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The Proud Tradition of Popes Resigning

Posted by Ethan Clow on February 11, 2013

News broke that Pope Benedict “I look like Emperor Palpatine” the XVI aka Joseph Ratzinger has resigned as Pope. Ratzinger sighted advanced age as one of the reasons for his resignation,

“However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfil the ministry entrusted to me.”

So no worries. The Pope didn’t suddenly get an attack of the conscience for the decades of child abuse he covered up or the horrible polices the Vatican has been promoting in Africa like condoms spreading HIV.

In fact, Ratzinger is joining a proud tradition of Popes throughout history who have quit. Five Pope’s have resigned over history and an additional four more are “said” to have resigned but the history books are less clear on them. Let’s take a look at the quitters now.

popepontain2

 

First we have Pope Pontian who wore the hat from July 230 to September 235 CE. Little is known of this fellow, and we have only a few sources of his life to go by, however in a nut shell, this Pope found himself in the ire of Roman Emperor Maximinus Thrax who decided to have Pontian and his rival Hippolytus of Rome sent to the “unhealthy island of Sardinia.” Pontain resigned to prevent a power struggle in the papacy during his captivity. He died in the mines of Sardinia.

 

Next comes Pope Marcellinus who also was Pope during the reign of an Roman Emperor who wasn’t a fan of Christianity. It is believed that his papacy was from June 296 to April 304. There is some debate as to what happened to Marcellinus, did he resign? Was he martyred? Did he renounce his faith to save himself? What we can say for sure is that at some point during Emperor Diocletian’s reign, Marcellinus said “bugger this…I’m out.”Marcellinus

Next in our list is Pope Liberius, (May of 352 to September of 366 CE) who is only postulated to have resigned. Since digging through pages of obscure Catholic pseudo history is boring. I’m going to just agree.

The last of the historically mysterious Popes is John XVIII. The story for this guy is that he was basically installed as Pope by powerful Crescentii family, who ruled Rome from about 950 to 1012 CE. John actually poped from Pisa and apparently got tired to being bossed around and died as a monk in 1009. Way to keep your dignity dude.

john

BenedictusIXPope Benedict IX. Boy was this guy fun. He was Pope multiple times from October 1032 to July 1048. Installed by his dad who was super rich and well connected, Benedict IX was known for being the youngest Pope at 18 years old (maybe younger) and for his wild and crazy times. He was called “a demon from hell in the disguise of a priest…” and “a disgrace to the Chair of Peter” and that he “feast[ed] on immorality” Oh and he might have been gay. So when he finally got bored of having orgies in the Vatican and potentially being a murdering rapist, his grandfather bribed/bought the Papacy from him. His grandfather became Pope Gregory VI but after resigning and the money never arrived, Benedict had a not so surprising change of heart and returned to Rome with an army. He retook the throne but was no longer recognized by organized Catholicism as being Pope.

Benedict IX leads us directly to next quitter-pope. That is, his grandpa Gregory the VI. Catholicism breathed a sigh of relief when Benedict was bought out. But as I said, that quickly didn’t last. There were actually three Popes at this time. Benedict, Gregory and this jerk Pope Sylvester III. By this time, Holy Roman Emperor Henry III had had enough of this Pope-musical chairs and came down and drove Benedict from Rome. Henry favored Gregory and Sylvester was declared “you were never Pope in the first place” and sent home. However, Gregory also was slapped on the wrist for buying the Papacy. He resigned while spluttering “what? what? but…but…but…I’m a hero!”

 

But...but...

But…but…

(Gregory’s successor was Pope Clement II who poped until his death in 1047 when Benedict became Pope again. Ha.)

Next comes probably the most sensible Pope ever. Pope Celestine V. (July 1294 to December 13 1294) Known as a hermit and solitary guy, he sent the cardinals (who were trying and failing to elect a new pope) a letter warning them of dire consequences if they don’t elect someone soon. Mistaking this letter as a poorly worded resume they elected Celestine. To his credit, Celestine refused and according to Petrarch, tried to flee. One of his most important degrees as Pope was that any Pope could resign from the papacy, which he did five months into his reign as Pope. For some reason, his successor, Pope Boniface VIII (aka the pope that Dante put in hell in his Divine Comedy) had him imprisoned and may have murdered him.

And now the (previously) last Pope to resign. Pope Gregory XII. Gregory XII was elected pope during the Western Schism. In a nut shell, this schism was mostly about location. Prior to Gregory XII, Gregory the XI was a Pope at Avignon in France, however he moved the papacy back to Rome. This created a kerfuffle. Remember that guy Boniface the VIII? Well because of his wars with European monarchs, the cardinals elected a French Pope, who refused to move to Rome, choosing to stay at Avignon. This allowed France to essentially control the papacy for about 68 years. Anyway, along comes Gregory XI who wants to head back to Rome. So another Pope was declared in Avignon. So when Gregory the XI dies, his successor Gregory the XII has the following conditions, he must resign if the Avignon Pope also resigns; thus ending the schism.

Gregory XII

Gregory XII

Eventually, that’s what happened. Once both rival popes had resigned and any other upstart popes had been declared anti-popes, the church unified, elected Pope Martin V.

Bonus “almost” resignations include Pope Pius VII who before traveling to Paris to crown Napoleon emperor, left instruction that if he was held prisoner he was to be considered ‘resigned.’  It’s also claimed that Pope Pius XII had a similar condition that if he was captured by the Nazis, he was also defacto resigned. And apparently Pope John Paul II also had left instructions that if he had an incurable disease “that would prevent him from exercising the apostolic ministry” or in case of a “severe and prolonged impairment” that would have kept him from being the pope.

