How bad is history?

So this all started with a book; Napoleon's Crimes: A Blueprint for Hitler.  It asserts that the person to invent gas chambers as a method of cheap and efficient mass execution was Napoleon, in response to rebellions by slaves in the Caribbean.  Particularly, the economically important islands of Haiti and Guadeloupe.  The method described in the book, was to section off the holds in the French warships and burn sulphur containing rocks, to produce poisonous sulphur dioxide gas to kill the slaves.  Using this, the author claims that thousands, possibly tens of thousands of slaves were slaughtered in these "choker" ships.  The book was not very well received politically - that is about as surprising as a baseball bat hit to the head hurting a lot; what government would want to be linked to the holocaust's gas chambers, Hitler and have its country credited with the invention of the gas chamber modern genocide set up, also used by the Nazis?  Well the answer is probably North Korea, but that is not relevant right here.  It was also not very well received by the history community as the evidence is mainly sporadic memoirs and diaries of revolutionary leaders and French naval officers that performed the acts, often with remorse.  Great, so Napoleon = Hitler, and some feathers were ruffled.  So, is it true, or not?

Immediately it was conceivable to me that these atrocities happened.  Maybe its because I am not a very good scientist - I will explain that in a bit.   Or am I such a pessimist that human depravity does not surprise me (the realist in me would say this was a great example of operational excellence and 19th century six-sigma in operation...)?  This goes on to my point - a curious observation, that is a symptom of a society that can't sit easy with the horrors that exist in its history.  Though maybe that is a good thing - perhaps it shows we are getting conditioned to be squeamish - sadly not all at once since mostly, atrocities continue across the world (more on that later).  I have, of course  named the problem; archeoeuscopophilia - the love or tendency to view ancient things with a positive perspective.

Gas Chambers:
Bad

Let me begin by explaining what I have observed when it comes to how we approach historical study when faced with incomplete facts.  Incomplete facts are common, particularly with ancient history, where we have little written evidence; and most of that tends to be biased towards the rich and victorious, not the oppressed and slaughtered.  What I have noticed is that people seem to assume that past was generally better, less disgusting and less bloodthirsty as it actually was.  We end up changing our opinion once we find more facts about the events.  The problem is, that by then society has often made a consensus opinion that ends up being pervasive; and it becomes a common misconception.  This is strongest when the events are horrific - you know, massacres, genocides, wars, racial oppression, gender oppression, systematic state endorsed slavery - all the good stuff that makes people want to study history in the first place, rather than find a more amusing way of passing the time such as catching spit or falling asleep at your desk out of boredom and accidentally stabbing yourself in the eye with your pen.

Now, let me be clear; I am not a trans-temporal time lord; I have hot had the fortune of being able to magically visit events in the past and compare them to the present day historical consensus of the event and say, "wow guys, you really have got that ass-backwards".  Instead what I have generally looked at is our understanding as it stood at point A in time, about an event in history and compared it to our understanding at point B later in time, about the same historical event.  Point A might be long before point B, or it might be temporally close but intersected by a significant new discovery that radically changes the perception of the historical event.  What is the transition from A } to } B, with respect to how we have to alter our perception and understanding?  

When we gain more information and evidence about historical events, we reassess and tend to have to conclude that they were worse and more horrific than we initially thought.  Therefore, the opinions that we generally form when we first start building up a picture of the past, seem to be of the proverbial "rose tinted spectacles" version; rather than the shockingly despicable, "glad we don't live like that, anymore" version that more often that not ends up being the case, as we find more bones, artifacts, crushed babies, murals, pottery or whatever else we use as evidence to further our understanding.  Or if you prefer to be an optimist about it, we tend to reassess that they were more profound or different than we imagined, compared to today's analogues - so this can also apply to good "things" in history.  But there is so little that is "good" in history that this is a particularly sunny and inane form of optimism, if you espouse optimism here.  

The reason we generally start off with "pleasant" assumptions about the past is twofold.  This is expected as humans tend to be self involved, narcissistic and selfish, so it is blindingly obvious that they would add greater weight to their own experiences, relative suffering and context; over that of peoples' that are long dead and lived on a different continent.  More positively, we can say that because things are so much better today - in the western world - that it is hard for people to understand the horrors of the past; without rigorous study and immersion into our species' tendency for violence and oppression.  The other bit is actually very understandable and "benign"; good history scholars are essentially scientists, and good scientists use observations of facts to make their conclusions.  That is why unless there is the credible evidence, that an event occurred and occurred in a specific way (good / grisly / whatever), a scientist would not want to leap to wild conclusions; right?  Mostly.  

