Book Review--Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon

In the hottest part of the summer of 1985, the future Mrs. Archaeopteryx and I loaded our camping gear into my ’78 Ford Fairmont (no air conditioning) and drove to the Grand Canyon on a journey that would have made Chevy Chase proud. The trip included a busted alternator, a night spent in the parking lot of the high school in Checotah, Oklahoma, an encounter with a friendly but incompetent police officer, a trip to the auto repair shop at Grand Canyon National Park, and finally a hike to Phantom Ranch in the bottom of the Canyon, where I got in an argument with an snippy ranger named Lorne.

The hike to the bottom of the Canyon, a nine-mile walk, took 11 hours. By the time we reached a shade-free series of switchbacks suggestively named “The Devil’s Corkscrew,” temperatures had reached 100 degrees. Like many first-time hikers in the canyon, we didn’t carry enough water or food. By the time we made it to the last part of the hike—two miles or so of thick sand alongside the Colorado River—we were completely exhausted and near heatstroke. We collapsed into a cool creek near the campground, then set up our tent. We slept fitfully in the heat—thanks, Lorne—then got up about 4 a.m. to begin the return hike. The hike up the canyon wall took only eight hours. Because we started earlier, we avoided much of the heat, but each step we took came with increased altitude, and as we neared the top, we had to stop every 100 yards or so to catch our breath. We were unprepared for the heat and altitude of the Grand Canyon, and it was a wonder we didn’t have to be evacuated out by the National Park Service.

Last month I accompanied a group of students to the Grand Canyon. While shopping in the bookstore at the North Rim, I happened across a book titled Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon. I flipped through the pages, and was hooked. The book is a discussion of every recorded death that has occurred in and around the Canyon since Americans began visiting in the 1800s. There are lists of every careless slip, every fall from a rubber raft, every heat-assisted heart attack, and every forlorn leap from a mile-high ledge. The book includes chapters on falls, heatstroke, flash floods, rafting accidents, plane crashes, freak accidents, suicide, and murder.

Here is the story of a priest who led two teenaged boys into the crazy heat of the canyon, and fell to his death; one of his charges died of heatstroke, but the second boy miraculously survived. A few pages later is the story of United Flight 718, which strayed a bit from its flight plan so its passengers could have a better view of the canyon; unfortunately, the pilot of TWA Flight 2 had the same idea at the same time. All 128 people aboard both planes died, and it took many days of dangerous canyon-climbing to retrieve their remains. One cocky fellow, admonished by his son to be careful, told him “you have to take some chances in this life,” then stepped into an unsupported snow bank and fell 500 feet to his death. Three members of the first expedition of John Wesley Powell—the one-armed explorer who first mapped the Canyon—split off from the group, and climbed the canyon walls, only to be met and murdered by Mormon settlers.

It becomes clear early into the book that the main killer of visitors to the Grand Canyon is stupidity. This fact was not lost on me as I recalled the hike that my wife and I made 22 years ago. Our story was very much like that of many of the victims recounted in the book—we were stupid, but unlike the folks in the book, we were lucky. Hikers in the canyon underestimate the effects of heat. They wander off maintained trails. They ignore posted signs warning of the vicious currents in the Colorado River. Tourists climb over guardrails, and roughhouse on the edge of a 5,000-foot deep abyss. River rafters fail to properly scout rapids, or ride through whitewater without life vests. The canyon is not forgiving of carelessness.

The authors—Michael Ghiglieri and Thomas Myers—are experienced river runners and hikers who ostensibly use the stories in the book to analyze the fatalities for common threads. They claim to be—and try to be—respectful of those who have died, but occasionally it becomes difficult for them to hide their astonishment at people who skip along retaining walls before plunging to their deaths, or at a fellow who is struck by lightning and survives while a bystander dies, or the unfortunate soul who is crushed by a falling mule. Their analysis is fruitless except to demonstrate that the depth of human stupidity is greater than that of the canyon. The book is generally well-written except for the last chapter, a rant against personal injury lawyers whom the authors apparently think are ruining the Grand Canyon by forcing the Park Service to install guard rails on every rim and trail. This goofy—and baseless—diatribe feels as if it was added at the behest of editors to give the book a purpose beyond rubbernecking, but gawking at disastrous missteps is what this book is about. That, and being glad that my wife and I aren’t in the index.

Mike Huckabee--Authentic Crook

I just watched the rerun of last night's Colbert Report, and was treated to the spectacle of Colbert lobbing softballs at Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and current Republican presidential hopeful. Colbert led with a montage of clips showing Huckabee saying the word "authentic" over and over again. In the interview, Huckabee explained his concept of authenticity: "It's like an apple. If you cut into the apple, and it's an apple all the way to the core, that's authentic. If you cut into it and it turns out that it's plastic fruit, there's no nourishment there."



