A Norse Myth

Our wegie cat Lucy Feathertail

A Norse myth recounts a contest between Thor, the god of thunder, and Utgardsloki, the strongest frost giant. Utgardsloki challenged Thor to lift his Norwegian house cat. Laughing at the seemingly easy task, Thor accepted the challenge. But when Thor tried, the cat arched his back higher and higher until finally Thor had to admit defeat.

Under the Category, They Don’t Write Like this Anymore - Grantland Rice

Grantland Rice

After reading the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s article about Pitt’s victory over Niagara on Saturday, I couldn’t help thinking about some of the colorful sports writers of a past era. Following Notre Dame's 13–7 upset victory over a strong Army team, on October 18, 1924, Grantland Rice writing in the New York Herald Tribune, penned the most famous football lead off all-time:

Outlined against a blue, gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.

My late father-in-law, C. Richard Jacob, who played high school football in the twenties, used to proudly point out that he was about the same size as these legendary players none of whom weighed more than 160 pounds.

Four Horsemen

Buffett’s Pronouncement: Altruistic or Just Good Business?

Those of you that think that Warren Buffett’s recent pronouncement that the rich should pay more taxes was made for altruistic reasons, should think again. Buffett, while being just as greedy as the next billionaire, is also an extremely astute businessman. DAH. He realizes that the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 that resulted in the longest-running business cycle expansion in US history raised taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of taxpayers.



Buffett & Barack: Looks like Obama understands but does he?


During the economic boom of the Clinton years (1993-2001), not only did the rich get richer but everyone else got better off, too. As Harry Truman once said “If you want to live like a Republican, you have to vote Democrat.” This is something that Tea Party members and small business owners just cannot comprehend, and what makes them candidates for the stupidest people in the world.

I do not want you to think that I am disparaging Buffet’s philanthropic record. He has given away billions and that is to be commended! The point is that he is also a great businessperson and understands that when Big Business and the wealthy start paying their fail share of taxes, then America will truly be on the road to recovery and ALL AMERICANS will be better off.

Trickle-down Economics Must Die

“Supply-side economics is a school of macroeconomic thought that argues that economic growth can be most effectively be created by lowering barriers for people to produce (supply) goods and services, such as lowering income tax and capital gains tax rates, and by allowing greater flexibility by reducing regulation. According to the theory, consumers will then benefit from a greater supply of goods and services at lower prices. Typical policy recommendations of supply-side economics are lower marginal tax rates and less regulation.” [1]



Reagan outlines his tax reduction plan in 1981

Also known as “trickle-down economics”, its advocates believe that by providing tax cuts and benefits to businesses and wealthy individuals, their benefits will trickle-down to the middle-class and poor. On the surface, it sounds reasonable and it certainly appeals to wealthy Americans, Tea Party members, and others who spend their time trying to figure out ways to avoid their patriotic duty of paying taxes. There is only one problem with it is: IT DOESN’T WORK!

Ronald Reagan espoused it in the 1980’s and “Reaganomics,” as it was called, resulted in the ballooning of the national debt. At first, George H. W. Bush (1989-1993) criticized Reagan's supply-side policies calling them "voodoo economics." Later, when he became President, he tried to continue this disastrous policy (“Read my lips”) until the economy tanked so badly that he was finally forced to raise taxes.

Bill Clinton (1993-2001) restored economic sanity by raising taxes early in his first term. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 raised taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of taxpayers, while cutting taxes on 15 million low-income families and making tax cuts available to 90% of small businesses. Despite passing Congress without a single Republican vote, and without any support from Big Business, or wealthy Americans, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act resulted in decreased public debt and Americans enjoyed the longest-running business cycle expansion in our history.

In addition, Clinton managed to resist temptation and kept us out of those cowboy macho Iraq/Afghanistan-type wars that, according to a Congressional Research Service report, has cost well over 1.3 trillion dollars since 2001.



Clinton, President Barack Obama and Advisor Valerie Jarrett

 With the election of George W. Bush (2001-2009), “supply-side economics” made its return with a vengeance. Eschewing any particular name and with the rational that tax cuts would stimulate the economy and create jobs, Bush  presided over one of the largest tax cuts in U.S. history. In his 2001 State of the Union Address, Bush estimated that there would be a $5.6 trillion surplus over the next ten years but by the end of his second term, the United States was wallowing in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Many expected that Democrat Barack Obama would be guided by Clinton’s clear-cut blueprint for economic success putting America back on solid footing and getting us out of the Bush quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan. In what can only be described as mind-boggling Barack has decided to stick with the Republican formula for failure. In one of the biggest overstatements since Bush’s 2003 "Mission Accomplished" statement, spokesman for the President Jay Carney recently stated, “The economy is vastly improved from what it was when Barack Obama was sworn into office as President.” According to Heritage Action for America “Unemployment has increased by 1.4 percentage points since President Obama was inaugurated, from 7.8% to 9.2%. 2.5 million more people are out of work now than when President Obama was campaigning. Oh, and there are millions more who have given up looking for work altogether. Not to mention the fact that 1 in 3 unemployed persons have been out of work for over a year!”

