Was coffee’s introduction into Europe responsible for fomenting the Enlightenment?

“…when coffee originally arrived as a phenomenon in the mid-1600s, it was not seducing a culture of perfect sobriety. It was replacing alcohol as the daytime drug of choice. The historian Tom Standage writes in his ingenious A History of the world in Six Glasses:

The impact of the introduction of coffee into Europe during the seventeenth century was particularly noticeable since the most common beverages of the time, even at breakfast, were weak “small beer” and wine….Those who drank coffee instead of alcohol began the day alert and stimulated, rather than relaxed and mildly inebriated, and the quality and quantity of their work improved….Western Europe began to emerge from an alcoholic haze that had lasted for centuries.”

Steven Johnson’s The Invention of Air, pages 59-60.

If you’ve been to London’s Hyde Park, you’ll see from this short film taken in 1926 that almost nothing has changed about it (save for the motorcoaches that drive through it):

Britain in Colour c.1926 – ACL

“Progress … is about to hit the buffers of overpopulation, the greenhouse effect, and the exhaustion of resources. However fast we run, we never seem to get anywhere. Has the industrial revolution made the average inhabitant of the world healthier, wealthier, and wiser? Yes, if he is German. No, if he is Bangladeshi. Uncannily, … evolutionary science is ready to suit the mood. The fashion in evolutionary science now is to scoff at progress; evolution is a treadmill, not a ladder.”

“Men have evolved to live dangerously because success in competition or battle used to lead to more or better sexual conquests and [hence] more surviving children. Women who live dangerously merely put at risk those children they already have [or those they are yet to have].”

Women are incentivized to avoid risk if they want their genes to be passed on to the next generation, whereas men are incentivized to seek risk.

It’s interesting that, in humans’ pre-agrarian ancestral environment, human gender roles had completely opposite incentives with regard to risk, and yet they still were able to cooperate in order to create successive generations.

(Page 20)

In the last year, Somalian pirates have featured prominently in the news. When a Maltese flagged, russian-owned freighter was hijacked off Sweden in late July, it made me very curious about piratery. It turns out that the United States has a long history of pirating:

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Baltimore’s shipbuilders produced a generation of fast topsail schooners known as Baltimore Clippers. Designed for speed rather than carrying capacity, the Baltimore Clippers were ideally suited to long voyages carrying precious metals and for semilegal activities. Privateering (a nice word for pirating) was a Baltimore specialty; during the War of 1812 the city was home port to 126 privateers. In British eyes it was simply a “nest of pirates”. In September 1814 General Ross’ British Army, having just burned Washington, DC, turned its attention to Baltimore. When the ground forces were stalled outside the city, an invasion fleet stood in the harbor and pounded Fort McHenry for twenty-five hours. The fort and its men held firm, saving Baltimore from destruction. A lawyer named Francis Scott Key watched the bombardment and paid tribute to the defenders of the flag by writing the four verses of “The Star Spangled Banner”.

Due to an apparently fraudulent election in Iran, an interesting situation has presented itself. One in which the world would be much better off if the man controlling the White House was former-President George W. Bush.

One of the most hated Presidents in recent memory (if not the entirety of American history), George W. Bush managed to divide the nation into hostile camps of partisanship. He led a war into a foreign country that did not attack America, going against the traditional anti-war stance the Republican party had held for much of U.S. history (including Vietnam). He changed tax policy to increase the amount of earnings that the rich could keep, which both inductively and effectively led to increasing wealth inequality and disparity, fanning the flames of class warfare . And he was a foreign policy hawk, largely due to the construction of his cabinet which included prominent gung-ho warriors like Elliott Abrams, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz.

Barack Obama, in contrast, is a foreign policy diplomat. His message as well as his actions indicate a desire to show a new face to the world: an America that engages other nations constructively as an observer, but neither infringes on nations’ sovereignty nor involves itself in their internal affairs.

Enter the 2009 Presidential Elections of Iran. It’s come to light that Mr. Ahmedinejad, the victor, may have actually come in 3rd in votes. The vote was certified within three hours of being counted, whereas Iranian election law dictates that they be certified no earlier than three days after an election, so as to allow for appeals on grounds of corruption or voting-tally errors. The security services have green-lighted a provision to allow police to fire upon demonstrators and protesters who dare question the results, and have already begun shooting protesters in exactly this fashion.

