Dispatch Number 84 -2012 Survivalists: An Attack Piece

Alex

This past August having spent the hottest part of the year in the Amazon basin I felt the urge to get out of that sticky oppressive part of Peru and clear my head in the Andes. Set against the mountainous backdrop were indigenous Peruvian herders grazing flocks of sheep and cattle on communal grasslands. To manage the animals they would hiss and make guttural sounds while tossing rocks and slapping them with branches. It was in this setting, far from the city, I met Alex and his 2012 futurist friends at The Way Inn.

Interesting ones in this group, these New Age spiritualists that use psychotropic drugs with surprising regularity to find higher levels of consciousness and use it to get closer to their New Age ideas, one of them is the presently popular prediction of a 2012 doomsday, based on the ancient Maya calendar and scripts. It is a Western idea that modern Maya do not subscribe to.

Alex is the absentee owner of the Inn who occasionally visits to check up on things. He has a room on the remote property, but is hardly in it. Nomadic spirit is in his blood. A tall strapping Englishman with long brown hair pulled in a neat ponytail and a rich voice I imagine women are attracted to. This time he visits with his New Age friends whose focus these days is the copious consumption of psychotropic drugs like ayahuasca and San Pedro cactus; several in his group claim to be self-taught shamans providing guided drug journeys to spiritual tourists (there's an abundance of them here in Peru trying to find it again). Alex and his self-proclaimed shamans are the latest incarnation of evangelists, New Age spiritualists. People who describe most everything they do as a calling.

Alex ate fast and ate multiple plates of food while standing without seeming to pay attention to what he was doing while we talked. He had made a life in Peru and was an unabashed New Age believer in a 2012 doomsday.
Between plates of food I asked the only question that mattered, What sets your beliefs apart from other superstitions that have predicted the end of the world?
Good question, followed by a deep breath as he went on in unconvincing fashion to tell me it can all be explained away by vast amounts of information available interpreted with modern theory and joined with select remnants of Maya texts and antiquated calendar.

How information has grown exponentially since the 1960's, and thus, with this bounty of data and modern ability to interpret it, one cannot refute the signs of collapse that the Maya were telling us. Glossing over an inconvenient truth, the data he refers to came from the very Western civilization he attacks as being corrupt and unsustainable.

He went on, those who remain 'unconscious' in the trappings of Western ways are doomed and will suffer for their dependence on the system. The implication is the 'unconscious' ones will be left out of the new era expected to emerge after cataclysmic events begin on December 21, 2012. He expressed suspicion towards mainstream Western culture, believes in the idea of spiritual evolution, and the possibility of leading the world into the New Era by individual example and group consciousness. The New Agers set themselves apart (in their minds) by practicing meditation, taking repetitive psychedelic drug journeys, while claiming to live at higher levels of consciousness. The implication is clear: They are better fit for survival.

When Alex heard my story of driving through Latin America for an extended period of time, he linked it to an increase in man's awakening and an increase in global consciousness, hinting that I may survive the coming apocalypse by being in the right place at the right time. For him, I was additional proof that something was afoot, my actions were a contribution to the collective consciousness. In books, people take what we need and not necessarily what the books principle point is, and in Alex's case it is an example of seeing everything around him as a 'sign', an environment where most everything has some sort of meaning or significance. For the 2012ers it is superstition dressed up as fact.

He flushed, I love seeing signs like this, man, it's real good, I get excited meeting people like you.
Flattered as I was, I remained unconvinced. Putting the excitement of doom aside one of the aims of the 2012 movement is to foster counter-cultural sympathies and activate spiritual activism. I'd be down with some of their ideas if they would leave the doomsday part out of the picture; in any case, their end-of-time prophecy cheapens this positive aspect and offends those with active minds. No one likes to be manipulated by threats.

What The End Looks Like

The belief, in general, is that there will be cataclysmic or trans-formative events on December 21, 2012 that will come as earthquakes, extreme climate change and super-volcanoes that will kill off more than half the population and in turn lead to the collapse of the capitalist system. Judgment day for capitalism; Western civilization punished for materialism, corrupt mores and extravagant ways. The primitive Christians more or less said the same of the Romans until they acceded the high court of Roman emperors and Rome became a holy Catholic State. Before long those same pious Christians adopted the extravagant ways of the Romans.

