Murphy's Law Alive and Well

The story goes that this epigram was named after Capt. Edward A. Murphy, US Air Force, who worked on effects of sudden deceleration on the human body at Edwards Air Force Base in Colorado in 1949.

The popular version of this so called “law” today is, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”.

Originally, since Capt. Murphy worked on an Air Force project, he declared from observation that, "If an aircraft part can be installed incorrectly, someone will install it that way”. Soon it was realized that it applied to almost anything people worked on. Examples of it had been popping up everywhere anyone cared to look.

When we think that technology today will eliminate or greatly reduce incidences of mishaps and snafus, we would be wrong.

The Roofing Mishap

In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, our home needed a new roof. Though damage was relatively minor compared to the thousands of other homes, our insurance company decided we needed a replacement.

We picked a contractor who was well reviewed and only one of two bidders who did not bother to get up to the roof to take measurements. Old school surveyors are already losing to satellite mapping technology and our contractor is keeping up with the digital age. The young salesman informed me that they use a satellite service that measures the square footage of the roof area from 200 miles up. A commercial subscriber downloads the data, writes up a contract and voila, you get their bid the following day. You sign the contract and send it back electronically.  Weeks later, roofers were and still are very busy, the same young man announced the good news – roofers will begin work the following Monday.

Monday morning came. No workers, no equipment, no material were at the front of the house. Shortly before 10:00 that morning I called the office. The kind receptionist was puzzled by my query and replied with a question of her own, “What do you mean the roofers are not there?” I had to tell her nicely. I did not succumb to sarcasm, as tempting as it was for me to say, “Unless the roofers and the materials were the invisible type, I don’t see them”. A half hour later she called back to say that the roofers went to the wrong house a couple of blocks down in a similar cul-de-sac and they had already successfully removed a third of the asphalt shingles of the house that did not need a new roof.

Anticipating your question let me explain. Our address and the errant one have the same exact house number on streets similarly named after a common indigenous tree, except with different prefix and suffix. Those of you familiar with Google map search, you typically see a listing of closely related addresses. The young man put in the wrong address from the list of choices when he requested for the satellite download. He provided the men with the same address. Here is what made this even a bit more bizarre. The material was delivered on Sunday by the supplier to that house, depositing the load right in between the house and its adjoining neighbor. The homeowners were out for the weekend. If they noticed it when they got back, they thought nothing of it, thinking it was for the other house. They both went to work that Monday morning.  The roofers came, saw the material, checked the address they were given, and up they went with their tall ladders and proceeded to work as they had done many mornings of their vocational life.

When the young man who also is the son of the owner of the company called, after apologizing profusely, promised to reschedule after they finish re-roofing the wrong house at his expense (His dad wanted to drive the lesson hard so it was on the son’s salary). But, there was one bad news. His quote was based on the roof area of the wrong house which, as a two story home, registered an area smaller than our single level home. The total living square footage of our home is smaller than most 2-level homes in the subdivision but the roof area has a larger footprint. He quoted an additional $4K for our roof. I know what you are thinking. We already had a signed contract; but I elected not to hold his feet to the fire because I had other encounters with Murphy’s Law that I will talk about later.  I went back to the insurance company who promptly agreed to go along with the higher quote.

But Mr. Murphy was not quite through with this episode. I had earlier decided to get rid of the two powered rooftop ventilators that had become more of a gateway for squirrels, raccoons and possums to the attic. The workers removed them and covered the holes. Meanwhile, on Wednesday while the roofers were still working, the heating/air conditioning guy came for the biannual inspection and checkup of the two units located at the attic. The HVAC guy came down after a quick trip to the attic and informed me that there was no electrical power to one of the units. The days had been cool so we didn’t even notice that the AC wasn’t working. I went up there with him and we could tell what happened.  To remove the ventilators the roofer merely cut off the power cord to the ventilators. The HVAC units and the ventilator though separate were wired from the same junction box. But why was there no power to the HVAC unit. That was a conundrum that seemed to defy explanation. The cord was not directly connected to the HVAC units. It took a good twenty minutes before we realized what had happened. When the roofer snipped the cord of the ventilator his cutter momentarily shorted the wires that tripped the breaker at the main breaker box that was shared by the HVAC units and the ventilator. Whew! “Where there was that possibility for it to happen, it certainly did”.

Murphy’s Law worked overtime in 1982

I mentioned earlier about my encounters with Murphy’s Law. Although it happened 35 years ago the string of occurrences, separate and unrelated that happened in one day, was etched indelibly in my memory.  It was in 1982, we were newly minted immigrants and I barely had three years in the company. I was at the early stages of my third assignment in a new department. I had to make a trip to California to visit a couple of our satellite offices and meet with a handful of business contacts.

I stopped by the office before proceeding to the airport thinking I had plenty of time. I miscalculated the Houston traffic. I missed my PAN AM non-stop flight (remember, this was when PAN AM was alive and well). The lady at the counter was so kind to get me on another flight but on another airline, however. She gave me a new ticket but I must hurry because the plane was leaving soon but not to worry because there was a transfer tram that serviced the three different terminals – A, B and C. I found the area where to board the tram and all I had to do was to listen for the announcement as the tram approaches each terminal. By that time I was a semi-nervous wreck, the public address system on the tram crackled indistinctly. The tram must have circled twice and I keep missing the correct terminal. I missed that flight. I went back to the PAN AM counter. The lady was still very nice (those were the days). She can get me on another plane. I will not have to leave the terminal (whew, and what a relief). The flight though required a change of plane in Denver but (again) not to worry because there was plenty of layover time for me to catch the connecting flight. It was fine because my first appointment was dinner with a business contact and since California was later by two hours off Central time I had plenty of cushion.

