Sure you didn't!

We didn't start the fire (History Podcast; 2021-2023)

Hosts: Katie Puckrik & Tom Fordyce

In the mid-1980s, a young person commented to Billy Joel. In the young person's mind, the world of the 1980s was plagued with tumultuous events. In passing, he said, "I bet the world must have been a more peaceful place when you were growing up."

That got Billy Joel thinking. He started jotting down all the significant events from his birth in 1946 throughout his time growing up in New York till the summer of 1989.

Like that, he came up with close to 119 incidences that impacted him at least. He started arranging the list, like a good composer would, and wrote a record-smashing hit that everyone in the 90s would know.

Billy Joel realized as he reminisced about the years that went by that the world had always been a restless place. Looking back on the events, one thing is clear: It was as unsettled then as it is now.

The list he came up with became a narration of all the events that happened in post-war America and even the rest of the world. It even became the history syllabus for many schools in a few states. Katie Puckrik and Tom Fordyce decided to make a podcast out of the whole thing. They interviewed experts relevant to the subject for each of the 119 events, personalities or political events mentioned in the song. What transpired at the end is close to 90 hours of banter and history lessons that are excitingly interlaced with wisecracks and jokes.

Completing all the podcasts makes me feel like I'm in slumber while everybody else is doing the stuff. Many things were below the radar, and time is the best teacher for what happened in the past and will happen in the future. Many more things happened in the background without the rest of the world's knowledge. Some events still remain enigmas, which the world will never know, like whether Oswald's bullet really did kill JFK on the fateful day in Dallas.

Starting with Harry Truman and his questionable decision to drop the nuclear bomb in Japan, the podcasters dissect Doris Day. And we soon discover that her life was not like the 100-watt sunshine smile she flashes in her movies. Her life ambition was crushed when she was involved in a motor vehicle accident early on life. She had to switch careers. Married with a child by 22, life was not easy. Married four times, in the later stage of her life, she had fought court case after court case to retrieve her life savings from her lawyer, who had swindled her.

Like that, we learn about what has been happening in the background beyond the glitz of neon and what is printed in the media. It ends with the late 1980s staged Cola War between Pepsi and Coke—a fake war started to create publicity while the fizzy drink makers laugh all the way to the bank. Perhaps if the song had been written a bit later, he would have written about the fall of the  Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism.

We didn't start the fire, It was always burning

Since the world's been turning

We didn't start the fire, No, we didn't light it

But we tried to fight it

The Imperialists, specifically the Americans, in the post-war era, can deny all they want that they did not start the chaos that is rampant around the world. The sad truth is that the turmoil we are in has its roots deeply planted by the actions of people before us, intentionally or otherwise. For one, the current Middle East Crisis originates from the Imperialists' interference in the regional exploration and usurping of black gold and strategic power control of local politics. They fanned fires to appear as peacemakers akin to pinching the baby's bottom and singing lullabies simultaneously. While they were at it, they decided to sell arms to both warring sections. Why not? And sing 'We didn't start the fire, it was always burning...'

(P.S. Highly recommended for history geeks.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Out of Africa?

The world has been under the impression that Africa was a dark continent, that it was primitive. Scholars always refrained from using the words 'philosophy' and 'wisdom' in the same sentence when it came to Africa. People tend to look at this vast continent with scorn as a place where its natives delved in black magic and the belief in the occult practices.
The truth is far from that.

As far as philosophy is concerned, Africa can be divided into two geographical locations - North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. The contributions by the North African dwellers are said to be predating the Egyptian dynastic era. With the spread of the Abrahamic religions to this area, many thinkers gifted their input into Jewish, Christian and Islamic epistemologies. Offhand, philosophers such as Augustine of Hippo, Ibn Sab'in, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and Ibn Bajjah come to mind.The Sub Saharan region, however, is more complicated. With 3,000 over tribes occupying that area with no written language or sacred text, analysis becomes problematic. The similarity is there, nevertheless, on the concept of time and personhood. If they are any indications, oral history and proverbs that had passed from generations to generations may give insight into their general outlook of life.

John Samuel Mbiti, a professor and a parish minister, through his research into African oral traditions, has challenged the long-held Christian assumption that African religious ideas were 'demonic and anti-Christian'.

Exciting concepts that I gathered after listening to Professor Peter Adamson's 'History of Africana Philosophy' involve the idea of God and time.

Sankofa symbol - Twi language, means 'reach back and get it' 

In these cultures, time is categorised into the past, present and immediate future. There is no future because the future is actually only in memory as we move along in time. Sasha (now) slowly moves along to become the long-forgotten past (Zamani). Sasha denotes spirits remembered by those living. As the present dies, they would eventually go into the hidden history, Zamani, where nobody present remembers. So, in a way, they are telling that time moves in a loop. We live for the future, but in actual fact, we get pushed into the past. The spirits only leave the mortal body but are forever present in the spiritual world. There is no distinction between the physical and spiritual world. The physical body decays, but the spirit moves to another existence.

This pretty much resonates with David Eagleman's 'Three Stages of Death': the first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

The African concept of God is closely linked to their dependence on Nature and land. A non-anthropomorphic omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient Supreme Being that exerts His powers via Nature and in phenomena beyond human control.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/African_philosophy

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Who was she?

BBC Podcast: Death in Ice Valley(2018)

In November 1970, hikers discovered the remains of a lady in the icy cold mountainous area of Isdalen Valley in Norway. This lady, in her 30s, obviously not equipped for trekking, was found charred faced down in a fire with a bottle of barbiturates in the vicinity. This death was unusual to the peaceful port town of Bergen. It created a lot of excitement. The police had nothing much to work with.
To start with, no identity could be ascertained. Nobody came forward with the report of a missing person. The labels on her clothes were cut off. A nationwide alert pinpointed to left luggage in the railway station. It seems she possessed multiple passports, multiple identities and many wigs. 

With not much evidence to work with, the police soon declared her case as suicide and were buried in a zinc cast to enable further test if necessary. Her burial was a low-key attended only by police officers. 

46 years later, investigative journalists from BBC and NRK decided to re-open the case with the benefit of newer forensic tools and technology. They meticulously swept through the case with a fine-tooth comb as any good investigator would do starting at the site where the lady (who was christened 'Isdal Woman' after the valley) was found after slowly tracing her activities. A total of ten episodes narrating their work was aired. A Facebook page was created to discuss their findings for the smart people out there to give their input.

Interviews with living witnesses and police officer shed light on the background of the case. The hotel where the Isdal Woman stayed before her death is still around, and records of her registration were available for scrutiny. Handwriting experts, who have a better knowledge of the nuances of writing now than they were in the 70s, suggested that she was probably from a French-speaking nation. She had multiple identities, sometimes writing in German, but they ascertained that her German was probably fake. 

An artist's impression of the Isdal Woman.

The recurring suggestion was that she was a spy or an informant. With the penchant to hide her identity with fake names and aliases, wigs and cul labels off her clothes, this was her mostly accepted profession. She was also found to have in many hotels and was a frequent traveller. Some opined that she could be a sex worker as sexy lingerie was found amongst her luggage.

She was also sighted around the vicinity of the area where Norway carried out its missile test, The Penguin, furthering supporting this possibility. 

The Coroner's office still kept her mandible as the coroner must have thought it could be handy in time to come. She had multiple gold fillings and crown, which located her to have originated from Russia or an Eastern European country. C14 dating gave her age as probably in her 40s.

New, untested methods were brought to the fore. O2 isotope studies could suggest the area where one's water supply came from. Strontium isotopes interpretation which reflected the types of food that one ate and the type of soil in the area that food was grown, was employed. Tissues in the paraffin blocks of the sample taken from the Isdal Woman was sent for DNA analysis.

As it stands, it has been ascertained that the Isdal Woman is of European stock, probably grew up in eastern or central Europe, moved towards France in her adolescence just before or during World War II. Her handwriting indicated she learnt to write in France or in another French-speaking country. Followers of this podcast are eagerly awaiting the second season of the series. The producers promised to have one if newer discoveries are made.

My friend asks if all these endeavours are worth their time and effort? Is the discovery of the identity of the Isdal Woman going to give any real closure to anyone since no one seems to be missing her? We do not know that, right? Is the discovery of the perpetrator of crimes, if any, is going to of any fruition since by all accounts he may have died already? If the sin was committed by agents related to regimes of a particular ideology, we all know how brutal secret services are. At one time, the idea of she (Isdal Woman) being a Mossad agent was considered, but forensic findings proved otherwise. Are these mere exercises of futility just to mentally arouse ourselves and fulfil our overinflated egos? Is this going to change mankind in any way? Is it a warning to would-be criminals that their crime would not be unpunished? But then, criminals, by being educated on how forensics work, would now be in the know-how to avoid detection!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39369429

 https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

All kinds of everything...

Back in medical school, we had the honour of having the first-hand experience of listening to a learned man of stature croak cockamamie. The deputy director of Health then officiated some function. The gist of the speech that left an everlasting impression on me was his stand on allocations of funds for research.

From the podcast: Bigger than Bacon, Radiolab.

He lamented the idea of students complaining about the lack of grants for research. He insisted that of one is genuinely interested in doing research, he can even do it under the coconut tree! I am sure many findings can be cooked up under the tree - with the help of coconut oil, coconut milk and coconut toddy!

Somehow, this thought came to me when I was listening to a podcast recently. 

Apparently, the first thing they teach you in underwater surveillance studies is to identify a crackling sound which is not the noise of a advancing naval fleet but a particular type of shrimps. These single clawed crustaceans were correspondingly snapper shrimps. They actually mask the passage of a submarine or ocean liner in the World War! Nice to know but the scientists were not satisfied with just knowing that. What did they do? Using ultra fast speed photography and acoustic measurements with various state of the art equipment, they discovered that the snapping sounds were not due to physical contact of the claws in the some kind of territorial ritual but actually caused by the popping of a bubble. The scientists managed to show that sudden movement of the claw created a vacuum and release a vacuole of air bubble that pops giving the characteristic rustic crackling sound!

What does it matter? How is it useful for humankind? Believe it or not, this knowledge has helped passage of certain medicines through the blood brain barrier.

This was the same scenario before the smartphones came to the scene. Many of the technologies used in smartphones were invented by people who did not know the use of their invention. They just discovered it and patented it, waiting for someone like Steve Jobs to come along and assimilate it into his product.

So, who said research is a waste of resources? It paves the path others in the future to have a blueprint upon which they can improve and hopefully use it in a meaningful for the benefit of the human race as a whole.

Meet the man who spent 12 years trapped inside his body watching ‘Barney’ reruns

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/01/13/meet-the-man-who-spent-12-years-trapped-inside-his-body-watching-barney-reruns/
By Peter Holley January 13

Martin Pistorius in his wheelchair in 1992. (Courtesy of Martin Pistorius via HarperCollins)
"Lynchian," according to David Foster Wallace, "refers to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former's perpetual containment within the latter."
Perhaps no other word better describes the onetime fate of Martin Pistorius, a South African man who spent more than a decade trapped inside his own body involuntarily watching "Barney" reruns day after day. "I cannot even express to you how much I hated Barney," Martin told NPR during the first episode of a new program on human behavior, "Invisibilia."

Pistorius at a special needs center during his illness. (Courtesy of Martin Pistorius via HarperCollins) 

The rest of the world thought Pistorius was a vegetable, according to NPR. Doctors had told his family as much after he'd fallen into a mysterious coma as a healthy 12-year-old before emerging several years later completely paralyzed, unable to communicate with the outside world. The nightmarish condition, which can be caused by stroke or an overdose of medication, is known as "total locked-in syndrome," and it has no cure, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

In a first-person account for the Daily Mail, Pistorius described the period after he slipped into a coma: I was completely unresponsive. I was in a virtual coma but the doctors couldn’t diagnose what had caused it.

I was treated for tuberculosis and cryptococcal meningitis, but no conclusive diagnosis was made. Medication after medication was tried – to no effect. I’d travelled beyond what medicine understood. I was lost in the land where dragons lie and no one could rescue me. When he finally did awaken in the early 1990s, around the age of 14 or 15, Pistorius emerged in a dreary fog as his mind gradually rebooted itself.

"I had a sense that something was wrong," he told "The Wright Stuff," a British TV program. "I suppose you can almost describe it like when you are trying to wake up from a dream, but can't."
At some point, between the ages of 16 and 19, Pistorius fully regained his consciousness -- only to be confronted by the jarring reality of his situation, according to NPR. He was trapped, marooned on a deserted island within himself, his only companion his despondent thoughts, which had begun to eat away at whatever hope he had left.

"Ghost Boy" by Martin Pistorius. (Courtesy of HarperCollins)

Pistorius told himself nobody would ever love him and that, for as long as he remained alive, he was doomed, according to NPR.

"It's like a cold, sinister frustrating and frightening feeling, which seems to throttle every cell in your body," he told "The Wright Stuff" about the feeling of being trapped. "It's was like you're a ghost witnessing life unfold in front of you and nobody knows you are there."

But Pistorius was there, so much so that he remembered with clarity the death of Princess Diana, the inauguration of Nelson Mandela and the Sept. 11 terror attacks. He watched his relatives go about their lives and listened to the things they said, though they had no idea he could hear them. "But nobody thought I was even aware of them, let alone the fact that I not only knew about them, but was shocked or excited or saddened like everyone else," he told "The Wright Stuff."

He described the feeling in more detail for the Daily Mail: 

My father’s faith in me was stretched almost to breaking point – I don’t think it ever disappeared completely. 

Each day Dad, a mechanical engineer, washed and fed me, dressed and lifted me. A bear of a man with a huge beard like Father Christmas, his hands were always gentle.
I would try to get him to under-stand I had returned, willing my arm to work. "Dad! I’m here! Can’t you see?" But he didn’t notice me.
"Let’s get you into bed, shall we?"  

He continued to undress me and my gaze slid to my arm. It was not moving: its only outward manifestation was a muscular twitch close to my elbow. The movement was so tiny I knew my father would never notice it.

Rage filled me. I felt sure I’d burst. I gasped for breath. "Are you OK, boy?" Dad asked as he heard my ragged breathing and looked up.

I could only stare, praying my silent desperation would somehow communicate itself.

Pistorius giving a presentation in Israel. (Courtesy of Martin Pistorius via HarperCollins)

His recovery began with Barney, the big purple dinosaur he was forced to watch on loop at the special care center where he spent his days, according to NPR. Pistorius decided he'd had enough and dedicated his thoughts to something that offered some modicum of control over his reality, such as telling time by tracking sunlight in a room.
"I can still tell the time of day by the shadows," he told NPR.

As his mind improved and Pistorius learned to "reframe" and "reintepret" his "ugliest thoughts," his health improved, too, according to NPR. By age, 26, he was able to use a computer to communicate, shocking his family.
"When he gets the tools to communicate, he forges ahead," his mother, Joan Pistorius, told NPR.
It wasn't long before he'd gotten a job, enrolled in college to study computer science, started a web company and, more recently, written a book, "Ghost Boy," which was published in 2011. The Sunday Times calls it "a deeply affecting and at times shocking book" that recalls "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" -- "but with a happy ending."

Pistorius on his wedding day. (Courtesy of Jeff Turnbull via HarperCollins) 

Indeed, Pistorius also fell in love and got married. Speaking through a device that allows him to talk with the help of a computer keyboard, he can be seen on video here discussing the book and his wife in the same sitting.

He's now living happily in the United Kingdom with his wife, Joanna, leading a life that is perfectly regular, which is exactly how he prefers it.

"I am happy with who I am," he told "The Wright Stuff."

"Yes, life has its challenges, but then again, whose doesn't."

Thinking aloud allowed

I think it is more relevant now than ever, the platform to intellectually tease out and argue a certain event as it is unfolds. The human race has evolved and has weathered the atrocities of Mother Nature simply by being able to critically evaluate their shortcomings and dare to make changes.This is the thought that went through my mind as I completed listening to the 12th episode of the season 1 of 'Serial', the podcast that is taking the podphiles the world over by storm.
A 17year old second generation American boy of Pakistan origin, Adnan Syed, is convicted of murder of his schoolmate cum ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, is incarcerated for life in 1999. Almost 20 years later, the producer decide to re-look into the case files and critically analyse whether justice was carried out correctly.

Over a year, the files are scrutinised. The background of the accused is dissected critically. His background, family, recreational activities are all bare open. The idea whether his racial background had any bearing on the outcome of the trial is also mooted.

Syed's character, his double life of being a religious son at the family level, serving religiously at the local madrasah whilst taking weed and pilfering the mosque's coffers exposed through interviews. Syed was interviewed by phone over the limited time allocated to him.

The witnesses were traced (after so many years). Some of the schoolmates who had gone on with their lives just refuse to be interviewed. Some however, decide to open up as the podcast becomes more famous.

They even go as far as to investigate Adnan's defence attorney, whether she sold out to earn more from the appeal.

The evidence is also scrutinised extensively. Listening to the podcast, we learn quite a lot about telecommunication transmission theory.
It is amazing that the show managed to maintain the attention for a whole season and everybody is left wondering whether Syed Adnan had a fair trial.

Thought I had heard it all

Heard this sad podcast recently...

Dr Benjamin Gilmer took over a family practice in a small town in North Carolina. Interestingly, the previous doctor had the same surname as his (unrelated) and was serving time for ruthlessly strangling his father to death!

