Of all things that have surprised me recently — and a lot of them have — the one that almost shocked me was my first reaction to Paul Ehrlich’s death.
For those who’ve been asleep for the last fifty years plus, Paul Ehrlich was the man who hated humanity and was never right. Ever. He wrote the Population Bomb, a book that pushed Malthusian ideas to the criminal degree and was almost single handedly responsible for things like forced abortions and sneaky sterelizations in Africa.
He convinced people — and perhaps himself — that human population was going to continue exploding until it overrun Earth resources. I remember being scared spitless while reading him in the seventies, about how we were going to run out of potable water and food in less than a decade.
He painted a vivid, compelling picture of a world where you’d have to ask your neighbor to breathe out so you could breathe in. And being a kid, I had no way of knowing that some of those predictions were already outdated, and others were outright bloody impossible.
Anyway, if human population crashes to the point that civilization falls in the next 100 years, it will be Paul Ehrlich who is the most responsible for it. (Not the sole responsible, mind. Governments that pushed all women into the work force in the name of maximizing their tax revenue and corporations that encouraged same in the name of lowering salaries (before they found third worlders to lower it even more are there on hte same pillory.)
And yet I felt — immediately — a pang of sympathy for the man, and said a prayer that he might have found mercy on the other side.
This surprised me, and I had to think through it. The answer, of course, is that I felt quite a bit of fellow-feeling with him.
No, no, I never thought that the human population is increasing exponentially. Nor do I think we should control human reproduction. Nor should we be putting sterilizing agents in the water. And if I’d gone to India, I might have been appalled at the crowding and some people’s living conditions, (supposedly his trigger for the Population Bomb) but I’d have realized a lot of it was cultural and also that the countryside would be far emptier.
However, Paul Ehrlich’s real talent was …. persuasive writing. Something for which I have some little talent of my own. And I know the pitfalls. And could see it getting out of control.
Every talent has its own danger. Like, if you have a talent for balance, you might decide that tight rope walking is your metier, and might eventually meet your demise that way. If you’re really good at sales, but you’re an artist… well…. I envy you to the point of (almost) hating your guts. But more importantly, there’s a danger you’ll get really involved in the sales and forget to produce a worthy product.
But in my case, if you have a talent for creating plausible story lines, compelling motives, and to write persuasively, it’s quite possible you’ll find yourself buying into your own stories. Particularly since, inevitably, they are targeted at your strongest interests and most profound fears.
So a man who got utterly panicked over the crowding and living conditions on the streets of Indian cities, and who was naive enough not to realize that the countryside is not that crowded, could conjure an elaborate pseudo-scientific nightmare vision that convinced various governments to limit their own populations, sometimes by draconian means.
The point is, he probably believed it himself. Even the NYT who bought into it lock stock and barrel, because they hate humans, reported that Ehrlich was “premature” in his predictions and not wrong, wrong, wrong, so far steeped in wrongitude to the point of no come back. (This is because they too also hate humans and want us to go extinct.)
So? So, be aware of your talents, and their pitfalls. I continuously test my own perceptions and theories against the real world, so that I don’t con myself (much less others) into something stupid. I’ve learned — through hard experience — the feel of when I’m diving into my fantasy. There’s this “slippery/excitable” feeling. And I stop and examine things.
I have no idea what your talents are. I know someone who reads here occasionally has the same talents I do, which means she’s really good at talking herself into crazy stuff.
This type of talent, if you’re in a good situation, can convince you you’re invulnerable and leave you wide open to attack. And if you are in a bad situation can amplify “uncomfortable and somewhat depressing” to the level of a frontal attack and an horrendous torture. And it feeds on itself with each level of self drama amplifying things and making the next level worse.
Do not fall for your own stories. Make up stories about whatever you want, but NOT YOUR OWN LIFE. That way lies madness. Particularly because if you’re good enough at it, you’ll take others along for the ride, including everyone in your orbit.
Always, always, always reality test instead of feeding either euphoria or panic.
Use your powers for good. They’re all double-edged. What can take you to success, can also destroy you.
Remember that and stay in control of your abilities. Don’t let them control you.
And more importantly, don’t use them to set the world on fire, lest you get burned.
According To Hoyt 
C4C
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Even Heinlein had a fear of Malthusian predictions, though not to Ehrlich’s level. Many of his works mention overcrowding and food rationing, often as a way to set up his protagonists willingness to emigrate to colonies. So, it was a common fear, though all the predictions seemed to be tied to the end coming by the year 2000. Zeroes scare people.
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Yes. EVERYONE believed Ehrlich. even Heinlein.
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Then there was Neil Smith, who pointed out that the entire world population (at least at the time, a few decades ago) would fit in Rhode Island — though they’d have to stand up. If you move them to Connecticut, they can sit down.
No, the world isn’t all that crowded. That’s really obvious to this immigrant from Holland, a much more densely populated country than the USA, which nevertheless has many large open spaces.
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yep. Same for this immigrant from Portugal.
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I live in Georgia, a state which for decades has been flooded with in-migration. It’s hard for me to visualize dropping populations.
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I understand. But they DO seem to be dropping worldwide.
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Seeing it locally. Just about every school district is contracting. Both districts here, niece in Vancouver WA area school districts is seeing it (she is a teacher). Her job appears to be safe, even though she is going on maternity leave for 6 weeks, summer, and next year. Not enough projection on the numbers of kids. Our district is officially down three grade schools and two middle schools.
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A dropping population would be easier to hide than an expanding one, right? Infrastructure not in use vs. more infrastructure needed.
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Initially, yes.
But then the decay sets in as people stop maintaining buildings and other things that are no longer used. Think of pictures of Detroit now versus fifty years ago. Active governments will tear down areas with too many unused buildings. Lazy or corrupt governments will ignore them until the drug addicts hanging out in them accidentally set one on fire and burn down a neighborhood.
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Even then they just put out the fire and ignore everything that didn’t burn down.
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I grew up rural Midwest, where mechanization and improved crop yields mean a century plus trend of population decline. Dad can drive through Wisconsin and tell what decade a farmstead stopped milking cows.
For me, public schools got smaller and further away.
Now, it’s harder for me to see in cities, but the signs are there.
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One of the big things – when I was still on the “but the modern world is so built up and crowded” thought train – that shook me out of it was, “What would happen if an EMP hit while I was on the road this evening?”
I live in the ultra-crowded, built-up East Coast. I was 20 minutes from home, on a bridge. I did a quick look around.
