Take a good look at this picture:
Guy looks reasonably well supplied, right? Good clothes, pump shotgun. Full sized backpack, sleeping roll visible on the bottom. He looks to be in decent physical condition, about 30-40 years of age.
Now read the first bit of the article that goes with that picture:
It promised to stretch reality television to the limit: one man pitting his wits against the Yukon wilderness with just a camera for company.
But hopes for an epic three-month contest between man and nature were dashed when adventurer Ed Wardle failed to go the distance.
Seven weeks after striding out into the rugged forests of western Canada armed with a rifle and a fishing rod, Mr Wardle had to be airlifted back to civilisation suffering from starvation.
Here’s another bit:
Mr Wardle was chosen for the project because of his abilitiy as a cameraman and producer, and his experience of filming in the North Pole and on the summit of Everest.
He has worked on shows for Channel 4, ITV, BBC and Discovery.
But he had no specific training for living alone in the remote territory, 80 per cent of which is pristene wilderness.
OK, I saw this story early this morning, and have been thinking about it. It’s stuck in my head sufficiently that I can’t concentrate on working on the caregiving book until I write about it and get it out of my system. I’ve had several reactions to the whole thing, but I keep coming back to: “what kind of idiot do you have to be to try something like this without at least rudimentary training in wilderness survival?”
But close behind that is: “what kind of idiot, that well equipped (the article says that he had a fishing pole and tackle, as well), would you have to be in order to *not* survive just fine for three months in an environment teeming with fish & game?”
I mean, yeah, sure, anything can happen. Twist an ankle or break your wrist in a fall, and you’re in pretty deep shit. But look back at that photo – that guy could easily have enough decent gear and a change of clothes to get through three months of living rough without any problems. Hell, I’m in poor physical condition (relative to him, anyway) and I’m confident that I could do it just fine. I would’ve preferred a good .22 over the shotgun – much lighter ammo, and living off of small game is easier – but still.
Well, OK, that’s out of my system. Back to work.
Jim Downey
An old SCA friend was in town for a visit, and we got together for lunch. After, we came back to the house, since she hadn’t been here since forever. As we went through the place, showing her how we had settled in, we got back here to my office where I also have my reloading bench and my big safe for guns and rare books waiting to be worked on. She hadn’t remembered that aspect of my life from way back when, and was a little curious. After discussing the matter a bit, she asked whether I also hunted.
“Haven’t in years, though I used to a fair amount. Grew up hunting. I’m thinking that it’s about time I did a bit again. We’ll see.”
* * * * * * *
I just checked my blood pressure. 123/90. Yeah, the diastolic is a little high, but my bp tends to be up a bit in the morning. Still, that is dramatically better than when I wrote this 11 months ago:
Actually, my blood pressure was scary bad. When the aide took it earlier, she was startled by how high it was. Let’s put it this way – it’s in the range where if it were just a bit higher, hospitalization would be indicated in most cases. If I walked into an ER with that blood pressure, people would start rushing around.
What was my bp then? Well, I was hesitant to say, since it was so bad, and I didn’t want to cause concern among my friends and family. But it was averaging 230/120. Like I said, scary bad.
But as time has gone on, and I have worked with my doc to tweak meds this way and that, we’ve gotten it under control. As I expected we would. Which has allowed me to write here that I am a lot healthier than I really have any right to be, considering the stresses I have placed myself under these past few years. So it was from that perspective that I had this email exchange with a friend this morning:
Me: “Though I don’t actually feel old yet. I did for a while, there, but not so much now.
Hmm. I should think more about that.”
My friend: “That would make sense, actually. You’re not in pain from your own chronic illness, nor exhausted from trying to be a caregiver for someone in the last throes of hers.”
* * * * * * *
I never really *enjoyed* hunting. Not in the sense some people think of hunting as just going out and killing things, anyway. No, I grew up hunting from a young age, and just took it for granted that it was something you did. When I got older, and grew more reflective on why I did the things I did, I still found that hunting was a good thing for me to do.
Why? Well, I thought then, and still think today, that if you are a meat-eater you should occasionally actually go kill something and then clean and butcher the animal. It helps keep me honest about the fact that with every bit of meat I eat that an animal died.
Oh, there are other aspects of hunting I enjoyed. Getting out in the woods/fields. Challenging my skill with firearms. Making me more aware of the sights and sounds around me. Maybe being with friends or family, though I have just as often hunted alone. I usually enjoyed sharing the meat with friends – wild game just tastes so much better, and few people have the opportunity these days to enjoy it.