Worse yet, many Americans continue to believe that the only way out of our economic death spiral is even more tax cutting. This is like trying to save the Titanic by cutting another hole in the hull expecting that the water will flow out. Americans cannot seem to understand that tax cuts result in public workers (teachers, police, firefighters) losing their jobs. This results in less tax revenue which necessitates more tax cutting → firing more workers → less tax revenue → more tax cutting …

Figure 1 illustrates the different tax amounts under the demand side economics [2] of Clinton vs. the supply side economics on George W. Bush. The question facing Americans is: which one would you rather have? For the single person making $30,000 per year: would you rather pay $401.25 more per year in taxes and have a job, or be out of work? For a married couple with an income of $60,000 per year: would you rather pay $1,072.50 more per year in taxes and have your house, or lose your house? How about the married small business owners making $125,000 per year: Would you rather pay $3,964.00 more per year in taxes and have a thriving small business, or see your small business go under?

Of course, Big Business and wealthy Americans do not have to make these decisions. They can sit back and laugh at those in favor of cutting taxes, lose their jobs, lose their homes, lose their small businesses, and see their lifetime dreams go down the drain in the artificially created economic disaster of the last ten  years.

Figure 1: Comparing Income Taxes under Bill Clinton and George Bush

Individual Income Tax Due in 2008,
Bush Law versus Clinton Law

For taxpayers who take the standard deduction and have no children
Taxpayer Tax That Would Have Been Owed under Clinton-Era Tax Law Tax Owed under Current Law, with Bush Tax Cuts

Tax Plan	Clinton	Bush
Single, income of 30,000	$3,157.50	$2,756.25
Single, income of 50,000	$7,262.50	$6,606.25
Married, income of $50,000	$5,085.00	$4,012.50
Married, income of $60,000	$6,585.00	$5,512.50
Single, income of $75,000	$14,262.50	$12,856.25
Married, income of $75,000	$9,426.50	$7,762.50
Single, income of $125,000*	$29,378.50	$26,472.25
Married, income of $125,000*	$23,426.50	$19,462.50

*This chart does not take into account the Alternative Minimum Tax

1. Wanniski, Jude (1978). The Way the World Works: How Economies Fail—and Succeed. New York: Basic Books
2. Demand-side economics is an economic theory which suggest that economic stimulation comes best from increasing the demand for goods and services. Also called Keynesian economics, after John Maynard Keynes, this concept is usually placed in direct opposition with supply-side economics, which suggests that stimulation is achieved through increasing the supply of goods and services.

S&P The Dashboard Light

Several years ago I was running some errands on a beautiful fall Saturday afternoon. My friend Tom tagged along. After the errands we planned to stop at Lou’s on Walnut Street and watch some football.

All of a sudden one of the dashboard lights lit up on my silver Chevy Citation. Cars are supposedly a guy-thing but I’ve never been very knowledgeable about them. First, I have a physical disability that makes it extremely difficult for me to get under the hood or crawl under the car and tinker around. Secondly, I’m just not really that interested in changing belts, oil filter, etc. I would rather make my car payments, get it inspected, and if it needs service pray that I don’t get ripped off too badly.

So I turned to Tom and asked his opinion on the situation, hoping that his diagnosis would not put a complete damper on our afternoon. Without batting an eyelash he said, “I think your dashboard light is bad.” I decided to go with Tom’s expert opinion and ignored it. We had a great afternoon and luckily the problem turned out to be minor. In the back of my mind, however, I knew that this was probably not the best way to handle my problems.

Earlier this week I was reminded of this incident after Standard & Poor’s downgrade of U.S. debt. Instead of acknowledging the problems with the economy and the political system trying to fix it, President Obama and others decided to criticize the dashboard light – S&P.

I never asked Tom for his opinion on car matters again.

Taxes in Bizarro America

In Bizarro America the rich pay far less than their share of taxes while the middle class and poor see their safety, quality of education, and infrastructure erode. In Bizarro America the rich pay far less than their share of taxes while the middle class and poor can’t get health insurance, pay more for health care, and have their benefits taken away from them by greedy Bizarro Americas.

Bizarro politician

Reward lying, cheating, and stealing. Penalize honest, hard-working people and businesses. Bizarro politicians believe that this makes good sense for Bizarro America.

Immigration in Bizarro America

In Bizarro America crooked businesses hire illegal aliens. It gives them a competitive edge over businesses that believe in following the law. Illegal aliens take the jobs of honest law-abiding Americans. This practice is obviously illegal but if they get caught they just get a slap on the wrist.


Bizarro politician

Reward lying, cheating, and stealing. Penalize honest, hard-working people and businesses. Bizarro politicians believe this makes sense and is good for Bizarro America.

The Man Who Tied Christy Mathewson

Young "Pete"

One hundred years ago, a tall lanky right-hander from Elba, Nebraska, made his debut with the Philadelphia Phillies and cut a swath through Major League Baseball like no other rookie pitcher had before or since. His name was Grover Cleveland Alexander but he would go by his boyhood nickname, “Pete.” Pete won 28 games in 1911, a rookie record that stands to this day, and struck out 227, another rookie record that would stand until 1984 when Dwight Gooden broke it.