Hills, empty fields for cattle to graze, a river under the bridge, and me with no certain idea which direction would take me back to what civilization remained if that theoretical EMP hit. Add in four-legged predators, pitch black darkness, and of course possible human predators, and I realized that even if I didn’t kill or injure myself stumbling around in the dark that getting home wouldn’t be near as easy as certain storytellers liked to pretend.
Sure, the East Coast is built up. You can still die by the side of the road and no one will notice even if the vultures find you. We’re not so cramped and crowded here that you can’t get lost and never be seen or found – alive or dead.
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Should have said “no certain idea which direction would take me safely back to what civilization remained.” Oops.
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At least most of the East Coast it is not hours before someone comes along to rescue stranded motorists; baring EMP or natural disaster. West Coast, pretty much most states west of Mississippi, this is not true. Even in these cell days, can’t even call for help. We came on a 😒hit-and-run black bear on the road in Yellowstone (did not witness). But we did stop, put on blinkers, to wait for the next vehicle … An hour later. They went on to report it. We sat there another 90 minutes before a ranger showed up. The ranger had started as soon as word got passed through. Enough vehicles had been informed and wave through that the ranger had gotten multiple reports off and on through the radio (radio is hit-and-miss too) before arriving. Now that satellite emergency access is available through cell phones, being without communication is getting smaller and smaller. But not nonexistent.
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I think it was Mary who pointed out that East Coast towns tend to be a stagecoach day apart, and that villages tend to be at the break times for stagecoaches. (Or wagons, or whatever it was.)
So if you’re on a main road, you can probably get to civilization in a few hours’ walk either way, and that’s pretty easy compared to being anywhere further West.
The main thing is to avoid falling into ponds, lakes, canals, rivers, etc.
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Whatever your dominant travel form, the inns tend to be a day apart by it, and then towns build up about them.
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I’m pretty sure I remember hearing that towns out west tend to be as far apart as steam trains could go before they needed to refill their water.
Undoubtedly some of those towns have died away since they switched to diesel-electrics.
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There are old water towers along tracks where there is nothing else around.
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True, sometimes the inn did not conjure up a town. Had to be awkward for the inn-keeper.
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Or they got bypassed by the interstate.
There was a town in NY state that had the choice of having the courthouse or the Erie Canal. They opted for the courthouse. That was why a different town, near them, boomed and became a city.
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If you look at the Census’s map of demographic density, zooming in to the county level, the East Coast isn’t uniformly thickly settled: https://maps.geo.census.gov/ddmv/map.html
It looks more like more thickly settled areas around the major cities, but they peter out rather quickly. If you drive on the major highways, it may seem that it is all built up, but if you head away from the cities, it’s rural.
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Very! But no one bothers to really zoom in these days…
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I’ve driven by large farms in Connecticut, which is among the most densely populated. And there’s always the parks.
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DIL comes from very rural area of CT. VERY rural.
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The I95 corridor, from Boston to Washington, is thickly settled, but the areas of peak density are limited.
I think part of the problem is people who want to build up a panic about the loss of natural resources. In my opinion, it would be more logical to replace small buildings in densely settled areas with denser housing, rather than try to turn surrounding suburbs into cities, because the state and city resources are oriented around the cities. It’s much easier to get to NYC by bus than to an outlying suburb, for example.
If you live in a city, it might seem that there’s an overpopulation problem, because some cities draw in more people than they can house. The cost of housing in NYC is much higher than in rural Maine, for example.
A lot of the people writing articles about how no one’s having children anymore because they can’t afford it live in expensive urban areas with high population density and high tax rates.
We’re a very large country. People don’t think of the fact that we’re the third largest country in the world by population. We’re 183rd in the world for population density.
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Also Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar for population density.
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Heinlein may have believed in Ehrlich’s work, but RAH’s concerns about overpopulation long preceded The Population Bomb (circa 1968). Case in point is Farmer in the Sky, published in 1950. [Muses about Heinlein’s time travel stories, and wonders how he might have acquired a machine.]
Farmer wasn’t the first Heinlein I’d read, but it had a strong impact on me.
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But even in Farmer’s in the Sky, there are signs that productive land has been removed from production. There is mention early, before the caloric rationing tracking, of flying over the “restored Great Plains with restored ecological systems, including huge herds of Buffalo, Elk, Pronghorn, and Grizzlies, to the prairies”.
Would have to check on when first published, but may have been with the Great Dust Bowl still in the rearview mirror horizon.
There is a reason why US is the breadbasket of the world. It isn’t just the fertile land east of the Mississippi. May be acres to the cow, or fewer bushels per acre, but still better than most of the world. Plus, US farmers do not exhaust the land.
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In the 1923 (25? I don’t have my notes on hand) Yearbook of Agriculture from the D of Ag, there are long selections about the need to depopulate those lands (the Great Plains) that shouldn’t be farmed and putting people in wetter locales where they won’t starve.
The guy who wrote that got a job with FDR in 1932. Cue the Resettlement Administration and the plans to strip the West of most population “for their own comfort” and return it to grass and perhaps ranching. The National Grasslands in NM, TX, and CO are a legacy of that effort.
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Why there are Beefalo and Buffalo ranches. Better for the land than pivot irrigation farming. But pivot irrigation farming hasn’t gone away either.
Also, rather than cattle crossed with buffalo making tamer buffalo, the farmers end up with wilder cattle. Go figure.
Just to show how different the various prairies are, we are used to Yellowstone, Tetons, and Glacier, hiking (at least when we hiked). When we went to Little Big Horn, it’s prairie, lower (for degrees of lower) elevation, and further east, the prairie cactus was a surprise. I expect cactus in the southwest states, not Wyoming and Montana. Desert Prairie. Emphasis on Desert.
Common Cacti in Eastern Wyoming:
Characteristics:
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Farmer in the Sky used to be one of my favorite RAH books. i read and re-read it. until I took up scuba diving in 2001, and learned some actual, applied physics, chemistry, and physiology to get my enriched air certification. Then, the business of Ganymede’s atmosphere being three pounds of oxygen, dumped me out of the story.Even realizing that it was written before we knew about oxygen toxicity. So.
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And it didn’t help that for a while at least he believed that a world government was inevitable.
Such a government would at some point, if not at it’s inception, devolve into a collectivist world view where people are widgets and everything can be solved with the right numbers in the spreadsheets and the proper programming of the computers.
