Some humans like to see other humans doing extreme things. Beer-drinking Rednecks buy $100 tickets to sit in the stands at NASCAR races and watch other Rednecks turn left at well over 100 miles per hour, hoping they might see cars fly. We have extreme snow boarders take helicopters to the tops of mountains and race avalanches down to valleys. People are now “train-surfing” on fast trains, jumping from the tops of  cars to other cars. It is an extremely dangerous “sport.” It started with the “sport” of car surfing, hanging on and riding the hood of a fast car. Several gory “accidents” have improved the gene pool.      Crocodile bungee is catching on in Australia. The hero bungee-jumps into a crocodile-infested river from a cliff and races the croc to shore. Some people have lost the race. Others use boards to surf down into volcanoes at 50 mph. through smoke and steam.
Large blood-thirsty crowds pay good money to watch men and women in metal cages box, wrestle, kick, maim, and otherwise alley-beat the hell out of each other for the pleasure of the crowd. Other animals do kill each other over food and sex, but it is rather rare. We share 99.9 percent of our genes with chimps. I wonder what is in that .1 percent in us that makes us into “extreme” beings... I also wonder how many of these “extremists” have received Extreme Unction, the Roman Catholic sacrament of anointing with oil when the person is in grave danger of dying. Used when a person is ill, any person who bungee-jumps into a crocodile-infested river has to be really sick.

Alpine Swifts, Malala Yousafzai, And Las Vegas Dance Crowds

   I got hooked this week on three examples of extremism.  First, bird researchers have discovered that migrating Alpine swifts often fly nonstop for 200 days. Believe it or not, they eat, drink, and sleep on the fly. The researchers put electronic monitors on swifts that measure location, body position, and movement and discovered they never stopped moving from September of 2012 to early spring. At night the birds flap their wings and then glide for long distances. The birds eat aerial plankton and bugs and spiders that are caught in high winds. These bodies contain water, but the swifts can also skim lakes while in flight. They mate in Europe, then make the long flight to winter in Africa, south of the Sahara Desert. They only take rest breaks after crossing the huge desert on the flight back to Europe. The researchers have not discovered why swifts do not take rest stops. Maybe it’s to escape predators. A side note: Dolphins can continue moving for very long periods of time because they sleep by resting one/half of their brain at a time. (We better do some research on humans to see if we have this capability. I have some candidates who have talkshows.)
Another example of extremism was highlighted by a statement by United Nation’s Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in an ad for the book “I Am Malala” : “Extremists have shown what frightens them the most: a girl with a book.”  Fifteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan was shot at three times by the Taliban as she was riding a bus to school because from the age of eleven she advocated the education of females in Muslim countries. One bullet went through her left eye socket and narrowly missed her brain. Two bullets struck girls sitting next to her on the school bus. She spent three months in a Birmingham, England hospital surviving numerous surgeries.
She has recovered enough to return to school, and on her 16th birthday she addressed the United Nations Assembly in New York. She was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. What kind of people try to kill a young girl who wants an education? They are religious extremists who have announced that they will try to kill her “and will be proud on her death.” Her father Ziauddin has also been targeted for death because he ran a girl’s school in the SWAT Valley of Pakistan. I repeat, what kind of people swear to kill a child and a school leader? But before we begin to feel superior, we also have the American Taliban who target abortion doctors for killing in this country although it has been declared a legal medical procedure. In most abortion clinics armed guards wearing bullet-proof vests check purses and backpacks of patients. Any visitors must pass through metal detectors for weapons checks. Phones, cameras, computers and other electronic devices are prohibited. What’s the difference between Islamabad, Pakistan and Wichita or Topeka, Kansas? Which one has the mosque?

America And Hong Kong, Lands Of Extremism

Setting priorities has never been our strong suit. If we charge to do finger and toenails we must have a state license. If we become a plumber or an electrician we must have a business license. In some states if you buy a goldfish you must certify you actually own a fishtank to put it in. But to purchase a gun in a country that kills 33,000 and wounds over 70,000 a year, and the gun lobby doesn’t even blink, no license or permit is required. Some areas of Eastern cities have “community guns.” If you need a gun you can borrow or rent one for the evening. A teacher in Crown Heights, New York asked her students if they could get a gun easily if they wanted one. Every hand went up. They said it was much easier to get a gun than a MetroCard which is used to ride the subway. Remember Senator Barry Goldwater’s admonition: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice?” No extreme methods are necessary to find a gun.
Both American and Chinese workers are suffering from globalization and the movement of manufacturing to low-wage countries. The middle class is disappearing in the United States and Hong Kong workers are living in extreme conditions because service sectors such as banking, insurance, trading, logistics, and real estate have replaced good manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing jobs have moved to low-wage China. Many low-wage and uneducated Hong Kong workers now live in 15 sq. ft. cubicles in residential buildings. The cubicle contains a small TV, a single bed, a very thin mattress, and shelves. Typically 20 men live in cubicles stacked on one another in an area containing about 450 sq. ft.  The men share one toilet and one shower.  Bottom cubicles are the cheapest. Air conditioning is an absolute necessity. I think these living conditions could be described as extreme.

Would A 254-room Mansion With A 70-room Summer Cottage Be Extreme?