Catastrophe and collapse will come in a host of colorful ways, here are some (always told with a straight face): solar maximum or sunspots, (think of a barbecued earth), the earth's magnetism reversing; rogue planets striking earth, super-volcanoes and earthquakes. As if the above were not dramatic enough some of the more extreme predictions include the return of alien caretakers to enlighten or enslave us, to a sudden devolution of humans into non-bodily beings.

A researcher who has studied New Age communities and themes, describes 2012 narratives as the product of a 'disconnected' society: unable to find spiritual answers to life's big questions within ourselves, we turn outward to imagined entities that lie far off in space or time -entities that just might be in possession of superior knowledge. And this is what people around town more or less had to say about Alex, commenting that he was going through some big life changes and seemed adrift in search of answers to the unanswerable.

They excite over the Western idea of complicated data-intensive calculations, astronomical alignments and numerological formulae used to predict the end of the world based on Maya writings and the Maya Long Count calendar. After all, information is power, right? In short, because the calendar ends the world ends -lovely kindergarten logic even a child can appreciate. They believe that after the capitalist system is destroyed a new system will emerge; the new era will be based on a humanistic ethos of simple living based on the concept of 'collective-consciousness'. This basis of group thought is rooted in primitive attitudes of mechanical solidarity or herd behavior, much like the ones I subscribed to when I was a corporate guy -in that environment even though we were all fucking each other over on business deals, we chanted "Win-Win" all the way.

Others interpret it as positive physical or spiritual transformation that may spark the beginning of a new era, however, still as the result of catastrophe and massive population loss. Talking with Alex and his futurist friends about 2012 made me think back to the Y2K bug scare of the late 1990s that suggested our computers would stop working and lead to economic collapse. I knew people who withdrew vast amounts of cash from the bank and stockpiled food anticipating anarchy; at the time I worked in the computer industry and we loved it because we knew nothing was going to happen.
Skeptically I thought, Wow, those PR guys are good.
Survivalists appear in every age on the flimsiest of pretexts; like lonely singles looking for companionship and grab at anything that comes their way; the survivalist waits for a cause.

It's a Western Idea

None of the proposed alignments or formulae has been accepted by mainstream scholarship. Impending doom is not found in any of the existing classic Maya accounts, and the idea that the Long Count calendar "ends" in 2012 misrepresents Maya history. Classical sources on the subject are scarce and contradictory, suggesting there is little, if any universal agreement to what the date might mean. The Maya I met in southern Mexico and northern Guatemala were concerned with the next rain. I could not find a local Mayan that subscribed to the Western idea of a 2012 collapse.

The destruction they crave will pave the way for realignment of world order, a simpler way of life, much like the back-to-the-land movements of the 1960's and 1970's that promoted self sufficiency and humanistic ways, which one could argue contributed to the greed of the 1980s and irrational exuberance of the 1990s. Enthusiasts of 2012 apply a moral standard of simplicity against the perceived extravagance of capitalism. With capitalism the focus of their dark predictions, I wonder if the Chinese and Russians will get a pass on the horrors that await because they made a strident go of communism.

Armageddon, my word, is not used by the New Agers who subscribe to this end of time prophecy and instead use phrases like: "When the shit hits" or "The big change coming", or "A massive realignment". New language and words to describe an old outcome -the Earth's end; an unoriginal story repeated for millenniums.

One is left to guess that when the earth's crust opens Alex's New Age friends will be spared death by the approach of an angel that will catch them just as the earth opens. Further one is left to suppose that when super-volcanoes erupt and fill the air with unbreathable ash they will find themselves atop a remote mountain in a pocket of pure air. Never mind the last time the air turned this toxic from an asteroid strike, it knocked off all the dinosaurs. Yet, listening to the superstitions they promote of 'collective consciousness', it will have them in the right place at the right time to survive. It smacks of mystical superiority and the non-believers, the unconscious who live in the capitalist system, are doomed to the hell that awaits them.

It is an age old tale that falls into a long line of similar predictions made by major religions and cults that have cropped up with each passing moral fad. Religions have always taken contemporary thought, tied it to secret knowledge and applied it to the passive masses claiming sage-like knowledge with command of the facts & data of the day. These New Agers are the new messiahs using an antiquated Maya calendar and ancient writings nobody really understands claiming to know how to interpret what the Maya were telling us.

