Would a king from the Middle Ages willingly swap lives with an average American?

Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to be a great and powerful king from the Middle Ages. I’m talking about kingly kings—those who would be deemed successful by other kings. If you were one of those top 25 percentile kings, just think of all the people waiting on you, and imagine all of your privileges, including your own court jester to entertain you, and lots of soldiers that you can use to expand or defend your territory. You would get to live in a beautiful big castle, and people from all around would seek your attention and bestow complements and gifts upon you and your family. Some of those visitors would come from far away and they would tell you stories from distant lands. If you got sick, the wisest doctor in the area would come to your service to give you the best health care available in the Middle Ages. Could there possibly be a better way to live than being a successful king? I then wonder how being a king would compare to living the life of an average American in modern times. Consider that the median household income for an American family in the year 2007 was about $50,000, and that this can buy you a lot of things. The average American has access to foods from all around the world by visiting the local grocery store. American families typically own automobiles that can go much faster and much farther than the horse of any king. The average American can use a television or computer to hear news from anywhere in the world. Using the Internet, the average American has a "library" thousands of times bigger than the library of any king. Americans don't have to imagine what it would be like to walk on the moon. They have photos and movies of people walking on the moon. They don't have to wonder what Mars looks like, because they have king-in-mini-cooperstunning photos. They don't have to wonder what stars actually are, or how big the universe is -- they have scientific answers to these questions and answers to many other questions that Kings wouldn't even know how to ask. The average American family has the option to stare at a large colorful television screen in their own home in order to be entertained by images and sounds that could not even be imagined by a king. When Americans get sick, they can go to hospitals that offer them stunningly effective cures for many maladies. The houses of average Americans are always kept warm in the winter and cool in the summer. A couple times each year, many Americans get to step into large silver machines that fly them to faraway places, traveling hundreds of miles per hour, where they capture incredible images with digital cameras. And then they share them with their Facebook kingdoms of hundreds of “friends.” You get the idea. Now let's assume that you could transport a Middle Ages king to modern times, and let him live the lifestyle of an average American for a few weeks. Here’s my opinion of what would happen: [more . . . ]

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Kangaroo Courts and Show Trials

A debate is raging over the wisdom of the administration's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) in a civilian court in New York City. Those opposed to the decision assert that it's simply too dangerous, that a military tribunal in Guantanamo would be better, and that it's foolish to afford any constitutional protections to terrorists. They argue that KSM and other terrorists should be held under the law of war-- that their actions were not crimes, but rather acts of war and are therefore undeserving of access to our normal criminal justice system. There is so much wrong with this way of thinking, it's difficult to know where to begin to refute them. I think I'll go on a point-by-point basis. Those opposed to civilian trials initially cite security concerns. For example, see this bipartisan letter from six senators to Attorney General Eric Holder. The typical argument goes like this:

The security and other risks inherent in holding the trial in New York City are reflected in Mayor Bloomberg’s recent letter to the administration advising that New York City will be required to spend more than $200 million per year in security measures for the trial. As Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly know too well, the threat of terrorist acts in New York City is a daily challenge. Holding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial in that city, and trying other enemy combatants in venues such as Washington, DC and northern Virginia, would unnecessarily increase the burden of facing those challenges, including the increased risk of terrorist attacks.

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Warming to Climate Claims

As Washington D.C. gets record snowfall, climate denialists cackle with glee. It was a cool summer, and now a cold winter. So, they wonder, where is this global warming? "People," I want to condescendingly say, "look at the sun." Weather girls of all genders and persuasions are mentioning that this is the coldest winter in 11 years. Notice that? Are they unaware that there is an 11 year cycle of solar warming and cooling that corresponds to -- and can be measured by -- sunspots? So it's like saying with implied importance that this is the coldest month since 12 months ago. The spots are just starting up, much like the days getting longer at the end of December. Here is a nice look at the sunspot phenomenon. It is intuitively confusing that dark spots mean more heat. But the pair of images here shows visible and ultraviolet views of the same scene. Those dark spots are tunnels into the gamma-hot regions of the sun. Our eyes can only see one octave on the spectrum. Both hotter than blue and cooler than red ranges are invisible. Dark. Red hot is the coldest temperature that gives off light. (Read about Black Body Radiation if you want to know how this is known.) Another detail that climate denialists get wrong is the meaning of heavy snowfall. If you get heavy precipitation, it implies much moisture aloft. That is, many more megatons of water are evaporated. By heat. So before you point to a low local current temperature as evidence against global warming, please look at the time scale that climatologists use, like the Temperature record of the past 1000 years, or even for the last century and a half:

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Eisenhower warns of the military industrial complex

In this video from 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower explained the grave implications of the existence of the military industrial complex. In my opinion, he was spot on in this speech (which was his exit speech from the presidency), and this phenomenon of the MEC explains the horrifically warped U.S. national budget and our equally warped sense of national priorities for decades:

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Hypocrisy on parade

Perhaps you've heard about the American hikers being held in an Iranian prison? A couple of Belgian bicyclists who were detained at the same prison have some updates on their situation:

"We're deeply concerned for their well-being," Van den Bosch and Falleur wrote in a news release. "The psychological stresses of detention were very great, especially during interrogation and solitary confinement." As of early December, when Van den Bosch and Falleur were released, the American hikers were being held in solitary confinement, a harrowing experience the Belgian men describe in detail. "We were in cells with no outside contact and a ceiling light on day and night," they wrote. "No communication was possible with other prisoners or with our families. Everything was designed to make us feel very lonely." Van den Bosch and Falleur added, "From our own experience, we can only imagine that the psychological pressure put on the hikers to confess to crimes they are innocent of is extremely intense. Their feeling of loneliness must be extreme."
Yes, no doubt the psychological pressures one must face in those sorts of situations must be intense. Not as intense as the pressures innocent Muslims face in America's torture prisons and secret black-ops sites, but extreme in any case!

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