Of course such a world would be so mis-managed as to generate resource shortages such that they can’t support the population, no matter how large it actually is.
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To be fair. World government makes sense when the world is a small colony on a world, moon, asteroid, or even space station habitats.
I took more the approach of Andre Norton in Time Trader’s series. Each country, or country coalitions (voluntarily or not, ex: USSR and Mongol), having gotten access to spaceship plans, propulsion, and target planets, each sent their own colony ships.
Controlling said space colonies makes about as much sense as it did for England, French, or Spanish, controlling the colonies of the new world west of the Atlantic. How’d that work out for them long term?
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That’s only a stopgap until they figure out how to program the people. ☹️
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Early Heinlein, early Poul Anderson; even H. Beam Piper had a rule, “one world one government” at least in his Federation timeline… after a huge but civilization-survivable nuclear war. (For how and why it started, see “The Answer” — likely not what yoiu’d think.)
Of course then the ideas were “in the air” or even in the water; almost ubiquitous, almost invisible. One World Rule to combat bomb-o-phobia (though who would a world government use its bombs on? For obvious answer see Swalwell, Eric). “Logical” and “efficient” rule by or with the assistance of Enlightened Machine Intelligences, or even just centralized computer banks running programs. Plus, and as already spotlighted, that “efficient” use of “resources” to combat “looming” shortages and famines and whatnot, see everyone from Malthus on to the 1970s “Club of Rome.”
(Robert Zubrin makes the point that resources are created by an ability to use the commodity or substances involved. Uranium in 1900, heavy water today — not energy resources. Likewise, with maybe a few exceptions, crude oil and natural gas before the 1800s. Also for materials.)
Jerry Pournelle’s “CoDominium” was based on an essentially Faustian bargain against a nuclear war between Russia and the U.S. — if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em and rule the world (which means tightly controlling research to avoid upsetting surprises; the system still failed catastrophically). His setting also features a “Bureau of Relocation” mass-shipping Earthlings to the stars to relieve “population pressure” — yet the same guy did that magnificent “Step Farther Out” essay smashing the doomeristic “Limits to Growth” stuff being peddled by the “Club of Rome.”
Perhaps some of this was more market or social awareness than pure unexamined groupthink. Though I have every reason to believe much or most of it was indeed the second.
Easy for us to see in hindisght; much harder to see clearly in real time… but see the OP on that.
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A lot of it, trust me, was what the market would take. I always wanted to write “the humans are the old ones of the stars” and gonzo science fiction, but no editor would take it by the early two thousands.
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Yes; and the nature of the thing is to hide itself. Jerry Pournelle is a clear exception because of his non-fiction, Poul Anderson used to at least sorta-believe The Collective Koolaid once upon a very young time because he’s basically said as much, not sure about H. Beam Piper because he didn’t seem to leave behind enough of that sort of “outside the spotlight” material.
It’s actually a little dizzying and daunting, to think that generations or centuries later, people (or even historians) might be sure someone was All In On That when in fact the real person was just trying to get along with/in a mania-befuddled world. Social gaslighting that endures long after the gaslighters are dust… yack!
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The tabletop RPG Jovian Chronicles by DP9 is one of the few contrary versions that I’ve seen. The setting information in the core rulebook suggested that the Central Earth Government Administration (CEGA) ruled over Earth, the orbital colonies, and the lunar colonies (using threats of turning the navy’s guns on the fragile colonies in the latter two cases; this was actually done to one of the lunar colonies that attempted to rebel).
However, when the CEGA sourcebook was released, it revealed that things weren’t quite so simple. CEGA only controlled about half of the Earth’s surface, with various unaligned nations controlling the rest. And CEGA itself was effectively a confederation of seven “regions” (really partly autonomous countries) that don’t get along with each other at all, but pretend to like each other so that they can claim Earth’s seat on the Solar Council.
So the solar nation with the second most powerful fleet in the solar system (by a pretty wide margin) is in reality made up of squabbling member states who are largely focused on intrigues against each other.
Yes, this does turn out to be a recipe for disaster. Why do you ask?
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There was one on CEGA released, and then another called “Shadow of CEGA” that was about the Non-Aligned nations.
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LOL! Especially programmers. “What do you mean I can’t divide by zero? What is this Y2K thing anyway?”
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Y2K: something my youngest sister really enjoyed, because it gave her several years of very lucrative consulting jobs updating COBOL programs. :-)
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Yep. One more of those mistakes I made in my self-education; I never learned COBOL. FORTRAN wasn’t all that useful (although slightly more so than Pascal…).
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Never did COBOL, but did FORTRAN for 12 years before moving on to Ada, C, C++, C#, Java, Visual Basic, Python, etc. Ah, the life of a programmer.
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High school programming (circa 1970), most of our stuff was in NCR’s assembler (NEAT/3), but the last program was in COBOL. Ran out of time before I could get a working program, and decided that COBOL wasn’t anything I wanted to use.
Used FORTRAN (both F/4 in CS 101 and F/2 in an EE class because the relevant computer time was free), played with and used a bit of Pascal, generally preferred C and Perl.
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COBOL is why “spaghetti code” was coined. COBOL has no concept of multi-line embedded IF/WHILE/UNTIL blocks. Must be a procedure called to have multi lines work. No begin/end (Basic, Pascal/Delphi), no {} (C/C++, etc.). Not only that, but ending lines weren’t easy to see semicolon, but a period.
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IMO Spaghetti Code was caused by idiot COBOL programmers not by the COBOL Programming Language.
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Also see, “Those whom the Gods would destroy, They first teach BASIC.” (Convention button from the circa-1980s.)
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BASIC was worse than COBOL.
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Won’t disagree. But it takes real discipline to prevent doing it. It is almost impossible to unsnarl.
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Well, when writing from scratch, I found it easy to avoid.
But I agree about the unsnarling it.
Especially when the boss said “I want that program working NOW, not after you rewrote it.” 😉
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I was dealing with 30-year-old code. Source, originally from a mainframe. Been in the hands of locals, who while could program, were not programmers, and it “just had to work”. It worked. But no wonder they were frustrated. Calling it spaghetti code was generous. About all one could say easily, that if a procedure was called, it was somewhere below where it was called … Somewhere.
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Hopefully, the COBOL Program didn’t include an “Alter Statement”. [Shudder]
Oh, there was a major (very old) program where I once worked that feed into other batch programs that used “Alter Statements”.
