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Latest Article|September 3, 2020|Free
::Making Grown Men Cry Since 1992
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One of the more obscure films to pop into this year's Best Animated Feature category at the Academy Awards was the Cuban-born cartoon Chico & Rita. (It lost out to the American-made Rango .) The roots of the film's existence can be traced back to director Fernando Trueba (one of three directors credited on Chico & Rita ). Trueba produced and directed the Latin jazz documentary Calle 54 . It was on that watershed 2000 film that Trueba met legendary Cuban pianist/bandleader Bebo Valdés. Valdés provides the music as well as the loose biographical inspiration for Chico & Rita .In modern-day, poverty-wracked Havana, we are introduced to aging shoeshine man Chico. Set adrift on memory bliss (and a few glasses of rum), Chico flashes back to his and his country's heyday, the late '40s. Back then, Chico (voiced by Eman Xor Oña) was a hotshot ladies' man and an up-and-coming musician. One fateful night, out partying with his best friend Ramón and a couple of Yankee lasses, he spots curvy chanteuse Rita (Limara Meneses' speaking voice and Idania Valdés' singing voice) and is instantly smitten. Attracted on both a personal and professional level, the two fall into bed and eventually enter a radio talent competition. The talent competition leads to bigger and better things, but the romance is somewhat less successful.Over the course of the next several decades, Chico and Rita cross paths many times along the bumpy road to love. Rita is swept off to New York City by a smooth-talking talent scout, where she quickly becomes the toast of the town. Chico and his pal Ramón eventually follow in her footsteps and are caught up themselves in the manic Afro-Cuban jazz craze of the '50s. Along the way, their lives intertwine with those of various real-life musical personalities, including Woody Herman, Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo. Chico & Rita plays out like a pulpy, old-fashioned Hollywood melodrama, with romantic declarations of love, angry bouts of jealousy and long periods of brokenhearted melancholy pulling our lovers together and tearing them apart. The iconic animation lends a vivid backdrop to all this tempestuous emotion. Much like the vintage work of adult animator Ralph Bakshi ( Heavy Traffic or American Pop , certainly), Chico & Rita is gritty urban realism filled with spicy sex and occasional violence. This ain't no cartoon for kids. The simple, hand-drawn art style looks like ink sketches highlighted in watercolor. The lines are bold and clear. The colors are pastel and frequently complementary (except for Rita's trademark yellow dress, which pops in nearly every scene). Animators occasionally employ a 3D-ish computer assist, which gives weight to the characters and depth to the backgrounds. (Particularly in a zippy car chase through the streets of Havana.) This is a worthy addition, as much of the film's charm is wrapped up in its earthy period details. Pre-Revolutionary Havana glows and mid-century Manhattan sparkles in washes of pale color. There are the swanky hotels, the seedy bars, the crowded nightclubs, the cramped tenements. Everything looks like some bebop-crazed jazz record cover by David Stone Martin—as well it should. Admittedly, however, those bold, expressive lines don't give quite as much detail to the human beings. Some viewers might see this as an impediment to fully absorbing the passionate feelings at play here. Though, to be honest, the film's predictably melodramatic script does more to keep the characters two-dimensional than the animation.The best bet here is to surrender to it all. Give in to the syncopated rhythms of the rhumba and the seductive lyrics of the bolero. Turn yourself over to the punchy, tropical deco art style. Submit to the sultry tumult of cinematic emotions. Go ahead: Listen, look and fall in love.


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San Carlos, California, United States
About B.Nute productions
Founded in 2007 by Betsy Nute Beier, B.Nute productions is a specialty design studio featuring whimsical party invitations, decorations, and paper goods for all occasions.
Our products include:
•Party Invitations
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B.Nute productions is the culmination of all things that Betsy is passionate about - design, whimsical styling, entertaining and a zest for life! She's been drawn to vintage, retro, festive imagery for as long as she can remember. Old circus ephemera, cheeky 50's styling, retro children's products – she loves it all.
"I strive to bring the innocence, nostalgia and humor from past eras, along with my own creative touch into all my designs. I am delighted when I hear the excitement from my customers when they receive their purchase! Making someone's party or special occasion unique, fanciful and memorable is very rewarding."

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Reading over the posts on InterfaithFamily's Parenting Blog, I have come to the realization that a decision Kat and I made has allowed us to avoid some of the issues facing families that are blended from two distinct faiths or cultures. We know we do not want children and it was one of the easiest decisions for us to make. It also eliminates many common areas of disagreement in interfaith families such as religion in which to raise the kids, education and discipline.
How can deciding not to have kids—a watershed moment in most people's lives—be so easy for us? If you take a step back and look at the facts critically and without playing to the emotions so often tangled up in it, the matter becomes a balancing of the positives and negatives of what parenting would entail in our family. Admitting this out loud often raises people's ire because "How can one put a price on the joy that children bring?" I can imagine what some readers are thinking, because we have heard it all before. Folks most often respond with stares of horror or confusion or with comments about how we are young and will change our minds as we "grow up" (I am 33 and Kat is 29).
The most practical reason for our decision is simply this: Neither Kat nor I want a lifestyle that is suitable for raising children. Kat is an EMT and works weird hours. My schedule is not much better and is not likely to improve as we move forward with our efforts to expand my research overseas. When that happens, it is likely that Kat will move over to working with me at our non-profit full time. There's a decent likelihood that one or both of us will be out of town over a hundred days per year. That is just not a good situation to bring children into and we do not wish to give up our careers.
Another factor in the decision to not procreate is that we do not wish to give up or change our own identities and lifestyle to raise children. This may seem a very selfish reason on its face but stop and think about how many of your friends drifted away when they had children. If it makes someone else happy, that's spectacular but we know that it isn't for us. I am thrilled to live vicariously through someone with regards to their children so long as they agree to do the same with regards to our lifestyle.
One of the common rebuttals that folks (often older folks) have is "But won't you miss having children around?" And we might, but perhaps not as much as you would think. Our take is that kids are great in small doses. And we'll be able to get those small doses with our nephew, thanks to my younger sister and her husband.
The other common question is "But who will take care of you when you're old?" Once again, this is usually something that comes from people the age of my grandparents because people tend to ask about things that are sources of concern to themselves. While having children is one way to try to ensure your wishes and needs are taken care of, it is no guarantee. Grief does screwed-up things to people and clear thinking is usually one of the first things to go. So having someone who is closely tied to you make end-of-life decisions may end up causing additional problems.
As I mentioned, people most often try to persuade us with the argument that we will come to want children as we "grow up" is the most common one we encounter, and it is often done in a rather patronizing way. It is also frankly one of the most insulting things one can say to a person. Saying such things about someone's core beliefs about their life is akin to criticizing their religion. To say such things to us is to imply that we are wrong, though it is more likely that the people judging us do not fully understand our circumstance. If a lifestyle choice makes a person happy and they are not harming anyone else with their views, why should it be a concern of yours? Just as Kat and I do not judge others and may not understand fully their desire to have children, we respect and support their decisions. All we ask is the same courtesy.
