Bertrand Russell in Quotes

“Christians hold that their faith does good, but other faiths do harm. At any rate, they hold this about the Communist faith. What I wish to maintain is that all faiths do harm. We may define 'faith' as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. When there is evidence, no one speaks of 'faith.' We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence.”

- Bertrand Russell

Long before people such as Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) and Richard Dawkins (1941 - ) made opposition to religion if not fashionable, at least more tolerated , there was Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). Karl Marx may have declared that religion is the opiate of the masses but he was a German Commie; Russell was an Englishman, by gad, bearing the title of Earl, from a wealthy and influential aristocratic family. His paternal grandfather served as Queen Victoria’s Prime Minister on two occasions, in the 1840’s and 1860’s.

From Wikipedia:

. . . a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, social critic and political activist. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these in any profound sense. He was born in Monmouthshire, into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in Britain.

Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the early 20th century. He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlpb Frege, colleague G E Moore, and his protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians. With A N Whitehead he wrote Principia Matehematica, an attempt to create a logical basis for mathematics. His philosophical essay “On Denoting”" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy". His work has had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence; linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science and phiolosphy. 

Russell was a prominent anti-war activist; he championed anti-imperialism and went to prison for his pacifism during World War 1. Later, he campaigned against Adolf Hitler, then criticised Stalinist totalitarianism, attacked the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War, and was an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament. In 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.”

Some further Betrand Russell quotes:

Since evolution became fashionable, the glorification of Man has taken a new form. We are told that evolution has been guided by one great Purpose: through the millions of years when there were only slime, or trilobites, throughout the ages of dinosaurs and giant ferns, of bees and wild flowers, God was preparing the Great Climax. At last, in the fullness of time, He produced Man, including such specimens as Nero and Caligula, Hitler and Mussolini, whose transcendent glory justified the long painful process. For my part, I find even eternal damnation less incredible, certainly less ridiculous, than this lame and impotent conclusion which we are asked to admire as the supreme effort of Omnipotence.

It is not by prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws. The power you acquire in this way is much greater and more reliable than that formerly supposed to be acquired by prayer, because you never could tell whether your prayer would be favourably heard in Heaven. The power of prayer, moreover, had recognized limits; it would have been impious to ask too much. But the power of science has no known limits. We were told that faith could remove mountains, but no one believed it; we are now told that the atomic bomb can remove mountains, and everyone believes it.

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Dora and I are now married but just as happy as we were before.

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Trivia Tuesday

Some trivia and facts about the human body:

A foetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months.

A healthy individual releases 3.5 oz. of gas in a single flatulent emission, or about 17 oz. in a day. (Not me, I don’t do that).

An average person uses the bathroom 6 times per day.

An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body.

Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood we have only 206 in our bodies.

In the late 19th century, millions of human mummies were used as fuel for locomotives in Egypt where wood and coal was scarce, but mummies were plentiful.

On average women say 7,000 words per day. Men manage just over 2000.

The average adolescent girl has 34,000 underdeveloped egg follicles, although only 350 or so mature during her life (at the rate of about one per month).

The feet account for one quarter of all the human body’s bones.

Women blink twice as many times as men do.

The largest known kidney stone was 17 cm in diameter and about the size of a coconut, removed from a man in Hungary in 2009.

Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.

The largest cell in the human body is the female reproductive cell, the ovum. The smallest is the male sperm.

Bonus Body Bit:

While sitting at your desk make clockwise circles with your right foot. While doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand. 

Your foot will change direction.

(After a while I managed to do it without my foot changing direction: I drew the 6 in the reverse order, starting from the inside and working outwards in the same direction as the moving foot).

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Monday Miscellany: Some Odds, Ends and Personals

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An email from Robyn in response to the Paul Keating Redfern Speech post:

Otto 

Whether or not Keating penned the speech it is he who delivered it with profound empathy and sincerity as to its contents. Sad to say little progress has been made in the intervening years in re instating the first Australians to their rightful place in this very (materially) wealthy continent over which they had had stewardship for eons without any of the degradation the invaders (originally the detritus of the British Imperial hegemony) have visited upon the land in a little over 200 years. 

For me it will always be the Australian equivalent of the Gettysburg address. Until this nation (all of its constituents) acknowledge the first Australians we will not have arrived as a nation.

Robyn

Too true.

