Wild Thing: A Novel (41 page)

For more on
income disparity in China
, see “China’s unequal wealth-distribution map causing social problems,” by Sherry Lee,
ChinaPost.com.tw
, 28 Jun 2010, and “Hidden trillions widen China’s wealth gap: study,” by Liu Zhen, Emma Graham-Harrison, and Nick Macfie, Reuters, 12 Aug 2010.

For information on
how radio stations work
I am indebted to Douglas Thompson of Minnesota Public Radio / American Public Media Engineering and to the RCA section of The Broadcast Archive (
oldradio.com
) maintained by Barry Mishkind.

I first came across the idea that
the “H” in Jesus H. Christ
, while probably an
eta
, might also (as “an old bio major joke”) stand for “haploid,” in “Why do folks say ‘Jesus H. Christ’?,” by Cecil Adams,
The Straight Dope
, 1986. Other sources give different definitions of the “IHS” monogram, such as “Iesus Hominem Salvator,” “In hoc signo,” etc. But the “IHS” entry by René Maere in
The Catholic Encyclopedia
, ed. Herbemann et al., 1910, agrees with Adams.

The
biblical quote about apples
is from Song of Solomon 2:12. In the King James: “Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for
I am sick of love.” Which to me sounds more like Shakespeare than Psalm 46 ever did.

Note that while
fresh
fog is transparent to infrared
, so-called old fog, which has had time to equilibrate in temperature with the air, is opaque.

The
amphibious boat
that appears in the book is based on models produced by the Sealegs corporation. See
sealegs.com
for pictures and other information.

Promotional materials of United Poultry Concerns quote the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service as counting 8,259,200,000 “broiler”
chickens slaughtered in the U.S
. in 2000; the 22-million-a-day figure is just that figure divided by 365. Non-broiler chickens I don’t know from. Incidentally,
Humanefacts.org
says chickens are typically slaughtered at five weeks of age but have a natural life span of seven years.

Ronald Wright argues in
A Short History of Progress
(see section on catastrophic paleontology, above) that
technology progresses logarithmically
because every new piece of it has at least a theoretical chance of interacting with every previously existing piece. Patent law, of course, would limit this.

The controversy over whether modern, or “atypical,”
antipsychotic medications
are any more effective than older and much cheaper ones
^*
was probably inevitable in a system where the only thing pharmaceutical companies have to do to get a new drug approved for sale in the U.S. is show that it doesn’t kill people (at least within the time frame of the study) and that it works better than a placebo. (In other
words, they don’t have to test it against other medications, which in addition to being cheaper could be twice as effective with half the number of side effects.) Not to mention a system in which you can spend 11.5 billion advertising dollars a year
^*
promoting new drugs that, if they were actually better, physicians would presumably prescribe anyway.

The
quote from Karl E. Weick
is from Weick’s
Making Sense of the Organization
, 2001, Vol. 1, pg. 105, but cites work by him going back to 1985. I added the italics. Many thanks to Dr. Weick for kind permission to use it.

The statistics about “New World” populations and Spanish gold are from Ronald Wright’s
What Is America?
, pgs. 20–30, but
Virgil Burton
’s worldview is influenced by all three of Wright’s books. (Again, see section on catastrophic paleontology, above.) Note that the term “First Nations” is uncommon in the U.S., where “Native Americans” is used much more often, but since the Ojibwe lands are on both sides of the border I’ve taken the liberty.

