Holy Shit, Yoko Ono!

Remember The Beatles? They were this band back in the day. They had one or two songs that topped the charts. Or twenty-seven. They were a pretty big deal. Why'd they break up again?

I went ahead and answered for you.

Yoko Ono, you say? Well, you're only kind of right. She was part of it, but I wouldn't say she wanted to be. Sure, she followed John Lennon around everywhere he went. She even went to band practices with him, an unprecedented breach of Beatles policy. That was crossing the Rubicon. But do we blame Vercingetorix for Caesar's actions?

Look it up. History is important.

Of course we don't. And don't worry about not knowing who Vercingetorix is. The important thing to know is that John Lennon was an asshole, and both Yoko Ono and The Beatles were victims of the circumstances.

Now, I'm not going to say John Lennon was the only reason the band broke up. They were growing apart creatively, and they all started wanting different things for their careers. The group had an expiration date, and given how much strain fame places on relationships such as theirs, it's a miracle they lasted as long as they did.

But people blame Yoko Ono, and that doesn't really sit well with me. Because Yoko Ono didn't want to cross the Rubicon and sit in on band practice. She wanted to stick with her own avant-garde and admittedly kind of weird brand of performance and art. But John Lennon wouldn't let her.

The handcuffs are probably under the sheets. And not in the fun way.

Evidence came about in the last few years that Yoko Ono didn't follow John Lennon around everywhere, he practically dragged her around on a leash because his jealousy came dangerously close to psychotic levels. She was there, but not by choice. She was Vercingetorix in chains, awaiting Caesar's Triumph. I'll steer clear of that metaphor in the future, I swear.

My point is, just because John Lennon asked everyone to give peace a chance doesn't necessarily mean he practiced it at home. And when you really pay attention, doesn't "I used to be cruel to my woman. I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved. Man, I was mean, but I'm changing my scene and I'm doing the best that I can" kind of sound like something a Lifetime Movie villain would say?

I want to sincerely apologize to fans of The Beatles, but it has to be said. John Lennon was a Lifetime Movie villain, and Yoko Ono was maybe not so bad after all.

Holy shit.

Holy Shit, The Tet Offensive!

This one time, America got involved in a bit of a kerfuffle over in Vietnam. You may have heard of it. You may have also heard of the Tet Offensive, possibly the most important engagement of the entire conflict. You might not know that, while it ended up being the first step toward a North Vietnamese victory in the war, it was actually a massive tactical victory for America. Here's how it went down.

At the end of 1967, the Johnson administration saw with growing alarm that people were no longer all that keen on sending kids overseas to die needlessly. In response, they announced that the war was going absolutely swimmingly. In fact, one of the top Field Commanders, General Bruce Palmer, Jr., went on record to say, "The Viet Cong has been defeated."

Here he is sitting in a completely non-symbolic armchair.

About a month after he waved a proverbial red flag at the hulking behemoth of fate, the Viet Cong shouted a collective "NUH UH!" But with guns. And bombs. And they did this on the first day of the Tet Lunar New Year, a two-day celebration that had been informally set aside as a ceasefire period.

North Vietnam and the Viet Cong guerrillas attacked just about everywhere in the country, sparking the major battles of Hue, Khe Sanh, and Saigon. The goal was to surprise and utterly incapacitate the Allied forces long enough to incite a general uprising among the South Vietnamese, who were not completely thrilled with the country's leadership.

But seriously, everywhere.

What North Vietnam failed to take into consideration was that most of the people who would rise up had already done so. That, and the fact that the Allies were extraordinarily talented at mobility and redeployment, which meant that they could counter just about any attack the Viet Cong could surprise them with.

People still died, though. A lot.

By the time the offensive was called off, the Viet Cong were utterly depleted and North Vietnam was looking at an existential crisis. Their casualty rate was somewhere around 50 freaking percent. Party leaders started eyeing each other nervously and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Then they started hearing what the South Vietnamese and Americans were saying.

In the South, people were faced with the stark reality that their government couldn't guarantee any kind of safety, even with the massive weight of the United States behind them. In the U.S., the political blow that North Vietnam dealt cost Johnson his career. When Nixon eventually took the reins, his policy toward the war was "Vietnamization," which basically meant "Y'all are on your own."