So. Fear not, Ratzinger. Your legacy as a quitter, while not as spectacular as some of your predecessors, is secured in a time honed tradition of disgraceful people quitting a disgraceful position.

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Who Killed the Avro Arrow?

Posted by Ethan Clow on July 4, 2012

Have you heard of the Avro Arrow?

The Avro Arrow was a fighter jet created by Avro Aircraft for the use of the Canadian air force. However it was a plan that never took off. Get it? Planes? Take off? Baw ha ha. Anyway.

More accurately called the CF-105 Arrow, and also more accurately referred to as an interceptor aircraft, designed specifically to prevent missions of enemy aircraft. However this role is largely obsolete these days as modern jets are already fast enough and other weaponry like surface-to-air missiles provide better defence.

But the big question is the fate of the Arrow. Not long after the 1958 start of its flight test program, the development of the Arrow (including its Orenda Iroquois jet engines) was abruptly and controversially halted before the project review had taken place, sparking a long and bitter political debate and many conspiracy theories.

We should provide some context as to why this particular jet was so important in the first place. The Arrow was one of the fastest jets ever built. During the 1950′s the Arrow was achieving speeds of mach 2, which for the time, made the Arrow one of the fastest jets ever.

Aviation experts were pretty amazed by the Arrow, and rightly so, it was sleek, fast, and a technological marvel. Obviously with all the excitement going around about the Arrow, Canadians were feeling a lot of pride at this new creation.

Why did Canada need such fast weapons? Well, keep in mind this was during the cold war and the USSR was right across the North Pole from Canada. Also in 1954 the USSR unveiled their long range Tupolev bombers, which worried a lot of Canadians. Back in those days the big concern was nuclear war. And part of the arms race was not just about building new and more powerful nuclear bombs but also developing a delivery system for those bombs.

Consider how far apart Russia and the US were. Launching missiles back and forth over the oceans and continents wasn’t exactly pragmatic. So of course they would need jets and boats and everything in between to get those bombs to their targets. Building jets that had the ability to fly higher and faster and farther meant that a nation had a much greater ability to deliver its nuclear weapons. And when the USSR developed long range bombers, something needed to be done.

The Royal Canadian Air Force believed they needed 600 fast jets to defend the north from the Soviets. Thus, the Arrow was built.

The Arrow also had some pretty cutting edge design, notably the delta-wings which allowed for more room for fuel and weapons while at the same time providing the same quality of speed and altitude.

The downside was that the Arrow was enormously expensive. The initial cost which was green lit by the St. Laurent Liberals was 190 million for 29 Arrows. Of course as Avro started to improve the design the cost went up, by the time Diefenbaker and the Conservatives took office, the Arrow was looking to cost about $12 million each. So if the government was going to purchase 600 Arrows, as the air force requested, the total price tag would have been around 7 billion and change.

Whereas purchasing an American jet that was comparable to the Arrow would have cost about 1/6th as much.

On February 20th 1959, the Arrow was canceled. The reasons being there was a recession and the cost of building the Arrow couldn’t be justified without foreign interest, so controversially, the program was scrapped. Nearly 30,000 employees of Avro were put out of work by the decision and the plans and blue prints were destroyed.

And that was the end of the story.

Or was it?

Enter the conspiracies.

There seems to be about 3 main conspiracies out there:

  1. Diefenbaker was in cahoots with the American Military complex and cancelled the Arrow because the jet threatened American dominance of jets or something.
  2. American politicians put pressure on Diefenbaker to cancel the Arrow and he caved to their pressure.
  3. Diefenbaker had a personal vendetta against the Arrow and those who made it and canceled it out of spite.

You’ll notice something similar about the conspiracies:

They all seem to focus on Diefenbaker – notice how he’s either a schemer, a push over, or petty. We should keep this in mind as we know that Diefenbaker was a rather unpopular Prime Minister, and he had just defeated the Liberals in an election and was under the microscope from a skeptical public.

But moving on, could any of these theories be true? They could, it’s not like they involve aliens or bigfoot or something. But are any of these likely? Well, not really. Let’s take a close look at the conspiracies.

1) Diefenbaker was in cahoots with the American military – part of this theory comes from the idea that after canceling the Arrow, Dief allowed the Americans to build Bomarc and SAGE (Semi-Automatic-Ground-Environment) installations in Canada. And this also led to Canada getting (more permanent) Nuclear weapons. And of course NORAD.

The idea of Dief in cahoots with Americans is rather silly. He was known as being somewhat anti-American. He wanted to shift trade from America to Britain, which was one of his more contentious political ambitions. And while he did have a friendly relationship with American President Dwight Eisenhower, a deal of that was probably motivated by their similar farm boy upbringing. But there was very little to suggest that Dief would be a friend to American industry and business.

This theory also places all the blame on Dief and ignores some serious facts of the world. During this time, the superpowers were racing to develop ICBM’s (Inter-Continental-Ballistic-Missiles) which would make bombers obsolete. As well as interceptors since the missiles were too small and fast for jets to catch them. Thus, NORAD and such military alliances were mostly reasonable things for Dief to consider.

2)  American politicians put pressure on Diefenbaker to cancel the Arrow? The Americans were also developing interceptors like the Arrow. The idea being that the Arrow was a threat to the American built jets and if developed would put pressure on the American control of the industry.

