Lily Salter's Blog, page 996
September 29, 2015
Letter to my pro-life Facebook friends: Please stop showing those photos
Unfortunately, there are certain tactics and argumentative gambits there are to be expected when voicing one’s support of Planned Parenthood and access to safe and affordable abortions. In fact, whenever I engage in an online conversation regarding reproductive rights, I expect to be called “selfish” or a “murderer” or be shown pictures of dead fetuses. But this time, I couldn’t have possibly expected these ploys to have such a negative effect on me. It wasn’t because I have had an abortion. In fact, I don’t hold any guilt or shame about my decision to terminate a pregnancy, long ago. A pregnancy that would have made me an unfit mother and left a child in an unhealthy environment. It wasn’t because, now that I am a mother, I’ve had a change of heart or have become more sympathetic to the plights of those who believe their beliefs should dictate another woman’s body. No, it was because I was once pregnant with twins and, at 20 weeks, lost one. It was because I carried life and death inside of me for the remainder of my pregnancy; teetering on an unforgiving plane of sadness and joy, both emotions bombarding me with an overwhelming and relentless cruelty. It was because, when I birthed my now 1-year-old son, I also birthed his dead brother and -- afterward -- could not bring myself to look at his remains. It was because, under the guise of kindness and a so-called respect for life, complete strangers are forcing me to look now. When pro-lifers share dead fetus porn -- usually misappropriated as fetuses that have been aborted but usually are, in fact, fetuses that have been miscarried -- they fail to realize that all women see those pictures. All. The woman who has endured her third miscarriage this year sees that photo. She cringes as she remembers the painful trip to the bathroom or the evacuation she braved, feeling the same tears that stained her eyes when she stared at the hospital ceiling. She swallows the heavy lump of memories, now lodged in her throat. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. The woman that can’t have children sees that photo. She still has bruises from her second round of IVF, a constant reminder of the ways in which her body has failed her. She thinks about the embryos that died in her womb and wonders if strangers are judging her just as harshly. She feels crippled by a guilt she doesn’t want but cannot let go of, because now she knows the feeling of inadequacy is the only feeling she’ll have that’s related to childbirth. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. The woman who works in Labor and Delivery sees that photo. She’s still exhausted from a 24-hour shift. The same one that ended while she was holding a distressed mother's hand through a stillbirth. Every picture leads the way for flashbacks of a petite, blue face or a devastated mother’s sobs. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. The woman who lost her 2-month-old to SIDS sees that photo. Her child was a living, breathing human being instead of a fetus, and still, she is violently thrown into the moment she felt a cold body and a silent chest. She experiences the same rush of debilitating fear and callous panic and vicious hope, even though she knows how the story ends. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. And the woman who, like me, made the choice to spare her body and mind the emotional torment of seeing the remains of a child who never lived sees that photo. A choice that was meant to protect her from the vengeful silence of night: when sleep eludes her and the back of her eyelids shows her what she would have seen in that delivery room. So, the next time you find yourself in the middle of a pro-life, pro-choice debate and you argue for the former, stop and consider the lives of the women you bombard with those photographs. You are not proving a point. You are not fighting for unborn babies. You are not a soldier for the sanctity of life. You are lazily engaging in the tactics and argumentative gambits that, sadly, we have all come to expect but still cannot completely comprehend. You are harming lives in the process. And that is not “pro-life."Unfortunately, there are certain tactics and argumentative gambits there are to be expected when voicing one’s support of Planned Parenthood and access to safe and affordable abortions. In fact, whenever I engage in an online conversation regarding reproductive rights, I expect to be called “selfish” or a “murderer” or be shown pictures of dead fetuses. But this time, I couldn’t have possibly expected these ploys to have such a negative effect on me. It wasn’t because I have had an abortion. In fact, I don’t hold any guilt or shame about my decision to terminate a pregnancy, long ago. A pregnancy that would have made me an unfit mother and left a child in an unhealthy environment. It wasn’t because, now that I am a mother, I’ve had a change of heart or have become more sympathetic to the plights of those who believe their beliefs should dictate another woman’s body. No, it was because I was once pregnant with twins and, at 20 weeks, lost one. It was because I carried life and death inside of me for the remainder of my pregnancy; teetering on an unforgiving plane of sadness and joy, both emotions bombarding me with an overwhelming and relentless cruelty. It was because, when I birthed my now 1-year-old son, I also birthed his dead brother and -- afterward -- could not bring myself to look at his remains. It was because, under the guise of kindness and a so-called respect for life, complete strangers are forcing me to look now. When pro-lifers share dead fetus porn -- usually misappropriated as fetuses that have been aborted but usually are, in fact, fetuses that have been miscarried -- they fail to realize that all women see those pictures. All. The woman who has endured her third miscarriage this year sees that photo. She cringes as she remembers the painful trip to the bathroom or the evacuation she braved, feeling the same tears that stained her eyes when she stared at the hospital ceiling. She swallows the heavy lump of memories, now lodged in her throat. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. The woman that can’t have children sees that photo. She still has bruises from her second round of IVF, a constant reminder of the ways in which her body has failed her. She thinks about the embryos that died in her womb and wonders if strangers are judging her just as harshly. She feels crippled by a guilt she doesn’t want but cannot let go of, because now she knows the feeling of inadequacy is the only feeling she’ll have that’s related to childbirth. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. The woman who works in Labor and Delivery sees that photo. She’s still exhausted from a 24-hour shift. The same one that ended while she was holding a distressed mother's hand through a stillbirth. Every picture leads the way for flashbacks of a petite, blue face or a devastated mother’s sobs. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. The woman who lost her 2-month-old to SIDS sees that photo. Her child was a living, breathing human being instead of a fetus, and still, she is violently thrown into the moment she felt a cold body and a silent chest. She experiences the same rush of debilitating fear and callous panic and vicious hope, even though she knows how the story ends. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. And the woman who, like me, made the choice to spare her body and mind the emotional torment of seeing the remains of a child who never lived sees that photo. A choice that was meant to protect her from the vengeful silence of night: when sleep eludes her and the back of her eyelids shows her what she would have seen in that delivery room. So, the next time you find yourself in the middle of a pro-life, pro-choice debate and you argue for the former, stop and consider the lives of the women you bombard with those photographs. You are not proving a point. You are not fighting for unborn babies. You are not a soldier for the sanctity of life. You are lazily engaging in the tactics and argumentative gambits that, sadly, we have all come to expect but still cannot completely comprehend. You are harming lives in the process. And that is not “pro-life."Unfortunately, there are certain tactics and argumentative gambits there are to be expected when voicing one’s support of Planned Parenthood and access to safe and affordable abortions. In fact, whenever I engage in an online conversation regarding reproductive rights, I expect to be called “selfish” or a “murderer” or be shown pictures of dead fetuses. But this time, I couldn’t have possibly expected these ploys to have such a negative effect on me. It wasn’t because I have had an abortion. In fact, I don’t hold any guilt or shame about my decision to terminate a pregnancy, long ago. A pregnancy that would have made me an unfit mother and left a child in an unhealthy environment. It wasn’t because, now that I am a mother, I’ve had a change of heart or have become more sympathetic to the plights of those who believe their beliefs should dictate another woman’s body. No, it was because I was once pregnant with twins and, at 20 weeks, lost one. It was because I carried life and death inside of me for the remainder of my pregnancy; teetering on an unforgiving plane of sadness and joy, both emotions bombarding me with an overwhelming and relentless cruelty. It was because, when I birthed my now 1-year-old son, I also birthed his dead brother and -- afterward -- could not bring myself to look at his remains. It was because, under the guise of kindness and a so-called respect for life, complete strangers are forcing me to look now. When pro-lifers share dead fetus porn -- usually misappropriated as fetuses that have been aborted but usually are, in fact, fetuses that have been miscarried -- they fail to realize that all women see those pictures. All. The woman who has endured her third miscarriage this year sees that photo. She cringes as she remembers the painful trip to the bathroom or the evacuation she braved, feeling the same tears that stained her eyes when she stared at the hospital ceiling. She swallows the heavy lump of memories, now lodged in her throat. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. The woman that can’t have children sees that photo. She still has bruises from her second round of IVF, a constant reminder of the ways in which her body has failed her. She thinks about the embryos that died in her womb and wonders if strangers are judging her just as harshly. She feels crippled by a guilt she doesn’t want but cannot let go of, because now she knows the feeling of inadequacy is the only feeling she’ll have that’s related to childbirth. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. The woman who works in Labor and Delivery sees that photo. She’s still exhausted from a 24-hour shift. The same one that ended while she was holding a distressed mother's hand through a stillbirth. Every picture leads the way for flashbacks of a petite, blue face or a devastated mother’s sobs. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. The woman who lost her 2-month-old to SIDS sees that photo. Her child was a living, breathing human being instead of a fetus, and still, she is violently thrown into the moment she felt a cold body and a silent chest. She experiences the same rush of debilitating fear and callous panic and vicious hope, even though she knows how the story ends. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. And the woman who, like me, made the choice to spare her body and mind the emotional torment of seeing the remains of a child who never lived sees that photo. A choice that was meant to protect her from the vengeful silence of night: when sleep eludes her and the back of her eyelids shows her what she would have seen in that delivery room. So, the next time you find yourself in the middle of a pro-life, pro-choice debate and you argue for the former, stop and consider the lives of the women you bombard with those photographs. You are not proving a point. You are not fighting for unborn babies. You are not a soldier for the sanctity of life. You are lazily engaging in the tactics and argumentative gambits that, sadly, we have all come to expect but still cannot completely comprehend. You are harming lives in the process. And that is not “pro-life."Unfortunately, there are certain tactics and argumentative gambits there are to be expected when voicing one’s support of Planned Parenthood and access to safe and affordable abortions. In fact, whenever I engage in an online conversation regarding reproductive rights, I expect to be called “selfish” or a “murderer” or be shown pictures of dead fetuses. But this time, I couldn’t have possibly expected these ploys to have such a negative effect on me. It wasn’t because I have had an abortion. In fact, I don’t hold any guilt or shame about my decision to terminate a pregnancy, long ago. A pregnancy that would have made me an unfit mother and left a child in an unhealthy environment. It wasn’t because, now that I am a mother, I’ve had a change of heart or have become more sympathetic to the plights of those who believe their beliefs should dictate another woman’s body. No, it was because I was once pregnant with twins and, at 20 weeks, lost one. It was because I carried life and death inside of me for the remainder of my pregnancy; teetering on an unforgiving plane of sadness and joy, both emotions bombarding me with an overwhelming and relentless cruelty. It was because, when I birthed my now 1-year-old son, I also birthed his dead brother and -- afterward -- could not bring myself to look at his remains. It was because, under the guise of kindness and a so-called respect for life, complete strangers are forcing me to look now. When pro-lifers share dead fetus porn -- usually misappropriated as fetuses that have been aborted but usually are, in fact, fetuses that have been miscarried -- they fail to realize that all women see those pictures. All. The woman who has endured her third miscarriage this year sees that photo. She cringes as she remembers the painful trip to the bathroom or the evacuation she braved, feeling the same tears that stained her eyes when she stared at the hospital ceiling. She swallows the heavy lump of memories, now lodged in her throat. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. The woman that can’t have children sees that photo. She still has bruises from her second round of IVF, a constant reminder of the ways in which her body has failed her. She thinks about the embryos that died in her womb and wonders if strangers are judging her just as harshly. She feels crippled by a guilt she doesn’t want but cannot let go of, because now she knows the feeling of inadequacy is the only feeling she’ll have that’s related to childbirth. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. The woman who works in Labor and Delivery sees that photo. She’s still exhausted from a 24-hour shift. The same one that ended while she was holding a distressed mother's hand through a stillbirth. Every picture leads the way for flashbacks of a petite, blue face or a devastated mother’s sobs. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. The woman who lost her 2-month-old to SIDS sees that photo. Her child was a living, breathing human being instead of a fetus, and still, she is violently thrown into the moment she felt a cold body and a silent chest. She experiences the same rush of debilitating fear and callous panic and vicious hope, even though she knows how the story ends. She tries to forget, but strangers won’t let her. And the woman who, like me, made the choice to spare her body and mind the emotional torment of seeing the remains of a child who never lived sees that photo. A choice that was meant to protect her from the vengeful silence of night: when sleep eludes her and the back of her eyelids shows her what she would have seen in that delivery room. So, the next time you find yourself in the middle of a pro-life, pro-choice debate and you argue for the former, stop and consider the lives of the women you bombard with those photographs. You are not proving a point. You are not fighting for unborn babies. You are not a soldier for the sanctity of life. You are lazily engaging in the tactics and argumentative gambits that, sadly, we have all come to expect but still cannot completely comprehend. You are harming lives in the process. And that is not “pro-life."