In 1915, ‘16, and ‘17, Pete won 31, 33, and 30 games respectively, taking the Phillies to their first World Series in 1915. They lost to the Boston Red Sox who were led by Hall of Fame outfielder Tris Speaker and another young pitcher by the name of Babe Ruth. In 1915, ‘16, and ’20, Alexander won the coveted triple crown of pitching, leading the league in wins, earned run average (ERA), and strikeouts. In 1916, he set a major league record that many believe will never be broken with an amazing 16 shutouts.

With his phenomenal success, it was only natural that Pete would be compared to the elite pitchers of his day. The one that he was most often compared to was the great Christy Mathewson and he would be haunted by this comparison for the rest of his life.


Christy Mathewson

Mathewson joined the New York Giants in 1900. With a good fastball, pinpoint control, and a pitch he called the "fadeaway,” he was already a legend by 1911. His best year came in 1908 when he set the National League record with 37 wins and led pitchers with a 1.43 ERA.

On the field, Alexander was favorably compared to Matty; off the field it was no contest. In a time when baseball players were known as hard drinking, tobacco-chewing brawlers, Pete was the norm. In contrast, the clean-cut, blond-haired, blue-eyed Mathewson was the epitome of the gentleman athlete.

At Bucknell University, Christy had been a top-flight student, serving as class president and joining the band, glee club, and two literary societies. Later, as the toast of New York, he was highly sought after for his endorsements. He once received an offer to put his name on a pool hall/saloon but turned it down when his mother asked, "Do you really want your name associated with a place like that?" If all that was not enough, he wrote a series of children’s books known as “The Matty Books.” Legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice wrote:

Christy Mathewson brought something to baseball no one else had ever given the game. He handed the game a certain touch of class, an indefinable lift in culture, brains, and personality.

In 1916, Mathewson was traded to the Cincinnati Reds, where he finished his career as a player-manager. After 17 seasons, he had amassed 372 victories and a 2.13 ERA. Accepting a commission as a captain in the Army's Chemical Warfare Division, Christy left for France in 1918. While in France, he came down with a serious case of influenza and then was exposed to mustard gas during a training exercise. Three years later, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and died in 1925 at a sanitarium in Saranac Lake, New York. He was only 45.


Mathewson WWI

Alexander was also greatly affected by World War I. Like Mathewson he was sent to France in 1918, and when a shell exploded nearby he lost all hearing in one ear. While recovering, he was diagnosed with epilepsy and what we call today combat stress syndrome.

Alexander had always been a heavy drinker but by the mid-20’s, alcohol and his numerous physical problems began to take its toll on his pitching. In June of 1926, the Cubs placed their slumping 39-year-old pitcher on waivers and the St Louis Cardinals claimed him for $6,000 (about $73,000 today). In a revival of sorts, the washed-up veteran won nine games and helped the Cards to the National League pennant. His performance in the World Series against the New York Yankees, however, would provide the stuff of legends.

The 1926 Yankees were essentially the same team as the 1927 Yankees, a team that won 110 games and swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. Many consider the ’27 Yankees the greatest baseball team ever and their lineup including Ruth and Gehrig gave new meaning to the term “Murderers Row.”


Alexander 1926

After winning games two and six, Alexander, thinking his work done, celebrated. The next day, leading 3-2 in game seven, the Cardinals found themselves in a jam. Leading off the bottom of the seventh, Yankee centerfielder Earle Combs singled to left and shortstop Mark Koenig sacrificed him to second. Cardinal starting pitcher Jesse Haines wisely issued a free pass to Ruth and left fielder Bob Meusel grounded out, forcing Ruth at second. Pitching ever so carefully, Haines loaded the bases with a walk to Lou Gehrig.

Knowing that Alexander had pitched a complete game the day before and spent the night drinking, player-manager Roger Hornsby was faced with a difficult decision. Pete had told Hornsby that he would be ready if needed so the St Louis manager decided to bring him in to pitch to the dangerous Tony Lazzeri. With the count at 1-1, Lazzeri hit a shot down the left field line, just curving foul at the last second and missing a grand slam home run. On the next pitch, Alexander struck him out on a fastball. Pete blanked the Yankees in the eighth and ninth innings, giving the Cardinals their first of 10 World Series titles.

Alexander finished the 1926 season with a 327-178 record. With each successive victory getting harder to come by, he spent the next three seasons chasing Matty's record. On August 1, 1929, Alexander tied Mathewson with a complete game win over the Brooklyn Robins. Nine days later, Alexander finally vanquished his ghost, winning his 373rd with a relief win over Philadelphia. It would be his last.
 

