they regard it preferable to have an established world currency unit than to have to invent and market a new one. The residual Brits are having none of it, of course; the pound is British and if you are not British, then you can’t have it, as the line goes. I have no idea how difficult it would be to get a new currency unit to be accepted in Berlin, Beijing and Bangalore; those darned foreigners might regard it as being worth no more than the paper that it is printed on. But if it can be done and is done, I hope that my Scottish brethren will honor their heritage by naming the new currency unit the “groat” (a medieval coin) and will cast their coins to be much, much lighter than the British one pound coin; if you have a few of these monsters in your pocket you certainly know about it. I remember my English years when the trouser pocket in which you kept your change was always the first one to become holed!

If Scotland becomes an independent nation, many questions are posed. For example, one wonders whether they or the residual Brits will renovate and reinstate Hadrian’s Wall in order to keep one or the other in their place. And will the new Scots feel secure enough to not want their own Army, Navy and Air Force to defend their sovereignty? And will they kick out the NATO establishments already on their soil, since I suppose NATO will toss them out. And will they apply for membership of the EEC? And if they do will their GNP be strong enough to meet the membership criteria? But since Greece got in, surely Scotland ought to! The list goes on and on and it would seem to me that the Scots might just want to stick with Britain and swallow their idealism with their haggis. This brings up the thought that this whole independence caper is perhaps just a ploy to wring more devolution power from London; we shall see.

Meanwhile, I leave you with this photo that was purloined from the BBC web site; I think that this sums it all up with typically British whimsy. However, I feel that there is a problem with the juxtaposition of the finger nail polish of the three bonnie lasses and the colors of the images displayed on the cookie frosting (a real Englishman would have used the word “icing” here); surely blue polish should be grasping the largely blue St Andrew’s flag, and the red one ought to be associated with the predominantly red Union Jack…

Scotland for the Scots, and the Scotch!

