The Consequences of Action, Inaction, and Renegade Archaeology

 Queue John Williams' score.

As a kid, I didn't just like Indiana Jones, I LOVED Indiana Jones.  In some ways, I think it was those films that originally lured me into learning about history.  At the time, I wanted to be an archaeologist, a swashbuckling, gold statue-grabbing, whip-cracking, gun-shooting archaeologist.   When I first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark  I thought Indiana Jones was the genuine article, a true and original adventurer.  Little did I know that Indiana Jones was essentially an updated version of older films and adventure serials, right down to the leather jacket and fedora.  But more importantly, I didn't know at the time that that real archaeologists, if they work in the field at all, spend weeks or months slowly digging with little more than hand spades, meticulously documenting each square centimeter, often times working with local labor support personnel who frequently can be incompetent or untrustworthy. 

Day 12. Nothing found. Should have bought shovels instead of hair conditioner with grant funds.

 If they are lucky, a team of archaeologists might find a handful of arrowheads, maybe a sword, a partial foundation, a skeleton or two and some bits of leather or cloth.   Gold artifacts are rare and rarer still are artifacts which have known historical significance.  The daggers that killed Caesar, Alexander's sword, Captain Cook's issues of Nude Wenches Quarterly....all lost to history.     But in the world of film, Indiana managed to find historically significant objects with remarkable regularity.   From the films alone Jones discovered and/or recovered;

• Chachapoyan gold fertility idol
• The headpiece for the staff of Ra
• The lost Ark of the covenant
• Emperor Nurhachi's ashes
• 1 of 5 Sankara Stones
• Coronado's gold and jewel encrusted cross
• The tomb of Sir Richard, a knight and crusader
• The Holy Grail
• The tomb and treasure of Francisco de Orellana, a Spanish conquistador
• The Temple Spaceship Inter-Dimensional craft of the Gods Aliens Inter-Dimensional Beings

Lucky fellow, Indy.   All that luck aside, is Indiana really that good of an archaeologist?  Lets look at his accomplishments one by one;

• Chachapoyan gold fertility idol -  Jones was the first to successfully explore the temple in which the Idol was kept, but did not discover it, Forrestal did and Rene Belloq was right behind Jone's tail, with much more reliable help.
• The headpiece for the staff of Ra - Discovered by Abner Ravenwood, whom Jones apparently pissed off to such a great degree that he died and his daughter did what all heartbroken girls do; move to Nepal and open a bar. 

Try as I might, I just can't seem to chase these blues away drinking heavily here in a dingy bar in the dead of Nepalese winter, surrounded by drunk and dirty gamblers.  Go figure.

• The lost Ark of the covenant - Jones did in fact discover the Ark's burial location within the city of Tanis, but it was Rene Belloq who found the city.  With a literal army of diggers, it would have only been a matter of time before it was found.
• Emperor Nurhachi's ashes - Found (or recovered) by Jones only to be sold to a Shanghai crime boss.  Forgive my ignorance, but isn't archaeology about learning from the past and not selling relics?   

  

 Too much to drink, Doctor Jones?  Seriously, you need to stop. This is an intervention and we are here because we love you.

• 1 of 5 Sankara Stones - Jones does recover the Sankara stone he was looking for. Tough shit for the other two starving villages that had their stones stolen, but hey, one out of three aint bad. However, Jones uses brute force and deception to recover the stone and even if he didn't know the magic words which lit the stones on fire, the British army would have shot Mola Ram within seconds.  Jones could have simply let Mola Ram have the bag containing the stones, shot up the ladder and let Mola Ram either face hungry crocs or British bullets.  

Hello Seattle!  Are you ready to rock?!