Let's say that at some future date an alien race from another galaxy, far superior to us, colonises our planet and dispossesses the human race.  Over time, the numbers dwindle, new diseases are brought by the aliens as well as new kinds of addictive, destructive drugs.  Children are taken from us, never to be seen again.  The aliens even engage in genocide towards humans in some areas.  Attempts to stand up for our rights are brutally and quickly suppressed. We are called by derogatory and offensive names, the women are raped, the men are often jailed.  Humans have higher rates of disease, illiteracy, jail sentences, and substance abuse, with lower life expectancies.  Would it all be made okay by the aliens, much later, starting meetings and functions by acknowledging the humans who were the traditional owners of the land?  It hardly seems apt.

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From Arthur on the Pirates for Wayne post, Wayne having requested an item on that topic:

Is Wayne thinking of his boyhood days?

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From David in respect of the same post:

Your daily about pirates reminded me of the inverse correlation between the extent of piracy and global warming 

http://sparrowism.soc.srcf.net/home/pirates.html

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A follow up from David on the Colombian Women’s Cycling Team uniform:

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/colombian-womens-team-kit-uci-issues-statement-136653

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Inspirational quote for the day:

Remember the 1989 flick with Charlie Sheen, Major League?

There is a character in there named Pedro Cerrano, a voodoo-practising Cuban refugee baseball player. All season Pedro has trouble with curve balls, which his opponents know and which they use to strike him out. All season Pedro prays to his idol, Jobu, for help, but the strike outs continue. 

Another team member encourages Pedro to instead pray to Jesus Christ for help in dealing with curve balls.  That team member is so dedicated to Jesus, and so hostile to Jobu, that he even urinates on Jobu when Pedro is absent.

During the final big game as Pedro goes to bat, knowing that his batting can either lose the game or help win it, he addresses Jobu: 

“I'm pissed off now, Jobu. Look, I go to you. I stick up for you. You don't help me.  Now I say 'Fuck you, Jobu,' I do it myself.”

And he does.

There's a lot of messages and deeper meanings in the above words and actions.

See it by clicking on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsjoFZEwAyI

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Top Movie Quotes continued, 85-81

Continuing the American Film Institute list of best film quotes, compiled in 2005, as selected by judges who comprised film artists, critics and historians. Selection criteria of the quotes included cultural impact and legacy, for example, to what extent the quote had become part of everyday language and the memories of the film as a result of the quote. Selections were from films shown in American cinemas, hence there is a weighting for American films. There have also been many superb films since 2005.

The list below provides the movie quotes on their own at first to enable you to see if you can identify the film and the actor speaking the line. This is followed by an identification and some trivia.

85. “My precious.”

84. "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast."

83. "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make."

82. "Toga! Toga!"

81.”Hello, gorgeous.”

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85. “My precious.”

Spoken by Andy Serkis as Gollum in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

Trivia:

• Andy Serkis drank bottles and bottles of "Gollum juice" (a mixture of honey, lemon and ginger) to keep his throat lubricated for his intense vocal performance.
• Andy Serkis was pitched the role of Gollum by his agent, who rang him up and asked him if he wanted to do three weeks' voiceover work in New Zealand. However, Peter Jackson was so blown away by Serkis' audition that he decided to have him perform the movements for Gollum as well.
• Serkis said he based Gollum's desperation and cravings on the withdrawals of heroin addicts. 
• Gollum's pupils signal his frame of mind. "Treacherous Gollum" has narrow pupils; "friendly Gollum" has slightly wider pupils. This is most obvious in the scene when the two sides of his personality struggle with each other.

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84. "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast."

Spoken by Robert Armstrong as Cark Denham in King Kong, 1933

Trivia:

• This film—along Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with (1937) and Laurel & Hardy movies--were thought to be Adolf Hitler’s favorites. 
• Fay Wray, from the original King Kong, was supposed to make a cameo in the Peter Jackson remake, delivering the last line, "It was beauty killed the beast". Unfortunately, she died before this was possible. 
• The name King Kong is said to have been created by director Merian C. Cooper who had happen to really like words that began with the letter "K". Some of which were Komodo, Kodak and Kodiak. His fascination with Douglas Burdens trip to the island of Komodo and subsequent naming of the giant lizard that lived there as the "King of Komodo" lead to the first part of the name King. The second part Kong is thought to be a combination of the words Komodo and Congo leading to King Kong. Cooper loved the name and the mysterious sound it had.

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83. "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make."

