CelestialFamily

My Review of Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer

(Warning: There are a few spoilers)

First of all, I must confess that the only reason I chose to read this book was because I love Jon Krakauer’s work. As I pointed out last week I think he is an excellent investigative reporter. Even when the events he’s reporting on are partially concealed by the Alaskan back-country, the deadly slopes of the highest mountain in the world, secretive polygamist societies or in this case by the chaos and fog of war. I had made up my mind about Pat Tillman and was not really interested in devoting my reading time to this poster-boy of the war effort in Iraq. It was only my history with Krakauer’s work that made me reconsider my prejudices. And my preconceptions about Tillman couldn’t have been more wrong.
Since I don’t understand football I didn’t have any clue who Pat Tillman was before the Bush administration chose to make him the poster boy for the war effort when he turned his back on a $3,000,000 contract to join the Rangers and do his part to help out in the war in Afghanistan. I don’t think that football players are a special class of people so I saw his sacrifice as just the same as any other person who chose to put their life in danger to protect my rights. And I got a particular bee in my bonnet after his death when the right wing media tried to spin his death as meaning more than any other soldier’s death. Tillman put himself in harm’s way to protect my liberties. He literally gave his all. Yet so did thousands of other soldiers. Their future earning potential is irrelevant. They gave their lives for this country.
So I had pigeon-holed Pat Tillman, without any research on my part, as a mindless jock who just jumped behind the war effort because he’d heard Toby Keith’s song and wanted to go act it out. Indeed that is the way much of the talk show noise spun his enlistment. If you still believe this distortion of who Pat really was you will be very disappointed when you read the book.
Pat was probably one of the more literate people to ever wear an NFL jersey. When the other players on his team were buying the fanciest cars they could and just partying, Pat was being teased about driving his used Volvo to practice and spending most of his spare time completing his Master’s degree. Pat was a voracious reader. Among his favorite authors was Emerson, Thoreau, Homer and Noam Chomsky. The title of the book is a quote from the Odyssey, which Tillman particularly like and had a copy of it with him in Afghanistan.
Pat kept meticulous journals. Much of the book is quotes taken straight from these journals. At a couple points Krakauer used phrases that I thought were unnecessarily partisan. I thought that he was just putting his own opinions into the book which wouldn’t have been appropriate for an investigative report like this. Then I stepped back and realized that these weren’t Krakauer’s opinions, they were Tillman’s taken straight from his journals. With my preconception of Pat I just hadn’t expected him to make statements like, “the neo-conservative brain-trust in The White House” and “that cowboy at the helm”. Those were some of the nicer things that Pat said about his Commander-in-Chief. You see Pat really didn’t fit the mold. He didn’t think we had any business in Iraq at all. He and his brother, Kevin, had enlisted to assist in the war in Afghanistan. They were both very vocal and upset and felt tricked into fighting in a war they didn’t agree with.
Krakauer departed strictly from Tillman’s story for a little bit to give a history of U. S. friendly fire accidents. Although the press didn’t dwell on it too much the first confirmed deaths of the Iraq war were friendly-fire accidents. This short history of accidental fratricide in the military was necessary to show the predisposition of the military to covering up the facts. In a friendly fire death the investigative agency is the military itself. There is no other agency involved like there is with other accidents. In a plane crash the airline doesn’t investigate themselves. That task falls to the NTSB in order to avoid a conflict of interest. So with the military there is a serious conflict of interest and tendency to push the blame as far down the chain of command as possible. This section seemed hauntingly familiar and I kept thinking about Zimbardo’s work on situational evil.
The descriptions of war in this book are quite graphic and not for the squeamish. The day I finished the book I was so emotionally jarred by it that when I came home and saw my son taking joy in a war video game I just couldn’t stay quiet. He deserved to be criticized for his behavior, but I was definitely responding more to my feeling about this book than I was to his behavior.
“When the military is confronted with the fratricidal carnage that predictably results, denial and dissembling are its time honored responses of first resort.”
After Tillman’s death the extent to which the military and the government took to spin and cover up the specifics was particularly unnerving. The members of Pat’s unit were sworn to secrecy about the incident even from Pat’s brother, Kevin who was in the same unit. The doctor who performed Pat’s autopsy was denied the details of his death and ultimately refused to sign the official report because his investigation had been so hindered that he knew his autopsy was incomplete. Pat’s brain was never actually recovered. Pat’s uniform, body armor and personal effects were removed and burned in open defiance of military protocol. Along with the uniform was a notebook that Pat had been keeping his journal on while they were deployed. Of the two letters written for Pat’s posthumous Silver Star one was edited so much in the final edition that the author didn’t even recognize it and the other was unsigned and the alleged author did not remember even writing it.
I’m glad I read this book. It put a face on the men and women who are dying in our country's wars. I’m glad I got to know Tillman better. I still think it’s a shame that there isn’t a similar book written about every single soldier killed in action. The Bush administration unashamedly tried to spin Tillman’s story into a ideal of post 9-11 patriotism. Instead Tillman’s story became a story of unnecessary sacrifice, inept leadership and cover-up. But Pat’s legacy is stronger than that. Thanks his mother, brother, wife and this book Pat still refuses to be reduced to a stereotype and lives on in the lives of those he inspired.