A couple of nights ago I was sitting in my porch enjoying the dying embers of the day; it was a particularly beautiful night, temperature in the mid-70s and a pleasant breeze blowing from the south. Added to this, a gibbous moon, a couple of days past full, was hanging over the eastern horizon and a few trails of cirrus were vainly seeking to obscure its face. It was an evening of great splendor and thoroughly deserving of a glass or two of bubbly in celebration. Admiration of Nature’s beauty and perhaps the alcohol had put me in a pensive mood. In the background there was some music playing on my iPhone/Bose speaker system, magically connected through a Bluetooth link (whatever that means!). It was playing something by Gounod as I recall, and perhaps for this reason I found myself thinking of Faust, that legendary scholar made famous in literature and music by Goethe and aforementioned Gounod. Initially he was an idealist before becoming disillusioned, as many of us are. He found a way to make a deal with the devil in which he committed his soul to eternal damnation in return for power and knowledge in this life. If memory serves, all did not go well for the good doctor; but I digress…
Perhaps it was this music and those thoughts of dealing with the devil that put me in the mood for what happened next. Out of nowhere, it seemed, I heard what appeared to be a voice, and the weird thing was it seemed to be close by and actually addressing me. As I said, it was a clear, moonlit night and on looking out into my fenced yard I could see nary a soul, nor could I see either of my immediate neighbors to the north and south in their yards; presumably they were safely tucked in their beds, or perhaps communing with Charlie Rose or one of the other late-night TV pundits. So I presumed that the bubbly was affecting my judgment and I had been hearing things and so I continued my contemplations and my sipping.
And then it came once more, louder and clearer this time.
“Good evening, Michael,” was uttered very plainly. “I am sorry to disturb your reverie; could I persuade you to listen to a proposition that I have for you?”
You can imagine the creepy feeling that came over me; a disembodied voice was invading my solitude.
“But where are you? I cannot see anybody in the neighborhood. Should I be scared?’
“Please try to be calm, Michael, and look down near your feet; you will see me there.”
And so I craned my neck, not having any idea what to look for, and at first I could see nothing, but then I caught sight of what appeared to be a tiny doll-sized figure close to my right foot. Could this be what I was being told to look at? I was gob-smacked in the extreme.
As if reading my thoughts the voice came again.
“Yes, I am the figure on the floor near to your feet. I am sorry that what you see is just a caricature of my real self, but it is the best we can do at the moment.”
Imagine my consternation: who are the “we” referred to and what had been done to something to produce this small apparition which was associated with a pleasantly modulated voice speaking in perfect English. I pulled myself together and resolved to play along. If one of the kids in the neighborhood was playing a particularly clever practical joke I did not wish to look stupid.
“Yes, I see what you mean. But, since you wish us to converse and you seem to know my name, perhaps you would be kind enough to introduce yourself.” I ventured.
“Of course, please excuse my rudeness, my name is Mephistopheles.” He replied.
This name rocked me back on my heels, even if only metaphorically.
“You are the devil? The devil you are!” I blurted out in a poor attempt at levity to cover up the sudden feeling of anxiety that had come upon me. Could it be that my thinking of Faust and the devil had conjured up the satanic one himself? And what about the proposition that was alluded to-was I to be offered a Faustian bargain?
“No, Michael that is a mistake that many people make. I am not the Devil; I am a trained lawyer in her employ-the Devil’s advocate, you might say.” There was a hint of a chuckle at this point, in which I joined. At least this miniature fellow had a sense of humor similar to my own.
“What do you want with me, and why did you say it is the best that we can do now?”
“Two very big questions, Michael, but I will try to give you answers that will satisfy you. Let me answer the second question first.”
“Before you start, I think I am going to need a little extra fortification so allow me go to the fridge and refill my glass,. Is there is anything that I can bring for you?”
“I am good, thank you Michael,” came the formal, if grammatically-flawed, response.
Having refreshed my glass to the brim, I returned to the porch more than a little apprehensively, sat down, breathed deeply and asked him to continue.
“Well, by the phrase ‘the best we can do’, I was alluding to the fact that what you are seeing in front of you is a distorted representation of my true self. I believe that my friends and colleagues would tell you that the physical me cuts a most imposing figure; the color red suits me particularly well, I am told. What you are visualizing is a poor holographic image of me, and it is poor because our technology for the process of image displacement across universes is still being perfected.”
“Holography? Across universes?” In my fear I seemed to be incapable of making good sentences. “Do you mean that you are from another galaxy?”
“Once more you are confused, Michael, kindly listen carefully to what I say. Transposition from another galaxy would not require inter-universe displacement. The planet whereon I, the Devil, and the rest of her disciples exist is part of a galactic formation in another universe, parallel to yours, in a certain way.”
“But how could you possibly travel from one universe to another? It takes us months to travel to Mars, one of our planetary neighbors!” I asked, in open-mouthed confusion.
“You seem to have forgotten, Michael, or maybe you were not listening carefully, that what you have in front of you is not Mephistopheles the person, but a holographic image of him, and a crude one at that. What has traveled from my universe to yours is a composite of reconstructed wave fronts generated by a coherent light beams scanning across a recording medium that contained my hologram. Since you do not know what the real me looks like, you will have to take my word for it that I am a much more imposing figure than what you see before you.” He said this in a tone that was both haughty and proud.