No other policy in history will ever be so perfectly illustrated.

Ultimately, North Vietnam's ruinous defeat ended up being their greatest victory. Not only did they kick over the first domino that would lead to the U.S. getting out of their hair, but they removed any potential contention with the Viet Cong after reunification by depleting them and replacing them with North Vietnamese regulars.

You'd think it's what they meant to do all along, but you'd be wrong. Despite the opportunistic propaganda they shouted at the time, North Vietnamese leadership maintains today that the Tet Offensive failed to achieve any of its major objectives. That failure turned the tide of the war to their favor.

Holy shit.

Holy Shit, Earth is Round!

You may have observed in the picture of Earth above that our planet is round and portly. In fact, I'd wager that you've known that for quite some time. If you didn't, you're either obstinately ignorant or certifiably insane. "Silly blog," you're no doubt saying with a hint of derision, "Everyone knows that Christopher Columbus proved the Earth was round when he sailed to America in 1492!" To which I say, "Hah! That asshole?"

Seriously, what an asshole.

No, reader, Christopher Columbus was full of many things, but intelligence was not one of them. When he set sail on his voyage to what he assumed to be India, he wasn't trying to prove that the Earth was round. He was trying to prove that India was way the fuck closer to Europe than it actually is. And he was wrong.

The naysayers that you made fun of in your elementary school play on Columbus day were actually completely right to doubt him. If, by sheer luck, there hadn't been an entire North and South America halfway between Europe and Asia, Columbus and his men would have surely died adrift at sea.

I've given some thought to what his memorial would look like.

"Now I remember," I hear you backtracking, "It was Copernicus and Galileo who proved the Earth was flat! They went against the church based on astronomy and stuff!"

Nope! I'm afraid that's just as wrong. First of all, the disagreements both men had with the church came well after 1492, and even well after Ferdinand Magellan (or more accurately, his crew) successfully circumnavigated the globe. Second, the disagreement centered on whether the Earth revolved around the sun or vice-versa. It's a pretty interesting debate in itself, but all parties pretty much agreed already that the Earth was round.

Rounder than my luscious curls, even.

So when did the Flat Earth myth die?

Sometime around the 6th Century.

B.C.



While the idea of a flat Earth may have persisted among the lower classes, most educated people in Western Civilization (and most other civilizations) have been aware of the general shape of the Earth for much, much longer than we collectively imagine.

See, when you pay attention to where the stars are, how shadows work, and how ships seem to sink below the horizon when they get far enough away, it becomes pretty clear to the discerning mind that there's no way in hell this place is flat. As a matter of fact, the Greeks had pretty much figured out the Earth's circumference by 240 B.C, a good 1700 years before Columbus got it drastically wrong.


Holy shit.

Holy Shit, Hospitality!

No, but seriously. Hospitality. I know it doesn't sound like the kind of thing that could dazzle you into swearing, but there's a long and storied history behind hospitality that makes it one of the most important concepts in Western Civilization. The best place to learn about it is in Greek mythology.

Among the high concepts associated with Zeus was that of Hospitality, or Xenia. If someone in a Greek Myth disrespects hospitality, the King of the Gods considers it a personal affront. Personal affronts to the mightiest of the gods was something the Greeks generally wanted to avoid, since anyone who managed to insult him was guaranteed an exceptionally and creatively severe punishment.

You may have heard of some of the poor suckers who thought it would be no big deal to disrespect a tradition associated with the guy who casually tosses lightning down from Mount Olympus in his spare time.

I don't know if you were aware, but not a lot of people can do that. Also, horse penis.

Take Sisyphus. Sisyphus was sent to Tartarus (which is basically Hell) to push a massive boulder up a hill with a rounded top. Every time he crests the hill, the rock rolls down the other side and he's forced to start all over again. Forever. His crime? As a king of Ephyra, he murdered guests and travelers in his home. That's a pretty flagrant violation of Xenia.

Cheer up, little fella. Someday, Camus will make you a metaphor for the human condition.

Tantalus killed his own son. On it's own, filicide was not bad enough to warrant the full brunt of Zeus-style justice. But he also disrespected Xenia by bringing a His-Son Pie to the table of his hosts. And his hosts were the gods.