But I didn’t enjoy cleaning the game, or even the actual killing part. Necessary, yes. But not enjoyable. Not for me.
* * * * * * *
I have been . . . avoiding . . . working on the caregiving book for the last couple of months. Oh, not consciously. But it is clear to me upon reflection that I have managed to keep myself too busy with this, or that, so that I never seemed to get back to working on the book.
It is about 2/3rds done. Maybe more. My co-author and I made huge progress on the book through the spring. Seriously, about two or three months of work would finish it.
Then why avoid it?
Well, I’ve been thinking about that a lot this last week or two. And I think that it has to do with the fact that I am feeling healthy. That I am largely recovered now from the years of being a care provider. Working on the book earlier this year helped a lot in getting me to this point – helped me to understand and see the whole experience in some context. Yeah, it was really emotional. But coming to terms with those emotions was a good thing. I feel like I have slain my dragons.
And now I just have the carcass to deal with.
Understanding this now, I think it’ll be relatively easy for me to get back to it. I have something to share with others – this isn’t so much about me working through my issues, not any more. It is about helping others to work through theirs. It is sharing the bounty of my hunt, as it were.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Climate Change, Fermi's Paradox, General Musings, H. G. Wells, Science Fiction, Scientific American, Society, Space, Survival, Writing stuff
OK, this was kicking around in the back of my head when I wrote the post the other day, because I have had a page from the June 6th Economist sitting on my bench for the last several weeks, waiting for me to get around to writing about it.
About what? Us clever monkeys. Well, more accurately, our genes, but for purposes of discussion here I will say the two are functionally the same over the time span I wish to address. (Which, when you think about it, is a rather profound notion. No, this is not my idea.)
The idea discussed in the article is this: that the development of modern human culture was dependent not on intelligence, but on something more basic – survival. Specifically, on population density:
In their model, Dr Thomas and his colleagues divided a simulated world into regions with different densities of human groups. Individuals in these groups had certain “skills”, each with an associated degree of complexity. Such skills could be passed on, more or less faithfully, thus yielding an average level of skills that could vary over time. The groups could also exchange skills.
The model suggested that once more than about 50 groups were in contact with one another, the complexity of skills that could be maintained did not increase as the number of groups increased. Rather, it was population density that turned out to be the key to cultural sophistication. The more people there were, the more exchange there was between groups and the richer the culture of each group became.
Dr Thomas therefore suggests that the reason there is so little sign of culture until 90,000 years ago is that there were not enough people to support it. It is at this point that a couple of places in Africa—one in the southernmost tip of the continent and one in eastern Congo—yield signs of jewellery, art and modern weapons. But then they go away again. That, Dr Thomas suggests, corresponds with a period when human numbers shrank. Climate data provides evidence this shrinkage did happen.
Now, this is a fairly old trope in Science Fiction: that some cataclysm can result in the complete collapse of society, to the extent that most if not all knowledge and technology is lost. Just look at The Time Machine to see how far back this idea goes – and it has been used countless times since. I play off this trope for Communion of Dreams in a couple of ways, of course, using it as both back story for the novel and for the eventual revelation at the end of the book.
It is interesting to see this intuitive idea borne out by some science (though it sounds to me like there’s still a fair amount of work to be done to establish that the theory is correct). And not just because it addresses some curious discontinuities in the archeological record. Rather, it says that intelligence has considerable staying power, at least in our species. Sure, it may not be a sufficient factor in supporting true civilization, but knowing that at least in our case it can last some 100,000 years gives one hope for it lasting for a while elsewhere, even if those civilizations do not.
Jim Downey
Filed under: General Musings, Heinlein, Humor, Robert A. Heinlein, Society, Survival
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
— Lazarus Long
I can’t believe it.
One of my favorite economic historians from my undergrad days wrote a famous treatise on human stupidity, and it took me 20 years to find out about it.
Sheesh!
Well, just in case you too missed this little gem, I offer:
THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY
By Carlo M. Cipolla
Go. Read the whole thing. It’s not too long. And if you have a wry, cynical (maybe even sardonic?) twist to your view of the world (as I certainly do), you will laugh your proverbial ass off. Maybe even your real ass. But since most people need a bit of convincing to actually *read* things these days, here’s a taste to whet your appetite:
THE FIRST BASIC LAW
The first basic law of human stupidity asserts without ambiguity that:
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
At first, the statement sounds trivial, vague, and horribly ungenerous. Closer scrutiny will however reveal its realistic veracity. No matter how high are one’s estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that:
a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid.
b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one’s activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments.