Spoken by Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula in Dracula, 1931

Trivia:

• When Bela Lugosi died in 1956, he was buried wearing the black silk cape he wore for this film.
• The studio did not want the scene where Dracula attacks Renfield to be filmed due to the perceived gay subtext of the situation. A memo was sent to the director stating "Dracula is only to attack women". 
• It was rumored that Bela Lugosi, who didn't speak English very well, learned his lines phonetically for this film. This however proved to be untrue as Lugosi had already learned English as well as he ever would by this point in his life. 

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82. "Toga! Toga!"

Spoken by John Belushi as John “Bluto” Blutarsky in National Lampoon’s Animal House, 1978

Trivia:

• The hole John Belushi makes in the wall with the guitar is the only physical damage to the house the movie-makers made during the entire shoot. Instead of repairing it, the fraternity placed a frame around the hole with an engraved brass tag around the hole commemorating it. 
• Te scene where John Belushi is teaching everyone the "dirty lyrics" of The Kiongsmen’s 1963 song "Louie Louie" is based on an actual investigation conducted by the FBI from 1963 to 1965 in which the agency spent more than 2-1/2 years trying to "decode" the song because of the supposed profanity that was "hidden" in the muffled lyrics. After spending more than two years and tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars, the agency announced that it could find no "obscene" words in the song. 
• Originally popular during the late Fifties and early Sixties, fraternity "toga parties" became a huge fad all over again at colleges across America following the release of this film. 

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81.”Hello, gorgeous.”

Spoken by Barbara Streisand as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, 1968  

Trivia:

• Barbra Streisand tied with Katharine Hepburn for Best Actress - a first in the history of the Academy Awards. 
• Co-stars Barbra Streisand and Omar Sharif had an affair during the making of Funny Girl which Sharif details in his 1976 autobiography The Eternal Male. Later he told Rex Reed, "She's a monster. I had nothing to do but stand around. But she's a fascinating monster. Sometimes I just stood on the sidelines and watched her. I think her biggest problem is that she wants to be a woman and she wants to be beautiful and she is neither."
• According to many sources, Barbra Streisand's reputation as a self-absorbed diva began partly as a result of a party thrown for her by producer Ray Stark. Stark wanted to introduce Streisand to his powerful Hollywood friends before shooting began on Funny Girl. She reportedly not only showed up very late, but she also spent the entire time at the party holed up in a single room forcing anyone who wanted to meet her to come to her. Stark's guests found her rude, aloof and arrogant for keeping them waiting. Streisand claimed that she was just shy about meeting them. 

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Great Speeches: Paul Keating's Redfern Speech

On 10 December 1992, Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating delivered a speech on the problems facing Australia’s indigenous population. Delivered at Redfern Park (Redfern being an inner city suburb with a large indigenous population) to a largely indigenous audience, the speech is generally now known as the Redfern speech.

The speech was not given much media attention at the time but is today regarded by many as one of the greatest of Australian speeches, being the first public acknowledgment by an Australian Prime Minister as to white injustices towards the indigeous population of Australia. Keating declared that it was European settlers that were responsible for the difficulties being faced by Australian Aboriginal communities. Nonetheless, according to Keating, guilt was a non-productive emotion in the way forward.

To read the full text of the speech, click on:

https://antar.org.au/sites/default/files/paul_keating_speech_transcript.pdf

To read Keating’s rebuttal of speechwriter Don Watson’s claimed authorship of the speech, and to read Keating’s comments as to the significance of the speech, click on:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/society-and-culture/all-mine-my-dear-watson-20100825-13s5l.html

To see and hear the speech, click on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKhmTLN3Ddo 

(Part 1) (Main part from about 5.43 onwwards)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G0gizfu5Ms&src_vid=mKhmTLN3Ddo&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_622980 

(Part 2)

Here are selected parts of the speech:

Ladies and gentlemen 

I am very pleased to be here today at the launch of Australia's celebration of the 1993 International Year of the World's Indigenous People. 

It will be a year of great significance for Australia. 

It comes at a time when we have committed ourselves to succeeding in the test which so far we have always failed.

Because, in truth, we cannot confidently say that we have succeeded as we would like to have succeeded if we have not managed to extend opportunity and care, dignity and hope to the indigenous people of Australia - the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people. 

This is a fundamental test of our social goals and our national will: our ability to say to ourselves and the rest of the world that Australia is a first rate social democracy, that we are what we should be - truly the land of the fair go and the better chance. 