After conversations with believers in a 2012 collapse, I came away with a wholly different opinion and point of view about them. Their actions, spirit and zealotry made them less 'spiritual' than I had originally thought. They are not New Age spiritualists. They are a new form of an old idea and in-group: they are a cult of Survivalists that fluff up their cause with dreamy spiritualism.

The survivalist movement is based on many events imagined and real, including government policies, threats of nuclear warfare, religious beliefs, and writers warning of social or economic collapse, both apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic books. The Maya 2012 doomsday prediction has mystical and religious underpinnings that activate the Survivalists.

It is superstition presented in its latest form and there are no shortage of writers claiming interpretive knowledge (just buy my book). They use the most effective parts of the propaganda model: fear and hidden knowledge. Alex and his friends are persuaded by these superiors to direct their vows to the reining Western resurrection of Maya deities and to propagate the latest doctrine of collapse. They are the spiritually starved who have sadly been reduced to mythic-magical thinking.

Even though they cite 'facts and data', the 2012 gang are as superstitious as the great religions of the world -Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Zoroastrian and Buddhist. Most all have made end of time predictions, while accusing their contemporaries of being morally corrupt and that if they do not reform they will suffer. Man's propensity is to exalt the past and depreciate the present. As a historical point of fact these predictions have always failed to come.

I marveled at the intelligent ignorance of this new class of spiritualist citing 'data' as the proof, yet unable to explain the smallest part of it. Data is the new power word, people get hit over the head with 'information-age' messages in mass media and the corporate environment; here the word has been co-opted to project something untrue and bolster superstition. The Christians did this all the time taking contemporary issues and fads and incorporated them into current superstitions, which in turn, were used to manipulate and control a docile populace. The New Agers are remarkably similar to those primitive Christians who renounced the extravagant ways of Rome and its privileged class, while they practiced non-participation in civic affairs claiming moral and secret knowledge as authority for their choices and proclamations.

Bruce Chatwin captures the dynamics at work of persons controlling information:

"So important were the dates of the seasonal cycle- for planting, inundating and harvesting- that you found an outburst of astronomical calculation and astrological prediction. So important was it to keep the work force in passive dependence, that this knowledge became the exclusive property of a caste of managerial bureaucrats, the futurologist of the ancient world. These were men morbidly wrapped-up in themselves and responsible to nothing but the system; they dwarfed the people with monumental architecture and threatened the people with implacable sky gods."

Alex's answer was deeply inadequate to the gravity that he subscribed to; it also told me he was the latest incarnation of what organized religion has done to people before him: a docile slave to historic interpretations he does not understand, but easily surrenders to without critical thought. 2012 theorists use the passions of the human heart and contemporary circumstances of mankind, as instruments to execute its purpose.

High in the Andes, The Way Inn seemed like a good place to escape impending doom. It's a rare moment to observe an end of time prophecy playing out before my eyes, usually I only get to read about what never happens. I am sure that in the end, Alex's apprehensions will far exceed his sufferings.

David

Huaraz, Peru

Dispatch Number 83 -Dead Things

Eight months into my journey, back in 2009, I still wore the gleam of the rose-tinted traveler excited by most everything I saw, summoning it up with 'Great!' My romantic perspective was jolted when the well respected, Reverend Lawrence Rosebaugh, an American was shot dead. He had spent over thirty years running missions in war-torn countries like El Salvador and Guatemala. Now, he was slumped over the wheel caught in a road-side ambush two kilometers outside the 200-person village I was staying in.

Peace Corp friend, Ted and I watched them drive past his house at 5:30 in the afternoon. Minutes later the Reverend was shot in the head and the others in his group, all priests had their valuables taken at gunpoint. The bandits escaped on foot over a jungle trail with a couple cameras, bibles and a fistful of dollars, leaving a dead man behind. The news sent a chill down our spines because we had driven the same road just a couple hours earlier.

Traveling remote areas, which is usually where I am, carried a new edge after that. In this remote part of northern Guatemala the apathy and disinterest of the police contrasted with the anger of the indigenous communities they were expected to serve. The cops would not enter into a pursuit and the next morning a posse of local farmers took matters into their own hands and gave chase finding evidence, but no robbers.

While in Honduras with Jeff the gregarious Australian we saw these two:

After lunch under piercing Honduran sun we drove on a new highway that cut through the banana plantations along the Caribbean coast. An old man lie dead in the opposite lane. Fresh runny blood poured down the sloping roadway towards our lane as we crawled by in first gear staring out the driver's window, the blood would be in our lane soon. A very old woman of similar age stood pensively over him as if afraid to know who he was, a bicycle lay on the ground near him. The scene looked like it happened minutes earlier. The dead one appeared still warm, blood shiny and fresh pooling by his head and running over the little stones that make up asphalt. We drove seven miles before talking again.