Huckabee then launched into an attack on Mitt Romney, the message being that Huckabee is an "authentic conservative," unlike Romney, who doesn't really hunt, isn't really pro-life, and presided over a state where--gasp!--homos can get married!

Colbert wasn't taking Huckabee all too seriously; he made fun of Huckabee's standing in the polls ("trailing Duncan Hunter, Sam Brownback, and six guys named Thompson"). But Huckabee's been making inroads; he scored some points in South Carolina over the weekend, and made a big splash last week in the press by calling for Attorney General Gonzalez to resign. Huckabee's become sort of a media darling--besides Colbert, he's appeared on The Daily Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, and was a frequent guest on Imus. Of course he's appeared on all the Sunday morning political shows.

This has to be nipped in the bud, right now. So, let's talk about authenticity. Huckabee is a Baptist minister; as such, you might expect him to be an authentic man of peace (you know, like Jesus). Quite the contrary. Huckabee is a fanatic supporter of the war in Iraq (watch here as he paints the war in Iraq as a "struggle for existence."). He authentically believes that Armageddon is coming and that Israel must be defended at all costs. He also is a big proponent of the death penalty, with sixteen executions occurring while he was in office, including a triple header--three in one day! Is he an authentic Christian? I'll let you decide.

Huckabee's apple metaphor is more than apt, as long as you consider the apple to be rotten. Huckabee was the most corrupt governor Arkansas has had in recent memory. He accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts from supporters, used state aircraft for personal trips, stole furniture from the governor's mansion, and ignored admonishments from the state Ethics Commission. Besides being a crook, Huckabee was a constant embarrassment to the state. He referred to conservationists as "environmental wackos," called Arkansas a "banana republic" on the Imus show, and lived in a triple-wide mobile home on the Governor's Mansion grounds while the residence was being rennovated. His son once tortured a dog to death, with no reprisals. (Read a summary of Huckabee's tenure as Arkansas governor here.)

One would hope that the press would begin giving Huckabee a closer look, particularly if his campaign begins to pick up steam. He despises such scrutiny, frequently lashing out at the press if they dare to question his integrity or to demand accountability. His thin skin will ensure that he is unable to survive as a viable candidate; the sooner that Huckabee is exposed, the better off the country will be.

"Poo-tee-weet?"

I grew up in a very small town, the son of parents without money. There was no library except the one at the school, and so I, a voracious reader and world-class nerd, spent my summers waiting on the slim pickings of the county bookmobile. The bookmobile was long on children’s books and short on pretty much everything else, but they did have a few science fiction novels, and it wasn’t long (what with the nerdiness and all) before I was hooked. Of course, the selections of the county tended to run toward the innocuous—lots of Asimov and Clarke, and nothing particularly subversive.


One summer afternoon, my mother loaded us kids into her old Buick and drove over to Perryville to do her banking. While she busied herself in the bank, my brother and I slipped into the drugstore on the square. I had a couple of bucks of my allowance left, and I thought I’d pick up a new science fiction paperback. The only one they had that I hadn’t already read was Cat’s Cradle. I knew nothing about the book or Kurt Vonnegut, but I spent the two bucks or so, and, just that quickly, I changed my life.

I was hooked. Vonnegut’s style was like nothing I’d ever read—science nerds don’t get much satire mixed in with their rockets and robots, and any social commentary is generally unsharpened and clumsy. From then on, I read every one of his books I could get my hands on. The bookmobile took requests for books to add to the mobile collection, and I requested all the Vonnegut they could bring. Eventually, that led to Slaughterhouse Five.

Like most young teenage boys, I was self-absorbed and ignorant of the world outside my little town. I thought that war was glorious, and that the United States could do no wrong. Slaughterhouse opened my eyes—just a little—to the idea that maybe the John Wayne movies I saw on our family’s little black and white TV weren’t true life, and in fact, maybe the world wasn’t black and white. I remember being horrified by Vonnegut’s descriptions of Dresden after the bombing. I was approaching draft age, and Vietnam hadn’t quite wound completely down. Suddenly peace began to seem very appealing to me, and not completely for selfish reasons.