There are reasons to at least wonder whether
Hitler had syphilis
besides the chapter of that name in
Mein Kampf
. By the end of his life, Hitler had numerous symptoms consistent with late-stage neurosyphilis, such as tremors, hallucinations, digestive problems, skin lesions, and so on. The memoirs of his former confidant and press agent Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl (who also claimed to have invented the
“Sig Heil”
chant, basing it on the fight song of his alma mater, Harvard) say he heard Hitler contracted syphilis at a young age in Vienna. Most sources on the topic (e.g.,
Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis
, by Deborah Hayden, 2003, which is agnostic) make a point of not trying to
use syphilis to excuse or even explain specific actions taken by Hitler, but occasionally you luck into articles like “Did Hitler unleash the Holocaust because a Jewish prostitute gave him syphilis?,” by Jenny Hope, the
Daily Mail
(London), 20 June 2007. In any case, the symptoms could also have had other causes. For example, D. Doyle in the Feb 2005 issue of the
Journal of the Royal College of Edinburgh
notes that “the bizarre and unorthodox medications given to Hitler [during the last nine years of his life], often for undisclosed reasons, include topical cocaine, injected amphetamines, glucose, testosterone, estradiol… corticosteroids [and] a preparation made from a gun cleaner, a compound of strychnine and atropine, an extract of seminal vesicles, and numerous vitamins and ‘tonics.’ ”
^*
Doyle calls Hitler a “lifelong hypochondriac,” and concludes that “it seems possible that some of Hitler’s behaviour, illnesses and suffering can be attributed to his medical care.” See also “Did Adolf Hitler have syphilis?,” by FP Retief and A Wessels, in the Oct 2005 issue of the
South African Medical Journal
, which examines evidence that, Retief and Wessels conclude, “swings the balance of probability away from tertiary syphilis.”

For a relatively recent discussion of
the origins of syphilis
, see “Genetic Study Bolsters Columbus Link to Syphilis,” by John Noble Wilford, in the
New York Times
of 15 Jan 2008.

Despite much subsequent information coming to light, the best book about Hitler in his
bunker
, as far as I’m concerned, remains
The Last Days of Hitler
, by Hugh Trevor-Roper, originally published in 1947 but revised, God spare me, until 1995.

The one-in-four figure for diabetes among the Ojibwe
/Chippewa is for people over twenty-five years of age, and is from “Diabetes in a northern Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. Prevalence and incidence of diabetes
and incidence of major complications, 1986–1988,” by SJ Rith-Najarian, SE Valway, and DM Gohdes, in
Diabetes Care
, 16:1 266–70, Jan 1993.

The story of Houdini shocking Arthur Conan Doyle
by pretending to remove the end of his thumb
is in
Houdini!!!: The Career of Erich Weiss
, by Kenneth Silverman, 1997, which is definitive and a great read.
^*

When I talk about
the ancients linking invisibility to bad behavior
, I’m thinking most directly about the parable of the Ring of Gyges in Book II of Plato’s
Republic
(which is a clear influence on Tolkien, although it’s interesting that in Plato, Gyges’ use of the ring, whatever moral corruption it brings, leads to lasting material success for his descendants, one of whom is Croesus), but also about the association of vision with shame (and both invisibility and sightlessness with relief from shame) in
Oedipus Rex
and so on.

Current
digital pocket cameras
often have a simple IR filter over the light sensor, because few of them still use IR to focus. For example, if your camera emits a series of stuttering flashes before it takes a picture in the dark, it’s focusing with visible light from the flash. In which case you could theoretically remove the IR filter and (to keep the signal from being drowned out) replace it with something that filters visible light but not IR,
^*
ending up with a functional night-vision relay.

The fake article on
bull sharks
isn’t meant to be entirely scientifically sound but mostly is, because it draws heavily on two actual research
papers, “Osmoregulation in elasmobranchs: A review for fish biologists, behaviourists, and ecologists,” by N. Hammerschlag,
Marine and Freshwater Behaviour and Physiology
, September 2006; 39(3): 209–228 and “Osmoregulation in Elasmobranchs,” by P. Pang, R. Griffith, and J. Atz,
American Zoology
, 17: 365–377 (1977).

John Boehner
spokesman Michael Steel
^*
is quoted from “House G.O.P. Eliminating Global Warming Committee,” by Jennifer Steinhauer, in the Caucus blog of the
New York Times
, 1 Dec 2010.
Darrell Issa
is quoted from “12 Politicians and Execs Blocking Progress on Global Warming,” by Jeff Goodell,
Rolling Stone
, 3 Feb 2011. The number of investigations debunking the “Climategate” scam (five) is from “British Panel Clears Scientists,” by Justin Gillis, the
New York Times
, 7 Jul 2010. Note that Darrell Issa has never to my knowledge been convicted of anything, nor has he been charged with arson. For more on his
indictment
for stealing a car (1972) and indictment for grand theft (1980), both dropped, and for details about suspicions that Issa may have been responsible for the 1982 burning of a warehouse three weeks after he more than quadrupled the fire insurance on it (as well as for details about his arrest on gun charges, and biography in general), see “Don’t Look Back: Darrell Issa, the congressman about to make life more difficult for President Obama, has had some troubles of his own,” by Ryan Lizza,
The New Yorker
, 24 Jan 2011.

