The human eye vs. a camera: how do they compare?

Humans are a visual species, so it's not surprising that our eyes work pretty well - though we don't compare to avians. ClarkVision compares the eye to a digital camera, and claims a resolution equivalence of about 580 megapixels, a relatively mediocre ISO 800 sensitivity (and only grayscale for that), roughly f3.5 and @ 20mm focal length, and an awesome (albeit complex) visual range. (link via Kotke)

It's a great set of references from a photographer and professional astronomer*. I'm not sure how this translates into realtime perception however, and that's the bit that matters. I recall reading that the pathways beween the retina and the visual cortex have pretty limited bandwidth, and the visual connections to the prefrontal cortex are astoundingly weak. It's as though the world's best camera were connected to your computer by an RS-232 serial cable. There has to be an incredible amount of pre-processing and lossy compression to get any useful realtime work, and for us only realtime counts. On the other end of the circuit, the brain is doing a lot of informed guessing to create it's simulacra of "reality".

This is why a human studying a photograph will get much more from the image than they can ever perceive from a realtime glance. The eye is a marvelous camera, but evolution hasn't had harder time optimizing the neural interfaces.

By the way, how good might the eye/brain be at lossy compression and re-representation of image input? One clue is how successful living organisms are at storing their "construction specifications" and startup machinery in a single cell (egg, the sperm could be eliminated). That's a level of data compression/packing (relatively lossless) orders of magnitude greater than we can achieve with current technologies.

* I've noticed less repetition lately of the absurd "bloggers are ignorant fools" meme.

UPS delivery record fraud - how to respond

I've experienced this twice in the past year. UPS claims they attempted a delivery at my home, but I've reason to believe they didn't. Kotke reported the same thing a few months ago ..

Harry Potter and the Phantom Delivery (kottke.org)

... At some point after 7pm, the UPS status page updated to say that a notice was left at 3:36 pm, implying that a delivery attempt was made and no one was home to receive it. (Amazon's tracking page says that UPS told them "Delivery attempted - recipient not home".) No such notice was left. My door buzzer did not ring at 3:36 pm (I was home all day on Saturday) and the doorman of the building next door who takes the deliveries for our building when people aren't home reported no notice or delivery attempt...

Recently I wrote of UPS' package-crushing habits.

UPS is following the airlines down the tubes, perhaps for similar reasons. Today I'd recommend the USPS over UPS. If you run into UPS problems with an Amazon order, use the Amazon feedback option linked to your order to complain. Don't bother contacting UPS, they're too far gone. We need Amazon to shift them, or to find another solution.

That Jena business: it's time to stop watching television news

Since I don't watch TV, news of the "Jena Six" passed me by. I kept seeing references to the topic though, so when Google News suggested an AP article by Todd Lewan I read Black and White Becomes Gray in La. Town. It's a persuasive summary; from it I concluded that Jena's racism level is at least American average, but probably not above the 80th percentile. I suspect a jury of enlightened rationalists would have punished at least some of the Jena Six, though with more creative and useful sentencing.

The story is thus mostly interesting as an example of how narratives are created in America's divided communities, and I suspect the real criminal here is American television news (CBC, NCB, ABC and Fox in particular*) and the people who persist in watching it.

Now, you might question how I can say this, since I told you I don't watch TV. Well, I do sometimes catch network TV news when walking through airports or sitting at restaurants. In the seconds before I can avert my gaze the shocking stupidity of it shines through. On the other hand, I read a lot of print media, and it's not so bad.

America, stop watching television news. It's a drowning beast that will grab onto anything above the water line. Just turn it off. Now.

* What about radio talk shows? Good question. I can't comment there, because it's been years since one of those accidentally crossed my radio. I mostly listen to podcasts these days ...

Today, would Gerald Ford be to the left of Hillary Clinton?

In a NYT Magazine article John Paul Stevens, the 87 yo "liberal" justice, reminds us he was appointed by Ford and is a "moderate republican"...

Justice John Paul Stevens - Supreme Court - Law - Washington - New York Times

Stevens, however, is an improbable liberal icon. “I don’t think of myself as a liberal at all,” he told me during a recent interview in his chambers, laughing and shaking his head. “I think as part of my general politics, I’m pretty darn conservative.” Stevens said that his views haven’t changed since 1975, when as a moderate Republican he was appointed by President Gerald Ford to the Supreme Court. Stevens’s judicial hero is Potter Stewart, the Republican centrist, whom Stevens has said he admires more than all of the other justices with whom he has served. He considers himself a “judicial conservative,” he said, and only appears liberal today because he has been surrounded by increasingly conservative colleagues. “Including myself,” he said, “every judge who’s been appointed to the court since Lewis Powell” — nominated by Richard Nixon in 1971 — “has been more conservative than his or her predecessor. Except maybe Justice Ginsburg. That’s bound to have an effect on the court.”

I usually think that the GOP has moved to an extreme position, so much so that a Ford Republican is a liberal today. On the other hand, is it correct to say that Gerald Ford would be to the left of Hillary?

It's a tricky question. These days even commies like me respect the power of markets, even as we fear the answers markets give the weak. Ford-era price controls aren't "liberal" today, they're dumb. On another paw, Ford @1970 would be far less tolerant of non-heterosexual gender relationships than most of today's GOP (ignoring their theater for a moment).

Bottom line, I don't think Gerald Ford @ 1970 would map onto any part of today's political spectrum. Probably not the Democrats, and certainly not today's GOP. Stevens and the few Republicans like him have been left adrift as the GOP has moved to some weird political dimension ...

kottke.org - Gordon's Notes on steroids, more art, less physics

I enjoy writing Gordon's Notes. It's my own little candle in the darkness. I have no pretensions to grandeur, but I do think it's a bit unusual in terms of the breadth of topics. Most blogs these days are more specialized, or represent multiple voices.

Except for one I came across today for the first time:

kottke.org :: home of fine hypertext products:

... kottke.org is a weblog about the liberal arts 2.0 edited by Jason Kottke since March 1998. You can read about me and kottke.org here. If you've got questions, concerns, or an interesting link for me, send them along. Follow kottke.org via RSS kottke.org RSS feed, see what I'm up to on Twitter, view my Flickr photostream, or check out some random entries from the archives. You may also be interested in my thoughts on books & movies or some photos I've taken. I also made a tiny bitmap font called Silkscreen several years ago...it's free and works on OS X, Windows, and Linux...

This blog has tends of thousands of readers on bloglines alone and includes gems like this review of the NYT archives. Compared to me Jason Kottke is a much better writer, and is more interested in the arts, movie and culture than exotic physics. He's also bawdier than me and lives in Manhattan rather than Saint Paul*, so be careful when reading at work.

His growing tags collection is a good topics guide:

Some recommended tags
photography economics lists bestof infoviz food nyc firstworldproblems cities restaurants video timelapse interviews language maps fashion nsfw remix

Recently popular tags (last 3 weeks)
indianajones multitouch harrisonford ratatouille movies firstworldproblems iphone facebook desktoptd aol jasonkottke nyc jenbekman mobiletelephones design pixar apple photography art mcsweeneys harrypotter geography books tv tennis

All-time popular tags
movies books photography nyc science food lists design business sports weblogs music art video bestof games tv funny apple language videogames google restaurants interviews maps

Random tags
bengibbard ajax sony pizza arthurclarke mattwebb kenjennings lordoftherings d70 soda textmate vogue anildash lifeaquatic china starbucks anaisnin barnabyfurnas stevenspielberg upperdeck election2008 meteorology uptonsinclair legendofzelda foodnetwork

I recommend a trip to the archives, including the very earliest posts. I enjoyed the "about" page as well. Great fun!

Update: *Kottke was born in the Twin Cities, where I now live. He left at an early age though.
Update 9/23/07: Browsing Kottke's archives, I see he was back in Minneapolis from 1996-2000. Ahh, that explains it. Nice post on the Mill City Museum too.

Do you know where your identities are?

Yes, this chap has more than most geezers, but you probably have more selves than you realize.

Gordon's Tech: Online identities: management and multiplication:

... I currently have manged 'major' identities at Amazon, faughnan.com, faughnanlagace.com, Google Gmail/Blogger, LinkedIn, and, yes, even Facebook -- and those are only the ones I can remember right now. I debated including my Yahoo! identity in the mix, but unless Yahoo does something remarkable with Zimbra that's just a front for spammers. I do have a Microsoft Passport (or whatever they call that now) identity as well, but I try to forget that one. I used to have a .Mac identity, but Apple's .Mac hasn't delivered much value for money so that one is in abeyance. There are a myriad of 'unmanaged' lesser identities, and of course all my emails have some form of identity associated with them ...

It's the gold rush of the 21st century, each identity a piece of reputation management. Which ring will bind them all?

If we survive, we will be Sweden

I think Africans are more optimistic than Swedes. Having said that, I'll comment on Follow Me Here and the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World. Essentially, the more "enlightenment 2.0" you are, the more you move to the top right of the chart.

The blessed nations include Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and, way out there at tip-top, Sweden. Japan and New Zealand approach from different directions, the US has a ways to move.

I'd love to see a dynamic model of this chart, showing the movement of nations over the past 30 years. Zimbabwe, by the way, now owns the bottom left.

Attitudes change: suicide bombing is unfashionable

This news is two months old, but a bloglines glitch threw it up today. I don't recall commenting on it before; it deserves a mention.

No wonder Muslim support for suicide bombing is declining | FP Passport

...The percentage of Muslims saying that suicide bombing is justified in the defense of Islam has declined dramatically over the past five years in five of eight countries where trends are available. In Lebanon, for example, just 34% of Muslims say suicide bombings in the defense of Islam are often or sometimes justified; in 2002, 74% expressed this view...

Next year it might be 20%. That's a change worth mentioning.

America's Billion Dollar Embassy - in Baghdad

Worth reading so you know what the Feds are up to:

Welcome to Baghdad, U.S.A. | FP Passport

...Located in Baghdad’s 4-square-mile Green Zone, the embassy will occupy 104 acres. It will be six times larger than the U.N. complex in New York and more than 10 times the size of the new U.S. Embassy being built in Beijing.... The Baghdad compound will be entirely self-sufficient, with no need to rely on the Iraqis for services of any kind. The embassy has its own electricity plant, fresh water and sewage treatment facilities, storage warehouses, and maintenance shops. The embassy is composed of more than 20 buildings, including six apartment complexes with 619 one-bedroom units. Two office blocks will accommodate about 1,000 employees.... Once inside the compound, Americans will have almost no reason to leave. It will have a shopping market, food court, movie theater, beauty salon, gymnasium, swimming pool, tennis courts, a school, and an American Club for social gatherings...

A billion dollars.

The cure for the AMT: The Carbon Tax

A few weeks ago, in the context of my carbon tax thread, I noted the synergy between our trillion dollar infrastructure bill and a carbon tax. That's a spend-side synergy though, so in the interest of encouraging my one GOP reader I'll mention there's also a tax-side synergy.

America is hooked on the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax). You can disregard all the Bush blather about cutting taxes, because he hasn't cut my taxes at all -- he's basically only cut the estate tax that affects very wealthy people. That's because I pay the AMT.

Inflation and economic growth will drive more and more Americans to pay the AMT. This is good in a way, because it's a built-in tax engine, though I think this has already been incorporated into social security and medicare projections. (Meaning if we actually did anything about the creeping tax aspect of the AMT our current huge deficits would see modest.) On the other hand, Republicans are allegedly supposed to hate taxes (true, that's not the way the Bush administration behaves, but it's the theory).

So here's the deal. Make the Carbon Tax "tax neutral". Use it to replace the AMT.

The roads will still need rebuilding, and medicare and social security will still be underfunded, but that's a political discussion. Providing a planet for our children is more important than getting our nation's finances in order.

So there you go Republicans -- embrace the Carbon Tax and axe the AMT. Let's see a candidate come out and say that ...

The dinosaur you ate yesterday

You probably ate an avian yesterday -- a turkey or chicken perhaps. You ate a dinosaur ...

Velociraptor was just a scary turkey, say scientists | Science | The Guardian

... Velociraptor, which was much smaller in real life than its screen version, was a one-metre tall, two-legged predator that lived more than 70m years ago. Equipped with large claws on each leg, it was a close relative to the earliest birds.

In a study of the fossilised forearms of velociraptors found in Mongolia in 1998, palaeontologist Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History found 'quill knobs' - bumps where the feathers used for flight in modern birds are anchored to the bone with ligaments. His results are published today in the journal Science.

'The more that we learn about these animals the more we find that there is basically no difference between birds and their closely related dinosaur ancestors like velociraptor,' said Professor Norell. 'Both have wishbones, brooded their nests, possess hollow bones, and were covered in feathers. If animals like velociraptor were alive today our first impression would be that they were just very unusual looking birds.'

Because of velociraptor's relatively short forelimbs, the feathers would not have helped it to fly. The researchers speculated that the feathers could have been passed down from smaller ancestors that did fly but would have served other functions such as display, shielding nests, temperature control or to help stability.

Geezers like me still tend to think the dinosaurs became extinct, but my son Ben's books talk only about the 'extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs'. The dinosaurs that attract our imagination were probably all avian dinosaurs, so, truly, they never did become extinct. Now that's a successful design ...

Distrusting climate models - it cuts both ways

The newest rational attack on global warming fears is to denounce climate models as unreliable predictors. It's true that these attacks are often motivated by tribal allegiances, perversity, fear, denial and bribes -- but they're still important. Semi-rationalist opposition helped establish that CO2 is rising, and helped establish that we have been warming for over a 100 years, and warming faster over the past 10-20 years.

Now that those battles are done, we have to justly fight the battles over the reliability of climate simulation. I'm not making bets on this one, I think the deniers may have a case. Simulation is hard, the models may not work.

Of course (insert evil laughter), this cuts both ways. The models may exaggerate climate change, or they may underestimate it. Observational data from the arctic shows that in that region the models have been consistently too conservative (emphases mine)...

The North Pole Is Melting: Scientific American

... As a result of atmospheric patterns that both warmed the air and reduced cloud cover as well as increased residual heat in newly exposed ocean waters, such melting helped open the fabled Northwest Passage for the first time [see photo] this summer and presaged tough times for polar bears and other Arctic animals that rely on sea ice to survive, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Such precipitous loss of ice cover far outpaces anything climate models or scientists have predicted.

This new record low continues the trend of steadily shrinking summer sea ice. "We're already set up for a big loss next year," Serreze notes. "We've got so much open water in the Arctic right now that has absorbed so much energy over the summer that the ocean has warmed. The ice that grows back this autumn will be thin."

In fact, a German expedition on the icebreaker Polarstern has revealed that existing Arctic sea ice in the center of the ice cap is only about three feet (one meter) thick, 50 percent thinner than it was just six years ago. As a result, more melt water is mixing with the salty seawater and pulses of warmer Atlantic seawater have intruded into the Arctic Ocean.

Whereas the South Pole remains protected by differing geographic, atmospheric and oceanic conditions, the North Pole is undergoing rapid change not seen in at least 6,000 years and perhaps as much as 125,000 years, and which may spread to lower latitudes. "It is reasonable to think that if you lose the sea ice cover that is going to have an impact elsewhere, in the midlatitudes," Serreze says. Some modeling studies of such effects have suggested drought in the western U.S. or changes in precipitation patterns across Europe.

Serreze expects the ice will bounce back somewhat next year, if only because he cannot imagine it shrinking any more so swiftly. But ice-free summers in the Arctic may become the norm in the near future. "At this point, I'd say the year 2030 is not unreasonable" for a summer without sea ice in the Arctic, Serreze says. "Within our lifetimes and certainly within our children's lifetimes."

When that occurs, the Arctic Ocean may become a spooky, foggy place, haunted by diminished populations of spectrally thin polar bears clinging to life in residual habitat. "It's going to be a different world," Serreze notes. "The observed rates of change have far outstripped what we projected."

The antarctic is mercifully protected, but as goes the Arctic, so goes Greenland. That may lead to faster sea level changes than the simulations predict, but I expect they will be in line with estimates of ancient climate impacts on Greenland.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, we live the future. Our climate in the continental center is very affected by arctic conditions. The Feds have moved southern MN into a new climactic zone, outdoor ice skating is disappearing, Nordic (cross-country) skiing is finished in the metro area, snow sledding now requires artificial snow, the northern snowmobile industry has collapsed and we're building lots of indoor water parks to get the kids through increasingly dull winters.

Carbon tax, anybody?

Network TV commits sepuku - Fake Steve Jobs gloats

NBC and ABC can't help themselves. It's like watching a slow motion multi-train wreck. Forbes' "Fake Steve Jobs" provides the pithiest summary...

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: We're thrilled about this NBC download service:

... NBC is making a big deal of saying that the downloads will be free. Free! Free! Did you hear me? Not 99 cents like that greedy bastard Jobso, but FREE! Well they made sure the word 'free' would get into all the headlines but when you read the stories a little more closely you find the warts. Like, the commercials will be embedded into the shows and you won't be able to skip over them. Like, you'll only be able to download to a Windows PC. Like, they'll only be free for seven days after broadcast. Then they dissolve. If you want to get them later, you'll have to pay. How much? Um, ah, mwah mwah oh did we mention that they're free for the first seven days?

Oh, and if you want shows from ABC, you can go to AOL. (And yes, heads are rolling at Disney over that deal. More on that later.) Money quote from the story about the ABC-AOL deal: 'The consumer is probably becoming confused. He will need to go to AOL to watch ABC. CBS programming is on the iPod. NBC will be doing direct downloads from its own website. NBC and News Corp (NWS) are starting a joint online venture called Hulu.' So, fair enough. Bring on the big media cluster fuck. Roll out all the different systems that don't work together. Bring on all the different kinds of software...

Wow. The demographic that wants to watch commercial infested television on a Windows PC must be absolutely HUGE ...

[Caveat: I get hives when I think of watching commercial TV, so you may assume my opinions on this topic are particularly ill-informed.]

Ramstad - another bad sign for the GOP

I met Jim Ramstad a few years ago, while he was doing a walkabout at my employer's - a major donor of his. He was a bit of a puzzle; an intelligent if misguided man who ran with the GOP. He owned the 3rd district, a suburban zone west of Minneapolis. His retirement is great news for the Dems, and another bad sign for the GOP (emphases mine):

Ramstad's exit sets off a scramble in 3rd District

Citing fatigue and political isolation, U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad triggered a scramble by potential successors with a surprise announcement Monday that he is retiring from Congress next year after nine terms.

Ramstad, 61, had barely finished announcing his decision when at least five potential candidates declared an interest in going after his seat while other potential hopefuls were mentioned..

...He said he has grown tired from the relentless physical grind of service in Washington and weary of being a lonely centrist in an increasingly polarized legislative body.

... The congressman called himself one of the last of a "dying breed of Republican moderates." He has increasingly called on Washington politicians to "work in a more bipartisan and pragmatic way," as he put it Monday. "People need to put aside the harsh rhetoric on both sides of the aisle."

Although Ramstad has long easily cruised to reelection, he warned that the Third District "is not a safe Republican district," pointing out that Bill Clinton won it twice, John Kerry almost won it and it currently has more DFLers in the Legislature than Republicans.

... About a month ago, during a session at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Ramstad said he had been feeling increasingly isolated in his party as it has tacked to the right.

... Ramstad said he has no plans to return to politics. Instead, he wants to teach and work with people suffering from chemical addiction and possibly work a stint in academia.

He is now cosponsoring the mental health "parity" legislation with Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., whom Ramstad has been mentoring since Kennedy's high-profile car crash, which was related to prescription drug use....

... He broke with his party five times this year in key votes, most notably against the troop surge in February. He voted with Democrats to increase the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour over the next two years, to allow the government to negotiate directly with drugmakers for lower prescription costs and to implement recommendations by the 9/11 Commission.

He also voted for a bill that would repeal tax cuts to oil companies and fund renewable energy programs.

He voted with the GOP against a troop reduction in July and for funding for the war without withdrawal deadlines in May.

Ramstad basically voted as a Clinton Democrat, I wonder if he ever considered switching parties. The Dems could never have defeated him for that district, but now it's definitely in play. If nothing else, it will suck GOP resources to defend it.

It's a measure of the fall of the GOP that it's losing its last highly electable centrists. The next election may take them to the point where they either reform or become irrelevant. I'm hoping for reform -- the Dems without a rational opposition would be like Apple without ... errr ... like Apple 2007.

Squanto and the non-Puritan non-Pilgrim "Fathers"

As a Canadian I'd been spared the folklore of the first American thanksgiving, so I was surprised five eight years ago when I chanced upon a neglected monument in a decrepit park by the town of Squantum, across the harbor from Boston. The monument park was near the closed causeway to Moon island and its mysterious Potemkin Village.

From GeoMapped Images

Who, I wondered, was Squanto? Why was the nearby town evidently named after him?

When I returned home I read what was then known of Squanto, the one man who connects both Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. I later learned that in his own language his name meant the equivalent of Satan. We don't think the "Pilgrim Fathers", of whom only half were religious and that half was Separatist, not Puritan, knew what his name meant. Had they known, they would have considered that a most curious omen.

Today the Wikipedia entry isn't a terrible introduction, but it's been vandalized and seems too incredible even for a life as astounding as Squanto's:

Squanto - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

.. Tisquantum was kidnapped and taken by Georgie Weymouth in 1605, according to the memoirs of Ferdinando Gorges. According to Gorges, Tisquantum worked in England for nine years before returning to the New World on John Smith's 1613 voyage... [jg: that's Jamestown I think?]

