The Third Man Factor

Five things you didn't know about "Guardian Angels":


1- About one-third of Britons believe they have their own personal guardian angel.

2- The Catholic Church has never said whether or not each soul has its own guardian angel, so this belief is not a matter of faith. However, the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia says "this doctrine is clearly discernible" in the Bible. 

3- Belief in guardian angels (called something else, of course) long predates Judaism, and is mentioned in Babylonian and Assyrian monuments. 

4- October 2nd is the unofficial Feast of the Guardian Angels.

5- On December 1st, 2010, The Third Man Factor author John Geiger interviewed Christopher Hitchens about religion. The transcript (and mp3) can be read here. It's well worth your time. 


Charles Darwin and The Third Man Factor author John Geiger have something in common.  Before Darwin explicitly claimed that species change and evolve - and more to the point, that human beings aren't exempt from this process - he first presented the evidence. 

Here, look at all these finches on different islands. They're very different. This eventually led to species evolve. 

(I'm grossly oversimplifying, I know, but bear with me.) 

Leading the way out of the closet

Darwin did this for two reasons. First, the concept and theory of natural selection didn't come to him fully formed, but was shaped by his observations.  These observations - the evidence - gradually drew him towards a coherent (not to mention revolutionary) theory.  Second, he knew that his conclusion (once he reached it) wasn't going to make him very popular. 

John Geiger, I believe, is doing something similar.  Here, look at all these cases of people reporting a shadowy figure who makes them calm and helps them survive dangerous situations. This, it seems, will eventually lead to Guardian Angels exist. 

Whether you believe in God, angels, et cetera, that seems to be the direction Geiger is heading.  He doesn't make his explicit claim in The Third Man Factor - he's still at the evidence-gathering stage -and to be fair, does broach the subject.

Is this the only possible answer?  Of course not. Near-death experiences - the iconic light at the end of the dark tunnel - may be the eternal soul floating to heaven, but they might also be a neurological response to oxygen starvation. Similarly, "third men" might be straightforward hallucinations. The subconscious, knowing it's in deep trouble, reaches deep into its bag of tricks. 

Shackleton's crew. Not pictured: angel

 But whatever you believe the answer is, it's fairly conclusive that something weird and wonderful is happening.  From Ernest Shackleton's famous account of an extra crew member in Antarctica, down through modern explorers and survivors of horrific disasters, there's a mountain of anecdotal evidence. 

The individual stories themselves are, at times, scary, poignant, touching, and chilling. Each is well worth reading.

 Not all third man stories come from famous explorers or 9/11 survivors, of course.  Geiger has a homepage where people can and have shared their own stories. 

The Third Man Factor is a wonderful compilation of odd and mysterious survival stories. But it does leave one thinking the follow-up will be even more shocking. 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Five things you didn't know about autism:

1- Autism Spectrum Disorder - actually a range of disorders - occurs in between 3 to 6 children out of every 1,000.

2- Boys are four times more likely than girls to have autism.  Nobody knows why.

3- Michael Fitzgerald, an autism researcher and child psychologist with Dublin's Trinity College, has speculated several notable historical figures were autistic. His list includes Thomas Jefferson, Michelangelo and Isaac Newton.

4- Fitzgerald's list also includes Adolf Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Kaczynski. 

5- There is no cure for autism. There are a variety of treatments and therapies, some of which are "revolutionary" and controversial - many of which attempt to completely remove mercury from the body, either through injections of hormones, or IV drips. Mercury has been linked to autism, but not conclusively.


I'll admit something to you here and now: I vastly prefer nonfiction to fiction. When fiction is bad, it's a waste of time. When nonfiction is bad, at least you might learn something new. Even worse, when I do read fiction, it often tends to be historical fiction, such as Robert Harris' unfinished Cicero trilogy. 

How Christopher copes with the world

I do try and leave my comfort zone every so often, though, because of gems like Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. 

The book's Wikipedia page mentions a film version is in the works. Given the book's success, this was probably inevitable, but I can't say I'm looking forward to it. The book's wonder comes from successfully and believably getting you inside Christopher John Francis Boone's head - and being autistic, Christopher is a hard person to understand.