“The Martian” and the big Mars discovery: Here’s why we have to go, no matter what it costs
I believe it was the film historian Mark Harris (also the undisputed heavyweight champion of Oscar bloggers) who first injected a note of cynicism into the furor surrounding one of the biggest scientific discoveries of the 21st century: Flowing water on the surface of Mars. Was it entirely a coincidence, Harris tweeted, that the very same week was also bringing us Ridley Scott and Matt Damon’s science-nerd extravaganza “The Martian,” the most pro-NASA movie in many years? Which is, by the way, a tremendously exciting popcorn spectacle, and also a portrait of extraplanetary survival convincing enough that it had my tech-obsessed 11-year-old companion on his feet cheering on several occasions. I'm pretty sure Harris was kidding, and did not think that NASA’s big announcement was a movie tie-in. But I also don’t think Matt Damon actually meant to say that he thought gay actors should stay in the closet, which was how a clumsy statement he made in a Guardian interview has been interpreted. But before we move on from the briefly titillating question of whether we will find unexpected life on another planet within our lifetimes to the far more important issue of Celebrities Who Say Dumb Things (which often feels like the central theme of the Internet, after amusing cat videos) – wait, hang on, let’s not move on, dammit. Let’s go to Mars. If this week’s unlikely coincidence of life and art is sending us a message from God or our alien overlords or the marketing geniuses of Hollywood, that’s what it is. I think we have to go to Mars. If your first reaction is to say we can’t afford it, or there’s too much screwed-up stuff to deal with here on Earth – well, sure. But that’s not the way the human species has ever approached things, and I believe that on some fundamental level it’s neither the right answer nor a true answer. Launching a new manned spaceflight program, alongside the current unmanned research missions that have immensely expanded our understanding of our planetary neighbors and the universe, does not mean giving up on addressing climate change or developing alternative energy technology or reducing poverty and inequality. It might, over the long haul, make those things easier to deal with, rather than more difficult. Science and technological possibility and human ambition are not zero-sum equations; one of the dorky but inarguable points made over and over again in Drew Goddard’s screenplay for “The Martian” (which is adapted from Andy Weir’s bestselling novel), is that ambition breeds innovation and innovation spurs on ambition. Yes, it will cost fabulous, almost unimaginable sums to develop and execute a human Mars mission like the one that goes awry in “The Martian.” If anyone were to propose a concrete number -- $100 billion has repeatedly been floated, but given the history of the space program that is almost certainly a lowball estimate – the inner Grover Norquist within all of us would rise up and vow to drown this pointless scheme in the cosmic bathtub. But that’s small-minded thinking from a nation that has grown distressingly hunched and small. In 1962, John F. Kennedy made that famous speech at Rice University announcing that the United States would put a man on the Moon before the end of that decade -- and it happened. In 2004, George W. Bush announced a plan to send humans back to the Moon by 2020 and establish a long-term base there to be used as a launchpad for missions to Mars and elsewhere. How's that been going? Among the innumerable signs of America’s imperial decline, few are clearer than our abandonment of a manned space program and the governmental defunding of numerous scientific disciplines. We have collectively decided – or we have permitted it to be decided in our names, which comes to the same thing – that science is not trustworthy and not worth it, that we’d rather cut taxes for millionaires and build up the national debt by pouring our grandchildren’s dollars into the black hole of permanent war and an omniscient security state. Sure, I can hear those murmurs of prudence and caution coming from the liberal quadrant too, which has grown hunched and small in its own distinctive way. As I was about to wrap up this article, I heard about Rush Limbaugh’s pronouncement that NASA was lying about the discovery of water on Mars in order to push a “leftist agenda,” and I could just rest my case right there. To a certain disturbingly widespread mind-set, scientific discovery and the advancement of human knowledge are suspicious in themselves, and likely to produce culturally unhealthy outcomes. Look at the mess Galileo and Darwin got us into! Of course the right knows or pretends that evolution is dubious, and that schoolchildren should “study the controversy.” How convinced are they, really, that this whole business about the Earth orbiting the sun – when common sense tells you otherwise! -- is not the cover story for a “leftist agenda”? Anyway, liberals – please don’t start in about how we need that money to feed the hungry, provide universal healthcare, make higher education affordable and clean up the environment. I’m in favor of those things too, but we’re not doing them anyway, and we won’t until we have a more realistic taxation structure in this country and can break free of the ideological hypnosis of austerity and privatization and “market-based solutions.” (Which was inflicted upon us by Bill Clinton’s administration and the Democratic leadership caste of the ‘90s, at least as much as by Reagan and the Republicans.) If we don’t have single-payer health insurance and a way to send every qualified kid to college and a realistic plan to land a woman on Mars by 2027, it’s not because we lack the resources. It’s because our minds have been clouded by lies and manufactured delusions, and because our priorities are hopelessly screwed up. Let’s assume that $100 billion estimate for a Mars mission is low, way low. Let’s assume it’s too low by a factor of 10, and that sending human beings to the Red Planet and getting them back in one piece would cost more like $1 trillion. Unimaginable, right? Yeah, it’s a lot – so much that it’s almost one-fourth the estimated total cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Which were super-necessary and did so much for humanity that we can’t possibly imagine having done without them. As for “The Martian,” if it’s a feature-length advertisement for the possibilities of a new human spaceflight program, it’s a damn fine one. If the sheer number of low-tech solutions stranded astronaut Mark Watney (Damon) must improvise in order to stay alive indefinitely on Mars -- after being left behind alone, badly injured and with little food or water -- beggars the imagination, each individual stroke of genius is plausible enough. Back on Earth, we have perhaps my favorite dork-moment in the movie (there are dozens of those, if not scores), when a young telemetry genius at NASA unveils his outrageous, breaking-all-the-rules plan to rescue Watney after more conventional methods have failed. His codename for the scheme is Project Elrond, and everybody in the room begins exclaiming about how that’s the perfect monicker for a secret meeting where a radical shift in strategy is decided upon, while the NASA P.R. official played by Kristen Wiig looks on in bewilderment, announcing, “I hate you all so much.” This is Ridley Scott’s most entertaining and energetic film in a very long time, and made me want to forget “Prometheus” all over again (having pretty well forgotten it once already). You can argue that the plot of “The Martian” doesn’t offer many surprises, but this is a movie of innumerable delightful moments and small discoveries, and even more of infectious enthusiasm. Goddard’s screenplay captures and distills the tirelessly geeky behind-the-scenes camaraderie of this massive technical exercise, and also the dedication and momentum that keeps pushing Damon’s character forward even when he is 99 percent sure he will die alone, millions of miles from home. In casting the large and delightful multiracial and mixed-gender ensemble of “The Martian,” which includes Jessica Chastain as the Mars mission commander, Michael Peña as a fellow astronaut, Chiwetel Ejiofor as the head of Mission Control in Houston and Donald Glover as the telemetry wunderkind who may save the day, Scott has done more than score identity-politics points. (Although I don’t doubt that such a motivation was in the mix.) He’s announcing that the infectious nerdy enthusiasm this film celebrates and embraces – and indeed proposes as the true solution to what ails us, embodied here by the reverse-Christ figure of one solitary dude trying to grow potatoes on a (presumably) lifeless planet – has spread far and wide, and cannot be stopped. These days it isn’t just bespectacled white boys (and Asian boys) who love physics and engineering and microbiology, who worship technology on its own terms and also for the human possibilities it opens, and who will take massive dorky enjoyment in being part of something called Project Elrond. Boys and girls and men and women of all colors and on all continents will thrill to this movie this week, as they have thrilled to the news that the red orb out there in space, which has teased us so long at the outer edges of human imagination and human possibility, may not be barren after all. Can we afford to go to Mars? We can’t afford not to.I believe it was the film historian Mark Harris (also the undisputed heavyweight champion of Oscar bloggers) who first injected a note of cynicism into the furor surrounding one of the biggest scientific discoveries of the 21st century: Flowing water on the surface of Mars. Was it entirely a coincidence, Harris tweeted, that the very same week was also bringing us Ridley Scott and Matt Damon’s science-nerd extravaganza “The Martian,” the most pro-NASA movie in many years? Which is, by the way, a tremendously exciting popcorn spectacle, and also a portrait of extraplanetary survival convincing enough that it had my tech-obsessed 11-year-old companion on his feet cheering on several occasions. I'm pretty sure Harris was kidding, and did not think that NASA’s big announcement was a movie tie-in. But I also don’t think Matt Damon actually meant to say that he thought gay actors should stay in the closet, which was how a clumsy statement he made in a Guardian interview has been interpreted. But before we move on from the briefly titillating question of whether we will find unexpected life on another planet within our lifetimes to the far more important issue of Celebrities Who Say Dumb Things (which often feels like the central theme of the Internet, after amusing cat videos) – wait, hang on, let’s not move on, dammit. Let’s go to Mars. If this week’s unlikely coincidence of life and art is sending us a message from God or our alien overlords or the marketing geniuses of Hollywood, that’s what it is. I think we have to go to Mars. If your first reaction is to say we can’t afford it, or there’s too much screwed-up stuff to deal with here on Earth – well, sure. But that’s not the way the human species has ever approached things, and I believe that on some fundamental level it’s neither the right answer nor a true answer. Launching a new manned spaceflight program, alongside the current unmanned research missions that have immensely expanded our understanding of our planetary neighbors and the universe, does not mean giving up on addressing climate change or developing alternative energy technology or reducing poverty and inequality. It might, over the long haul, make those things easier to deal with, rather than more difficult. Science and technological possibility and human ambition are not zero-sum equations; one of the dorky but inarguable points made over and over again in Drew Goddard’s screenplay for “The Martian” (which is adapted from Andy Weir’s bestselling novel), is that ambition breeds innovation and innovation spurs on ambition. Yes, it will cost fabulous, almost unimaginable sums to develop and execute a human Mars mission like the one that goes awry in “The Martian.” If anyone were to propose a concrete number -- $100 billion has repeatedly been floated, but given the history of the space program that is almost certainly a lowball estimate – the inner Grover Norquist within all of us would rise up and vow to drown this pointless scheme in the cosmic bathtub. But that’s small-minded thinking from a nation that has grown distressingly hunched and small. In 1962, John F. Kennedy made that famous speech at Rice University announcing that the United States would put a man on the Moon before the end of that decade -- and it happened. In 2004, George W. Bush announced a plan to send humans back to the Moon by 2020 and establish a long-term base there to be used as a launchpad for missions to Mars and elsewhere. How's that been going? Among the innumerable signs of America’s imperial decline, few are clearer than our abandonment of a manned space program and the governmental defunding of numerous scientific disciplines. We have collectively decided – or we have permitted it to be decided in our names, which comes to the same thing – that science is not trustworthy and not worth it, that we’d rather cut taxes for millionaires and build up the national debt by pouring our grandchildren’s dollars into the black hole of permanent war and an omniscient security state. Sure, I can hear those murmurs of prudence and caution coming from the liberal quadrant too, which has grown hunched and small in its own distinctive way. As I was about to wrap up this article, I heard about Rush Limbaugh’s pronouncement that NASA was lying about the discovery of water on Mars in order to push a “leftist agenda,” and I could just rest my case right there. To a certain disturbingly widespread mind-set, scientific discovery and the advancement of human knowledge are suspicious in themselves, and likely to produce culturally unhealthy outcomes. Look at the mess Galileo and Darwin got us into! Of course the right knows or pretends that evolution is dubious, and that schoolchildren should “study the controversy.” How convinced are they, really, that this whole business about the Earth orbiting the sun – when common sense tells you otherwise! -- is not the cover story for a “leftist agenda”? Anyway, liberals – please don’t start in about how we need that money to feed the hungry, provide universal healthcare, make higher education affordable and clean up the environment. I’m in favor of those things too, but we’re not doing them anyway, and we won’t until we have a more realistic taxation structure in this country and can break free of the ideological hypnosis of austerity and privatization and “market-based solutions.” (Which was inflicted upon us by Bill Clinton’s administration and the Democratic leadership caste of the ‘90s, at least as much as by Reagan and the Republicans.) If we don’t have single-payer health insurance and a way to send every qualified kid to college and a realistic plan to land a woman on Mars by 2027, it’s not because we lack the resources. It’s because our minds have been clouded by lies and manufactured delusions, and because our priorities are hopelessly screwed up. Let’s assume that $100 billion estimate for a Mars mission is low, way low. Let’s assume it’s too low by a factor of 10, and that sending human beings to the Red Planet and getting them back in one piece would cost more like $1 trillion. Unimaginable, right? Yeah, it’s a lot – so much that it’s almost one-fourth the estimated total cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Which were super-necessary and did so much for humanity that we can’t possibly imagine having done without them. As for “The Martian,” if it’s a feature-length advertisement for the possibilities of a new human spaceflight program, it’s a damn fine one. If the sheer number of low-tech solutions stranded astronaut Mark Watney (Damon) must improvise in order to stay alive indefinitely on Mars -- after being left behind alone, badly injured and with little food or water -- beggars the imagination, each individual stroke of genius is plausible enough. Back on Earth, we have perhaps my favorite dork-moment in the movie (there are dozens of those, if not scores), when a young telemetry genius at NASA unveils his outrageous, breaking-all-the-rules plan to rescue Watney after more conventional methods have failed. His codename for the scheme is Project Elrond, and everybody in the room begins exclaiming about how that’s the perfect monicker for a secret meeting where a radical shift in strategy is decided upon, while the NASA P.R. official played by Kristen Wiig looks on in bewilderment, announcing, “I hate you all so much.” This is Ridley Scott’s most entertaining and energetic film in a very long time, and made me want to forget “Prometheus” all over again (having pretty well forgotten it once already). You can argue that the plot of “The Martian” doesn’t offer many surprises, but this is a movie of innumerable delightful moments and small discoveries, and even more of infectious enthusiasm. Goddard’s screenplay captures and distills the tirelessly geeky behind-the-scenes camaraderie of this massive technical exercise, and also the dedication and momentum that keeps pushing Damon’s character forward even when he is 99 percent sure he will die alone, millions of miles from home. In casting the large and delightful multiracial and mixed-gender ensemble of “The Martian,” which includes Jessica Chastain as the Mars mission commander, Michael Peña as a fellow astronaut, Chiwetel Ejiofor as the head of Mission Control in Houston and Donald Glover as the telemetry wunderkind who may save the day, Scott has done more than score identity-politics points. (Although I don’t doubt that such a motivation was in the mix.) He’s announcing that the infectious nerdy enthusiasm this film celebrates and embraces – and indeed proposes as the true solution to what ails us, embodied here by the reverse-Christ figure of one solitary dude trying to grow potatoes on a (presumably) lifeless planet – has spread far and wide, and cannot be stopped. These days it isn’t just bespectacled white boys (and Asian boys) who love physics and engineering and microbiology, who worship technology on its own terms and also for the human possibilities it opens, and who will take massive dorky enjoyment in being part of something called Project Elrond. Boys and girls and men and women of all colors and on all continents will thrill to this movie this week, as they have thrilled to the news that the red orb out there in space, which has teased us so long at the outer edges of human imagination and human possibility, may not be barren after all. Can we afford to go to Mars? We can’t afford not to.