We arrived in Denver without a hitch.  All I needed was look for Gate 15 for my connecting flight. Gate numbers were on huge boards supported by cables from the high ceiling. Passengers walked along a walkway in between where the service counters were and the wide glass wall overlooking the tarmac. An easy chore.  I walked past Gate 12, 13, 14 and then Gate 16, then 17. I knew I went too far so I retraced my steps. I got back to Gate 14, but no 15. I retraced my steps once more until I got to the nearest counter to ask where Gate 15 was. The lady told me I was at Gate 15 (another whew!). I sat down, relieved that I had plenty of time to decompress. A few minutes later, there came two workmen carrying something and a tall ladder. They had the board that said Gate 15. They must have removed it earlier and were re-installing it. Don’t stop reading, it’s not over yet.

We got to San Francisco airport after a delayed departure from Denver. I got the rental car and with the map I laid out the route, the exits and turns for my destination. This was my first trip to California, my first business trip ever for that matter. My destination was Concord, CA where my hotel was and I was then getting a little frantic because there was not much time to waste before my dinner appointment at Walnut Creek. I missed one critical exit. California highways were a little unforgiving when you missed an exit.  It took several miles to get to the next exit for a U-turn. Discombobulation mixed with panic got the better of me as I missed the exit again. The sun had set, I was completely exhausted and missed the dinner to meet my contact (and remember this was pre-cell phone era).  It was a complete waste because the morning appointments and the day’s schedule precluded any make up time for the missed opportunity. Mr. Murphy has one more trick, so stay put for the next episode.

Two days later I was back to the SF airport to fly to Los Angeles (LA). I felt good because the drive from Concord to the airport went well and returning the car to the return location went without a hitch (not an easy feat because airport layouts are notoriously challenging to rental car returners). I felt good. I got to LA, no issues finding my hotel. I did not rent a car since my meetings were confined to the business area near the luxurious Bonaventure Hotel where I stayed for the night. Next day, after a nice breakfast I was ready for the first appointment with plenty of time.

For this trip I purchased a pair of new shoes that were very comfortable. Cordovan shoes, made from horse hide, usually come in burgundy color. At that time it was the most money I spent on a pair of shoes. It was a treat for my first business trip on a job I was enjoying thoroughly.  I had some time so I stopped by to have my shoes shined. Shoe shine spots are mostly located in hotel corners, usually under subdued lighting. I don’t know why but they just are, typically, that is. There I was sitting on one of those elevated seats served by a very engaging shoe shiner. He asked what military service I was in. I told him I was not although I felt flattered that I made that impression on him. He merrily kept polishing with gusto. Afterwards, after paying him with a nice tip, I proceeded outside to catch a cab. I arrived for my first appointment. As I got out of the cab I instinctively looked down at my shoes.

The rich bright burgundy Cordovan was no longer it. It was polished to a lustrous gleaming black! No wonder he asked me what branch of service I was part of. I picked that pair of Cordovan for its simple, no frills line that military shoes are noted for. He meant well and he also used a black dye that gave the pair that wet glassy spit shine that any Marine would have been proud of. The shoes irretrievably remained black for the rest of its useful life.

After that the rest of the trip went splendidly well. Murphy’s Law had its fill of mischief to last a long time.

We are still left with the question: Why indeed does anything that can go wrong, does? In my opinion, because we live in an imperfect world, there really is no such thing as a perfect anything.  From the macro world to the realm of sub-atomic particles, perfection is as elusive as the neutrino or the Higgs boson. Even towering volcanoes, with their inverted perfect cones, stood majestic for eons until they erupted and proceeded to obliterate surrounding square miles of land and pastures that for a long time were picturesque representations of tranquility. If a volcano, any volcano, has the potential to erupt, it will. Even if it takes 600,000 years, which had been the estimated interval between each of the last three eruptions of the super volcano that is beneath the Yellowstone National Park, it will again, someday.

Flu vaccines work and often cause little complication but because they can in rare cases, they indeed will. However, flu can turn virulent and indeed it will. Should you get a flu shot during flu season? According to Murphy’s Law you should. If that was the message I was going after, forgive me for taking the most meandering path but you must agree with the corollary to Murphy’s Law - the day you ignore doing the preventive step that you’ve routinely done many times before is like forgetting to bring an umbrella and be caught in a heavy downpour on a day you had a new outfit for an important meeting.

Remember, Murphy’s Law is an equal opportunity distributor of mishaps where and when we least expect them.

A need for show and tell: (I think the photos will enlarge with a tap)

This is what started it all. Hurricane Harvey, besides this, also caused the closure of the Houston airport. A day before the heavy wind and rains our flight was cancelled. We missed the flight for a foreign tour. But there was a silver lining. Because we were home I prevented a much more serious problem. I took down 35 gallons of water from the leak coming down between the chimney and roof joints. The buckets shown in second picture caught most of the water. I was up and down the attic all night long hauling each filled bucket. The damage could have been more serious and severe.