• Coronado's gold and jewel encrusted cross - Not only did Jones not find this himself, it is fairly clear that Panama Hat (yes, that is the character's name) is the legitimate owner.    More on this below.
• The tomb of Sir Richard, a knight and crusader - With the help of  Dad's diary, Indy found the tomb...and destroyed it.  Technically, it was the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword who lit the fire which forced Indy to overturn the sarcophagus, but had Indiana planned ahead a little bit, he could have conducted a proper search with support and security, and thus the Brotherhood wouldn't have been an issue.
• The Holy Grail - It is clear from the events of the film, the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword already knew where the Grail was held, at least roughly speaking. But even if they know precisely where it is and the solutions to all the traps in the temple of the sun in which the Grail is kept, the living Grail Knight (and the two other, deader, Knights Richard  and Groucho ) had already found the Grail centuries before James Bond knocked up Mrs. Jones.  Indiana would never have found the Grail himself had it not been for his father's hard work as a scholar.   

Hey old man, I'm looking for the...JEE-ZUZ! What's that smell? You really need a shower, dude.

• The tomb and treasure of Francisco de Orellana, a Spanish conquistador - Found by Jones, but again, through his own incompetence, the body was destroyed and no effort was made to preserve or record the tomb.

• The Temple Spaceship Inter-Dimensional craft of the Gods Aliens Inter-Dimensional Beings - I hate even trying to remember this horrible film, so to be honest, I've forgotten who finds what. Screw it, lets just say Marion Ravenwood stumbles across it and call it good.  

  So, with Indiana's reputation as an archaeologist roundly shattered, one must ask; 'Does Indiana Jones do any good at all?'  


Well, yes.


 Strange as it may sound,  the Temple of Doom is the only movie of the series in which Indiana does any actual good.  First, let's examine his other endeavors.

In the case of Raiders,  Lets say Indy gets a bad case of Dysentery in Egypt and sooner or later the Germans, Belloq and the army of diggers find the "Well of Souls" containing the Ark. 

Well, what do you know? The Ark is in the middle building of the large temple at the center of Tanis. Who would have guessed that?   I thought it would be over by the food court.

 So they load the Ark in the cool flying wing, while poor Indy can't stop shitting. Worst case scenario, Belloq, Toht and Dietrich open the Ark up some place, get their faces melted and leaving the magical box there for the next idiots to find. BEST case scenario, Dietrich feels so confident (given the lack of any outside interference) that he takes the Ark directly to Der Fuhrer himself, who, along with his senior staff and possibly Mussolini, get their faces melted and WW2 (in Europe anyway) never happens. Congratulations Doctor Jones, your diarrhea just saved millions of lives.

Goddammit, I forgot the sunblock!

 Fast forward to the Last Crusade. Indiana realizes "Hey, my Dad was a dick. Let that old fart stay missing! I'm going to bang one of my students, maybe two, instead." While Indiana is in a (possibly illegal) tryst with one or more coeds, the Germans could  find the Diary in Jones' clothes, eventually make their way to Hatay (which turns out was a real place all along, look it up) and they find the temple and the hilarious beheadings of Hatay lackeys and fascists alike begins.   That's if they find the diary. Still Donovan is resourceful and in theory, he could pay a bunch of scholars to do the same research that Henry Senior had done, effectively creating a new diary.  For all that effort, they would still end up in the same trap-laden temple.  Assuming Donovan and crew are not all idiots, sooner or later they would get past the booby-traps and find the Grail Knight (who I'd guess is no match for a MP40, with or without the Grail's version of Powerade) and, even if they choose the grail "wisely", so what? Neither Donovan nor the Grail can go beyond the great seal on the floor. (Typical religion...always a catch.)  "That is the price of Immortality"  As the Grail Knight says.  But then again, there is still a very good chance the bad guys will choose "poorly".

Oh no, everyone's staring.  There's something in my teeth, isn't there?

 Whatever the case, the best Nazi Germany can do is open a museum in the Valley of the Crescent Moon which is in some remote corner of a country no one has heard of. And all of that assumes the Germans and Donovan could ever find Sir Richard's tomb in the library in the first place, which Indiana and Henry Senior happily, if ignorantly, did for the Reich (Both men did have pussy-blinders on, so lets be fair).   If the Knights tomb couldn't be found, no one would know where to start looking for the Grail.   So once again, had Indiana just sat on his ass, everything would have turned out more or less okay.  Yes, Henry Senior would have spent the war imprisoned in an Austrian castle, but I'll bet my left arm that the old man loves tapestries.  But instead, Indy effectively leads the Nazis to the Grail and, after many lives are lost, basically leaves an old man to be crushed by falling rubble.  Classy Jones. Real classy.

