101 Interesting Things, part fifty-eight: The Horror of Georgia Tann

I'm back!  (In accordance with the prophecy.)  Thankfully, everyone I know and love is fine for the time being, and things have settled back down - but it did take a human sacrifice.  Well, a partial one.  I had to have my gall bladder out:  turns out, I don't just have a sour stomach, and I've had gallstones for fifteen or twenty years!  Also, these events are totally causally related, and not at all coincidentally timed.

Today's entry comes to you courtesy of the podcast, Criminal. I'll be writing about a real-life supervillain:  born and raised in privilege, she was denied one fuckin' thing she wanted, and began a domino cascade that resulted in thousands of people suffering entirely deliberate but completely unnecessary tragedies.

I am, of course, talking about this bitch.  (Image found at

FindAGrave.com, because you're damn right I'm happy she's dead.)

Be warned:  today's 101IT comes with child abuse, murder, miscarriage of justice on a nigh-industrial scale, no happy ending, and post hoc moral waffling by people who really ought to know better.  So buckle up, Buttercup; we're in for a bumpy ride.

TERF-Busting #0 - Introduction

TERF stands for "Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism/ist," and is a term that was coined by a cis woman to describe a troubling trend in radical feminism that she had noticed for some time and decided to name:  that some radical feminists ("radfems") were being super transphobic.  This was weird, because second-wave feminism ("the one we don't talk about") was pretty trans-inclusive all the way in the beginning, and...

You know what?  There's a lot to unpack just there, so I need to start earlier.

"Who ordered the SWERF & TERF?"  See, the lobster is for trans folks,
and the steak is for misogyny-laden metaphors.  (Image from Wikipedia.)

A bullet list of links will go here when I'm reasonably into this (looks like we've got Trans Thursdays going, which really makes me wish I'd chosen Tuesdays instead), but for now just know that a general introduction is below the cut.

A True Work Conversation

My coworkers are a pretty bright bunch.  Generally.  I mean, it's hard to work on locks for a living, with all the mechanical and electrical work that it involves, while being dumb as a sack of hammers.  Some of my predecessors have been dumb as a sack of hammers.  They did not last long.

So when I hear someone say some shit, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt.  "Oh, that's probably just how he was raised," I tell myself.  "Oh, she's from another generation," I think with a mental wave of my hand.  "Oh, I don't feel like getting fired for not being able to keep my mouth shut," is what's usually behind all that.  But sometimes... just... no.

101 Interesting Things, part forty-seven: It's "-jutsu," dammit!

I've been reading The Wise Man's Fear, sequel to The Name of the Wind in Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicle.  I can't put it down, and there's quite a long bit in the middle where the hero lives and trains among people who are essentially ninjas.  The way their language is described, more suggestive than explicit, is analogous to Japanese; the way they move and fight, with subtle grace and economy, is clearly meant to evoke Earth's own "shadow warriors."  So, naturally, I have ninjas on the brain.

In the twelfth century, a samurai named Daisuke Nishina suffered a crushing military defeat.  Rather than face his death like a man (pfft!), he fled into the mountains, and that's where things get hazy.  Some say he met a wise man from India, some say he met a monk from China, some say he met a tengu - but in the following years, a new breed of warrior arose in Japan.  Unbound by the principles of bushido, these unconventional warriors eventually came to be known as ninja.  They fought uncommonly well, but "dirty" (to the samurai), using techniques that exploited principles of leverage and body mechanics without relying so much on strength or speed.  They also engaged in psychological warfare as their legend grew, cultivating their own myth to their advantage and pressing it against their superstitious opponents.  And, of course, they used stealth - skulking about in the dark, striking from the shadows, disguising themselves, and various other "dishonorable" tactics that would be unthinkable for a samurai.

101 Interesting Things, part forty-one: Real-Life Ghost Ships!

I was reading Dino Comics at work the other day - which I highly recommend, by the way (Dino Comics, that is, not wasting time at work with pixellated fun in Courier font - I must not have fun. Fun is the time-killer.) - when...

Wait. Let me start over.

This Dino Comics strip taught me about the Baychimo, allegedly the very best of boats. After looking into the matter, I agree. But I also found out about a bunch of other crazy ghost ship stories in the process, and today I am going to share them with you. We'll start with the Baychimo.