It is time for a change of the political system in Iran, the first major change since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. A young and resurgent Iran demands Democracy and modernity, and now needs to rip the power away from the entrenched theocracy, the Mullahs, and the (Grand) Ayatollah (Al-Sistani).

Equally important to the Iranian people’s revolutionary actions would be American intervention. The United States’ CIA is widely-known as being responsible for the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq in August 1953, and is just as able to foment a revolution in Tehran now as they were then.

The best outcome of these election irregularities would be a peaceful popular uprising and a revolution. The mullahs, however, have other ideas, and would be a strong adversary during a revolution. The mullahs would call up the military to institute martial law in order to keep the revolutionary hordes down. Because of the mullahs and their power, the most likely endeavour to bring about revolution in Iran would require outside (U.S.) intervention in addition to a popular uprising.

With Barack Obama sitting in the White House being the calculated and ’safe’ President that he has shown himself to be time after time, it is not likely that we will see strong support from him for an aggressive U.S. response/intervention. Doing that would go against not only the principles that he ran on and his outspoken stance against the war in Iraq, but against his subconscious self that has been shaped by his experiences in politics and law for decades.

Barack Obama is not the President who will help Iran over the pass and into the Valley of Liberty and Prosperity.

But who is?

The first man who comes to mind is none other than George W. Bush. Bush’s father, George Herbert Walker Bush served for a time as Director of Central Intelligence under Gerald Ford, and knows of the CIA’s capabilities regarding illegal and unauthorized activities and intervention on foreign soil (he was actually called in by Ford to investigate and clean-up the agency of this kind of activity). Bush 41 also led the charge of Desert Storm into Kuwait and Iraq in 1990 and is likewise quite willing to use the military and the CIA in defense of America’s interests abroad. Bush 41’s son, George W. Bush, was likewise a war-hawk, willing to intervene for global interests and to ensure that authoritarian hegemony has no safe harbor in our modern world. He and his cabinet led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 in addition to the occupation of Afghanistan, and managed the occupations until his two-term presidency ended in January 2009.

If George W. Bush were the President of the United States, he and his cabinet would likely support and execute a covert intervention in Iran and supply the Iranian revolutionaries with intelligence, supplies, and money. Such a development would be best for Iran and the world, but because Barack Obama is such a measured and calculating anti-war President, American intervention is unlikely. Iran and the world will doubtlessly suffer because of this cruel joke of history.

It’s now up to the Iranian people to rise up, as Ukraine did in 2004, and do what must be done–with or without the help of a passive and unassertive America.

Cameron Newland is a mobile phone expert and technology writer from Seattle, Washington. You can subscribe to his blog’s RSS feed by clicking here, and follow his Tweets here. He can be reached at cameron at cameronnewland dot com.

Chrysler built B-29’s that bombed Japan during WWII. Mitsubishi built Zeros that tried to shoot them down. Both companies built cars in a joint plant called Diamond Star in the 1990’s. Both companies are now technically insolvent.

What were they thinking! – Mitsubishi’s Unfortunate Bailout

Q & A – How are Asian rivals reacting to Chrysler’s bankruptcy? – Reuters

Unnecessary Knowledge – Chrysler/Mitsubishi

(note: Akane is Japanese, and lives in Tokyo.)

Akane: we have big holiday from 2-6 [of May]
Cameron: oh yeah?
Akane: we called “golden week”
national holiday
Cameron: YAY!
Are you going to invade Manchuria?
Akane: YAY!!
Cameron: You are, aren’t you
Akane: chinese hate us…..hahahah
Cameron: yes they do!

Salman Rushdie has reported that he still receives a “sort of Valentine’s card” from Iran each year on 14 February letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him.

Salman Rushdie – Wikipedia

John Adams is regarded as one of the most important Founding Fathers of the United States of America. Before becoming the second President of the United States, John Adams served as the Vice-President under President George Washington. Prior to that, John Adams was a signer of the Declaration of Independence as a delegate from Massachusetts.

Founding-father John Adams was a Unitarian (but raised a Congregationalist) who rejected orthodox Christian beliefs, including the divinity of Christ and the far-fetched ‘trinity’. He valued religion in general because he believed it restrained “human passions” such as “avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry.” Like other Founders who leaned toward deism or agnosticism, Adams thought religion was important not because it was true but because it helped keep the common people in line.