The First Basic Law prevents me from attributing a specific numerical value to the fraction of stupid people within the total population: any numerical estimate would turn out to be an underestimate. Thus in the following pages I will denote the fraction of stupid people within a population by the symbol σ.
There, if that doesn’t get you started on the right track, there’s no hope for you: you’re one of THEM.
As a friend of mine always says: “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”
Of course, he means the stupid people.
But you knew that.
Right?
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Sorry I’ve been gone. Been trying to avoid getting killed. While getting new glasses.
No, I haven’t been messing around with a jealous ophthalmologist’s wife. I went to see a friend who is a top-rate ophthalmologist and who has cared for my eyes for years. And along the way kept hearing the theme to “The Wizard of Oz” playing in my head. From a note I just sent another friend:
Been hearing about the storms on NPR.
Ayup. Six dead. Tornadoes to the left of us, tornadoes to the right . . .
Seriously, we were only about a half hour from being in the wrong place at very much the wrong time. And there was no way for us to know it. On the way down yesterday, the tornadoes blew through the I-44 corridor about a half hour ahead of us getting on there. Lots and lots of billboards, highway signs, and trees blown down just ahead of us. Two tracker-trailers blown over and off the road. We tried to stop in Springfield to get some lunch, and about half the city was without power. It was a bit . . . exciting. In not the good way.
Well, we did make it. And back this afternoon. But for those of you who don’t live in these parts, and have always thought that Midwesterners were constantly being chased around by tornadoes carrying cows . . . well, in this case, you’re pretty much right.
More after I clean out my underwear thoroughly.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Bipolar, Depression, Gardening, General Musings, Habanero, Health, Preparedness, Survival
My special-order plants arrived yesterday. Bhut Jolokia, Fatalii, and Red Savina chile peppers (man, you gotta love a pepper with the name Fatalii). Ivory Egg and Opalka heirloom tomatoes. These will be supplemented with other peppers and tomatoes I can get locally.
So, since we’d gone several days without rain, I was finally able to get into the garden and do the tilling that has needed to be done for the last couple of years. And since it had been a couple of years since I had done it, the ground was hard, compacted, uncooperative. I basically spent six hours wrestling with the rototiller. Six hours being jarred, hands going numb, shoulders aching. But also six hours thinking.
Not serious thinking. Not most of the time. Not when I was in a life or death struggle with the machine. Mostly it was random free association, going over this or that neglected chore, replaying a conversation I’d had at a city meeting the day before. But there was also some time for real contemplation. Real introspection beyond consideration of how sore my back was.
And somewhere in there I discovered something. Strength. Not physical strength – at 50 I don’t really expect to reclaim the physical strength I had at 30. Rather, a kind of strength of personality. A sense of my own potency. A realization that this had come back to me.
Oh, it hadn’t been a complete stranger. It takes a kind of personal strength to close a beloved business, and to care for a beloved family member until their death. Instead of glimpses and flashes of the thing that kept me going the exhaustion of those years, this was more . . . whole? Unified? Tempered?
I dunno. But it was – is – there. A sense that I can do more now. That I am more capable. More secure in my abilities.
I have always felt as though this life were a thing caught just at the edge of full consciousness, in the mildly euphoric hypnogogic state as you emerge from a dream into morning. And so there is often the sense that one is only now coming to full wakefullness, full integration of your faculties. And so it is again, with this renewed sense of personal power, the upward arc of my bipolar cycle.
And soon, I’ll be planting tomatoes and peppers. That always makes me feel good.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Emergency, Flu, Government, Guns, Health, Pandemic, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival
Couple minor things . . .
The Ballistics by the inch site has broken 700,000 hits. The related blog has been getting more hits than this one, but I think that is mostly due to our recently having completed the second sequence of tests and starting to talk a bit about that.
Looks like things are stabilizing for now with the H1N1 virus. This is good, even if it means less publicity for Communion of Dreams. Yeah, I know, I’m not nearly as cynical as I like to pretend – I would rather not have a global pandemic, even at the cost of a bit of fame. Oh well, at least I have reviewed my preparations for the coming Zombie Apocalypse.
I still keep spending too much time flinging rocks. Being obsessive-compulsive is sometimes a pain.
Maybe more later.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 