Matty, Ruth, Wagner, Johnson, & Cobb

In 1930, Pete was traded back to Philadelphia where he had started his career, but after a 0-3 start and a dismal 9.14 ERA, he was released. In 1936, Christy Mathewson became one of the famous "First Five" inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame along with Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and Honus Wagner. Alexander joined him in the Hall in 1938, but with one more victory than Christy, it’s hard to understand why he wasn’t one of the famous "First Six"

After his Major League Baseball career, Alexander barnstormed for several years, including a stint with the famous House of David baseball club. Each passing year as age and alcohol diminished his skills, he became more and more pathetic. Old Pete’s ultimate disappointment came in 1946‚ when record-keepers discovered an unrecorded 1902 Mathewson win, giving Christy 373 victories. For years Alexander had taken pride in having won one more game than Mathewson but now at the age of 59 it was too late to go back.

Broke and an alcoholic, Grover Cleveland Alexander died in a St. Paul, Nebraska boarding-house on November 4, 1950. To followers of baseball, he will always be known as the man who tied Christy Mathewson.

The Land of Bones: Forgotten Lessons from Afghanistan

Alexander by Lysippos

When people think of Alexander the Great, they usually think of the Macedonian wunderkind who conquered the world and died young, leaving a good-looking corpse. At least, that’s how I saw him. A couple of years ago, I began reading about Alexander, and like most people who do, got sucked into his endlessly fascinating life. Like an addiction, it started with a Wikipedia article, then biographies and works by ancient historians, and finally with books about particular facets of his life and conquests.

One of the most interesting of these books of the latter type, is Into the Land of Bones: Alexander the Great in Afghanistan by Frank Lee Holt. [1] Dr Holt is a professor at the University of Houston and an expert on Alexander. In Alexander’s time, Afghanistan was known as Bactria. Holt’s interesting title comes from the Zoroastrian custom of exposing their dead to carrion birds and scavenger dogs, something that revolted Alexander and his Greek troops. Of course, the Bactrian’s found the Greek custom of burning their dead just as revolting.

Into the Land of Bones chronicles Alexander’s invasion of Bactria in 330 BC. What he found was a harsh mountainous land ruled by isolated, semi-autonomous, warlords; each easy to defeat, defeating all of them at the same time a near impossibility. Sound familiar?

Since Alexander, successive invaders have encountered similar conditions, including in more modern times, the British Empire in the 19th century, Russia in 1979, and of course the United States in 2001. As Holt points out, “All these invasions of Afghanistan went well at first.” Each, however, ended up paying a heavy price and was left scrambling to extricate itself. The poet and philosopher George Santayana famously wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The final chapter of the US/Afghanistan saga has yet to be written; therefore, Into the Land of Bones becomes as much a cautionary tale as a history lesson.

In 336 BC, Philip II, King of Macedonia, was assassinated. He had been planning an invasion of Persia and already had generals in Asia Minor carrying out operations. The Persian Empire, at this time, stretched from northern Africa in the west to the Indus Valley in the east and was capable of fielding enormous armies. Philip’s 20-year-old son, Alexander, blamed Persian King Darius III for his father’s death and vowed revenge. In the next five years, Alexander reeled off a dizzying succession of military and diplomatic victories, conquering the Persian Empire, and earning the titles of Hegemon of Greece, Pharaoh of Egypt, King of Kings, and Lord of Asia. In addition, an Egyptian oracle told him that he was a god, and strange as it may seem today, Alexander probably believed it. For years, his treacherous, snake-worshiping mother Olympias had been telling him that he was a demigod.

Philip II

What remained on Alexander’s to-do-list were the capture of Darius and then the conquests of India and China. His men did not know about the India China thing yet. It can be argued that events in Bactria would cause him to fall short of the latter two, dreams that were probably inspired by his former know it-all teacher Aristotle.

Following his third decisive victory over the Persians on the plains of Gaugamela (now in Iraq), Alexander chased King Darius and the remnants of his grand army across Persia and into Bactria. When he finally caught up to Darius, he found him lying dead in a wagon. Darius had been betrayed by his Bactrian kinsman Bessus, who was now claiming the royal title of Artaxerxes V. Alexander was now compelled to hunt Bessus down. It didn’t take long.

With Alexander in pursuit, the new King of Kings fled across the Oxus River into Sogdiana. Sogdiana was an ancient kingdom north of Bactria, encompassing parts of present-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Holt seems to lump it in with Bactria for discussions of Afghanistan. It was Bessus’ turn to be stabbed in the back. Knowing Alexander’s fierce reputation and determination, Bessus’ men, lead by the Sogdian nobleman Spitamenes, got cold feet and left him collared and chained by the side of the road. Alexander gave Darius a royal funeral befitting his rank and had the pretender to the throne, Bessus, executed in the Persian manner – mutilation followed by impaling.

Holt Lesson 1: “There are no immutable loyalties or alliances in Afghanistan whatever ethnic or religious umbrella they may be formed under and however fervent the oaths that seal them. Bessus betrayed Darius, and others revealed themselves willing to betray Bessus in turn.”

Darius Codomanius

It had all been so easy. Alexander next marched north to Maracanda (now Samarkand), the capital of Sogdiana. The Bactrian and Sogdian warlords were expecting that he would take his royal titles and split for India. They really did not care who was the King of Kings, whether it was Darius, Alexander, or whoever. All that they wanted was to be left alone, but Alexander was on the scene and bossing everyone around. This was too much for the proud warlords to handle. The tinderbox exploded.