It was one of those programs where you hoped it would never need a Major Change because it was one where a “rewrite from scratch” would be the best way to go.
The only “changes” made when I was there was to “add” codes to some of the logic switches.
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Somewhere around ’80 I saw a couple articles in a computer type mag (definitely not Byte, maybe something called Kilobaud Microcomputing). Proud father was showing off his son’s programs to multiply, (next was divide) two 100-ish digit numbers.
All the code needed was some marinara sauce and some meatballs and it would have been perfect. I had a smattering of higher level languages, Fortran, Basic, Pascal and the weird stuff that a tester company wrote on top of Dec assembler. (First machine was a Dec 12 bit, the second was the company’s 18 bit clone of the above.) There were more subs and gotos in those articles than I’d seen in rather larger Fortran programs.
I thought of rewriting the kid’s code in a de-pastafied version, but decided life was too short…
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FORTRAN IV didn’t have an end statement for loops. Instead you had to use GOTO which led to very poor coding unless you were disciplined enough to only use GOTO to go to the top of the loop. One wag at work said he wanted a COMEFROM statement instead.
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Believe that was a keyword in INTERCAL.
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Essentially the “Goto” in Cobol was “Call procedure-name”. Yes, I did go through and comment on the procedures and note where it was being called from. Took time initially. Saved time later. Since this was a program that changed annually as growth models were tweaked.
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Skipped ADA, and Python. The rest, yes. Add SQL, dBase, FoxPro, and Paradox (of all things). Did have to mess with MS Access for a short time (enough to get an absolutely horrible mess converted to SQL Server with a C# front end).
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Worked as a contractor to Ford Motor Credit Co in Dearborn. DEC shop, RSTS/E, BASIC-PLUS and BASIC-PLUS2.
And, we replaced a lot of that with actual Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (aka OMSI) Pascal.
Everyone there was 3-piece suits (even some of the women) except for the DEC MACRO guy, who could have doubled for Jerry Garcia.
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LOL! Got to accommodate the guys with special skills. I remember using DEC macros to create a multi-directory search function, something UNIX had long had, but DEC didn’t seem to see the need for.
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Gosh, this takes me back. The PDP-11/44 running RSTS/E has a special place in my heart (and a PDP-11/45 before that).
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And that work began around 1990 … my employer at the time had that project running for years in advance: anytime a file was touched, the y2k update was made. By the time the date rolled around, it was not a problem. What kind of engineer or programmer would fail to see that one coming? Grrrr at the exploitation industry.
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I was one of those who didn’t see it coming. I figured it was a COBOL thing. All our code was FORTRAN on UNIX. Then in ’97 an admiral involved in the Trident Warrior exercise decided to set the calendar ahead. The UNIX systems wouldn’t boot. Whoops! Y2K was an unknown success story. Most people only thought, “Nothing happened. What was the big deal?” But that was only because a bunch of folks spent 4 years fixing stuff. If you prevent the disaster, you get no credit.
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Date format problem. Could be any language, any OS. Default was yymmdd. Could force it to yyyymmdd. But not without converting records from first storage format to second. RPG, or any variable field size field file storage, with no delimiter, could have the same problem.
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“If you prevent the disaster, you get no credit.”
Sad to say, you are correct, sir.
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My first task in 1990 with the new employer was Y2K, COBOL. Ten year growth model and logging plan was overdue. You’d have thought this would have hit from the beginning. But the < ’99 established areas had been carved out and ignored. That is < 1899. Solution was multi, until data got move out of COBOL and into SQL, where dates wouldn’t matter under Y2K. Not that I got to see or participate in the data transfer (dang sale).
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How about the developers that built a Y2K software tracking for all the different systems in a company I worked for, in late 1998, that used 6 digit dates because “that’s what you do for dates”.
I argued that they should at least be fired and never allowed to touch a computer ever again for such gross malpractice since I was overruled on hanging them from the flag pole out front as an example. Didn’t happen.
The number of short sighted coding I’ve run across in my years of developing has been astonishing, to the point where when I run across something that wasn’t just a short cut is a wonder.
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The problem wasn’t the programmers (computer professionals) but was Upper Management refusing to listen to the computer professionals.
I wasn’t the only programmer in the 1980s who saw the problem.
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Ah, Y2K. Who can forget the January paycheck/invoice dated 1/15/19100?
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Zeroes worried Jimmy Thach, but that just drove him to devise tactics to minimize their strengths and maximize the Wildcat’s strengths.
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And zeroes did not worry Gen. MacArthur at all, not even one little bit, which is why his entire scrimped together from meager stateside production air component of P-40 fighters and state of the art B-17 bombers was “surprised” and destroyed on the ground by Japanese zeroes and level bombers flying over from Taiwan NINE HOURS after he had been notified of the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor.
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How did he manage to avoid a court martial? I guess the GO pool was pretty thin at the beginning of the war.
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Yeah.
They relieved both the Army General and Navy Admiral in Hawaii for being in charge during the Pearl Harbor attack, which, no matter what else one assumes about the pre-war leadup intelligence, was in fact an actual surprise, but the guy with NINE HOURS WARNING was not relieved, either right away after the destruction on the ground of his entire air force or even later after he lost the Philippines and his entire command in a truly incompetent defensive campaign, at the end of which he had to be smuggled out at night in a PT boat before he became the most senior U.S. general officer captured in the entire war.
The excuse at the time was MacArthur was too famous back home, and after a string of defeats home front morale would be hit too hard were he cashiered.
I have strong opinions about this choice.
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McArthur was essentially the all knowing Army head honcho who occupied the top job slot from the Silent Cal years until early FDR.
He knew everything. Allowing him to be captured was unacceptable.
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The Philippines were a pivotal element of all pre-war U.S. war plans against Japan, and the baseline objective of U.S. forces in the Philippines was to hold out until a massed U.S.N. battleship force could sail across the Pacific and relieve them, originally sortieing from the official fleet home port in San Pedro, but from April 1940, from Pearl Harbor after FDR relocated the Pacific fleet to Hawaii as a bluff against the Japanese (during an exercise, with no advance notice, just “Hey Admiral Richardson, put out a press release saying you requested to stay in Hawaiian waters to ‘finish up some things’” and then basically leaving them there).
The IJN certainly knew about the American plan at least in broad strokes. Their own plan was to intercept the USN battle fleet mid Pacific with their own battle fleet in a “decisive battle,” preferably at night, and soundly defeat them, forcing the U.S. to sue for peace.