 Why don't I speak 11th century French?  Because fuck you. That's why.

 Now onto the Cold War with titans like Kruschev, Eisenhower and Beaver Cleaver.  Let's say Indiana avoids being suckered into looking for the Crystal Skull by the Soviets because he is stuck in paternity suit after paternity suit since he has impregnated so many of his former pupils. (Doctor. Jones hates three things; Snakes, Nazis and Condoms) But Boris and Natasha are clever and find the skull anyway which eventually leads them to the lost temple which turns out to be a GODDAMNED FLYING SAUCER, but so what? The reds replace the skull to where it belongs, the "inter-dimensional beings" wake up, the temple/ship/UFO activates, the bitch of Leningrad gets her eyes burned out and the whole mess gets sucked into a dimensional vortex. Dosvidaniya comrades, the end.

This is why Communism failed.

 In all three cases, Jones' actions, if anything, hastened a forgone conclusion.  Even in the minor opening sequences, Jones proves to be rather useless.   Lao Che? He still ends up with the remains of the Emperor, all he really wanted (and probably recovers the diamond too, as he either owns or controls the club in which the diamond was lost on the floor.) The Fertility Symbol? Belloq got it and presumably it is in a museum or collection in Europe.  The Cross of Coronado?  Stolen Recovered at the loss of several lives. Note that Indiana does not attempt to say that Panama Hat is not the rightful owner, in fact it is made clear that when the cross was dug up in the first place, it was done with the support of local law enforcement; more permission than Jones ever got.  Rather, Jones merely tells Panama Hat that the Cross belongs in a museum.  Which museum?   Let me guess...the one that Jones and partner-in-crime Marcus Brody work for!  Also note that how Indiana did not protest with "It belongs in a museum!" when he was conversing with Lao Che about the Emperor's Ashes.  Hell, not only does Jones employ a gun-toting goon like all the other gangsters, but he also threatens to cut a bitch when the deal goes sour.  But apparently it's only grave-robbing when someone else is doing it, right?  

Pay up jerks! Indiana stole that urn  fair and square!

The major exception is the Temple of Doom. If Indy wasn't so thirsty for that sweet sweet Shanghai Martini and thus wasn't poisoned, and gold coins were good enough for the exchange of the Emperor's ashes, then everything in Shanghai would have been peachy. (except for the moral problem Doctor Jones being essentially a tomb-raider-for-hire ) Ergo he never boards the plane, ergo he never gets to the village/Pankot Palace/Secret mines of Kali. That means the village continues to starve, the children remain as slaves, the slave driver remains unsmooshed by the rock pulverizer, the Maharajah continues to be an annoying asshole and everything goes on the way it had been for about ten more years until Nehru fucks up the Indian economy for the next three decades and Pankot Palace goes into foreclosure.   *Or* the remaining Sankara stones are found ushering in the era of Kali and Mola Ram and his Thuggees go on to destroy the Muslim, Hebrew and Christian gods. (Ha ha Mola Ram, joke's on you! Jesus lives inside us, retard!)   I do think however that Mola Ram is possibly overstating the powers of the stones.  My guess is that apart from glowing, I don't think the Sankara stones do much at all, at least not enough to protect sword-wielding Thuggees from RAF bombers. 

 CHAR...Oh wait. Hang on guys, there's a cliff.

Even so, the poor kids who don't even have union representation, would have remained slaves for much longer than they otherwise would have been, but for the quite accidental, but fortunate, arrival of Indiana Jones, Willie and Short Round.  Jones, for once in his life, does something extraordinarily good.  As an aside, what kind of self-respecting Indian palace serves bugs and chilled monkey brains, but not Naan, Roti, Curry or Kheer? Ive been to India...whatever was served at dinner was not Indian food.   It should have been the chef who was lowered into the lava.

