In the Darwinian scheme of things man first communicated with grunts and sounds which evolved into words. The words of rudimentary ideas were depicted by pictures etched on cavern walls, the first recorded form of communication, followed by picture alphabets, then real alphabets and then books. In the history of the written word, pictures, non verbal images, from hieroglyphics to illustrated medieval manuscripts [“Belle Heures”, commissioned by the Duc de Berry, circa 1408/9] to glossy coffee table books [“Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001] coexisted and supported ideas expressed by mere letters. They certainly added another dimension.

Gone was his florid face, the verbal bluster and cocky demeanor. Here was a stooped hollow cheeked husk of a man in too large a suit sitting in the dock. The only colors in the proceedings were the judge’s blood red crimson robes, the lawyers’ funereal black ones in stark contrast with the United Nations’ washed out blue and white logo of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Today's Monster of the Week faces justice. There will be others, tomorrow, next week and next year. These monsters-to-be will be Libyan, Somali, Egyptian, Israeli or even American, depending how events unfold and how the world media perceives the truth. It is easy to demonize a person, accuse him of war crimes for acts of insane violence, and condemn him but never the roots, the causes of the conflicts that precipitated them.  

Liberia was America’s abolitionists’ effort to create a home for freed black slaves. In fact it was the first African sub Saharan country, having declared independence in 1847. Since its inception it was corruptly but peacefully ruled by a small number of Libero-Americans, with a nod and a wink of support from Washington.  

My introduction to Liberia came when a faulty Pratt & Whitney engine forced a landing in Roberts Field, the country’s only airport. In 1976 Monrovia, the capital was a picture perfect African city. The luxurious Intercontinental Hotel sat high on a hill; just below it was the Free Mason Lodge, an imposing white marble Temple. Broad Street, chaotic with traffic, ran from the harbor past the Temple up that hill.  The “Cash Madams” in their colorful dresses and head gear tended stalls in the open air markets selling anything and everything. Kids and dogs were under foot, boom boxes played deafening afro rhythms. It was a nice, colorful kind of place.

Now in real life things are different. David Chaney, a dumb Secret Service agent, picks up Dania, an escort, not a prostitute, in La Perla, the notorious strip club/casino in Cartagena, Columbia. The negotiated price for sex is now $800, reasonable enough considering inflation. The morning after David offers $30 for the lady’s services. Mind you this is in 2012 when gas is at $4.28 and not 1951 when it was $0.19 a gallon. You wonder at the minimum IQ required for Secret Service agents entrusted in protecting the life of the President of the United States.

A compromise was reached at $225 for sexual favors, but that was only the beginning. The early morning [it seems that the Caribe Hotel, the scene of the tryst, has a standing policy of 6:30 am wake up calls for visiting prostitutes] confrontation and hallway commotion embroils eleven more Secret Service agents and ten additional US military personnel similarly ill engaged, all this in the age of the internet and instant messaging.

Declaring any work of art or for that matter any artifact part of a nation’s cultural heritage is fraught with danger and unforeseen consequences. In 1970 a well-meaning United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] adopted the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. Romania signed and ratified the Convention in 1993 as did France in 1997. It is the definition of “cultural property” that gives one pause:

          The United Nations Security Council lead by its permanent members, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, with other countries blindly compliant, has declared economic sanctions as the best and only diplomatic alternative to war. That is a lie. It is not a viable alternative. Economic sanctions are the callous, cowardly mass murder of a civilian population. 

          “Economic sanctions” is when a bunch of countries gang up on another run by a crackpot, a Khadafy, a Hussein or, in Iran’s case Mahmoud Abimadinejad, seeking to coerce an innocent population to depose the son of a bitch. It is an ineffective weapon that wreaks death and human misery. It seldom achieves its objective and often just lets us take a hypocritical high moral ground, a feel good fig leaf, ignoring war crimes committed in the name of the collective good.

          My first brush with sanctions came in ’93. The Bosnian civil war was raging, Sarajevo was under siege. Crossing the then Yugoslav border at Horgoš, near Zseged [what’s with Hungarians and weird names?] I was stranded in a sea of misery and privation. Traffic was backed up for hours. Yugoslavs were streaming across the border burdened with every day necessities, pampers, appliances, gasoline in jerry cans ready to explode, stuff, just plain stuff that was no longer available, deprivation for the likes of you and me.

We are inundated, and for me turned off by never ending appeals to our guilt and sympathies by worthy causes. “Save a Child’s Life – You are Their Gift of Hope” replete with heart wrenching photos of starving African tykes from the Catholic Relief Services was an e mail I received this morning. I cringe at the sight of kids with cleft palates. Woebegone doggies with hand dog demeanors, pun intended, now leave me cold and make me click the remote. Enough already!