In 1931, Baychimo became trapped in ice, and shed her crew because they were holding her back. She broke free in two days, only to be boarded again by her once-and-future taskmasters, and so she got stuck again within the week (a little passive-aggressive for a boat, don't you think?). Most of the crew gave up and went home in planes, their flighty temperaments no match for Baychimo's determination. The fifteen who remained lasted about a month longer, at which point Baychimo - I'm not making this up - escaped under cover of blizzard. You go, boat!

Baychimo was spotted days later and boarded for the purpose of taking her most valuable cargo, then abandoned in the frigid sea to presumably die of exposure. But after seventeen bitter years of servitude to the Hudson's Bay Company, Baychimo decided to make the most of her newfound freedom and roamed the seas for thirty-eight years, despite repeated boardings from unprepared yahoos who didn't know what to do with her (or didn't have the equipment even if they did, anyhow). Techinically, that should be "thirty-eight years and counting," since she is only presumed sunk. I prefer to think that she drifted all the way to the Moon and is now renovating the abandoned dinosaur cities on its dark side. If you don't believe me, you're welcome to check, just let me know when you're going so I can also buy a ticket.

Next, we go back in time to 1872 to discuss the Mary Celeste. On the night of November 4^th, Captain Benjamin Briggs (of the Mary Celeste) met with his friend Captain David Morehouse (of the Dei Gratia) for dinner with their wives in New York. Both ships were headed for the Mediterranean, as it turned out, though Morehouse didn't leave for another week. But on December 4^th, the Dei Gratia spotted Mary Celeste about six hundred miles West of Portugal. Nobody was on deck, there was no distres signal. After two hours of staring at the empty ship, she was boarded and explored, with perplexing results:

Oliver Deveau, chief mate of the Dei Gratia, boarded the Mary Celeste. He reported he did not find anyone on board, and said that "the whole ship was a thoroughly wet mess". There was only one operational pump, two apparently having been disassembled, with a lot of water between decks and three and a half feet (1.1 m) of water in the hold. However, the ship was not sinking and was still seaworthy.

All of the ship's papers were missing, except for the captain's logbook. The forehatch and the lazarette were both open, athough the main hatch was sealed. The ship's clock was not functioning, and the compass was destroyed; the sextant and marine chronometer were missing. The only lifeboat on the Mary Celeste, a yawl located above the main hatch, was also missing. The peak halyard, used to hoist the main sail, had disappeared. A rope, perhaps the peak halyard, was found tied to the ship very strongly and the other end, very frayed, was trailing in the water behind the ship.

- Wikipedia on the Mary Celeste

Piracy, foul play on the part of Dei Gratia's crew, mutiny, and insurance fraud are all silly explanations, as many very valuable things were left intact, the captains of both ships were good friends, there was no sign of any kind of struggle, and the insurance payoff wouldn't have been worth the planning. Likely of importance was Mary Celeste's cargo: 1,701 barrels of commercial alcohol. Briggs was not a fan of such dangerous cargo, and the possibility of an explosion may have motivated him to evacuate the ship with his wife, daughter, and crew at a sign of trouble. A brief fire from alcoholic fumes might not have left any scorch marks on the ship, and could explain the hasty evacuation. If Mary Celeste ran into a waterspout (tornadoes of the sea!), "Lower air pressure resulting from a waterspout might have thrown off measurements of how deep the water level was in the ship's hull. A dipstick-like device was used to monitor water levels in the bilge. Low pressure could pull water up the tube around the stick, creating the impression of a sinking vessel." (Wikipedia again.) In either case, it's likely that the evacuating crew tied their lifeboat to the rope that was found frayed and trailing the ship.

Finally, we conclude our journey through ghost ship history in 2007 with the Kaz II, a catamaran which bore three men to mysterious watery doom. On April 18^th, Kaz II was spotted drifting by a chopper near the Great Barrier Reef. Once boarded, the Queensland Emergency Management Office found everything to be perfectly normal: the equipment was all intact (save one torn sail), the engine was running, a laptop was on, no life jackets had been used, and food was set out on the table (spooky!). There were just no people. Footage recovered from the ship, timestamped the morning of the ship's departure, showed a 360-degree view of surrounding scenery which allowed investigators to pinpoint Kaz II's location, as well as various other details which had been altered by the time of the ship's discovery, aiding efforts to piece together the story. The official report is, to my mind, a good piece of reasoning which incorporates all the evidence:

