A Philosophical Investigation by Philip Kerr

The problem for any author who writes about the future is attaching a date to that vision. 1984, 2001, etc.  Here we are in 2014 and witness that the future is much more prosaic than the book or movie. The same is true here. The year is 2013. Chief Inspector “Jake” Jacowicz has been assigned to investigate the murders of several VMN-negative men. Research has revealed that men who are deficient in Ventro Medial Nucleus are more likely to commit violent antisocial acts. The Lombroso project was created to analyze men, to find those who are VMN deficit and to provide counseling and drug treatment in order to prevent their violent natures from committing crimes. Unfortunately, one of the VMN-negative men has found his way into the database and is killing off the men.

Each of the men has been given a code name to protect his privacy. The killer’s code is Ludwig Wittgenstein (obviously the title is a pun on Wittgenstein's most famous work), a twentieth century philosopher who speculated on the nature of language and its relationship to empirical reality. Oddly, the killer, in the eyes of the detectives begins to assume characteristics similar to the original philosopher whose diaries reveal interesting speculations on the nature of death and reality. Punishment in 2013 consists of punitive coma of varying lengths — often permanent. This was a way of defeating the anti-capital punishment groups. Obviously a person in a coma is not dead, they are being fed and cared for, and we know brain waves continue during coma, and its reversible nature at will (in 2013) provides control and saves money.  Ironic given recent events in Oklahoma.

The book  is quite interesting in some of the philosophical issues it raises. The discussion of murder is particularly interesting. “Because each time I kill one of my brothers, I am, of course, killing God. But just a minute, I hear you say: if someone kills God and God does not exist, then surely he’s killing nothing at all. It makes no sense to say ‘I am killing something’ when the something does not exist. I can imagine a god that is not there, in this forest, but not kill one that is not there. And ‘to imagine a god in this forest’ means to imagine a god is there. Burt to kill a god does not mean that. . . But if someone says ‘in order for me to be able to imagine God he must after all exist in some sense’, the answer is: no, he does not have to exist in any sense. Except one. Where God does exist is in the mind of man. Ergo, one kills a man, one kills God.” Fascinating.

There are other intriguing speculations on the nature of society and what is right and wrong. Society is simply a bias toward commonly held standards of what constitutes right and wrong. “That does not give us the truth about my acts. Only the appearance of truth. For thousands of years, when a man took another man's property it was called theft. But for almost a century, in certain parts of this world this sort of thing was legitimized by the name of Marxism. Tomorrow’s political philosophy might sanction murder, just as Marxism once sanctioned theft.

You talk about a standard of a decent society. . .. But what kind of society is it that regards a President of the United States who orders the use of nuclear weapons to kill thousands of people as a great man, and another man who assassinates a single President as a criminal?”

Very good detective story that speculates on numerous important issues, but he would have been better advised to leave the year ambiguous..

Spy Sub: A Top-Secret Mission to the Bottom of the Pacific by Roger C. Dunham | LibraryThing

Spy Sub is interesting on several levels. It’s the story firstly of a young man who was thrown out of college for having miserable grades. Yet the Navy saw fit to train him as a nuclear reactor operator on a highly classified submarine mission. Their faith and assessment procedures worked for the author went on to become a respected physician after leaving the Navy. Dunham explains many of the techniques used to learn the material. Basically, it was peer pressure — he would have been ostracized by his shipmates if he failed to perform — and self- preservation — he would have destroyed himself if things went wrong.

Because the nature of the mission they trained for, which involved lowering an electronic device thousands of feet below the sub to search for something, even the name of the submarine was required to be changed for the book although numerous photographs are reproduced as illustrations.

Working on a submarine could not be less appealing. The confined quarters with no view of the surface for weeks at a time required that the Navy do extensive psychological testing of each candidate. Constant emergency drills — the flooding drill was particularly scary — tested everyone’s nerves and skills. When a real emergency did occur, caused by a defective 49 cent diode, they had to spend hours on battery power after SCRAMming (emergency shutdown) the reactor to track down the problem.

Life was not without its amusing moments, however. During one exercise a surface ship was supposed to deploy a top secret device — so secret it was lowered into the ocean covered by a box. The device would then be sought out by the pseudonymous Viper Fish's fancy electronic surveillance gear. Unfortunately, whoever designed the strange object didn’t consider its density in relation to salt water and the device floated where it could be seen by all after popping out of its cover, a terrible security lapse that probably caused the end of the world as we know it.

The mission takes place as tensions over the Vietnam War escalate. The protests at home were intensely demoralizing to the crew. After a man is washed overboard during an attempt to fix a hydraulic mechanism during a violent storm, and Dunham’s partner at the reactor control panel begins to act a little weird, tensions increase....