1. Why did you invent so many ways for things to fly? Birds, insects and bats all have very different means of flying. Wouldn't it have been more intelligent to figure out which was the most efficient method and make everything fly the same way?

2. Why do dolphin fins, bat wings, and my hands all have very similar skeletal structure? What is so intelligent about making basically the same design perform three drastically different jobs?

3. As a man what purpose do my nipples serve? Don't get me wrong. I've kind of grown used to them. I'm just curious what you had planned for me to do with them since male mammals don't lactate.

4. Why is human reproduction so ridiculously inefficient? In her life time an average human female will produce several hundred eggs and only a very small percentage will ever be fertilized. Don't get me started with human males. Millions of sperm die for every one that wins the race.

5. Would it have hurt for humans to have those cool closable nostrils like seals and otters? I've never been a very good swimmer but if I had nostrils like that I could do a lot better.

6. And speaking of seals, if they're gonna spend so much time in the water, wouldn't it have made more sense for them to have blow-holes like whales and dolphins?

7. Why did I have to have my wisdom teeth pulled? They never came in all the way and even if they had, it's not like I have to chew on sticks to get to the soft stuff in the middle.

8. Why did you design my eyeball with the rods and cones behind all the blood vessels? Wouldn't it be more intelligent to put the blood vessels behind the photo-receptive cells?

9. What's the design advantage of making me breath and eat using the same tube? Was this just your way of giving Heimlich something to invent?

10. Why did you design so many thousands of fossils that look as if life was evolving? As an engineer when I design something I sign my work. You seem to have signed your work “Evolution”.

I am a space nut. As a kid I built models of the Apollo lunar landers. I was too young to remember the Apollo project first hand, but I do remember Skylab and the Apollo/Soyux missions. I even got permission from my folks to skip school and watch the first shuttle launch and landing. I also remember quite vividly the first pictures sent back from the surface of Mars by the Viking lander. I remember thinking how lucky I was to grow up in a time when the Voyager’s grand tour was even possible. I watched the first raw image returns from the Cassini missions live as they came in from Saturn in 2004. Every day I check multiple Astronomy websites and I make a conscious point to look up in the mornings as I walk to the car and see if I can locate the planets that are currently visible.

So with this introduction you might find it odd that I applaud the announcement to all but kill NASA’s manned space flight program. I don’t have a problem with manned space flight in particular. We just need to look at it honestly and objectively and see what kind of return on our investment we’ve gotten on manned space flight when compared to robotic missions.

While Voyager was taking pictures of Jupiter and all its moons Apollo Soyux was just trying to see if we could get Russians and American’s to shake hands. While Cassini Huygens was taking the best shots of Saturn ever manned missions were trying to figure out how to not burn up another shuttle during re-entry. While Mars Pathfinder more than doubles its life expectancy and continues to send back data from Mars manned missions are trying to figure out how to rescue a shuttle if tiles get damaged on the shuttle. While Hubble continues each day to amaze us with images from the extremes of the universe the ISS is trying to figure out how astronauts can process their own urine and re-drink it. I could go on and on with these examples but my only point is that while the robots are doing real research and doing a bang up job in the process the manned missions are quite literally doing little more than trying to figure out how to stay alive.

I’m not denying the political chest thumping advantage of being able to say we are the only country that has ever set foot on the moon. But let’s not deny that that’s all that it really was. The science was at best and afterthought. We only actually put one scientist up there and he was bumped up to an earlier mission when we realized that we were going to be discontinuing the program. If we feel we need to thump our chest again to show how great America is let’s do it after we’ve taken care of some issues much closer to home. But let’s just not disguise it as a scientific pursuit.

A few years ago when Constellation and Orion were announced I was more than a little annoyed. Why were we spending so much money to rebuild 70’s era technology to do something that we’d already done? So I’m actually glad that the current budget is choosing to cut it. Let Richard Branson, Burt Rutan and the rest of the private sector spend their own money to figure out how to make a toilet that functions in zero-G. Let’s invest our tax dollars into something based on science and with a cost effective return on our tax investment. The robots have proven that they can do that exponentially better than any manned mission.

I love PhD comics. Here's another one that's right on the mark.