But that left the U.S. and Philippine Armies somehow “holding out” until they could be relieved. The Philippine Army was organized as “Philippine Scouts” and were expected to melt into the jungle and conduct guerrilla warfare. The U.S. Army was to retreat to the fortress on the Bataan peninsula and hold out there.
But MacArthur didn’t want to retreat – with enough B-17s, he insisted, he could destroy all the enemy ships approaching the islands, and use his 10,000 U.S. Army and 12,000 Philippine Scout troops to mop up any little landings that leaked through. FDR gave him the B-17s, and the Army Department approved the change in plans.
Which makes it all the more mysterious why he left his B-17s, the central capability he begged for, the one thing that underlay his entire forward defense concept of defending the Philippines so he could hold out for the U.S.N. battle fleet, to remain parked up and sitting there in line for the Japanese bombers and zeroes to destroy nine hours after Pearl Harbor.
And, irony being pretty ironic sometimes, the one thing he certainly could not have known was that the U.S.N. Pacific Fleet that was supposed to sail across and relieve him was at that point largely submerged at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. No matter what, he was never going to see that relieve force sail over the horizon.
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I’ve had opinions about MacArthur since my very first college paper, which covered veterans’ affairs. Specifically, what he did to the WWI veterans protesting in Washington to get their pensions. Hint: it involved tanks.
It just might be he knew where too many bodies were buried to be allowed to be captured.
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>>>It just might be he knew where too many bodies were buried to be allowed to be captured.<<< Or courtmartialed/relieved.
I suspect your last sentence was the key factor, but from what I’ve read of WWII history, Dugout Doug had an awesome PR machine set up.
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My understanding is while both Kimmel and Short were relieved of command as a form of public scapegoating, they were both allowed to continue in the service as the professional understanding was that there wasn’t much that they could have done with the information that they had.
As for Mac’s actions in the Philippines, that was halfway around the world, and thus difficult for the American public to see. I would hazard a guess that the fact that his planes got caught on the ground wasn’t even publicly known until after the war. The difficulty in communicating across a very hostile Pacific Ocean would have made it unlikely for the news to circulate in the US even without the wartime censorship. So there wouldn’t have been a similar need for a scapegoat.
As for his wartime record, he still has a number of admirers to this day.
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Bob: We wrote our latest software using ones and zeroes – none of those pansy ‘languages’!
Sally: Wait – you had ones ?
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Ones were a singular innovation.
On a related note, at the Army course from which I recently retired, my coworkers would joke about my age. The more generous would ask me what it was like to work with Benjamin Tallmadge. Others would ask about writing reports on clay tablets. I rolled with it.
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You had writing? We had to make do with notched sticks.
Used to identify with Zed in Day by Day (he’s changed a lot) and Sid in User Friendly.
Favorite computer sound – a VT52 blowing its clutch.
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It’s been a long time since I read UF. Had to look up the characters. It was a crossover strip that got me into Sluggy Freelance, which I still read.
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Other than Bun-bun, never got into SF – too much backstory to catch up on.
Ka-click!
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The crossover was early in SF, so using the good bandwidth at work, I was able to catch up.
AfterY2K was also a favorite. Used to have (and wore out) a Tubes Rock T-shirt, as well as a couple of Abacus World Expo shirts from the early Aughts.
Got into DayByDay much later, and since I was stuck on dialup, there’s several years I missed. Haven’t had the time to delve into those missing strips. (I think I started reading shortly before Zed and Sam moved from Florida. Something about them avoiding getting clobbered by a drone, so Obama years.)
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One of my grandsons asked me if I had ever seen a dinosaur.
Of course I had.
I used to ride one to school.
Up hill, both ways. In the snow.
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Back in 90, a co-worker told me his son had asked him if he was around when the Beatles were alive. His answer was, “They’re still alive! Except for John.”
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Sheesh. My wife was at the Beatles’ 1966 concert at Candlestick park – 17th birthday present from her folks.
Kind of surprising that things I still like are now 60+ years old. Helps me understand how my parents liked stuff from the 30s and 40s while the Beatles dominated the radio. I’m pleased to say I’ve come to appreciate a lot of that music, too.
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I still remember trying to park and do something else in the city when there was a Lennon memorial going on.
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I was fortunate to grow up in a small town when all of this stuff was being pushed. Never believed that there would be apartments bored into the side of the Grand Canyon (one of RAH’s more outlandish notions).
Miles and miles of dirt, cactus, and prickly bushes in all directions from me. (Ninety miles to Tucson, the nearest “city” – which at the time was barely a quarter of a million. It has approximately doubled since then – in fifty years, far more than a generation. That is with massive in-migration, and not all that much “native” procreation.)
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Just like nobody would build on a beach in an earth quake/tsunami zone but California exists as does Japan, damn realtors. Face it if you let them the millionaire billionaires would build apartments in the walls of the grand canyon just for the view. Of course, they would all be environmentalists and decry the treatment of animals natural resources as they ate their caviar, hypocrite much. Sorry allergies going mad today, the sarcasm just flows as does my nose.
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My nose just gets constipated this time of year… But that’s still a good excuse for my snarkiness the last couple of days.
I was maybe 10? when I read the novel, so hadn’t developed my cynicism to quite that degree. Yes, they certainly would do so if they could get away with it. (Not that I can say I’m any more ethical. There’s one place out here that I would try to buy if I ever win PowerBall. On top of an isolated peak in the middle of nowhere. Rich enough that they had a T1 internet connection to their place twenty-five years ago. Lord knows, they may have a dedicated StarLink satellite now…)
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Someday there may indeed be apartments and homes and stores bored into the sides of a yet grander canyon, Valles Marineris on Mars. For radiation shielding, temperature control (typical night on Mars’ equator is like Antarctica in winter), assorted other reasons.
Not the same thing at all, certainly not “population pressure” — though that might have been the excuse used in Heinlein’s world, to create such “lovely view” and likely ultra-pricey exotica.
(Not even sure if there are many “canyon walls” anywhere in the Mariner Valleys to bore into, that way; there’s not a whole lot of close-up pictures or data just lying around…)
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Seems we have a lot of software folks here. When people at work liked my graybeard stories, they told me I should write them down, so I did: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C3N2N14N. Feel free to peruse.
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I had the fun (both seriously and sarcastically, depending on the situation) of dealing in both worlds, mainly programming testers for integrated circuits. I suspect (and hope) I’m the only one here who has programmed a Fairchild 5000C tester. By the time we retired them, we had engineers younger than the machines, and techs who knew how to perform magic on less-than spry hardware.