In his youth, Adams’ father urged him to become a minister, but Adams refused, considering the practice of law to be a more noble calling. Although he once referred to himself as a “church going animal,” Adams’ view of religion overall was rather ambivalent: He recognized the abuses, large and small, that religious belief lends itself to, but he also believed that religion could be a force for good in individual lives and in society at large. His extensive reading (especially in the classics), led him to believe that this view applied not only to Christianity, but to all religions.

Adams was aware of (and wary of) the risks, such as persecution of minorities and the temptation to wage holy wars, that an established religion poses. Nonetheless, he believed that religion, by uniting and morally guiding the people, had a role in public life.

Adams was a champion of reason because he was objective in his thoughts on religion, which allowed him to be critical of religion’s flaws, and at the same time, he was tolerant of believers. He was reasonable, but was not one-sided or militant. For this we should thank him, as this post-Enlightenment luminary has set a fantastic example for all of us to follow.

Excerpted from:

The Religious Affiliation of Second U.S. President John Adams, with citations

And Everybody Hates the Atheists: Romney tries to get ahead by climbing over unbelievers – Reason

Payments in ransom and tribute to the Barbary states amounted to 20% of United States government annual expenditures in 1800.

If that amount was spent to appease Somali pirates today, we’d spend upwards of $590 billion per annum. Of course, we currently spend 21% of our budget on our military, which effectively discourages piracy (in all places except the Gulf of Aden).

Barbary Pirates – Wikipedia

Morocco, which in 1777 was the first independent nation to publicly recognize the United States, became in 1784 the first Barbary power to seize an American vessel after independence. That action got the attention the sultan sought; it followed several years of fruitless diplomatic efforts to get an American emissary to come negotiate a treaty. Thomas Barclay, American consul in France, went to Morocco in 1786 and negotiated a very satisfactory treaty based on the draft he had carried from Paris and requiring no future tribute or gifts. Experience with Algiers was different. In 1785 two ships (the Maria of Boston and the Dauphin of Philadelphia) were seized, the ships and cargo were sold and the crews were enslaved and held for ransom.

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson, then the ambassador to France, and John Adams, ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, a visiting ambassador from Tripoli. The Americans asked Adja why his government was hostile to American ships, even though there had been no provocation. They reported to the Continental Congress that the ambassador had told them “it was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave,” but he also told them that for what they considered outrageous sums of money they could make peace.

Barbary Pirates – Wikipedia

Fitting for Easter, I’ve come across a very reasonable condemnation of Jesus’ resurrection story. Oddly enough, it comes straight from a mega-church’s blog:

“In so far as the ancient non-Jewish world had a Bible, its Old Testament was Homer. And in so far as Homer has anything to say about resurrection, he is quite blunt: it doesn’t happen.” [5] The idea of resurrection is denied [...] from Homer all the way to the Athenian dramatist Aeschylus who wrote, “Once a man has died, and the dust has soaked up his blood, there is no resurrection.” [6] One of the most influential writers in antiquity was Plato. According to Wright, “neither in Plato nor in the major alternatives just mentioned (i.e. Aristotle) do we find any suggestion that resurrection, the return to bodily life of the dead person, was either desirable or possible.” [8] Wright provides a helpful summary: “Christianity was born into a world where its central claim was known to be false.” [7]

Non-theists maintain that resurrection is physically impossible. Some Jews have hope that it’s possible, but only in the future. Christians seem to think it happened to Jesus–despite all available evidence to the contrary.

But who is right?

In this case, the Non-theists are partly wrong, as are the Christians, and the Jews emerge victorious, holding the most accurate worldview.

Non-theists are right that resurrection hasn’t yet occurred on this Earth, but science will one day allow us to resurrect dead bodies. Non-theists shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss future possibility.

Christians are wrong in their belief that Jesus was physically resurrected. However, Jesus’ legend remains, which qualifies as a sort of resurrection in that it keeps the stories of his life ‘alive’. Literal resurrection? It didn’t happen. Figurative resurrection? Absolutely.

Jews, having hope for future resurrection (which will someday be provided by science) are right on the ball. Chalk up 10 points for the followers of Moses.

China’s Chang Cheng Station [in Antarctica] was inaugurated with a “dove of peace” ritual in which hundreds of Chinese pigeons were released, nearly all of which froze to death within hours.

Peaceful.

Countries Maneuver for Potential Future Land Grab – Wired News