Having children can be a beautiful blessing, and a continuity of the Jewish community, however, there is also sometimes strife that child rearing causes in relationships—including interfaith marriages. We cannot help but ask whether more people should be taking a critical view of whether having children is right for their situation rather than trying to make their relationship fit having children.
The social and religious expectation that a couple will produce children is so overwhelming that many do not stop to think about the reality of it in any concrete way. Maybe it is time that such matters be given more consideration and not simply be treated as a given. If it works for you, great! But the responsibility of parenting should be a rational and sober decision and not one made simply to please cultural, social, religious or family expectations.
Stephen is a secular humanist Jew and a trauma biomechanics/crash survivability researcher from Indianapolis, Indiana. He and his loving fiance Kat will be married this September in an interfaith ceremony.
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A Disciple of Christ
Brethren, I have in mind saying a few things about what it takes to become a disciple of Jesus Christ. And this being a priesthood meeting, I presume that each of us holds the priesthood and desires to qualify as a disciple of Christ. On this premise I have chosen as my text the fifth verse of the forty-first section of the Doctrine and Covenants, which reads:
"He that receiveth my law and doeth it, the same is my disciple; and he that saith he receiveth it and doeth it not, the same is not my disciple, and shall be cast out from among you."
Christ's invitation to become his disciple is universal. He extends it to everyone. His call and promise is "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28).
And he has said "that every soul who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me, and calleth on my name, and obeyeth my voice, and keepeth my commandments, shall see my face and know that I am" (D&C 93:1).
Jesus put no money price tag on his invitation. Nephi quotes him as saying, "Come unto me all ye ends of the earth, buy milk and honey, without money and without price" (2 Ne. 26:25).
This does not mean, however, that because he put no money price on it that there is no cost involved. There is a cost to be paid in becoming a disciple of Christ, a very real cost. But the cost is a performance cost, not a money price.
Jesus taught this very plainly. He further taught that those who profess to follow him should realize the cost at the outset.
Here are some examples. In the Gospel according to Luke he said:
"It came to pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.
"And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.
"And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.
"Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.
"And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.
"And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:57–62.)
Jesus was not looking for, or calling, men to do lip service only. He a wanted them to realize that following him meant effort and sacrifice. Luke tells us of an occasion when "there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them,
"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
"And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.
"So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:25–27, 33.)
In these seemingly harsh statements, Jesus was not specifying "literal hatred toward one's family … as a condition of discipleship." He was emphasizing "the preeminence of duty toward God over personal" or worldly demands of those who would be his disciples. (James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976, p. 453.)
As to counting the cost, Jesus pointed out the wisdom of doing so even with respect to mundane projects:
"Which of you," he said, "intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?
"Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him,
"Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish." (Luke 14:28–30.)
In this last dispensation, the Lord has taught the importance of complete dedication to his service and strict obedience to his commandments as emphatically as he did during his earthly ministry. For example, in 1831, the first year after the Church was organized, the Lord revealed through the Prophet Joseph Smith, who was visiting the Saints then assembled in Jackson County, Missouri, that they were in "the land of promise, … the place for the city of Zion" (D&C 57:2). This good news heightened the enthusiasm of the Saints, who were already eagerly anticipating the blessings of Zion as it would be in its glory.
At this juncture, to calm them down a little and impress upon them the fact that the establishment of Zion would depend upon their obedience to his law, the Lord said to them:
"Hearken, O ye elders of my church, and give ear to my word, and learn of me what I will concerning you, and also concerning this land unto which I have sent you.
"For verily I say unto you, blessed is he that keepeth my commandments, whether in life or in death; and he that is faithful in tribulation, the reward of the same is greater in the kingdom of heaven.
"For after much tribulation come the blessings. …
"Remember this, which I tell you before, that you may lay it to heart." (D&C 58:1–2, 4–5; italics added.)
The Lord was reminding the Saints there that there was some tribulation ahead before they could enjoy the promised blessings of Zion as it will be in its glory.
He was warning them that in Jackson County, Missouri—which was Zion then and will yet be Zion—where they were going, the law—that is, his law—had to be kept. Men had to be true disciples. This was clear notice to the Saints in Missouri, and it should and must be clear notice to us, that keeping the law of God is the principal thing that all who truly become his disciples must learn.
A week later, just before the Prophet left Missouri for Kirtland, the Lord gave through him a revelation in which he emphasized the importance of complete and total dedication:
"Behold, blessed, saith the Lord, are they who have come up unto this land with an eye single to my glory, …
"For those that live shall inherit the earth, and those that die shall rest from all their labors. …
"Yea, blessed are they whose feet stand upon the land of Zion, who have obeyed my gospel; for they shall receive for their reward the good things of the earth. …
"And they shall also be crowned with blessings from above, … they that are faithful and diligent before me.
"Wherefore, I give unto them a commandment, saying thus: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy might, mind, and strength; and in the name of Jesus Christ thou shalt serve him." (D&C 59:1–5; italics added.) Confessing and accepting is not sufficient.
Then he named some specific things that these Saints had to learn to do before they prospered in Zion:
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Thou shalt not steal; neither commit adultery, nor kill, nor do anything like unto it.
"Thou shalt thank the Lord thy God in all things.
"Thou shalt offer a sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in righteousness, even that of a broken heart and a contrite spirit.
"And that thou mayest more fully keep thyself unspotted from the world, thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day." (D&C 59:6–9.)
These are some of the specific things the Lord told the Missouri Saints to do in order to prove themselves to be his disciples when he first took them to Jackson County, Missouri, the center stake of Zion.
His concluding instruction was: "Learn that he who doeth the works of righteousness shall receive his reward, even peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come" (D&C 59:23).
This is not the occasion to review the history of the Saints in Jackson County, Missouri. Suffice it to say that they did not demonstrate the necessary dedication and commitment to establish Zion at that time. On February 24, 1834, after they had been "driven and smitten by the hands of [their] enemies" (D&C 103:2), the Lord told the Prophet Joseph that the reason he had permitted their expulsion was so "that those who call themselves after my name might be chastened for a little season with a sore and grievous chastisement, because they did not hearken altogether unto the precepts and commandments which I gave unto them" (D&C 103:4; italics added). They were not yet his disciples in the true sense of the term. He did, however, give them this great promise:
"They shall … begin to prevail against mine enemies from this very hour.
"And by hearkening to observe all the words which I, the Lord their God, shall speak unto them, they shall never cease to prevail until the kingdoms of the world are subdued under my feet, and the earth is given unto the saints, to possess it forever and ever." (D&C 103:6–7.)