“We’re not living in a golden age of music”: Joe Jackson on why the ’90s were better than the ’80s and the “musical doldrums” we’re in right now
Joe Jackson’s catalog is admirably ambitious. While the crisp new wave pop he crafted in the late ’70s and early ’80s rightfully endures—whether it’s the manicured urbanity of “Steppin’ Out” to the crestfallen “Is She Really Going Out With Him?”—the breadth and depth of his work in the 30-plus years since is perhaps even more impressive. The 61-year-old songwriter/pianist has explored jazz, big band, blues and classical music, while delving into esoteric topics—everything from 1997’s “Heaven & Hell,” a song cycle about the seven deadly sins, to a long-gestating theater project focused on the life of Bram Stoker. Musically, however, Jackson’s new album, "Fast Forward," might be his most straightforward album since 2003’s “Volume 4,” which was itself lauded as a nod to his earlier, more pop-leaning days. Songs such as the effervescent “If It Wasn’t for You” and the vivid, darker “Junkie Diva” are supreme earworms, while “Neon Rain” has a sneering edge that recalls his punkest moments. The record’s plenty diverse, though: Jackson channels Antony Hegarty on the ruminative, wry title track, while the smoldering jazz of “Poor Thing” features sharp horns and percussion, and a cover of Television’s “See No Evil” is both reverential and celebratory. The album goes on sale Friday, but you can listen here: For Jackson, the process of assembling the album was quite different than previous releases: He recorded "Fast Forward" in four separate cities—New York City, New Orleans, Berlin and Amsterdam—with a different set of musicians in each. And so the four New York songs boast contributions from jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, drummer Brian Blade and Jackson’s longtime bassist, Graham Maby, while the slinky New Orleans section is marked by three members of funk troupe Galactic (drummer Stanton Moore, bassist Robert Mercurio and guitarist Jeff Raines) and a horn section. Incredibly, the idea to spread out the recording was “pretty recent,” Jackson tells Salon. “I just spent a long time accumulating songs. I was sitting on a big pile of songs, and I was looking for some way to organize them. [When] it started off, the idea was rather than doing a whole album was to work on three or four songs at a time, maybe do a series of EPs instead. It grew from there.” How did you choose which songs were recorded in each different city? A few of them were obvious. Mostly it was the musicians that drew me to those places rather than the places themselves, and a few of the songs were kind of obvious. I mean, like “Kings of the City” is definitely a New York song, “If I Could See Your Face” is definitely a Berlin song, and “Neon Rain,” I was thinking about New Orleans when I wrote it. So some of them were obvious. And then a bit later on, I thought having decided that I was gonna aim for those four places. I started thinking about maybe doing one song in each city that was very much associated with it. That didn’t exactly work out because I just couldn’t think of one for Amsterdam; there were too many for New Orleans. [Laughs.] So I abandoned that idea, but I did end up with a song from a classic New York album, which we did in New York, which was [Television’s] “See No Evil.” And a translation of a German song for Berlin, which was “Good Bye Jonny.” So there are some connections between the songs and the places, but it wasn’t a case of starting with a concept and then writing the songs to fit the concept. I don’t think I’ve ever done that, really; it’s usually been the other way around. Since there were such a diverse array of musicians you’ve collaborated with on this record, what did they all kind of bring to the process? Besides, obviously, very different textures and instrumentation. Yeah, I think one of the surprising things about it is how little difference there is between the four. [Laughs.] Because I think it’s all kind of unified by my writing and my singing and my playing, and my way of looking at the world. So I think that there’s a lot more similarities than differences between them. But there were certain things — I mean, I had been to a gig that Brian Blade and Bill Frisell did together and I met them afterwards, and there were a couple songs I thought they would be fantastic for, especially “Fast Forward.” And, you know, something like “Keep On Dreaming,” that’s just the kind of groove that Stanton Moore eats for breakfast. [Laughs.] So there were just certain people I thought, “Oh God, these guys would be great for this.” A few of the songs could’ve been done anywhere, to be honest, but you know, I ended up dividing them up, and in the process some things happened that I didn’t expect to happen. I mean, like the Berlin EP turned out to be the darkest of the four, and that sorta happened without really being planned. It’s the sort of thing that people think is deliberate, and it isn’t. But I really like them all equally. [Laughs.] If someone just asked me which was my favorite, no way I’m gonna answer that. When did you first fall in love with New Orleans musically? What about the city resonates with you? It was love at first sight. I first went there in 1983 on tour… [Laughs.] I can’t believe it’s that long ago. And I’ve been going back regularly ever since. Yeah, it’s a special place; I think everyone knows that, really. I don’t have anything to say about it that hasn’t already been said, but I like it. There’s a couple of places in the United States that are absolutely bursting with music. I mean, New York is one, but in a different way. In New York, it’s all more sort of “important” and expensive. [Laughs.] You go to New Orleans, and you hear amazing musicians playing for free on the street. It’s so much a part of the culture. You know, I like the generally bohemian vibe, I like the food… what could I say? It’s just a great place. You’ve lived and recorded in New York in very different times of the city’s existence. Was there anything sort of different making music there today as compared to any times in the past you’ve created there? Well… there’s a lot less studios than there were, that’s for sure. [Laughs.] I mean, I don’t know… I don’t know, making music is making music. You know, it’s me and the musicians doing what we do despite what’s happening outside. It’s definitely a very different place to what it was when I first came here, that’s for sure, but I’m not letting that stop me, let’s put it that way. Did you ever get to see Television in their original incarnation when they were around? What really drew you to covering that song? That was a hugely influential album at the time—I believe it was 1977 it came out. And it was one of the things that made me think something really interesting’s happening in New York, and that I would really like to go there. I don’t think it had occurred to be before I heard Talking Heads and Television. And, you know, a couple of years later, there I was: I made it to New York in 1979 on my first tour. So I think there was a bit of nostalgia there, and I was trying to think of a song that would have a connection to New York, without necessarily being some really obvious song about New York. So this is a song from a classic New York album. It’s a little surprising that you and Bill Frisell haven’t crossed paths creatively before now. What was the most gratifying thing collaborating with him? You know, there’s something about the way he’s able to just play one note and have it sound like Bill Frisell, it’s quite extraordinary. [Laughs.] I don’t quite know how he it does it. I mean, for one thing I’m not a guitarist myself, but he does seem to be able to create some kind of magic that I don’t really understand from the instrument. And, you know, he’s a nice guy and he wanted to do it. [Laughs.] He was very flattering about it—he loved the songs, especially “Kings Of The City,” which he played beautifully on, I think. He seemed like he couldn’t get enough of that song. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I met him and Brian Blade at a gig that they played together, and it turns out they were fans of mine. Brian especially was a huge fan of mine, which completely astonished me. I mean, you never know who your fans are. It’s so hard to be objective about anything like that. And I just thought, “I just have to work with these guys.” One project I know you’ve been working on in the recent past is a piece on Bram Stoker’s life. Has there been any movement toward getting that a wider release? Oh my God, yes, Stoker. Yes, there is movement. There’s always movement, but it just seems to be, like, one step forward and five steps back every time. It’s just incredible. I don’t know how anything ever gets produced in the theater world, really, if this is anything to go by. This has been going on for years and years and years. And it’s not uncommon. This is the first time I’ve worked in this area, and one time I said to the director, “If I knew it was gonna take this long, I don’t know if I’d’ve gotten involved.” And she laughed and said, “Well, I knew it would, and that’s why I never said anything.” [Laughs.] So it’s not unusual, apparently. But no, there’s definitely some things going on and it may happen next year, but I don’t wanna say. I just don’t know. I mean, there’s nothing I can do at this point. I mean, it’s not my world. I’ve become quite fatalistic about it. It’s a great piece— I mean, if it ever gets produced, I think it’s fantastic, but who knows? But actually one of the songs from it ended up in a rewritten version on this album: “Far Away” started its life as a song for Stoker. In the piece, it’s sung by Stoker as a young boy. And the music is substantially the same, yeah, but since I thought that song may never see the light of day, I rewrote it and then changed the lyrics and took it in a different direction, and it becomes a song about… Well, I like the idea of how—you know in a movie sometimes you’ll see the character as a child, and then time passes and you see the same character as an adult? And I thought it’d be cool to do that in a song. As a musician, it easier for you now to work on projects like that that might be overly ambitious? Obviously, there’s also the “Heaven & Hell” project that you did some years ago, as well, that was extremely ambitious. Yeah, that was the most ambitious thing I’ve ever done, I think. It was just something I wanted to do and see if I could do it. I think it sold somewhere in the double figures. [Laughs.] But anyway… When you really started going against the grain in regards of what people and labels might’ve expected of you artistically, what sort of resistance did you run into? I don’t know if I run into as much resistance as people might imagine. I mean, people don’t come into the studio and put a gun to your head and say, “Make this kind of record or else.” It’s not like that. It’s quite often after the fact, you know, you do a project that’s not all that successful, you’ll get people saying, “Oh, well, if only you did this instead…” or “If you haven’t done that…” Everyone’s an expert and no one’s an expert, really. I don’t know that there was a point where I deliberately went against the grain—that makes it all sound more kinda calculating than I actually am. I mean, I just always pretty much done what I wanted to do. For the upcoming tour you’re doing, what can people expect from it, besides songs from the record? Old songs and new songs as usual, really. I’m gonna be doing some songs solo as well, and apart from that, I think it’s good if people don’t entirely know what to expect. There are plenty of older songs that I like to play, but I don’t wanna be any more specific because I think it’s nice to have a few surprises. It is very difficult in this day and age to actually be surprised by something. Like when a record comes out, and you don’t know what it sounds like or what’s on it…. It’s refreshing when something like that happens. Yeah. Well, we’re not living in a golden age of music right now. I think that’s pretty clear. You know, I don’t think it’s all crap either, but it’s not a particularly interesting or exciting or important time. I don’t think so, anyway, and I think I’ve been around long enough to see that it’s not a straight line. [Laughs.] It’s very much a cycle. There are times when a lot of interesting things are happening, and there’s a real buzz about it, and there are times that are the doldrums. And I think we’re in the doldrums now. There’s really nothing much I can do as one individual to change that. All I can do is make the best record I can and really try to make it great. When you were first starting out, was there a sense that it was a really important time in music? Yeah, I did feel that that was an exciting time, yeah. And I think that, you know, as the ’80s wore on it got less interesting and I think things got more interesting again in the ’90s. So I think it’s just the way it goes. I read some of
your album analyses on your website
. You said you realized there was all this contemporary ‘90s music you enjoyed, that it was one of the few times your tastes were lining up with what was going on at the time then. Yeah, yeah. I actually think the ’90s was a more interesting decade than the ’80s, and I’ve had people disagree very strongly with that, so sometimes it has to do with very subjective things about the age you were at the time, where you were and what you were doing. It’s hard not to be completely subjective, but I just always had such an interest in such a wide range of music that I don’t think it’s just about what was important when I was in my twenties to me, you know? I’m very interested in early jazz from the ’20s and ’30s, for instance, not to mention people like Beethoven. [Laughs.] To me, music isn’t just something that accompanied my teenage years or something like that. Anything else you want to add? You know, if anyone asked me to describe my new album, or how I feel about it or anything like that, I just say it’s fucking great. I mean, I have no guarantees that anyone else in the world is gonna think so, so I think it may as well start out with me thinking that. If there’s one person that feels really good about this album, it really should be me. [Laughs.]Joe Jackson’s catalog is admirably ambitious. While the crisp new wave pop he crafted in the late ’70s and early ’80s rightfully endures—whether it’s the manicured urbanity of “Steppin’ Out” to the crestfallen “Is She Really Going Out With Him?”—the breadth and depth of his work in the 30-plus years since is perhaps even more impressive. The 61-year-old songwriter/pianist has explored jazz, big band, blues and classical music, while delving into esoteric topics—everything from 1997’s “Heaven & Hell,” a song cycle about the seven deadly sins, to a long-gestating theater project focused on the life of Bram Stoker. Musically, however, Jackson’s new album, "Fast Forward," might be his most straightforward album since 2003’s “Volume 4,” which was itself lauded as a nod to his earlier, more pop-leaning days. Songs such as the effervescent “If It Wasn’t for You” and the vivid, darker “Junkie Diva” are supreme earworms, while “Neon Rain” has a sneering edge that recalls his punkest moments. The record’s plenty diverse, though: Jackson channels Antony Hegarty on the ruminative, wry title track, while the smoldering jazz of “Poor Thing” features sharp horns and percussion, and a cover of Television’s “See No Evil” is both reverential and celebratory. The album goes on sale Friday, but you can listen here: For Jackson, the process of assembling the album was quite different than previous releases: He recorded "Fast Forward" in four separate cities—New York City, New Orleans, Berlin and Amsterdam—with a different set of musicians in each. And so the four New York songs boast contributions from jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, drummer Brian Blade and Jackson’s longtime bassist, Graham Maby, while the slinky New Orleans section is marked by three members of funk troupe Galactic (drummer Stanton Moore, bassist Robert Mercurio and guitarist Jeff Raines) and a horn section. Incredibly, the idea to spread out the recording was “pretty recent,” Jackson tells Salon. “I just spent a long time accumulating songs. I was sitting on a big pile of songs, and I was looking for some way to organize them. [When] it started off, the idea was rather than doing a whole album was to work on three or four songs at a time, maybe do a series of EPs instead. It grew from there.” How did you choose which songs were recorded in each different city? A few of them were obvious. Mostly it was the musicians that drew me to those places rather than the places themselves, and a few of the songs were kind of obvious. I mean, like “Kings of the City” is definitely a New York song, “If I Could See Your Face” is definitely a Berlin song, and “Neon Rain,” I was thinking about New Orleans when I wrote it. So some of them were obvious. And then a bit later on, I thought having decided that I was gonna aim for those four places. I started thinking about maybe doing one song in each city that was very much associated with it. That didn’t exactly work out because I just couldn’t think of one for Amsterdam; there were too many for New Orleans. [Laughs.] So I abandoned that idea, but I did end up with a song from a classic New York album, which we did in New York, which was [Television’s] “See No Evil.” And a translation of a German song for Berlin, which was “Good Bye Jonny.” So there are some connections between the songs and the places, but it wasn’t a case of starting with a concept and then writing the songs to fit the concept. I don’t think I’ve ever done that, really; it’s usually been the other way around. Since there were such a diverse array of musicians you’ve collaborated with on this record, what did they all kind of bring to the process? Besides, obviously, very different textures and instrumentation. Yeah, I think one of the surprising things about it is how little difference there is between the four. [Laughs.] Because I think it’s all kind of unified by my writing and my singing and my playing, and my way of looking at the world. So I think that there’s a lot more similarities than differences between them. But there were certain things — I mean, I had been to a gig that Brian Blade and Bill Frisell did together and I met them afterwards, and there were a couple songs I thought they would be fantastic for, especially “Fast Forward.” And, you know, something like “Keep On Dreaming,” that’s just the kind of groove that Stanton Moore eats for breakfast. [Laughs.] So there were just certain people I thought, “Oh God, these guys would be great for this.” A few of the songs could’ve been done anywhere, to be honest, but you know, I ended up dividing them up, and in the process some things happened that I didn’t expect to happen. I mean, like the Berlin EP turned out to be the darkest of the four, and that sorta happened without really being planned. It’s the sort of thing that people think is deliberate, and it isn’t. But I really like them all equally. [Laughs.] If someone just asked me which was my favorite, no way I’m gonna answer that. When did you first fall in love with New Orleans musically? What about the city resonates with you? It was love at first sight. I first went there in 1983 on tour… [Laughs.] I can’t believe it’s that long ago. And I’ve been going back regularly ever since. Yeah, it’s a special place; I think everyone knows that, really. I don’t have anything to say about it that hasn’t already been said, but I like it. There’s a couple of places in the United States that are absolutely bursting with music. I mean, New York is one, but in a different way. In New York, it’s all more sort of “important” and expensive. [Laughs.] You go to New Orleans, and you hear amazing musicians playing for free on the street. It’s so much a part of the culture. You know, I like the generally bohemian vibe, I like the food… what could I say? It’s just a great place. You’ve lived and recorded in New York in very different times of the city’s existence. Was there anything sort of different making music there today as compared to any times in the past you’ve created there? Well… there’s a lot less studios than there were, that’s for sure. [Laughs.] I mean, I don’t know… I don’t know, making music is making music. You know, it’s me and the musicians doing what we do despite what’s happening outside. It’s definitely a very different place to what it was when I first came here, that’s for sure, but I’m not letting that stop me, let’s put it that way. Did you ever get to see Television in their original incarnation when they were around? What really drew you to covering that song? That was a hugely influential album at the time—I believe it was 1977 it came out. And it was one of the things that made me think something really interesting’s happening in New York, and that I would really like to go there. I don’t think it had occurred to be before I heard Talking Heads and Television. And, you know, a couple of years later, there I was: I made it to New York in 1979 on my first tour. So I think there was a bit of nostalgia there, and I was trying to think of a song that would have a connection to New York, without necessarily being some really obvious song about New York. So this is a song from a classic New York album. It’s a little surprising that you and Bill Frisell haven’t crossed paths creatively before now. What was the most gratifying thing collaborating with him? You know, there’s something about the way he’s able to just play one note and have it sound like Bill Frisell, it’s quite extraordinary. [Laughs.] I don’t quite know how he it does it. I mean, for one thing I’m not a guitarist myself, but he does seem to be able to create some kind of magic that I don’t really understand from the instrument. And, you know, he’s a nice guy and he wanted to do it. [Laughs.] He was very flattering about it—he loved the songs, especially “Kings Of The City,” which he played beautifully on, I think. He seemed like he couldn’t get enough of that song. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I met him and Brian Blade at a gig that they played together, and it turns out they were fans of mine. Brian especially was a huge fan of mine, which completely astonished me. I mean, you never know who your fans are. It’s so hard to be objective about anything like that. And I just thought, “I just have to work with these guys.” One project I know you’ve been working on in the recent past is a piece on Bram Stoker’s life. Has there been any movement toward getting that a wider release? Oh my God, yes, Stoker. Yes, there is movement. There’s always movement, but it just seems to be, like, one step forward and five steps back every time. It’s just incredible. I don’t know how anything ever gets produced in the theater world, really, if this is anything to go by. This has been going on for years and years and years. And it’s not uncommon. This is the first time I’ve worked in this area, and one time I said to the director, “If I knew it was gonna take this long, I don’t know if I’d’ve gotten involved.” And she laughed and said, “Well, I knew it would, and that’s why I never said anything.” [Laughs.] So it’s not unusual, apparently. But no, there’s definitely some things going on and it may happen next year, but I don’t wanna say. I just don’t know. I mean, there’s nothing I can do at this point. I mean, it’s not my world. I’ve become quite fatalistic about it. It’s a great piece— I mean, if it ever gets produced, I think it’s fantastic, but who knows? But actually one of the songs from it ended up in a rewritten version on this album: “Far Away” started its life as a song for Stoker. In the piece, it’s sung by Stoker as a young boy. And the music is substantially the same, yeah, but since I thought that song may never see the light of day, I rewrote it and then changed the lyrics and took it in a different direction, and it becomes a song about… Well, I like the idea of how—you know in a movie sometimes you’ll see the character as a child, and then time passes and you see the same character as an adult? And I thought it’d be cool to do that in a song. As a musician, it easier for you now to work on projects like that that might be overly ambitious? Obviously, there’s also the “Heaven & Hell” project that you did some years ago, as well, that was extremely ambitious. Yeah, that was the most ambitious thing I’ve ever done, I think. It was just something I wanted to do and see if I could do it. I think it sold somewhere in the double figures. [Laughs.] But anyway… When you really started going against the grain in regards of what people and labels might’ve expected of you artistically, what sort of resistance did you run into? I don’t know if I run into as much resistance as people might imagine. I mean, people don’t come into the studio and put a gun to your head and say, “Make this kind of record or else.” It’s not like that. It’s quite often after the fact, you know, you do a project that’s not all that successful, you’ll get people saying, “Oh, well, if only you did this instead…” or “If you haven’t done that…” Everyone’s an expert and no one’s an expert, really. I don’t know that there was a point where I deliberately went against the grain—that makes it all sound more kinda calculating than I actually am. I mean, I just always pretty much done what I wanted to do. For the upcoming tour you’re doing, what can people expect from it, besides songs from the record? Old songs and new songs as usual, really. I’m gonna be doing some songs solo as well, and apart from that, I think it’s good if people don’t entirely know what to expect. There are plenty of older songs that I like to play, but I don’t wanna be any more specific because I think it’s nice to have a few surprises. It is very difficult in this day and age to actually be surprised by something. Like when a record comes out, and you don’t know what it sounds like or what’s on it…. It’s refreshing when something like that happens. Yeah. Well, we’re not living in a golden age of music right now. I think that’s pretty clear. You know, I don’t think it’s all crap either, but it’s not a particularly interesting or exciting or important time. I don’t think so, anyway, and I think I’ve been around long enough to see that it’s not a straight line. [Laughs.] It’s very much a cycle. There are times when a lot of interesting things are happening, and there’s a real buzz about it, and there are times that are the doldrums. And I think we’re in the doldrums now. There’s really nothing much I can do as one individual to change that. All I can do is make the best record I can and really try to make it great. When you were first starting out, was there a sense that it was a really important time in music? Yeah, I did feel that that was an exciting time, yeah. And I think that, you know, as the ’80s wore on it got less interesting and I think things got more interesting again in the ’90s. So I think it’s just the way it goes. I read some of
your album analyses on your website
. You said you realized there was all this contemporary ‘90s music you enjoyed, that it was one of the few times your tastes were lining up with what was going on at the time then. Yeah, yeah. I actually think the ’90s was a more interesting decade than the ’80s, and I’ve had people disagree very strongly with that, so sometimes it has to do with very subjective things about the age you were at the time, where you were and what you were doing. It’s hard not to be completely subjective, but I just always had such an interest in such a wide range of music that I don’t think it’s just about what was important when I was in my twenties to me, you know? I’m very interested in early jazz from the ’20s and ’30s, for instance, not to mention people like Beethoven. [Laughs.] To me, music isn’t just something that accompanied my teenage years or something like that. Anything else you want to add? You know, if anyone asked me to describe my new album, or how I feel about it or anything like that, I just say it’s fucking great. I mean, I have no guarantees that anyone else in the world is gonna think so, so I think it may as well start out with me thinking that. If there’s one person that feels really good about this album, it really should be me. [Laughs.]