    Oh shit. I just knew I should have served the Lamb Vindaloo instead of the eyeball soup.  Your advice has screwed me for the last time, Paula Deen!

  
Besides the freed slaves (the minor miners. HA!) and returning the stone to the village, there aren't many more tally marks on Henry Jones Junior's scorecard in the "good" column.   Yes, he did save Marion Ravenwood from Arnold "Shoot zem, shoot zem boats" Toht and company, but Jones led them there in the first place.  And as mentioned earlier, Jones does save his father, though whether or not  Henry Senior was ever in any real danger is debatable.  Everything else Jones does is pretty well befitting a scoundrel and a plunderer, which admittedly makes for three entertaining films.  

Back in the day, we archaeologists took what we wanted and shot whoever got in our way. Good times.

 

Today's rambling manifesto brought to you by...

 Hi, I'm Chris.  I'm going to murder people to clear my name. By the way, Bill Cosby?  Big fan.

Has anyone else read Chris Dorner's manifesto? It is an interesting piece demonstrating a disconnect from reality. On the one hand, Dorner highlights the corruption he claims to have witnessed while he was an LAPD officer and well as retribution he faced for exposing said abuse. Other the other hand, Dorner goes on to say that he will target LAPD officers and, if the allegations are true, he has already murdered 3 people, one of whom being the daughter of an LAPD member against whom Dorner held a grudge.   Given the LAPD's reputation, I am inclined to believe the allegations Dorner makes, but I fail to see how that justifies murder.  

But there is much more to the man and his manifesto.
 
Among other things, Dorner expresses his support for an assault weapons ban, announce his love, support and admiration for people ranging from Piers Morgan, Barack Obama, George H W Bush, George Carlin, Charlie Sheen and John Huntsman. (He loves Michelle Obama's new bangs, by the way) He lauds Ellen Degeneres and disagrees with California proposition 8, yet claims that;

 "lesbian officers in supervising positions who go to work, day in day out, with the sole intent of attempting to prove your misandrist authority (not feminism) to degrade male officers. You are a high value target." 

  How one can tell what an officer's "sole intent" is merely by looking at them is anyone's guess. 

Dorner goes on and on, agreeing and disagreeing with various positions and people (He hates Fareed Zakaria for some reason), he accepts that "what makes America great" is that people can freely disagree vis-à-vis the Chik-Fil-A/ Gay marriage controversy...and yet he seems incapable of actually having a rational dialog about his own issues. In his opening statement he poses the question; "what would you do to clear your name?" Answer;NOT MURDER PEOPLE. 

 If he wanted to shame the department (which isn't hard, by the way) he had literally dozens, if not hundreds, of media outlets available, not to mention many law firms who love this sort of thing. If he wanted to transform the system, he could have started a public advocacy/watch dog group. For Dorner however, these were not serious options and thus he began his campaign of violence. He condemns hypocrites, yet either ignores or is unaware of his own hypocrisy.

Amazingly, he has the gall to claim that he was "never a bully". While that may or may not have been true when he was a youth, I think killing an unarmed girl and her boyfriend qualifies as being even worse than being a bully. Bringing up decades-old school yard events, favorite comedians, likes and dislikes in his manifesto shows to me that this man is profoundly disturbed. I'm no psychologist but when discussing something of (literally) grave importance and then one goes off  on completely unrelated and superfluous matters like a stolen watch in high school or the playing status of Tim Tebow, I think the person just might be crazy, particularly when they start murdering people.

And now I am in critical danger of being a rambler myself, so I will leave it there. Read the manifesto here.

Absurd Price Controls

Well, the regulators are at it again...

It seems cheap milk is just too detrimental to the State of Louisiana, so it must be crushed.

  If you want to understand how insane the reasoning behind price controls actually are, just talk it out;  The price of Milk must be kept high, otherwise people will sell cheap Milk and undercut their competition who will be forced out of the market and then the remaining Milk sellers will raise the price.  So high prices will prevent high prices by eliminating low prices.   Sounds ridiculous, right?
 