This talk about coherent light and wave fronts was something that I knew about and it helped to allay my fear.
“Hmm, I see your point about light carrying the image; in about an hour that image could cross about a trillion kilometers, which is quite a distance. I have dipped into Brian Greene’s books about cosmology and these have made me aware of the ideas of the existence of parallel universes, or multiverses. But I am still not clued in as to how light is able to cross from one universe to another, or why, having done so, your reconstructed image is not as imposing as you would wish it to be.”
“Well, Michael, you would also have seen in the Greene books that transference of matter, including light, from one universe to another is forbidden. However, as clever as your present-day physicists are, they are a long way behind ours. In fact, Greene’s, and others’ postulations and theories of the make-up of the universe are rudimentary at best. They are ideas from our distant past. However, Greene has one thing almost right, which is that inter-universe transposition is difficult, but not impossible. However, fortunately for us, it is commonplace in physics that events that are strictly forbidden in theory can be to some extent allowed under appropriate conditions. The proof is what you see in front of your eyes, this representation of me is here because photons from my planet in my universe have arrived here and have reconstructed my image. However, and I repeat, the technique is not yet perfected and thus you do not see me in my full magnificence, unfortunately for you. By the way, speaking of Mr. Greene and your cosmology community, are you acquainted with the books of that Lisa Randall person? She is also a cosmologist, but her uppity name-dropping severely distracts one from her prose.”
“Yes, I read her presumptuously-titled book ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ and I certainly agree with your characterization.”
At that moment, without any warning the air around me seemed to be filled with a light perfume and suddenly the Mephistophelean doll started to shiver and become blurry and then wildly vibrate and suddenly another, somewhat larger, humanoid figure appeared before me. Its face was dark-complected with a full red beard. Long red hair was pulled back into a pony tail. It was wearing a dark red, perhaps blood-colored, suit, and a black shirt with red tie, and a pair of black boots. It had all the appearance of a human male, except that it was about two feet in height.
“Well, finally they seem to have got it right.” He spoke animatedly and everything appeared to work in a coordinated way. “What you now see before you is more like the true Mephistopheles,” he continued, with a note of pride in his voice. “What do you have to say about that, my friend?”
I wondered at these last words, were we supposed to be chums, after such a short and surreal encounter? However, I resolved to ignore them and continue with the main thrust of the conversation.
“Well, that is impressive indeed,” I responded, in an effort to flatter him. “Am I now seeing the true you, or rather a composite image of the true you reconstructed from coherent wave fronts?”
“Yes, you are, and moreover, in case you have not realized how scientifically sophisticated we are, note that as the real me changes back home in what we call the transmission cubicle, so my image here changes. When I move my arms, or jump up, or open my mouth to speak, the image in front of you faithfully reproduces these motions in real time. Thus the image on the recording medium is constantly being erased and refreshed in order that you see me as if I were a substantive being, such as one you might meet in a bar and one that you would not think of as an extraterrestrial, for example.”
“I see what you mean,” I said, “but I might think that you were a rather well-formed midget.”
“Yes, but that is how we are on our planet, and I am noted for being one of our taller brethren.” Mephistopheles responded with a rueful air. I found myself feeling a little sorry for him.
“But don’t feel sorry for me,” he spoke as if he had been reading my mind. “On my own world, which I feel that I have to remind you is where I truly am now, I am surrounded by people of similar stature, so I have no sense of being short.”
As he had been twisting and turning I had been looking for any sign of a tail, as I had always thought that Mephistopheles (or was it the devil?) was so blessed. However, I could see no evidence of such a member.
“You know, Mephistopheles, I have just had a thought. I am almost ready to accept the idea of your image being in front of me while the real you is on some planet in another universe, a feat achieved by a kind of super holography, but what about your voice? How does that get here in synchrony with your lip motions?”
“That, my dear friend is an excellent question and it shows me that you are a scholarly fellow who, even when he is confronted by a putative representative of the Devil, who has quite a scary reputation among your fellows, is clear-headed enough to ponder questions of science; most of your fellow Earthlings would be shaking in their shoes by now. The answer, however, is difficult for me to put into words because, being a lawyer with no scientific training, I am not cognizant of the detailed mechanism of voice transportation, but I have been told that you might think of it as akin to a surfing phenomenon. In the cubicle my words are recorded in analog format just as you do here on your planet. Then the bytes, as you call the digital bits of information, are somehow mixed into the visual information stream and are carried along with it, sort of like in what you call a movie, where the celluloid strip carries the visual and audio images side-by-side. Then, at your end, the audio signal, being at vocal frequencies, in some way transfers its energy to the air, and, lo and behold, you hear my voice. To get a realistic representation, our engineers have to intensify the signal before it goes out, otherwise your ears would not have the capability to pick up the minute disturbances in the air.
“Hmm, I see (even though I did not), but first of all I have little knowledge of holography, and, even if I were the world’s expert, your technology is clearly so far in advance of ours that it would still be a mystery. So, for now I accept it, after all, I have the evidence of my own eyes and ears being processed by my brain which tells me that I am conversing with someone with human characteristics. But now I have another question. What you have told me relates to my perception of you and your antics, but when I move and speak, how does that information arrive back to the cubicle so the real you can converse with me in real time? Surely I am not in a similar cubicle here on my back porch, am I?”
“Now I am convinced that I am conversing with a true thinker, you are to be congratulated, Michael, your power of thought is phenomenal. However, you are analyzing the situation in front of you in terms of your own understanding of the nature of science. Unfortunately, Earthly brains, including those of your greatest thinkers, past and present, are simply incapable of understanding the phenomenon of back transfer of information. To cut a long story short, I must ask you to judge from the evidence of your senses that it can be done and is being done. Just have faith, Michael.”
At this I burst out into a fit of laughter, during which I was unable to speak with any degree of coherence. Eventually I was able to splutter,
“Faith, faith, bloody faith. So the Devil is no different from the other lot in resorting to an exhortation to blind belief. I am disappointed in you Mephistopheles. I was expecting rational, cogent reasoning and what do I get?
‘Have faith, my son; the Devil moves in mysterious ways!’ Ha Ha!”
And so saying I dissolved once more into uncontrollable laughter.