What the hell is wrong with you?!

Jesus Christ. I mean...why on Earth would he think that was a good idea? You don't just pull a fast one on Zeus. Tantalus was sent to Tartarus for his trouble, where he was placed in an inescapable pool of water next to a low branch full of fruit. Cursed with everlasting hunger and thirst, Tantalus soon learned that every time he reached for the fruit, the branches would rise just above his grasp. When he leaned down to drink, the water level would recede to just below his lips. That's where we get the word "tantalizing."

According to the myths, when Ixion murdered his father-in-law it was the first kinslaying in history. Zeus's response? He invited Ixion to dinner. He figured, "What the Hell Tartarus, right? Everyone makes mistakes." When Ixion arrived, he started making googly eyes at Hera and caressing her under the table.

"I can't see how this could end poorly."

Here we have a double whammy. Not only did Ixion dishonor Zeus's favorite virtue, he made Zeus the victim of his crime. For that, he was tied to a winged wheel of fire that will continue spinning ceaselessly until the end of time, causing him thousands of lifetimes of horrible, searing pain. Not because of the murder, because of the hospitality.

Of course, the Greeks didn't have a monopoly on hospitality. Most cultures have similar feelings on the matter. In fact, a compelling argument has been made that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed not so much because of all the butt sex, but because citizens were planning to perform said butt sex forcibly upon angels of the Lord who had just been explicitly granted hospitality by citizens of the two cities. Old Testament God responded with his typical remedy for disrespect.

I love the smell of brimstone in the morning. Smells like...piousness.

The shared moral of these stories is that disrespecting hospitality, historically speaking, is about the same as slapping a god in the face. So...maybe don't kill your guests or anything.

Holy shit.

Holy Shit, Snipers!

Who's up for another story about violence? Don't lie. You're interest is piqued. Especially when you saw the word "sniper" in the title. The completely inaccurate ideal of the lone wolf sniper (they always, always travel with a spotter) is one of the most enduring images of jingoistic media, which is why every first-person shooter on the market devolves into half snipers and half people who know that snipers are a bunch of camping noobs who piss everyone off.

The real life consequences of rage quitting are considerably more severe than this, though.

That's really the point, though. Snipers are meant to demoralize, terrorize, and piss off the enemy. To do that, they have to sit perfectly still, do a shit-load of math (no seriously, they carry cheat sheets like you used to use to get through algebra tests), and perform unfathomable feats of marksmanship from incredible distance.

I was terrified to learn that there is, in fact, an app for that.

One such nefarious miracle worker was known as Carlos Hathcock. Known as The White Feather Sniper to the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, Hatcock racked up a confirmed kill count of 93 over the course of the Vietnam War. That's 93 people he definitely killed and had confirmed by both his spotter and a third party officer. The actual number, as is usually the case, was probably much higher.

I have no words. Only lightly browned underwear.

Hathcock was most famous for a particular shot he made, though. Remember that part toward the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, when the hillbilly Christian sniper shoots the Nazi in the bell tower?

Oh, did I mention there would be violence?

It turns out that shot is difficult to make.

Really difficult.

Like, so close to impossible that there's no way in Hell anyone could ever do it.

Unless their name is Carlos Hathcock.

You see, the NVA were none too fond of Carlos, so they sent their own favorite sharpshooter with the considerably more dangerous sounding name of "Cobra" to forcibly remove him from service. Carlos and his spotter tracked Cobra down to a patch of jungle after he turned a few heads in the very unfortunately literal sense using the medium of high velocity bullets.

Hathcock saw a flash of light as he was scanning the vegetation and, on instinct, aimed for it and pulled the trigger. When they investigated the spot, they found Cobra lying dead with a bullet in his eye and a shattered scope on his rifle. There is only one way this could possibly happen: Cobra had literally been aiming directly at Hathcock, but didn't have the presence of mind to fire first. Hathcock's bullet went straight through the scope without ricocheting or bursting out of the sides. The shot would go down as one of the most famous in sniper history, which, yes, is a real thing.