The ventilator wire took a split second to snip but enough to trip the breaker

This would have been what the owner of the errant home would have seen when they came home to see their roof partially cleared of the asphalt shingles. 

The overcast sky looked like another opportunity for Murphy's Law to have doled out another mischief but the rain did not come.

The chimney flashing got the attention it deserved

It was messy. The roofing contractor was nice enough to replace a couple of weakened roofing sheets with new ones

At last, after all that, it is all done and done well.  The roofing contractor, despite the little miscue, did an excellent job in just three days. (On the first day they engaged ten men to do the initial work; six did the finishing work the next two days. They cleaned up the area without any residual sign they were there, except for a job well done.

This is, among the other things that happened this year, something to be thankful for this coming Thanksgiving Day. 

Roads Paved with Good Intentions

Just a few days ago the EPA approved the release of male mosquitoes to eliminate or slow down the spread of mosquito-borne diseases. Here is a Nature Magazine clip of that news:

“Instead of relying on genetic engineering, MosquitoMate infects lab-grown mosquitoes with the common bacterium Wolbachia pipientis, which affects mosquitoes but not animals or humans.

The Wolbachia-infected male mosquitoes (which don't bite) mate with the wild populations of female Asian tiger mosquitoes (which do bite). The eggs fertilized by MosquitoMate's male mosquitoes won't hatch because the paternal chromosomes don't form properly due to the effects of the bacterium.”

This is supposed to be good news, right? Let’s hope it is, however, we should not forget that there were many instances in the past when the “cure” was worse than the “disease”.

In late 1900s mongooses were brought into Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands to eradicate rats that were infesting the sugar cane fields. Mongoose, a native of India, is a voracious predator and it would certainly have found rats to be quite delectable; however, so were birds, reptiles and amphibians and chicken, naturally.  The mongoose, thriving even today, caused the decline of and sometimes the extinction of local species. The “hired” predator is now a bigger pest in habitats where it is at the top of the food chain. Meanwhile, rats are still a problem.

At one time, China declared war on sparrows because they fed on grain before harvest. Sparrows also fed on insects. Well, yield in rice production actually went down when the sparrow population declined from the massive eradication campaign but over population by insects did a number on the rice field.

The Story of the Snail Darter Fish

Depending on which side one stands on this story, it was either a case of extreme environmentalism or whether progress was almost halted by a small fish about twice the length of a paper clip. In the 70’s the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was constructing a dam on the Tellico River for a major hydroelectric project. It had been approved by Congress and Federal money was allocated and was near completion when opponents to the dam took up the case of the snail darter fish. The dam, safer than a nuclear reactor and cleaner than fossil-fuel-fired electric plants, will cause the extinction of the small fish. It was protected under The Endangered Species Act. A court injunction temporarily stopped the construction. After much delay a higher court allowed the project to be completed citing that so much money was already spent. Likely not cited in the decision was the fact that electric energy production for a large population area outweighed the fate of the fish.

But there was a twist. After the dam was completed, it was discovered that the darter fish existed in several other tributary bodies of water along the same river system and thriving well. It was subsequently taken off the endangered species list.  This darter fish story was cited in a California case where another fish, the delta smelt, is in the middle of another cause celeb involving water supply distribution.

There are a number of stories enough to fill a whole book where good intentions by well-meaning folks, and even by government bureaucrats, backfired or resulted in ill effects worse than the original malady. Consider the case of the rat tails in French colonial era Vietnam.

The Rat Tail Story

In 1897, the French introduced the sewer system in Hanoi to modernize the city and promote wide spread use of indoor plumbing. Nine miles of underground sewer system was completed when the rat population exploded almost overnight – the cool dark sewers were ideal breeding ground for the rodents. Fearing bubonic plague and other diseases, the French colonial government decided a rat eradication campaign. Rat killers were dispatched to hunt the rodents down in the sewers. Although so many rats were killed, the program was far from a total success. The well-to-do folks whose homes were naturally served by the sewer system, thus the first the rats would go to when they emerged from underground, complained loudly.  The rat hunting was opened to all citizens who were enticed with a one cent incentive for every rat tail brought in. The tail idea was conceived so government officials and facilities did not have to deal with rat corpses. Rat tails started pouring in by the thousands. It was fine until it was later discovered that rats with no tails were seen running around. It turned out that a good number of “rat catchers” were capturing rodents, cut off their tails and released them so they can continue to breed, thus ensuring a healthy source of rat tails to sell to the government. In extreme cases some folks resorted to actually breeding rats in cages, poultry like, which were more efficient and less labor intensive than going out each night to hunt for the hapless rodents. If you’re interested, check out my musing, “When Rattle Snakes Don’t Rattle Anymore”.

The Barbra Streisand Effect

“In 2003, Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman for distributing aerial pictures of her mansion in Malibu. But Adelman was no paparazzo—he operated the California Coastal Records Project, a resource providing more than 12,000 pictures of the California coast for scientists and researchers to use to study coastal erosion. At the time Streisand sued Adelman for $50 million, the picture in question had been accessed a whopping total of six times—twice by Streisand’s lawyers. Nonetheless, her lawsuit stated that the photos explicitly showed people how to gain access to her private residence”.