Mephistopheles remained unmoved, a pained expression on his face.
“Michael, we are not at all like the other lot, as you call them. First of all, they are not of my universe, but of yours. It is your kind that have invented them for whatever reason, presumably as a vehicle for power of a few exercised at the expense of the many; you wrap them in mysticism, imagery, ritual and rites; you invoke the existence of a supreme being, a God figure who is omniscient and under whose gaze you are eternally confined. And that is the least of it; the practitioners of your religions start on your children early in life and instill a fear of this God’s retribution into them. In this way they have you captured, hook, line and sinker; you allow these persons to promote themselves to a rank that is only just below that of the God that they have invented, and give them control over you. They even convince you that there is an afterlife in which you can enjoy the fruits of your sinless life, or be condemned to eternal damnation-in the company of their Devil-if your sins are above a certain threshold level.
We are not like that; we are completely secular in our outlook, the Devil that I know is a mortal person who has been elected to the position by a popular majority, just like your President of the United States; she serves a term equivalent to six of your years. There is a parliament, also elected, that debates issues and enacts laws, and if people break the laws, punishment is meted out as befits the nature of the crime. Thus there is a police force to apprehend law breakers, just as you have here on your planet; one difference is that our force is made up of what you might call humanoid robots. There are no afterlife consequences of anti-social or criminal behavior-you serve your sentences, pay your fines and that is it. Moreover, there is no death penalty or prison as such; if a crime is too heinous to pay for by fine or public service, you will be transported on a one-way ticket to a penal colony on a nearby planet.”
“Well, that sounds humanistic and somewhat Utopian,” I responded, “Nevertheless you are asking me to have faith that some technological process that you cannot explain, actually exists.”
“But that it is very different concept, Michael, you are actually witnessing this manifestation of me with your own eyes and ears, and in your philosophy, this means that it is a real and not imaginary phenomenon. So the fact that I am not personally capable of explaining the full technical detail of the phenomenon does not mean that others are not capable, and that the phenomenon is thus wrapped up in the mists of arcane imagery.”
“Well, my friend, I think that we have a misunderstanding here. You say that because I can see and converse with this holographic representation of you, then I am in the presence of something real. But I can see and hear and even talk to images on a computer screen using an application such as Skype; does that mean that what is on the screen is real? We could lose ourselves in a debate about that. To see and to hear are necessary but not sufficient criteria of reality, what about the sense of touch? If I put my real finger in the space where I see you are and attempt to poke you, what will I feel, and what will you feel? And if I prick you, will you bleed?”
“Ha Ha! a very nice turn of phrase, Michael, twisting Shylock’s question to make your point. Of course your poke will be unnoticed as neither of us will feel anything, and there will certainly not be blood, since what you are seeing and hearing is a hologram, a sophisticated one, but still a hologram; the real, real me is in another universe very distant from your finger!”
“Right, but in some of our Earthly religions, people in some extreme circumstance have reported experiences that are referred to as visions, wherein God, or some other mystical entity appears before them and instructs them in something. One famous example is the temptation of Jesus by the biblical devil, as recounted in the gospels. After forty days and forty nights of fasting, who would not be hallucinating! From our conversation, I am beginning to think that such visions might be similar to what I am experiencing now-an encounter with a purported hologram of a person of extra-terrestrial origins. So perhaps I am having a good old vision, albeit a high-tech one, possibly promoted by the interaction of alcohol with my brain.”
“Well, Michael, I am beginning to see that not only are you a thinker, but you are also a skeptic. You are not willing to accept the truth that is in front of you. You agree that you can see and hear me; you cannot smell me or taste me, I trust, and there is nothing to feel or to stick a pin in. You must therefore agree that I am not a person, as such, and therefore what you are seeing and conversing with is an image of some kind. Does it stretch your credibility too much to allow that you are seeing what I say you are seeing, viz., a holographic representation of my true self that resides on a planet that we call 42, as that is our number in the planetary sequence starting with 1 which is nearest to our sun, Shat (this is the best I can do to make a word out of the sound he uttered to give the name of his sun).”
“Yes, Mephistopheles, it seems that we are at an impasse, as I am inclined to think that you are simply an image, a sort of vision, born into my brain as a result of my consumption of alcoholic beverages and the magical beauty of the evening. But suppose that, for the sake of argument, I accept your premise and you are indeed what you say you are. Now taking this to an extreme, might I hypothesize that all the visions of saints and others recorded in the history of Christendom are holographic representations similar to what I see in front of me?”
“You have a nice point there, Michael, but this cannot be a valid conclusion since we are still perfecting our holographic technology, as you yourself have witnessed in real time and thus the visions in your historical record cannot be related to this technology.”
“Hold on there, my friend (I have now fallen in with his chumminess) you are making the rather conceited assumption that your team is alone in this technological masterpiece. You state that you live on an alternate universe from mine, and I am prepared to give a measure of credence to that. But is your universe the only other one out there? Greene talks about there being multiverses, and allowing him to be roughly correct permits me to assert that saintly, and other, visions could actually be witnesses of holographic representations from one or more universes other than yours, that developed the technology independently and in advance of your chums. And thinking on from that, one is able to speculate that the Christian God and the Moslem Allah and so on, are real and exist in one or more alternative universes, such as you and your devil supposedly do. And these extra-universal deities communicate to everyone in all the universes by a version of your holographic method, appearing as what we call visions.”
“Michael, there is no doubt that you have a remarkable intellect. Since I myself believe in the holographic technology, as I am part of it, then maybe you are correct that it exists elsewhere in the multiverse, and in one of these (at least) there exists an entity that attempts to impart its religious beliefs to other components of the multiverse through visions created by holography.”
“Well, old chum, I think that we are getting into very deep water here and I need some time to think it over; I also need another drink. So, for now I accept that you are what you say you are, after all, the evidence of my own eyes and ears is being processed by my brain which tells me that I am conversing with a gentlemanly human type. Excuse me for a moment while I repair to the kitchen. There is now no point in my offering sustenance to something as insubstantial as something akin to a figure on a TV screen.”