That's our great promise. We will never cease to prevail until the Lord establishes his Zion in this world. The true discipleship of the priesthood of God will determine how fast we move toward that great consummation as we, through living the gospel, fight the debauchery and the wickedness that's going on in this world.
And then the Lord said, "Let no man be afraid to lay down his life for my sake; for whoso layeth down his life for my sake shall find it again" (D&C 103:27).
And this is a shocking statement to me: "And whoso is not willing to lay down his life for my sake is not my disciple" (D&C 103:28).
As we contemplate this great declaration, it may be well for us to be reminded of the oath and covenant which belongeth to the priesthood, by which all of us who hold the Melchizedek Priesthood are bound. Following a discussion of the "Holy Priesthood" (D&C 84:6) and the "lesser priesthood" (D&C 84:30), the revelation which gives the oath and covenant of the priesthood continues:
"Whoso is faithful unto the obtaining these two priesthoods [the greater priesthood and the lesser priesthood—meaning, of course, the Melchizedek and the Aaronic] of which I have spoken, and the magnifying their calling, are sanctified by the Spirit unto the renewing of their bodies.
"They become the sons of Moses and of Aaron and the seed of Abraham, and the church and kingdom, and the elect of God.
"And also all they who receive this priesthood receive me, saith the Lord:
"For he that receiveth my servants receiveth me;
"And he that receiveth me receiveth my Father;
"And he that receiveth my Father receiveth my Father's kingdom; therefore all that my Father hath shall be given unto him.
"And this is according to the oath and covenant which belongeth to the priesthood.
"Therefore, all those who receive the priesthood, receive this oath and covenant of my Father, which he cannot break, neither can it be moved."
And then this warning:
"But whoso breaketh this covenant [of the priesthood] after he hath received it, and altogether turneth therefrom, shall not have forgiveness of sins in this world nor in the world to come." (D&C 84:33–41.)
I hope and pray that each of us will remember and perform our obligations under the foregoing covenant and qualify for the blessing promised in the following declaration:
"Verily, thus saith the Lord: It shall come to pass that every soul"—this is said of all of us here tonight—that every soul "who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me, and calleth on my name, and obeyeth my voice, and keepeth my commandments, shall see my face and know that I am" (D&C 93:1).
Now, my brethren, I want to leave with you my witness. I know that God lives, and I am striving with all my soul to know God himself. I do not remember the time when I had any question about the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know as I live that Jesus lives, that he was and is the Only Begotten Son of God in the flesh, and that he is our Redeemer.
I know that Joseph Smith opened this last dispensation. It is thrilling to me to contemplate the fact that the Father and the Son stood before Joseph in the grove and that the Father gave the Prophet a personal introduction to his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. I know that angels came and restored the priesthood to the Prophet and Oliver Cowdery; that God did establish again his church upon the earth; that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is his church; that Jesus Christ is the only name given under heaven whereby men can be saved; that acceptance and obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ, which we have the honor to preach and are commissioned to carry to all the ends of the earth, is the only means of salvation for this world, both temporally and spiritually.
I shall not know these things better in the not-too-distant future when I shall stand before the Lord to give an account of my work in mortality. As I bear you this testimony I pray that we shall all fully live the gospel and thereby qualify as true disciples of Christ, to obtain the promised peace in this world and eternal life in the world to come. This I do in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.


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ATLANTA — For the first time, the government is proposing that all baby boomers get tested for hepatitis C.
Which GOP Losers Are Drowning In Debt?
Anyone born from 1945 to 1965 should get a one-time blood test to see if they have the liver-destroying virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in draft recommendations issued Friday.
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Baby boomers account for more than 2 million of the 3.2 million Americans infected with the blood-borne virus. It can take decades to cause liver damage, and many people don't know they're infected.
CDC officials believe the new measure could lead 800,000 more baby boomers to get treatment and could save more than 120,000 lives.
"The CDC views hepatitis C as an unrecognized health crisis for the country, and we believe the time is now for a bold response," said Dr. John W. Ward, the CDC's hepatitis chief.
Several developments drove the CDC's push for wider testing, he said.
Recent data has shown that from 1999 to 2007, the number of Americans dying from hepatitis C-related diseases nearly doubled. Also, two drugs hit the market last year that promise to cure many more people than was previously possible.
The virus can gradually scar the liver and lead to cirrhosis or liver cancer, and is the leading cause of liver transplant. It can trigger damage in other parts of the body as well. All told, more than 15,000 Americans die each year from hepatitis C-related illnesses, according to the CDC.
The hepatitis C virus is most commonly spread today through sharing needles to inject drugs. Before widespread screening of blood donations began in 1992, it was also spread through blood transfusions.
Health officials believe hundreds of thousands of new hepatitis C infections were occurring each year in the 1970s and 1980s, most of them in the younger adults of the era – the baby boomers. The hepatitis C virus was first identified in 1989.
Today, about 17,000 infections occur annually, according to CDC estimates.
About 3 percent of baby boomers test positive for the virus, the CDC estimates.
Of those, some manage to clear the infection from their bodies without treatment, but still have lingering antibodies that give a positive initial test result. That's why confirmatory tests are needed.
Still, only a quarter of infected people are that lucky. Most have active and dangerous infections, Ward said.
The agency's current guidelines recommend testing people known to be at high risk, including current and past injection drug users.
But as many as a quarter of infected baby boomers say they don't recall engaging in a risky behavior.
It's possible some people were infected in ways other than injection drug use or long-ago blood transfusions. Some experts say tattoos, piercings, shared razor blades and toothbrushes, manicures and sniffed cocaine may have caused the virus to spread in some cases.
Those kinds of experiences might not raise flags in the minds of many patients or their physicians, experts said.
A recent Harris Interactive survey of 1,000 baby boomers found other forms of ignorance about hepatitis C. Fewer than 20 percent knew they belonged to the generation most likely to be infected, and only a similar percent were aware it can be cured in many patients.
Also, only about 25 percent said they had been tested, according to the survey, done on behalf of the American Gastroenterological Association and Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which makes one of the hepatitis C medications.
Currently, many baby boomers learn of their infection almost by accident, like when they donate blood or get a physical exam for a life insurance policy, said Dr. Ryan Ford, an Emory University physician specializing in hepatitis care.
He and other physicians celebrated the CDC's announcement.
"It's a long awaited and very much hoped for development that I believe will save lives," said Dr. Ira Jacobson, a hepatitis expert at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center
The new testing recommendation is expected to become final later this year.
Baby Boomers Urged To Get Tested For Hepatitis C was originally published on newsone.com


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Speculators in the agricultural commodities markets are forcing grocery prices to rise too quickly and erratically, according to some top economists marking World Food Day on Sunday.
"Excessive financial speculation is contributing to increasing volatility and record food prices, exacerbating global hunger and poverty," wrote 461 economists, from more than 40 countries, in an open letter.
They called upon the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to crack down on speculators who have been buying large amounts of corn, wheat, soy and other commodities, hoping to make a profit. The economists argue that increased trading is a significant part of the reason grocery prices are higher this year.
And grocery prices are indeed up this year. For example, in August, the average price of bread in U.S. cities was up 17.4 percent over last year, while milk was up 12.4 percent, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Brandon Kliethermes, an agriculture economist with the forecasting firm IHS Global Insight, agrees that speculators do increase volatility — exaggerating price moves up and down.
"These markets have been bouncing around quite a bit for the past year now," Kliethermes said.
But not everyone agrees price speculation is the root of the problem. Economists have yet to find clear evidence that financial speculation can change food prices over time. Searching data for any meaningful price manipulation is very hard to quantify, Kliethermes said.
"You can't really point a finger at speculators," he said.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is expected to soon issue new rules about commodity speculation, as required under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
And next month in France, the subject will be in the spotlight at a summit involving top leaders of the G20 — a group of the world's biggest economies. The host, French president Nicolas Sarkozy is pushing for tighter controls to stop speculators from betting on crop prices.
The issue centers on whether commodity exchanges are now hurting food prices when, in theory, they should be helping hold down grocery prices. Here's how it's supposed to work:
Say a company needs corn to make corn flakes. It could go to a commodities exchange and agree to buy corn at a particular price, spelled out in a contract. Having a known price would allow the cereal maker to go forward with plans to produce and sell corn flakes.
The company might get a lower price if it waits longer to buy corn, so locking in a price involves some risk. But on balance, the deal makes good business sense: the cereal maker gets certainty about the price of corn, and the farmer gets certainty about the price he'll get for his crop. And consumers win because such transactions smooth out risks. That reduction in risk encourages people to become farmers and companies to make corn flakes — everyone wins.
But speculators have been pouring into the commodities market, hoping to make more money there than in the stock market. A UN report shows that money invested in food commodities shot from $13 billion in 2003 to $260 billion just five years later.
These financial speculators buy and sell contracts, but never grow corn or make corn flakes, according to Alan Bjerga, author of a just-released book, Endless Appetites — How the Commodities Casino Creates Hunger and Unrest.
Among the speculators, "no one ever takes delivery of the grains," Bjerga said. It's just paper being passed back and forth among investors betting on price moves.
Critics say food should not be traded like gold or stocks, purely for financial gain. Their demands for change are being made on World Food Day, an annual event marking the 1945 launch of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
The U.N. agency tracks — and tries to end — hunger around the world. Many fast-developing countries, especially in Asia, have made dramatic progress in recent years. Still, hunger remains the world's No. 1 health risk, killing more people than diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
FAO reports that about 925 million people do not have enough to eat, with the worst problems being concentrated in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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This document does not advocate or condone the extinction or betrayal of ewoks, it merely reports upon a physical situation and the acts involved.
The circumstances at the end of Return of the Jedi lead inevitably to an environmental disaster on the Endor moon. The explosion of a small artificial moon in low orbit sends a meteoric rain onto the ewok sanctuary, on a scale unmatched since Endor formed. Through either direct atmospheric injection of small particles, or showers of ejecta from large impacts, the atmosphere will be filled with smoke and fallout causing a gargantuan nuclear-winter effect.
Unless the rebel commandoes on Endor were executing a suicide mission, the rebel fleet was evidently able to intervene to protect their immediate vicinity: probably an area comparable to Luxembourg. Debris fragments amounting to the mass of the rebel fleet might conceivably have been diverted from that particular locality (by the exertion of the fleet's tractor beams) and onto adjacent areas of the Endorian globe. However this is only a tiny fraction of the total mass incident on the moon during an event lasting mere minutes. The mass of the entire debris cloud and fireball is incomparably (inexorably) greater than the combined mass of both fleets over Endor.
A general climatological catastrophe was unavoidable. Averting the disaster would have required physical action on a scale greater than the construction of a Death Star, within minutes of the battle station's explosion.
Immediately following ROTJ the Endor moon has become unliveable, meaning that the ewoks are extinct except for those:
This page is not concerned with environmental amelioration. The New Republic, former-Imperial warlords, the Svivreni or galactic conservationists could make attempts to terraform and repair the moon, but these are long-term measures and cannot stop the immediate damage that occurs within minutes and hours of the explosion. The scope of galactic technology is not great enough to magically restore ecosystems buried beneath dozens of metres of metallic dust or debris, nor resurrect life forms smothered by a chemically-altered atmosphere. Artificial structures, like the urban terrain of Coruscant after Dark Empire, can be replaced or restored globally in a year-long rebuilding project that is comparable to the construction of a Death Star. However trees and living systems are no so quick to restore. At the very least, if all the Endorian species were preserved off-world, the replanted forests would take decades to grow. In any case, amelioration and restoration projects, and the motives of whoever implements them, are in the realm of speculation. The biotic catastrophe itself is a well founded and direct consequence of the observable events of the STAR WARS canon. That is the basis of the discussion below.
Thanks are due to, in alphabetic order:
The Death Star II was designed as bait for the Rebel Alliance, but it was never supposed to be destroyed. The station was meant to be protected by an impenetrable deflector shield. Primitive bipeds on that paradise world were recruited and exploited by daring rebel commandos. They managed to overwhelm the security forces defending the shield's power generator. Ironically, the ewoks were actually the beneficiaries of the deflector shield, and their aggression indirectly and unwittingly brought about their world's doom.
Destruction of both the deflector shield and the battle station caused some serious collateral damage.1
The technical principles underlying power systems in STAR WARS technology are not fully clear to us. "hypermatter" annihilation is the main and ultimate power source for large warships and battle stations [SW:ICS p.10, AOTC:ICS p.5], however nuclear fusion and antimatter annihilation play a subsidiary or secondary role. For all we know, they may also employ more exotic and potent technologies: perhaps tapping into deeper subatomic realms, portable miniature black holes or other phenomena unfamiliar to Earthly engineers. We know that hypermatter involves supralight particles [AOTC:ICS p.5], and we can infer that its annihilation produces radiant decay products like antimatter annihilation or nuclear reactions do. The mass/energy conversion of hypermatter must be as complete and as practically effective as antimatter annihilation, otherwise the latter would have been used instead.
The destructive magnitude of the superlaser implies power systems of vast power and admirable efficiency. The main reactor core of the Death Star II was a machine of immense scale operating on what probably were post-nuclear technological schemes. As a general tendency of human works, the deeper the technology, the worse may be the by-products of its uncontrolled failure: disasters of pre-nuclear technology produce poisons or fires; nuclear explosions leave abundant radioactivity; the detonation of a Death Star could be at least as dirty. But we don't know for certain.