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George Wallace: American Populist? by Stepehen Lesher

George C. Wallace came up the hard way. He was desperately poor and 'scrambled for any job that literally might earn him a few pennies. At the same time, everything he did was with an eye toward future political power. Even as a youth, when one job required traveling all around the county inoculating dogs for rabies, he was making friends and winning potential votes. Many remembered him years later and voted for him in droves. In some ways he was quite progressive. As a first-term legislator he sponsored and ramrodded a bill to provide low cost vocational post-secondary education for blacks and whites (separate of course) and many of the issues he favored were populist in nature.

In WW II he enrolled as a cadet to learn to |fly but wound up as a flight engineer on a B- 9 flying several missions over Japan toward the end of the war. Most flights were routine but they had several close calls with engine fires and other mechanical difficulties. Finally he had enough and refused to get in an airplane. His colonel, who could have had him court-martialed, instead sent him to the base hospital where he was diagnosed with battle-fatigue. Forever after he was white-knuckled on every campaign flight.

Stephan Lesher’s biography of Wallace brings Wallace and his role in American politics very readably to light. Wallace will be forever recalled as the man who enshrined racism as a political stratagem. Clearly everything he did, every hand he shook, every statement he made, was intended to get him elected to office. The man lived politics, and during the sixties attacking civil rights was good politics in Alabama.

Wallace argued then and later in 1930 that to take any other approach was political suicide. “It was not any of my making. . . .It was political suicide to offer any moderate approach. . . Alabamians are gullible for that kind of thing. . . .Give the people something to dislike and hate, create a straw man for them to fight, they’d rather be against something than for something. As long as our people are of that frame of mind and like their politics with that brand, then we’re going to have people to take advantage of that kind of situation.” And he did with a vengeance.

It also clear from this biography, that Wallace’s residential campaigns tapped a deeper malaise in the electorate as the votes he garnered during his presidential campaigns reveal. Many of his issues were used successfully in successive campaign by both Republicans and Democrats: prohibition of school busing for integration, school prayer by constitutional amendment, tax reductions for the middle class (to be paid for by taxing church-owned property, and law and order, to name few. In fact, Kevin Phillips considered Wallace as “the first national tax-revolt leader [and] the man also in the vanguard of so many other populist causes.” Lesher reiterates that no president was elected between 1963 land 1992 “without clearly embracing and articulating. ... the Wallace issues. . . .George Wallace’s wish to be rehabilitated by history may or may not be realized - but history already has substantiated his idea of history.”

Destroyer Captain: Lessons of a First Command by Adm. James Stavridis Review

Now a flag admiral, the author was the second commanding officer of the U.S.S. Barry (the first to take her on deployment,) an Arleigh Burke class destroyer, the same class as the Vincennes, the ship that shot down the Iranian passenger plane (an Airbus 300 flight 655) with an Aegis missile in 1988 believing it to be an attacking jet. The book was a big disappointment to me. It’s basically a journal, an almost daily one, but without the serious introspection of those worth reading. It’s quite self-congratulatory and one wonders if those under his command really had the same regard for him that he had for himself. I had hoped for a better feel of what it’s like to become captain of a modern destroyer. Unfortunately, this journal is too superficial. Here's an all-too-representative sample: We had lunches and dinners all over this intriguing seaport city, which is actually quite blue collar—at least by Riviera standards. Clearly, it is the best buy on the Riviera, with a good French fixed-price dinner going for under $20 for three courses and frequently with wine thrown in! Pizza in the wood-burning ovens is excellent. My favorite place, in fact, was a pizzeria called Luigis up over a hill behind the beach area of Mourillons. The Cercle Navale (French officers’ club) has excellent buys on lunches. The large Carrefour in the downtown is a French Kmart of sorts, with great buys on wine, pottery, and other typically French items. Now what lessons of command he learned from that escapes me. For something much more real, I highly recommend Don Sheppard’s books.

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Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals

This is a sobering book. The devastation wrecked on the world’s fisheries is extraordinary. 90% of the predatory fish, so essential to a healthy ecosystem, have been destroyed or fished out since 1950. Traditional food fish have all but disappeared. If we had any sense, we’d stop eating fish immediately. So what to do. Paul Watson says, save the whales.

The modern method of killing whales is barbaric and should be stopped. How that should be accomplished is partly the subject of this book. Technically, the Japanese are hunting whales legally by taking advantage of a loophole in the international treaty that permits killing whales for “research,” even if the result of that research winds up on the dinner tables in Japan (I did not know that the U.S. encouraged the consumption of whale meat after WW II, something that had not been cultural, to prevent starvation. Whale meat now brings in about $1 million in revenue per whale from the sale of meat. In fact, whale meat is declining as a food source and is now having to be frozen and stored because they can't sell enough.) Greenpeace and Watson, one of its original founders have fallen out over the tactics used by Sea Shepherd.org. As an aside, it should be noted that the FBI in June 2004 declared ecoterrorism to be a bigger threat to domestic security than Al Qaeda. The rumor that the Sea Shepherd society had been named an ecoterrorist group is bogus.