In the kitchen, as I poured my next drink, something dawned on me and I quickly returned to the porch to confront him with it, but going out of the door I noticed that he seemed to be a little blurry, perhaps because of my alcoholic state. When I asked about this visual difference he reassured me that it was probably a minor problem in the cubicle back on planet 42 and to think nothing of it, so I continued with my thought.
“Something occurred to me while I was in the kitchen. You used subject and object pronouns in the feminine form when referring to the Devil just now-are you telling me that the Devil incumbent is a female?” I was about to offer some humorous remark connecting “female” with “devil”, but he responded too quickly.
“Yes Michael, the population of our planet, like yours, is currently divided roughly equally between two genders. This appears to be a trans-universal, though outmoded way of propagating the species. But it was not always like this, a few decades ago the then Devil and her party in power decided to do away with citizens of the male gender, since males were deemed to be more trouble than they were worth and the population could be maintained at the appropriate level by what you call cloning. Accordingly, males were rounded up by the robot police and transported to a nearby planet in our system, where they simply lived out their normal, petty lives and eventually died out. Cells for the cloning process were genetically engineered to generate only females and the few mistakes were flushed down the nearest toilet. But at some point, the population, now completely female, began to grow rebellious because there were no males over whom to exercise dominance; the ladies found that something was missing from their lives and so there started a bring-back-the-males political party (BBTM) which gained a very large representation in our parliament. Of course, since the males had become extinct, nobody was sure how to achieve the desired end. It seemed to be simply an expression of a typical female attribute; to always want something that is unattainable. Then the Devil of the day revealed that not all the males that had been rounded up had been transported; her predecessor and some influential women had saved a few of the prime specimens and had set up camps on formerly uninhabited islands where the lady owners could bring their favored lady friends for so-called ‘stud weekends’. When the rank-and-file of the BBTM party got to hear of this they demanded, and eventually got, equal access to the studs, which meant a lot of grueling work for the men, who were at that point being kept in good carnal condition by injections of hormone cocktails. With the passage of time, nature took over and babies of both genders were being born and raised, so that in a couple of generations the gender gap had been virtually eliminated, and we were left with the situation that we have today. I heard just the other day that there was a now a new political movement forming, based on the idea of once more transporting the males and relying only on cloning. As in many things it seems that the ladies appear never to be satisfied.”
“Amen to that; so is the Devil always female, then?”
“Yes, the whole of the government and the intelligentsia and the professional classes are women. After the days of the transportation there were only females on the planet, except for the few males at the secret stud farms and they played very minor roles in the body politic, their influence being limited to pillow talk. After the male renaissance, the females ensured their continued sociopolitical dominance by passing a law that enforced mothers of male offspring to nurture them during their first six months of life with special, government-supplied baby food that rendered the young males intellectually feeble, while at the same time enhancing their physical attributes. So these days the majority of males on my planet are useful only as manual workers and objects for sexual gratification. If they think at all, the men think this is a perfect arrangement since all manual work is done by robots. A side effect of this situation is that some mothers enter their young sons in pageants and other competitions that award prizes for the best-looking figure and musculature. There are many competitions for displaying the strength and combat abilities of young men. Winners of such trials at the national and international level become major celebrities and are sought out by aging politicians and corporate leaders as trophy mates and arm candy.”
“I see, you have a brave new world of a very different type from the Huxley version. It seems to be a major case of role reversal to what we have here on Earth.”
“Oh yes, your society is a very old-fashioned one, especially in the Judeo-Christian concept of monogamy. Ladies in my world can have as many male companions as they can afford to keep, and nobody cares. In fact, a woman’s status in society is judged by the number of mates she can support-a sort of harem in reverse. The Devil, being the First Lady, has a male entourage provided by the state, and they are all prime examples of masculinity. They spend their days locked in combat with each other for the prize of being chosen for a night in her company.”
“Sort of like a queen bee! The guys have to fight to fuck, as it were.”
“Precisely, although I am somewhat irked with your use of that f-word.”
“You mean ‘fight’?” I responded, tongue firmly in cheek.
He gave me a disdainful sneer, “You know what I mean.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that, but here on Earth, or at least in this part of it, cuss words have become liberally sprinkled into most conversations. But to change the subject, having learned all about your society from you, I am left with one major question. It seems to me that you are both a male and someone of a high intelligence; could you be one of the Devil’s male concubines?”
“Certainly not, my friend; I am an ‘Outlander’.”
“What is that?”
“I will try to explain; what I have described to you so far is a general picture of my planet, but as on your Earth there are several divisions-nations, if you like. The nation where the devil and her government hold sway is named Crst, which might translate into your language as Devilstan. It is the richest and most resourceful of the group of nations, comparable to your USA within our planet’s context. There are several other nations, all smaller and less resourceful than Crst and these days Crst exerts hegemony over the lot of them. The ruling class of all of them being female, nobody appears to want to contest the dominance of Crst. Anyway, I originate from one of these smaller nations, Frt by name, but on Crst all the outlying nations are somewhat dismissively referred to as the Outland, hence I am an Outlander. Fortunately for me, on Frt we do not manipulate the new-born babies as they do on Crst and elsewhere, thus males can be naturally intelligent and I am the result of that policy”
“Well, you seem to have done alright for yourself, having become the representative of the Devil to Planet Earth, or at least to my porch; what about explaining why you are appearing here tonight. Have I been specially selected for this contact or is it simply dumb luck that your hologram landed here in my porch?”
“Well, I was just about to get to that, but I see my project manager signaling to me that we have been running the cubicle too hard and we have to quit for the day; I will make every effort to come back, or I should say for my image to be sent over tomorrow, in order that I can answer your questions and put forward my proposal; goodnight Michael, I have very much enjoyed our conversation.”
And with that he faded to black and five days later I have not had any follow-up visitation.
Maybe it was the bubbly after all…