This ignores the fact that the Americans considered purchasing the Arrow but a simple cost-benefit analysis showed that they could build their own jets for less money. And this wasn’t unique to America. Britain and France both came to this conclusion independently. Combined with the change of technology mentioned earlier, the Americans probably realized that Interceptors weren’t worth the time and resources.

This also seems to imply that the Americans wanted Canada to be less militarily developed. However the Americans gained very little from such a scenario. With NORAD they would basically be defending two countries instead of one, how does that benefit America?

It also seems to place a lot guilt on the military industrial complex, which at this point in history was actually just beginning. There really wasn’t a complex in place yet for American politicians to protect.

3) Diefenbaker had a personal vendetta against the Arrow? Dief was known to be a rather grumpy person and difficult to get along with. There are reports of him having heated meetings with Crawford Gordon, the head of Avro. Could this be true?

It’s certainly possible that Dief didn’t like Avro. But to suggest that the reason he canceled the Arrow was because of this also ignores some important facts. First, it was actually the Liberals who first considered canceling the Arrow, however before they could there was an election which they lost. Also the cancelation wasn’t a surprise. The Conservatives sent several warnings to Avro that the program would be scrapped.

When the Arrow was canceled, Avro fired its workers the same day. Avro blamed Diefenbaker for the firings and then re-hired about 2500 employees to finish other projects.

It was Avro who fired employees, not the government, putting the blame on Dief isn’t really accurate, especially when the Arrow as already considered a cost over-run by the previous government and had been issued warnings before cancelation. It’s also fair game to put more the blame on Avro as well. Prior to gaining the military contract to build the Arrows, Avro had been heavily involved in civilian and commercial industry, but they switched all their focus to military and when they lost the Arrow they had nothing as a company to fall back on.

There are some bonus conspiracies to go along with ones I mentioned: After the Arrow as cancelled, all the plans and blue prints were destroyed. This has led some to infer that the conspiracies about Dief were true, why destroy the plans unless there was some conspiracy with America to snuff the Arrow?

The most reasonable conclusion was that they were worried about Soviet espionage. This may seem rather “extraordinary” to us now, but given the historic context, the cold war and fear of spies, it made a lot of sense.

Were all the Arrows destroyed? One theory suggests that one of the Arrows was kept hidden.  The rumours that an Arrow got away started the day of the cancellation. Some people reported hearing the Arrow with its Iroquois engine taking off. Others said that one night Avro was cordoned off and several covered flatbed trucks were seen leaving the plant. One source of the rumors has to do with the photos of the destruction. In one overhead shots of the Avro building, one can see five Arrows with one partially disassembled. In the side view, you see the same partially disassembled Arrow in the foreground but one Arrow is missing from the photo. Did it escape or was it simply in the hangar?

In Dec of 2011 an ejection seat was discovered in the UK and confirmed to have belonged to an Arrow. How did it get there? There is speculation that Air Marshal W.A. Curtis spirited away in an Arrow before it could be destroyed. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen. He did imply in an interview with the Toronto Star in 1968 that if he had stolen one, he wouldn’t admit to it, stating when asked “I don’t want to talk about that.”

Perhaps adding insult to injury, when the Arrow was canceled, a blow was struck to the Canadian aerospace industry that it never recovered from. Many of the engineers and scientists who were fired by Avro were immediately hired by NASA. This has led many to believe that the team of Avro scientists were also anticipating a Canadian Space Program and building a ship to go to the moon. However there is no evidence for such plans and the idea can probably be attributed to a fictional movie about the Arrow produced by the CBC.

The loss of the Arrow was an unfortunate turn of events for Canadian military pride, and the media of the time ran with it all the way to the bank. The outcry was so out of proportion and especially when you consider that given the circumstances, the Arrow as destined to be canceled, it just so happened that the government who did was Diefenbaker and the Conservatives.

Sources:

http://www.avroarrow.org/AvroArrow/asktheexpert2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Diefenbaker#Foreign_policy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20111217/avro-arrow-ejection-seat-mystery-deepens-with-uk-discovery-111218/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_arrow

Canada: From Empire to Umpire, Hillmer and Granatstein.

 

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A Beauty Pageant for Holocaust Survivors?

Posted by Ethan Clow on June 29, 2012

If those words make you shiver with morbid misgivings of bad taste, congratulations, I believe that’s the correct response. Too bad it wasn’t the response from the Shimon Sabag organisation, which organized the event.

Fourteen women who survived the Holocaust, aged 74 to 97, competed for the prize of being named Israel’s first ‘Miss Holocaust Survivor.’

It was billed as a celebration of life, the contestants were selected based on their stories of survival and their impact in their communities. The judges would then decide who was the winner based on who had the most incredible story. So don’t worry, physical appearance only counted for 10% of the final score.

Hava Hershkovitz Via The Independent

And I’m sure the panel of judges were really qualified as well. There were three former beauty pageant winners and a psychiatrist who treats holocaust survivors.

So, sound like a good idea?

The winner was 79-year-old Hava Hershkovitz, who was banished from her home in Romania in 1941.

The pageant has readily been condemned by various organizations that deal with Holocaust survivors, Collete Avital, chairwoman of Israel’s Holocaust survivors’ umbrella group was quoted saying:

“It sounds totally macabre to me… I am in favour of enriching lives, but a one-time pageant masquerading [survivors] with beautiful clothes is not what is going to make their lives more meaningful,”

Despite the statements from the organizers that this was not about capitalizing on the memory of the Holocaust, most people have been left agape and believing that this was just a terrible decision. It doesn’t help the cause of the organizers when it was revealed that a cosmetics company was recruited to help the women dress for the pageant.

