Incubi, succubae, alien kidnappers, and out of body experiences

Incubus
. pl. in·cu·bus·es or in·cu·bi (-b)
1. An evil spirit supposed to descend upon and have sexual intercourse with women as they sleep.
2. A nightmare.
3. An oppressive or nightmarish burden.
[Middle English, from Late Latin, alteration of Latin incub, from incubre, to lie down on; see incubate.] From the Free Dictionary

Succubus
n. pl. suc·cu·bus·es or suc·cu·bi (-b, -b) also suc·cu·bae (-b, -b)
1. A female demon supposed to descend upon and have sexual intercourse with a man while he sleeps.
2. An evil spirit; a demon.
[Middle English, from Medieval Latin, alteration (influenced by Late Latin incubus, incubus) of Latin succuba, paramour, from succubre, to lie under : sub-, sub- + cubre, to lie down.] From the Free Dictionary

Note the literal meaning of the Latin root of incubus – “to lie down on.” I’ll get back to that. For the classic visual of this, look at John Henry Fuseli’s painting, The Nightmare.

After waking up one morning in that vaguely disturbed state that follows a half remembered nightmare, I started thinking about a couple of types of “paranormal” experiences that have been explained by science. The first is the dream of oppressive visitation.

In the Middle Ages and beyond, people would claim to have been visited by an incubus or succubus (see above). From the advent of aliens in science fiction in the early 20th century to this day people have claimed to have…..well…to have had sex with an alien. Or, for that matter, to have been captured and tied down by an alien. It all relates to the same physical syndrome, with different cultural overlays.

It is called sleep paralysis. When we sleep, we pass in and out of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, when we dream. In this state a certain part of our brain shuts off, effectively paralyzing us. If not for this, we would act out our dreams in our sleep, thrashing around and probably injuring ourselves. A minor failure of this mechanism can be seen in the twitching paws of a sleeping dog, as it chases its prey across the lawn of its dreams. In humans, when all works correctly, we regain our motor functions as we awake. This enables us to smack the alarm clock and roll out of bed. However, with some people the timing is off and the sleep paralysis stays engaged as the person is in the process of waking up from REM sleep. Humans are pattern finders, assimilators of all parts of the perceived environment. When a fractionally awake person feels as if he or she can’t move, there needs to be a cause, and a cause is provided by the imagination. For the medieval peasant it was a demon, for the modern Westerner, an alien. Sleep disorder researchers have watched people with sleep paralysis wake up and swear that they had just been visited, once again, by an alien.

The other phenomenon is one that many people have experienced during a physical crisis. The story often goes something like this: “I was on the operating table, under anesthetic. I heard the doctor say that my heart had stopped. I felt myself rise up out of my body and found myself looking down on the operating table and the doctors and nurses around my body. They restarted my heart and I reentered my body.”

Jet fighter pilots have experienced the same phenomenon during or after sharp maneuvers. The pilot pulls out of a steep dive and experiences large g-forces, the acceleration that is like experiencing 2, 4, or even 8 times the force of gravity. The pilot partially or completely blacks out. The pilot then finds himself over his own plane looking down on himself in the cockpit. What is going on?

Neuroscientists call this phenomenon failure of proprioception. Proprioception is our internal sense of our body position and movement. It enables us, for example, to walk in complete darkness. Alcohol impairs proprioception, which is why a cop will ask a drunk to close his eyes and touch his nose with one fingertip. In rare instances of complete loss of proprioception due to neural injury, people have become essentially paralyzed, and eventually relearn basic movements by watching themselves. These unfortunates can’t look away while holding a glass of water – they’ll drop it.

Failure of proprioception can be caused by temporary loss of sufficient blood flow to the brain. In the case of the pilot, the g-forces caused blood to pool in the lower body, depriving the brain of oxygen. Depending on situation, a person can find themselves apparently behind themselves, above themselves, in front of themselves, or beside themselves. According to some accounts, the sense of being in front of your own body can result in the sufferer feeling shadowed by someone else. This probably brings us back to demons and aliens.