The 10 most egregious U.S. abuses of psychology and psychiatry
Psychiatrists and psychologists have been used by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to facilitate mind control and torture in Project MKUltra and in the American Psychological Association-bolstered CIA torture program. Psychiatric political abuses in nations that are U.S. enemies have been routinely denounced by U.S. establishment psychiatry and the U.S. government, especially during the Cold War within the Soviet Union (where political dissidents were diagnosed with “sluggish schizophrenia” and psychiatrically hospitalized and drugged). However, the abuse of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment to subvert human rights has occurred not only in totalitarian U.S. enemies but in the United States as well. While the following list of political abuses of U.S. psychiatry and psychology begins with the infamous Project MKUltra and recent American Psychological Association torture scandal, this should not be taken to imply that these more sensational abuses are the most important ones. For gay Americans, Native Americans and African-Americans, the political abuse of psychiatry and psychology is a significant part of their traumatizing American history, and while MKUltra resulted in severe trauma and even death, mental health professionals’ current enabling of dehumanizing American institutions continues to create, quite possibly, even greater damage. 1. Project MKUltra This CIA program of experiments on human subjects, which began in the early 1950s, used drugs (including LSD) and other procedures (including sensory deprivation and electroshock) to weaken and break an individual and force confessions. MKUltra has been documented by the U.S. Congress’ Church Committee investigations, acknowledged by the U.S. Supreme Court, and detailed in "The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate': The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences" by former State Department officer John Marks. In MKUltra, there was widespread involvement by at least 80 institutions (including universities, pharmaceutical corporations and prisons) and 185 researchers, including some of America’s leading psychiatrists such as Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West and leading psychologists such as Henry Murray. Among the subjects in one of Murray’s MKUltra experiments at Harvard was 17-year-old undergraduate Ted Kaczynski, and serving as a subject in another MKUltra experiment was a young prison inmate named Whitey Bulger. 2. American Psychological Association Assistance in Interrogation/Torture The American Psychological Association, in the days after the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, nurtured relationships with the CIA and Department of Defense “to position psychology and behavioral scientists as key players in U.S. counterterrorism and counterintelligence activities,” according to a 2014 Truthout report. The American Psychological Association secretly collaborated with the George W. Bush administration to bolster a legal and ethical justification for the torture of prisoners. This was highly useful for the government officials involved in torture, as the New York Times in 2015 reported, “The involvement of health professionals in the Bush-era interrogation program was significant because it enabled the Justice Department to argue in secret opinions that the program was legal and did not constitute torture, since the interrogations were being monitored by health professionals to make sure they were safe.” The degree of American Psychological Association complicity was detailed in a damning independent review (commissioned, under political pressure, by the American Psychological Association), which revealed that ties between the American Psychological Association and the CIA/DOD were deeper than previously recognized, as the associations’ ethics director collaborated with the DOD to align the associations’ ethics policies with the needs of DOD. 3. Pathologizing Homosexuality and Disempowering Gay Americans In recent times, the most well-known political abuse of psychiatry with regard to stigmatizing and disempowering a particular group is its psychopathologizing of homosexuality. The American Psychiatric Association in 1973—due to the political efforts of gay activists—finally relented and declassified homosexuality as a pathology in its diagnostic bible, the DSM. Even after declassifying homosexuality as a mental illness, much of establishment psychiatry continued to maintain that homosexuality was not as normal as heterosexuality, according to dissident psychiatrist Vivek Datta, who 
Edward @Snowden, Twitter celebrity: How will he use his new platform, now that everyone’s watching?
Given that your technology-challenged uncle managed to finally figure out Twitter last year, the long delay before the abrupt arrival of mad genius/anti-totalitarian savior/ enigma Edward Snowden on the social media platform on Tuesday is a bit of a head scratcher. And given what Snowden managed to do the last time around, a lot of us are wondering, What’s he doing here, now, suddenly? And, most acutely, What does this guy have in mind this time? Describing himself in his profile as “I used to work for the government. Now I work for the public,” Snowden announced himself with an inaugural “Can you hear me now?” (It’s a reference, as some picked up, to an old Verizon commercial.) So far, Snowden has only followed the National Security Agency, a group he’s been acquainted with in the past and whose Twitter following he quickly outstripped. (Snowden also made a joke about “a thousand people at Fort Meade just opened Twitter.”) Jesse Ventura, the show “Mr. Robot,” the ACLU, and TED guru Chris Anderson have all welcomed him. As for the question of why now, some speculate that the science geek in Snowden was jolted by the news of water on Mars and wants to follow it better. “One of the tipping points appears to be a recent interview that Snowden conducted with celebrity astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson,” Matt Pearce writes in the Los Angeles Times. Pearce quotes from the radio interview:
"I tried to find you on Twitter, and I couldn't find your handle ... you kind of need a Twitter handle, so like, @Snowden, maybe, is this something you might do?" Tyson asked Snowden. "That sounds good, I think we gotta make it happen," Snowden replied, laughing. "You and I will be Twitter buds ... your followers will be the Internet, me and the NSA, it'll be great."Snowden tweeted to Tyson when the Mars news broke: https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/64... But, on second thought, they could have probably just exchanged emails or something. The more important question is what Snowden is up to. Maybe he just got lonely in Russia and wanted to send out photos of what he eats at restaurants. (He made a joking reference to cat photos.) For a guy who once set the world on fire, Snowden has kept a pretty low profile lately. He’s talked about not wanting to be one of the many whistleblowers destroyed by the system they try to take down. Despite the intense focus and risk and egoism that his work required, he has not been relentless or ubiquitous since his 2013 revelations about widespread NSA spying on civilians. “For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” he told the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman, near the end of 2013. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.” He’s not a hero to everyone: Some, and not just patriotic wack-jobs, consider him a traitor or a reckless egomaniac. The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin described him as willfully naïve about what the NSA, which once employed him, does for a living, calling Snowden “a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.” What’s the role for Snowden these days? We no longer need to be woken up to the fact that the United States security apparatus has become scary and invasive, and journalists on the left, right, and center have begun to pay attention. But maybe we can take him at his word: That as the director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a group co-founded by Daniel Ellsberg, he'd dedicated to “support and defend public interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption and law-breaking in government.” Government surveillance is likely no better than it was when Snowden’s famous leaks broke. At the very least, Snowden can keep a steady supply of Stupid Government Tricks coming. With Jon Stewart (and David Letterman) offstage now, maybe Edward Snowden is the guy who can keep us simultaneously amused and terrified?Given that your technology-challenged uncle managed to finally figure out Twitter last year, the long delay before the abrupt arrival of mad genius/anti-totalitarian savior/ enigma Edward Snowden on the social media platform on Tuesday is a bit of a head scratcher. And given what Snowden managed to do the last time around, a lot of us are wondering, What’s he doing here, now, suddenly? And, most acutely, What does this guy have in mind this time? Describing himself in his profile as “I used to work for the government. Now I work for the public,” Snowden announced himself with an inaugural “Can you hear me now?” (It’s a reference, as some picked up, to an old Verizon commercial.) So far, Snowden has only followed the National Security Agency, a group he’s been acquainted with in the past and whose Twitter following he quickly outstripped. (Snowden also made a joke about “a thousand people at Fort Meade just opened Twitter.”) Jesse Ventura, the show “Mr. Robot,” the ACLU, and TED guru Chris Anderson have all welcomed him. As for the question of why now, some speculate that the science geek in Snowden was jolted by the news of water on Mars and wants to follow it better. “One of the tipping points appears to be a recent interview that Snowden conducted with celebrity astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson,” Matt Pearce writes in the Los Angeles Times. Pearce quotes from the radio interview:
"I tried to find you on Twitter, and I couldn't find your handle ... you kind of need a Twitter handle, so like, @Snowden, maybe, is this something you might do?" Tyson asked Snowden. "That sounds good, I think we gotta make it happen," Snowden replied, laughing. "You and I will be Twitter buds ... your followers will be the Internet, me and the NSA, it'll be great."Snowden tweeted to Tyson when the Mars news broke: https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/64... But, on second thought, they could have probably just exchanged emails or something. The more important question is what Snowden is up to. Maybe he just got lonely in Russia and wanted to send out photos of what he eats at restaurants. (He made a joking reference to cat photos.) For a guy who once set the world on fire, Snowden has kept a pretty low profile lately. He’s talked about not wanting to be one of the many whistleblowers destroyed by the system they try to take down. Despite the intense focus and risk and egoism that his work required, he has not been relentless or ubiquitous since his 2013 revelations about widespread NSA spying on civilians. “For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” he told the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman, near the end of 2013. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.” He’s not a hero to everyone: Some, and not just patriotic wack-jobs, consider him a traitor or a reckless egomaniac. The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin described him as willfully naïve about what the NSA, which once employed him, does for a living, calling Snowden “a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.” What’s the role for Snowden these days? We no longer need to be woken up to the fact that the United States security apparatus has become scary and invasive, and journalists on the left, right, and center have begun to pay attention. But maybe we can take him at his word: That as the director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a group co-founded by Daniel Ellsberg, he'd dedicated to “support and defend public interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption and law-breaking in government.” Government surveillance is likely no better than it was when Snowden’s famous leaks broke. At the very least, Snowden can keep a steady supply of Stupid Government Tricks coming. With Jon Stewart (and David Letterman) offstage now, maybe Edward Snowden is the guy who can keep us simultaneously amused and terrified?Given that your technology-challenged uncle managed to finally figure out Twitter last year, the long delay before the abrupt arrival of mad genius/anti-totalitarian savior/ enigma Edward Snowden on the social media platform on Tuesday is a bit of a head scratcher. And given what Snowden managed to do the last time around, a lot of us are wondering, What’s he doing here, now, suddenly? And, most acutely, What does this guy have in mind this time? Describing himself in his profile as “I used to work for the government. Now I work for the public,” Snowden announced himself with an inaugural “Can you hear me now?” (It’s a reference, as some picked up, to an old Verizon commercial.) So far, Snowden has only followed the National Security Agency, a group he’s been acquainted with in the past and whose Twitter following he quickly outstripped. (Snowden also made a joke about “a thousand people at Fort Meade just opened Twitter.”) Jesse Ventura, the show “Mr. Robot,” the ACLU, and TED guru Chris Anderson have all welcomed him. As for the question of why now, some speculate that the science geek in Snowden was jolted by the news of water on Mars and wants to follow it better. “One of the tipping points appears to be a recent interview that Snowden conducted with celebrity astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson,” Matt Pearce writes in the Los Angeles Times. Pearce quotes from the radio interview:
"I tried to find you on Twitter, and I couldn't find your handle ... you kind of need a Twitter handle, so like, @Snowden, maybe, is this something you might do?" Tyson asked Snowden. "That sounds good, I think we gotta make it happen," Snowden replied, laughing. "You and I will be Twitter buds ... your followers will be the Internet, me and the NSA, it'll be great."Snowden tweeted to Tyson when the Mars news broke: https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/64... But, on second thought, they could have probably just exchanged emails or something. The more important question is what Snowden is up to. Maybe he just got lonely in Russia and wanted to send out photos of what he eats at restaurants. (He made a joking reference to cat photos.) For a guy who once set the world on fire, Snowden has kept a pretty low profile lately. He’s talked about not wanting to be one of the many whistleblowers destroyed by the system they try to take down. Despite the intense focus and risk and egoism that his work required, he has not been relentless or ubiquitous since his 2013 revelations about widespread NSA spying on civilians. “For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” he told the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman, near the end of 2013. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.” He’s not a hero to everyone: Some, and not just patriotic wack-jobs, consider him a traitor or a reckless egomaniac. The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin described him as willfully naïve about what the NSA, which once employed him, does for a living, calling Snowden “a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.” What’s the role for Snowden these days? We no longer need to be woken up to the fact that the United States security apparatus has become scary and invasive, and journalists on the left, right, and center have begun to pay attention. But maybe we can take him at his word: That as the director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a group co-founded by Daniel Ellsberg, he'd dedicated to “support and defend public interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption and law-breaking in government.” Government surveillance is likely no better than it was when Snowden’s famous leaks broke. At the very least, Snowden can keep a steady supply of Stupid Government Tricks coming. With Jon Stewart (and David Letterman) offstage now, maybe Edward Snowden is the guy who can keep us simultaneously amused and terrified?
The Republican rebrand’s final indignity: “David Duke without the baggage” in line to lead House GOP
In the wake of the GOP’s disappointing showing in 2012, the Republican National Committee released its “Growth & Opportunity Project,” a nearly 100-page-long “autopsy” intended to explain why an election many Republicans thought was theirs to lose had gone rather uniformly in the Democrats’ favor. The surprisingly frank report warned that the Republican Party was “marginalizing itself” with extreme positions on gay rights, immigration reform, and race. Without some real institutional and ideological changes, the report said, it would be “increasingly difficult for Republicans to win a presidential election in the near future.”
In the time since its release, the Republican Party has adopted around zero of the Growth & Opportunity Project’s recommendations — or at least around zero of those that don’t have to do with the internal party structure or election minutiae. On gay rights, the party has not only failed to progress, but has arguably backslid, with its recent embrace of Kim Davis as the most conspicuous example. On immigration reform, the party’s nominal presidential frontrunner is Donald “deport ‘em all” Trump. And on race, the party has not only defended the Confederate flag, but has flirted with the idea that Black Lives Matter is responsible for attacks on the police.
And now, with Speaker of the House John Boehner’s surprise retirement, it appears that the GOP may be ready to take another decisive step away from the “rebranding” the RNC report advised. Because if Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy replaces him, as is widely expected, it would mean that the man on-deck to be his replacement is none other than Rep. Steve Scalise. That’s right: the Louisiana radical who made front-page news earlier this year for speaking to a group of white supremacists is poised to be the next majority leader of the House of Representatives.
In the GOP’s defense, it’s not at all certain that Scalise will get the gig. As the Huffington Post’s Amanda Terkel notes, even though Scalise, as majority whip, is technically in-line to replace McCarthy, there is a movement within the Republican caucus to promote Georgia Rep. Tom Price instead. Figures as influential as Rep. Paul Ryan and Rep. Jeb Hensarling have backed Price. And it makes sense, really, given that Price is just as conservative as the next guy without having Scalise’s liabilities. He doesn’t have a reputation for indulging white supremacists, for example; and he isn’t known for saying he’s “like [former KKK leader] David Duke without the baggage,” either.
But even if Scalise ends up being passed over for the majority leader position, it won’t be because the GOP’s leaders has an issue with his past. Back when the story first broke, they had all the opportunity in the world to distance themselves from this (allegedly) self-described accessible version of a Klansman. Instead, the leadership in the House — Boehner and McCarthy very much included — decided to keep Scalise as their number three. Scalise was “a man of high integrity and good character,” Boehner said, guilty of a simple “error in judgment.” Scalise, for his part, said he was “very disappointed” that some might “infer” that he’s bigoted just because he courted bigots.