There is no more basic test of how seriously we mean these things. 

It is a test of our self-knowledge. 

Of how well we know the land we live in. How well we know our history. 

How well we recognise the fact that, complex as our contemporary identity is, it cannot be separated from Aboriginal Australia. 

How well we know what Aboriginal Australians know about Australia. 

Redfern is a good place to contemplate these things. 

Just a mile or two from the place where the first European settlers landed, in too many ways it tells us that their failure to bring much more than devastation and demoralisation to Aboriginal Australia continues to be our failure. 

That is perhaps the point of this Year of the World's Indigenous People: to bring the dispossessed out of the shadows, to recognise that they are part of us, and that we cannot give indigenous Australians up without giving up many of our own most deeply held values, much of our own identity - and our own humanity. 

Nowhere in the world, I would venture, is the message more stark than it is in Australia. 

We simply cannot sweep injustice aside. Even if our own conscience allowed us to, I am sure, that in due course, the world and the people of our region would not. 

. . . .  

. . . the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians. 

It begins, I think, with that act of recognition. 

Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. 

We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. 

We brought the diseases. The alcohol. 

We committed the murders. 

We took the children from their mothers. 

We practised discrimination and exclusion. 

It was our ignorance and our prejudice. 

And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. 

With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me? 

As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us. 

If we needed a reminder of this, we received it this year. 

The Report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody showed with devastating clarity that the past lives on in inequality, racism and injustice. 

In the prejudice and ignorance of non-Aboriginal Australians, and in the demoralisation and desperation, the fractured identity, of so many Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. 

For all this, I do not believe that the Report should fill us with guilt. 

Down the years, there has been no shortage of guilt, but it has not produced the responses we need. 

Guilt is not a very constructive emotion. 

I think what we need to do is open our hearts a bit. 

All of us. 

Perhaps when we recognise what we have in common we will see the things which must be done - the practical things. 

. . . .  

. . . it might help us if we non-Aboriginal Australians imagined ourselves dispossessed of land we had lived on for fifty thousand years - and then imagined ourselves told that it had never been ours. 

Imagine if ours was the oldest culture in the world and we were told that it was worthless. 

Imagine if we had resisted this settlement, suffered and died in the defence of our land, and then were told in history books that we had given up without a fight. 

Imagine if non-Aboriginal Australians had served their country in peace and war and were then ignored in history books. 

Imagine if our feats on sporting fields had inspired admiration and patriotism and yet did nothing to diminish prejudice. 

Imagine if our spiritual life was denied and ridiculed. 

Imagine if we had suffered the injustice and then were blamed for it. 

It seems to me that if we can imagine the injustice we can imagine its opposite. 

And we can have justice. 

I say that for two reasons: 

I say it because I believe that the great things about Australian social democracy reflect a fundamental belief in justice. 

And I say it because in so many other areas we have proved our capacity over the years to go on extending the realms of participation, opportunity and care.

There is one thing today we cannot imagine. 

We cannot imagine that the descendants of people whose genius and resilience maintained a culture here through fifty thousand years or more, through cataclysmic changes to the climate and environment, and who then survived two centuries of disposession and abuse, will be denied their place in the modern Australian nation. 

We cannot imagine that. 

We cannot imagine that we will fail. 

And with the spirit that is here today I am confident that we won't. 

I am confident that we will succeed in this decade. 

Thank you

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Funny Friday

The Scots are in the news, so . . .

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"How's the flat you're living in in London, Jock?" asks his mother when he calls home to Aberdeen. 

"It's okay," he replies, "but the woman next door keeps screaming and crying all night and the guy on the other side keeps banging his head on the wall." 

"Never you mind," says his mother, "don't you let them get to you, just ignore them." 

"Aye, that I do," he says, "I just keep playing my bagpipes."

* * * * * * * *

Jock bought a bottle of fine whiskey but while walking home he fell.

Getting up he felt something wet on his pants.

He looked up at the sky and said, "Lord, please. I beg you, let it be blood!"

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Being from Scotland, I love the summer.

It's my favourite day of the year.

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Jock finds himself in dire trouble. His business has gone into foreclosure and he's in serious financial problems. He's so desperate that he decides to ask God for help. 

"God, please help me. Ah've lost ma wee store and if Ah dinna get some money, Ah'm going to lose my hoose too. Please let me win the lottery!" 

Lottery night! Someone else wins.