In truth, Christopher is often a hard person to like. This sounds harsh, and it is. But his parents are divorced, mostly because of the stress of caring for him. Like Rain Man, Christopher is incredibly gifted with numbers, math, and puzzles.  But he's also moody, distant, and occasionally even violent. When overwhelmed by life - which is often - Christopher shuts down, slumps over, and groans loudly to block out the noise. Most devastating for a parent, he loathes being touched - no high-fives, no handshakes, and certainly no hugs. Haddon doesn't pull any punches: living with Christopher is difficult.

This happens a lot. Sometimes with biting.

The story itself - no spoilers, but Christopher decides he must solve the mystery of his neighbour's dead (murdered?) dog - is compelling and even amusing. But the genius is it's told completely from Christopher's perspective.  The world, filled with menacing strangers, is terrifying, bewildering, and unfathomably big.

The movie is being written and directed by Steve Kloves, who's done some of the Harry Potter films. And that's encouraging, I suppose. But I just don't see how he's going to transport us into Christopher's head, or manage to make Christopher as difficult yet somehow lovable. 

There are books I read and set aside, in case I want to read them again "somewhere down the line." And there are a few I know I will read again, very soon. The Curious Incident is one of those precious few.

The Beluga Cafe

Five things you didn't know about inter-species communication

1- Whether or not animals have their own "languages," some species can certainly learn them. Koko the gorilla had a working vocabulary of over 2,000 words in American Sign Language, and often signed complex but comprehensible sentences. Captive bottlenose dolphins in Hawaii can understand (and respond to) basic sentences, including a direction to "be creative" and come up with something on their own. 

2- On April 26, 1998, Koko the Gorilla participated in a live online chat. 

3- When I typed "interspecies" into my Google search bar, the first suggested phrase was "interspecies mating."  I don't know what that says about us, but it says something. 

4- The Department of Fisheries and Oceans estimates the eastern Hudson Bay population of beluga whales dropped from 4,300 in 1985 to 3,000 in 2008.  The beluga whale is officially endangered, but in 2010 most hunting quotas actually increased. 

5- Finnish cultural anthropologist Jöns Carlson speculates that belugas may not be talking to one another in a "language" (as humans define that term). They may use sound instead, to externalize and communalize their own emotional state as it relates to the group’s stability.  (Quoted directly from Interspecies' website)

"I wish they all could be California..."

Do animals talk? Not in words, obviously. But do they communicate?  And if so, can we communicate with them?

Well, of course they communicate.

"Hey, I'm hungry."
"Hey, I'm horny."
"Hey, I know I'm not ordinarily supposed to get into the garbage, but surely that doesn't apply this one time."

But people like The Beluga Cafe author Jim Nollman aren't talking about grunts, groans and tweets here. Sure, your dog barks one way when he wants out, another way when he's hungry, and makes that adorable noise when he's scared. We're not talking about that. 

So what are we talking about? Actual, linguistic communication? Is that possible? Jim Nollman thinks so. Interestingly, he thinks music - not words - are the key. 

He's got a point. Ever hear humpback whales sing? Surely, that's not all random squawking. And as we've seen above, it's not a huge mental leap. But if animals are smart enough to learn our languages, does that mean we're smart enough to learn theirs?

Apparently a documentary

I'd like to believe so. But probably not in my lifetime.  

But if you're looking for an account of Nollman's successes or failures communicating with belugas, The Beluga Cafe will disappoint. They didn't actually see any; the kind of thing that happens in real life, but not conducive for books ostensibly about communicating to animals. 

What emerges instead is a book about conflict. Nollman and his two companions, Jonathan and Daniel - in the Canadian Arctic to "talk to the whales" - are not well-received by the locals.

It's not hard to see why. Three white dudes - two of them insufferable and self-important douchebags - who fashionably claim to respect Native culture and traditions, but don't actually know any, and tend not to like the ones they meet. They come, basically, to preach. The message is different ("stop hunting whales," instead of "Jesus is your saviour") but they never grasp that it amounts to the same thing: we object to your way of life, so change it. 

Of his three companions, Nollman comes closest to grasping the irony, but doesn't quite get there.

The author's reception in Inuvik