The unsuspecting Greeks suddenly found themselves in the middle of armed battles all across the region. Put down one insurrection and another one would erupt. On the battlefield, Alexander was still the boy genius. To his credit, he was able to divide his army into several smaller, more mobile and effective units but while he could win, he could not conquer. If only he could fight a decisive battle such as the ones that he had fought at the Granicus River, Issus, or Gaugamela. It was whack-a-mole warfare 4th century BC style, and just as costly as it is today. He tried every tactic he knew. Good invader-bad invader; kind and merciful in one village, kill everyone and everything in the next. Back and forth; nothing worked. Alexander would lose more men in Bactria than it took to defeat the much greater Persian Empire.

Holt Lesson 2: “So far no superpower has found a workable alternative to what might be called the recipe for ruin in Afghanistan: 1. Estimate the time and resources necessary to conquer and control the region. 2. Double all estimates.3. Repeat as needed.”

Most implacable of all the warlords would turn out to be Spitamenes, the man who had made a gift of Bessus. When Alexander marched north to the Jaxartes River, Spitamenes led a surprise raid on the garrison at Maracanda, killing 2,000 infantry and 300 cavalry. Rushing back to Maracanda, Alexander found that Spitamenes had vanished. For the next two years, Spitamenes lead costly guerilla raids and ambushes between Bactria and Sogdiana.

Punishment of Bessus by Castaigne 1899

Ironically, it would be Spitamenes’ wife who would bring an end to his rampage. Worn out from constantly being on the run, this unnamed woman begged Spitamenes to make peace with Alexander. Accepting the futility of her pleas, she decided to take matters into her own hands. One night after Spitamenes had drunk himself into a stupor and fallen asleep, she cut off his head and proudly presented it to Alexander. He did not know whether to feel happy that she had killed his hated foe or repelled by the sheer savagery of this act.

All this killing and being killed was having a demoralizing effect on Alexander and his troops. In addition, two incidents would cast a complete pall over his army. First, an assassination plot was uncovered involving Philotas, a close friend of Alexander and a successful cavalry commander. While Philotas was not accused of being one of the direct assassins, he admitted to having knowledge about the plot beforehand and was thus suspect. Under extreme torture, he not only named the would-be assassins but also accused his father Parmenion of being involved.

Macedonian Phalanx

Now, Parmenion was not just anybody. He had been Philip and Alexander’s most popular and successful general. He was an amazing man and at the time was around 70 years old. Many experts believe that without Parmenion commanding the left side of his battle line, Alexander would never have been able to defeat Darius. At the time of this plot, Parmenion was commanding an army guarding the royal treasury at Ecbatana, and with the execution of his son Philotas, Alexander did not believe that he could safely leave him in charge. A swift squad was dispatched and arriving before the news of the plot, Parmenion was killed, probably without ever knowing why.

The second incident involved another cavalry officer and close friend of Alexander. At a banquet in Maracanda, Alexander and Cleitus, known as "the Black,” became extremely drunk and began arguing. Cleitus was the brother of the king’s much beloved childhood nurse Hellanice and had saved his life at the Granicus River. Despite the pleas of everyone and attempts by the Somatophylakes (Alexander’s bodyguards) to separate the two, neither would let it drop. Somehow, Alexander was able to get hold of a spear and ran Cleitus through, killing him. The next day when Alexander sobered up the terrible realization of what he had done set in, and he became despondent almost to the point of suicide.

Holt Lesson 3: “All invaders so far have had to face one more difficult choice: once mired in a winless situation, they have tried to cut their losses through one of two exit strategies: 1. Retreat, as did the British and Soviets, with staggering losses. 2. Leave a large army of occupation permanently settled in the area, as Alexander did."

Alexander’s most loyal and longest-serving troops from Macedonia and Greece had been in many difficult fights before. They had always had faith in him. He fought alongside them, bled with them, suffered with them and always seemed to have their back. After Gaugamela he had changed. More and more he was taking on Persian dress and customs, including proskynesis, which required his subjects to bow down before him and which was particularly humiliating to the Greeks. The deaths of Parmenion, Philotas, Cleitus, and others left his ordinary soldiers deeply shaken. If it could happen to those closest to him, then it could happen to anyone.

What started out as a side trip to capture Darius was now entering into its third year. Alexander was desperate to bring this campaign to an end and move on to India. He was so desperate, in fact, that he got married. I know it sounds like a bad Henny Youngman joke but that’s exactly what the world’s most eligible bachelor did. The lucky little lady was a Sogdian teenage beauty named Roxane. Ancient historians tell us that when Alexander first saw her, he fell in love and shortly after, they were married.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that she was the daughter of Oxyartes, brother of deceased King Darius and Satrap (governor) of Sogdiana. Having avenged Darius’ death by killing Bessus and given his former enemy Darius a grand send-off, Alexander’s marriage to Roxane gave him a reliable ally in her father for the first time. With Bactria heavily garrisoned, Oxyartes solidly on his side, Alexander believed he was now free to invade India.