One of my favorite podcasts lately has been Point of Inquiry. DJ Grothe has great guests and he does a great job of showing multiple different approaches to rational thinking. So it was with mixed emotions that I heard the news that DJ would now be President of the James Randi Education Foundation. I suspected that this would mean fewer episodes of Point of Inquiry.
Well I was pleasantly surprised to see DJ is hosting a new podcast for the JREF called For Good Reason. Check it out. I just finished listening to it and I enjoyed it. This episode had an interview with James Randi about the future of his organization as well as some information about some scams that have hit the news lately. I don’t know if DJ will be able to continue to be able to host both podcasts but I look forward to future episodes.
One small disappointment: In the intro to the podcast there is a segment by Jamie Ian Swiss. It’s brilliant but has a few not safe for work words. I loved the podcast but would have loved it more if I could have been able to recommend to my kids and family members without having to give this caveat. I think many podcasts in this genre disqualify themselves from a large audience, school children, by not exercising a little restraint when it comes to their language.

As I’ve stated before I have a pretty low tolerance for nonsense masquerading as science. Well last Thursday I hit DEFCON 4.
On the way home from work I stopped by the library to pick up a few books that I had on hold. I also noticed that Victoria had a few on the shelf too. So I picked them up. One of them was a DVD titled simply “Brain”. The cover looked like a National Geographic type program. It looked interesting. I even had a pleasant conversation the librarian about how interesting it looked. After dinner Victoria suggested that we sit down as a family and watch it.
It started off just fine. Slick computer graphics showed cutaways of the brain. They then moved over to interview scientists who were doing research on that particular part. The format kind of reminded me of the Universe series that we really love. So the format felt comfortable. The first half hour of the program was just fine. I take issue with a little bit of the ethics of using this type of brain science to improve combat forces but the science was well done. Then it took a turn off the deep end.
The last half hour was about ESP. They extensively interviewed the unremarkable cold-reader, John Edward and explored his so-called psychic ability as if it was a foregone conclusion. That’s when I really blew my top. The first step to investigating any phenomena is to see it the phenomena really exists. You don’t speculate as to how something works until you’ve determined that it works. But that is exactly what Dr. Dean Radin did. And they gave him the last ten minutes of the show to spout his nonsense.
I completely lost it during one scene. Radin had speculated that during one of his readings Edward’s heart rate would synchronize with his subjects. When he tested it and found that their heart rates did not synchronize he interpreted this clear defeat by claiming that he must be syncing with the person who had passed on. Unbelievable! His test failed completely and he interprets the results as a success. But not just any success, a success that is unfalsifiable. How in the world could we test to see if Edward is syncing with a person who has crossed over? Radin has obviously convinced himself that psychic phenomena is real and all of his results, positive or negative are interpreted to support that forgone conclusion. The kids were laughing at me by this point. I was not reserving any comment and they thought it was funny that I was yelling at the TV. “You do know that they can’t really hear you, don’t you, Dad?”
I was patiently waiting for the token skeptical response. They had it. It was about a 15 second shot of the cover of Skeptical Inquirer with overdubbing that said little more than some in the scientific community question Dr. Radin’s research. That's it? Something as controversial as psychics and you can only spare 15 seconds and one still graphic.
After the program was over Victoria noticed that the program was produced by the History channel. If there is a more inappropriately named TV channel I can’t think of it. A close second it ABC Family. What in the world does a program on ESP have to do with History? But this is the same station that has marathons on UFO stories, etc.
So afterword I took advantage of the teaching moment to talk to the kids about what psychics really do. I showed them a few youtube.com videos of psychics being tragically wrong and having no remorse about the consequences of their wild guesses. I then took out a deck of cards and showed them how I could steer the kids into picking the card I had chosen and making them think that they had chosen it. I then showed them a video of Dr. Richard Wiseman doing a psychic prediction and explained to them exactly how it works.
Hey I’d think it was really cool if ESP really existed. But it’ll take more than these con artists and their carefully selected rubes to prove it to me. Shame on the History channel for giving an once of credibility to these con artists and pretending that there is any scientific validity to ESP.