My early morning exercise walk takes me along the lungomare (promenade) here in CDP at a time when many fellow Castiglionese are also about, walking their dogs or, like me, just walking. Over the years several of these gentle folk and I have become friendly acquaintances, and we hail one another as we pass; sometimes we stop to exchange a word or two. Everyone knows me as “Mike”, and the usual greeting is “Buon giorno, Mike!” Some, however, inverse the words and say “Mike, buon giorno!” usually with a glint of merriment in their eyes as if there is a secret joke. And indeed there is-but you see I get it! I have been coming to Italy now on a fairly regular basis for about four decades and somewhere in that time I became familiar with the fact that there was a very popular TV host, often of quiz games, named Mike Buongiorno (he died a couple of years back). So all these “Mike, Buon giorno” greeters are having a bit of nostalgic fun in a kind of vicarious way.
In another world, the one called the USA, there was yet another TV personality called Fred Rogers, universally known as Mr. Rogers and one of the shows that he hosted was “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood”; a show for children. Fred was a calm and composed avuncular gentleman who usually dressed in a cardigan and told stories to the kids in a laid-back way without any of the computer-generated stuff that we see everywhere these days. Mothers would plunk their kids down on the floor, turn on the TV and run off to their chores, or whatever, secure in the knowledge that their kids were safe in Mr. Rogers’ oasis of tranquility. It must have been heaven for the kids to be free of their parents’ continuous screaming injunctions such as “Don’t pick your nose!” or “Eat your broccoli!” and so forth. Mr. Rogers died a few years back but there are a couple of generations of American adults who knew him and loved him.
So now, when I make a purchase at a store in the US and present my credit card for the payment, the cashier will often hand me back my card and the receipt with the words “Thank you, Mr. Rodgers.” with the same kind of merry twinkle in their eyes as my Italian friends have who hail me with “Mike Buongiorno”. I quietly respond “Welcome to my neighborhood.” Indicating that we are in harmony and that all is right in this little corner of the world.
La vita e bella!