The lawsuit, before which only a handful of people knew of Ms. Streisand’s expensive mansion, resulted in over a  million views by people who otherwise would have been oblivious to Ms. Streisand’s residential location.

The Economist described the Streisand Effect as, when “efforts to suppress a juicy piece of online information can backfire and end up making things worse for the would-be censor.”

Not only did Ms. Streisand lose the $50 million lawsuit, she had to pay over $150,000 in court fees incurred by Mr. Adelman.

There are two main themes from these stories. First, we have classic examples that best exemplify the old proverb, “The roads to hell are paved with good intentions”. Second, it is not a wise idea to make such a big deal of something when your intention is to make sure it does not become one in the first place.  These proverbial statements are also called aphorisms – concise statements of facts or generally considered truths expressed in as few words as possible. For example, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

There are a few more examples worth noting that did not seem obvious immediately: eradication of wolves from some U.S. National Parks; widespread use of DDT to eradicate harmful insects that almost wiped out the entire population of bald eagles; environmental disaster not initially seen when beavers were hunted down to near extinction for their pelts. On the other hand, the prohibition managed to kill off legitimate businesses immediately but did not eradicate alcohol consumption; instead, it ushered the birth of organized crime from liquor smuggling, which became the “business model” for other crime organizations that today are more sophisticated than ever.

Let’s do a speculative one.

There were some analyses made by a handful of folks on the ascendancy of the “Trump Phenomenon”. Early during the Republican primary, the mainstream media (MSM) were seen to give Trump premier coverage over his opponents. The MSM reason was that he was a news maker and so he got a good share of media attention. One line of analysis was that the media was so much into making sure that there was another breakthrough political event (i.e. Pres. Obama was elected the first black president) when for the first time the country will have had its first woman president. The idea, according to the speculation, was that Trump will be so much easier to beat in a general election. Collectively, the media, so the claim goes, wanted Trump to be the Republican candidate. Trump was prone to self-inflicted political wounds and his bombastic, flamboyant personality did not conform to generally accepted norms of political conduct and would easily have been a weaker candidate. MSM, it was concluded, promoted Trump’s ascendancy and once he was the candidate, then the same MSM can easily bring him down. What they did not count on was how poorly Mrs. Clinton ran her campaign. She also committed her fair share of self-inflicted rhetorical wounds, i.e. “deplorables” comments, and not campaigning in states she assumed she was going to win handily. If true, MSM also underestimated Trump’s indefatigable energy and determination to work hard on his own campaign.

Can we classify this as an example of good intentions that did not result in what it was intended for? Is today’s predominantly negative coverage by the media of Pres. Trump’s administration a reflexive effort by MSM to rectify their miscalculation? Are they trying to bring down, someone in their mind, the “monster” they created? I leave that to the political pundits. And there is almost an unlimited arena for punditry to last at least through the next three years. I think the jury is still out as to whether the last election was a case of a road paved with “good” intentions that is now full of potholes. Note “good” is in quotation marks.

Next time you hear politicians promise another good thing for the people, first ask yourself if it is just another road paved with good intentions.

  

Imagine

Imagine, if you can set aside a few moments, that you just woke up from a deep sleep, almost from a hibernated state. You try to make sense of your surroundings that is mainly a very large room with an oversized porthole that opened up to thousands of stars ablaze against a jet black sky. You didn’t need to count them. At that moment you just knew you were in some space ship but not sensing that you are in motion. You look at the large door opposite the window but, momentarily, you held back the compulsion to open it, at least not yet. You took stock of your living quarters. It looks and feels comfortable. There is food and water and you are breathing normal air in a room so ideally cooled. Everything looks good.  It’s time to go out that door.

Your quarters open to a very large round area the size of a hotel lobby. There’s a dozen other people milling around and judging from their body language you know their situation is similar to yours and you surmise the doors you see along the circular lobby lead to their quarters as well. Introductions are made. It is clear that although you are all speaking the same language, it is obvious each one is from a different origin in physical features and cultural background and likely with a different birth language. You find out from almost all of them that the living quarters were different from each one and that yours appears to have the better if not the best accommodations. You have not checked your pantry or inside what looked like an extra-large refrigerator but you are certain you have more than any of them.  You excuse yourself to get back to your room to look at everything more closely.

There is a flat screen on a desk but no keyboard but there is a center toggle in front of it.  You touch it and the screen comes alive. Immediately, it informs you of the entire inventory in your room that is exclusively yours alone. Hunger is setting in. You find stacks of meal boxes inside the refrigerator. There is no microwave oven but the instruction on the box tells you where to put it on top of the table marked a green square. The green square turns red as you set the box on it. In just a few seconds it turns green again and you can smell the food is cooked.

A week just passed. Everyone has things to do but driven by different motivations and needs. You had no choice but to work because there was stuff around to keep you busy. You have tools and material and a host of many resources that surprisingly you are finding all around your quarters, so there were things to do. Aside from that, there was much to learn from the information coming out of the screen that seemed inexhaustible in scope and variety. However, it will not answer any specific issues around the other passengers. This forces everyone to interact with each other to gain what information others are willing to share.