One new idea has me interested and hopeful that some worthy causes are not mere beggars but innovative endeavors geared to changing and bettering the world. Sort of like give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. That’s the essence of research that then turns into teaching.

microryza [ https://beta.mycrozyza.com ] is an attempt to change the model for scientific research, its funding, the way information is shared and how the results are disseminated. I urge you to log on and explore the site, unleash an idea and support a project that is specific to your interests. You choose what is of interest and what you are willing to invest. Putting your money where your mouth and mind is at.

Now if you are as effete as I am, you will eschew the physicists, biologists and assorted anthropologists, the hoi polloi. I opt for the field of Vertebrate Paleontology and Chris Sidor of the Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture, University of Washington as my favorite maven. Catch him at

https://beta.mycrozyza.com   http://protist.biology.washington.edu/sidor/lab/home.html

Century old fossils do not have hand dog demeanors and can teach us more than Seamus, Mitt Romney’s hapless station wagon roof top travelling companion, now deceased but not yet fossified.  

A Canadian court has just issued a ruling striking down most of Canada’s laws that hindered the free practice of the world’s oldest profession, prostitution. The New York Times, March 27, 2012. Well done Canada, about time.

Only in Nevada, in the middle of nowhere, can you find a legal prostitute or brothel in the United States. Why, one asks. Go to any city or town and you will find “massage parlors” and “spas” catering to the sex trade. They can be found in many suburban strip malls, pun intended. Open the Yellow Pages and you will be confronted by pages of ads for “escort services”. Craig’s List, AshleyMadison.com, the Village Voice’s “backpage.com”, “myrebook.com”, Facebook and untold others ply the internet peddling sex. Why deny it?

Television is about to die, in its death throes overwhelmed by more electronic innovations and devices that you can shake a stick at, or click a remote at. In New York we have FiOS™, TiVo©, Netflix ™, Blu-Ray™, Qwikster©, Wirefly™ and God knows what else. Every day brings an announcement of something new, another alternative to TV, and another nail in TV’s coffin.

One can quibble about the exact dates of television’s birth and death. The exact dates aren’t that important. The dates that do matter are when television had a cultural impact, good or bad, and shaped society’s perception of itself. So I have arbitrarily decided that television’s lifespan to be 1950-2015. With that in mind, it is just and proper that that we start preparing the inevitable obituary for publication.

Television came hard on the heels of that earlier phenomenon the radio. Radio was two dimensional and try as it might it could never compete with three dimensional entertainment, the movies and the theatre. It had promise but perhaps the promise was still born with the advent of television. With just sound and imagination Orson Wells’ War of Worlds made history. Without pictures, with just sound and imagination the yarn he spun over the airways was as gripping and believable. But once television made the scene, radio was relegated to news, sports, music and the occasional talk show.

Initially television was elitist. The cost of the receiver, that big picture tube in the mahogany cabinet, was high. By the eve of the WW II there were only 22,000 licensed sets in all of Britain. In the early days Britain’s BBC had a lineup of shows that catered to the educated and the affluent. In the United States television stations were small stake gambles in local markets with little regulation. With the advent of national networks, NBC, CBS, ABC, television came into its golden age.

Money was no object; advertising dollars flowed to amuse the well do audience. Arthur Miller wrote as did Paddy Chayefsky. Marty, Network, The Bachelor Party were first broadcast on TV. John Frankenheimer directed Playhouse 90. Leonard Bernstein and Arturo Toscanini performed. Tchaikovsky’s ballets The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker aired, as did Cyrano de Bergerac. An opera specially composed for television, Amahl and the Night Visitors premiered.  

TV’s became affordable then cheap. Advertisers were no longer seeking to court the well to do, but the masses. Audience share became the name of the game. The age of the serial, westerns, situation comedies, police dramas and game shows had arrived. But do not underestimate their cultural impact. “Just the facts, ma’m” “Are we there yet?” “You have the right to remain silent” “How sweet it is” all became part of the American vernacular.

Now American broadcast television has been relegated to the dustbin once reserved for radio. Inane sport programs dominate as do reruns of once popular shows. Networks can no longer afford the budgets needed for innovative programing. That is now the domain of cable television and pay per view audiences. European television is following a like path with football a mainstay. Berlusconi has decreed that Italian programing is populated by his generously endowed mistresses and would be mistresses. Germany airs soft porn in the evenings. The beginning of the end.  Sic Transit Gloria Mundi. Requiem in Pace TV.

When war was raging in Vietnam, I dodged the draft. Unlike George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who gamed the system by finding safe harbor in the National Guard or using multiple questionable deferments, my dodge was based on the luck of the draw, the lottery. But I did not skate home totally scot free. I participated in a small way: I served as the Chairman of a local Selective Service Board so the burden and danger of service was always before me, while I safely sat the war out.

Once we “won” the Vietnam War, the draft fell victim to peace. In 1981 the Joint Chiefs of Staff convinced the President to reverse an earlier decision reinstituting the draft. The all-volunteer peacetime force was all that America needed in the absence of war. What a crock of shit. I invite you to access Timeline of United States Military Operations compiled by the Committee on Foreign Affairs @

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations#1980.E2.80.931989