Switching to a machine programmed in C was a dream. (Lots of macros. Whole lot of macros.)
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It goes back to that Copybook Heading: Fire is a useful servant, but a fearful master.
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I try to make my stories about people, real people, and be true to them. People are nuanced. Propaganda is not. People with a zeal to save the world are the most dangerous people. Just tell the truth as fearlessly as possible. Yes, the stories you pick with show your preferences, but don’t manipulate your characters.
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Don’t manipulate your characters, just the world around them.
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There’s a reason i try to set my stories a loooong way from the real world.
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I’d like to argue the point, but I ran out of Kleenex…
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If I ask what the kleenex was for am I going to regret it? :)
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I tihnk the allergies he mentioned.
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Ah okay 👍
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Ehrlich wrote persuasively, Sarah, but like you and others among us, he knew when he was writing speculative fiction. Had he truly believed his premise he’d never have lasted ~94 years. Ehrlich opened the door to today’s Culture of Death, from China’s one-child policy and Denmark’s stealth sterilizations in Greenland, to the abortion industry and Canada’s MAID “no-waiting” assisted suicide policy. He never authored any sort of retraction, though he had to know at least some of his work was proven wrong even if he didn’t fabricate it from whole cloth. He has much to answer for and I don’t think it will be pleasant.
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https://x.com/UAPWatchers/status/2034271197521661962?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
a) item: ufo stuffs would legitimately be clickbait, and may or may not be something Trump feels he promised to deliver on
b) criminal aliens. I just feel that ICE and deporting is probably not going away from Trump’s agenda, simply because of foreign policy successes.
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You do realize that UFOs and criminal aliens in the same comment made my head spin, right?
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I did not intend it that way, and I think head colds make stuff confusing even if otherwise simple.
My explanation can still be unclear.
The feds are apparently putting up a new website, aliens dot gov.
I have two explanations. Neither is outside of Trump’s character, but I feel that one is more consistent with his established policy.
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The thing is, an extraterrestrial alien could also simultaneously be an illegal alien and a criminal alien, without any required changes to current law.
The part about deporting back to whence they came could be problematic, though.
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Of course, in some circles, you get the discussions about Kal-El (Superman) being an illegal alien.
While the problem of deporting exists (as well as who can do it), since he’s very definitely NOT a Criminal Alien there would be plenty of other nations that would love to have him as a citizen. Thus any smart American President would attempt to find a way to make Kal-El a citizen of the US. [Grin]
Oh, one of the “retro-cons” of Superman have him being born in the US. He was in a “birthing module” (artificial womb) when the Kents found him. Thus when the birthing module opened, he could be considered born.
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Ooh, ooh, under current law, Superman is a natural-born Citizen of the USA.
He was a foundling under the age of 5 whose foreign birth was not legally established before he turned 21.
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https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:8%20section:1401%20edition:prelim)
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Um…. do you think our friend in BP could find me a couple of foundlings to raise? I miss kids around the house.
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Since he was adopted by the Kents, that’s easy.
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Clark Kent is a citizen of the US since the newer versions have Clark believed to be the Kents’ natural child.
But officially, Clark Kent is a different person than Kal-El (Superman).
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Habitual Linecrosser’s B-52 character had a theory. Theory was that one could refer to any nationality as $modifier Mexicans.
B-52 had an extension of that theory, that if someone of that nationality is offended, it is because of stuff that they are associating with the term Mexican.
(I’m not sure that I buy this argument for the case of Americans who are very firm that they have Spanish ancestry, not Mexican ancestry.)
So if a person calls the Tok’ra sneaky snake Mexicans, and Selmak is offended, than maybe it is about the opinions that Jacob has about Mexicans.
Anyway, I decided that my first comment on aliens was too complicated as it was, so I resisted segueing into Vulcans. Who could be Elf Logic Mexicans, and also growing up in a barrio, in very difficult circumstances.
I do not have any good inspiration on who would be the other gang faction in a crappy sci fi paintjob Romeo and Juliet adaptation.
Anyway, I’m tripping fatigue enough to segue to ‘three brothers from the barrio join CBP, and it is a Beau Geste adaptation.’ Somewhat public domain now, but anything I haven’t read is not something I should be adapting.
If you cremate to ashes, that is a lot more practical for a rocket payload to hit escape velocity from the sun.
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Sees URL of x.com.
Sees mention of aliens and UFOs.
Does a double-take.
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Terra Invicta was apparently pulled together by the people who made the long war mods for the newer xcoms.
There’s a joke about modding Terra Invicta to make a CBP game, but I actually would be entirely unsure which engine or game it would be best to modify to make such a thing.
(Taste is answered by observations about black humor. But it feels like realism, and propaganda, and fun gameplay might all be enemies of each other in such a hypothetical.)
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I thought it best to get over here quickly and light a metaphorical candle for Paul.
If I wait too long there won’t be any resources to remember him by.
Never forget: Ten years to peak oil! ALWAYS TEN YEARS!
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Oh, I’m so glad to see you. I’ve missed you.
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Maybe you can light a beeswax candle.
Oh no! The bees are dying out too!!
Lies. It’s all lies.
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Of course only a metaphorical candle. Bees’ wax is a non-renewable resource! Oh wait…. Well didn’t all us evil humans wipe them out in the Beepocalpyse? Was that one of Mister not very Ehrlich’s repertoire?
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It is all a conspiracy by Big Copium.
Actually, Australia is now a desolate wasteland, because the motor vehicle gangs warring over the ruins of civilization ran out of spare parts.
The world outside of Southern California no longer exists, but there is an elaborate cover up to make you think that Ohio is a real place that you could visit.
There are no bees, no birds, no dandelions, and no deciduous trees.
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(mafia boss): the guys from out of town are back for their cut. You don’t want to disappoint them, do you?
(nervous thug): no…no, I don’t. Sir.
(mb): send in Luigi. He’s got the goods.
(Luigi): what, already? (sighs). OK, its in the warehouse. Ten percent, just like we promised. With a little extra thrown in for sweetener.
(mb): yeah. I still remember Hackensack. (shudders)
(Luigi): (stares into distance) yeah.
[they enter warehouse]
(Luigi): here it is, boss. Five thousand cases.
(mb): Hubba Bubble…Double Bubble…where’d you find Big League Chew? I thought it was discontinued.