A month just passed. You calculated that your space ship is traveling at 18.5 miles per second. You learned that and a lot of other things from reading and experimenting and observing star positions that change ever so slightly. What eludes you that you found no answers for are: the direction or destination you are heading to and for how long this whole voyage will last? You notice a bright golden orb from a distance, changing locations relative to your window from time to time but it appears to accompany your ship.  You assume that is the mother ship. You do not have a good sense of the size of your own ship but you think it is huge. From somewhere your provisions and wastes come in and out.

This is the second month. You and twelve other co-passengers had been meeting regularly at the lobby. Early on you all learned that no person can go into another’s room. Some learned that the hard way. One violent sensation was enough to discourage all intrusions after a few incidents and word spread quickly. Today you learn that only three others seem to do well. The rest are complaining and bickering about all kinds of issues around how provisions, living accommodations and things to work with in each quarters were apportioned unfairly. No answers can be found from the screen and since there were no keyboards and methods of communication to either the ship or the golden orb they were frustrated from not being able to register their complaints or summon for answers. A few were showing physical distress and weight loss from not having enough to eat.  They were miserable and duly dissatisfied.

You learned that you can take food provision out of your room (it’s just that no one can come in to your room if you were to host dinner or something). You and three others decided to share some of your provisions with others.  Surprisingly, your provisions are replenished in your room through the pantry and refrigerator. You notice though that replenishment is influenced by the amount of work you’ve been doing. You’ve been doing experiments and you brought out some of your projects that other passengers appreciated. The other three passengers were doing different things too which the others welcomed. This lasted only for a while.

Today, you are faced with a crisis at the lobby. Most of the nine unhappy folks were destroying things around them; some even throwing away food they were given. Only one seems to realize that it was not the thing to do. He pleaded with you and the other three. He revealed that his situation was improving. His provisions had dramatically increased as he continued working and a few of his projects were working. The five of you huddled for a while. The fifth person to join you made an impassioned speech to the whole group, “We’re in this together.  In case you didn’t notice we’re all captive in this ship. None of us knows where exactly we are heading among all these stars and other objects out there. We can’t know for how long we will be traveling and we’re not getting any answers from anywhere else outside of this group. We had better start working together or we will destroy each other.”

One of the eight discontented ones yelled back, “We’re all going to suffer together and be equally miserable”. At which point they all aimed themselves at you and the four others. Quickly, you each retreated to your quarters. You want so much to end this nightmare. It must or it will put an end to all.  The ship will likely keep going but none of you may survive to see where it will ultimately take this voyage.

Multiply the total number of passengers – you and the twelve others by 538 million and …

13 X 538,000,000 equals approximately 7 billion.  Expand your space ship to something very large that you are familiar with. Think the planet you know – earth. The golden orb could be the sun.

Think about this further. Earth is indeed speeding along its orbit around the sun at 18.5 miles per second. It is moving along – a planetary captive together with seven other planets, asteroids and comets; the whole solar system journeying at 135 miles per second around a galaxy. You find out your home galaxy – the Milky Way – around which the sun is a medium sized star among a billion others, is approaching another galaxy, the Andromeda, at 250,000 miles per hour. Like everything else in space, speed of anything can only be gleaned relative to one another. Our galaxy is part of a cluster of galaxies, dubbed the local group that is also traveling at tremendous speed. It’s just that somehow the Milky Way and Andromeda are aiming to collide in less than 4 billion years.

For now, the prospect of finding a different planet, another earth, is out of the question. This is your home with the rest of 7 billion others.

As you can see, managing to get along with a dozen people is a challenge. Is this just a story I concocted? It is a story, one of many in our history. We do not take the story of Cain and Abel literally. As an allegorical representation was it too absurd to not have been replayed many times over for millennia? Did we not develop societies and entire civilizations so far advanced over previous ones repeatedly only to fall and be destroyed from within?

Earth is indeed a space ship traveling through infinite space and time. All 7 billion of us have nowhere to go but remain here for the foreseeable future.

Whatever we decide to do we must begin now and imagine.

Note: If you scroll to the prior musing before this, and you’re up to it, imagine again: “Diamonds are not Forever?” 

Diamonds Are Not Forever?

Dare I say that iron deserves the highest regard?  And, this is where you say, “Excuse me?” This begs an explanation but before I do that the diamond has some explaining first.

It was not until 1477 that the very first diamond engagement ring was given as a symbol of pre-matrimonial promise.  It was Archduke Maximilian who started it when he gave a ring adorned with flat diamonds to the love of his heart - Mary of Burgundy.  But then, as only royalty and the super-rich can afford it, it did not really catch on as an obligatory gesture of professing one’s love.

It was, in fact, not for another four centuries later, when Cecil Rhodes came to South Africa to found the De Beers Mining Co. that eventually controlled 90% of the world’s supply; true even today.  It was in 1886 that Tiffany introduced their trademark setting, later followed in 1918 by Cartier’s “Trinity” ring.  However, it was not until the middle of the 20th century, after the Second World War, when America’s wealth was emerging and the escalating growth of personal income enabled the average earner to “splurge” on a diamond ring for the lovely maiden.  Of course, that was not the whole story.  It was the clever marketing of Be Beers that did it.  When Marilyn Monroe was picked to say, (or did she sing it?), “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend” and the glossy print and billboard ads that declared, “Diamonds Are Forever” that sealed the deal for De Beers. Controlling the supply was the next clever thing even as the craving for it grew.