I think the idea of having women tell their stories of survival is great. The Holocaust is often a story without hope. Reality isn’t much like the Hollywood version, it was a dark and terrible side of humanity, not just from the point of view of the victims, but the perpetrators and bystanders each add levels of horror to the story. Having an opportunity to learn about those who survived and went on to help their communities and improve the world is a wonderful ray of light in an otherwise depressing and frightening time.

So why dress up what could be an uplifting story in the guise of a beauty pageant? The whole concept of ranking someone’s horrendous experience like it was a game just seems like a terrible gimmick. “Yes, you survived Auschwitz but… contestant 2 survived Treblinka… oh and she’s also a bit prettier…” Gah.

And seriously? The panel is made up of three beauty pageant winners and one psychiatrist? I’d like to see the results of that psychiatrists last ethics review.

I can understand that the event organizers probably wanted to create a venue to showcase how extraordinary these women are, which is great, as I said before, there can be positive and life affirming ways to remember the Holocaust. But to choose a beauty pageant as the theme? Really?

 

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Math and History United at Last

Posted by Ethan Clow on May 17, 2012

I came across this TED talk by Jean-Baptiste Michel, he’s a Founding Director of Harvard’s Cultural Observatory, where their research team pioneers the use of quantitative methods for the study of human culture, language and history. His talk is quite interesting, he suggests how you can use mathematical formula’s to understand history. This is by itself not a radical idea as its one of the central premises of Steven Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of our Nature.

And we all know there are trends in history that can be tracked mathematically, nevertheless it is an intriguing idea that the development of human civilization could follow a predictable pattern. The implication for this could be huge. Consider our interest in discovering alien civilizations. What if we could add a deeper understanding of how civilizations develop and plot what age that civilization might be in?

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History Fail: US Marines Pose with Nazi SS Flag

Posted by Ethan Clow on February 12, 2012

There are some news stories I never expect to see. One of them is “US Marines caught posing with Nazi SS flag.”

But apparently I should learn to expect the unexpected. CNN featured this story of how a elite squad of US Marines created controversy by posing with an American flag next to, what appeared to be a the symbol of the Nazi Schutzstaffel, also known as the special guards of the Nazi elite, as well as the personal army of Heinrich Himmler and were responsible for millions of war crime atrocities during the Holocaust.

The public relations branch of the military went into damage control once the image began circulating the internet on Friday, of course the photo had been taken a few years ago and was only now seeing the light of day. According to CNN, the Marine Corps Scout Snipers from the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, who are featured in the photo, which was taken in 2010 in Afghanistan and the photo’s description says the “SS” flag had been “adopted and used by the Marines in reference to Scout Sniper.”

To quote the article (damnphasis mine) (( on the advice of my friend Yves I’ve changed the word emphasis to damnphasis))

“The Marine Corps said it became aware of the photo last November and the local command investigated, but found it not to be racially motivated, according to a statement released by a Marine Corps spokesman, Lt. Col. Stewart Upton.

The unit’s commander decided not to proceed with disciplinary action, it said, but all Marines in the unit were reminded that such behavior will not be tolerated and any further display could result in punishment.

“They determined that the Marines in the photo were ignorant of the connection of this symbol to the Holocaust and monumental atrocities associated with Nazi Germany,” Amos said in his statement Friday.”

I’d like to draw attention to some of that quote. The investigation claims the use of the symbol was found to not be racially motivated. Let’s just think about that for a moment, this sniper squad choose to use the abbreviation ‘SS’ and chose the exact same logo the Nazi Schutzstaffel squad used… This is like burning a cross that stands for “time to go.”

Even if we assume that the marines in question were totally ignorant of who the SS were or what they did, what are the odds they would pick the exact same logo and say not bother to do a quick Wikipedia search to make sure, oh I don’t know, the SS weren’t a genocidal murder squad?

Perhaps the marines wanted to be badasses or something. Perhaps they felt using the SS name was justified because the SS were feared and they thought they could latch on to that emotional impact. But that leads us into the next part of the quote I highlighted. They claimed to be ignorant of the SS and their Holocaust crimes against humanity. So these marines may only be stupid and lazy and not neo-Nazis. Wonderful.

What is also telling is that previously in the article the word ‘adopted’ is used to describe the usage of the symbol and term ‘SS.’ To me, this would imply that marines clearly knew the context of the word and logo.

Not to mention, are we really going to believe that bunch of marines, who are probably military buffs, don’t know about the largest conflict of the 20th century? Did any of them never seen Schindler’s List or one of the other famous movies about the Holocaust??

At least it appears the military is doing its job to make sure that soldiers recognize that using Nazi imagery is probably a bad thing.

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Saturday Stub: What Day/Month/Year is it? Whatever…

Posted by Ethan Clow on December 31, 2011

So loyal readers/listeners of this site might have noticed an alarming* drop off in the number of witty, sarcastic, and sometimes angry posts by me the past few weeks.
*Depending on how seriously my opinions are for you.
The last couple weeks have been extra-ordinary for me in that I’ve been busy with a whole bunch of projects. Everything from starting a new job to working on an upcoming talk (see my skeptical highlight in the show notes for episode 146) and of course the weekly going on’s for Radio Freethinker. All this stuff combined to keep me very occupied.