Days later in the same region we saw a group of a 100 people or more surround and stare at a man who lay dead next to his spilled motorcycle. No one touched him and we didn't stop.
Was he dead?, I asked.
Yes, definitely dead. Jeff proclaimed in a doctor's tone.
It was a tone surprisingly similar to one I heard from the doctor caring for my mother, Hope when I asked the same question years back. She was too still to be anything else.

David
Huaraz, Peru

Dispatch Number 82 -Shot Dead

The violence broke out at 9 on a Sunday evening. Mothers and small children crying, some wail as they walk away from the scene in the cold night air. The shock felt in the aftermath of violence. People stood quiet without emotion. Quiet like a funeral service. The tidy curbs and paving stones betrayed the violence that brought people out of their houses in the small Colombian mountain town of three thousand people. The night was quiet except for aimlessly barking dogs. Quiet the way small agricultural towns are after sunset when they shutter up and the streets become still.

A man was shot dead one block from my hotel. The sounds: killing and shock could be heard in clear detail, the crack of the pistol and the horrible guttural wail women make when someone dies. Six rapid pistol shots, like Chinese firecrackers rang out shattering the peace of early evening. I thought someone had lost their temper and shot one of the barking dogs, when in fact, they lost it and shot another man.

I stood with the gathering crowd. We stared in silence at the dead man laying in the gutter. He looked so peaceful he could have been mistaken for a passed out drunk of 40 or 50 years, a man with a swollen face of too much salt, oil and beer. No sheet or jacket tossed over him, just his still body facing the cold night sky with closed eyes. He lay dead in front of a tienda, a small convenience store, the kind I buy toilet paper, beer and food at.

A crowd formed and stood quietly with a stillness only felt when you walk the streets late at night. Still, very still, like sex after an orgasm, expired and calm. No police car sirens or bright flashing lights, just one cop who arrived on foot in a two cop town. The townsfolk slowly grew into a crescent shape around the dead-man. Not a whisper.

I stood close, close as an outsider dare, looking for Hollywood bullet holes and blood. Unlike the movies there were none. I stood with the rest of them staring. Contemplating. The freshly dead are ghoulish. So strange this man in morbid state with not a whisper in the crowd.
I think to myself, What he did he do for work and wondered what the argument could have been over? How many dead bodies have I seen in my life?

I had to remind myself I was looking at a dead man, one shot dead like the days of the Wild West, there it was again: Hollywood. Listening to my thoughts I can see how much of life is played out on film and not in real life. I left the community to itself, its shock, its whispers. My return walk to the hotel was solemn as I passed whispering women standing in front of a house. I bowed my head and walked on.

Death makes you value life, albeit usually temporarily. You make half-hearted promises to yourself to do something different, much like the cheap new year resolutions we make and don't keep, or like this night, the next death.

Ernesto J. was shot dead over something. Nothing. It could have been anything, a woman, religion or saltine crackers. I sensed the killer was the man sitting next to Ernesto's still body, with his head hung low looking unhappy with his rashness. The policeman's radio crackled.

David
Lima, Peru

Dispatch Number 81 -Cow Man

A leather-faced cow herder waved us to stop at a broad curve in the road where he was shoveling dirt into potholes that burst out everywhere like pimples in the asphalt. He was working this remote section alone while his few cows munching on high plains grass that looked better suited to weave with. This scene is normal on back-country roads in Latin America, the poor get a shovel to patch holes in hope drivers will proffer tips for their labor. They do make a difference, but there are always more potholes than repairmen. Every age participates, from 7 year old boys to old peasant women.

On the drive to Chavin we crossed the famed Cordillera Blanca in search of a sulfur hot spring in the heart of the Andes, it was here we met the smiling Peruvian herder on the road. The peasants, or campesinos who live in this remote cold dry environment have red-brown weathered complexions. Age guessing is hopeless, they all look older than they are, the impassive faces of children have bright red-rosy cheeks that look painted on.