Something useful for the US Air Force’s Drone program?

No, this is not at all a story about any seafaring activities wherein I have been participating. In the beautiful English language the word “jib” has two meanings (there may be more, but I know only of two). In one sense the word refers to the triangular foresail of a sailboat such as a sloop, or larger craft; in the second it refers to that part of a lifting device (a crane) that is horizontal to the ground and that carries the cable that is used for lifting and carrying cumbersome objects to another nearby location, perhaps at a different level. It is this latter object that is reffered to in the title. Incidentally the word “crane” itself has two meanings; one being that referred to above, viz. the lifting device, while the other is the name of a long-legged, long-necked, sometimes migratory heron-like bird, some species of which are endangered, for example the Whooping cranes that breed in Canada and winter in southern Texas.

But I am getting diverted, so back to the theme. About a week ago, the tranquil life in via Remota was dramatically shattered by a gang of riggers who brought a long metallic object to the minute parking lot next to my house and proceeded to unfold it, piece-by-piece, until it looked like a crane, complete with a long jib that extended to the side-and sometimes over-my terrace, which is about 10 meters above the street. The jib was about another ten meters further up and was positioned so that the suspended bucket was able to lower itself onto the terrace of the house that is above me, about fifteen meters above the street. Since the day when the damn thing was positioned and unfolded, the bucket has been occupied in transporting chunks of concrete, broken from the house’s interior to the back of a pick-up truck and thence to some unknown junk destination; lately the bucket has lifted a concrete mixer, bags of cement and piles of gravel up to the upper house, where men have been mixing concrete and transporting it on wheelbarrows into the house, where presumably it has been employed in replacing the stuff that was jack-hammered out. I am eternally grateful that the operations of the crane are powered by electric motors, so that the motions are essentially silent, although at times the relays clunk and clatter loudly as the motion is changed. The whole operation is controlled by one man who carries a box-like object that turns out to have the appropriate buttons on it that can cause the crane to go about its business.

Here is a photo of the beast taken from my terrace (in the foreground) delivering material to the house above and behind mine.

Strange as it may seem this one-man control of operations at a distance, puts me in mind of those American boys sitting at their computer terminals in Tampa, Florida, “flying” their armored drones over the mountains of western Pakistan and, with the click of a button, unleashing missiles to deliver immediate death to persons below, who may be, or may not be, enemies of the United States. Whether they are enemies or not, the effect is the same, in that widows and fatherless children are instantly created. Do I recall correctly that the commander-in-chief of these boys in Tampa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a couple of years back?

Back in via Remota, I had occasion to visit a lady doctor yesterday. Here a lady doctor is titled “dottoressa” in order to distinguish her from her male counterpart, a “dottore”. In the US and the UK, places where I have lived, male and female medical school graduates are all called doctors. Here in Italy, a patient is left in no doubt about the gender of the physician who is going to treat them-maybe they like it that way, who knows? I should add that here there are also “professore” and “professoressa” in the universities. Anyway I was advised to go to see dottoressa Gianotti in order to get a prescription for the Italian equivalent of Vicodin, the drug that makes life bearable these days. Vicodin contains oxycodone, a controlled substance in the US and also, it appears, in Italy. Last year I was able to sweet-talk my friendly pharmacist into letting me have some Vicodin without a prescription, but yesterday no amount of sweet-talk or begging would get her to oblige, so off I trotted to get a prescription from dr.essa Gianotti . She occupies one office in a small building that houses four doctors in all and there is a communal waiting room with four ticket number dispensers on the wall, one for each of the partners. From the Gianotti machine I extracted ticket number 12, and I found a seat and proceeded to wait. The place was populated by about twenty others waiting to see Gianotti or Donarelli, the other doctor on duty-a male. Most of the others were of my vintage, mainly ladies, and there was incessant chatter among them, detailing their various illnesses and treatments. A lot of telephone calls were received and made, also. Another interesting feature was that everyone who came in after me, and presumably those before me, having extracted their number from the appropriate machine, asked the assembled multitude which number was the next to go in to see that physician; presumably they were interesting in how long of a wait were they in for. At one point during the hour and a half that I was in the waiting room, one lady insisted on seeing which person belonged to which number ahead of her. Maybe she was wanting to see whether she had time to go outside for a smoke?