Nevertheless, I’m here now to provide you with your skeptical Saturday fix.

You might have noticed that the year 2011 is coming to an end. In a few days the year will roll over to 2012 and according to some people, that’s all we get. For some people, this transition from one year to the next is a time for celebration, alcohol consumption and general revelry. For others it’s a time to face palm over the celebration of an arbitrary number change.

As a historian, people sometimes ask me about the origins of this arbitrary and somewhat unnecessary date roll over. Why do we celebrate it? What are its origins? and what does original meaning has been lost  in today’s drunken pub crawl?

The problem with these questions is that they pre-assume that history flows in this rather orderly, cause and effect, narrative where things have clear and defined origins and reasons for coming into existence. But this is a rather incorrect, or at least, difficult view on how meme’s and ideas travel through history. It’s not a straight line but rather this wibbly wobbly timey wimey…stuff.

And the history of the calendar is no different. So when I came across this video explaining how our calendar actually works, I was very impressed! Take a look:

Pretty neat eh?

See, we like to assume that at some point someone sat down and said “Okay, what we need here is a logical progression of measurements for time so that our society can function properly.” But this isn’t how things went down. Instead what we get is a hodgepodge of different memes and ideas, smushed together in odd ways, accounting for the influence of dozens of cultures and traditions so varied and hidden by the ages that we may never know the true meaning and history.

There are lots of instances of such a thing happening throughout time. Take for example the French number system. When Napoleon took power, he decided to change the system. So the current system of numbers in France is a strange combination of pre-Napoleon counting and post-Napoleon that continues to frustrate students learning French to this day.

Likewise, many skeptics might bristle at the Christ in Christmas but let’s not forget the Thor in Thursday or Mars in March.

Religious terms aside, few of us feel any cognitive dissonance over calling ourselves atheists and using the word “Thursday” to refer to Thursday. In time, we may also look back on the word Christmas and not immediately assume the Christ has a religious connotation.

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Conservative Senator Nicole Eaton doesn’t like Beavers

Posted by Ethan Clow on October 31, 2011

In the category of “are they seriously talking about this?” is the news that for Conservative Senator Nicole Eaton, Canada’s national emblem the beaver, simply doesn’t cut it and should be replaced by with the Polar Bear.

And yes, just so everyone is aware, I realize that the term beaver is sometimes used as immature euphemism for the female genital area. We at Radio Freethinker are far to mature for such slang and there will be no such jokes along those lines. Let’s move on.

We are serious about the news story. The Globe and Mail reports that Senator Eaton, who was appointed by Stephen Harper in 2009 doesn’t consider the beaver a worthy emblem. She is quoted in the article as saying:

“Many accuse the dentally defective rat of being a nuisance that wreaks havoc on farmlands, roads, lakes, streams and tree plantations,”

Apparently she’s a fan of the north and believes that the polar bear is a more potent symbol of Canada, quoted in the same article:

“A country’s symbols are not constant and can change over time as long as they reflect the ethos of the people and the spirit of the nation.”

The senator said the polar bear is more noble and rugged.

“The polar bear is the world’s largest terrestrial carnivore and Canada’s most majestic and splendid mammal,” she said, noting it “survives in the harshest climate and terrain in the world.”

The irony of course is that polar bear may not survive much longer to be an emblem of Canada if the threat of climate change continues to go unheeded. According to the World Wildlife Foundation  polar bears face a number of major challenges thanks to the changing climate. Further:

In the southern range of polar bears, the shorter sea ice season has decreased the amount of time bears can hunt for their prey. Sea ice break-up keeps these bears on shore. This forces them to spend the summer without significant feeding, relying on their fat stores from the previous summer to survive.

Many polar bears now suffer from malnutrition and others face starvation, especially females with cubs. Polar bear populations in Canada’s Hudson Bay have declined by 22 percent since the 1990s and researchers predict up to 73 percent of pregnant females in this population could fail to bring their cubs to term, given current and anticipated sea ice conditions.

Perhaps if Senator Eaton is so impressed with polar bears she would endorse some significant climate change legislation to help improve their lot in life. Not only did the Harper government dump the 1998 Kyoto Accord (we’re 31% above target on reducing green house gases) but Canada is in danger of failing to live up to the most recent climate change accord, the Copenhagen Accord, which calls for a 17 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

Senator Eaton may think this is a cute way to get some press (I’m just guessing about that, I don’t know her true motives) but at the very least I’d recommend a thorough history lesson on the role beavers played in Canada’s history and since she loves polar bears so much, an ecological lesson on what’s going to happen to them if we don’t do something about climate change in Canada.

Here’s her email address.

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What Dreams Have Come: A History of Dream Interpretation

Posted by Ethan Clow on October 21, 2011

Last Tuesday we talked about dreams on Radio Freethinker. Where do they come from? What do they mean? Why do we have them? These are all questions that have been around for a long time so I assumed there must be a sizable amount of literature throughout history of people trying to answer them.

Well, not really.

I was actually more than surprised by the lack of good scholarly resources on dreams and dreaming. Every time I put dreams into Google, I got a bunch of pseudoscience dream guides and other dream woo. Even when I used Wikipedia, and I don’t normally use it as a primary source but I was getting desperate, anyway – using Wikipedia was proving just as difficult. None of the articles had satisfactory footnotes or references. Some of the statements had no reference at all, or worse, some dream woo reference.

Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening by Dali

Fortunately I was able to find a few reliable sources and had a couple books that I could turn to. Truly, someone needs to write a collective history of dream interpretation from a skeptical point of view.

And now let’s look at my history of dream interpretation from a skeptical point of view.

It’s likely that dream interpretation has been going on since humans were capable of interpretation but one of the earliest (if not the earliest) is from ancient Sumer in the epic poem Gilgamesh – the hero Gilgamesh dreams of an axe falling from the sky, his mother interprets the dream as a prophecy,  but not a literal one, rather the dream tells the future through its symbolism.

This view that dreams represent the future, either in the forms of prophesies, omens, or in some cases, were literally happening, often through some sort of spiritual or divine process, would remain very constant throughout recorded history.

In ancient Babylon dreams were viewed as messages from the gods. Bad dreams were believed to be sent by demons whereas pleasant dreams were divine.  This is interesting since it actually differentiates between what type of dream someone has. For example, if you have a particularly wacky dream, even if you’re creative, it’s hard to figure out how that’s an allegory about the future. However, by assuming the dreams are sent, you explain why you might have very good dreams, very bad dreams or dreams you can’t understand or comprehend.

Cultures all across the Mediterranean all seemed to share similar beliefs regarding dreams as messages from the gods. In addition many also believed that dreaming was a way to contact the gods. For example, if you were ill and wanted the help of the gods, you would often visit a temple and sleep there in the hope that the god would visit you. You would report your dream to the priest and he would interpret it for you and prescribe a treatment. (My guess is whatever you dreamed would be interpreted as some contact with the gods)

This process was often called incubation and usually took place in the temples of dream gods of their respective culture.

In ancient Greece, ideas about dreams were adapted from other cultures like Babylon or Egypt. Many believed that dreams were sent by the gods and that they contained prophesies of the future or bits of wisdom that needed to be interpreted. This would frequently happen in a temple of a dream god.

Various Greek philosophers such as Democritus and others argued that dreams were evidence of the divine and that dreams allowed for the communication of some form between gods and humans. However we start to see a bit of a shift in that thinking with a number of Greek philosophers like Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras.

Especially Plate who seemed to argue that dreams were the soul being detached from reason and rationality. When you sleep, the governing part of the soul is dormant and the wild crazy soul is active, often spurred on by intoxicating drinks and food.

He still believes that dreams have a divine component but mostly only for the wise folk who feed their soul good food and philosophy and achieve harmony and all that good stuff.

Aristotle seemed to believe that dreams were not divine or at least, not supernatural. However he didn’t seem to have a clear idea what they were.  (Doubt: A history, page 23)

to quote Aristotle: “For, in addition to its further unreasonableness, it is absurd to combine the idea that the sender of such dreams should be God with the fact that those to whom he sends them are not the best and wisest, but merely commonplace persons” – On Prophesying by Dreams

Over the centuries the debate seems to go back in forth between the two ideas, one that dreams are divine (either communication from the gods or divine in other ways) and that dreams act as either prophesy or omens. The conflicting idea, presented by Plate and Aristotle and taken up by people like Cicero in Roman times that dreams are not (necessarily) divine but rather have more to do with what the individual does (both physically and spiritually) and these actions cause the dreams.

In early Christian writing it’s very clear that dreams are messages from God. In fact, the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity was because of a dream Constantine had.

This view on dreams in Christianity seems to be supported by church founders and philosophers like Augustus and Aquinas. (Dreams in myth, medicine, and movies By Sharon Packer pg 99-101)

This view seems to change quite a bit during the Dark Ages, after a bunch of bad stuff happens. Lots of wars, the Black Death, the Protestant reformation…

Dreams seem to take on a whole new meaning. While they still seem to be messages from the supernatural they come to be viewed as messages from the devil. Dreams are temptations, demonic visitations and other supernatural evils.

The Nightmare II by Henry Fuseli

A whole culture of fearing evil emerges around this time, ideas of incubuses and succubus’s, vampires and other monsters that feed on dreams and sins and bad stuff that you do while asleep.

This view of dreaming, heavily influenced by the religious climate of the time, would shift as time went by.

How dream integration shifts over the years is a difficult thing to track. Sigmund Freud laments this in his book “The Interpretation of Dreams” saying:

“To write strongly the history of our scientific knowledge of the dream-problem is extremely difficult, because, valuable though this knowledge may be in certain respects, no real progress in a definite direction is as yet discernible. No real foundation of verified results has hitherto been established on which future investigators might continue to build. Every new author approaches the same problems afresh, and from the very beginning. If I were to enumerate such authors in chronological order, giving a survey of the opinions which each has held concerning the problems of the dream, I should be quite unable to draw a clear and complete picture of the present state of our knowledge on the subject.”  - The Interpretation of Dreams

Prior to Freud, dreams appeared to be considered random, a product of an overactive imagination coupled with eating too many spicy foods. Often, dreams were considered in conjunction with sleep, if you were having nightmares, that might be because you were sleeping in the wrong position. It wasn’t clearly understood, and no one was making any progress figuring it out.

In 1899 Freud published Die Traumdeutung. In English it was called The Interpretation of Dreams.

Freud theorized that wish fulfillment was behind most dreams. His interpreted dreams as a reflection of the dreamer’s deepest desires, going back to their childhood. To Freud, dreams were images that held important meanings. Freud’s theory distinguishes two layers of dream content: manifest and latent.

Manifest (superficial) content had no significant meaning but was a mask for underlying issues of the dream.

