Tuesday, June 21, 1994

     Birds have been in the news lately.  Two pairs of them.  A pair
of falcons and a pair of eagles.  The falcons are nesting in downtown
Boston.  The eagles somewhere in the suburbs or outburbs.  In both
cases the female of each pair was recently killed and replaced by a
younger female.  The original male and the new females, of each pair,
have now produced their own young.  A forest ranger commented that
this sort of thing happens all the time... in nature!
     For most of human history O J Simpson would have had to face no
consequences for the crime he is accused of.  His physical skills as
a hunter and warrior would have made him too valuable to his tribe.
There are, in fact, still places where this is common practice.  Males
regularly injure, rape, and murder their mates and girlfriends in
many places around the world.  Injury goes on here at the rate of about
4,000,000 a year, until it crosses the line with murder.  Then you can
be in big trouble.
     We live in a different world now.  O J's skills are interesting,
exciting, admirable, envied--but not necessary.  He is... only a hero.
He has no elemental importance.  The survival of a tribe does not de-
pend on him.  He is antiquated--except for his entertainment value, by
modern times.  His social/cultural skills have also been left behind.
His cliche ridden letter reads no different from thousands of those
written by other ordinary, common wifebeaters.
     Something about human culture has been left behind by the rapid
evolution and development of our material and media worlds.  Imagine
for a moment that the evolution of airplanes had gone no faster than
the evolution of humans.  Today there might be humans who could with-
stand a 600 mile per hour plane crash.  But we can't.  We haven't had
enough time to select for that much extreme survivability.
     Consider also, the evolution of media/communications.  One can say
that we humans have somehow been left behind by it all.  It was a very
strange feeling to read about, and listen on the radio, the whole story.
It was too much.  It was as though the media had vomited, or was it
diarrhea, or both at the same time?
     On the radio today, a story about Simpson's history of beating his
ex wife--followed immediately by a story about a lesbian mother who was
trying to get custody of her child.  How ironic that Simpson could go
on, more than once, beating his wife, getting away with it, paying no
price, not being really seen as a danger to her, and yet a LESBIAN MOM
(substitute your own picture of the most ungodly, monstrous, horrible,
destructive force imaginable, for those two words) had to go through
the hell of the court system to prove herself not a danger to her own
child!  How very remarkable that the media magnifies and inverts these
two situations in such a perverted, twisted way.
     But back to "... in nature" and an attempt to answer just what sort
of biological advantage one might get from that kind of behavior.  Well,
suppose the female has been made pregnant by another male.  The "owner"
of that female can prove the superiority of his genes by doing in the
other male.  And since there may be an offspring from that foreign male,
the only way he can insure not having to share his resources with another
males children... the only sure way is to kill her also.  And that about
brings us up to speed and waiting for the next court date.

Tuesday, June 28, 1994

A reader responds to The Cambridge Chronicles:

That was a great piece you wrote.   Physical/mental abuse has been going on for
years - it's the issue no one wants to discuss.  As a former abused wife
(physical and mental) I know the effects.  I don't know what the solutions are.
 Even after leaving the situation, you're often stalked and hunted down like a
wild animal as I was for 3 years.  Threats, intimidation, manipulation etc.  
When one is finally away from that kind of violence, you never, ever place
yourself in a situation like that again.  I just thank God I am alive and able
to finally live my life peacefully.  But there are many women who aren't as
lucky.  I know what it's like to feel humiliation.  The scars are still there,
but hey I AM ALIVE.  

     Meanwhile, back to the news...  So he was killed first, then her.  And how
they figured that out should be intuitively obvious to the most casual of ob-
servers!  And how did he get them to come downstairs, he in just his pants, and
she in her nightgown.  Well, it was a complete stranger who answered the door
and so they went right down..., no, just kidding.  Here are three scenarios for
how it might have happened:

     1) the doorbell rings, OJ wants to see her, she doesn't want to, but he,
Nicole's new pal, says, let me handle this, and goes downstairs... but then
Nicole is left waiting... so she goes down...

     2) OJ calls to say he's brought some stuff of her's over, and could she
come down to take it upstairs, but Nicole's pal offers to go down for it...

     3) oh no you don't!  I'm leaving the third possibility (or more) as an
exercise for you mystery fans.

{Internetters mumbling to themselves as they sit at their terminals and read
this: but HOW do they know he was killed first?}

[Ok, listen up.  I'm only gonna tell you this once.  The world is not ruled by
mystical processes.  There is gravity, time, space, matter, and energy.  Now
go figure it out yourself.]

     Meanwhile, back here at the typewriter, the authors hands and fingers are
showing the first signs of RSI.  So no more today.