For a great exploration of this, listen to the Radiolab broadcast of May 5, 2006 on proprioception.

I sincerely wish you pleasant dreams.

The Fastest Man on Earth

I just received the latest newsletter from the Human Powered Vehicle Association, which had the results of the Nissan One Hour Challenge. The car company donated the use of its 5.6 mile oval test track in Standfield Arizona for a unique bicycle race. The competitors ride recumbent (sitting position) bicycles with aerodynamic carbon fiber shells as fast as they can for one hour.

A Canadian named Sam Whittingham pedaled a world record distance of (are you recumbent?) 53.918 miles. This guy maintained highway speeds for an hour. The top three competitors all exceeded 50 mph, and the fourth and fifth bested 47 mph.

Here’s a video clip from Whittingham’s chase car in the last two minutes of the race. The streamlined bike is barely visible at the beginning.

If that isn’t impressive enough, consider this: In 2002, on possibly the flattest, straightest section of highway in America, in a place called Battle Mountain, Nevada, Whittingham accelerated his bike to just over 81 mph. He still holds the world record with that run.

Here’s a short video about Battle Mountain and another attempt by Whittingham to beat his own record.

If you want to know what it’s like inside the carbon fiber shell, here’s a helmet camera video of “Fast Freddy” Markham reaching 78 mph at Battle Mountain. Fast Freddy, by the way, set the previous one-hour record in 2006 of 53.43 mph.

Sam Whittingham is a serious physical specimen. In 2003 he was monitored during a competitive run and produced 450 Watts of power going 78 mph. 450 Watts is about three times what your average schmo can put out. His bike, the Varna Diablo II is something special itself. The Diablo looks like a cruise missile on wheels, and is about as aerodynamic as any land vehicle can be. The gear train starts out higher than the top gear of a normal bike and goes up from there.

I keep thinking about that 450 Watts. Consider that when you drive down the road in your car at highway speeds you are expending about 15,000 Watts, 33 times the power that the Diablo needs. Of course, the Diablo is specifically designed as a speed bike, and not practical for everyday transportation. Still, it gives an idea of what can be accomplished down at the other end of the transportation spectrum. Post peak oil I could imagine people using vehicles that look much more like the Diablo than an SUV.

So, if you are driving on highway SR305 out in Nevada in October and a small cruise missile on two wheels passes you as if you were parked, smile and wave. It’s probably Sam.

Barging down the Erie II: Return of the freight barge

Your semi-aquatic Minor Heretic took to the Grand Canal once more last week, travelling from Oswego, on Lake Ontario, down the Oswego Canal, onto the Erie Canal, through Rome to Utica, New York. At one point, when we were docked near a lock, a massive construction barge went past, pushed by a tugboat. The barge filled the lock to within a few inches of the sides and nearly end to end. The incident was notable because of the lack of commercial traffic on the barge canal. It started me on a train of thought about the possible return of waterborne freight traffic.

I had spoken a couple of weeks before with a Canal Corporation official about the future of freight traffic, and he offered a few thoughts. A canal barge is 8 times more energy efficient than a tractor-trailer on the highway. $4.50 a gallon for diesel fuel is the economic tipping point between trucks and barges. The Canal Corporation is starting to get inquiries about barge freight. They have also started designing a self-propelled barge to carry up to 60 standard cargo containers.

I’d like to explore the possibilities of barge freight and its environmental impact. Interstate 90 generally parallels the canal across New York State. According to the Department of Transportation, between 2000 and 7000 trucks per day travel I-90 between Albany and Buffalo, depending upon the section of highway.

From my limited time on the canal I have seen that the time it takes to cycle a lock is about 20 minutes. A lock tender told me that his could cycle in 10 minutes if there were two lock tenders on duty. For the purposes of this exercise I’ll assume that the Canal Corp. gears up for freight traffic with two operators per lock, but allocate that saved ten minutes for maneuvering. At 20 minutes per cycle, a lock can pass 72 barges a day. At 60 containers per barge, that is 4320 containers per day. That represents a major percentage of the present I-90 truck traffic.