Soon after returning to his tribe in 1614, Tisquantum was kidnapped by another Englishman, Thomas Hunt. Hunt was one of John Smith's lieutenants. Hunt was planning to sell fish, corn, and captured slaves in Málaga, Spain. Hunt attempted to sell Tisquantum and a number of other Native Americans into slavery for £20 apiece[citation needed].

Sir Ferdinando Gorges, in A Brief Relation of the Discovery and Plantation of New England (London, 1622) wrote that some local friars, however, discovered what Hunt was attempting and took the remaining Indians, Tisquantum included, in order to instruct them in the Christian faith.

Eventually, Tisquantum escaped to London, living with a John Slany for a few years, and then went to Cuper's Cove, Newfoundland. Attempting to avoid the walk from Newfoundland to his home village, Tisquantum tried to take part in an expedition to that part of the North American east coast.

He returned to Ireland in 1618, however, when that plan fell through...

He returned once more to his homeland in 1619, making his way with an exploratory expedition along the New England coast. He was soon to discover that his tribe, as well as a majority of coastal New England tribes, had been decimated the year before by a plague...

Tisquantum finally settled with the Pilgrims and helped them recover from their first difficult winter by teaching them to increase their food production by fertilizing their crops, and by directing them to the best places to catch fish and eels.

Whatever Tisquantum's motives, he ended up distrusted by both the English and the Native people. Massasoit, the sachem who originally appointed Tisquantum a diplomat to the Pilgrims, did not trust him before the tribe's dealing with the pilgrims...

On his way back from a meeting to repair the damaged relations between the Natives and the Pilgrims, Tisquantum became sick with a fever... He died a few days later in 1622 in Chatham, Massachusetts, and is now buried in an unmarked grave on Burial Hill in Chathamport, overlooking Ryder's Cove...

The Encyclopedia Britannica entry is briefer but only slightly less incredible (no trip to Ireland):

Squanto was born into the Pawtuxet tribe that occupied lands in present-day Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Little is known about his early life. Some authorities believe that he was taken from home to England in 1605 by George Weymouth and returned with explorer John Smith in 1614–15. He was, in any event, seized with other Indians by one of Smith's men, Thomas Hunt, who took them to the Mediterranean port of Málaga, Spain, to be sold into slavery. Squanto somehow escaped to England and joined the Newfoundland Company. He returned home in 1619 on his second trip back to North America only to find that his tribe had been wiped out by disease.

During the spring of 1621, Squanto was brought to the newly founded Pilgrim settlement of Plymouth by Samoset, an Indian who had been befriended by the English settlers. Squanto, who had been living with the Wampanoag tribe since his return from England, soon became a member of the Plymouth colony. Because Squanto was fluent in English, Governor William Bradford made him his Indian emissary, and he then served as interpreter for Edward Winslow, the Pilgrim representative, during his negotiations with Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoags. Squanto died while guiding Bradford on Cape Cod.

Squanto's side trip with the Newfoundland company meant he was away when the plague depopulated most of the northeastern US. I'd read that it was Smallpox, but the descriptions didn't sound like Smallpox. If anything, it was even nastier. Modern historians apparently suspect Bubonic Plague, probably delivered by French fishermen off the coast of what is now Maine. The Europeans were relatively resistant -- though I wonder if plague didn't play a role in the 50% mortality rate of the "Pilgrim Fathers" during their first winter in America.

When Squanto returned home, after his astounding exile and enduring all manner of suffering, he would have found everyone he knew was dead. He himself only lived two more years, but during that time he saved the half-dead English immigrants. Without his training they would have certainly died. As it was the Pilgrims lingered on for a few years, before giving up and being absorbed by the massive Puritan migration that followed them. They were all but lost to history, until the Civil War led to a mythic reinvention of the first (euro) "Americans". [Update: see comment from GTT, I got this from the IOT lecture - In Our Time: The Pilgrim Fathers.]

For a bit more on this topic, though not enough on the most amazing figure of early euro-american history, do listen to In Our Time: The Pilgrim Fathers.

Oh, and the next time you serve that turkey, pause for a moment to reflect on the short, turbulent, violent and astounding life of Squanto. He paid a high price and ought not to be lost to memory.

Update 9/22/07: Jamestown. Plymouth Rock. John Smith. Myles Standish. A boat of religious zealots and roughneck desperadoes. The Black Plague. Slavery. Exotic locales. Alien cultures. The death of a civilization. Through it all ... Squanto, who's name meant Satan (or Lucifer?). Come on you-tubers, a dolt could make a classic movie of this material.