The mention of
the impact of climate change on shellfish
was inspired by “Dissolute Behavior Up North” from
Biogeosciences
, 6, 1877 (2009) as excerpted in the Editors’ Choice section of
Science
magazine, 9 Oct 2009—an article that among other things proves there’s no report so grim that someone won’t put a crappy pun in its title.

For more on
the Koch brothers
and the ways they’ve fucked you and will continue to fuck you, see “Covert Operations: The billionaire
brothers who are waging a war on Obama,” by Jane Mayer,
The New Yorker
, 30 Aug 2010. The Kochs’ 2011 meeting was described as a “four-day, invitation-only conclave of about 200 wealthy conservative political activists” by the Associated Press, 30 Jan 2011.

Two documents that are particularly useful for understanding the damage done by right-wing activist Supreme Court justices in
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
are the original dissent by Stevens (joined by Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor) and Laurence H. Tribe’s essay on the decision that appeared on the website of Harvard Law School on 25 Jan 2010. The disapproving reaction to the decision by 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain is also interesting.
^*

The quote from
Orrin Hatch
is from the (failed) confirmation hearing of Robert Bork, whom Hatch was trying to portray as apolitical, and who subsequently wrote the apolitical-enough-sounding
Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline
.
^*
Note that three (Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy) of the five Supreme Court justices who gave George W. Bush the presidency are still serving. On
Citizens United
, they were joined by Roberts and Alito.

According to Armand Hammer’s former personal assistant, Hammer, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum,
^*
used to brag that he had Al Gore’s father, Senator Al Gore Sr., “in my back-pocket,” and would then “touch his wallet and chuckle.”
^*
For more on
Al Gore’s financial ties to the oil
industry
, see “The 2000 Campaign: The Vice President; Gore Family’s Ties to Oil Company Magnate Reap Big Rewards, and a Few Problems,” by Douglas Frantz, the
New York Times
, 19 March 2000. You may also want to check out
The Dark Side of Power: The Real Armand Hammer
, by Carl Blumay and Henry Edwards, 1992, although it’s kind of a mess.

Even leaving aside environmental issues, the amount of
corruption in the George W. Bush administration
, and the extent to which it went unnoticed, is staggering. For example, when Vice President Dick Cheney shot his friend Harry Whittington in the face on 11 Feb 2006, the story was widely reported, but usually in ways that repeated the White House’s line that Katherine Armstrong, who owned the ranch where the incident occurred, was an old friend of Cheney’s and (in Cheney’s words) “immediate past head of the Texas Wildlife and Parks Department.” Both may have been true (although Armstrong had resigned from the Texas Wildlife and Parks Department, to which she had been appointed by G. W. Bush, years earlier), but Armstrong was also a registered lobbyist, including for Parsons—a company with construction and engineering contracts in Iraq—and the defense contractor Lockheed Martin.
^*

Regarding Katherine Harris, see, e.g., “Harris backed bill aiding Riscorp,” by Diane Rado, the
St. Petersburg Times
, 25 Aug 1998; “Harris
now regrets her tale of terror plot: Leaders in Carmel, Ind., contest U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris’s comments about an alleged plan to blow up the city’s power grid,” Associated Press, published in the
St. Petersburg Times
, 5 Aug 2004; “Harris Shuns Spending Requests,” by Keith Epstein, the
Tampa Tribune
, 3 Mar 2006; etc. Regarding the ties to industry of James L. Connaughton and other policy-making members of the Bush administration, including the companies at which they ended up, see “Bush Environment Chief Joins Power Company,” by Ned Potter,
abcnews.com
, 5 Mar 2009. For more on Phil Cooney specifically, see, e.g., “Ex-oil lobbyist watered down US climate research,”
The Guardian
(U.K.), 9 Jun 2005; “Ex-Bush Aide Who Edited Climate Change Reports to Join ExxonMobil,” by Andrew C. Revkin, the
New York Times
, 15 Jun 2005 (nice ambiguity in the title); etc.