On Wednesday, I kept a kid cornered in my office for nearly an hour, trying to talk him out of his decision to join the Army. This kid is bright, and funny, and he has an incisive mind that usually sees through bullshit—a student that keeps a professor honest. But, Justin has a horrible family life, and feels he has to get away. He sees the Army as a chance to make his own way in the world—to be independent (the irony apparently lost on his usually sharp mind). I told him that being a soldier is a necessary and honorable thing, but not for him—that he’s destined to be a surgeon or a journalist, and not to waste his life in a useless war—but it was to no avail. I failed utterly. I’d wasted my time, and made him angry.

I heard yesterday of Vonnegut’s death on NPR. I remembered reading Cat’s Cradle, and Galapagos, and especially Slaughterhouse Five. I could see the smouldering ruins of Dresden, the way Vonnegut had described them. And I thought of Justin. Maybe he’ll read my copy of Slaughterhouse.

Time Magazine Falls for Intelligent Design Trick

The most recent issue of Time magazine features a cover story on the teaching of the Bible in American high schools. Not just reporting on it—the article was written by David van Biema, Time’s religion writer, who ends by recommending that American high schools should teach two-semester courses on the Holy Bible. The article claims that such a course is necessary for anyone who claims to be educated, and for anyone who would understand American history. However, van Biema fails to make a convincing argument.


Here are some of the main points of the article:

Such a class would be constitutional. The article notes that the Supreme Court has decided that, although it is unconstitutional to require students to study the Bible as the received word of God, there is no problem with using it an object of study—in other words, as long as the Bible is being used for historical context or as literature. This is a nice idea in a theoretical sort of way, but in reality, people come down in one of two camps where the Bible is concerned. They either believe it is the inspired Word of God—or they don’t. If a teacher believes that the Bible is God’s word, there is absolutely no way he can teach it impartially. If he doesn’t believe it, his teaching is sure to arouse enormous amounts of controversy. Imagine the riot that ensues when the first teacher tells his eleventh-graders that the first few verses of Genesis are self-contradictory creation myths derivative of many previous such myths, and couldn’t possibly be true. Of course, most people who care enough to become teachers on the Bible are going to be true believers. Just because it would be constitutional to teach a Bible course doesn’t make it a good idea.

People think the Bible contains wisdom. Van Biema cites a poll that says two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bible holds the answer to all or most of life’s problems. This is actually a good reason to teach students the Bible—it would quickly dispel this notion. Again, though, those who would actually be teaching this class would almost certainly agree with the poll. Students would be taught that prayer with strong faith gives guaranteed results, or that the meek shall inherit the earth. Nice thoughts. Not true.

The Bible is the most influential book ever written. This, too, is a true statement, but it’s not a good reason to teach a high school course about the Bible. Mein Kampf and Das Kapital are also extremely influential books, but it’s not necessary to study every word of them to understand their influence. Reading Psalms is not necessary to understand how the Bible has been used as an excuse for colonialism, genocide, bigotry and homophobia. In fact, one could make the case that the Bible has been too influential, and teaching it in high school would only make it more so. The article makes a big deal out of the fact that there are innumerable literary and pop culture references to biblical stories—there is a full-page picture layout with a photo of Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction and another of Superman looking all crucified. (Did you know “el”—as in Jor-el—means “God” in Hebrew? Wow!) Apparently we should read and study the Bible so we can enjoy The DaVinci Code. Really, if we’re going to teach the Bible in public schools because of the pop-culture references, shouldn’t we be more eager to teach students about Seinfeld or The Simpsons?

Van Beima lists several arguments against a high school Bible course, then dismisses them out of hand. Most of the people pushing for teaching the Bible in public schools are evangelical Christians who are by definition interested in making converts. It’s okay, Van Biema says, because it’s possible for a conservative Christian to teach the Bible impartially. Commercial Bible curriculums contain creationist anti-science drivel. Not much, Van Biema says.

The best argument against teaching the Bible in high schools is the people who are pushing the idea. These folks are thinly disguised intelligent design advocates, attempting to get their pseudoscience wedged into public schools. For example, the author of one of the primary textbooks used in such courses is Chuck Stetson, a graduate of the Wilberforce Forum founded by Chuck Colson (of Watergate fame). This Forum lists among its board of directions two of the usual ID suspects, Phillip Johnson and William Dembski, as well as Marvin Olasky, the prominent Christian reconstructionist and dominionist. These are not innocent Christians only interested in promoting the Bible as quaint literature. This is just another attempt to circumvent legal separation of church and state.

Van Biema endorses the teaching of the Bible, but rejects courses in Comparative Religion because kids are “already overloaded.” He ends his article with a vignette of a classroom in which high school students are taught by a conservative Christian teacher that the Ten Commandments (presumably including “I am the Lord thy God, you shall have no other gods before me”) are to be taken literally. This little play is supposed to relieve us of any concerns about Christianity being taught in the schools. “Sure, there will be bumps along the way,” Van Biema says.