(Luigi): I made him an offer..
(mb): good idea.
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Hating humans and wanting them to go extinct is Satanic.
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Yes.
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When I was a kid, I loved Anne McCaffrey’s Decision at Doona. A human colonization effort encounters intelligent aliens who were definitely not there when the planet was surveyed, or the planet would not have been colonized. At first they blame the surveyors for missing an obvious, albeit low-tech, native civilization. (There’s no sign of industry, pollution, or any other clues that would have indicated the presence of high tech — the survey team was specifically looking for those, but could have missed natives living in caves, or in mud huts under trees). But over time, the humans establish friendly contact with the natives and start to establish the beginnings of trade. Then Plot Happens, which I won’t spoil unless asked to.
Thing is, when I went back to re-read some of my favorite childhood stories as an adult, I bounced hard off the premise of Doona. Because why was the colonization effort happening in the first place? Answer: earth was massively overcrowded. Immense apartment buildings, crammed full of people; laws about “anti-social behavior” like talking loud enough that your neighbors can hear it in the apartment next door (with, apparently, extremely thin walls for some reason)… and the protagonist, a nine-year-old kid, is of course one of those kids who is full of energy and always wanting to run around. So his parents sign up for the colonization effort because at least there he’ll stop getting into trouble every single day for running in the halls and other “anti-social behavior”.
The Ehrlich influence on Decision at Doona is utterly, in-your-face obvious from chapter one.
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Ender’s Game, too.
All 3rd children are ostracized along with families. You even need to have a certificate to have a 3rd kid.
OTOH, I can see, post COVID, rules such as these promulgated no matter how ridiculous the proposed reason.
You don’t want granny to DIE do you?
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And IIRC, the Wiggin family faked their certificate, or just went ahead and had Andrew, a.k.a. “Ender”, without permission. Which was part of the problems they were dealing with at the start of the book. So when they had a sudden opportunity to send him to Battle School, even though he was a little too young for it, they took the opportunity, because that was the only way he’d get a good education. Again, IIRC.
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My vague recollection is that Andrew (Ender) was an approved birth. The authorities looked at Peter, and realized he was capable of great things but had some strongly negative traits (such as his sociopathy) that didn’t fit the profile of what they were looking for. They wanted someone nicer, and Valentine initially seemed to fit the bill. Unfortunately, she was *too* nice for what the authorities wanted, so the Wiggens were permitted to have a third kid. This produced Andrew, and he fit the profile the authorities were looking for. So he got sent to Battle School.
But it’s been a long time since I’ve read the novel.
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Yeah, the Wiggins had permission for a third kid. He was still ostracized because of how rare that was and the assumption from neighbors that they had done something underhanded to get that permission. And presumably, some envy as well. The thing with Battle School was that them getting permission for a third child was contingent on them allowing him to be conscripted if the government chose to do so.
I don’t remember an explanation given as to why the population control law existed, but I thought it seemed implied that this was just because it’s a common sci-fi trope in future settings that are somewhat dystopian. It also quickly set up why Ender was a bit of a social outcast.
I definitely don’t take it as Card suggesting that such laws are a good thing, especially seeing as in his private life he talked about how great it is to have a large family, and he became father to I think five or six kids.
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Card is a Latter-Day Saint, and his views adhere to the doctrines of his (and my, I should note) faith. That includes having large families. In fact, comments about his faith’s stance on same sex marriage is what led to the claims that he’s homophobic, and the attempt to cancel him.
As it turns out, one of Ender’s parents is also LDS (his mother, iirc), while the other parent is Catholic. In one of the Shadow books, Ender’s mother notes to Bean that both parents came from faiths that encouraged large families, but didn’t follow through on that. AFAIK, there’s no evidence that the kids inherited any of the beliefs of their parents’ religions.
Of course, even for LDS families, three kids is often “normal” these days.
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I tried replying to you and I think it ended up as a new comments thread. Scroll down for that. 😄
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My recollection is that part of the reason for the birth limits was tied to the planetary emergency caused by the Formics. Mind you, it’s been a long time since I’ve read the book, and I don’t recall if much is said about why the planetary emergency would lead to laws mandating fewer births.
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That old bastard is finally dead?! Well I knew there had to be a reason I was craving Deep Dish Pizza, it was to celebrate.
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“And yet I felt — immediately — a pang of sympathy for the man, and said a prayer that he might have found mercy on the other side.” The man spent over half a century pushing hate and lies. Hard to believe he had the honesty, and humility, to get on his knees and beg God for forgiveness… Not for me to judge of course..
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Got modded again.
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Now that I’ve hijacked half the discussion as one for us software engineers, it occurs to me that I have a very relevant review that exemplifies what you’re talking about. https://frank-hood.com/2025/04/16/shakespeare-is-not-dead-but-alive-for-he-has-risen/
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–
Happened, a time or two, before. Shame on us. Although, to be fair to us, Sarah is probably somewhat used to this given Dan, and the boys. It is not often I get to say something about my career and get responses back that indicate nodding in agreement.
My experience, covers a number of years, but tech wise is what I’d call shallow. I think only two, maybe three, software applications even continue. Not in the same code, evolved (had to). But the processes and underlying logic would be intact. I worked on a lot more than three. Most are shelved. Would like to think that at least one or two more were taken, dissected and written for new locations, but doubt it.
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Yeah, probably Dan would enjoy our little side thread.
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>>>hijacked half the discussion<<<
It only happens on days ending in ‘y’, though days with a ‘t’ offer a strong minority of them. :)
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Haven’t watched most of “Yellowstone”, except the finale.
Have watched 1883 and 1923. Uncomfortable topics covered. Good analysis.
Now watching “Y: Marshall’s”, interesting start.
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I’ve never seen any of Yellowstone mostly because I only subscribe to Amazon Prime and Paramount+, but I have noticed the series/episodes Taylor Sheridan writes tend to be much better than the ones he only acts as producer for. 1883, 1923, Landman, and The Madison seem much higher quality to me than Mayor of Kingstown, etc.
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Interesting.
There is more depth (IMO) to Marshall Casey’s minimal reactions in episode #2 when his Ranger teammate and Marshall boss mentions his missing, on the run, brother, and the Montana county with no law enforcement. The point at the end where the “missing” individual from the truck ended up. Since I’ve seen the Yellowstone finale, the whole episode is different. How does Casey know how to head off the horsemen? How can he head off and get close enough to the truck to get a rifle shot off? Also, why would someone want to kill Rainwater. If you’ve seen the finale, you know.