I offered a lollipop instead of a coin. He had one of those broad natural smiles that gave the appearance he smiled all the time. His teeth were badly decayed though lined in silver, like picture frames highlighting what was left.
He was pleased with the candy and surprised me by asking, Do you have an old newspaper?
We were near a low mountain pass in the middle of nowhere, not a single house in sight. I love to read and was charmed he asked for a daily and dearly wished I had one to give.

We exchanged pleasantries then drove on while the next driver ignored his plea for a tip leaving Cow Man in a whirl of road dust.

David
Lima, Peru

Dispatch Number 80 -The Guest

This August having spent the hottest part of the year in the Amazon basin I felt the urge to get out of that sticky oppressive part of Peru and clear my head in the Andes. In the foothills where grass meets granite the focus becomes the mountainous backdrop with Peruvian herders managing small flocks of sheep and cattle. The herders hiss and make guttural noises to manage the animals while tossing rocks and slapping them with thin branches. After long walks in the mountains I would take communal meals at the Inn where fellow travelers shared stories.

There was a colorful variety of guests staying at the Inn, Amy an American lawyer visiting Peru for two weeks who brought it all with her, not the work, but the weird energy of wound up America. She worked for the U.S. Department of Justice in the Environmental Division in Washington, D.C. who was a tense tightly wrapped person. When people said something she made a point to hear exactly the opposite. She had the knack of asking questions and ignoring the reply.

A person who had trouble accepting kindness like the time I gave her a tangerine as a simple food gift; eying my actions with suspicion, she struggled with a snotty "thanks" sounding like a college sorority girl who was worried her friends were watching. A person could not hold a conversation with her because she would parse one's words mercilessly derailing the "intent" of the conversation. She would search for fault and blemish in most everything, including herself.

The most colorful guests were friends of the owner, Alex a group of 2012 futurists that predicted impending doom in December 2012 that took a lot of natural jungle drugs to see through it all. It was such a colorful bunch I wrote a separate piece to be shared soon.

Two German women were among the guests at the Inn, who I suspected of being lovers (men always have to comment on this superficial bullshit) that complained of the local peasants doing their annual grass burn before seasonal rains. The confident one, Teresa worked for Airbus and described her world in extremes of 'the best and worst' despite common opinion. Germans tend to be some of the most inflexible and intolerant people I have met on my travels. The most offensive I met were two young German men teaching English in rural Ecuador who turned the motor off in my Land Cruiser as it warmed telling me as I watched from the balcony above they did not want to listen to it and authoritatively told me engines don't need to be warmed anymore. I was never asked to turn it off.

The women at the Inn were much more friendly, Teresa's unemployed girlfriend had a voracious appetite consuming anything left on the communal dining table, smothering it with hot sauce until she emptied the bottle.
The confident one went on, thick with pity about the burning hillside near the Inn, I wish someone would tell them to stop doing that.

The West always knows best. I tire of this type of traveler who accepts little of the places they visit, preferring high moral ground like fires, trash and toilet systems to bitch about. One needs to be cautious when moralizing against the countries they visit, because if everything was run to high standards like they are in the West, then these travelers would have no place to go. A principal reason to travel is to see different things and things done differently. I have found the Germans to be the most reluctant to accept this idea, they prefer the comfortable couch of criticism, railing against anything they set their attentions to. On a closing point, the practice of burning grass to set nutrients for the next crop has been an agricultural practice for over 11,000 years.

David
Lima, Peru

Dispatch Number 79 -No Hands

After I saw him I thought shamefully to myself, David, the next time you get bitchy or full of self-pity try it one more time without a pair of hands.
Through a birth defect the backpacker next to me had no hands.
He has gone through his whole life this way and it stimulated a string of questions:
What are his hardships?
How does he count money?
How does he endure being teased and stared at?
How does he eat?
And how does he do it all and not have it be at the center of attention?

He moved effortlessly about and I hardly noticed him in my morning haze. The man with no hands refreshed my perspective on how petty we can make things. In this brief passing it was to never know a man yet be affected by him.

David
Lima, Peru

Dispatch Number 78 -Notes From a Notebook IV

The Move

The petite French woman who went volcano watching with us the night before rode with us from a cool air mountain town in Ecuador down to the steamy tropics of the Amazon basin to the east. Sort of cute, she had a compressed face that squished up her features and had a munchkin-like body. We stopped for a dip in a river to escape jungle heat by lying about in the shallow riverbed.