In the summer of 327 BC, Alexander crossed into India (modern Swat region of Pakistan) and swept down the Indus valley. At the Hyphasis River near Taxila, Alexander’s army would give him one more glorious victory and then refuse to go any further. Ten years of continuous fighting had left them warn out and old beyond their years. Cajole as he might, for the first time, Alexander could not inspire his men. His dream of pushing to the sea was over. Reluctantly accepting his fate, the Macedonian demigod began the long backtrack to the west.

Hephaistion

At Susa Alexander ordered and took part in a mass wedding, marrying two more wives: Statiera the daughter of Darius and Parysatis daughter of Darius’ predecessor Artaxerxes III. On his return to Ecbatana, Alexander would suffer his most devastating personal loss when Hephaestion his trusted general, boyhood friend, and lover died of a mysterious illness. Arrian tells us "he flung himself on the body of his friend and lay there nearly all day long in tears, and refused to be parted from him until he was dragged away by force by his Companions…” [2] His grief and rage were irrational and brutal. He had Hephaestion's doctor, Glaucias crucified and a tribe called the Cossaeans massacred as an offering to the spirit of Hephaestion. Hephaestion was given a royal funeral that is estimated to have cost well over $240,000,000 in today’s dollars.

In May of 323 Alexander returned to Babylon planning to make it the capital of his empire. Soon after, he also fell mysteriously ill and died ten days later on June 10 just ten months after Hephaestion. His sudden death has never been fully explained. Current theories center around disease (malaria, typhoid fever), complications from heavy drinking, and his many enemies make poison a distinct possibility. What followed was the mother of all inheritance battles.

Olympias

In the next few years, Alexander’s mother Olympias, his full sister Cleopatra (not the Egyptian one of legend), his half sisters Cynane and Thessalonike, his older retarded half brother Arrhidaeus, his wives Roxane, Statiera, and Parysatis, his mistress Barsine, and finally his two young sons Herakles and Alexander IV would all be murdered in a feeding frenzy of greed by the Diadochi (rival generals, family and friends of Alexander who fought for control of his empire after his death).

No sooner had Alexander crossed the Hindu Kush into India than he began receiving reports that Bactria was reverting to its pre-Alexandrine ways. Echoes of Alexander the Great in Afghanistan can still be found, especially in the cities that he founded and named after himself such as Kandahar. Within a few years of his departure and death, however, life would go on in Afghanistan as if barely touched by the world’s greatest conqueror.

References:

1. Frank L. Holt, Into the Land of Bones: Alexander the Great in Afghanistan. University of California Press, 1 edition,  2005.
2. Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander. translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt, Penguin Classics, 1958.
3. Quintus Curtius Rufus, The History of Alexander the Great. translated by John Yardley, Penguin Books Ltd, 1984.
4. Robbert Bosschart, All Alexander's Women: The Sisygambis Letters. BookSurge Publishing, 2009.
5. Waldemar Heckel, Who's Who in the Age of Alexander the Great: Prosopography of Alexander's Empire. Wiley-Blackwell, 1 edition, 2008.

Alexander in Babylon

James Joyce and Infinity

Wikipedia defines infinity (symbol: ∞) as "a concept in many fields, most predominantly mathematics and physics, that refers to a quantity without bound or end."

Sometimes I find that artist, writers, etc can express concepts in ways that capture their essence in more human forms. Such is a passage I read a number of years ago.

Excerpt from Chapter 3 of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man [1] by James Joyce (1882-1941)

“You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny little grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness; and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of the air: and imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all? Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again after it had been all carried away, and if the bird came again and carried it all away again grain by grain, and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended; even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time the mere thought of which makes our very brain reel dizzily, eternity would scarcely have begun.”

[1] James Joyce. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. B. W. Huebsch, 1916.

The Speech

The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class, by Senator Bernard Sanders from Vermont, is a much longer and more elequent exposition of the ideas that I've touched upon in several of my blogposts.

Amazon's Product Description:

In the wake of President Obama’s deal with congressional Republicans to preserve Bush-era tax cuts—tax cuts that gave colossal breaks to the wealthiest Americans— Senator Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, publicly denounced the deal as an “absolute disaster” and decided to do something about it.

On Friday, December 10, 2010, Senator Sanders galvanized millions of Americans with an eight-and-a-half-hour filibuster decrying the tax deal and all it symbolized: the bankrupting of the middle class, corporate greed, and the impotence and corruption of today’s Congress. As Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel noted, “The good Senator from Vermont spoke for millions of struggling working and middle class people who feel their voices aren’t being heard in a system dominated by well-funded lobbyists and corporate insiders.”

Reprinted in its entirety and with a new introduction, The Speech is a People’s State of the Union address, an anatomy of working and middle-class America rarely heard in the rarefied walls of the Senate.

Anyone who would like to know what it will take to put America back on the path to prosperity and fairness should read this book.

Pirates 2011: It’s About The Owners STUPID

What do the Greeks at Thermopylae, Billy Conn vs. Joe Louis, and the 2011 Pittsburgh Pirates have in common? Of course, they all had/have very little chance of winning. Unlike the Greeks and Conn, however, the Pirates offer very little to root for.