While I would not condone wild conclusions, science uses postulates as a way to picture a problem before it is solved.  Postulates must be proven with evidence, but the postulate itself can be as bland or fanciful as the author wants it to be.  As Santayana, Lincoln and Sagan all said; you are better prepared for the future by knowing the past (I'm heavily paraphrasing here).  Stay with me here; the past is not the future, but it can be what is "unknown"; equally the known past can be though of as "knowledge".  Going back to the saying; if you substitute "unknown" for the "future" (since the future is generally unknown), and "past" for "knowledge", then you can say; to be better prepared for the unknown, understand the trends in the knowledge that you already have.  

The past is really quite awful, new theories about civilizations or events that are just being discovered  should comfortably assume the worst about our ancestors' actions.  This does not detract from having a range of interpretations, nor does it detract from the necessity of using facts and evidence to prove the correct interpretation of a theory of the past.  This only states that the most likely interpretation tend to be (one of) the worst!  You can call it negative or pessimistic.  But there is a trend towards awful...  On a tangent - that's kind of where business discovery and artificial intelligence is heading - more on that in a much later post though (or just read New Scientist).  

The species really has to clean up our act, and with a glimmer of hopefulness for my ability to be optimistic, I will say that we have come a long way, baby; there must really be some diligent and courageous people throughout history, trying to scrub the world of the evil that festers in it.  I have no idea why people don't realise just how terrible our society used to be, still is and some very horrible things that happened only very recently!  How much do people have to be reminded of wars, plagues, ignorance causing pointless suffering, slavery, legal sexual inequality in he west as recently as 100 years ago and active racial segregation 30 years ago?? 

As a summary: what is going on in Sudan, bad; what is going on in Syria, bad; what was going on during the cold war; worse; what was going on during the world wars, worse still; what was going on during the crusades, ancient Rome or the Mongol invasions, also very, very bad.  We tend to forget that the British army used concentration camps in South Africa and the US used them against the Native Americans; we conveniently ignore that Ancient Greece was built upon institutional slavery yet we ironically call it the birthplace of democracy, instead choosing to admire only the romantic and the frankly sane parts of its culture and philosophy (big fan of Ancient Greece by the way...).  Then we wonder why western powers became so keen on slavery 1500 years later - surely they learned what a great labour saving device it was from their very ancestors!  We still turn a blind eye to the 3rd world's wars and problems when we get bored, or more local news happens (like a royal wedding dammit!!) or we ignore barbaric practices such as female (or male...) circumcision that still go on in Africa.  The list is long, only to shame us for not caring and, hopefully, to spur us into action!

Keep the past in mind - it will let you see in panorama and broaden your critical ability.  You are encouraged to criticize the status quo; to push for further progress.  Lets remember the capacity of man's inhumanity to man.  That knowledge is our shield against it.

Oh - so, is it true?    Yeah, it is.  

¦-(

Truth or Consequences?

A publication for which I have massive admiration, recently published an editorial article about a new commercial spaceport being built in the US, named (ta-da!) Spaceport America.  They commented that it is near the town Truth or Consequences, which is named after a radio show quiz (right... stay with me) from the 1950s, and that this name might be "undignified".

I could not disagree more.  Providing that the spaceport does advance science and discovery as much as its vision intends to, the name is serendipitously right on the mark.  We are an evolving species that is finding it difficult to strike a balance and stay at peace with each other and the environment.  Science offers the solutions to avoid catastrophe as we develop our society, improve our quality of life and take responsible stewardship of the planet.  

Are we there yet!?

The reason for science over ignorance and discovery over stagnation, can be aptly encapsulated by the phrase "truth or consequences".  How a society chooses to behave; either valuing science and discovery; or treating it with suspicion, derision and cool detachment (what has modern technology ever given us, right?); will have a profound effect on the end of that society.  It is the choice between prosperity, or degeneration.  Growth, or decay.

Truth or Consequences.  Do we want to seek out the truth?  If we don't, we will face the consequences...

A terrible piece of "work"

I originally was never going to publish this video.  It is hideous and it stands for everything I do not.  Having said, it occurred to me that it is theoretically possible that some people might like it.  That is a weak excuse, however, I do believe that art is a subjective function of a person's being, so if anyone finds it amusing then it has an existentially valid purpose.  People that like it are lucky, and anyone that does not like it can take some small measure of comfort in that I think it is terrible too.