If you haven’t, I guess 1923 would provide a clue or two. FYI, officially, and unofficially, Casey had nothing to do with his brother, except exposing him as their father’s murderer, getting him disinherited, ultimately causing the brother to run. Also, selling the Yellowstone ranch and why. (Who am I kidding? Finale has been out a year. Brother went to the Train Station. Casey had nothing to do with him going.)
Montana does not have death inheritance tax. However, the feds do. It was the federal inheritance tax they couldn’t afford without selling. The 1883 proclamation came true. Not as good as the actual clip, but covers the essence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-xo0pYL_-g The brother’s clip is available on youtube too. But not linking that one.
I thought I had Yellowstone linked on Paramount+, Netflex, and/or Hulu. Either it has disappeared (only found it for the finale), possible, or I unlinked it.
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Yellowstone is apparently on Peacock at least now. Having seen 1923, I assume Kevin Costner’s character is Spencer’s son John. Just a guess. But that’s about as much as I know. Thanks for the explanation. I’m still deciding on Marshals. Maybe I need to watch at least the last episode of Yellowstone to get the backstories.
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I was just talking with my mom today about how frustrating it is when medical workers get into lecture mode about how we poor dumb simple women shouldn’t be having kids, or are having too many, or are having them too close together….
She couldn’t remember who Ehrlich was but recognized his theories when I described them. A lot of his nonsense is definitely a factor in why that behavior took off. In general, there’s way too much a problem with “the experts” declaring that they know better than us regular people, to the point at which they justify telling outright lies about data and science because truth matters less to them than results.
And I wholeheartedly agree that there was an element of bigotry in why Ehrlich settled on his theories right after visiting India. His chapter addressing that hardly even talked about real issues that would improve quality of life in many countries, and instead just focused on how he disliked being around so many people who are different from him.
So much of this nonsense really just comes down to wealthy people from wealthy countries who sneer at anyone who lives differently. (Likely while insisting they’re middle class 🙄 because they have so little grasp of reality.)
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And another thing: Always beware the Very Smart People who Very Objectively argue that the world can only be good if everybody shuts up and obeys the Very Smart People, and not ask stupid questions.
Spontaneous order (a.k.a. emergent order) is the way that most innovation and progress have happened in human history. And, to the chagrin of the Credentialed Class, it happens without them being in charge or being able to give permission.
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despite their being in charge in many (most?) cases. Science makes progress funeral by funeral and all that being generally applicable to most everything,
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Sometimes it needs a Gibbs-slap. In one of Michael Chrichton’s novels (probably Andromeda Strain) he had an interlude on early biology/nucleus work.
Eminent biologist: “The human cell has 48 chromosomes, and here are the pictures to prove it.”
Upstart scientist: “The human cell has 46 chromosomes, and here are the pictures to prove it.” [Narrator voice: the same pictures.]
Eminent biologist: “You’re wrong!” [looks at pictures, counts. Counts again.] “Oops.”
As memory serves, Chrichton called it “the rule of 48”. Might have been somebody other than EB who really looked at the pictures…
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Prestige is a lagging indicator.
Consider the before and after career path of science Nobel prize winners.
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Depends on where and what. A lot of them are frustrated tyrants.
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“And yet I felt — immediately — a pang of sympathy for the man, and said a prayer that he might have found mercy on the other side.”
Thankfully, we are not in charge of that stuff. I let God worry about that and stick to my knitting here at home.
Here at home, I’ll just compare and contrast Sarah’s reaction to the death from old age of a lifelong Leftist propagandist, with the Usual Suspects and their reaction to any of a number of people who didn’t agree with them.
Anybody recall the wave of filth that washed over the media when Rush died of cancer? Yeah, that was pretty special.
But, due in no small part to Sarah’s example my books are not filled with the Paul Ehrlichs of the world Getting What They Deserve. I prefer to write about people who chose to do the right thing when they don’t have to.
This, I am convinced, is what actually makes the world go around. All the guys and gals who do the right thing because it’s right, and not merely because it’s popular, profitable, or signals their virtue.
I do admit that sometimes Cthulhu gets two megatons per second in the face, but come on, the squid was asking for it. ~:D
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Cthulhu needs two megatons in the face. :D
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He’s apparently left already…
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I remember it mentioned in the first book even, though I can’t remember which parent was raised in which church. I got the sense that they were both irreligious by the time the books start by I could be wrong there. It certainly isn’t a major focus. However I think the parents really wanted more kids and jumped on the chance.
I used to read Card’s opinion columns and I read the controversial one before it got picked up for controversy. The real point he was making was that he felt having the government force the issue against the will of the people was un-American and could lead to civil war. People turned this into him advocating for violence against gay people, which it really wasn’t. Disagree with him or not, but I dislike the way they twisted his words.
I also am LDS so I know what you’re talking about. I’m one of three kids and consider mine a mid-size family, but I know plenty of people insist that’s a big family. Husband and I are hoping for a big family but we haven’t really defined what that means. He jokes about producing a baseball team! I’m not so sure about that. But we’re not setting a hard limit on our family and we’ll see what ends up being right.
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(Comment was a reply to another thread and ended up in the wrong place. I blame my husband for distracting me while I’m writing!)
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Likely not your husband’s fault. Instead, probably one of the issues we regularly get with WordPress while posting here.
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spoilers: it did turn out to be a little bit un-American, and that un-American aspect did for a time look like a contributing element to possible civil war. (Less a reactionary thing, and more that the communists that counted the policy as a success for activism were later very confident in their activism, in their inside dealing, in their bullying, and in their revolutionary conspiracies. )
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I kill off democrat politicians in my books all the time, it helps me deal with their insanity. I no longer care about Corey Booker and several others, they’re already dead fictionally. No laws broken, no evil committed, no lives taken, but I do feel better. Less angry, ( anger probably due to meds and constant pain ) more able to be partially productive. Pardon me I have to go fictionally kill off Chuck Schumer again, he is probably the most satisfying to terminate fictionally. I think I can honestly say Mr. Schumer is one of the funnest to fictionally terminate. The best was when his ship was out of control and headed for a sun but not before he blubbered, sputtered and called for god to save him from crashing into the sun, I think God heard him, a solar flare consumed the ship before it evaporated in the corona. Contrary to a certain song dancing on the sun is bad, very bad.
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