Conn vs Louis 1941

This year’s Pirates are almost universally predicted to finish last in the National League Central. They have no offence, pitching, or defense (other than that they are great). Not even the Pirate shills at the PG, KDKA, WTAE, and WPXI, who try to pass themselves off as sports experts, are predicting anything more than last. I guess the 18-year losing streak finally dawned on them.

For years, the Pirate mantra has been, “Trust us; we are building for the future.” Meanwhile, we have slipped into the 21st century and it feels like we will be slipping into the 22nd before the corner gets turned. I once thought that the Pirate ownership and management just lacked the baseball expertise to build a winning team, but a couple of years ago (I am also a slow learner), I realized it was more than incompetence. As my poker-playing buddy, EastEndJohnny puts it, “it's not that they are losers; it’s that they like being losers.”

Mark Cuban

I have been going to Pirate games since 1954, but I started to feel so manipulated and cheated that I stopped buying tickets altogether. The city of Pittsburgh gave the Pirates one of the best and most beautiful baseball parks in the majors. This greatly increased the value of the team and so how are we repaid? I would much rather have the crazy antics of former Pittsburgher Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, than the complacency of the former and current owners.

Clint Hurdle

During the off-season, the Pirates replaced manager John Russell with former Colorado Rockies skipper Clint Hurdle. In eight years with the Rockies, Hurdle had one winning season and compiled a 534-625 W-L record. They also acquired firstbaseman Lyle Overbay ($5 million) who batted .243 with 20 HRs in 154 games last year. This is in addition to last year’s regular Pirate firstbaseman Garrett Jones ($425K) who batted .247 with 21 HRs in 158 games. I guess that they do not realize that you can only play one firstbaseman at a time. This is not exactly encouraging.

So it looks like I will not be buying any Pirate tickets again this year. Of course, if a couple of freebies happen to drop into my lap, I will not turn them down. To be honest, I am a little interested in how the youngsters (McCutchen, Walker, Alvarez, Cedeno, and Tabata) are going to do.

The Second Amendment and the Last Bear Shot in Washington County

An article by John Hayes in yesterday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Meet your new neighbors: the bears”, reported that, “The state's black bear population has quadrupled since the early 1980s,” and that there are bears in more than 55 counties in Pennsylvania. I don’t know if this includes Washington County.

I’ve lived in Pittsburgh since 1964, but I’m originally from nearby Washington County. For the first eight years of my life, I lived on a farm that had been owned by my family since the late 1700s. Several years ago, when I was researching our family tree, I found out that one of my ancestors is said to have killed the last bear in Washington County.

James McDowell was born in 1804, and according to family records, “followed farming, stock raising and hunting as an occupation, and was considered in his day a great marksman. ...When about fifteen years of age he, with a flint-lock rifle, went hunting, taking along with him a young fox-hound. Before he was off their own farm, he came up to a black bear. The young hound would not leave him, but with his tail down and bristle's up, kept a sniffing. He finally discovered the bear standing up on its haunches and on firing, the powder flashed in the pan, causing the gun to back fire. In the meantime the bear had got down on all fours and ran about a rod before the gun discharged the ball. This bear was the last one seen in these parts and when dressed the bear weighed 300 pounds. [sic]”

I never liked hunting, but my father John McDowell Jr., was a hunter, so I have some understanding about its appeal. Dad owned two shotguns (12 and 20 gauges) and two rifles (a classic 30 30 Winchester and a 264 magnum with a scope). Dad, however, was a different type of hunter and gunowner – he had a conscience.

Winchester 30 30

Dad never owned a handgun because he thought they were “worthless for hunting and dangerous.” He thought that semi and automatic weapons should only be in the hands of the police or soldiers. He had one cardinal rule when it came to guns: never, never, never point a gun at anyone even if you are 100% absolutely sure that the gun is unloaded.

He never graduated from high school, couldn’t quote the Second Amendment like all the NRA members and gunowners of today, but understood it in a way that these fanatics and indifferent politicians never can.

The Big Fat Tax Lie

Josef Goebbels, the infamous Nazi Party propaganda chief, once said, "Any lie, frequently repeated, will gradually gain acceptance." I see this happening every day, especially when politicians make seemingly common sense statements and the media fail to investigate their validity. Take the health care debate where Republicans have charged that Democratic reforms will lead to death panels. Or how about the charge that Obama wasn’t born in the United States and thus his Presidency is illegitimate? Despite being false, these ideas have gained widespread acceptance.