Also, people should re-examine themselves and take a chill-pill once in a while.  I guarantee that if you hate this, you must value and take yourself more seriously than others ever do.  And that makes you stuck up by definition;  http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stuck_up

Please watch it, and then forget it.  It will take a lot more to get me to do this again this year.  I'm still traumatized from last year and there are still 2 pending investigations at work relating to sexual harassment, that were as a direct result of the slug.

How to cut it in our Universe - Rounded Gaia and her bigger sister

When early people looked over the valleys and hills surrounding their neolithic camp sites, they must have wondered what lay beyond the horizon.  Sea explorers of the East Asian Empires, Europeans and perhaps the most daring of them, the Polynesian explorers, must surely have been awed by the mystery and daunted by the seemingly impenetrable line that cut its way across the view from their bows.  We may be at a new frontier today, but horizons, and their mysteries are still before us.  

Pictures of the universe are as breathtaking as they are thought-tickling.  We're at a point where, as those early explorers, we can create the first crude and coarse grained maps representing our view of the observable universe around us.  The shot here (its a CG composite) is from the work done as part of the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS).

Stop and stare...  Each dot is at least a whole galaxy, the size of our own, and many of the dots are clusters of galaxies bunched together by gravity, appearing as just a single glowing speck; together creating these archipelago-like chains of light, glittering on a sea of black velvet. 

The observable universe is the blob of space around us, extending in all directions, that we are able to see with out most powerful space telescopes.  The central position in this blob is us, on the Earth.  Making up our view is the total light that has been able to reach us ever since the beginning of the universe.  As we are not able to observe things before the big bang inflation, and even with light travelling very fast, we are only able to see objects that are up to about 18 billion light years away.  Any further than that and the light from more distant objects has not reached us yet. Our descendants will be able to see further than us, but for the time being this is as far as our technology allows us to explore.  This can be thought of as a cosmic "horizon" that is in 3 dimensions - it is all around us when we look at the sky.  It is similar, and only slightly different to the Earth's 2 dimensional horizon; which is formed by objects being past the brim of our view over the Earth's curvature. 

Obviously such maps are not for use in navigation but as a way of visualizing what is around us and to convey the grand scale of the cosmos.  They are part research tools, part teaching aids and, personally, they are some of the most artistic and humbling depictions of the insignificant fragility of humanity.  What also strikes me is how round they are.  We know that horizons on Earth (or any spherical object) are round, and explorers tended to make maps that had equally rounded edges because of this.  

There is a very definite feeling of ignorance when you come across a map from the ancient world.  It is something about a map being too flat or rounded that suggests that people don't really know the land properly and are just smudging together the bits on the extremities that they don't know about so that it can look convincing at first glance.  They hope that you don't look too close or ask why there seems to be less and less details the further you leave your central point.  Maybe you just live in the most exciting part, and everywhere else is boring, flat and dull, right?  The map below is a perfect example.  

Yes - I'm sure the world really looked like that back then.  Must have been all those pesky plate tectonics moving about in the last 300 years that straightened out all the edges since then...  Antarctica thinks its Pac-Man, apparently; which is also weird. 

Modern technology is a marvel, and yet I can't help feeling that the round shape of the pictures that have been created of the universe seem very similar to what the ancient explorers drew our world as when they simply did not know what lay beyond the edges.  I wonder if our so-advanced maps of the universe will be viewed with similar quaint appreciation, hundreds of years from now?  

The ancient map above is a beautiful snapshot of our history and epistemology.  It is not diminished by its incompleteness, any more than a life is diminished by still being lived.  Instead it gives me hope.  We can learn from our ancestors.  See where they once walked to,  but had yet further to go.  They pressed on, striving for progress, so that we could be able to enjoy the knowledge we have today.  We should hope to be as brave as them - but there is more to it than that.  

Nothing would terrify me more than for there to be no more mysteries, no more for us to learn, nothing else left to discover.  I want to believe that our imperfect view of the universe is not a crack in an otherwise perfect crystal, that it is not an error or a lack of will.  Instead it is the tantalizing and limited view as seen through a keyhole.  Our eyes are pressed against it, straining to see the contents beyond, as we are urged to unlock the door and step though to what awaits us beyond the next horizon.   

Images (C) of A. Bedno and obtained as part of the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation.