I've got the feather!

That's the name Sylvia gave to a game our chicks play. (They are young ones--we got them on April 14 and 15.) If a chick loses a feather, another chick will grab it in her beak and run around making a peculiar noise, not like the other cheeps they make. The other chicks chase her. Eventually one of the other chicks grabs it, and then she runs around making the noise. Sylvia twisted a piece of brown paper bag and gave it to a chick, and they played the same game with the paper twist. My friend Marion, who was raised in the English countryside, says that chickens also have a game called Kick the Twig, which is kind of an avian soccer.

Human games are of course more complicated. While I was researching my book, I came across descriptions of ancient Egyptian games. Game sets and paintings of Egyptians playing were found in their tombs. The ancient Tyrians and Sidonians left records on papyrus (which they imported from Egypt), and those rotted in the damper climate. So since the people of the Levant copied their art from Egypt, I made the assumption that they copied Egyptian games as well.

Since I'd never raised chickens before, I didn't know they were playful. But now that I think of it, mammals play and birds play. Do marsupials? I don't know. I've never seen cold-blooded creatures play (lizards, amphibians, insects, fish), but maybe someone else has and can enlighten me.

More kings

IreneF commented that " there are two circumstances that must be in place before the institution can arise. The first is sedentarism and the second is metallurgy. The first kings arose once large populations were committed to farming as a way of life, and when it was no longer possible to make your own weapons. Farmers also supply a surplus of young men, which is the group of people most prone to violence."


This is perfectly true. What puzzles me is why people who aren't forced to submit to kings continue to worship them, in a slavish way. I think it is related to the same psychological trait that causes people to worship at the feet of gurus, athletes, etc. Is it related to the human necessity for operating as social beings, rather than as lone hunters like tigers? Or some distortion of our capacity for love and idealization of the beloved? I remember the crush I had on a gym teacher when I was 18, and the way I idealized her. (Maybe that's one of the reasons they recruit kids that age.)

Why the Lust for Kings?

A nation that fought a revolution against monarchy and organized itself as a constitutional republic--that's us, my friends--now finds itself supporting absolute monarchs around the globe. We supported the Shah of Iran. We support the hereditary kings and sheiks of Gulf States, like Bahrain and Arabia. Note that I say Arabia rather than Saudi Arabia. Sa'ud is the name of the royal family. Calling the nation by that name implies that they own the whole country.

Part (but only part) of this support is explained by political convenience:  U.S.-based companies extract oil at bargain prices in return for keeping a royal family living in luxury. Democratic governments in these petro-states would not be so compliant. They might nationalize the oil fields and distribute the wealth among the general population.


The other part is that slavish trait in the human psyche that makes people create kings and worship them. It's what explains the American fascination with the recent British royal wedding. I mean, who cares about these useless creatures? None of them wrote a great book or great music; none of them invented a useful gadget, taught school, or even cured a wart.

The institution of kingship goes back a long way, at least to the 4th Millennium BCE in Sumeria. According to their writings, "When kingship descended from Heaven, the first king was in Eridu [their oldest city]." So not only do we create kings, we insist that a god or gods foisted them off on us. And ever since then, royalty claims to rule by divine right. The Israelites did the same thing, only a couple of millennia later. I talk about it in The Throne in the Heart of the Sea, when Elijah's uncle Reuben retells the story from the first Book of Samuel (Shmuel):  "The people said we want a king, just like every other nation. Shmuel told them all kings were tyrants. Did they listen? No, and we've been suffering ever since. One thug kills the next, installs himself as master, and everybody rushes to kiss his feet, give him their daughters, and die in battle to glorify him."

Every now and again, human beings get up off their knees and establish some kind of democracy or republic, however limited or imperfect. The Greeks did it, the Romans did it, the French did, and so did we. But for some reason the slavish trait oozes up again, and the new state succumbs to a tyrant, a Nero or Caligula. We seem to be headed in that direction, as our most recent thugs-in-chief have asserted the royal privilege of detention without trial, torture, and assassination, on their word alone.

I goofed

The original report said that bin Laden was buried at 2:30 am, but it didn't say what time zone. He was supposedly killed at 1:00 am Pakistani Standard Time. Now the newspapers are saying he was buried at 2:00 am Eastern Standard Time, U.S. This would give the Navy Seals 10 hours to wash, wrap, read prayers, transport the body, weight it and deep-six it. So that's certainly doable. Some of the other issues are still unanswered. The government is apparently deciding whether to release a "gruesome" photo. Photos can be doctored, of course. They say they made a DNA verification, but nobody knows where they got the DNA of relatives to check on. So there are still unanswered questions.

I couldn't stand Ronald Reagan, but I did appreciate it when he said, "trust, but verify." However, when it comes to the government, I don't really trust all that much either.

Something spooky

I'm not a conspiracy theorist by nature. Mostly I try to follow the rule known as Occam's Razor--always choose the simplest explanation for your data. My impression is that conspiracy theorists tend to rather convoluted explanations of events. However, when a simple explanation doesn't work...

I'm talking about Osama bin Laden, and wondering what really happened yesterday. The Special Ops people didn't take photographs--there were photos of Che Guevara after he was killed. A guy who tweeted from Abbottabad, Pakistan, reported the helicopter attack without knowing who the copters were after-his first tweet was at 1:00 am. The U.S. government says that our troops buried bin Laden at sea at 2:30 am, and that between the time he was killed and the time he was buried, they washed the body and had someone read prayers over it.

It couldn't have been 2:30 the following night. They said they buried him in a hurry, because Islam requires burial within 24 hours.

The driving distance from Abbottabad to the nearest seaport, Karachi, is 1570 km or 975 miles. A helicopter would take a straighter path--let's say it cut 1/3 of the driving distance and flew 650 miles. The cruise speed of a Blackhawk helicopter is 173 mph; maximum speed is 183 mph. At maximum speed, it would have taken 3.5 hours to fly to Karachi.

If they loaded the body on a Boeing 737, flight time is 1.5 hours, because the 737 flies at 491 mph. This still doesn't allow time to wash the body, pray over it, drive it to the airport, etc.

The government story doesn't make sense. I don't know what really happened in Abbottabad, and I don't think the American public is likely to find out.

Hospitality, then and now

Yesterday's NY Times had an article about Libyans fleeing the violence in their country, and finding shelter across the border in Tunisia. Residents of the town of Tataouine have opened their homes to total strangers, even moving into less comfortable parts of the house and giving the best rooms to the refugees. (See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/world/africa/29refugees.html?scp=2&sq=Tunisia&st=cse.)

One of the homeowners "described his gesture as a matter of obligation and pride. 'This is how it is, these are our customs,' he said. 'If there is something to eat, we will eat it together. If there is nothing to eat, we will have nothing together.'"

I am pleased but not surprised. These customs arose from the struggle for survival in the desert. Any stranger might claim three days of hospitality, simply by putting a hand on the guy ropes of your  tent, and if you were in trouble, you could claim it at another encampment. The three days were "greeting, eating, and talking." As host, you were expected to feed the stranger as well as your means allowed, even if your own family went hungry. You couldn't ask his business until the third day (it was almost always a him). And if pursuers came after him, you were expected to defend him with your life. It was a matter of honor. Often that hospitality extended well beyond the initial three days.

This tradition originated in the pre-Islamic Middle East and spread via Islam to North Africa, Central Asia, and east to Indonesia. It explains why the Afghans refused to turn Osama bin Laden over to the Americans, even though their country suffered terribly for it.

This is no doubt why the Afghans refused to turn Osama bin Laden over to his American pursuers. He was a guest, and had to be defended

My 15 minutes of fame

I'm in a movie called Stonewall Uprising. It was broadcast on PBS this past week, on a program called American Experience. The producers did a good job--they even interviewed the cop who led the raid on the Stonewall Inn, and who now regrets being on the wrong side of history. I think you can still watch the movie on your computer, or you can purchase the DVD.