Even if exploding hypermatter power sources are completely clean, the subsidiary antimatter and fusion devices in the Death Star II must have created an enormous burst of gamma-rays and high-energy particles. [Meltdowns are mentioned in ROTJ novel, chapter 9.] The magnitude of this flash is difficult to assess without intimate knowledge of the superphysical mechanisms of the runaway reaction and the evolving gamma-ray opacity of the debris cloud, but at least the outermost layers of the explosion must have emitted high-energy by-products. The visible parts of the surface of the nearby moon, which was as near as two thousand kilometres at the closest point, amount to 5/36 of the total area and must have been bathed in radiation. Living organisms on the irradiated side of the moon would be disposed to radiation sicknesses, if not sterilised or killed outright. Lingering radioactivity from affected areas of the moon's surface and radioactive debris fallen from the battle station would be a perpetual hazzard. Although the specifics are hard to estimate, the initial radiation flash and the long-term contamination may actually be more deadly than the climatological damage described below.
The Death Star II was in a very low orbit. According to geometric studies, the construction site was at an altitude which put its orbit within a double-radius of the moon's centre. A likely estimate for the moon's radius is 5200km, based on the surface gravity and realistic ranges of planetary composition. Assuming this scale, the orbital geometry is such that the battle station is only another 2000km above the surface.
The Death Star II remained stationary above the surface facility which generated its protective shield. In order to remain synchronous with the surface, the station's orbital period needed to exactly match the duration of the Endorian day2. However for all plausible ranges of the moon's composition, the orbital period will be very short for any object in a free orbit at this level. It should circle the globe in only a few hours.
There is good reason to believe that the moon does not have such a short rotation period. If the day was so short then the shadows would be move visibly during scenes, and the globe would be rotationally distorted. In other words the moon would have a noticeably oblate aspect, with the diameter through the poles being visibly narrower than the diameter through the equator. The observed profile of the moon is a nearly perfect sphere.
Therefore an object moving at the altitude of the Death Star II and which also has a period slow enough to be synchronised with the moon's rotation cannot be in a free natural orbit. In other words, the battle station was moving around the moon too slowly and with insufficient energy to stay up by itself. It needs supplementary support against gravity or else it will literally fall from the sky. The Death Star II therefore possessed an artificial support mechanism.
This mechanism could not have been the simple kinetic action of the station's sublight thrusters, since they would lead to either an increased orbital distance or increased rate of orbital revolution. Even in the last few minutes of the station's existence, it would have visibly moved away from its position above the location of the rebel strike team. As seen by the rebels, it would have moved close to or over the horizon. (Moving to the horizon would involve only about a tenth of a free orbit. A free orbit at that altitude is only a couple of hours long; hence only about a dozen minutes are needed to reach the horizon.)
The support was most likely provided by a large-scale repulsor field projected along with the security shield, generated at the surface facility. Alternatively, repulsors may have been mounted within the shell of the station itself. This seems most likely, since the station did not immediately fall out of the sky after the ground facility was obliterated.
In any case, the repulsors were destroyed either when the shield facility was demolished or when the station itself exploded. The artificial orbital equilibrium was broken and the remains of the Death Star II would drop into moon's atmosphere within only a few minutes, even if it were not already exploding in all directions (including the direction towards the moon).
Death Star II hangs serenely in low orbit above the sanctuary moon.
The surface facility generating the security deflector shield might also have been responsible for a repulsor field which supported the station vertically.
What happens next depends on the explosion's energy and the distribution of the sizes of the debris particles. There are two extreme cases according to the explosive energy of the battle station's destruction; these tell us that the total amount of material reaching the moon is somewhere between a sixth the station's mass and all of the station's mass.
Careful timing measurements indicate that the outer surface of the fireball expands at about 80 km/s. Matter hidden below the surface expands at the same or slightly lower velocity.
The mysterious flaming ring emerging from the equator was much faster, but until more is known about its composition we cannot assess its environmental impact. It could be intangible.
At least thirty multi-kilometre solid chunks emerged from and overtook the roiling debris cloud. Their velocities are greater than the 80km/s of the cloud's general expansion. (In fact there were enough large pieces of debris that Shug Ninx was able to purchase a mile-long piece of salvaged air-shaft, as shown in Dark Empire and Dark Empire Sourcebook.)
Escape velocity at the Death Star's altitude is on the order of 7km/s (assuming a realistic estimate for the moon's mass and composition). Since all major visible components of the explosion were moving dozens of times faster, the explosion was of the hard type.
It has been asked whether the total mass of the battle station's remains was great enough so that the fireball could fall back inwards upon itself due to self-gravity, perhaps to be swallowed by whatever exotic residue the reactor core may have left. Unfortunately, if this were the case, the outward motion of the margins of the fireball would have slowed visibly during the time shown in the movie. Empirically, it did not. Furthermore, Princess Leia did not encounter any self-collapsed remnant when she visited the place where the station would have been five years later, in Dark Force Rising. In any case, the mass needed for self-collapse would have been much greater than that of the Endor moon itself, and the station's everyday tidal effect would have warped the moon's shape noticeably.
Having established that millions of cubic miles of porous metal3 will inevitably strike the atmosphere, it is important to consider the state of the debris:
When there are significant impact events, the total amount of atmospheric dust will be greater than merely the mass of all the impactors. Large impacts yield more dust as ejecta (pulverised rock from the crater) than from the body of the projectile itself. Impacts will also kindle forest fires of global scale, sending further soot into the air. (Endor's isolated, unconnected seas cannot interrupt such fires; the burning will be much more extensive than during similar calamities on Earth.)
Observations of the morphology and kinematics of the explosion suggest that a combination of fine and coarse effects were experienced. The larger pieces are representated by at least fourteen fragments each a few tens of kilometres wide, seen hurtling down towards the moon's atmosphere. An explosive ring of plasma, erupting from the battle station's equator, will strike the moon within seconds, though it is unknown how much actual substance this phenomenon contains. The rest of the debris lacks discernable structure and seems to be fine.
The apparent tranquility of the site around the demolished shield generator, where the rebel commandoes celebrated their victory, has implications for the size distribution of the debris particles. The debris chunks which would have directly collided with the ground team must have been deflected to other areas of the moon's surface by the screening rebel fleet. However an impact over a certain size will cause a rain of ejecta and seismic concussion which would have harmed the commandoes even if they were dozens, hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away. This suggests that apart from the fourteen or so visibly large fragments, most of the impacting debris comprised bodies no larger than a dozens or a few hundred metres across, whose impacts would have no more effect on the rest of the globe than thermonuclear detonations. Much of the mass of the battle station probably fell as centimetre-sized or smaller grains, burning in the air and directly entering the atmosphere as dust without striking ground.