"On Sunday, April 15, 2007, at 10:05 A.M., the Kaz II was sailing in the vicinity of George Point. Up to that moment everything was going as planned but, in the following hour, their situation changed dramatically. The men hauled in the white rope that was trailing behind the boat and bundled it up on the foredeck, possibly to dry, next to the locker it was normally kept in. For unknown reasons, James Tunstead then took off his T-shirt and glasses and placed them on the backseat. The report says that since the men's fishing lure was found entangled in the ship's port side rudder, an obvious explanation would be that one of them tried to free the lure and fell overboard while doing so. Standing on the boat's 'sugar scoop' platform (a platform at the back of the ship close to the waterline) while the boat is moving is perilous and falling in the water is easy, but getting back aboard almost impossible. One of the other men then came to the rescue of his friend, while Batten, still on board, started the motor and realized he had to drop the sails before he could go back for his friends."

As he left the helm to drop the sails, a deviation of the ship's course or wind direction could have easily caused a jibe, swinging the boom across the deck and knocking Batten overboard. This could even have happened before Batten was able to untie and throw out the life ring to his friends. A blue coffee mug found near the life ring may support this. Since the boat was travelling before wind and at a speed of 15 knots, it would be out of reach of the men within seconds. The report states: "From that point, the end would have been swift. None of them was a good swimmer, the seas were choppy; the men would have quickly become exhausted and sunk beneath the waves."

But perhaps spookiest of all, the comic strip which started this all cannot be found! No, seriously, I'm glad I e-mailed myself the link, because searching for ghost ship or Baychimo with OhNoRobot doesn't turn it up (try it!). Oooh. Poor ghost ships, they wouldn't be so lonely if they weren't so hard to find...

Cross-Post: Green fairies are just as imaginary as any other color

A victim of urban myth = me. I learned this weekend that absinthe tastes like butt and evil. And, according to that Wikipedia article, it's not even hallucinogenic:

Absinthe has long been believed to be hallucinogenic, but no evidence supports this. ... Today it is known that absinthe does not cause hallucinations, especially those described in the old studies. Thujone, the supposed active chemical in absinthe, is a GABA antagonist and while it can produce muscle spasms in large doses there is no evidence it causes hallucinations.

GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) inhibits nerve impulses, so giving it the day off will allow your nerves to fire too easily (hence, spasms). This is not a hallucination, more like a seizure. Furthermore, this stuff has to pass TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau) testing, which means it's got less than 10mg/L thujone in it anyway (not large doses). Being 62% alcohol by volume, I have no qualms about chalking up these hallucinatory claims to the placebo effect. Further complicating this issue is the fact that some modern absinthe concoctions contain additional hallucinogenic ingredients, the goal being not to drink absinthe as it was drunk "back in the day," but to get the high attributed to it. Which, I mean, that's cool & all, but let's please not fool ourselves into thinking it's because of the absinthe. That's just backwards.

I came across the stuff Friday night at Friar Tuck's Booze Emporium (known to the rest of the world simply as "Friar Tuck"), when I had planned to buy a fifth of Captain Morgan Private Stock, tastiest of the Captain Morgan brand rums. At checkout, though, the guy who had previously turned me on to Distinguido tequila (a good, inexpensive tequila, which is valuable to me now that I'm out of the Mexican stuff) mentioned that they had one bottle of absinthe left. I inquired further and he mentioned that it was recently legalized. I took a look at the bottle, and it said it was made according to traditional French methods, with a full measure of Grande Wormwood, and gave rather detailed preparation instructios. Also, had the stuff recently been legalized, I found it plausible that there might be some, uh, "incentive" for the media to be rather quiet about it, which would explain why I hadn't heard the news. It looked authentic, and this guy had done well by me in the past, so I took a gamble. Anyway, the bottle cost $50, so I'm not tossing the stuff. If anyone wants to try it, you can fairly help yourselves - I wouldn't dare charge anyone for this. I've got like half the bottle left.

How this stuff ever became so popular is beyond me. It tastes terrible - I'd rather drink grain alcohol. It's like super-Jager, in that it has more licorice flavor in a shot than is present in a whole bag of licorice whips, and could probably be used as an industrial-strength solvent (and it has actually been used to disinfect contaminated water in the past). I tried two of the mixed-drink versions, wherein the absinthe is diluted to about the potency of wine, and was quite unimpressed. Doing a shot of it, however, was like having a licorice fireball tear through my esophagus.