As he went on with his job, he soon realised that his patients had only lovely things to say about the previous Dr Gilmer' about his caring nature, compassion, dedication and his magical touch. Soon, Benjamin developed a keen interest to explore the real Dr Vince Gilmer, his predecessor.

Dr Benjamin Gilmer

Vince's father was a Vietnam war veteran who had been diagnosed as schizophrenic and was in a medical facility. A few hours before the murder, Vince had taken his wheelchair-bound father for a boating outing. To cut the story short, he was strangled, had all his thumbs and fingers amputated and had the body dumped by the woods to rot.
Vince Gilmore himself had been on anti-depressive medications and allegedly had had a history of purposely crashing on to a pillar intentionally to avoid sitting for a career advancement examination. Anyway, a few days before the said incident, he had stopped his medication on his own accord.

Then came the ugly court case, the vilification, the opening of dirty linen, the frolicking of profound hindsight knowledge enhanced learned officers of the court around their road kill that finally decided that Dr Vince Gilmore had indeed willfully murdered his father in cold blood.

Along the way, Vince, sacked his attorney to represent himself with disastrous outcomes. He proclaimed the lack of serotonin made him do the things that he did, but the jury did buy the story.

Dr Vince Gilmer

As Dr Benjamin dwells into his namesake's case, he could not fathom why Vince had bouts of abnormal behaviour and unusual facial movements. He thought of Huntington's disease for the possible explanation for all his misdeeds.
The case was reopened, and genetic testing confirmed positive for Huntington's disease. He was placed in a psychiatric hospital instead and was doing better while his case goes on.

No matter how much we think we know, there are heaps of mountains of things that beg to be unravelled. And we think we know everything.

Reference: This American Life
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/492/dr-gilmer-and-mr-hyde

1year = 410days?

Heard on WYNC Radiolab the other day on something revolutionary.

Somebody researched on the inside of exoskeleton of the coral. Understandably,  the inside of the coral had about 365 grooves depicting the days in the year and the change in the tides. Some smart professor decided to go one step further and looked into prehistoric corals. To his astonishment, he consistently found 400 to 410 grooves in them. The great minds started wondering...
Is it possible that the year was longer in the prehistoric days when the Earth was in its 'infancy'? It turned out that there is a plausible explanation to this end.
The Earth, just after the Big Bang was devoid of a moon. In its place when just meteorites, hence the mass that was rotating the sun was following a different orbit (longer). When the meteorites coalesce to form the Moon, the gravitational force of the Moon slowed Earth, hence shortening the number of days in a year!
The things that you learn.... limitless!

A way with words!

Pockets of civilizations started with confluences of humans sporadically in areas considered fertile, non hostile, hospitable and habitable.Over time, the inhabitants started developing sets of rules and governance to maintain law,order and sanity to the weaker one in the society. They developed the art of imparting knowledge to the progeny so the knowledge that their forefathers had acquired by trial and error would not be lost in translation or the annals of time! With the innate greed that was ingrained in the DNA, pretty soon, one civilization tried expand their land over the other. (Land = Crops = Produce = No hunger = Bargaining power = Respect = Primordial sexual needs satisfied)
One technique employed by the invaders was make subject of their conquest to look down upon their own achievements, even though advanced by light years, and to look upon the the visitors' feats awestruck whilst to discard their own. Awestruck, they were and discard, they did!
And so the whole world speaks English and its forms it is spoken. And not knowing to speak in the lingua franca of the world is cringed upon.
Like that, the product of the post-modern world like me seem to find greater joy in appreciating the finer points in English rather than my own mother tongue. One of the podcast that I enjoy listening to right now is 'A Way with Words'. It is a programme showcasing the use of the English for the people who use it as their native language. The presenters of the show make an interesting presentation of learning English in a very fun and imaginative way. Some of the information that one can pick up are quite mind boggling and sometimes plain simple. They also discuss some idioms and obscure expression, looking at it from a history perspective and origin.
For example, "I am going the cut the quick of you....". The word 'quick' in the phrase refers to life, just like quick-sand (sand appears alive), baby quickening (the baby is alive), the quick and death (living persons), nails bitten down to the quick (the tender, sensitive flesh of the living body)....
Some of the things may appear petty but to lovers of the language, it must be God-send. There is a difference between the usage if the word 'use' and 'utilize', if it really matters! If you use a stapler to staple, then you use a stapler. If you use a stapler to do something that it is not intended for, like to smack somebody on the head, then you utilize the stapler!

https://soundcloud.com/waywordradio/120922-awww-1349-good-juju-mp3