Ultimately, whether Scalise is majority leader or majority whip a month from now doesn’t actually matter. In either scenario, he would still be a relative hair’s breadth from one of the most powerful and influential jobs in American government. And in either scenario, Donald Trump will still be a leading candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination; and every single Republican on the debate stage with him will still oppose the now-Constitutional right of same-sex marriage. So no matter how you look at it, really, the Republican Party’s rebranding effort will still be going just great.
You Must Hear This! The End’s “Introspection”
One thing you learn, sleuthing for obscure psychedelic music from the sixties, is that for every "White Rabbit" there is a "Night Sounds Loud." And a "Crystal Forms." And God knows how many other brilliant songs grown out of the same protoplasm, but forgotten to history. There is just no shortage of mind-exploding songs that have long ago slipped away into The Nothing – standout songs from bands less consistent, or just less lucky than Jefferson Airplane. Even knowing that so much great overlooked music is out there, buried deep in record stacks and on YouTube, I was unprepared for "Introspection" by The End. Ironically, seeing that it was produced by Bill Wyman and engineered by Glyn Johns actually lowered my expectations. Let me explain. For an album with such a pedigree – produced by a Rolling Stone in 1968 – to have completely fallen between the cracks, it couldn't actually be any good, or surely I'd have heard about it before now. Even the album cover is great – is that Charlie Watts' eye?? It was just too good to be true, so it had to be lousy. But it's not lousy. In fact, it's incredibly not lousy. Not just one or two of the songs, either – the whole album is a full-bodied technicolor blowout. Exquisite production, hooks galore and whiplash transitions... you might want to take a minute to dig out your good headphones: The album was set to come out on Decca (the Rolling Stones' label) in 1968, and by all rights conquer the world. But, bafflingly, it was shelved for about a year. Which, in the music scene in the late sixties, might as well have been twenty. When Decca did finally release it, they put nothing behind it, and it sunk like a stone. It will get another chance this November, when Demon Records reissues the album in a deluxe four-disc edition, designed by the legendary Phil Smee. I contacted singer Colin Giffin to learn more about the backstory – and to see if he could explain why such a great album had been so shabbily mistreated. We communicated over email and telephone. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Why don't you start by taking us back to the earliest days of The End. Dave Brown and I formed The End in 1965. Before that, we'd been together with Mike Berry & the Innocents, and we'd done a couple of tours with the Stones in '64. We had got on well with both Bill and Charlie so when The End went out on tour with the Stones in 1965 it felt familiar. Mick was very friendly and made a point of checking that the other acts were settled in as it were. I was never sure if they really noticed us, but then I ran into Mick somewhere in London, twenty years later, and when I mentioned The End he didn't miss a beat. He said, "Oh, yeah, that was Bill's band!" (laughs) So clearly, it registered with him. We got to know Bill fairly well during the course of those two tours. He had always said to us, "Well, if you want to do anything later on, just give me a shout, let me know." When we eventually got in touch it was, I guess, when he was looking to extend his interests into production and management and it seemed to be a good fit. The End were doing some reasonably good quality work, but we weren't playing what we really wanted to play. We were very influenced at the time by the stuff that was coming out of Stax and Atlantic. Artists like Otis Redding and Don Covay and Major Lance. We wanted a manager who would understand and who wasn’t one of the traditional suits. 
One thing you learn, sleuthing for obscure psychedelic music from the sixties, is that for every "White Rabbit" there is a "Night Sounds Loud." And a "Crystal Forms." And God knows how many other brilliant songs grown out of the same protoplasm, but forgotten to history. There is just no shortage of mind-exploding songs that have long ago slipped away into The Nothing – standout songs from bands less consistent, or just less lucky than Jefferson Airplane. Even knowing that so much great overlooked music is out there, buried deep in record stacks and on YouTube, I was unprepared for "Introspection" by The End. Ironically, seeing that it was produced by Bill Wyman and engineered by Glyn Johns actually lowered my expectations. Let me explain. For an album with such a pedigree – produced by a Rolling Stone in 1968 – to have completely fallen between the cracks, it couldn't actually be any good, or surely I'd have heard about it before now. Even the album cover is great – is that Charlie Watts' eye?? It was just too good to be true, so it had to be lousy. But it's not lousy. In fact, it's incredibly not lousy. Not just one or two of the songs, either – the whole album is a full-bodied technicolor blowout. Exquisite production, hooks galore and whiplash transitions... you might want to take a minute to dig out your good headphones: The album was set to come out on Decca (the Rolling Stones' label) in 1968, and by all rights conquer the world. But, bafflingly, it was shelved for about a year. Which, in the music scene in the late sixties, might as well have been twenty. When Decca did finally release it, they put nothing behind it, and it sunk like a stone. It will get another chance this November, when Demon Records reissues the album in a deluxe four-disc edition, designed by the legendary Phil Smee. I contacted singer Colin Giffin to learn more about the backstory – and to see if he could explain why such a great album had been so shabbily mistreated. We communicated over email and telephone. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Why don't you start by taking us back to the earliest days of The End. Dave Brown and I formed The End in 1965. Before that, we'd been together with Mike Berry & the Innocents, and we'd done a couple of tours with the Stones in '64. We had got on well with both Bill and Charlie so when The End went out on tour with the Stones in 1965 it felt familiar. Mick was very friendly and made a point of checking that the other acts were settled in as it were. I was never sure if they really noticed us, but then I ran into Mick somewhere in London, twenty years later, and when I mentioned The End he didn't miss a beat. He said, "Oh, yeah, that was Bill's band!" (laughs) So clearly, it registered with him. We got to know Bill fairly well during the course of those two tours. He had always said to us, "Well, if you want to do anything later on, just give me a shout, let me know." When we eventually got in touch it was, I guess, when he was looking to extend his interests into production and management and it seemed to be a good fit. The End were doing some reasonably good quality work, but we weren't playing what we really wanted to play. We were very influenced at the time by the stuff that was coming out of Stax and Atlantic. Artists like Otis Redding and Don Covay and Major Lance. We wanted a manager who would understand and who wasn’t one of the traditional suits.
The End, L-R: Dave Brown, Hugh Attwooll, Nicky Graham, Terry Taylor, Colin Giffin
Where does "Introspection" fit into the band's timeline? "Introspection" is toward the end of the timeline. We'd been playing, what do you call it... Blue-eyed soul? We had twin sax and organ, which were the key instrumental elements. If you listen to "Shades of Orange," for example, that's got the twin saxes on it. I suppose that was kind of a transitional piece, still retaining what we had been doing for some time, in terms of the soul influence, but starting to head toward what became the more psychedelic stuff. "Introspection" certainly sounds more psychedelic than Stax... Well exactly, but if you listen to "Shades," the elements from the Stax/Atlantic stuff we used to do are in there. The twin saxes are fairly prominent. It's just been turned on its ear. Yeah! Looking at it now, it sounds like a transitional piece. At the time, we weren't thinking that. We're just going to record the song! You know, but when you look at it in retrospect, you can see how it was kind of a bridge between what we were doing before and what came when we got deeply into "Introspection." Let's talk a bit about the recording sessions for "Introspection" – how that came about and what it was like. As far as I recall, it wasn't a question of saying, "Right, let's record an album." We were doing a lot of recording anyway, and we would go off to Spain – we were quite popular in Spain – and we would write a bunch of songs and come back and record them. And we gradually built up a body of recorded material which became the "Introspection" sessions. We recorded those over a period of time, some at Decca Records' studio in northwest London, in West Hampstead. Incidentally, the house sound engineer was Gus Dudgeon, who went on to produce David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and all the big Elton John records. I used to bump into Gus occasionally in later years, and he would always remember The End sessions. So obviously it struck a chord with him. So he was the house engineer at Decca West Hampstead, and then we were recording at Olympic with Glyn Johns engineering. The sessions we did at Olympic, where the Stones and a lot of other big bands at the time used to record, were very much the standard night time sessions, shall we say. You'd start early evening and just go through until you fell over. Lights out, and all that kind of stuff. I've read that you were recording during the Rolling Stones' down time in their actual studio. Well, I don't know exactly how it was all structured. Bill used to organize all of that, and obviously it would be organized around what his Stones commitments were. Because of our relationship with Bill we were in the circle, but it was very much on the periphery. We didn't have any direct contact with the Stones as a band, or even as individuals very much. I certainly can't recall us going in as the Stones were coming out or anything like that. Charlie Watts played on the album, right? Charlie played tablas on "Shades of Orange" and Nicky Hopkins, who was a regular sideman for the Stones, played harpsichord on "Loving, Sacred Loving." Previously, when Dave and I were on the earlier tours, we'd also got on quite well with Charlie, so there was kind of a loose ongoing relationship. It was nice to have him on the session! What kind of producer was Bill Wyman? Was he involved in the arrangements or the songwriting at all? Bill and [engineer] Glyn Johns were both musos and performers so there was a common language and approach. I think we would rehearse the stuff pretty thoroughly before going into the studio and then perform it for Bill and Glyn to listen and make comments and suggestions. As producer, Bill was final arbiter but I don’t recall any great divide between him and us. And I don’t recall any real arguments or tensions. I’m sure there wasn’t always total agreement – that would’ve been unnatural – but we never came to blows. The other extreme, in terms of producers – I saw a TV documentary about this a little while ago – was Blondie's "Parallel Lines" sessions. Particularly how Mike Chapman put "Heart of Glass" together note by note almost. We never worked that way. We couldn't have worked that way. That wasn't our style, because the core stuff would be done live. We weren't doing click tracks and jumps in and out, and all of that. We would play the basic stuff as a live piece, and then add overdubs and elaborate on things as and when necessary. I do remember very clearly one very personal event. We were deep into a night session, everyone was in the control room, possibly a supper break, when I suddenly collapsed on the floor from what felt like a stab in the back with a red-hot poker. I remember looking up at a circle of worried faces – nice to know they cared – and then being rushed off to Epsom hospital. Somehow some sort of rumour about the Stones went round the hospital which caused a bit of a stir amongst the nurses and I remember seeing small groups of them sneaking a look at me from doorways or behind screens. Took my mind off the pain for a moment but they soon realized I wasn’t Brian Jones or Mick and things calmed down. Turned out to be some kind of kidney problem. Not recommended. How big a role did Glyn Johns play in the overall sound? Glyn’s track record speaks for itself. Even at that relatively early stage of his career he was on it. So we got the benefit. The segments featuring George Kenset are fascinating to me. At first I kind of dismissed them as filler, but the more I listen to him, the more I think of him as a key performer on the album. George was Bill's gardener. We’d be hanging out or rehearsing at Bill’s house and George would wander in during a break and just drop these little gems of nonsense into the conversation. And it would make us laugh. And at some point in the proceedings, somebody said, "We should record this stuff! Because if it makes us laugh, it'll make other people laugh." It's the kind of thing I might have said, but I have no idea if I did. Was that unusual at that time – to put something like that on an album? It was a bit unusual. I don't know that we were the first people to do something like that. We thought it would add a bit of colour to the album, and just make people sit up and take notice – "Hello, what's that all about?!" It's a great little time capsule. It is. He was an archetypal English character. A guy from the country who would have these weird little stories that came out of nowhere. Do you remember completing the album? Was there a moment when you delivered the final album to the label? Not really. I don't recall the album being done as a piece. I may be completely wrong in my memory, and other people might have a completely different recollection of it. We were aware that we were putting stuff together for an album, but it wasn't like, for example, if somebody's got a concept album, they'll go in and start on day one and go through to day twenty or whatever it's going to be. It wasn't done like that, as I recall. So I don't remember a day when we said, "Right, the album is now finished." But there was a point at which you were expecting it to come out, and it wasn't coming out. Yeah, that's a whole different thing. There wasn't a last day of shooting, as it were, but what happened with it not coming out when it was completed? I've filed that under "don't want to know what happened." Because it was a big disappointment, and it happened, and there's nothing we could do about it. I don't know exactly what the situation was. I suspect that might be something Bill would have talked about somewhere, and he's probably the only one who knows exactly what was going on, and why things didn't happen. I'm guessing it was tied into some of the Stones' business affairs at the time. But why it came out nearly a year late? Who knows. I certainly don't. Hopefully the new Demon box set which covers pretty much everything we recorded will redress the balance a little. The interest in "Introspection" seems to have grown in the last few years. Be nice to get some wider recognition. Colin Giffin currently resides in Guildford, UK. He continues to record and perform as a solo artist, and as a member of the band Reed Maxfield, who are currently recording their third album, the first involving Colin. Previously:
One thing you learn, sleuthing for obscure psychedelic music from the sixties, is that for every "White Rabbit" there is a "Night Sounds Loud." And a "Crystal Forms." And God knows how many other brilliant songs grown out of the same protoplasm, but forgotten to history. There is just no shortage of mind-exploding songs that have long ago slipped away into The Nothing – standout songs from bands less consistent, or just less lucky than Jefferson Airplane. Even knowing that so much great overlooked music is out there, buried deep in record stacks and on YouTube, I was unprepared for "Introspection" by The End. Ironically, seeing that it was produced by Bill Wyman and engineered by Glyn Johns actually lowered my expectations. Let me explain. For an album with such a pedigree – produced by a Rolling Stone in 1968 – to have completely fallen between the cracks, it couldn't actually be any good, or surely I'd have heard about it before now. Even the album cover is great – is that Charlie Watts' eye?? It was just too good to be true, so it had to be lousy. But it's not lousy. In fact, it's incredibly not lousy. Not just one or two of the songs, either – the whole album is a full-bodied technicolor blowout. Exquisite production, hooks galore and whiplash transitions... you might want to take a minute to dig out your good headphones: The album was set to come out on Decca (the Rolling Stones' label) in 1968, and by all rights conquer the world. But, bafflingly, it was shelved for about a year. Which, in the music scene in the late sixties, might as well have been twenty. When Decca did finally release it, they put nothing behind it, and it sunk like a stone. It will get another chance this November, when Demon Records reissues the album in a deluxe four-disc edition, designed by the legendary Phil Smee. I contacted singer Colin Giffin to learn more about the backstory – and to see if he could explain why such a great album had been so shabbily mistreated. We communicated over email and telephone. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Why don't you start by taking us back to the earliest days of The End. Dave Brown and I formed The End in 1965. Before that, we'd been together with Mike Berry & the Innocents, and we'd done a couple of tours with the Stones in '64. We had got on well with both Bill and Charlie so when The End went out on tour with the Stones in 1965 it felt familiar. Mick was very friendly and made a point of checking that the other acts were settled in as it were. I was never sure if they really noticed us, but then I ran into Mick somewhere in London, twenty years later, and when I mentioned The End he didn't miss a beat. He said, "Oh, yeah, that was Bill's band!" (laughs) So clearly, it registered with him. We got to know Bill fairly well during the course of those two tours. He had always said to us, "Well, if you want to do anything later on, just give me a shout, let me know." When we eventually got in touch it was, I guess, when he was looking to extend his interests into production and management and it seemed to be a good fit. The End were doing some reasonably good quality work, but we weren't playing what we really wanted to play. We were very influenced at the time by the stuff that was coming out of Stax and Atlantic. Artists like Otis Redding and Don Covay and Major Lance. We wanted a manager who would understand and who wasn’t one of the traditional suits. The End, L-R: Dave Brown, Hugh Attwooll, Nicky Graham, Terry Taylor, Colin Giffin
