Welcome the most terrifying place in the world – at least to a Portuguese sailor in the early 1400s.
They called it Cape Bojador (pronounced BOO-jay-dur), a Portuguese rendering of the local name given it by area residents – which in turn comes from abu khatar, Arabic for “father of danger.”
It doesn’t look so scary or dangerous on the map – just a small bump in the African coast in what is now Western Sahara.
But the Cape’s true danger becomes apparent when you imagine that the year is 1434 and you are sailing a single 30-ton wooden fishing boat – with only one sail and a crew of about 20 – down the African coast. And then you look at this map of global wind patterns, with Cape Bojador marked by the green circle:
The channel between the African coast and the Canary Islands functions as a giant wind tunnel. For your small fishing boat, it would make for a quick trip – but remember, you also have to get back. And for a boat that small with only one sail, there was simply no way to fight against such strong winds to sail back to Portugal. A trip around Cape Bojador was doomed to be a one-way trip.
In the early 1400s, Prince Henry of Portugal was determined to find a way to sail beyond Cape Bojador, to discover and exploit whatever lay beyond. He founded the world’s first naval research school and laboratory at the far southern tip of Portugal, where seafarers looked for a way around.
A modern reconstruction of Eanes’s expedition (from a documentary made by Portuguese TV)
Their solution was as clever as it was terrifying. They called their strategy volta do mar, meaning “turn of the sea.” Rather than fight the wind to sail up the African coast, captains would order their ships to sail far out into the Atlantic, where they could pick up more favorable winds.
Of course, it’s one thing to have this strategy in theory, quite another to be the one to put it into practice. That dubious honor fell to Gil Eanes (1395-1450s?), who set off from Portugal in the small fishing boat described above. The expedition passed Cape Bojador and traveled as far south as what is now Mauritania, where they picked some roses of a previously-unknown variety as proof they had succeeded in their mission. Then they used the volta do mar to return home.
Within 20 years, the Portuguese regularly traveled as far as modern Ghana, unfortunately bringing slaves back with them to sell all over the world. Within 50 years, Portuguese navigators had rounded the southern tip of Africa; within 120 years, they had reached Japan.
Guest Post! One of the joys of being alive is having smart, curious friends to talk with – or to write guest posts for your blog. I’d love to see more of these, especially from friends with perspectives and opinions different from my own – email me your ideas!
Today it’s awesome friend Jeremy Berg with his thoughts on the first two Democratic Presidential Debates, and the 2020 U.S. Presidential election in general. As always, Jeremy’s thoughts are both laugh-out-loud funny and deeply insightful. Enjoy!
This is part 1 of Jeremy’s three-part series. Part 2 will come next week, and Part 3 the week after that. The pink-shaded paragraphs in italic are related tangential extra thoughts.
This crystal ball is named “Chuck Todd.” It makes inaccurate predictions.
Hey everyone. Jordan has invited me to share my thoughts on and predictions about the Democratic primaries. I’m going to touch on several hot button issues, but I don’t want to discuss the issues themselves — only how they might play in the campaign. Which is not to say you
won’t hear opinions…
Let’s get three things out of the way to start:
There will be many calls to unite behind one candidate ASAP and not sink the Dems through infighting. Phrases like “circular firing squad,†“purity tests,†“divide and conquer,†and “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good†will get much currency. This will not happen.
There will be calls to not refight the 2016 election. This will not happen.
There will be calls to not play identity politics. This will not happen.
A massive primary field became fait accompli the instant Clinton lost the election.
Yes, Russian interference, voter suppression, 3 million more popular votes, and the electoral college is bullshit. But. By the current measures of an American presidential election, she lost.
There are 23 candidates for the Democratic nomination for the
exact same reason that there were 17 candidates for the Republican nomination
in 2016: the current incumbent is despised to a degree that is not only
historic but previously undreamt of, and no one in the party has been anointed.
Jeb Bush raised a shitload of money and belonged to a dynasty, but he was a political non-entity whose biggest moment on the national stage had been the Terry Schiavo debacle, and who’d been out of office for almost a decade when he ran. The fact that he wasn’t considered the presumptive front-runner right away should’ve been enough to get him to cut his losses and quit on day three. Scott Walker was the Kochs’ pick, but he didn’t really exist outside of Wisconsin, even after the potentially star-making achievement of beating back a recall effort.
On the Democratic side of things, whether or not you think the DNC pulled shenanigans for her, Hillary Clinton was clearly the anointed one. The primary was supposed to be a formality; Bernie Sanders was unmistakably an unwelcome guest at the party (I am aware that Martin O’Malley also ran, but a wet piece of cardboard would’ve had the same impact. On a personal note, I was living in Baltimore when O’Malley was elected mayor, and seeing the dynamic fireball that played Irish bar band gigs in a sleeveless t-shirt, was the inspiration for Carchetti in The Wire, and who a friend once sat next to at Mick’s as he wept into his beer over the state of his beloved city somehow reduced to a piece of extra-bland tofu on the national stage was profoundly depressing).
An actual photo of the Democratic Presidential candidates taking the stage for the first debate
That means the field is wide open in a way that few if any candidates will live to see again.
Not only does every candidate face an uphill climb against a party favorite but the incumbent is so hated that anyone, no matter how far down the ladder or possessed of radical ideas, gets considered as a viable alternative. Whatever virtues everyone running may possess, they’re still politicians and they’re not about to let this chance pass them by.
With the field so crowded, voters are going to be very picky. The candidates know this, and will stress their virtues and others’ faults. Everyone’s done things someone won’t like, and that means those things will be brought up.
THRILL as the primaries threaten to saw this donkey in half!
So yes, we are going to hear all about Hickenlooper’s fracking, Buttigieg’s gentrification, Harris’s record as a prosecutor (or the fact that she was a prosecutor at all), Warren’s DNA test, Biden’s everything, and G-d knows what else. It’s true that all this tumult will potentially damage the candidate in the general, both in terms of the dirt that gets dug up and the voters it turns off, but it’s still going to happen.
Everyone agrees that it’s vital to get rid of
Trump, but each side thinks the other is guaranteed to fail. As part of the
argument, progressives will yell about how Bernie would’ve beaten Trump and we
can’t make that mistake again, we need offers of real change, while the
centrists will yell that we need a middle of the road candidate who will appeal
to everyone in the general and not turn people off and frighten them with
radical ideas.
…and radical skin tones, sexualities, and genders.
The idea that enough Trump voters (not all by any means, rampant racism and misogyny definitely figure) would have gone for a radical leftist instead of a radical rightist has been floated in various places. Matt Taibi’s book Insane Clown President makes a good case for this, and
there was a recent New York Times article where some Trump voters were saying they liked Warren for much the same reasons they’d liked him.
The word “electability†will surface in these discussions, a
word that has already been cast as both the only thing that matters for 2020
and a canard used to preserve white male power.
Gender aside, we had that “electable†candidate in 2016 and she
lost, so I’m not sure why anyone thinks it’s going to work now, but expect to
hear it just the same.
UPDATE: Mayor Killer passed away on May 21, 2020 at the age of 14. His loyal subjects have created a memorial fund with Baltimore Area Rescue & Care Add a comment to say it’s for Killer.
Meet the neighborhood of Hampden in Baltimore, Maryland. Population 15,000. A former community for immigrants working at the nearby sailcloth factories. Today, it is a hip center for urban living that has stayed true to its vibrant working-class roots.
Now meet “Killer,” the unofficial mayor the neighborhood:
The Mayor holds an audience with citizens
Killer spends nights inside with a specific human, but spends his days wandering the streets, getting food and water from whichever humans set it out, and generally not caring what you think.
I don’t live in Hampden, but I live nearby in the city of Baltimore. I’ve met Killer, and he is every bit as cute as his Instagram account suggests:
You’ve probably heard the story: it’s Christmas. A young husband and wife are very poor, and very much in love. His dearest treasure is a gold pocket watch his father gave him; hers is her beautiful long hair.
Unknown to him, she sells her hair to a wigmaker to buy a chain to hold his pocket watch. Unknown to her, he sells his watch to buy her a set of jeweled combs for her hair.
When they exchange gifts, they realize how much in love they really are. The power of this story comes from its bittersweet irony, with just a hint of tragedy. Love truly is the greatest gift, but you can’t comb your hair with love, and love can’t tell the time.
The source is “The Gift of the Magi,” one of the most famous short stories in American literature. It was written in 1905 by American author O. Henry (the pen name of William Sydney Porter). Henry wrote hundreds of short stories, but this one was by far his most famous.
My lovely spouse
My lovely spouse and I just had an experience that reminded us of this classic story, but without the hint of tragedy.
We have recently become fans of the Cartoon Network series We Bare Bears, a slice-of-life sitcom about three brothers who live together, and who happen to be bears. Grizz is a grizzly bear who is well-meaning but a bit dense and self-involved. Pan-pan is a panda who is girl-crazy and addicted to his smartphone (yes, I know pandas aren’t really bears, and I love how that is your first objection to this concept). But the star of the show is Ice Bear. Ice Bear is a martial arts expert who speaks only in short, direct sentences in a low gravelly voice – and consistently speaks of Ice Bear in the third person.
Here are some of his best moments from the show so far:
And so it came to pass that during one of my frequent Nights of Insomnia, I had just finished watching a few episodes, followed by the NBA TV rebroadcast of my hometown Orlando Magic’s exciting 149-113 win over the Atlanta Hawks. I mention that detail to explain what I did next: I logged in to my Amazon.com account to look for a Nikola VuÄević jersey. I found only a few, all far above my price range – but made another important discovery.
My lovely spouse and I share an Amazon account. We don’t normally share online accounts, but sharing one with Amazon makes life simpler because we can share the free two-day shipping to our address. And so when I didn’t add the Nikola VuÄević jersey to my shopping cart, I discovered something was already in the cart: a beautiful Ice Bear Believes in You T-shirt, size men’s large.
We are fortunately not even close to poor, much less as tragically poor as the young couple depicted in “The Gift of the Magi,” but with her finishing up a career-change master’s degree, we don’t always have immediate funds for purchases, no matter how awesome.
And so I figured she was waiting until her next paycheck to buy the shirt. I also figured she was buying it as a gift for our lovely nephew, a fellow We Bare Bears fan. And so I thought it would be an excellent time for a gift – not only the gift for our nephew but one in a more appropriate size for the spouse herself.
But of course she was not buying it for our nephew. And thus arrived in the mail a few days later:
And so, far from Christmas 1905, I’ll adapt the words of the story’s lyrical closing to celebrate our love:
O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the Ice Bear.
Click the Play button on the video above to watch this morning’s press conference as it happened. The press conference begins at the 33-minute mark of the YouTube stream.
Note: this isn’t something I’m directly involved in, I just think it’s REALLY REALLY COOL
10:15 AM UPDATE: The Press Conference is now over. Click the link above to watch the archived recording. I’m watching it now and I’ll summarize here.
10:04 AM UPDATE: The livestream is over, and there are so many fascinating results to unpack! Keep watching this space as I add more explanations and further resources to explore.
9:48 AM UPDATE: I’m learning about this at the same time you are. As I learn more, I’ll keep updating this post. This is so exciting!
