Part 24 (1/2)

_01:: Oscar Wilde (18541900) ”Cultivated leisure is the aim of man,” Oscar Wilde once famously said, and he certainly lived his life by that dictum. Wilde was brilliant, winning a gold medal in Cla.s.sics at Trinity College in Dublin in 1874 before earning a scholars.h.i.+p to Oxford. When his father died, however, Wilde left the family's finances to his older brother Henry, and worked only once in his life, a brief two-year stint as the editor of a women's magazine called The Woman's World, from 1887 to 1889. Wilde spent the rest of his time writing, giving lectures on aesthetics, coining pithy epigrams, and generally being a wit. Sadly, Wilde was forced to do hard labor near the end of his life after he was found guilty of immoral conduct for h.o.m.os.e.xual activities. A broken man, he died shortly thereafter, in 1900.

_02:: Socrates (468399 BCE) Aside from a possible brief stint as a sculptor, Socrates seems to have spent most of his hours ambling around the agorathe gymnasia where Athenians exercised, which was also Athens's central public meeting place and marketplace. When he wasn't milling about the town, the old philosopher could be spotted going to parties and loitering in taverns where citizens and foreign guests gathered. All this isn't to say the poor guy enjoyed the lush life. Socrates lived and dressed simply, wore neither shoes nor s.h.i.+rt, and owned only one coat. He also ate poorly, lived hand to mouth, relied heavily on the charity of his friends, and refused gifts when they were offered. Like, for instance, the time his friend Charmides offered to give him slaves who could have made money to support him. He also refused to accept presents from powerful leaders of Greek cities, not wanting to ever compromise his integrity. When the great philosopher was put on trial for allegedly teaching sacrilege, Socrates tweaked the Athenian a.s.sembly by suggesting that far from being a criminal, he deserved free room and board at their expense. Unamused, they condemned him to death.

_03:: Buddha (ca. 563483 BCE) Buddha, like Socrates, was a full-time thinker whose schedule of meditation, contemplation, and conversation didn't leave any time for work. Born around 563 BCE, Siddhartha, as he was called when young, was the son of a king who ruled a small kingdom in the northern floodplains of the Ganges River in India. The young prince led a life of leisure in his early years before growing disgusted with the materialism of the royal palace. Instead of sticking around, Siddhartha wandered off into nature at the age of 28, and after seven years of travel, meditation, and conversation with Hindu mystics, he attained enlightenment under a Bodhi tree. Receiving visitors and teaching students from under the tree, he spread the message of moderation and separation from material want that became Buddhismand never did get a job.

_04:: Osama bin Laden (1957) Before he started fighting for his own violent version of Islam, terrorist Osama bin Laden led the life of a playboy. Born around 1957 to a wealthy Yemeni father and Syrian mother, bin Laden was heir to part of the ma.s.sive fortune his billionaire father had acc.u.mulated in the Saudi construction business. As such, he squandered his days, acquiring a reputation for drinking too much and womanizing in his teens and early 20s in Beirut, which was then a cosmopolitan tourist hot spot. In fact, he didn't become a firmly committed, full-time Islamic radical until he went to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. That's where Osama began his improbable transformation from a rakish ladies' man to a ma.s.s-murdering zealot, never having worked a day before then.

Less-Than-Golden Slumbers:

5 Bad Nights of Sleep That Led to

Drastic Mistakes

”To sleep, perchance to screw up.” OK, we'll admit that's not exactly what the good bard said, but it does fit these five slices of somnambulistic history.

_01:: A Christmas Wake-up Call Colonel Johann Rall was a proven fighter, having already led his Hessian, or German mercenary, troops in successful battle against the American rebels. But he was contemptuous of his foe, and boy did he like to drink. In the end, the happy juice proved to be his undoing. On December 25, 1776, Rall ignored warnings that rebels under General George Was.h.i.+ngton were on the march toward Trenton, New Jersey. Instead, he got drunk and went to sleep, as did many of his 1,400 soldiers. Was.h.i.+ngton, meanwhile, made a daring predawn crossing of the ice-choked Delaware River. At daylight on December 26, the rebels attacked and routed the Hessians. Rall, who was under the covers when the battle began, got dressed just in time to be killed...proving that some days it really doesn't pay to get out of bed.