Where does "Introspection" fit into the band's timeline? "Introspection" is toward the end of the timeline. We'd been playing, what do you call it... Blue-eyed soul? We had twin sax and organ, which were the key instrumental elements. If you listen to "Shades of Orange," for example, that's got the twin saxes on it. I suppose that was kind of a transitional piece, still retaining what we had been doing for some time, in terms of the soul influence, but starting to head toward what became the more psychedelic stuff. "Introspection" certainly sounds more psychedelic than Stax... Well exactly, but if you listen to "Shades," the elements from the Stax/Atlantic stuff we used to do are in there. The twin saxes are fairly prominent. It's just been turned on its ear. Yeah! Looking at it now, it sounds like a transitional piece. At the time, we weren't thinking that. We're just going to record the song! You know, but when you look at it in retrospect, you can see how it was kind of a bridge between what we were doing before and what came when we got deeply into "Introspection." Let's talk a bit about the recording sessions for "Introspection" – how that came about and what it was like. As far as I recall, it wasn't a question of saying, "Right, let's record an album." We were doing a lot of recording anyway, and we would go off to Spain – we were quite popular in Spain – and we would write a bunch of songs and come back and record them. And we gradually built up a body of recorded material which became the "Introspection" sessions. We recorded those over a period of time, some at Decca Records' studio in northwest London, in West Hampstead. Incidentally, the house sound engineer was Gus Dudgeon, who went on to produce David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and all the big Elton John records. I used to bump into Gus occasionally in later years, and he would always remember The End sessions. So obviously it struck a chord with him. So he was the house engineer at Decca West Hampstead, and then we were recording at Olympic with Glyn Johns engineering. The sessions we did at Olympic, where the Stones and a lot of other big bands at the time used to record, were very much the standard night time sessions, shall we say. You'd start early evening and just go through until you fell over. Lights out, and all that kind of stuff. I've read that you were recording during the Rolling Stones' down time in their actual studio. Well, I don't know exactly how it was all structured. Bill used to organize all of that, and obviously it would be organized around what his Stones commitments were. Because of our relationship with Bill we were in the circle, but it was very much on the periphery. We didn't have any direct contact with the Stones as a band, or even as individuals very much. I certainly can't recall us going in as the Stones were coming out or anything like that. Charlie Watts played on the album, right? Charlie played tablas on "Shades of Orange" and Nicky Hopkins, who was a regular sideman for the Stones, played harpsichord on "Loving, Sacred Loving." Previously, when Dave and I were on the earlier tours, we'd also got on quite well with Charlie, so there was kind of a loose ongoing relationship. It was nice to have him on the session! What kind of producer was Bill Wyman? Was he involved in the arrangements or the songwriting at all? Bill and [engineer] Glyn Johns were both musos and performers so there was a common language and approach. I think we would rehearse the stuff pretty thoroughly before going into the studio and then perform it for Bill and Glyn to listen and make comments and suggestions. As producer, Bill was final arbiter but I don’t recall any great divide between him and us. And I don’t recall any real arguments or tensions. I’m sure there wasn’t always total agreement – that would’ve been unnatural – but we never came to blows. The other extreme, in terms of producers – I saw a TV documentary about this a little while ago – was Blondie's "Parallel Lines" sessions. Particularly how Mike Chapman put "Heart of Glass" together note by note almost. We never worked that way. We couldn't have worked that way. That wasn't our style, because the core stuff would be done live. We weren't doing click tracks and jumps in and out, and all of that. We would play the basic stuff as a live piece, and then add overdubs and elaborate on things as and when necessary. I do remember very clearly one very personal event. We were deep into a night session, everyone was in the control room, possibly a supper break, when I suddenly collapsed on the floor from what felt like a stab in the back with a red-hot poker. I remember looking up at a circle of worried faces – nice to know they cared – and then being rushed off to Epsom hospital. Somehow some sort of rumour about the Stones went round the hospital which caused a bit of a stir amongst the nurses and I remember seeing small groups of them sneaking a look at me from doorways or behind screens. Took my mind off the pain for a moment but they soon realized I wasn’t Brian Jones or Mick and things calmed down. Turned out to be some kind of kidney problem. Not recommended. How big a role did Glyn Johns play in the overall sound? Glyn’s track record speaks for itself. Even at that relatively early stage of his career he was on it. So we got the benefit. The segments featuring George Kenset are fascinating to me. At first I kind of dismissed them as filler, but the more I listen to him, the more I think of him as a key performer on the album. George was Bill's gardener. We’d be hanging out or rehearsing at Bill’s house and George would wander in during a break and just drop these little gems of nonsense into the conversation. And it would make us laugh. And at some point in the proceedings, somebody said, "We should record this stuff! Because if it makes us laugh, it'll make other people laugh." It's the kind of thing I might have said, but I have no idea if I did. Was that unusual at that time – to put something like that on an album? It was a bit unusual. I don't know that we were the first people to do something like that. We thought it would add a bit of colour to the album, and just make people sit up and take notice – "Hello, what's that all about?!" It's a great little time capsule. It is. He was an archetypal English character. A guy from the country who would have these weird little stories that came out of nowhere. Do you remember completing the album? Was there a moment when you delivered the final album to the label? Not really. I don't recall the album being done as a piece. I may be completely wrong in my memory, and other people might have a completely different recollection of it. We were aware that we were putting stuff together for an album, but it wasn't like, for example, if somebody's got a concept album, they'll go in and start on day one and go through to day twenty or whatever it's going to be. It wasn't done like that, as I recall. So I don't remember a day when we said, "Right, the album is now finished." But there was a point at which you were expecting it to come out, and it wasn't coming out. Yeah, that's a whole different thing. There wasn't a last day of shooting, as it were, but what happened with it not coming out when it was completed? I've filed that under "don't want to know what happened." Because it was a big disappointment, and it happened, and there's nothing we could do about it. I don't know exactly what the situation was. I suspect that might be something Bill would have talked about somewhere, and he's probably the only one who knows exactly what was going on, and why things didn't happen. I'm guessing it was tied into some of the Stones' business affairs at the time. But why it came out nearly a year late? Who knows. I certainly don't. Hopefully the new Demon box set which covers pretty much everything we recorded will redress the balance a little. The interest in "Introspection" seems to have grown in the last few years. Be nice to get some wider recognition. Colin Giffin currently resides in Guildford, UK. He continues to record and perform as a solo artist, and as a member of the band Reed Maxfield, who are currently recording their third album, the first involving Colin. Previously:
Jeb! for president never made any sense: Why his precipitous collapse is far from surprising
Jeb Bush should not have run for president. He’s a banal, gaffe-prone candidate with a sullied name, seeking to lead a party whose recalcitrant base despises everything he represents. It appears that Jeb’s campaign (read: his donors) are beginning to notice what most us predicted: He’s the wrong candidate at the wrong time. And now that Marco Rubio has eclipsed Bush in recent polls in Florida and New Hampshire, both crucial states for Bush’s campaign, Jeb's path to victory looks increasingly narrow. According to this report in Politico, Jeb’s big money donors are in near-panic mode after the latest poll results: 
Jeb Bush should not have run for president. He’s a banal, gaffe-prone candidate with a sullied name, seeking to lead a party whose recalcitrant base despises everything he represents. It appears that Jeb’s campaign (read: his donors) are beginning to notice what most us predicted: He’s the wrong candidate at the wrong time. And now that Marco Rubio has eclipsed Bush in recent polls in Florida and New Hampshire, both crucial states for Bush’s campaign, Jeb's path to victory looks increasingly narrow. According to this report in Politico, Jeb’s big money donors are in near-panic mode after the latest poll results: Jeb Bush should not have run for president. He’s a banal, gaffe-prone candidate with a sullied name, seeking to lead a party whose recalcitrant base despises everything he represents. It appears that Jeb’s campaign (read: his donors) are beginning to notice what most us predicted: He’s the wrong candidate at the wrong time. And now that Marco Rubio has eclipsed Bush in recent polls in Florida and New Hampshire, both crucial states for Bush’s campaign, Jeb's path to victory looks increasingly narrow. According to this report in Politico, Jeb’s big money donors are in near-panic mode after the latest poll results:
For the past week, Jeb Bush’s campaign advisers have been using a new data point to convince nervous donors that he’s still the candidate to beat – Bush’s lead in the political prediction markets. Just one problem: Beginning Sunday night, PredictIt, the biggest of the online sites and the one referenced last week by top Bush advisers and confidants, placed Marco Rubio ahead of Bush at the head of the GOP pack.It’s true that Rubio has just surpassed Bush in the polls, but the writing has been on the wall for months now. Despite all his organizational and financial advantages, Bush has been emasculated by Donald Trump and dominated by two utterly unqualified outsider candidates, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. So far the Bush team appears not to understand what’s happening, and why they can’t get any traction. Fred Zeidman, one of Bush’s operatives, sums up their cluelessness in one revealing statement to Politico: “There’s a lot of concern that if [emphasis mine] the conservative wing of our party takes control, that no Republican [presidential candidate] has a chance; so a lot of folks are waiting to see what happens with the shutdown.” I emphasized “if” because, as everyone knows, the conservative wing hijacked the party years ago, around the time Obama was elected and the Tea Party movement was born. If Bush’s people are still waiting to see how that whole thing shakes out, they’re hopelessly lost. Also troubling (if you’re a Jeb fan) is the fact that the campaign remains blind to what its own base demands. “Bush’s operation,” Politico reports, “continues to stick to the game plan by churning out policy papers and sticking to the mechanics of running for president – such as collecting signatures for ballot access.” Is it not obvious that Republican voters aren’t interested in “policy papers” or ideas at this point? Trump and Carson and Fiorina aren’t leading the pack because of their policy proposals; they’re leading because they’re shamelessly unconstrained by the facts. If Bush’s strategy is to sit tight until the reasonable people take charge, he lost before he began. The truth is that Bush’s campaign never made much sense. Jeb has two selling points: money and a shiny last name. Financially, Jeb does have an advantage, but that can change rather quickly. “Lots of donors,” says Katie Packer Gage, who served as Romney’s campaign manager in 2012, “are holding their money because if the big donor wants anything, they want to be with a winner.” Of course they do, which is why many are likely preparing to join team Rubio, the latest establishment favorite. As for Bush’s last name, it should surprise no one that the Bush legacy has hurt, not helped, Jeb. George W. Bush was arguably our worst president in the last 50 years; the wreckage he left on Obama’s doorstep testifies to that. No one outside the Bush family thought that baggage wouldn’t, eventually, hamstring Jeb’s campaign. Even if Jeb wasn’t an objectively bad candidate (which he is), he still would have run up against this problem. When you combine Bush’s baggage with the anti-establishment fervor in the GOP right now, his decline was inevitable from the very beginning.
Jeb Bush should not have run for president. He’s a banal, gaffe-prone candidate with a sullied name, seeking to lead a party whose recalcitrant base despises everything he represents. It appears that Jeb’s campaign (read: his donors) are beginning to notice what most us predicted: He’s the wrong candidate at the wrong time. And now that Marco Rubio has eclipsed Bush in recent polls in Florida and New Hampshire, both crucial states for Bush’s campaign, Jeb's path to victory looks increasingly narrow. According to this report in Politico, Jeb’s big money donors are in near-panic mode after the latest poll results: For the past week, Jeb Bush’s campaign advisers have been using a new data point to convince nervous donors that he’s still the candidate to beat – Bush’s lead in the political prediction markets. Just one problem: Beginning Sunday night, PredictIt, the biggest of the online sites and the one referenced last week by top Bush advisers and confidants, placed Marco Rubio ahead of Bush at the head of the GOP pack.It’s true that Rubio has just surpassed Bush in the polls, but the writing has been on the wall for months now. Despite all his organizational and financial advantages, Bush has been emasculated by Donald Trump and dominated by two utterly unqualified outsider candidates, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. So far the Bush team appears not to understand what’s happening, and why they can’t get any traction. Fred Zeidman, one of Bush’s operatives, sums up their cluelessness in one revealing statement to Politico: “There’s a lot of concern that if [emphasis mine] the conservative wing of our party takes control, that no Republican [presidential candidate] has a chance; so a lot of folks are waiting to see what happens with the shutdown.” I emphasized “if” because, as everyone knows, the conservative wing hijacked the party years ago, around the time Obama was elected and the Tea Party movement was born. If Bush’s people are still waiting to see how that whole thing shakes out, they’re hopelessly lost. Also troubling (if you’re a Jeb fan) is the fact that the campaign remains blind to what its own base demands. “Bush’s operation,” Politico reports, “continues to stick to the game plan by churning out policy papers and sticking to the mechanics of running for president – such as collecting signatures for ballot access.” Is it not obvious that Republican voters aren’t interested in “policy papers” or ideas at this point? Trump and Carson and Fiorina aren’t leading the pack because of their policy proposals; they’re leading because they’re shamelessly unconstrained by the facts. If Bush’s strategy is to sit tight until the reasonable people take charge, he lost before he began. The truth is that Bush’s campaign never made much sense. Jeb has two selling points: money and a shiny last name. Financially, Jeb does have an advantage, but that can change rather quickly. “Lots of donors,” says Katie Packer Gage, who served as Romney’s campaign manager in 2012, “are holding their money because if the big donor wants anything, they want to be with a winner.” Of course they do, which is why many are likely preparing to join team Rubio, the latest establishment favorite. As for Bush’s last name, it should surprise no one that the Bush legacy has hurt, not helped, Jeb. George W. Bush was arguably our worst president in the last 50 years; the wreckage he left on Obama’s doorstep testifies to that. No one outside the Bush family thought that baggage wouldn’t, eventually, hamstring Jeb’s campaign. Even if Jeb wasn’t an objectively bad candidate (which he is), he still would have run up against this problem. When you combine Bush’s baggage with the anti-establishment fervor in the GOP right now, his decline was inevitable from the very beginning.
Jeb Bush should not have run for president. He’s a banal, gaffe-prone candidate with a sullied name, seeking to lead a party whose recalcitrant base despises everything he represents. It appears that Jeb’s campaign (read: his donors) are beginning to notice what most us predicted: He’s the wrong candidate at the wrong time. And now that Marco Rubio has eclipsed Bush in recent polls in Florida and New Hampshire, both crucial states for Bush’s campaign, Jeb's path to victory looks increasingly narrow. According to this report in Politico, Jeb’s big money donors are in near-panic mode after the latest poll results: For the past week, Jeb Bush’s campaign advisers have been using a new data point to convince nervous donors that he’s still the candidate to beat – Bush’s lead in the political prediction markets. Just one problem: Beginning Sunday night, PredictIt, the biggest of the online sites and the one referenced last week by top Bush advisers and confidants, placed Marco Rubio ahead of Bush at the head of the GOP pack.It’s true that Rubio has just surpassed Bush in the polls, but the writing has been on the wall for months now. Despite all his organizational and financial advantages, Bush has been emasculated by Donald Trump and dominated by two utterly unqualified outsider candidates, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. So far the Bush team appears not to understand what’s happening, and why they can’t get any traction. Fred Zeidman, one of Bush’s operatives, sums up their cluelessness in one revealing statement to Politico: “There’s a lot of concern that if [emphasis mine] the conservative wing of our party takes control, that no Republican [presidential candidate] has a chance; so a lot of folks are waiting to see what happens with the shutdown.” I emphasized “if” because, as everyone knows, the conservative wing hijacked the party years ago, around the time Obama was elected and the Tea Party movement was born. If Bush’s people are still waiting to see how that whole thing shakes out, they’re hopelessly lost. Also troubling (if you’re a Jeb fan) is the fact that the campaign remains blind to what its own base demands. “Bush’s operation,” Politico reports, “continues to stick to the game plan by churning out policy papers and sticking to the mechanics of running for president – such as collecting signatures for ballot access.” Is it not obvious that Republican voters aren’t interested in “policy papers” or ideas at this point? Trump and Carson and Fiorina aren’t leading the pack because of their policy proposals; they’re leading because they’re shamelessly unconstrained by the facts. If Bush’s strategy is to sit tight until the reasonable people take charge, he lost before he began. The truth is that Bush’s campaign never made much sense. Jeb has two selling points: money and a shiny last name. Financially, Jeb does have an advantage, but that can change rather quickly. “Lots of donors,” says Katie Packer Gage, who served as Romney’s campaign manager in 2012, “are holding their money because if the big donor wants anything, they want to be with a winner.” Of course they do, which is why many are likely preparing to join team Rubio, the latest establishment favorite. As for Bush’s last name, it should surprise no one that the Bush legacy has hurt, not helped, Jeb. George W. Bush was arguably our worst president in the last 50 years; the wreckage he left on Obama’s doorstep testifies to that. No one outside the Bush family thought that baggage wouldn’t, eventually, hamstring Jeb’s campaign. Even if Jeb wasn’t an objectively bad candidate (which he is), he still would have run up against this problem. When you combine Bush’s baggage with the anti-establishment fervor in the GOP right now, his decline was inevitable from the very beginning.
September 28, 2015
I’m the woman you met on Ashley Madison: How the rush of infidelity led to affairs online
How many real women are actually using Ashley Madison?
I have no idea, but I can vouch for one.
About a year ago, I found myself overcome by ennui. Having been unfaithful to my (handsome, hilarious and very nearly perfect) husband in the past, I was familiar with the buzz of infidelity, and I wanted to get high again. I'd read about the Ashley Madison website in a magazine article a year or two before, filing the data away for potential future use. Not long after, I looked online to see what the website purported to deliver. As a woman, my registration was free. My interest was immediately piqued.