Jock prays again. "God, please let me win the lottery! Ah've lost my wee store, ma hoose and Ah'm going to lose ma car as weel!" Lottery night again! Still no luck... Jock prays again.  

"Ah've lost ma business, ma hoose and ma car. Ma bairns are starving. Ah dinna often ask Ye for help and Ah have always been a good servant to Ye. PLEASE just let me win the lottery this one time so Ah can get back on ma feet!"

Suddenly there is a blinding flash as the heavens open and the voice of God Himself thunders:

"Jock at least meet Me half way and buy a ticket!"

* * * * * * * *

The UK Government has said that Scotland could end up as a Third World country if they vote for independence.

I don't know if things will improve to that extent, but you never know.

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I grew up in Glasgow in the 1970s.

If you want to know what Glasgow was like in the 1970s, go there now.

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A Scots woman goes in a dry cleaning shop and says to the shop owner, "Can I sit down for a wee while, I have a bairn."

The posh shop owner replies, "I'm sorry, we don't repair scorched clothing."

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This Scottish bloke goes on a skiing holiday to Canada. 

After a hard day on the slopes he retires to a bar at the bottom of the mountain.

After about five or six whiskeys, he looks up and notices a stuffed animal with antlers on the wall.

He asks the barman, "What the fuck is that?"

The barman says, "It's a Moose."

The Scottish chap says, "Fuck me! How big are the cats?"

* * * * * * * *

Alisdair Biggar, a Scotsman, applied to join to the New York City police force. 

The inspector glared at him and asked, 'How would you disperse a large, unruly crowd?'

'Well,' replied Alisdair thoughtfully, 'I'm no too sure how ye do it here in New York, but in Aberdeen we just pass the hat around, and they soon begin to shuffle off.'

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Corn Corner:

Maître d'hôtel: 'Are you here for a special occasion?'

Campbell: 'Aye, we won the third prize in the annual Robert Burns Contest, a haggis dinner for two.'

Maître d'hôtel: 'What were the other prizes?'

Campbell: The second prize was a single haggis dinner, and, if you won the first prize, you didnae have to eat the haggis.'

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Pirates for Wayne

Arrrghh, September 19 be International Talk Like a Pirate Day me hearties. Now I know that today is not 19 September but it be close enough, especially since my friend Wayne has been at me to write about pirates. So here ye be, Wayne, an arrrrticle about pirates . . .

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Some facts and trivia about pirates:

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When travelling across the Aegean Sea, Julius Caesar was kidnapped by pirates. As ransom, the pirates demanded twenty talents. Caesar laughed at them because they didn’t know who he was, and suggested they ask for fifty talents instead. He was held for 38 days during which time he wrote poems and speeches which he read aloud. Those who didn’t appreciate what he was saying he called “illiterate Barbarians.” Laughingly, Caesar threatened to kill them all. After his random came, he was set free. Immediately, he manned numerous vessels, sought after the pirates, and caught them almost immediately. They were all imprisoned and crucified.

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The Jolly Roger flag, with its black background and white skull and crossbones, was designed to be scary. This flag was not used by all pirates, usually it was only flown by those sailing in the Spanish Main.

Pirates believed that wearing pierced earrings would improve their eyesight.

Pirates believed that having women on board their ship was bad luck. They also believed that whistling on a ship would cause the weather to turn stormy (as in ‘to whistle up a storm’).

Pirates would take over island ports and make them a safe haven for pirates.

Almost all pirates stole their ships because they couldn’t buy ships in case they got caught and sent to jail. Once they had taken over a ship they had to convert it for pirate life, this usually meant making more room for sailors to live on board and strengthening the decks to hold the weight of the heavy cannons.

Ships sailing on their own often sailed close to warships or joined other convoys of ships to protect themselves from pirates. Pirates could only attack one ship at a time, so if the sailors traveled in groups there was less chance of their boat being the one that was attacked.

Pirate captains would change out of their expensive, flashy clothes if there was a chance they might be captured. This way they could pretend they where only one of the crew and not somebody important, and hopefully escape.

Although pirates have been around since the 15th century, most pirating happened between 1690 and 1720.

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From: 

http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/Pirates/tp/Ten-Facts-About-Pirates-Of-The-Golden-Age.htm

1. Pirates rarely buried treasure

Some pirates buried treasure – most notably Captain William Kidd, who was at the time heading to New York to turn himself in and hopefully clear his name – but most never did. There were reasons for this. First of all, most of the loot gathered after a raid or attack was quickly divided up among the crew, who would rather spend it than bury it. Secondly, much of the “treasure” consisted of perishable goods like fabric, cocoa, food or other things that would quickly become ruined if buried. The persistence of this legend is partly due to the popularity of the classic novel “Treasure Island,” which includes a hunt for buried pirate treasure.