Of course, no system is perfectly efficient. I’ll arbitrarily assume that the canal is busy, but not packed, with each lock passing two barges per hour, or 2880 containers a day.

The Albany to Buffalo run on I-90 is about 290 miles. A tractor-trailer gets about 7-9 miles per gallon (call it 8), so one would burn 36.25 gallons of diesel on the trip. 2880 trucks would burn 104,400 gallons of diesel, producing 22.384 pounds of CO2 per gallon, or 2,336,889 pounds of CO2.

The ratio between the energy consumption of a barge and a truck is dramatic. There is a unit called the ton/mile, meaning the work of carrying one ton of cargo one mile. A truck gets 59 ton/miles to a gallon of diesel. A freight train gets 202 ton/miles per gallon. A barge gets 514 ton/miles per gallon, 8.71 times that of a truck. Divide 2,336,889 pounds that the truck fleet produced by 8.71 and you get 268,299 pounds, saving 2,068,590 pounds of CO2 per day. The polar bears would be happy about that.

Transferring that much cargo to the canal would also save about 92,400 gallons of diesel fuel a day, or 33,726,000 gallons a year. For comparison, that’s a little over half the annual diesel consumption in Vermont.

It makes sense that 200 years ago people built canals. Dig a ditch, let it fill with water, and gravity gives you a smooth surface. You can then build a wooden box, fill it with 120 tons of cargo, and pull it with three horsepower. Ok, mulepower.

I’m not indulging in nostalgia. As oil prices go up and oil availability gets spotty, we are going to be looking for energy efficient alternatives to the “rolling warehouse.” For items that can take four days to get from Albany to Buffalo instead of one, it is a reasonable alternative. 90% of the population of New York State lives within 20 miles of either a canal or the Hudson River. Vermont’s most populous city, Burlington, is connected to Montreal, Manhattan, and Michigan by water. Obviously we can’t transfer all cargo traffic to the water, but as we face ever rising energy prices we should develop this resource to its practical limits.

Lawrence of Arabia on Iraq

Or, "History repeats itself for the 45,896,327th time."

“You will kill ten of our men, and we will kill one of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.”

Ho Chi Minh

“Don’t send your military to fight nationalists on their own soil.”

Minor Heretic

The British learned this in America and Afghanistan. The Soviets learned this in Afghanistan. The French learned this in Viet Nam. The United States learned this in Viet Nam, forgot it, and is learning it once again in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The British experience in America is educational. The exact political relationship was different from ours today with the Middle East, but the general economic objectives are the same: maintain compliant states so as to extract natural resources. In both cases the colonized peoples started thinking and acting nationalistically, threatening the economic benefits enjoyed by the empire.

In the late 18th century the British were short on (semi) willing manpower, so they raised enlistment bonuses and hired mercenaries. They went deeply into debt. Much of the British populace wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the war. The British Army was beset by problems of supply, transportation, and rampant corruption. They won most of the battles of the American Revolution. Unfortunately for them, they lost a couple of big ones called Saratoga and Yorktown. In both these cases the loss was not about tactical military capability. As much as anything the British were defeated by long, fragile supply lines. General Washington operated on the principle that as long as his army was intact, he hadn’t lost. As long as his army was intact, the British had to stay in the field, spending money, losing troops, and generally getting worn down.

In Iraq today we have:
Mercenaries
Debt financing
Supply/transportation problems
Rampant corruption in both the Iraqi government and our own procurement process
Long, tenuous supply lines
Lack of popular support at home
Deteriorating military recruiting, morale and readiness

In the 19th century in Afghanistan the British managed to gain the upper hand militarily several times and dominate the Afghan kings. Still, after a while Afghanistan became just too difficult to manage and they left.

It’s not surprising, any of it. Afghanistan has been a strategic crossroads for thousands of years. The list of invaders stretches from Alexander the Great to the United States. As a result of centuries of practice, those who live in that region have become adept at guerrilla warfare, cunning in politics, and patient enough to wait out and wear down all invaders.

Likewise, the Iraqi resistance in all its forms has the advantage over us. Time is on their side, the population is on their side, and the battlefield situation is on their side.

Below is a piece from the “history repeats itself” category, by none other that Lawrence of Arabia himself.

First I’ll add a factoid that resonates: Lawrence wrote, “When conditions became too bad to endure longer, they decided to send out as High commissioner the original author of the present system, with a conciliatory message to the Arabs that his heart and policy have completely changed.” In our case, James Baker III, Secretary of State under George Bush Senior, sent a message through April Glaspie, then Ambassador to Iraq, to Saddam Hussein a week before he invaded Kuwait. The gist was that Arab vs. Arab conflicts were of no interest to us. In other words, “Go ahead, invade Kuwait, see if we care.” A million or so Iraqi deaths later, when the policy became a political shambles, guess who was appointed to chair the Iraq Study Committee and get us out of the mess? You guessed it: James Baker III.

22 August, 1920
A Report on Mesopotamia by T.E. Lawrence
Ex.-Lieut.-Col. T.E. Lawrence,
The Sunday Times, 22 August 1920

[Mr. Lawrence, whose organization and direction of the Hedjaz against the Turks was one of the outstanding romances of the war, has written this article at our request in order that the public may be fully informed of our Mesopotamian commitments.]

The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster.

The sins of commission are those of the British civil authorities in Mesopotamia (especially of three 'colonels') who were given a free hand by London. They are controlled from no Department of State, but from the empty space which divides the Foreign Office from the India Office. They availed themselves of the necessary discretion of war-time to carry over their dangerous independence into times of peace. They contest every suggestion of real self- government sent them from home. A recent proclamation about autonomy circulated with unction from Baghdad was drafted and published out there in a hurry, to forestall a more liberal statement in preparation in London, 'Self-determination papers' favourable to England were extorted in Mesopotamia in 1919 by official pressure, by aeroplane demonstrations, by deportations to India.

The Cabinet cannot disclaim all responsibility. They receive little more news than the public: they should have insisted on more, and better. They have sent draft after draft of reinforcements, without enquiry. When conditions became too bad to endure longer, they decided to send out as High commissioner the original author of the present system, with a conciliatory message to the Arabs that his heart and policy have completely changed.*

Yet our published policy has not changed, and does not need changing. It is that there has been a deplorable contrast between our profession and our practice. We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish Government, and to make available for the world its resources of corn and oil. We spent nearly a million men and nearly a thousand million of money to these ends. This year we are spending ninety-two thousand men and fifty millions of money on the same objects.

Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They kept fourteen thousand local conscripts embodied, and killed a yearly average of two hundred Arabs in maintaining peace. We keep ninety thousand men, with aeroplanes, armoured cars, gunboats, and armoured trains. We have killed about ten thousand Arabs in this rising this summer. We cannot hope to maintain such an average: it is a poor country, sparsely peopled; but Abd el Hamid would applaud his masters, if he saw us working. We are told the object of the rising was political, we are not told what the local people want. It may be what the Cabinet has promised them. A Minister in the House of Lords said that we must have so many troops because the local people will not enlist. On Friday the Government announce the death of some local levies defending their British officers, and say that the services of these men have not yet been sufficiently recognized because they are too few (adding the characteristic Baghdad touch that they are men of bad character). There are seven thousand of them, just half the old Turkish force of occupation. Properly officered and distributed, they would relieve half our army there. Cromer controlled Egypt's six million people with five thousand British troops; Colonel Wilson fails to control Mesopotamia's three million people with ninety thousand troops.

We have not reached the limit of our military commitments. Four weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a memorandum asking for four more divisions. I believe it was forwarded to the War Office, which has now sent three brigades from India. If the North-West Frontier cannot be further denuded, where is the balance to come from? Meanwhile, our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the wilfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad. General Dyer was relieved of his command in India for a much smaller error, but the responsibility in this case is not on the Army, which has acted only at the request of the civil authorities. The War Office has made every effort to reduce our forces, but the decisions of the Cabinet have been against them.

The Government in Baghdad have been hanging Arabs in that town for political offences, which they call rebellion. The Arabs are not at war with us. Are these illegal executions to provoke the Arabs to reprisals on the three hundred British prisoners they hold? And, if so, is it that their punishment may be more severe, or is it to persuade our other troops to fight to the last?

We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of the world. All experts say that the labour supply is the ruling factor in its development. How far will the killing of ten thousand villagers and townspeople this summer hinder the production of wheat, cotton, and oil? How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?

*Sir Percy Cox was to return as High Commissioner in October, 1920 to form a provisional Government.

Good Will Warfare

Your studious Heretic has been reading the works of the original blogger, Joseph Addison. With the assistance of Richard Steele, Addison published a series of daily essays in London almost exactly 300 years ago under the title of The Spectator. His medium was rag paper and hand pressed ink, but the intent was roughly the same as today’s laptop legions.

Addison’s writing collided with modern life for me most recently due to an email from an old friend. The subject line read, “They have me on the radio.” My friend is a former Marine who served a tour of duty in Iraq. He and his wife participated in StoryCorps, a project that sends mobile recording studios around the U.S. and assists people in recording their personal stories. His local NPR affiliate selected about three minutes of their 40 minute interview and broadcast it. You can listen to it here. In it, he talks about what his wife calls “good will warfare.” The Iraqis were solidly neutral in their behavior towards the Marines. My friend made it a personal challenge to get an Iraqi to smile or wave at him as he drove by. He figured that for that one moment he had gotten them into a better mood, perhaps even to the point of feeling friendliness.

This might sound naive, except for the solid science behind it. Scientists studying facial expressions have found that people who put on an angry expression that they don’t actually feel experience the same physiological changes as someone who is truly angry. Their muscles tense, certain stress related chemicals pour into their bloodstream, and parts of their brains associated with anger light up on a brain scan. The same goes for smiling. We can fake it and actually feel better. My friend was on to something.

India is home to a multitude of laughing societies. These people gather in parks and laugh. They fake it until they make it. I saw a documentary on the human face hosted by John Cleese of Monty Python fame where he visited one of these societies. A group of fifty or more people stood together in a public park with Mr. Cleese and started a round of the phoniest laughter you might imagine. Soon they were all convulsing with real laughter. They claim great emotional and physical benefits from the practice. Science backs them up, finding benefits for the heart, reductions in stress hormones, and boosted immune response.

This brings me back to Joseph Addison. Specifically, this brings me to Spectator number CCCCXLVII, Saturday, August 9, 1712. I quote:

“…..I would recommend to every one that admirable precept which Pythagoras is said to have given to his disciples, and which that philosopher must have drawn from that observation I have enlarged upon, Optimum vitae genus eligito, nam consuetudo faciet jucundissimum. ‘Pitch upon that course of life which is the most excellent, and custom will render it the most delightful.’ Men whose circumstances will permit them to choose their own way of life, are inexcusable, if they do not pursue that which their judgement tells them is the most laudable. The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination, since by the rule above mentioned, inclination will at length come over to reason, though we can never force reason to comply with inclination.”

I would disagree with Addison on the very last clause, being more a follower of David Hume, who wrote that “reason is the slave of desire.” Nevertheless, we can make choices, and by incorporating a practice into our routine, we can fight the good fight of reason over impulse. Habit, as Addison writes, can shape our desires.

Which brings me back to my Marine friend on patrol in Baghdad. He made a point of friendly engagement with fearful and hostile people in an extremely dangerous environment. He was, in a small way, improving his odds. In this, reason, virtue, and delight coincide.

I won’t belabor the point, but will allow my readers to extrapolate this into their own lives.