So how did this multi-faceted sparkling piece of adornment become one of the most coveted possessions?  It is actually made of pure carbon which, next only to hydrogen and helium, is a very common element in the universe.  So common in fact that life as we know it is essentially carbon based.  It is in our food as carbohydrates, source of most of our energy as hydrocarbons, and it is a waste product of every animal’s respiratory system although plants can’t live without it. 

Now, with carbon are other expensive elements that make possible the diamond ring.  A piece of crystalline rock is nothing without the settings of gold, silver and now platinum.  However, none of these elements could have become what they are if not for iron.  That’s right!  “Iron?” you say?

While diamond, the ones mined here, are earth-made through high pressure and temperature deep in the earth’s crust the other heavier elements, 60% of all the 92 naturally occurring elements in the periodic table can only be made by a much, much more intense temperature and pressure that are only possible in supernova explosions.  A star continues to shine for as long as it has hydrogen “to burn”.  The hydrogen atom fuses into helium as energy is released in the process that will take billions of years to finish for an average-size star like our sun.  Much bigger stars, thousands bigger and more massive than our sun will burn relatively quickly, turning hydrogen into helium rapidly (just a few million years), and then helium will fuse to form carbon.  The star will start to collapse under its own gravity – converting carbon into iron.  Iron will begin to settle into its core and as soon as that happens, almost in a blink of an eye, the heavy star will implode on itself and the shock wave from the sudden collapse will result in a massive explosion – a supernova will light up, outshining an entire galaxy momentarily.  It is during that explosion that heavier elements will be formed, and only then. 

The shock wave will compress surrounding hydrogen elements trillions of miles around to cause many, many stars to be born.  Our sun is supposed to be a second or third generation star out of the repeating processes.  All the elements formed during the supernova explosion will be spread out in a mix of material where some of them will be part of the molten swirling matter orbiting a star to become its planets.  One of those became our earth with a rich supply of the heavy elements from calcium to sodium, etc. and gold and silver, on and on.  Diamonds came last as the earth starts crushing carbon deep in its cooling crust.

There you have a story in the life of a star, one of a couple of billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.  But I digressed, though I hope you enjoyed the side trip.  Now you know iron signals the death of a star but it is also the reason a supernova explodes and new stars will be born.  You may want to know that the iron in your blood, your razor or the chassis of your car, or the cast iron skillet in your kitchen was at one time in the belly of a supernova eons ago, far, far away. Your prized possession of gold and silver, the calcium and potassium supplements you take were at one time created by unimaginable shockwaves that fused other elements to make them billions of years ago.

These elements we talked about have a forever history, so to speak, more than diamonds that are far from forever with its past or its future.  This is not a knock on diamonds but a profound inculpation on De Beers and those who traffic in so called blood diamonds or more diplomatically conflict diamonds from Angola to Sierra Leone to the Congo, etc.  And the thing is that iron and gold, and other heavy elements are indestructible by any regular process, except perhaps in a nuclear explosion, whereas, diamonds will shatter with a hammer blow or burn and disappear in a furnace. But, like you, I find diamond a dazzling piece to own or give away (if I can afford it).  Notwithstanding skyscrapers, bridges, iron tools, and steel safes to keep your diamonds safe, none of these can even compare to the allure and power of this coveted sparkler that is the hardest substance to scratch or acquire. 

I guess diamonds can be forever in one’s lifetime or the lifetime of a marriage.  Speaking of the latter, marital bliss will sparkle forever into generations that follow, ring or no ring.

Spider Talk

Two spiders were talking. They happen to like each other because both have two of the most difficult names in their species. One was Pholcus phalangioides, known as the long-bodied cellar spider or the skull spider and the other was Argiope trifasciata. Argiopeis Latin for “with bright face”; trifasciata is Latin for “three-banded.”

These two have this air of superiority over other spiders although one species has a more complex name than either; however, Parasteatoda tepidariorum, is also known as the common house spider, casting an inky shadow to the aura of the complicated name. But Pholcus phalangioides is one to talk when he is a cellar dweller. He’s got something special though as I shall explain.

They get together once a week. The following is the actual, unabridged transcript of their recent conversation.

Pholcus phalangioides: You heard what our human hosts were talking about the other day?

Argiope trifasciata: They’re your hosts, not mine, because you live in their cellar.  I am a free ranger. My meals are exotic as they come.  You prey on baby cockroaches.  Anyway, what have they got to say - your hosts?

Pholcus phalangioides: I heard them talking while working on a “project” at the basement. The so called “project” is a little bit of this, a little of that but mostly twisting off beer caps are what you’d hear in between the whirring of a power drill and some hammer work. In my experience watching professionals, a power drill and a hammer don’t go together well in assembling projects.

Argiope trifasciata: Please go on already. This is not one of your conspiracy stuff, is it?

Pholcus phalangioides: Listen. Steve was telling Al that he read something about some recent discovery by astrophysicists or cosmologists, those types, of a disturbance created from somewhere about 130 million light years away. And I said to myself, big deal!

Argiope trifasciata: What was it? Should it concern us?

Pholcus phalangioides: They talked about an event from trillions and trillions of miles away but it took 130 million years for the effect to get here. Our ancestors, yours and mine, were here 380 million years before these humans knew how to make crude tools. And this so called discovery is like a big deal when I could have confirmed its existence to them without resorting to their sophisticated detection tools”.