I decided to do some homework and find out just what I was getting myself into, so I read a couple articles: one on the origin of Lucid, the absinthe in question, and another on T.A. Breaux, a chemist playing a major role in the modern absinthe revival. This is the guy most directly responsible for getting Lucid approved, as he discovered that his own absinthe (produced with authentic equipment, ingredients, and procedures), as well as the pre-ban vintage absinthe he had acquired, had very nearly no thujone in them at all - making it trivially easy to bypass the thujone concentration rule which allows "refined" absinthe (strong liquor without wormwood) to be sold. Breaux is like an absinthe connoisseur or something, which leads me to believe that either there's more to it than I have come to expect, or there are far darker corners of the human heart than I dare imagine.

It turns out that absinthe isn't supposed to taste like Satan's asshole. Magically, I guess. The stuff came into popularity during a rather devastating wine shortage in France, and so if it was used as a wine substitute, I suppose it ought to be sipped rather than gulped or shot - and this could make a rather major difference, as it would with whisky or cognac. I'm going to lock myself in a room and try science to see if I can get this stuff to work right. You know, make it taste like herbs and flowers rather than suck and fail. However, my optimism remains cautious, for I know that there are those who drink moonshine and other noxious toxins straight from a jug. I'll let you know if something exciting happens, but otherwise, you would all do well to stay behind the safety glass.

Additionally, the stuff technically wasn't "legalized" because the consumption and possession of it aren't illegal in the first place (though it can be seized with a warrant, oddly enough), just importation and sale without FDA/TTB approval, which involves thujone concentration and almost no other factor - if it's an alcoholic product, then it cannot contain wormwood, and for legal purposes this means coming in under the aforementioned 10mg/L thujone concentration. Other thujone-containing substances, such as sage, are completely unregulated. So, it turns out, authentic absinthe doesn't legally contain the substance thought to be the active ingredient in... authentic absinthe. Since no laws had to be changed, it simply had to get approved by the FDA, which was just a matter of putting in the time and paying the lawyers. Another major detail, I guess, since getting something approved is probably a far lesser legal ordeal than trying to repeal a ban on a particular substance. The moral of the story is that thujone - as well as wormwood, from which it is derived - aren't controlled substances. The Lucid website has an FAQ which also corroborates this information, as well as providing me ideas for my experiments.

The 37th Humanist Symposium - Brought to you by the Internet

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 37th edition of the Humanist Symposium! We've got a lot of good reading for the evening, ranging from the informative to the contemplative, vitriolic to humorous, historical to speculative. Rather than attempt to unite these by a thematic thread, I want to tie things together tonight with some thoughts on the wonderful mechanism that makes this type of gathering possible: the internet.

But first, a man who needs no introduction: Ebonmuse of Daylight Atheism sends in the latest entry in his ongoing series "The Contributions of Freethinkers," recounting the life and times of Abner Kneeland, the last person in America to be jailed for the imaginary crime of blasphemy:

Kneeland argued, unsuccessfully, in court that he was not an atheist but a pantheist. The prosecuting attorney, meanwhile, argued that if he were not punished for his opinions, "marriages [will be] dissolved, prostitution made easy and safe, moral and religious restraints removed, property invaded, and the foundations of society broken up". (See any parallels?) In 1838, he was found guilty and sentenced to sixty days in jail.

With the possible exception of the ecosystem as a whole, the internet could be seen as the single largest network on the planet. I say "possible exception" because some may consider it cheating to allow the planet Earth itself to be considered a network contained within itself. As my roommate once remarked, after playing video games with some friends in Ireland, "Man, the internet is so awesome! I've just been talking with two guys in Ireland, a quarter of the world away, as if they were in the same room with me." I think the internet's ubiquity has detracted somewhat from the marvel of it - we take it for granted because we see it, use it, and talk about it every day (or almost every day), the sheer achievement of it drowned out by routine use.

Next, we have news from the field of medicine. Andrew Bernardin of The Evolving Mind tells of Christianity's failure to deal with depressing events by irrationally blaming them on others in Medicated Out of Hell:

...I heard a Christian football coach explain to the sad/distraught female interviewer why her friend had died of cancer. Adam. It was Adam’s fault. We now live in a fallen world and bad stuff happens to good people because of it.