"[State Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike] Strain said the regulations exist to keep the price of milk as low as possible.
Allowing a supermarket to sell milk below cost could drive competitors out of business, allowing the store to then increase the price of milk, he said."

Just ponder that for a moment...the regulation exist to keep the price as low as possible...by preventing the sale of cheap Milk.    How could this be stated with a straight face?   Truly, this defies every form of argumentative logic.  Truly, in the mind of regulator Mike Strain, War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength and Freedom is Slavery. 

Now listen to someone who actually knew what was wrong with price controls...with a special appearance by a two-faced Richard Nixon.

And here is some more on price controls with one of the most clear examples; Post-War West Germany.  Cheers to the late Ludwig Erhard for his clarity of vision to allow the West German economy to thrive.

 

Gee, Thank You Internet. (NFSW)

An innocent search for a photo of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe goes awry.

The black and white is a classy touch.

A Great Post About Israel

I wasn't planning on posting today, but I came across a great post by classical liberal economics professor  Steve Horwitz.  In it, correctly identifies a problem that frequently occurs with libertarians, which I would call an all-or-nothing position of anarchy, but professor Horwitz calls (cleverly, I might add) the dichotomy of being "Anti-State" as opposed to being "Pro Liberty".   The anarchist or, I am sorry to say, Rothbardian sees no distinction and that you cannot support the latter; liberty, without being the former; anti-state.    I personally see this as being dogmatic and frankly, nonsensical, because it tends to treat all states, all the time, with the same rancor.

As Horwitz says;

"And more important:  even if libertarians agree that “all states are bad,” that does not mean that all states are equally bad.  The US government is bad, and so was Stalinist Russia.  But you know what?  I’m pretty comfortable thinking that Stalinist Russia was a hell of a lot worse state than the US was then or now. "

Hear hear. I would even go a step further in saying that all state actions are not equally bad either.  Some actions taken by the state, however rarely, might actually be good.  Arresting murderers for example.    The same reasoning can be applied to the Israeli government; it's not good, but it is much better than the alternatives.   Yet many people don't see it that way.  As one anarchist named "Marc Abela" with whom I was arguing stated (emphasis mine);

"degrees of severity are of interest to you. They aren't to me. I try to do without. It blurs my thinking process to study whether Islam is grayer than Christianity.
Australia, Britain, Nazi Germany, Japan - all the same stuff. Barbaric statism. I live better and my reflection is cleaner when I just condemn rape and racism all together, not when I try to classify forms of racism into different groups and various flavors. A taxpayer funded post-office is the wheel on the genocidal car."

 This person claims that Australia is the same, morally speaking, as Nazi Germany.    If that isn't morally reprehensible thinking, I don't know what is.  To this person, everything, at least with regards to the state, is equally bad.  That is to say a congressman who uses his office to pay for, lets say, some new suits, is morally equal to this man.     What other way is there to describe this binary thinking other than sick? 

I suspect this person is being somewhat dishonest though and that he doesn't really see everything as being a yes or no question.  But, he presented an argument a certain way from the begining and was more focused in maintaining argumentative purity, rather than being reasonable.  You can read the entire exchange here. (I'm kev3d, in case you were wondering.)

Of course what is reasonable is to examine things on a case by case basis, to carefully weight the social, environmental, economic and most importantly, the moral costs and benefits.   As I have stated elsewhere, a good doctor understands triage; the most urgent problems require the most urgent care.  This requires a discriminating assessment, not all-or-nothing thinking.   Would you really want a hospital to treat someone with a sprained ankle with the same urgency as a person with a heart attack?  Or a common cold with the same remedy as cancer?  Of course not.  So before we claim that Israel is equally morally reprehensible as Iran, lets keep a little perspective, shall we? 

As professor Horwitz says;

"Yes, we all dislike the state, but sometimes the enemy of my enemy is not my friend.  Ending the state is not the same as building the institutions that safeguard liberty.  A free society is more than just one without a state;  it is one with the rule of law, protection for private property and contract, and equal political rights for all.  Only Israel comes close to having that, and the alternative Israel-free Middle East would be a net loss for liberty."

 Happy new year everyone.