The nett result in all scenarios is that a huge volume of dust is left high in the upper atmosphere. The total amount is equivalent to the mass of a porous lump of metal several hundred miles wide, plus whatever enhancement is derived from impact ejecta. If the remains of the Death Star II were evenly laid upon the moon with the same density as in the original substance of the station itself (with no extra compaction) then the entire globe would be buried in a wreckage layer over half a kilometre deep. Of course, significant compaction is likely; the final depth of solid material is likely to be only a few dozen metres on average. The sanctuary moon of Endor is likely to resemble a heaven for junk scavengers.
Even if it were not for dust-induced climate shifts, the chemistry of the air and surface of the moon must be severely changed by the arrival of this immense mass of foreign material. The debris is likely to include noxious chemicals similar to those which sterilised most of Honoghr.
The far side of the moon would not receive many direct hits. A minor fraction of the debris might be moving slowly enough to follow trajectory/orbits leading to collisions with the moon's opposite face. Some big impacts on the forward face of the moon may produce secondary debris that would fly into low orbits and then land on the far side, but on the whole the far side should fare better than the side that is directly under the explosion. However the most serious effects such as global firestorms, chemical contamination and the "nuclear winter effect" will be carried around the world by regular atmospheric circulation.
A scaled illustration of the spatial and size relationship between the sanctuary moon and the battle station. At this range it was inevitable that much of the moon would be struck directly by the station's remains.
The most important consequence following the debris shower is what has been called "nuclear winter effect". This kind of cataclysm is believed to have befallen Earth on several occasions, each time due to the natural impact of an asteroid or comet. One such episode was the mass-extinction 65 million years ago (which eliminated a majority of extant species, including dinosaurs). Atmospheric dust blocks sunlight from reaching the surface, casting a pall of twilight and causing temperatures to plummet. Vegetation dies due to lack of light; and this causes starvation of herbivores. Carnivores persist for a while by feeding on carcasses, but they too must perish. Only tiny, hardy, primitive animals of rodent size or less may survive through the cold dark years. After several years, the fallout gradually settles, leaving behind a devastated biosphere in which a majority of the former species have perished.
The severity of the effect on Endor must be much greater than the versions projected for Earthly nuclear wars and single asteroid impacts, since the amount of dust involved is comparable to a small moon rather than insignificant portions of the planetary crust. Such is the magnitude of the Endor event that it is yet unclear whether the atmosphere would even remain breathable. The chemistry of the air, land and water may be grossly altered (because of the burning meteoritic material). The explosion probably is accompanied by a huge burst of deadly radiation. Additionally, the remains of the Death Star II might have been highly radioactive, depending on the characteristics of the station's power technology. The scope of mass-extinction will be nearly total. Only very simple lifeforms will survive on Endor, and the ewoks are not quite simple enough.
The mass-extinction event at Endor is an inevitable physical consequence of the circumstances at the end of Return of the Jedi. As such, it indirectly enjoys canonical status, even though it was not clearly portrayed in the film. A small number of official but unfilmed pieces of STAR WARS fiction have offered brief glimpses of post-Imperial Endor, and at first glance some of these references seem difficult to reconcile with the necessary reality of the cataclysm. There are two possible responses to this problem, and a spectrum of compromises between them:
Harmonisation of the continuity is preferable to rejection, since it leaves us with a broader and more detailed view of the STAR WARS universe. Of course, some compromises are unreasonable or impossible to make, and there will be many fans who personally prefer excision of the aberrant fiction for the sake of consistency or out of personal taste. The particular works which are affected by the Endor holocaust are examined below.
For the first time, the Death star rocked. The collision [with Executor] was only the beginning, leading to various systems breakdowns, which led to reactor meltdowns, which led to personnel panic, abandonment of posts, further malfunctions, and general chaos.
— Return of the Jedi novel, chapter 9, p.201 [illustrated edition].
One of the important implications of this passage is that the station's habitable surface layers locally include reactors which undergo dirty meltdown like nuclear reactors on Earth. They pose a danger to the crew. How much harmful radioactivity will the battle station's solid fragments and fireball deposit into the Endorian environment?
As soon as the battle station was destabilised, the rebel starfleet clustered together and moved between the moon's surface and the imminent explosion. This may have been a premeditated attempt to shelter the region surrounding the commando team, perhaps extending to an area as wide as a couple of miles. Although the rebel cruisers would be inadequate for affecting the majority of the moon-sized bulk of debris, judicious use of combined deflector shields, tractor beams and firepower might deflect dangerous fragments towards neighbouring regions of the moon's surface (rather than falling directly on the commandoes' heads).
The "fireworks" and dark circumstances of the rebel celebration are suggestive of the meteoric rain of debris and the spread of fallout across the sky. The Radio Play [p.182] explicitly states that pieces of the Death Star II were burning up in the atmosphere during the lighting of Lord Vader's pyre.
LUKE: What could be more fitting? It's a night of lights. Ewok victory fires. Rebel fireworks. Even the last pieces of the Death Star burning up in the atmosphere.
The rebel starfighters seen flying through the air are probably providing air cover protecting the commando team against straggler impacts. At the very least this would have been necessary during the first few minutes after the station's explosion. Pilots would blast apart any dangerously large fragments endangering the site. However, the smaller broken particles left by such intervention will still ultimately burn up and contribute to the atmospheric fallout layer. Furthermore, it is impossible for the rebels to break apart or repel more than an insignificant local portion of the total shower's mass, which is moon-like in magnitude. Other regions of the globe will still suffer their giant impacts, and the finer debris will still reach the high airborne soot layer. If the rebels ever had the ability to avert the biocidal calamity then they would also have had the ability to propel the whole battle station around the system before the destruction, which is a ludicrous proposition.
The rebels brought a large number of medium transports to Endor. their role is not immediately obvious, but the novel indicates that at least some of them were loaded with explosives and sent into deliberate collisions with Imperial ships. Surviving transports might have been useful for evacuating allied Ewoks, after being emptied of the deadly cargo. However there is not way in which the transports could carry and deposit useful heavy machinery like a portable planetary shield in the few minutes between the battle station's explosion and the time when the debris reached the moon's atmosphere.
Immediately following the Battle of Endor, the heroes of the Rebel Alliance departed to attend to a bizarre and urgent crisis in the Bakura system. They spent only one night at Endor, with Han Solo then morbidly inspecting the site of Anakin Skywalker's pyre. Nothing in this tale is affected by the Endor holocaust. Luke Skywalker and his companions can be excused for not knowing or understanding the extent of the calamity since:
Sometime between two and three years after the Battle of Endor, Wedge Antilles and members of his famous starfighter squadron were on a scouting mission on the galactic capital world, Coruscant. They toured the Galactic Museum as part of their task of monitoring the planet's social conditions (in preparation for New Republic invasion).
Antilles found several stuffed ewok specimens on display with a note that the innocent creatures had been made extinct on their native world through the actions of rebels. Though unwelcome news to members of the squadron which detonated the battle station, this report appears to be objectively true. The museum display provides satisfying corroboration for the realistic fate of the ewoks, but of course it is not relied upon as primary evidence. (The primary facts are those events of Return of the Jedi which point to the disaster.)
Some readers have assumed that the ewok extinction reported by the prestigious Galactic Museum is nothing more than a lie serving Imperial propaganda. However it is important to realise that the most effective forms of propaganda do not falsify verifiable truths and circumstances; instead they weave a preconceived pattern of significance through cleverly judicious use of available objective facts. It is true that a few mistruths were told in Museum displays dealing with Emperor Palpatine's motivations at Endor, but those situations were no longer open to testing and disproof. Demonstrably false factual claims about ewok extinction would not serve the propaganda machine very well.
From the Imperial point of view, the holocaust at Endor was an act of reckless ecological vandalism by wild political fanatics. For the Rebel Alliance, the devastation was an unfortunate side-effect of the necessary destruction of a war-machine which was poised to deliver worse destruction throughout the civilised galaxy.
The pilots of Rogue Squadron, particularly those who were involved with the Battle of Endor, would probably not know about the subsequent fate of Endor's natives. The rebel leadership must be sufficiently ashamed of the biocide to hold a general cover-up, and they're probably tactful enough to deliberately avoid bringing the debacle to the Rogues' attention.
X-Wing: The Bacta War,
Wraith Squaron & Iron Fist
In these novels Endor is mentioned, but its condition is not. Ewoks are mentioned, but their circumstances are not. The closest these books come to showing a native of Endor is the use of a hypothetical Ewok recruit, who is an emigrant anyhow. There are hints that some mid-level and junior New Republic pilot officers are unaware of the fate of Endor and any ewoks who remained there. Evidently, the New Republic's official coverup persists, but otherwise these novels tell us nothing about the environmental catastrophe.
In this novel a number of Ewoks escaped from Warlod Zsinj's Binring Biotics Facility, with the aid of a New Republic sympathiser. This demosntrates that unknown numbers of Ewoks survived for some time in Imperial captivity far away from their homeworld, some may have been kept as luxury exotic pets, and some eventually entered civilian life in the greater galaxy. This suggests that the species itself may not be in depserate danger, regardless of the thoroughness of whatever evacuation may have taken place immediately after the destruction of the second Death Star.
Princess Leia Organa-Solo chose Endor as the location for her rendezvous with noghri super-commando Khabarakh, approximately five years after the disaster. The orbit chosen for the Millennium Falcon passed through the position of a "stain" in the Force marking the event of the Emperor's betrayal and death. [This encounter tells us something about the kinematics of the dark Force nexus, since there is no such thing as a universal frame of reference; the nexus must be either in some kind of "orbit" alongside the moon, or else it is linked to the moon itself. But this should be the subject of another commentary.] The full disk of the moon was visible in the sky. No landing was made.
As seen by the Princess, the moon seemed "lush" and "green". At first glance, this appears to be incompatible with the wasteland which Return of the Jedi leads us to expect. However the lushness may be a misleading impression given by the green colour. There are more ways for a world to be green than simply through the presence of foliage. The greenery of Endor at this point in its post-apocalyptic history must be due to either copper salts or algae suspended in the air or scattered on the desolate ground. (Atmospheric dust should have mostly settled and thinned within the first few years after the disaster, so the surface might now be visible from space.) Simple forms of microscopic algae or photosynthetic bacteria might be the forms of life best equipped for surviving several years of lightless dormancy. In a best-case scenario, the greenery might be lichens or simple hardy grasses.
Two ewoks were sighted among the rebel forces grounded at the wreck of the star destroyer Liberator near the damaged Imperial Palace on Coruscant. The Endor holocaust has no implications for this scene, since the moon never appeared in the comic and the ewoks could simply belong to whatever small handful of survivors the rebels were able to evacuate in the days following the Battle of Endor. Otherwise these offworld ewoks are representative of the scarce individuals who left their moon with traders before the commencement of the Empire's military activity there. This group could easily be the entire ewok population of the universe.
Seven years after the Battle of Endor, a young Sith initiate named Kyp Durron paid a visit to the site of Lord Vader's funeral pyre. He did not seem to notice anything amiss. An ecological disaster at Endor is grounded in the canonical facts of Return of the Jedi. Now what does this tell us about the continuity status of Durron's excursion? The passage we're interested in is pp.293-298 of Dark Apprentice. It mentions the existence of "trees", a "forest", "twigs and dead leaves", "underbrush", one live Gorax, a handful of live Ewoks perceived to be huddled in their homes, and a few noises. Note:
The Gorax is a miserable carnivorous giant residing in a peculiar castle on Endor. Its gross similarity to the stranded humanoid marauders of King Terak suggests that it could be an abomination deliberately created by the Dathomirian witch Charal, as part of her malevolent experiments with the Dark Side of the Force. (Ancient Sith Lord Exar Kun performed similar procedures on willing Massassi warriors. Emperor Palpatine's adepts on Byss used human stock to create giant symbiotic soldiers known as Imperial Sentinels.)
Aside from neglecting the climatic disaster, the credibility of a literalist interpretation of the Dark Apprentice is undermined by the existence of a few comparable continuity problems in material written or edited by the same author. For instance:
At some point in his career, Lord Vader's forces were engaged in a large space battle over the planet Honoghr, homeworld to the fierce noghri species. A capital ship belonging to one of Vader's enemies crashed to the surface, effecting a climatic disaster. Though the immediate climatic effects of such an event would be much slighter than the more massive calamity at Endor, (since the size and severity of the impact is less), the damage is much more lasting. The principal cause of the continuing devastation on Honoghr is contamination by noxious chemicals used in the crashed vessel. Only a small area of clean land remains habitable. Lord Vader brought aid to the noghri, who pledged allegiance to him, but agents of the Emperor modified many of the land rehabilitation droids to sow a genetically-engineered kholm-grass which actually enhanced and perpetuated the poison. So, even two decades after its cataclysm, Honoghr is not even graced by the greenish slimes and lichens which appear to have recovered a hold on Endor.
During the Palpatine Era, the planet known as Maltha Obex was a desolate waste in the grip of a fierce ice-age. New Republic scientists and an intelligence team led by Lando Calrissian discovered that it had once been a more balmy world inhabited by an intelligent species known as the Qella. Several thousand year ago, unnoticed by the Old Republic, the Qella faced a disaster which promised their extinction.