If you ask me, that guy is delusional. But because he is not personally suffering, or an obvious danger to himself of others, and because his relationships are intact . . . . the state won’t involuntarily institutionalize him.

Mike of Brain Stimulant discusses possible mechanisms for a spirituality-boosting drug in Religious Pill:

Does a selective drug exist that could increase a person's spirituality and religiosity? Are there pills available that would allow a person to suffuse their perceptual consciousness with a feeling of the presence of an otherworldy supreme being? Will the very same drug increase feelings of serenity, peace and magic? I mentioned previously about a British psychiatrist who argued that we could use drugs to enhance specific traits of humanity. What does neuroscience have to say about human spirituality?

Like a good scientist, he sticks to the facts without getting too deep into the ethics. Like a good philosopher, I would love to talk about the ethics at great length over several beers. As if in answer, we have a piece from Colin Timberlake, born of just such a bar-style discussion, entitled Suicide and Organ Donation: A System to Save Lives?

The idea sounds difficult to stomach at first. But if we, as a society, have the potential to save lives - quite possibly the lives of children in desperate need of organs - then it is immoral not to explore such an option merely because it seems…icky.

The internet is not exactly a "new" thing, however. In a lot of ways, it is simply a logical outgrowth of that which came before it. Phone lines connected the world before the internet piggy-backed on top of them; before that, electrical grids powered cities, every house a node that connected to the nexus of the local power plant; before that, indoor plumbing connected everyone to water towers and sewer systems. What's "new" about the internet is that it is an informational network, not simply a power delivery system or a combination water delivery/waste disposal system like its aforementioned predecessors. The information one can find on the internet was previously stored, not in computers accessible from home terminals, but in libraries private and public, places you would have to travel to in person to find the information you sought*.

Next, from frontiers literary, we have two book reviews. The DC Secularism Examiner, Paul Fidalgo, reviews Eric Maisel's The Atheist's Way: Living Well Without Gods, in 'The Atheist's Way' is a crucial message in a light tome:

This book offers a vital message that I think any nonreligious person needs to hear, even if they don't realize they need to hear it: There is no inherent "meaning of life," existence really is a random, pointless phenomenon, and any meaning for which we may pine must be created by ourselves. Maisel levels with the reader, and insists that we establish our own parameters and values based on our consciences and intelligence, and encourages us to live these to our best ability.

GrrlScientist of Living the Scientific Life provides us with an in-depth and insightful review of Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True, reminding me that I need to buy it:

Even though Coyne's initial motivation to write this book stemmed from his annoyance with those who claim that intelligent design is science, he doesn't attack religion. Instead, as demonstrated in some of the passages I've quoted here, he does what scientists do best: he makes predictions. In this case, he makes predictions that naturally arise from evolutionary theory as well as from creationism and "intelligent design" and details how actual scientific data conflict with religious beliefs.

Even the networks of phone lines, electrical power grids, and indoor plumbing may be seen as natural out-growths of the human societies in which they were invented. These societies, too, though anticipated by other social animals (and inferior to those of social insects until we got into some serious technology) are but natural outgrowths of the networks that preceded them: tribes, families, brains, organs, even the most basic multicellular organisms are networks of eukaryotic cells, themselves in turn networks of prokaryotic conglomerates that merged for mutual benefit some time in the vast uncertain chapters of history.

Next on the hit list is our meditative group, led by Moody of verywide.net with a humanistically spiritual rumination on the Tree of Æons, opened with a sentence the length and poetry of which would make Dickens blush:

From so humble a beginning as the blind dance of chemicals may represent, from out of the depths of unconscious ages in life’s Ultima Thule, the Tree of Life arose from the primordial chaos, sui generis, to grow through countless ages, to diversify its fruits, to send tendrils of spiral DNA, winding and raveling, into every niche, every nook and cranny of exploitable space, to thrive even in the face of massive threats to its very existence, to return from setbacks on scales that in their enormity beggar the imagination, to reach in its endless adaptations this age, this milestone, where we—but a part of its neverending, ever wending growth—may gaze upon it and perceive, however dimly, the ground from whence it rose up, while still not finished, and as yet remaining all but blind to the future of its existence.