While the Asian worker lives in 15 sq. ft. we can see how the One Percent lived in the Gilded Age of the 1880’s in George Washington Vanderbilt’s 178,926 sq. ft. mansion built on 125,000 acres near Asheville, North Carolina. George called it his “little mountain escape” but he did design it to be a working estate. It took six years to build. At the same time Cornelius Vanderbilt built The Breakers, a little “summer cottage” of 70,000 sq. ft near Newport, Rhode Island. Corky and I toured the Asheville mansion a few years ago, taking two days to see some of the 254 rooms in the largest private home ever built in the United States. I don’t know if anyone has ever valued the furnishings in the home, but I do know there are 35 Tiffany lamps in it. Tiffany lamps are valued up to $100,000 on the antique market. The estate now sits on only 8,000 acres, complete with operating winery and farmland.  The Vanderbilts sold 85,000 acres to the federal government, now called the Pisgah National Forest. The estate is worth a visit. Over a million people visit it each year so it is still profitable.
The Breakers has a 3,650 sq. ft. glass pavilion and a 34-seat carved oak dining table to remind people of the old days. The Asheville estate is still owned by the Vanderbilt family but The Breakers is now owned by the nonprofit Preservation Society of Newport which plans to build a visitors center on the property. Fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt is opposed to the idea, saying it will change the idea this “is a reminder of a lost world.” I guess Gloria wants to preserve the world where her “Gilded” ancestors changed their dresses seven times a day to stay fashionable in an extreme society.

Is $600 for A $35 Bottle Of Vodka Extreme?

According to news stories Las Vegas visitors are not gambling like they used to. Could it be winning money because you have so much anyway just isn’t fun and exciting any more? That might be interpreted as an extreme position. It was extreme that before World War1 the U.S. dollar was worth four German marks. After the war in 1923 the dollar was worth 250 billion marks due to inflation. That sum would buy a pound of sugar. A pound of scarce meat went for more than three trillion marks. A Berlin construction worker was paid three trillion marks a day. This valuation was so extreme children made building blocks out of stacks of bills. Economic inequality is getting so great in this country that the rich may be losing interest in money in such quantities.
A September 30 New Yorker story “Night Club Royale” by Josh Eells discusses the possibility that dance floors may make more money for casinos than all the slots, poker, blackjack, crap, and other fascinating games combined. Gambling receipts have not grown at all from the 2008 crash, even if the One Percent has garnered all the profits in the U.S. since then. Doesn’t the dollar mean anything anymore?
Dance floors, some as large as 40,000 sq. ft., are now adding as much as a $1 million a night to the bottom line of Vegas casinos. Customers pay between $5,000 and $25,000 for tables close to the dance floor. The tables are well-stocked with booze and food. Some customers have had $500,000 floor and bar bills in one night. They often pay $600 for a $35 bottle of booze without blinking. Celebrity d-j’s playing their own electronic music often make up to $250,000 a night. “Beautiful people” from all over the world are attracted to this scene because money isn’t important or exciting to them anymore. Large casinos now entertain 6,000 to 8,000 “dancers” in a night. Many of them do not even dance. They are there to be seen. They don’t even go to big casino shows now because they can’t be seen in a dark theater. Folks, this is the bedrock of our future societies.

Spike Milligan: “Money Can’t Buy You Happiness, But It does Bring You A More
Pleasant Form Of Misery”

   The world is loaded with extremists, ranging from religious killers to genius autistic savants to just crazy, ego-driven nuts. A few have ended dictators. Haile Selassie, the dictator of Ethiopia, helped his country’s unemployment record by hiring a pillow bearer to place a pillow under his feet when he sat down. He was a short guy. Stephen Wiltshire of England is an autistic savant who can take one helicopter flight over a city and draw the entire landscape, including every window ledge.
The singer Mariah Carey has a clause in her performing contract that her dressing room never contain printed fabrics. The music autistic savant Leslie Lemke can listen to an original piece of music many minutes long–then recreate it perfectly on the piano. Singer and actress Jennifer Lopez insists that anything she drinks must be stirred counter-clockwise.
The rich, the superegos, and the just crazies have enticed entrepreneurs to invest in service companies such as Task Rabbit. Task Rabbit workers are hired to do things people don’t have time to do–or do things they just don’t want to do. (Task Rabbit raised $37.7 million in venture-capital funding last year.) One woman asked Task Rabbit to find a woman who wore a 5½ shoe who could wear her shoes and break them in for her. A man hired a Rabbit Tasker to go to 15 fur stores in New York and try on fur-lined leather coats between $900 and $1,500 and have pictures taken of her modeling the coats so he could choose the right one. He claimed the coat was for his wife. Task Rabbit has now spread to nine cities and employs 4,000 “rabbits.”
Extreme wealth calls for extreme living. Luxury Attache is a lifestyle management company that employs concierges in over 30 Manhattan apartment buildings that are in the $30 to $60 million rage. Concierges are hired to take care of desired amenities. One resident hired a private jet to fly his new puppy from Miami to New York. They hunt for expensive wines and first-edition books. Extreme? It could be called that in a country where 20 percent of the children don’t have the right foods to eat.