Argiope trifasciata: I think I know what you’re talking about, but do go on”.

Pholcus phalangioides: First of all, they talk about this detector that costs $1.1 billion each and they built two of those at different locations just to make sure they got it right. It’s called LIGO, by the way.

Argiope trifasciata: What does LIGO stand for?

Pholcus phalangioides: I’ll tell you but you won’t remember it the second I say it. Steve and Al don’t either, so don’t feel bad.  It’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory.  It will detect gravity waves that disturb space time.

Argiope trifasciata: Wait, wait! You and I know we don’t call it that but we know what it is because we feel it every time it comes across but how do you know what this thing really is. Your human friends Steve and Al don’t sound that sophisticated to me. By the way, I don’t care what it’s called. I don’t mind that hairs on our legs – in all eight of them – feel it but what bothers me is when I feel the effect right at our foreheads and it’s not helping that our eight eyes are right there. It bothers me every time. My question is, ‘Why didn’t evolution take care of it already’? For millions of years it took to get us to our sophisticated level today …”

Pholcus phalangioides: Listen and listen well, they’re not our human friends the way they treat us.  We should be their friends, or at least they should recognize we’re useful to them. What we get in return is we’ve become Halloween caricatures and you’ve seen or hear how they squeal and scream when they come near us. I’ve seen enough cruelty and torment from their brooms and folded newspapers.  Sometimes they use fly swatters on so many of us. I just cringe every time I think about it. Don’t get me going, okay?  Anyway, I read, that’s how I know”.

Argiope trifasciata: Sorry.  So they have a name for it. They’ve detected it with some pretty expensive detectors, big deal! I’ll have to agree with you there.

Pholcus phalangioides: Decades ago someone named Albert Einstein predicted the existence of this thing.  Like I said earlier, I could have confirmed it.  My great, great, great grandfather or perhaps much earlier from my ancestry, could have told them that it is true. Anyway, we knew it existed but I’ll have to give it to these humans to explain why and how it is produced. Nevertheless, what good is detecting something that happened at a time when there were still dinosaurs around? Speaking of dinosaurs, what was so special about them? They died out and we’re still here and we’ll be here long after many more species will have gone the way of the dinosaurs.

Argiope trifasciata: Okay, okay, you’re going somewhere again, like you usually do. Let’s get back to what we’ve been talking about. We’re so sophisticated we can detect the slightest movement anywhere our web is touched. We can tell too if it is prey, something we can eat, or if it is just a leaf or twig or even a gust of wind or even from a slight breeze. Millions of years of evolution gave us eight simple eyes, eight legs with some exceptions, our mutant relatives they are. And …

Pholcus phalangioides: You’re talking to me, another spider. I know that, we know that. What humans don’t know is that we’ve been able to detect these so called gravity waves all our lives. They don’t know that and they can’t know it because they can’t measure it in us.  Anyway, do you want to know what these gravity waves are?

Argiope trifasciata: Even if I say no, you’re going to tell me anyway.  So tell me.

Pholcus phalangioides: At least you’ll know what this thing that from time to time bothers us. I know it’s irritating, something humans have no idea how. We’re more sensitive to it than their $1.1 billion detector. Apparently, these gravity waves that had been bothering us for all this time occurs from trillions and trillions of miles from here, like I said. This particular one came from a place that took light 130 million years to get here.  So, two heavy stars that much earlier had already collapsed into their dense shells collided and merged into one. There was an explosion as you can imagine and the event caused a ripple through space time around them, producing waves that travelled just like something produced when a pebble is dropped on a still pond.  It was so far away and by the time it got here the strength is a feeble facsimile of the original. We felt a lot of these in the past. Humans finally felt it and that was all the excitement about. Well, what do you think?

Argiope trifasciata: To be honest, I don’t really care. Good talk though. I need to relocate my web. There’s a new spot that seems to get a lot of traffic – flies, mosquitoes, moths, you name it.

Pholcus phalangioides: Before you go, let me tell you something.  Be thankful you can detect everything that touches your web. These gravity waves don’t come across that frequently. And by the way, baby cockroaches taste better than adult mosquitoes you’ve been getting lately. You know they carry more diseases than baby roaches. Baby insects until they’ve become adults are much cleaner, and easier to catch, of course. And don’t forget you are an arachnid. People fear you.  Same place next week? Happy Halloween!!!

Nerd Notes (Or, a note to the nerds among you):

Largely unnoticed last week or so ago was the much awaited news that astronomers, astrophysicists and cosmologists had been waiting for.  It was the rock-solid evidence of the existence of so called gravity waves, one among several of Einstein’s predictions proven to be true. Contrary to our two spiders’ pooh-poohing attitude, this was a big deal. It proved again that space that we know to be empty can be stretched and compressed and rippled like still water in a pond. It is so counter intuitive bordering on the strange and the bizarre, yet so very real.

Science News in Astronomy: “On February 11, 2016, after decades of trying to directly detect such waves, scientists announced that they appear to have found them. The waves came from another galaxy far, far away. How far? Try between 750 million and 1.86 billion light-years away! There, two black holes collided, shaking the fabric of space and time, or spacetime. Here on Earth, two giant detectors in different parts of the United States quivered as gravity waves washed over them”.

Not only did LIGO confirm it, radio and optical telescopes located the spot in the sky where the ripple started.