Greta Christina poses a properly philosophical question, What does it mean to believe in something? I found her answer both illuminating and satisfying, as she spots a critical conflation of two distinct meanings of the term, "to believe in":

A while back (I was still calling myself an agnostic, which gives you an idea of how long ago it was), I wrote a piece pointing out that the question, "Why are we here?" has two very different meanings. It can mean, "What caused us to be here?", or it can mean, "What is our purpose?" And I pointed out that religious belief tends to conflate these two meanings -- the answer to both questions is, "God" -- but that, for non-believers, those two questions have completely different answers. What caused us to be here is the process of evolution and the physical laws of cause and effect; our purpose is whatever we decide our purpose is.

I want to make a similar argument about what it means to believe in something.

Julian Sanchez makes use of some demographic research and capitalizes on the fact that, for any finite data set, infinite interpretations are available, in outlining A "God-Shaped-Hole" Shaped Hole in his life:

It looks like we have some data here, in the form of the Pew survey (and the ensuing New York Times op-ed) to which Stuttaford is responding. That poll found that while the “unaffiliated” are the fastest growing “religious” group, children raised without an affiliation are more likely to end up with one than those raised within a faith are to switch religions (or abandon it altogether). The problem is, “unaffiliated” isn’t all that helpful a category—it’s easy to conflate with “secular,” but a closer look makes clear that this isn’t the case: Lots of people who lack affiliation to any particular church hold religious, or at least “spiritual” beliefs, and even attend religious services at least sporadically.

And VJack at Atheist Revolution has some words to say on the way that categories work and being out with one's beliefs, in Coming to Terms with One's Atheism:

Do you believe in any sort of god(s)? If your response was anything other than an affirmative one, you are an atheist. Yes, you.

Depending on how far back we wish to go, and how fast & loose we like to play with our labels, we can see networks dating back to before even the Earth itself was formed. What are galaxies, after all, if not vast networks of stars connected by invisible threads of gravity? These galaxies themselves sometimes collide, showing that even these most vast of superstructures are still connected in networks, and through them, all the universe is connected to itself.

Our penultimate category waxes humorous, and to avoid spoiling any jokes, I'll be sparing the introductions:

Debbie Goddard of the Center for Inquiry writes of awkward party conversations in "What's your sign?" When Good Conversation Goes Woo.

Cubik's Rube lets fly a Grade-A rant (the "A" is for "atheist") in More than we can handle. OK, it's probably not deliberately humorous, but I've been in this type of situation before and his rant really makes me smile, so I'm including it here.

Jennifurret the Blag Hag regales us with a consideration of just what exactly An uncontroversial atheist ad would look like.

Looking into the past, when there was nothing but stars connected by nothing but light and gravity, I think the future of the internet may not be too much different. Things are becoming increasingly wireless, and I would not be surprised at all to find our ever-changing information network consisting simply of some form of broadcast node (whether a tower or a satellite), metaphorically orbited by satellite devices (both servers and terminals) with no wires involved at any step of the way. At any rate, I think it's fantastic that people from around the world can sit in the comfort of their own homes and share ideas both in real-time and at length (by AIM, Skype, e-mail, or blog) because of something our civilization has built.

Speaking of the future, our last category has but a lone entrant, who also happens to be the host of the very next symposium on June 14^th: Viktor Nagornyy writes a future-based historical fiction piece entitled 2121: the age of reason. Viktor's short story speaks for itself, so I'll leave him to it.

So that's that for the 37^th Humanist Symposium; I hope you've enjoyed your visit! Please direct any questions, comments, or death threats to the comments below. Y'all have a good night, and a pleasant holiday tomorrow!

* - Yes, yes, I'm aware that I'm ignoring all the chaff on the internet, but that's OK. There's a lot of chaff in libraries, too: just look in their metaphysics, new age, or religion sections. Also, on networks in general, I kind of ignored post offices. I didn't realize this until I had only a paragraph to go, though, and couldn't really find a nice place to fit them in, so I'll just skip them (but for this brief acknowledgment, of course).

101 Interesting Things, part four: Spancill Hill

The story of Spancill Hill is a genuine Irish-American legend, concerning a song written by a man named Michael Considine. I came across this interesting bit of history and/or folklore while looking up the lyrics to the song Fairmount Hill by the Dropkick Murphys.