Eventually it was my turn to see the dottoressa, and we very quickly established why I was there, and she had no problem writing out a prescription for me, inquiring where was Bowling Green (I had handed over my driving license for identification). She was excited to learn that I was an ex-chemistry professor, as chemistry had been her favorite subject at the University of Pisa, where she had studied.

And thus mission was accomplished and I returned to the pharmacy, clutching my prescription for Depalgos (the Vicodin equivalent). I remain puzzled why there is apparently no system of appointments as I am used to in the US, thereby avoiding the long period in the waiting room, under attack by germs of every color and creed. It took me back to  the 1940’s when I was a boy in Chesterfield where they had the same ritual-minus the ticket machines, of course!

We live and learn…

This is a big day in the Catholic Church. Rome today is overflowing with the faithful who have traveled from the Ends of the Earth (purely a metaphor) to cheer and weep when the current Pope canonizes two of his predecessors. So by about noon today (Rome time) there will be two more names to add to the list of those regarded by Catholic officialdom as holy enough to be named a saint. I looked on the internet for how many actual named saints there are, and it seems that the number is hard to estimate. One modern source that attempts a clear analysis puts the number canonized since 993 CE (or AD, if you prefer), the year when the then pope (John XV) canonized the first saint, as 285 prior to the papacy of John Paul II. This worthy gentleman in his 23 year reign canonized a whopping 480 saints. His successor, Benedict XVI managed only 45, but Francis I, in his first year on the job, has already raised 10 (including today’s pair) to sainthood; so much for the numbers.
Somewhere deep in the recesses of my memory is the information that when I was a boy of 8 or 9, I was required to attend a catholic school and, on Sundays, its associated church. One of the misremembered “facts” that stuck with me at the time was that saints were created in order to provide a name to every day of the year, such as St Patrick’s, or St George’s. This was back in post-war England in 1946, well before the time of John Paul II, when there were fewer named saints than there were days in the year-no longer the case!
My current readings inform me that in order to be named a saint a person has first of all to be dead for five years, to be regarded as having lived a worthy life and to have performed two miracles, for which evidence must exist. Francis I, however, seems to be disregarding the miracle prerequisite since only one miracle could be found for John XXIII, and some of the lesser-headline saints of Francis’s regime have no miracles in their locker. Maybe he has decided that miracles are old school and he is going to resort to other criteria-number of publications in refereed journals, perhaps?
Speaking of miracles there are those of us who believe that several such are performed every weekend on the playing fields of the major football leagues; one example would be Wayne Rooney’s goal scored from the half-way line a couple of weeks ago. In my way of thinking, a football game is a sort of metaphor of life; there are a few miraculous moments, a few violent ones, dispersed in a vast medium of boring humdrum.
This brings us to the Sinners mentioned in the title. Defining sinners is a lot less complicated than defining saints; for one thing there is a list of ten dos and donts that came down to us from Mount Sinai on tablets of stone. On perusing these it appears that I am a Category I reprobate. The first four are about establishing who is the boss, and whose name I must not take in vain, or give worship to false gods, or work on the Sabbath, otherwise a whole lot of nasty stuff will be visited upon me and my offspring, down to the fourth generation. In these, God is admitting jealously, and indicating vanity; I make an F grade here, sorry kids! It doesn’t get much better as we go down the list, although I get some redemption in honoring my parents, not having committed murder or theft or bearing false witness. Then there is adultery and coveting my neighbor’s house, wife, servant or Porsche, etc.; here again I have been found wanting.
Meanwhile folks, for those who might have been taking notice, the condom dispenser remains firmly attached to the outer wall of the pharmacy here in Castiglione della Pescaia, just a short train ride from St Peter’s basilica, where artificial contraception is regarded as intrinsically evil.
La comedia continua…

Look at the image below and decide whether it was taken

a) in Alaska

b) in Antarctica

c) in Siberia

d) none of the above

You could be forgiven for answering a,b, or c, but answer d is the correct one; it was taken by me this morning (March 3) from a window looking out over my backyard in Bowling Green, Ohio. I arrived back here on Saturday evening after my 3-day drive from Sarasota, and that night it snowed, giving the image that you see, and even though the sun is shining from a cloudless sky, the outdoor temperature is in the low single digits (F), about -12 C. Brrr!