Hathcock has nothing on Simo Häyhä, though. Simo Häyhä was a Finnish sniper in the Winter War (that little side story of WWII between Finland and the Soviet Union) whose full story I won't get into right now. Suffice it to say that Häyhä had 505 confirmed kills with a sniper rifle, in addition to at least 200 more with other weaponry. The man was an unstoppable killing machine who racked up more kills than any other sniper in history, and he did it all on Hard Mode by not even using a goddamned scope.

"Those are too cumbersome!" he shouted, gleefully tearing another man's face apart.

I'm fairly certain Simo Häyhä was actually an avatar of death. He certainly seemed immortal. He survived ambushes, other snipers, artillery strikes, and even being shot in  the jaw with an explosive bullet that took half his face off. The lives he took certainly seemed to nourish him. Häyhä died at the comfortable old age of 92. Either he was working for the Grim Reaper or the Reaper knew better than to come within a mile of his presence while he was still in possession of his faculties.

Holy shit.

Holy Shit, An Off Week!

I hope you'll forgive me for taking a week off, but I've been dealing with this:

Which smells like SHIT.

 Which led to this:

The bags plug up a shit hole. Literally. Toilet is in the family room. Home ownership, right?

And also (eventually) this:

No more mold but...you know...there used to be a floor here. And a laundry room.

But that's not even the best part. Wanna know the kicker? All of this miserable impromptu renovation can be traced back to a single, tiny spot. This asshole:

A pin prick on a half-inch segment of copper tube.

That's why I'm not researching anything this week. Because apparently, that little thirty-pixel dot (and yes, I checked) is all it takes to ruin your week. Or more.

Holy shit.

Holy Shit, Stanislav Petrov!

Recognize the guy in the photo? It's unlikely that you do, but I'm not going to tell you not to feel bad about it. Because that man is Stanislav Petrov, and you very likely owe him your life.

The year was 1983, and the U.S. and Soviet Union were playing for keepsies. Their on-again-off-again relationship was decidedly in the off-again setting, and the U.S. said, "Hey, you know what would be a lot of fun in an atmosphere of extreme geopolitical tension and nuclear paranoia? A war game with unprecedented realism that makes it look like we're about to nuke the shit out of Russia!"

Shit's on fire, yo.

The Soviet Union wasn't too fond of the idea. Especially since it kind of looked like their longtime rival was actually planning to rain hell fire onto their faces. They saw enormous forces massed on their borders. They saw fully armed nuclear bombers coming right to the edge of and sometimes slightly within their airspace before turning away. They saw unprecedented mobilization. And they started to flip a shit.

That's where Mr. Petrov comes in. Stanislav Petrov was an officer in the Soviet Air Defense Program in charge of monitoring their Early Warning System. On September 26, 1983, said system blipped. A blip on your "We're All Gonna Die" radar is literally the last thing you ever want to see in that situation. But there it was. A blip headed straight for the Motherland.

OH GOD, DEFINITELY DO NOT WANT.

Stanislav the Manislav, being a reasonable man(islav), figured that a single blip could easily be a defect. "Something must be tripping up the system," he told himself. So he decided not to report it. As he came to that decision, four more blips appeared. So now there were five possible missiles headed into town to get rip-roaring, rowdy, and...you know...nuclear.

At this point, Stanislav neglected his duty. He declined to report the attack. It was still a small number, and the reliability of the system had been questioned before, so he took it upon himself to not worry the top brass with it. It's a goddamn good thing, too, because the top brass had an itchy trigger finger and an unhealthy dose of panic at that moment. If they had any reason to believe the U.S. was launching a nuclear strike, they would not hesitate to end life on Earth.

Luckily, Mr. Petrov was 100% correct. Sunlight was in perfect alignment with a few high altitude clouds and the satellites used to track potential missiles, which caused the false alarm. After a brief moment of panic on November 9th, when Able Archer 83 simulated a movement to Defcon 1 (meaning imminent nuclear strike), NATO forces packed it all in and went back to their regularly scheduled mild panic.

As for Petrov, he was removed to a less sensitive position. A lateral move, you'll be happy to know. He was neither punished nor rewarded for his actions, but his direct superiors praised him and said that his actions were "correct."

Many years later, after the story was made public, Petrov was much more justly rewarded. The Association of World Citizens gave him their World Citizen Award. Twice. And a documentary was made about him, aptly titled The Man Who Saved the World.

Because he did that.

Holy shit.