As the Wikipedia page can tell you, Michael Considine came to the USA from the Cross of Spancilhill, Ireland in 1870, at about the age of twenty. After working in Boston for two years, Considine moved to California, and died shortly thereafter. Before he died, though, he wrote a poem called "Spancilhill," and sent it to his six-year-old nephew John for safekeeping.

Here is the poem:

Last night as I lay dreaming, of the pleasant days gone by,
My mind being bent on rambling and to Erin's Isle I did fly.
I stepped on board a vision and sailed out with a will,
'Till I gladly came to anchor at the Cross of Spancilhill.

Enchanted by the novelty, delighted with the scenes,
Where in my early childhood, I often times have been.
I thought I heard a murmur, I think I hear it still,
'Tis that little stream of water at the Cross of Spancilhill.

And to amuse my fancy, I lay upon the ground,
Where all my school companions, in crowds assembled 'round.
Some have grown to manhood, while more their graves did fill,
Oh I thought we were all young again, at the Cross of Spancilhill.

It being on a Sabbath morning, I thought I heard a bell,
O'er hills and vallies sounded, in notes that seemed to tell,
That Father Dan was coming, his duty to fulfill,
At the parish church of Clooney, just one mile from Spancilhill.

And when our duty did commence, we all knelt down in prayer,
In hopes for to be ready, to climb the Golden Stair.
And when back home returning, we danced with right good will,
To Martin Moilens music, at the Cross of Spancilhill.

It being on the twenty third of June, the day before the fair,
Sure Erin's sons and daughters, they all assembled there.
The young, the old, the stout and the bold, they came to sport and kill,
What a curious combination, at the Fair of Spancilhill.

I went into my old home, as every stone can tell,
The old boreen was just the same, and the apple tree over the well,
I miss my sister Ellen, my brothers Pat and Bill,
Sure I only met my strange faces at my home in Spancilhill.

I called to see my neighbors, to hear what they might say,
The old were getting feeble, and the young ones turning grey.
I met with tailor Quigley, he's as brave as ever still,
Sure he always made my breeches when I lived in Spancilhill.

I paid a flying visit, to my first and only love,
She's as pure as any lilly, and as gentle as a dove.
She threw her arms around me, saying Mike I love you still,
She is Mack the Rangers daughter, the Pride of Spancilhill.

I thought I stooped to kiss her, as I did in days of yore,
Says she Mike you're only joking, as you often were before,
The cock crew on the roost again, he crew both loud and shrill,
And I awoke in California, far far from Spancilhill.

But when my vision faded, the tears came in my eyes,
In hope to see that dear old spot, some day before I die.
May the Joyous King of Angels, His Choicest Blessings spill,
On that Glorious spot of Nature, the Cross of Spancilhill.

The really interesting thing about this poem, though, is how it came to pass that we can read the original version today. After Considine's death, a popular but inaccurate version of the song took root in the area. From the Wikipedia page:

In the late 1930s or early '40s, Robbie McMahon, a local folk singer and composer, during an Irish traditional music session in Spancil Hill, was in a neighbour's house with some friends singing when someone suggested singing "Spancillhill". The woman of the house, Moira Keane, left the room and when she came back said, "If ye are going to sing that song ye might as well sing it right" and she gave Robbie the original song.

Some time later at another session in the parish Robbie was asked to sing "Spancilhill" when a gruff voice in the corner growled out "Don't sing that song". When asked "Why not?" the voice barked back " 'Cos ye don't know it."

Robbie, however insisted he did and launched into the version he'd gotten from Moira Keane. After singing a few lines Robbie noticed the gruff man sitting up and paying attention. As Robbie progressed with the song the gruff man foostered more and more with his cap and became agitated. When the song ended, the gruff voice in the corner demanded "Where did ya get that song?". The gruff old man seemed both perturbed and pleased.

Moira Keane was the gruff man's aunt and the gruff man was 76 year old John Considine, who had kept his uncle Mike's song safe for 70 years.

This is the sort of thing that's really hard to verify.  However, I think it's still a rather interesting story, true or not.

The Lenient Policy

In his book, Influence:  The Psychology of Persuasion, Dr. Robert Cialdini writes about many of the tricks used by what he calls "compliance professionals" to get their marks to accede to their demands.  He details the use of six such "weapons of influence" using case studies and real life examples to explain the psychology behind them, as well as how to protect yourself against them (and how not to become overzealous in doing so, as many of these principles are generally helpful to us).