Skeptical, I provided very little identifying information on my profile at registration. I wanted to hunt without being hunted, and was afraid I'd be found out. By a neighbor. By a friend's husband. By an acquaintance. Or, most horrifyingly, by my father (he was never on the website that I know of, but this remained my most prominent and irrational fear). The personal details I did eventually include were guarded and vanilla. "Not sure what I am doing on here. I have a wonderful husband but ... I'm in my 30's, enjoy my profession, love my adorable family. I like sports and the outdoors. My favorite book is Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, my favorite movie is Steel Magnolias, and my favorite band is The Grateful Dead."
I surfed the profiles of men I never doubted to be real. I looked for handsome faces, some semblance of professional success, and proper grammar/punctuation. It wasn't quite like shopping for shoes at Nordstrom, where everything is beautifully displayed and screams "Buy me! Buy me!" -- but the selection was certainly better than the Goodwill thrift shop down the road. I initiated contact with a few men I found attractive. We exchanged AM messages and then moved the conversation to our personal email accounts. Only then would I provide my real name and a photo. I continued with vague explanations of my extramarital pursuit, but was clear that my husband was the one for me, with no intention of destroying anything on anyone’s home front.
When I finally did feel comfortable to post a (faraway and sunglassed) photo on my AM profile, I was bombarded with likes and winks and invitations to view private photo galleries. At first, it was kind of fun. So many men! So many men who could potentially be mine! Then it became overwhelming. The sheer volume diluted the experience, making it more overstimulating than stimulating. I liked it better when I was doing the shopping.
Yet there was still a deeply addictive quality to it all.
One man once asked me if all the Internet attention "gave me high self-esteem.” I can say with confidence that non-specific, voluminous "likes" and "winks" and generic compliments had very little effect on my own self-worth. I wish it were that easy. Interestingly, men kept telling me how “normal” I seemed. This was the closest to flattered that I felt, a form of reassurance that despite this totally inappropriate, amoral and dishonest venture, I was still A-OK at my core. In hindsight, I recognize “normal” as code for “real” -- not a sex worker, not a robot, but a regular woman.
And the dick-pics. Oh the dick-pics. I didn't even know this was a thing. I still don't want it to be a thing. It seriously shouldn't be a thing.
I finally chatted with someone I found interesting. We’ll call him Dave. We had excellent Internet chemistry, banter that gave me butterflies - only then did I start to entertain the reality of an in-person meeting. It took some persuasion on his part. But I felt little bursts of dopamine activate my neurons during our online chats when I should have been working, playing a game with my son, or going to bed on time. As soon as I conceded that I would meet with him at a restaurant midway between his work and my house, I also resolved to meet with a total of five other men. It was part sociological experiment, part romantic venture and part a thrill-seeking foray into this very secret cheaters’ life.
***
When I was a young girl, I told my dad that when I grew up I wanted to be a doctor or lawyer or pilot and have boyfriends all over the world. “That’s called a high-class hooker, my dear,” he responded.
I have struggled on and off over the years with relationships and the realities of monogamy. But when I met my now-husband, and we worked through a lot of the baggage I brought into the relationship, I knew, without a doubt, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. To adventure together. Raise children together. Grow old together. In sickness and in health. For better or worse. So we got married. And I was faithful. For almost a year.
We once entertained the idea of having an open marriage. Or, he entertained my idea of having an open marriage. But when I did go ahead and sleep with another man and confessed the tryst to my husband, he told me in no uncertain terms that the “open marriage” was off the table. I complied, but then secretly embarked on a more prolonged affair with a local man I met online. Again, I confessed my indiscretion. My husband was hurt, horrified and needed time to reevaluate our relationship. We lived apart for a few months, he threatened divorce, and we went to counseling. Ultimately, he chose forgiveness. And for a few more years I remained faithful.
In reflecting on my proclivity for infidelity, I can only describe it as a kind of sensation seeking -- the addictive quality of falling for someone new -- and a propensity for self-destruction -- reinforcing pathological defense mechanisms. Sure, there’s the sex. And that part is great, sometimes even amazing. But for me, it’s not about a secret kink, an insatiable sexual appetite. or not getting enough attention at home. It’s the novelty of someone else. The intensity. The escape. The possibility. The falling ...
***
As soon as I met my first AM suitor, Dave, in person at the restaurant, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. The online chemistry didn’t translate into real-life chemistry. While I may be easy, I’m still picky. And when, after a cocktail and some awkward conversation, he said quite loudly, “So are we gonna fuck?” I definitely knew it wasn’t going to happen.
Dave was a well-educated man, just a few years my senior. We initially connected over a little-known but well-loved vacation spot. He was cute in a nerdy sort of way, and we developed a quick and witty rapport. I shared things that I seldom discuss with even my closest friends. He reciprocated. We stayed up late chatting, and he often made me laugh out loud. He's married to his college sweetheart, and his wife became pregnant with their third child over the course of our friendship. Having had one extramarital relationship with a single woman he met on OkCupid, he turned to Ashley Madison in search of chemistry with an already-partnered woman. He told me that he didn't feel like he was getting what he needed from his marriage, wanting more in the way of emotional intimacy. He was also open to more varied sexual experiences.
Next I met with a man whom we'll call The LDS Lawyer. His AM profile pictures were high-quality and showcased his many mountain adventures. I'm a sucker for an outdoor alpha male. Doing my pre-meeting detective work, I discovered we shared a mutual Facebook friend. This was both comforting and bizarre. It is a small world after all, and I was hoping to make my world feel bigger, not smaller. We met for drinks at a bar during work hours. He told me right away that he was interested. I was reticent. Sure, I was attracted to him. But he drank three cocktails to my one (it was still daytime), and he and his wife had an interesting sort of arrangement (I felt he had less to lose than I did). I pushed for more conversation, more get-to-know-you kind of talk. He asked me if he could kiss me, and I blushed and shied away. For a minute. Then I went for a drive with him to a park, and we fooled around in the back of his Durango like teenagers.
The LDS Lawyer and I continued to meet like this for several months, fooling around, but never actually having sex. I liked him well enough, but when he confessed that he masturbated to the thought of impregnating me and professed that he was "mildly" in love with me, I broke off the relationship.
The third man I met, I'lll call Texas Ranger. His was one of the first profile photos I noticed, and he wasn't immediately responsive to my initial message. He must have a life outside of technology and pursuit of extramarital affairs, I thought, that is downright sexy in this day and age. I later learned he was training in the mountains in Peru, and messaged me after a day spent jumping out of planes. We exchanged a few emails and agreed to meet at a bar.
Texas Ranger looked smaller and had thinner hair than in his photos. Nonetheless, I was immediately attracted, drawn to him as if we’d known each other for years. We drank whiskey and discussed the confines of monogamy. We exchanged travel stories. I talked passionately about my work, and pressed him for details about his confidential military job. He asked smart questions, and actually listened to the answers. But in a thoughtful, aloof sort of way. He described himself as someone who desired to meet and expand, to discover and know. He wasn’t married, opposed to the institution, in fact, but was with a “fantastic partner,” whom he had “no business straying from.” This alone connected us.
Despite the genuine chemistry with Texas Ranger, I met with a fourth man, let’s call him Not A Doctor, at his apartment. I emailed him beforehand: “Since meeting at your place is somewhat shady, just promise me that if you rape and kill me that you’ll tell my family where to find the body, and not that we met via AM." He was in the process of divorcing his wife, a relationship that, per my prodding, seemed volatile and doomed from the start. He was on AM because he wanted to meet women who weren't looking for serious commitment. He physically came on strong -- caressing my thighs, kissing my neck, trying to unbutton my dress. I resisted, and pushed him away. "You like this, don't you," he said coyly. The physical attention actually made me uncomfortable, but ultimately I conceded that this was all part of the adventure. After we fooled around, I insisted on knowing more about him, about his failed marriage, about the women he'd met on Ashley Madison, about his job in medical sales. As my curfew approached, he walked me -- and his little dog -- to my car. I kissed him on the cheek, knowing we'd never see each other again.
And to round out my commitment to meet with five different men, I met the fifth and final AM suitor at one of my favorite coffee shops downtown. Let’s call him Idaho. I knew immediately, before even approaching the table where he was sitting, with perfectly erect posture and drinking his coffee black, that I wasn't interested. He just wasn't my type. He had recently relocated to the city for a new job, living apart from his wife and kids in an entirely different state. He was fully committed to staying with his family, but he and his wife were no longer physical in any way, because of her mental health issues and medication regimen. He was nice enough, but not a person I wanted to sleep with, let alone cheat on my husband with. He asked if he could see me again, I declined, attributing my reticence to my lack of clarity about the whole venture. We politely bid each other adieu. And I still couldn’t get Texas Ranger out of my head.
Texas Ranger and I have been in some version of a relationship for nearly a year now. At times it has enhanced my marriage, inspiring me to go down on my husband, reminding me that my man is as good as it gets. And at other times this relationship totally undermines my marriage, creating resentment over my responsibilities and time constraints, making me question my chosen life path. Technically speaking, Texas Ranger and I have no future together. He loves his girlfriend and intends to propose marriage. I love my husband and intend to become pregnant with another child. But I just can’t give him up. For one, I sincerely like him, but also there’s an addictive quality to it all. I crave him, I get my fix, and then I want more. My insatiable appetite, not just for the sex, but for the whole confusing mix of physical and emotional feelings, persists. Maybe it’s the escape from real life. The exploration of something new. The thrill of falling for someone else. But ironically, there’s also a very isolating quality to infidelity. There is no one to talk to about it all, to reflect on my actions, to process the big picture. I can’t talk to my lover about my husband. I can't seek advice for marital spats or discuss fertility woes. And I can't talk to my husband about my lover. I can't brag to him about the amazing sex, or cry to him with the heartbreak that is being involved with a man who loves someone else. None of it makes any sense to me yet, and the secrecy draws me further, not closer, from the people in my life. In my search for excitement, romance, connection and intimacy, I’m as alone as I’ve ever been. Sometimes I wonder if that’s the point.
“NASA has to be extraordinarily careful”: What happens now that we know there’s water on Mars
On Monday, NASA announced evidence of water on Mars – not water in the distant past, but in the contemporary life of the red planet. “Right now, 140 million miles away, somewhere on the frigid surface of Mars, there is water forming,” the Atlantic reports of an announcement by NASA. “Scientists announced they have strong evidence that briny water flows on the planet, a critical step toward identifying possible life on Mars.” This is not the first time scientists have suspected water, but it’s the most solid announcement from the scientific community. Of course, anyone who’s ever read a science-fiction novel or watched an old film about Mars immediately pictured little green men. But what does the new report mean – and not mean? We spoke to Derrick Pitts, the chief astronomer and planetarium director at the Philadelphia science museum the Franklin Institute; he’s also been a guest of Stephen Colbert and and Craig Ferguson. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Let’s start with today’s news about Mars. What does this tell us that we didn’t know? So what we learned today is that NASA has definitive evidence that there is liquid water acting on the surface of Mars today. They didn’t see water flowing, but they saw, instead, the precipitate of salt that would come out of water when that water evaporates. For someone like you, who pays attention to the heavens, how shocking was this? It depends on where you are on this. If you follow the Mars story pretty closely, you’ll find that this is not surprising. It’s not surprising because the actual observation of the features that were revealed today, those pictures have been around for at least five years. If you are a student of geology at all, you could look at those pictures that have been around for five years and say, “A-ha – that looks like evidence of some liquid on the surface, because of the way the wet surface grows in extent in length, then seems to disappear over time. The recurring aspect of this would lead someone familiar with the story to recognize what’s going on here. The most important thing that’s going on today is that NASA has confirmed that they have a strong enough body of evidence that they feel confident to say that the features are caused by liquid water. So it’s not another case, which we’ve seen before, announcing that Mars has had water many thousands of years ago. This is seasonal change in the present. That’s a good way to say it. We can look at the surface features of Mars and easily see that billions of years ago, Mars had more water. I’m telling you, I was looking at satellite pictures of Mars, back in the late 1970s/early ‘80s, and I knew for certain I was seeing fluvial erosion created by water. But there were no landers on the ground. Now we’re much more confident. There were people – you included – who were pretty confident that there was water on contemporary Mars, not in the distant past… How long ago were you and your colleagues pretty certain of it? At least five years ago. I’d look and say, “Yeah, OK, it looks to me like there is still some kind of water activity going on now.” The funny thing about Mars – not the case with the other planets – is that there have been rumors and fantasy and mythology about water and life on Mars going way back. What make Mars special in the imagination? Mars has been the subject of speculation about life since the early 20th century, since the crude observations made at that time seemed to indicate that there was liquid water flowing on Mars. And that it was probably connected to some civilization… The “canals” of Mars, right? Yes the canals of Mars… But nowadays, we actually have scientific evidence of what the surface looks like – not canals. What we were seeing back then were dust storms and things of that sort. What we are seeing now, because of close-up satellite images, indicate the presence of water billions of years ago. It seemed like Mars, from the beginning, especially in the work of Percival Lowell [from the 1890s to about 1910], was documented at the same time a lot of speculation took place – science and fantasy got tangled up together. Observation was tied up in the fantasy of alien life forms. Why didn’t we fantasize the same way about other planets? Mars was the only one that looked in any way terrestrial. So the speculation was made -- maybe there’s some life there. Does the new announcement tell us anything about the possibility of life in the present or distant past? And of course life can mean a single-celled organism, up to an intelligent species with language and technology and everything else. Does this move that story forward? What this does is show us that there were many more locations on Mars where the environment was probably conducive to the development or existence of life. What the Curiosity Rover showed us was that the places it had already examined were conducive to the development of life. What this discovery tells us is that any of places where we see the same [visual pattern] could support life. What’s great about that is if you can identify in the satellite photographs more locations like this around the planet, you multiply the possibilities, around the planet, where life might have existed. And that’s much easier to do from the satellite photos than to drop Rovers in each and every one of those locations. It sounds like there’s still a lot of speculation involved, especially when it comes to the existence of life. Will we know more about any of these questions any time soon? No, we won’t – the short answer is no. The reason I say that is that we may’ve been able to identify locations where water exists as a liquid. But that still doesn’t give us any solid evidence of either the past existence of life, or the current existence of life. For example, we’re not even sure what the source of the water is. So there’s a lot more work that has to be done. NASA has to be extraordinarily careful to take it step by step. They can’t speculate, they can’t jump the gun on anything. They need to have hard evidence of every step they take, so when they take the ultimate step of saying anything about the existence of life, they will have built that on absolutely rock-solid, incontrovertible, science-community-vetted evidence. Does NASA have a history of jumping the gun or racing ahead with this kind of thing? No, they do not – they’re very careful that they do not do that. We’re talking about a group of the highest-caliber scientists and engineers on the planet – they know how to be careful, how not to jump to conclusions. Not perfect, but very cautious. Remind us laypeople about the evidence of water and potentially life in other parts of the solar system, including the moons of the gas giants. There are two other places in the solar system – one is a moon of Jupiter, the other a moon of Saturn – where we find a construction where the moon has an outer layer or ice that overlays an ocean of liquid water underneath. If that ocean is liquid, the supposition is that perhaps there is a chance that life has evolved there, since the type of life that we’re familiar with is completely based on water. That’s just a supposition – we have no other evidence except that startling fact that we found water on these moons, which was completely unexpected. It sounds like we know more than we used to, but there’s still a lot more to know. Maybe our grandchildren will get some of the answers to these questions. You’re right – we know far more than we ever have known before. And the knowledge we’ve gained in the last decade has completely changed our knowledge of the solar system and the galaxy and the universe. I think our grandkids are in for a great ride in terms of understanding all of it, and our place in it.On Monday, NASA announced evidence of water on Mars – not water in the distant past, but in the contemporary life of the red planet. “Right now, 140 million miles away, somewhere on the frigid surface of Mars, there is water forming,” the Atlantic reports of an announcement by NASA. “Scientists announced they have strong evidence that briny water flows on the planet, a critical step toward identifying possible life on Mars.” This is not the first time scientists have suspected water, but it’s the most solid announcement from the scientific community. Of course, anyone who’s ever read a science-fiction novel or watched an old film about Mars immediately pictured little green men. But what does the new report mean – and not mean? We spoke to Derrick Pitts, the chief astronomer and planetarium director at the Philadelphia science museum the Franklin Institute; he’s also been a guest of Stephen Colbert and and Craig Ferguson. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Let’s start with today’s news about Mars. What does this tell us that we didn’t know? So what we learned today is that NASA has definitive evidence that there is liquid water acting on the surface of Mars today. They didn’t see water flowing, but they saw, instead, the precipitate of salt that would come out of water when that water evaporates. For someone like you, who pays attention to the heavens, how shocking was this? It depends on where you are on this. If you follow the Mars story pretty closely, you’ll find that this is not surprising. It’s not surprising because the actual observation of the features that were revealed today, those pictures have been around for at least five years. If you are a student of geology at all, you could look at those pictures that have been around for five years and say, “A-ha – that looks like evidence of some liquid on the surface, because of the way the wet surface grows in extent in length, then seems to disappear over time. The recurring aspect of this would lead someone familiar with the story to recognize what’s going on here. The most important thing that’s going on today is that NASA has confirmed that they have a strong enough body of evidence that they feel confident to say that the features are caused by liquid water. So it’s not another case, which we’ve seen before, announcing that Mars has had water many thousands of years ago. This is seasonal change in the present. That’s a good way to say it. We can look at the surface features of Mars and easily see that billions of years ago, Mars had more water. I’m telling you, I was looking at satellite pictures of Mars, back in the late 1970s/early ‘80s, and I knew for certain I was seeing fluvial erosion created by water. But there were no landers on the ground. Now we’re much more confident. There were people – you included – who were pretty confident that there was water on contemporary Mars, not in the distant past… How long ago were you and your colleagues pretty certain of it? At least five years ago. I’d look and say, “Yeah, OK, it looks to me like there is still some kind of water activity going on now.” The funny thing about Mars – not the case with the other planets – is that there have been rumors and fantasy and mythology about water and life on Mars going way back. What make Mars special in the imagination? Mars has been the subject of speculation about life since the early 20th century, since the crude observations made at that time seemed to indicate that there was liquid water flowing on Mars. And that it was probably connected to some civilization… The “canals” of Mars, right? Yes the canals of Mars… But nowadays, we actually have scientific evidence of what the surface looks like – not canals. What we were seeing back then were dust storms and things of that sort. What we are seeing now, because of close-up satellite images, indicate the presence of water billions of years ago. It seemed like Mars, from the beginning, especially in the work of Percival Lowell [from the 1890s to about 1910], was documented at the same time a lot of speculation took place – science and fantasy got tangled up together. Observation was tied up in the fantasy of alien life forms. Why didn’t we fantasize the same way about other planets? Mars was the only one that looked in any way terrestrial. So the speculation was made -- maybe there’s some life there. Does the new announcement tell us anything about the possibility of life in the present or distant past? And of course life can mean a single-celled organism, up to an intelligent species with language and technology and everything else. Does this move that story forward? What this does is show us that there were many more locations on Mars where the environment was probably conducive to the development or existence of life. What the Curiosity Rover showed us was that the places it had already examined were conducive to the development of life. What this discovery tells us is that any of places where we see the same [visual pattern] could support life. What’s great about that is if you can identify in the satellite photographs more locations like this around the planet, you multiply the possibilities, around the planet, where life might have existed. And that’s much easier to do from the satellite photos than to drop Rovers in each and every one of those locations. It sounds like there’s still a lot of speculation involved, especially when it comes to the existence of life. Will we know more about any of these questions any time soon? No, we won’t – the short answer is no. The reason I say that is that we may’ve been able to identify locations where water exists as a liquid. But that still doesn’t give us any solid evidence of either the past existence of life, or the current existence of life. For example, we’re not even sure what the source of the water is. So there’s a lot more work that has to be done. NASA has to be extraordinarily careful to take it step by step. They can’t speculate, they can’t jump the gun on anything. They need to have hard evidence of every step they take, so when they take the ultimate step of saying anything about the existence of life, they will have built that on absolutely rock-solid, incontrovertible, science-community-vetted evidence. Does NASA have a history of jumping the gun or racing ahead with this kind of thing? No, they do not – they’re very careful that they do not do that. We’re talking about a group of the highest-caliber scientists and engineers on the planet – they know how to be careful, how not to jump to conclusions. Not perfect, but very cautious. Remind us laypeople about the evidence of water and potentially life in other parts of the solar system, including the moons of the gas giants. There are two other places in the solar system – one is a moon of Jupiter, the other a moon of Saturn – where we find a construction where the moon has an outer layer or ice that overlays an ocean of liquid water underneath. If that ocean is liquid, the supposition is that perhaps there is a chance that life has evolved there, since the type of life that we’re familiar with is completely based on water. That’s just a supposition – we have no other evidence except that startling fact that we found water on these moons, which was completely unexpected. It sounds like we know more than we used to, but there’s still a lot more to know. Maybe our grandchildren will get some of the answers to these questions. You’re right – we know far more than we ever have known before. And the knowledge we’ve gained in the last decade has completely changed our knowledge of the solar system and the galaxy and the universe. I think our grandkids are in for a great ride in terms of understanding all of it, and our place in it.On Monday, NASA announced evidence of water on Mars – not water in the distant past, but in the contemporary life of the red planet. “Right now, 140 million miles away, somewhere on the frigid surface of Mars, there is water forming,” the Atlantic reports of an announcement by NASA. “Scientists announced they have strong evidence that briny water flows on the planet, a critical step toward identifying possible life on Mars.” This is not the first time scientists have suspected water, but it’s the most solid announcement from the scientific community. Of course, anyone who’s ever read a science-fiction novel or watched an old film about Mars immediately pictured little green men. But what does the new report mean – and not mean? We spoke to Derrick Pitts, the chief astronomer and planetarium director at the Philadelphia science museum the Franklin Institute; he’s also been a guest of Stephen Colbert and and Craig Ferguson. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Let’s start with today’s news about Mars. What does this tell us that we didn’t know? So what we learned today is that NASA has definitive evidence that there is liquid water acting on the surface of Mars today. They didn’t see water flowing, but they saw, instead, the precipitate of salt that would come out of water when that water evaporates. For someone like you, who pays attention to the heavens, how shocking was this? It depends on where you are on this. If you follow the Mars story pretty closely, you’ll find that this is not surprising. It’s not surprising because the actual observation of the features that were revealed today, those pictures have been around for at least five years. If you are a student of geology at all, you could look at those pictures that have been around for five years and say, “A-ha – that looks like evidence of some liquid on the surface, because of the way the wet surface grows in extent in length, then seems to disappear over time. The recurring aspect of this would lead someone familiar with the story to recognize what’s going on here. The most important thing that’s going on today is that NASA has confirmed that they have a strong enough body of evidence that they feel confident to say that the features are caused by liquid water. So it’s not another case, which we’ve seen before, announcing that Mars has had water many thousands of years ago. This is seasonal change in the present. That’s a good way to say it. We can look at the surface features of Mars and easily see that billions of years ago, Mars had more water. I’m telling you, I was looking at satellite pictures of Mars, back in the late 1970s/early ‘80s, and I knew for certain I was seeing fluvial erosion created by water. But there were no landers on the ground. Now we’re much more confident. There were people – you included – who were pretty confident that there was water on contemporary Mars, not in the distant past… How long ago were you and your colleagues pretty certain of it? At least five years ago. I’d look and say, “Yeah, OK, it looks to me like there is still some kind of water activity going on now.” The funny thing about Mars – not the case with the other planets – is that there have been rumors and fantasy and mythology about water and life on Mars going way back. What make Mars special in the imagination? Mars has been the subject of speculation about life since the early 20th century, since the crude observations made at that time seemed to indicate that there was liquid water flowing on Mars. And that it was probably connected to some civilization… The “canals” of Mars, right? Yes the canals of Mars… But nowadays, we actually have scientific evidence of what the surface looks like – not canals. What we were seeing back then were dust storms and things of that sort. What we are seeing now, because of close-up satellite images, indicate the presence of water billions of years ago. It seemed like Mars, from the beginning, especially in the work of Percival Lowell [from the 1890s to about 1910], was documented at the same time a lot of speculation took place – science and fantasy got tangled up together. Observation was tied up in the fantasy of alien life forms. Why didn’t we fantasize the same way about other planets? Mars was the only one that looked in any way terrestrial. So the speculation was made -- maybe there’s some life there. Does the new announcement tell us anything about the possibility of life in the present or distant past? And of course life can mean a single-celled organism, up to an intelligent species with language and technology and everything else. Does this move that story forward? What this does is show us that there were many more locations on Mars where the environment was probably conducive to the development or existence of life. What the Curiosity Rover showed us was that the places it had already examined were conducive to the development of life. What this discovery tells us is that any of places where we see the same [visual pattern] could support life. What’s great about that is if you can identify in the satellite photographs more locations like this around the planet, you multiply the possibilities, around the planet, where life might have existed. And that’s much easier to do from the satellite photos than to drop Rovers in each and every one of those locations. It sounds like there’s still a lot of speculation involved, especially when it comes to the existence of life. Will we know more about any of these questions any time soon? No, we won’t – the short answer is no. The reason I say that is that we may’ve been able to identify locations where water exists as a liquid. But that still doesn’t give us any solid evidence of either the past existence of life, or the current existence of life. For example, we’re not even sure what the source of the water is. So there’s a lot more work that has to be done. NASA has to be extraordinarily careful to take it step by step. They can’t speculate, they can’t jump the gun on anything. They need to have hard evidence of every step they take, so when they take the ultimate step of saying anything about the existence of life, they will have built that on absolutely rock-solid, incontrovertible, science-community-vetted evidence. Does NASA have a history of jumping the gun or racing ahead with this kind of thing? No, they do not – they’re very careful that they do not do that. We’re talking about a group of the highest-caliber scientists and engineers on the planet – they know how to be careful, how not to jump to conclusions. Not perfect, but very cautious. Remind us laypeople about the evidence of water and potentially life in other parts of the solar system, including the moons of the gas giants. There are two other places in the solar system – one is a moon of Jupiter, the other a moon of Saturn – where we find a construction where the moon has an outer layer or ice that overlays an ocean of liquid water underneath. If that ocean is liquid, the supposition is that perhaps there is a chance that life has evolved there, since the type of life that we’re familiar with is completely based on water. That’s just a supposition – we have no other evidence except that startling fact that we found water on these moons, which was completely unexpected. It sounds like we know more than we used to, but there’s still a lot more to know. Maybe our grandchildren will get some of the answers to these questions. You’re right – we know far more than we ever have known before. And the knowledge we’ve gained in the last decade has completely changed our knowledge of the solar system and the galaxy and the universe. I think our grandkids are in for a great ride in terms of understanding all of it, and our place in it.On Monday, NASA announced evidence of water on Mars – not water in the distant past, but in the contemporary life of the red planet. “Right now, 140 million miles away, somewhere on the frigid surface of Mars, there is water forming,” the Atlantic reports of an announcement by NASA. “Scientists announced they have strong evidence that briny water flows on the planet, a critical step toward identifying possible life on Mars.” This is not the first time scientists have suspected water, but it’s the most solid announcement from the scientific community. Of course, anyone who’s ever read a science-fiction novel or watched an old film about Mars immediately pictured little green men. But what does the new report mean – and not mean? We spoke to Derrick Pitts, the chief astronomer and planetarium director at the Philadelphia science museum the Franklin Institute; he’s also been a guest of Stephen Colbert and and Craig Ferguson. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Let’s start with today’s news about Mars. What does this tell us that we didn’t know? So what we learned today is that NASA has definitive evidence that there is liquid water acting on the surface of Mars today. They didn’t see water flowing, but they saw, instead, the precipitate of salt that would come out of water when that water evaporates. For someone like you, who pays attention to the heavens, how shocking was this? It depends on where you are on this. If you follow the Mars story pretty closely, you’ll find that this is not surprising. It’s not surprising because the actual observation of the features that were revealed today, those pictures have been around for at least five years. If you are a student of geology at all, you could look at those pictures that have been around for five years and say, “A-ha – that looks like evidence of some liquid on the surface, because of the way the wet surface grows in extent in length, then seems to disappear over time. The recurring aspect of this would lead someone familiar with the story to recognize what’s going on here. The most important thing that’s going on today is that NASA has confirmed that they have a strong enough body of evidence that they feel confident to say that the features are caused by liquid water. So it’s not another case, which we’ve seen before, announcing that Mars has had water many thousands of years ago. This is seasonal change in the present. That’s a good way to say it. We can look at the surface features of Mars and easily see that billions of years ago, Mars had more water. I’m telling you, I was looking at satellite pictures of Mars, back in the late 1970s/early ‘80s, and I knew for certain I was seeing fluvial erosion created by water. But there were no landers on the ground. Now we’re much more confident. There were people – you included – who were pretty confident that there was water on contemporary Mars, not in the distant past… How long ago were you and your colleagues pretty certain of it? At least five years ago. I’d look and say, “Yeah, OK, it looks to me like there is still some kind of water activity going on now.” The funny thing about Mars – not the case with the other planets – is that there have been rumors and fantasy and mythology about water and life on Mars going way back. What make Mars special in the imagination? Mars has been the subject of speculation about life since the early 20th century, since the crude observations made at that time seemed to indicate that there was liquid water flowing on Mars. And that it was probably connected to some civilization… The “canals” of Mars, right? Yes the canals of Mars… But nowadays, we actually have scientific evidence of what the surface looks like – not canals. What we were seeing back then were dust storms and things of that sort. What we are seeing now, because of close-up satellite images, indicate the presence of water billions of years ago. It seemed like Mars, from the beginning, especially in the work of Percival Lowell [from the 1890s to about 1910], was documented at the same time a lot of speculation took place – science and fantasy got tangled up together. Observation was tied up in the fantasy of alien life forms. Why didn’t we fantasize the same way about other planets? Mars was the only one that looked in any way terrestrial. So the speculation was made -- maybe there’s some life there. Does the new announcement tell us anything about the possibility of life in the present or distant past? And of course life can mean a single-celled organism, up to an intelligent species with language and technology and everything else. Does this move that story forward? What this does is show us that there were many more locations on Mars where the environment was probably conducive to the development or existence of life. What the Curiosity Rover showed us was that the places it had already examined were conducive to the development of life. What this discovery tells us is that any of places where we see the same [visual pattern] could support life. What’s great about that is if you can identify in the satellite photographs more locations like this around the planet, you multiply the possibilities, around the planet, where life might have existed. And that’s much easier to do from the satellite photos than to drop Rovers in each and every one of those locations. It sounds like there’s still a lot of speculation involved, especially when it comes to the existence of life. Will we know more about any of these questions any time soon? No, we won’t – the short answer is no. The reason I say that is that we may’ve been able to identify locations where water exists as a liquid. But that still doesn’t give us any solid evidence of either the past existence of life, or the current existence of life. For example, we’re not even sure what the source of the water is. So there’s a lot more work that has to be done. NASA has to be extraordinarily careful to take it step by step. They can’t speculate, they can’t jump the gun on anything. They need to have hard evidence of every step they take, so when they take the ultimate step of saying anything about the existence of life, they will have built that on absolutely rock-solid, incontrovertible, science-community-vetted evidence. Does NASA have a history of jumping the gun or racing ahead with this kind of thing? No, they do not – they’re very careful that they do not do that. We’re talking about a group of the highest-caliber scientists and engineers on the planet – they know how to be careful, how not to jump to conclusions. Not perfect, but very cautious. Remind us laypeople about the evidence of water and potentially life in other parts of the solar system, including the moons of the gas giants. There are two other places in the solar system – one is a moon of Jupiter, the other a moon of Saturn – where we find a construction where the moon has an outer layer or ice that overlays an ocean of liquid water underneath. If that ocean is liquid, the supposition is that perhaps there is a chance that life has evolved there, since the type of life that we’re familiar with is completely based on water. That’s just a supposition – we have no other evidence except that startling fact that we found water on these moons, which was completely unexpected. It sounds like we know more than we used to, but there’s still a lot more to know. Maybe our grandchildren will get some of the answers to these questions. You’re right – we know far more than we ever have known before. And the knowledge we’ve gained in the last decade has completely changed our knowledge of the solar system and the galaxy and the universe. I think our grandkids are in for a great ride in terms of understanding all of it, and our place in it.