The quixotic nature of the Sea Shepherd campaign is obvious from the moment Peter Heller (correspondent for National Geographic) steps aboard the Farley Mowat for a month-long trip to the southern oceans in hopes of finding the whaling fleet. The southern ocean is a huge place roughly the size of all the western states from Mexico to Canada and east to a vertical line drawn north and south parallel to the Colorado eastern border. So for the ancient Farley Mowat to search for the Japanese whalers is like leaving Denver in an old pickup truck to try to find four other vehicles in the western states but not knowing where they might be. 

The crew are certainly dedicated, if inexperienced and ill-trained: half had never been to sea, the helicopter pilot had never flow the particular type of helicopter they needed to rely on, they had no helicopter mechanic on board, the assumption seemed to be good intentions substitutes for competence. The ship was registered as a yacht so they could avoid paying higher fees and more importantly did not need to have licenses for the officers. To give you an idea. On their first stop at Hobart they anchor (mistakenly dropping both instead of one); after being cleared by customs they take two zodiacs in, one gets loaded to the gills with liquor and swamps on the way back so they begin throwing the liquor boxes overboard, on the other a crew member drops a VHF radio over the side (that represented ⅓ of their handheld radio communications.) In the meantime two jet-ski drivers took their craft for a spin around the ship, showboating, if you will, one flips and the engine is ruined. There goes half of their small-craft-for-running-around-the-whale-ships-boats. The captain is in the radio room preparing PR. Is he concerned by the flubs. Not a bit. Apparently, it was common practice for Greenpeace ships to take out whatever wharf they intended to tie up to. Heller inspects the safety gear and decides to buy his own. This to venture into some of the most dangerous waters on earth.

Their mission is to aggressively interfere with whaling wherever possible, even if it means sinking ships (they claim credit for having sunk fifteen, most relating to Arctic whaling that was clearly illegal.) Sectarian disputes are common. You have freegans, vegans and vegetarians all thrown in together; the use of honey by one could bring on an active donnybrook. One thing most could agree on was that humans are evil and the world would be better off without them. 

It should be noted that of the 44 people on board for the trip Heller documents, 7 were journalists and videographers. Media coverage is absolutely crucial to the campaign. They had no direct responsibilities in operating the ship and answered to no one although they were expected to follow whatever rules Watson dictated on any given day. Paul Watson makes no apologies for manipulating the media, arguing that’s the only way to get the message across. No doubt he’s correct and Whale Wars, the TV show furthers that goal. I am through #5 of Season 3 and so enjoying the amateur antics and buffoonery of these well-meaning folks. Hysterical. Bunch of rank amateurs (but very committed) running around pretending to be doing something useful. The captain of the Bob Barker, barely refitted, no sea trials after engine rebuild, 60 yrs old, having engine trouble, steers right into the middle of a terrific storm, putting his ship, the mission, and the crew at terrible risk (his first time as ship captain, he only managed yachts before) and justifying it by saying if they can save 10 hrs they can save some whales, but there's no guarantee Watson's plan for two ships will work at all. What a bunch of yahoos. And Watson as a captain? He stands around clueless most of the time. Any captain worth his salt would have had the crew practicing launching the zephyrs over and over until they could do it in their sleep. Instead, they wait until they are confronted with the Japanese ship for what appears to be a first-time effort. Ridiculous. Shame, because the whaling should stop. But these guys are a joke. Fun to watch, though. 

The question of what to do remains. It’s all well and good to tell those who’s livelihood depends on some activity to stop doing it when it hurts the requester not at all. We have to figure out a way to put teeth into international treaties (I’d say use the money spent on the Sea Shepherd activities to bribe (oh, I’m sorry, I meant to say campaign contributions) legislators. But at the same time, help those affected find alternative and profitable ways to make a good living. Any pain that results has to be shared. 

I was struck by the most treasured item on the Farley Mowat, a huge wide-screen TV and a substantial collection of videos and DVDs. Cell phones and high-end electronics are ubiquitous. The production of computers and wide-screen TVs is perhaps just as destructive -- if not more-- to the environment and many people, as killing whales. Watson’s stateroom is larger than the bridge and was remodeled at a cost of $75,000 -- donated, but perhaps money could be better spent. Finding a balance in a tightly-coupled world will be your generation’s challenge.

Humans are very efficient killers, of each other, and of other species. The lesson of this book might also be that the best thing for the earth would be human extinction.

Peter Heller has written a fascinating, sympathetic, yet not uncritical (he was dismayed when he discovered a .50 caliber sniper rifle and shotguns on board) book about the Sea Shepherd group. This is peripherally also a study of the true believer and how assumptions dictate their actions. Those "facts" or "events" that don't meet their assumptions are discarded. I am a fan of whales. I am not a fan of Paul Watson, but if one of the goals was to get you to think twice before eating, Heller succeeded.

References: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/nov/18/ady-gil-whaler-blamed-collision

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