Touch of Evil Cyril Evans, the wireless operator aboard the Californian, forgot to set the automatic signal detector in his haste to catch some shut-eye. As a result, the s.h.i.+p didn't receive any warnings from the nearby t.i.tanic, and (despite being the closest to the wreck) failed to lend a hand until far too late.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Author ONE WORD, TWO WORDS.

The charming children's books (and wartime propaganda) of Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) have entertained young and old alike for generations. One commentator described his work, which included If I Ran the Zoo, Horton Hears a Who!, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and The Cat in the Hat, as wonderful stories of ”ludicrous situations pursued with relentless logic.” Starting in 1957, Seuss's work becomes noticeably laconic: the number of different words drops considerably. With Green Eggs and Ham, Seuss won a bet with his editor, who wagered that he couldn't write a book using fewer than 50 different words. Brilliance or laziness? You decide.

_02:: ”Get the Phone, Eva, I'm Schnoozing”

The weather seemed too rough over the English Channel the evening of June 5, 1944, to launch the greatest military invasion in history. So Adolf Hitler figured, ”What the h.e.l.l, I'm going to bed.” Der Fuhrer took a sleeping pill and left orders not to be disturbed. Big mistake on old Adolf's part: D-Day was several hours into effect before aides got the courage to wake Hitler up to get his permission to mobilize needed troops and equipment. Even then, the dictator dallied. He had tea, took a nap, and met with the premier of Hungary. Finally, about 5 p.m. on June 6, he issued orders, mostly bad ones that kept German generals from being able to move reinforcements to the invasion area. Good thing for the Allies that he woke up.

_03:: Asleep at the Switch?

During a clear, sunny morning, February 8, 1986, the 114-car Canadian National Railway freight train rolled west near the small town of Hinton in the province of Alberta. Rolling east was a pa.s.senger train. But because the freight train's three-man crew missed a stop signal, the two trains were on the same track. The result was a horrific collision, killing 23 people, including the freight train's engineer and brakeman. Just why the crew missed the signal has never been resolved. What was reported, however, was that the engineer had worked 26 of the 30 days before the wreck, and the crew had had little sleep. In the wake of the tragedy, the rail company introduced sweeping measures to combat crew fatigue.

_04:: Oil on the Waters The reef was well marked on the charts, the weather was OK, and the 984-foot-long Exxon Valdez had all the latest navigational equipment. But the oil-laden s.h.i.+p still went aground on Prince William Sound just after midnight on March 24, 1989. The resultonly the worst oil spill in American history, which led everyone to ask the same question: What happened? Despite the popular notion that it was caused by a drunken captain, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board attributed the spill to other causes. Among them was that the third mate, who was at the helm at the time of the accident, was ”impaired by fatigue,” as was the rest of the crew. Exxon, it turned out, had a policy of increasing crews' workload to save money. The spill cost the company $2.2 billion, which translated into a lot of overtime.

_05:: ”I Object: My Attorney's Asleep”

Calvin Burdine was scheduled to die on April 11, 1995, 12 years after being convicted of killing his boyfriend in Houston. But a federal judge stopped the execution a few hours before it was scheduled. What prompted the justice's change of heart? Well, among other things, he was troubled that Burdine's lawyer had slept through portions of the trial. Amazingly, a three-member federal appeals court panel overruled the judge, reasoning that a defendant had no const.i.tutional right to a conscious attorney. Fortunately for Burdine, a full appeals court ordered a new trial, and the U.S. Supreme Court concurred. As of 2004, Burdine was doing life in a Texas prison after a plea bargain. And lawyers all over the country were trying to stay awake.

What's That You're Flying?