One of the most widely accepted and destructive of these lies is the belief that Americans, especially the middle class, are overtaxed. It has been repeated ad nauseum over the last decade and has become so widely and fanatically embraced that any candidate who even thinks about raising taxes is committing political suicide. So let’s take a look at it:

The following table [1] compares the percentage of pay after taxes of the US to a number of other developed countries:

Table: AVERAGE PAY AFTER TAXES January 1, 2000
	Married		Married 2 Children
Country	$40K	$100K	$40K	$100K
Canada (Ont)	76%	64%	76%	64%
Denmark	65%	48%	65%	48%
Germany	69%	65%	80%	71%
Italy	68%	60%	69%	61%
Japan	83%	75%	83%	77%
Netherlands	64%	59%	64%	59%
Sweden	60%	53%	60%	53%
U.K.	76%	70%	76%	70%
U.S.	78%	74%	84%	77%

What the table tells us is that on January 1, 2000, Americans were able to keep a larger percentage of their paychecks than any of the other comparable developed countries.

According to Wikipedia, “Tax Freedom Day is the first day of the year in which a nation as a whole has theoretically earned enough income to fund its annual tax burden.” Here in the United States, we’ve actually seen it decrease from May 1st in 2000, the height of the Clinton economic boom, to April 9th in 2010. Around the world, Tax Freedom Day is later. For example, Tax Freedom Day for Spain, the UK, Canada, Germany and France is May 21, 2008; May 30, 2010; June 6, 2009; July 8, 2008; and July 16, 2007, respectively.

Fact: Americans are paying less in taxes today than 10 years ago and less in taxes than other developed countries.

Most Americans would either disagree with these facts or cheer if they agree. Normally, I would be one of the ones cheering if it wasn’t for the downsides and there are a number of serious downsides. The most serious of these are crippling our local municipalities. With less revenue coming in, local municipalities have been forced to make drastic cuts in teachers, police, firefighters, and maintenance workers, with resultant deteriorations in public education, safety, and infrastructure.

In order to rationalize the deterioration in public education and justify tax cuts, parents, public officials, reformers, and reactionaries have made teachers their scapegoats. Teachers are frequently characterized as greedy and inept, supported by unions and out-dated tenure rules. Such criticisms, however, totally ignore the fact that, all things being equal, the most important factor in determining quality education is class size. Study after study has shown this to be true. As Don Iglesias, Superintendent of public schools in San Jose, California, was quoted as saying about teacher lay-offs: “This is not a choice that anybody is making because we think increasing class size is a wonderful thing for our schools. It's a choice because there's ineptitude in terms of our elected officials in Sacramento and their unwillingness to raise taxes.” [2] (Emphasis mine.)

Likewise, police and firefighter layoffs have left us less secure. For example, prosecutors in Camden, New Jersey, recently reported a dramatic rise in violent crime two months after 160 police officers were laid off. Aggravated assaults with firearms jumped 259 percent in January and February compared to last year, and violent crime over all is up 19 percent, the Camden County Prosecutor's Office told the Philadelphia Inquirer. [3]

In the case of maintenance of infrastructure, there other considerations. Postponing repairs not only incurs safety risks, but also increases their costs, because the problems inevitably get worse and because we pay for them with inflated dollars. Repairs that cost $1,000,000 in 2011 dollars might cost $2,000,000 in 2021 dollars.

There are more problems. First, irresponsible tax cuts exacerbate economic problems in a circular way: e.g., cut taxes → less revenue → layoffs → even less revenue → even more layoffs. Second, groups like the Tea Party say that one of their goals is to take back control from the Federal Government by cutting taxes and spending. What they don’t realize is that irresponsible tax cuts actually have the opposite effect. With less revenue coming in, local municipalities and states have had to rely more on money from the Feds. However, when Federal money is available, it always comes with strings attached and results in even more control over local municipalities and states. Lastly, this entrenched belief that Americans are overtaxed leads politicians to be even more dishonest than they usually are, because any hint of raising taxes could result in the death knell of their careers.

Let me make this clear, however: I am not saying that the solution to our economic and budget problems is to irresponsibly raise taxes in the future just as we have irresponsibly cut taxes in the past. What I am saying is that any sincere discussions about budget shortfalls have got to include raising taxes in a responsible way. If it doesn't, it is totally disingenuous, whether coming from the right, left, center, conservatives, liberals, Tea Partiers, rich, middle-class or what have you. The reason for this is that spending cuts will get only you so far, and in order to completely balance budgets, we would have to make so many draconian cuts that even the ultra-conservatives would cry uncle.

Unfortunately, the rich, with the help of their political proxies, have done such a thorough job of brainwashing Americans into believing that we are overtaxed as to take it completely off the table. So when any of those “inept elected officials” whom Superintendent Iglesias alluded to, suggests cutting taxes, even the people who would be hurt the most support it. As long as we Americans keep blindly accepting statements that are put forward by the short-sighted, statements such as “Americans are overtaxed,” and “AIG and other financial institutions are too big to fail,” we will keep shooting ourselves in the foot. As a wry poker player once quipped about continually calling with the worst hand, “First you shoot yourself in the left foot, then you shoot yourself in the right foot, and then you blow your head off.”

1. Adams, Cecil, “Are U.S. taxes low compared to the rest of the industrialized world?”, December 1, 2000, The Straight Dope.
2. Montgomery, Michael, “Class Sizes Begin to Rise Again in California Schools”, November 19, 2009, The California Report.
3. Goodwin, Liz, “Violent crime spikes after Camden halves police force”, March 7, 2011, The Lookout.