What about our two spiders detecting the waves? We cannot prove that they do or don’t.  And I am under no obligation to reveal how I came across the transcript of their conversation.

“Once there was a Fleeting wisp of Glory”

President John F. Kennedy’s administration in its early stages was at one time fondly attributed by the press to a Broadway musical. It was well known how much he and then First Lady Jackie Kennedy loved the Broadway musical, “Camelot”, when it first debuted in 1960, right at about the time of the presidential campaign which he won. How much the story in the musical had affected Pres. Kennedy’s view of his presidency, the country and the world, was subject to wishful speculation by many, including the media that was fascinated by the charisma of a young and vibrant president.  Sadly, the event in November 1963 tragically put an end to all of it.

What was it in the musical that could possibly have attracted the First Couple? Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, lyricist and composer teamed up for “Camelot” but their prior work, “My Fair Lady” was what first catapulted them to fame. They collaborated in “Brigadoon” and “Paint Your Wagon” (this last one, when made into a movie, had Clint Eastwood sing in his one and only musical role, but I digressed).

There was the Cold War just a little over a decade after WWII. The fear of a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union gripped the nation and the rest of the world. The United Nations was a young world organization where the Security Council’s circular table evoked the idea behind and connected to the idealism of King Arthur’s Round Table.  Camelot was the dreamy, idyllic place from which King Arthur ruled, surrounded by knights in shining armor from all around the kingdom and even from across the ocean. All of these symbolisms were not lost on many citizens of the world, fearful of another war but hoping for peace. Kennedy perhaps reflected upon those fears and what better way to launch his administration by countering fear with the ideals represented by chivalrous knights? I am merely speculating.

Let’s examine the story of “Camelot”. King Arthur was going to marry Guinevere. When they first met he explained to her what Camelot was all about with the song, partly:

A law was made a distant moon ago here:

July and August cannot be too hot.

And there's a legal limit to the snow here

In Camelot.

The winter is forbidden till December

And exits March the second on the dot.

By order, summer lingers through September

In Camelot.

Last stanza went:

Those are the legal laws.

The snow may never slush upon the hillside.

By nine p.m. the moonlight must appear.

In short, there's simply not

A more congenial spot

For happily-ever-aftering than here

In Camelot.

Jackie Kennedy was known to have played the vinyl record (no CD or streaming then) over and over in the White House. John Kennedy had a genuine fondness for it, for sure, but he also loved Ian Fleming’s James Bond series. I often wondered what it would have been like if Kennedy went on to finish his first term and re-elected for a second one.

As tragic as his story was, “Camelot” was not, in its full story, the pure and idyllic place as portrayed earlier in the musical either. {Note: the musical and the Legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are two entirely different stories; the latter, far from what the musical represented, was truly about chivalry, righteousness and faith against aggression by foreign invaders}.

The musical was a contradiction in its content.  There was the fairy tale land of perfection, only to be soiled by an adulterous affair between Sir Lancelot and Guinevere, then an intrigue fomented by King Arthur’s illegitimate son, Mordred, followed by the inevitable destruction of the Round Table. King Arthur, if Kennedy idealized him, was an ineffective, oblivious king who through to the end stuck to his ideals even as his kingdom was falling apart. The fall of Sir Lancelot from being the perfect model of knighthood, proved the depth of human frailty.  King Arthur considered him his best knight even though he was from the other side of the English Channel. Lancelot described himself the perfect knight without a shred of humility when at the beginning of the musical on his way to Camelot he declared:

I've never strayed

From all I believe;

I'm blessed with an iron will.

Had I been made

The partner of Eve,

We'd be in Eden still.

C'est moi! C'est moi!

Lancelot not only did he make it to knighthood in the first ballot, so to speak, he became King Arthur’s favorite. But it did not take long for character to succumb to human weakness. Guinevere and Sir Lancelot fell for each other and King Arthur’s world was ripped asunder. Well, Kennedy turned out to be more like Lancelot. He was a war hero, good looking, magnetic and everything a knight was portrayed.  But he was a flawed man. That we knew later. He was the fallen Lancelot and he had several Guinevere(s) as it turned out, long before he stepped into the White House that was his Camelot and even during his brief sojourn there.

“Camelot” is still one of my favorite musicals, so it might seem I am contradicting that sentiment after the above dissertation.  There was hope at the end of that musical, as he was preparing for battle after the kingdom’s fall. King Arthur saw a young boy emerged from behind the lines to join the king’s army. King Arthur saw hope and a shining example that chivalry was still alive in the boy’s face.  He knighted him Sir Tom but he was going to send him away from the battlefield to “go home and grow old”. But before the boy left he told him to listen first:

Each evening, from December to December,

Before you drift to sleep upon your cot,

Think back on all the tales that you remember

Of Camelot.

Ask ev'ry person if he's heard the story,

And tell it strong and clear if he has not,

That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory

Called Camelot.

That is about all we can hope for today as governments here and from many corners around the world face all kinds of challenges. It seems that crises after crises are all we hear. Our fears increase by the day while the world appears helpless. People from all corners can only harken to a place, more imagined than real, more wishful, supported only by a universal hope. But perhaps by miracle the world will get to it. Yes that we will indeed get to where “once there was a fleeting wisp of glory” which once found, we can hold onto and we get to keep it for at least ten thousand years.