Sure there will.

I'm Never Going Back to My Old School

I spent part of spring break visiting friends from graduate school. It was really nice seeing old friends and labmates. Much beer was consumed, good food was made and eaten, and gossip was swapped. I’m very proud of my little group of friends; almost all are working on a Ph.D., and their projects are all interesting, with a brilliant one or two thrown in.


One of my former labmates just completed her M.S., and it was just by the skin of her teeth. My major professor had been hers, too, and they had had major disagreements over statistical minutiae. In the end, he had resigned from her committee, leaving her scrambling to find another advisor. As she recounted the story of escalating arguments and increasingly personal attacks, I flashed back to my last year in grad school, when this same professor had somehow become convinced that I was trying to usurp his research program. He thought that I was intent on hijacking his funding when I left to find a job, even though nothing like that had ever crossed my mind, and even though I wouldn’t have known how to do such a thing. I spent my final year in constant fear of being ejected from the lab, not knowing for sure that I’d receive my doctorate until I actually had the parchment in hand.

My major professor had kicked another student out of his lab several years before. This student, another of my closest friends, found himself without a master’s project with no warning and no explanation. He was forced to complete a non-thesis degree, which made it more difficult to find a Ph.D. slot. He eventually did so, and is now finishing his second post-doc; he’s a brilliant, driven student, but my major professor’s erratic behavior cost him at least two years, and to this day no one but the professor knows why.

Ours is not the only professor that has unreasonably ejected students from his lab. At the same university, another professor kicked two students out of his lab when he decided that his research program was going to change direction and that these two students were going to take longer to complete their projects than he wanted to spend with them. A colleague of mine who got his degree at a different university was nearly ejected from his major professor’s lab because when his father got a brain tumor, the student spent too much time with his dying father and not enough on his research project.

Graduate degrees in field biology often take much longer than those in other sciences. It isn’t unusual for a student to spend three years on a master’s or five years on a doctorate. Bad weather or uncooperative study organisms extend dissertation projects past university deadlines and beyond funding. During this time, grad students are subject to the whims of the major professor. Students may have to teach their professors’ classes and assist with his research or that of their labmates, all while taking classes and performing their dissertation research. There are some conscientious professors that don’t abuse the system, but there are others that treat their students as slave labor, take credit for their research, or give them poor advice and instructions or none at all. The professor can also terminate a student’s research and dismiss him from the lab without giving a reason. The student has very little recourse in such situations. Although the university involved may have supposed safeguards against capricious actions by professors, in reality there is almost no way to force a professor to act in good faith if he or she has decided to do otherwise.

My Job Interview With United Airlines

Inspired by the true story of Dr. Marcus R. Ross.

"So, Mr. Archaeopteryx, you wish to fly a jet for United Airlines?"

"Yes."

"And you have your pilot’s license?"

"Yes. I received my license from the University of Rhode Island Flight School. I fulfilled all the requirements and have flown the requisite number of hours in simulators and in real jets."

"Okay. You won’t mind if I ask you a question or two about the physics of flight, just to make sure you’re up to speed."

"Of course."

"Okay. Explain how Bernoulli’s principle relates to flight."

"Oh, I don’t think Bernoulli’s principle has anything to do with flight."

"What?"

"No. Jets fly because angels grab their wings and propel them through the air."

"What?"

"Yeah. It’s the will of the Lord that planes can move through the air, and he sends angels to make sure that that happens."

"But….you got your license from the University of Rhode Island Flight School. Didn’t they make you learn about Bernoulli’s principle?"

"I didn’t just learn about it. I wrote my flight school dissertation about it."

"But you don’t believe it?"

"Of course not."

"And they gave you your pilot’s license?"

"Of course. They said that aeronautics was a ‘belief system,’ and that no one should be denied a pilot’s license just because they didn’t believe in aeronautics. I’m a good pilot. My teachers said so."

"Why would you become a pilot if you don’t believe in aeronautics?"

"The idea is to fly planes around, all the while trying to prove the existence of angels that lift the airplanes. I’ll give speeches to people who don’t believe in aeronautics or fluid mechanics. I’ll use my pilot’s license to give creedence to my opinions. If you don’t give me this job, I’ll claim that you’re disrespecting my religion, and liberal thought in general. I’m going to use your open mind and sense of fair play against you. I’m going to use my license to undermine the airline industry and aviation, as well as aeronautical engineering in general."

"Okay. Welcome aboard!"