If you’ve been following my blog for more than a few posts you’ll know that periodically I like to talk about logical fallacies. I just think it’s helpful to recognize the flaws in our thinking and make sure that we understand why the logic is incorrect and how to recognize it.
A commonly used logical fallacy is the appeal to authority. Just because somebody with authority in one field voices his opinion in a field outside his expertise does not make him an authority in that field. I’ve grown quite weary of the numerous Albert Einstein quotes being used to support things besides physics. His opinions on politics and religion hold no more weight than yours or mine. His opinions on physics however, are within his expertise and hold a little more weight. But even then there should be evidence to back up his claims and not just a pronouncement by a famous scientist.
What has me upset lately is that I see that many people are embracing an odd variation of this fallacy. I’ll call it “appeal to anti-authority”. In its simplest form the more credible somebody’s authority and evidence the more likely they are to be wrong. And the converse is also true. The more humble somebody’s experience the more likely they are to be right. Take this ad as an example. The advertiser is asking us to not trust our dentist, the real authority, and instead trust a single mom’s procedure to whiten teeth.
I just don’t know how to even respond to this twisted anti-logic. Should I now avoid going to my local garage when I have car trouble? Perhaps I should seek out somebody who explicitly has not had any training in Toyota Tundras to fix my check engine light. Yet this is exactly what many people do and it really scares me. Rather than trusting thousands of immunologists and getting vaccinated they are trusting the anecdotes of actors and putting kids at risk of catching serious diseases. Rather than trusting the evidence presented by thousands of climatologists they choose to believe the talking heads, most of whom don’t even have degrees in journalism let alone anything that grants then any authority on scientific matters.
I saw a series of books the other day at the library. The all started with the line “The Politically Incorrect Guide to…” I find it very sad that more and more Americans are accepting something being politically incorrect as proof that it is true. Something being politically accepted or politically incorrect is irrelevant to the truthfulness of the claim. What does the evidence say? I don’t care who believes the claim or who is offended by it.

“...the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. “
Carl Sagan

In 1984 Jennifer Thompson was raped. She spent one hour with her rapist’s face just inches from her own. She made a concerted effort to study her rapist’s face and learn every detail about him. If she lived through the night she wanted to be able to lock this guy up forever. And that is exactly what she did. However after being in jail for eleven years DNA proved that the man she had locked up without any physical evidence, just based on her description, did not commit the rape. Picking Cotton is this story

I’ve always been suspect of human memory, particular when it comes to our justice system. I’ve had personal experiences where my own memory did not line up with other facts. I know that how I remember the incident could not have been the case but somehow my recollection of the events has been altered. My experiences are completely trivial when compared to the eleven years that one man, Ronald Cotton, spent in prison for something that he did not do.

Since his release Cotton and Thompson have become very active in educating police systems at how to avoid the mistakes that happened in their case.

Reading this book was not easy. Sections will and should make you very uncomfortable. The serious miscarriage of justice that happened is not to be taken lightly. Cotton and Thompson’s story will have you squirming in your seats the next time you watch a cop show and they lock somebody up just based on witness identification. Or worse, the next time you hear of a death row inmate being denied a stay of execution and his conviction is based on even less than Ronald Cotton’s conviction.

Far from being bitter about the loss of so much of his adult life Cotton recognized that he and Thompson were victims of the same man, the real rapist Bobby Poole. Their story is one of the most heart warming tales of forgiveness that I have ever read. It will have you questioning a lot of your preconceptions about, justice, memory and what it truly means to forgive.

This is a very well done video that explains the basics of skepticism. Thanks to teacherninja for point this out to me.

A few weeks ago Victoria pulled me aside to watch and interview with Barbara Ehrenreich on The Daily Show. Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. A few years ago Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was overwhelmed with well meaning people telling her to avoid any negative emotions and to stay positive. She began to look deeper into this cult like attitude that so many people have that you can jinx your health, relationships, and your carrier if you don’t always keep a positive attitude.
Not many of us enjoy being around a cynic all the time. Don’t mistake Ehrenreich’s criticism of the giddy optimism promoted by so many as cynicism. It isn’t. She merely points out that being unrealistic about things can be far worse than just the occasion outward sign of frustration of negativity.
Last month while reading Emotional Awareness the Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman pointed out that optimism can be just as destructive as pessimism if it prevents us from seeing events as they really are. Ehrenreich builds on this theme and shows case after case where people have been deluded by their own optimism. She goes in dept to point out how destructive this mindset can be. Blinded by optimism we set reason and rational reactions aside.
This book pulled from and added to many of the books and issues that I’ve been studying for the last few years. She tackled many of the peddlers of irrational optimism like, Oprah, Rick Warren, Joel Olsten, Zig Ziglar and many others.
Unfortunately we live in a time when a book that is literally about nothing more than wishful thinking is a best seller and celebrities and actors are seen as authorities on just about any topic just because they can share a personal anecdote. I’m sorry a personal anecdote is where science starts, not where it ends. Just because Suzanne Summers feels better after a colonic doesn’t make it science and foregoing real treatments can kill you with or without a positive attitude.
I really enjoyed seeing a book that was so passionately pro-science and anti-magical thinking get such good press. I couldn’t put it down.

“A vigilant realism does not foreclose the pursuit of happiness. In fact, it makes it possible.” Barbara Ehrenreich