4 Laziest Flag Designs

Flags are an important reminder of who we are and what we stand for, so it's surprising how often a flag design is chosen in a seemingly careless manner, with little attempt at originality of appearance. What follows is a list of just four of the many, many lazily designed flags that have still waved proudly from masts across the globe.

_01:: Libya: It's Ridiculously Easy Being Green In 1977, Libya left a federation of Arab states (the other members were Syria and Egypt) that had all used a pan-Arab banner with horizontal stripes of red over white over black. As part of an effort to forge a new, uniquely Libyan ident.i.ty, the ever-wacky Muammar al-Gadhafi unveiled a new flag design for the ”Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.” The flag, representing Islam and fertility, was completely green.

Touch of Evil The flags of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden are all nearly identical in design; each depicts a cross with its intersection in the first third of the field.

_02:: Haiti: Get the White Out The modern Haitian flag features two horizontal stripes, blue over red. But the original version, adopted upon independence in 1804, featured two stripes arranged vertically like those on the French flag. The flag originated when Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a leader of the Haitian revolt against France, tore the white stripe out of a French flag and told his G.o.ddaughter to sew the two remaining stripes together. Ironically, while Dessalines meant this as a gesture of contempt for his country's former white masters (many of whom were ma.s.sacred by their former slaves during the fight for Haitian independence), the color white in flags traditionally stands for peace, something Haiti unfortunately has known little of in its 200 years as an independent country.

_03:: Alaska: The Best Darn Artist in the Whole Eighth Grade Alaska had been a U.S. possession since 1867 and a territory since 1912, but apparently n.o.body ever bothered to make a flag for the place until 1927, when the territorial government of Alaska farmed out the responsibility of flag design to the Alaska Department of the American Legion. The Legion, in turn, decided flag design was too important to leave to anyone but teenage children, and so sponsored a contest. The winner, John Bell Benson, was a 13-year-old boy. He actually did a fair job, all things consideredthe flag is dark blue, with eight five-pointed gold stars in the shape of the Big Dipper and a larger gold star representing the North Star, Polaris. The lazy, lazy inhabitants of Alaska even let Benson pick the state flowerhe chose the forget-me-not.

_04:: China: Getting By with a Little Help from Communist Friends The Chinese Communists developed their own flag during the terrible decades-long civil war with the Nationalists and various warlords. The clever design featured a red background with a golden hammer and sickle. The only problem: This flag was identical to that of the Soviet Union, minus a star. Not to be outdone, the later Communist parties in Vietnam and Laos adopted their own flags. For some reason, however, these were simply copies of the Chinese version. This intrepid spirit of innovation would serve the Communists well in defeating Western democracy and capitalism in the cold war. Oh, wait...

The Sound of Sirens:

3 Warning Calls History Ignored

Tsk-tsk! If you hear the warning bells a-ringing (or see that a certain group has been looting and plundering your neighbors and is now making a beeline for your home), maybe it's time to put down the remote and start planning your defense. Of course, if you're too lazy to make a move you could always cross your fingers and take your chances. Unfortunately, that genius tactic didn't work out so well for the following folks.

_01:: Beware Macedonians Bringing Gifts Demosthenes (384322 BCE) was a brilliant Athenian orator, though apparently he was pretty good as an oracle as well. Throughout the 340s BCE, he begged, harangued, and pleaded with the feuding Greek city-states to unite against what he saw as the growing threat of Macedon, under its brutal, one-eyed King Philip. But Philip wasn't without his charms, either: the wily warlord threatened, flattered, and bribed the city-states until they were either too scared, too vain, or too rich to risk fighting the Macedonians. When they finally realized the danger, it was a little too late. With the evidence all pointing to Philip's plot for total domination, Demosthenes did finally succeed in scrounging up a coalition against him, but they lacked the time and resources to prepare. At Chaeronea in 338 BCE, Philip and his son Alexander (a few years shy of being ”the Great”) destroyed the united Greek armies. Demosthenes lived on until 322, giving him plenty of time to tell his fellow h.e.l.lenes, ”I told ye so.”