Jason, a travel friend, did a bizarre thing -he made a move on the pug-like Nittie, an action that stood in contrast to his low self-esteem that propelled him to do little. He was throwing rocks with his cousin when he suddenly stopped, walked over to where Nittie was sitting, over fifty feet away, then faced her while he placed his hands on a large rock, then with model-like sexuality tore off his t-shirt and dunked his 80s rocker-style hair into the waters. He stood up dripping, pulled his hair back and bared his chest to unimpressed Nittie who struggled to contain a giggle.

Marjolein, my Dutch travel companion remarked, Did you see Jason's Herbal Essence Shampoo move?
Before it was over Jason, without saying a word, gave a clumsy smile, stood cautiously proud and hesitated awkwardly for a moment then walked back to his rock pile. Nittie finally gave a laugh, the condescending way French people do when confronted with American guilelessness.

When we arrived at our destination in steamy Tena she was gone in under five minutes for the bus station declaring she was bound for one of those spots promoted in the travel guides as an "off-the-beaten-path" experience. These guides are bibles for the uncreative non-adventurous types and they adhere to them with remarkable predictability. The implication made in these travel books is that you will be the only non-native person there. And like most things that share characteristics of the bible it leads to group-think and group-actions that end in dull predictability: the "intrepid" backpacker finds his congregation has already arrived at the same hotel and taking meals in the same restaurants.

Doritos
A traveler's comfort comes in many forms, tonight it is being alone in a cheap street-front room, a candle in the window with a large bag of Doritos, a chunk of cheese and two bottles of beer. Made complete with a good book, this one a biography about the Argentine revolutionary Che.
Little else is needed in this mountain town.

Unhatched Ideas

A Doritos Index. It would keep a running record of Doritos prices in each country as a measure of inflation and relative prices which can fluctuate widely country to country. Two things I can find in every country: Doritos and Coca Cola, good Coke in glass bottles.

The Recently Read List
Compañero, a biography on revolutionary Che Guevara, now I know the story and it is a great deal more than the pop-art posters that are plastered everywhere. A complicated and extraordinarily interesting man, he was a Gemini after all. After his capture the Bolivians decided to execute Che to avoid further problems they anticipated would come with having just captured the World's Revolutionary leader whose stated goal was to export revolution. The Americans wanted to interrogate him in Panama and there was a possibility the Cubans would send an armed rescue to break him out. Aside from being a rural tourist I am also a morbid historical seeker, my plans are to visit the ravine where he was captured and school house where he was summarily shot. Years ago I stood at the motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. The combined pleasure of seeing the actual location of one's death and history is difficult to explain.

Blinding Light, Paul Theroux's (One of America's great travel writers) worst novel ever and something rare for me, left unfinished and abandoned on a bookshelf for another traveler to suffer.

A contemporary history of The Arab-Israeli Conflict, an eye opening read from a world historical perspective. The rule of history prevails, those in power rarely negotiate. Israel is in the driver's seat on this one.

Endurance, the Shackleton story of an exploration ship getting trapped in antarctic ice floes and of his miraculous, truly miraculous story of survival and leadership. An unbelievable ordeal that lasted nearly two years, in 1914-17.

Howard Hughes, The Secret Life, a biography of the billionaire sex crazed bi-sexual control-freak who was also a titan of American industry, a friend of the CIA and to wrap up his further eccentric side was a germaphobe and notorious tightwad (an odd trait shared by many of the super wealthy). Contrary to popular belief, the evidence demonstrates he was not crazy nor controlled by others, but was, in this account very alert and active in his latter years. With his Hollywood productions he influenced how films were made, especially the loosening of sexual censorship. Others include contributions to the aeronautics industry; spy satellites for the U.S. government; various CIA escapades involving Cuba; a secret technology provider to the intelligence boys at the CIA; transformed the Las Vegas you know today when he bought several casinos from mob families in the 1960s. Howard initiated corporate-run Vegas of today made fit for a child and a man of vice.

A Short History of Nearly Everything, a layman's book of modern science by Bill Bryson, very good, especially the biographies of the fame-crazed scientists that either made novel discoveries or stole them from each other -these guys are catty self-promoters! Did you know that if your text book diagram of the solar system was to scale that Pluto would be two kilometers away from where you sat?

What am I Doing Here, a Bruce Chatwin posthumously published book of travel and interview notes. It helped me better understand my current nomadic traits. He has a thing for very good first sentences too.

David
Lima, Peru