Look, it's a great book, and an interesting read, but I'm not here to sell books.  I'm here to talk about prisons.  Cialdini writes, in "Commitment and Consistency,"

During the Korean War, many captured American soldiers found themselves in prisoner-of-war (POW) camps run by the Chinese Communists. It became clear early in the conflict that the Chinese treated captives quite differently than did their allies, the North Koreans, who favored savagery and harsh punishment to gain compliance. Specifically avoiding the appearance of brutality, the Red Chinese engaged in what they termed their "lenient policy," which was in reality a concerted and sophisticated psychological assault on their captives. After the war, American psychologists questioned the returning prisoners intensively to determine what had occurred. The intensive psychological investigation took place, in part, because of the unsettling success of some aspects of the Chinese program. For example, the Chinese were very effective in getting Americans to inform on one another, in striking contrast to the behavior of American POWs in World War II.

Cialdini goes on to describe how the Chinese would "start small and build," deftly planting a tiny seed in the minds of their captives and letting their own internal psychological pressures do most of the work.  Reluctant as I am to quote ad nauseum, Cialdini describes the process rather succinctly:

...prisoners were frequently asked to make statements so mildly anti-American or pro-Communist as to seem inconsequential ("The United States is not perfect." "In a Communist country, unemployment is not a problem."). But once these minor requests were complied with, the men found themselves pushed to submit to related yet more substantive requests. A man who had just agreed with his Chinese interrogator that the United States is not perfect might then be asked to indicate some of the ways in which he thought this was the case. Once he had so explained himself, he might be asked to make a list of these "problems with America" and to sign his name to it. Later he might be asked to read his list in a discussion group with other prisoners. "After all, it's what you really believe, isn't it?" Still later he might be asked to write an essay expanding on his list and discussing these problems in greater detail.
The Chinese might then use his name and his essay in an anti-American radio broadcast beamed not only to the entire camp, but to other POW camps in North Korea, as well as to American forces in South Korea. Suddenly he would find himself a "collaborator," having given aid to the enemy.

It's really rather insidious, when you think about it:  between these almost casual conversations, discussion groups, and essay contests - yes, essay contests! - it sounds almost like a retreat.  I mean, except for the squalor and inability to leave and all that.  I'm not at all trying to trivialize the prison experience of these POWs, my point is that the program to which they were subjected had zero violence and got great results.  One of the best parts is that it was cheap, too:  in the aforementioned essay contests, trivial prizes were handed out.  A pack of cigarettes, or some fresh fruit.  This was entirely deliberate, because too-tempting prizes could allow the contestants to rationalize their writing as "for the prize."  But when the prizes are trivial, the contestants are forced to own more of their decision to write what they write.

On top of that, the winning essays weren't always the most pro-Chinese, pro-Communist, or anti-American ones submitted; often, winning essays were selected apparently for sincerity, making only minor concessions to the Chinese while still being largely pro-American.  These minor concessions would then be built upon with those individual writers, who would likely be softened upon winning a contest with a pro-American essay, and a message was sent that the contest was one of merit and not of lip service.  This way, prisoners could not submit just any old dreck that exalted the ideology of their captors, thereby insulating themselves from influence.

The principle upon which this whole operation hinged was to subtly get the prisoner to change his own self-image.  Once that is done, internal pull towards consistency will do the rest.  The trick is to hide from the captive that this is the objective, and to create an environment that facilitates and encourages desired behaviors circumstantial to the final goal, but all pushing together directly towards it by slowly changing an inner mindset.  Indoctrination, in a word.

Rhetorically speaking, this is fighting dirty, but what cannot be denied is its efficacy.  Torture assaults both the body and the mind, but pits the victim's loyalty against the captor's brutality.  The lenient policy is another kind of battle of wills, one that does not attack the ideological fortress outright, but corrodes it from within.  Please do not mistake my words - I do not mean to insinuate that this is worse than torture, and far from it.  What I mean is that this sort of technique is far more effective than torture, despite (perhaps because of) its subtlety.

I guess the question now is:  why does anyone torture any more?  I mean, the only thing that torturing gets you is the sadistic glee of causing pain to the Other.

Oh, wait.