Latent content was those underlying issues; it expressed unconscious wishes or fantasies.

Basically dreams are our way of acting our dark fantasies and if we didn’t dream, our desires would drive us insane. Further, all the imagery in our dreams can be interpreted as something else. By analysing the context of the dream we can gain insight into our personal psyche.

Carl Jung, a student of Freud, also believed that dreams related to the dreamer’s wishes, which enables them to realize things they unconsciously desire, and that the dreams helps them to fulfill their wishes. Jung believed dreams were messages to the dreamer and that dreamers should pay attention for their own good.  Jung came to believe that dream contents present the dreamer with revelations that uncover and help to resolve emotional issues, problems, religious issues and fears. Jung believed that recurring dreams are a proof that the dreamer is neglecting an issues, thus it shows up repeatedly in dreams to demand attention. He believed that many of the symbols or images from these dreams return with each dream.

While Freud and others tried to understand dreams from a scientific point of view, they still could not explain the methodology of interpreting dreams.  Just like if you go to several different psychics, they’ll all tell you different things, getting your dreams interpreted will often result with several different views on what they mean.

So what’s to be made of all this? Clearly humans haven’t figured out dreaming, that’s what. We clearly suck at that. However that hasn’t stopped us from inventing mythologies to explain it and investigation the human psyche searching for a reason. Today, we still don’t seem much closer to really understanding why we dream. There are theories and some are more likely than others but we still haven’t found that smoking gun that answers the question.

We’ve waited 10,000+ years. We can wait a bit longer.

 

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Raising the Black Death from the Dead

Posted by Ethan Clow on October 13, 2011

Scientists have recently pieced together the DNA of one of history’s greatest killers, the Black Death. The New York Times has an article documenting the process and explaining the science behind this amazing advancement. You can read the actual science paper here.

To summarize, a group of scientists, led by Kirsten I. Bos of McMaster University in Ontario and Johannes Krause of the University of Tübingen in Germany, began to sample DNA from human remains in graveyards and cemeteries across Europe that dated back to the 14th century.

Specifically, they used DNA from teeth. Dr. Bos explains the process:

“If you actually crack open an ancient tooth you see this dark black powdery material and that’s very likely to be dried up blood and other biological tissues.

“So what I did was I opened the tooth and opened the pulp chamber and with a drill bit made one pass through and I took out only about 30 milligrams of material, a very very small amount and that’s the material I used to do the DNA work.” – source

So that’s pretty cool, they were able to reconstruct the DNA of an ancient pathogen by examining old bones and dried blood. By analyzing the DNA of the old Bubonic plague, scientist can learn a bit more about the current variation of it. Obviously bacteria will evolve over time like all living things but it turns out that this particular bacteria is a slow evolver. Of the bacterium’s chromosome, which is about 4.6 million DNA units long, only 97 of these DNA units have changed and only a dozen of these changes occur in genes and therefore would affect the organism’s physical properties.

The goal is to create a living version of the ancient Bubonic plague. Wait, what?

“Such a microbe could be handled only in special secure facilities. But even if it did infect a person, the bacterium would be susceptible to antibiotics, like its living descendants, said Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University, a team member.” – source

So aside from the troubling question of why these scientists are playing Frankenstein with the Black Death, this is pretty cool research. Here’s another question arises, if the ancient bacterium is so closely related to the current strain, why does the current strain seem to be far less deadly? What does “less deadly” mean? Apparently the modern plague has a mortality rate of 1-15% in treated cases and a 40-60% mortality rate in untreated cases.  Additionally from 1987-2001,the World Health Organization has reported an annual average of 38,876 cases of the plague with 2847 deaths worldwide.

Granted, that’s not the most reassuring numbers but when you compare the way the plague cut through the population of Europe, it was like a hot knife through butter.

How to explain this discrepancy? What we need is some Historic Context!!

When the Black Death hit Europe in the 1300′s things weren’t going well for the average European. The average person was extremely malnourished. Food was scarce and what little food you got wasn’t particularly healthy for you. Major famine had repeatedly struck western Europe at this time, which was only exasperated by the climate getting colder (the Little Ice Age)

Economically, Europe was in trouble (sound familiar?) there is evidence that the average person was basically scrapped for cash and having trouble making ends meet. People couldn’t buy enough food or live in great conditions. And then to make matters worse, a giant war broke out. The Hundred Years’ War (although it didn’t last 100 years) between England and France broke out in 1337 and left the countryside of Europe decimated.

It was a perfect storm for an invading microbe. When the Black Death hit, people thought it was the end of the world. It almost was. People would get infected and if they didn’t die within hours, would be dead in a few days. Since the disease (pasteurella pestis) was spread by fleas who liked to hang out on rats, the unsanitary conditions of medieval Europe were like a smorgasbord for the bacteria.

It’s estimated that the Black Death killed off about 30 – 60% of Europe’s population. The disease spread fast as well. It entered Europe in 1347 and by 1352 it had spread all across the continent and into Russia.

If for some reason you ever travel back in time to this period and want to escape the plague, head to central Europe, somewhere between Prague, Cracow and Warsaw, for some reason, we aren’t too sure why, the plague didn’t really spread there and those areas remained largely uninfected.

Getting back to the science of the Black Death, this research also solves a few debates over the origins of the plague. The majority of scientists accept the theory that the plague was caused by pasteurella pestis however, some have maintained that could not be the case. Other theories suggesting the culprit was an Ebola-like virus or perhaps something related to Anthrax. For many of these theories, the evidence often comes up that the description of symptoms doesn’t match what Bubonic plague does. I’m skeptical of such claims for a few reasons.