2. Their careers didn't last long

Most pirates didn’t last very long. It was a tough line of work: many were killed or injured in battle or in fights amongst themselves, and medical facilities were usually non-existent. Even the most famous pirates, such as Blackbeard or Bartholomew Roberts, only were active in piracy for a couple of years. Roberts, who had a very long and successful career for a pirate, was only active for about three years from 1719 to 1722. 

3. They had rules and regulations 

If all you ever did was watch pirate movies, you’d think that being a pirate was easy: no rules other than to attack rich Spanish galleons, drink rum and swing around in the rigging. In reality, most pirate crews had a code which all members were required to acknowledge or sign. These rules included punishments for lying, stealing or fighting on board (fighting on shore was OK). Pirates took these articles very seriously and punishments could be severe. 

4. They didn't walk the plank

Sorry, but this one is another myth. There are a couple tales of pirates walking the plank well after the “Golden Age” ended, but little evidence to suggest that this was a common punishment before then. Not that pirates didn’t have effective punishments, mind you. Pirates who committed an infraction could be marooned on an island, whipped, or even “keel-hauled,” a vicious punishment in which a pirate was tied to a rope and then thrown overboard: he was then dragged down one side of the ship, under the vessel, over the keel and then back up the other side. This doesn’t sound too bad until you remember that ship bottoms were usually covered with barnacles, often resulting in very serious injuries. 

5. A good pirate ship had good officers 

A pirate ship was more than a boatload of thieves, killers and rascals. A ggood ship was a well-run machine, with officers and a clear division of labor. The captain decided where to go and when, and which enemy ships to attack. He also had absolute command during battle. The quartermaster oversaw the ship’s operation and divided up the loot. There were other positions, including boatswain, carpenter, cooper, gunner and navigator. Success as a pirate ship depended on these men carrying out their tasks efficiently and supervising the men under their command. 

6. The pirates didn't limit themselves to the Caribbean

The Caribbean was a great place for pirates: there was little or no law, there were plenty of uninhabited islands for hideouts, and many merchant vessels passed through. But the pirates of the “Golden Age” did not only work there. Many crossed the ocean to stage raids off the west coast of Africa, including the legendary “Black Bart” Roberts. Others sailed as far as the Indian Ocean to work the shipping lanes of southern Asia: it was in the Indian Ocean that Henry “Long Ben” Avery made one of the biggest scores ever: the rich treasure ship Ganj-i-Sawai. Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who sailed with “Calico Jack” Rackham in 1719, dressed as men and reportedly fought just as well (or better than) their male counterparts. When Rackham and his crew were captured, Bonny and Read announced that they were both pregnant and thus avoided being hanged along with the others. 

8. Piracy was better than the alternatives

Were pirates desperate men who could not find honest work? Not always: many pirates chose the life, and whenever a pirate stopped a merchant ship, it was not uncommon for a handful of merchant crewmen to join the pirates. This was because “honest” work at sea consisted of either merchant or military service, both of which featured abominable conditions. Sailors were underpaid, routinely cheated of their wages, beaten at the slightest provocation and often forced to serve. It should surprise no one that many would willingly choose the more humane and democratic life on board a pirate vessel. 

9. They came from all social classes 

Not all of the Golden Age pirates were uneducated thugs who took up piracy for lack of a better way to make a living. Some of them came from higher social classes as well. William Kidd was a decorated sailor and very wealthy man when he set out in 1696 on a pirate-hunting mission: he turned pirate shortly thereafter. Another example is Major Stede Bonnet, who was a wealthy plantation owner in Barbados before he outfitted a ship and became a pirate in 1717.  Some say he did it to get away from a nagging wife! 

10. Not all pirates were criminals 

Sometimes it depended on your point of view. During wartime, nations would often issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal, which allowed ships to attack enemy ports and vessels. Usually these ships kept the plunder or shared some of it with the government that had issued the letter. These men were called “privateers,” and the most famous examples were Sir Francis Drake and Captain Henry Morgan. These Englishmen never attacked English ships, ports or merchants and were considered great heroes by the common folk of England. The Spanish, however, considered them pirates.

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