A) Medical science wasn’t very good back then. Doctors, if you want to call them that, for the most part stood around and when “duuuhhhhh” at the mountain of bodies that piled up during the plague. So I’m not surprised that descriptions of symptoms are spotty or appear inconsistent.

Duuuhhhhhh

B) People weren’t really aware of disease as communicable in our sense of the word. Sure they would isolate people who had the illness but they didn’t get the idea of washing your hands or not living in squalor. The treatments they did have, like bloodletting were just making things worse. So again, people might also be dying from treatment, let alone the Black Death.

But this new research really points to pasteurella pestis being the culprit here. DNA doesn’t lie and this is really a slam dunk in that department. Especially if they are able to take the DNA code and make a living sample of the ancient plague.

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King Arthur Loses Court Case for Bodies Buried at Stonehenge

Posted by Ethan Clow on August 29, 2011

As reported by the BBC (and not the Onion) King Arthur Pendragon has lost a court case in London to keep human remains buried at Stonehenge.

Mr. Pendragon, who changed his name from John Timothy Rothwell (is his first name ‘King’ or ‘Arthur’?) claims to be the reincarnated spirit of the (most likely fictional) character King Arthur.

King Arthur Pendragon

Pendragon has been involved in a series of legal disputes over Stonehenge, mainly relating to limitations on visiting the ruins, which he claims violates his freedom of religion. However, this current case involves human remains that were discovered at Stonehenge that Pendragon believes are members of a “royal line” or “priest caste” and should be returned as soon as possible.

The remains were discovered in 2008 and gave archaeologists a new theory to the purpose of Stonehenge, perhaps it was a graveyard. The remains, dated to be about 3000 years old, could indicated that Stonehenge was used as a ceremonial graveyard for about 500 years.

The true purpose of Stonehenge may remain a mystery forever, but this discovery, along with many others are revealing a great deal about the monument and the surrounding area.

Aside from a funny headline, this story actually brings up two important issues that are worth some discussion.

The first relates to who built Stonehenge and potentially, who has ownership of it. Obviously Pendragon believes it was built by Druids and they have guardianship over it now.

The second, perhaps more importantly, is what do we do with buried remains that are thousands of years old that offer insights into ancient culture and society but are claimed by cultural groups? In this case we have Druids claiming ownership of the remains found at Stonehenge but a related instance would be ancient human remains being found in North American that are claimed by First Nations peoples.

We can be very certain on one thing. Druids did not build Stonehenge. The Druids were a priest caste of the people known as the Celts. According to radio carbon dating, Stonehenge was built over a thousand years before the Celts migrated to England. In terms of ownership, the Druids have no real claim to it, which of course is true of any group of people. Under what reasonable circumstances can anyone claim to own or have guardianship over Stonehenge, except for the current organization that protects and administers the site, the UK government.

That’s not to say that Druids can’t have a cultural relationship with Stonehenge or celebrate the real history that exists between Stonehenge and the Druids. During its long history, Stonehenge was used by Druids for various ceremonies. That doesn’t mean they have exclusive rights to the monument but it is an established reason to allow them access to the site. But it’s very important to keep in mind that the remains and excavations going on at Stonehenge are from a time period that is unrelated to the Druids. The Celts probably arrived in Britain around 1200 B.C.E around the Iron Age. Since the remains being unearthed date to the year 3000 B.C.E so there is just no way those remains are Druid.

The other more difficult question to answer is what do to with remains that various groups of people claim ancestry with or some sort of cultural connection to. This is probably one of those times where if everyone was an atheists, this wouldn’t be a problem. As someone who doesn’t believe in an afterlife, I honestly don’t see a problem with performing scientific studies on human remains. Especially in the case of human remains that are thousands of years old, the notion that we are disturbing the rest of these people seems overly silly.

Now that’s just me. In reality, everyone isn’t an atheist and taboos about death and bodies remains to this day. Many cultures have objections to disturbing the final resting place of humans. Of course, such a view also deprives us of learning about the history and culture of these ancient people. Such was the position taken by the British Humanists.

It seems to me that there should be room for compromise in such situations. Since the scientific study of human remains is usually a very delicate and careful form of research, it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch that archaeologists are asked to respect the cultural views the remains represent. And when I say ‘respect’ I mean treating the remains in a way that implies reverence or dignity. Not, for example, tossing the skull around like a football or waving the hand bones around (I assume such jackassery is rare)

More seriously, researchers could take pains to not destroy or damage the remains while studying them. When the studies are complete, perhaps the remains could be returned to the culture or where they were found. The information, the scientific, historic and archaeological should be used for educational purposes for both the community of science and the lay community as well.

One might suggest these are unreasonable attempts at accommodation but I would argue that the effort to not present science as hostile to people’s sensibilities might pay off down the road. Especially when dealing with groups like First Nations people who are typically not well represented in the sciences.

In the particular case with Mr. Pendragon and the remains at Stonehenge, one must also weight the consequences of any decision. Do we rebury the remains to appease a mostly modern, new age, religion, virtually unrelated to the historic group it is based on? Or do we continue to research into one of the most celebrated and amazing monuments in human history? What option will greater add to our collective knowledge of history, culture, science, and equally important, appreciation for Stonehenge?

The English Heritage organization has announced that the remains will be kept until 2015 to ensure that all the necessary research is completed.

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