One of their world's two moons was a small captured asteroidal body. Perturbed by a larger natural moon, its orbit was decaying towards an inevitable impact against the planet. With only a century to prepare, the Qella were unable to develop sufficient starfaring technology to evacuate their entire population, nor sufficiently powerful repulsors to deflect the moon. Their bioengineers did manage to develop another slight hope for the species' salvation, but the planet itself met its due devastation. The moon impacted, and the resulting nuclear winter effect kicked the planetary climate into a deep ice-age state.
The details of extraterrestrially-induced mass-extinctions on Earth are still contended by geologists. However it seems as if most scientists believe that an asteroid or comet about 10km in diameter impacted sixty-five millions years ago. An impact crater at least several hundred kilometres wide and dating to the correct age lies beneath the surface of the northwest part of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Distinctive chemical elements which are rare in the Earth's crust but relatively common in asteroids (and comets) is found enriched in a 65Myr-old clay layer worldwide. Most individual organisms died and at least forty percent of all animal species (including most large animals) vanish from the fossil record at this point.
It is believed that the impact caused the mass-extinction via the kind of nuclear winter effect described in previous sections (climatic alteration due to dust and soot in upper atmosphere). The necessary differences between the Earthly and Endorian situations are that much more matter was injected into the Endorian atmosphere, the matter may have been radioactive, and the moon probably did not suffer global tidal waves (because instead of oceans it has only a smattering of small local disconnected lakes). The composition of Earth's atmosphere probably would not have been as severely altered.
It has been speculated that the moon Yavin IV might have been adversely affected by the explosion of the original Death Star. Whether or not the first Death Star was close enough for Yavin IV's surface to be affected, the rebel base surely had a sufficiently good deflector shield to locally repel any falling debris onto neighbouring areas of the moon's surface (so the base need not fear obliteration by a direct impact). The rebels probably left the moon within days of the battle anyhow, since they would rightly fear Imperial reprisals.
The Death Star was not close to the moon when it exploded. It had just rounded the limb of the planet Yavin, ready to fire the superlaser. According to indications on rebel tactical displays and the known diameter of Yavin, the battle station was about 250,000km away from YavinIV. The Death Star II was only about 2000km away from the Endor moon.
Because of the great distance between the Death Star and the moon, only a tiny fraction of the exploding mass would intercept Yavin IV. Much (perhaps most) of the debris would have fallen into the gas giant, which dominated the battle station's sky. The portion striking the moon would be no more than a quarter of a percent of the station's total mass - equivalent to a cube of the station with a side length of 8km.
A single solid impact of this size would cause a big mass-extinction event, but the Death Star is partly hollow. Realistically we would expect a large number of small- to medium-sized impacts distributed over the globe. Individually, the imapcts would be nasty to anyone within a few dozen km. There may be some climatic problems, but nothing on the scale of the Endor disaster, where much of the moon's surface would be literally smothered with wreckage.
Biocide is well within the standard technological capabilities of the galactic civilisation. Interstellar warfare results in the deliberate or accidental erasure of life from planets from time to time. The operation of cleansing a hostile world by bombarding it to the point where the crust is melted is code-named "Base Delta Zero" in the lexicon of the Imperial Navy, but it is not an exclusively Imperial procedure. Victims of such operations have included Caamas and Emberlene [Spectre of the Past], and the Rebel Alliance administrative outpost at Dankayo [Scavenger Hunt]. In the former example, the planetary surface remained aflame for years after the attack. The planet Meridias [Planet of Twilight] was left a charred radioactive wasteland centuries before the rise of Palpatine.
According to X-Wing: Wraith Sqaudron, the planet Toprawa was sterilised after the Battle of Yavin. This was Imperial punishment for the theft of the Death Star plans from a facility on that world. The locals were innocent, but they were reduced to a pre-industrial existence, and forced to partake in rituals of public grovelling in order to receive supplies.
In Vector Prime a deliberate moonstrike was inflicted on a populated Outer Rim world by the Yuuzhan Vong. It was a small moon, really only as great as a modest or large asteroid. However its impact obliterated civilisaztion and presumably sterilised the globe.
No animal larger than a few kilograms and incapable of long sheltered hibernation could survive the Endorian calamity. The air might even have been poisoned and deoxygenated for a few years until simple plant life could return to growth. If so then it is possible that all animal life perished. In any case any ewok on the surface who was not equipped with impressive high-technology survival gear and a nuclear shelter must have died.
For those unfortunate beings not painlessly obliterated by the impact concussions, the initial night of celebration would linger on and on with days of darkness. A chill would fall, the waters would turn to ice and the vegetation would wilt into death or dormancy, depending on species. Provided that radioactivity was insignificant and the air remained modestly breathable (a very generous assumption) the doomed ewoks might survive for days or weeks huddling around bonfires, until they starved.
The species was not perfectly confined to its native moon, and some off-world individuals seem to have survived. Exact statistics for ewok emigration are unknown but probably small. Although the Galactic Empire had declared the moon a natural sanctuary, at least several smugglers had taken ewoks offworld as stowaways, hitchhikers and perhaps slaves. These encounters are known to have happened long before the start of the Death Star II construction project. It seems likely that the forces of the Rebel Alliance evacuated some ewoks in the aftermath of the Battle of Endor, though they did not have sufficient transport capability or enough time to gather more than a small fraction of the scattered global population. Members of the tribe which had adopted the Rebel Alliance were probably given preferential treatment. The presence of two living ewoks among the forces of the New Republic Navy was confirmed in Dark Empire, six years after the disaster.
During the Thrawn campaign, the neutral planet Svivren boasted an ewok population. The Svivreni detest the Galactic Civil War, and they successfully resisted both the Imperial remnants and the New Republic after Palpatine's fall. Thus Svivren is an ideal sanctuary for Endorian evacuees. Statistics in The Last Command Sourcebook hint that the ewoks comprise the largest minority group on the planet.
If there truly were ewoks on the moon during the later visit of Kyp Durron then they must be a recently-resettled group, with modern survival equipment if the climate remains hostile. They may be part of a deliberate rehabilitation and terraforming project executed by a benign agency with galactic-standard technology.
Though resettlement of offworld ewoks ends the species' technical state of extinction on their homeworld, the fate of the ewoks is not yet secure. It is not clear whether the remnant ewok population is large enough for the species to remain viable without extensive genetic therapy to counteract the ills of inbreeding. If the Death Star II fallout was radioactive then the ewok returnees would also need to contend with radiation sickness, enhanced rates of cancer and mutational birth abnormalities.
The ewoks were marginally known to the outside galaxy before the cataclysm at Endor. Some ewok languages must have been cursorily studied by galactic anthropologists, since they were incorporated into the linguistic repertoire of at least one protocol droid which was over a hundred years old4.
The ewoks were known to the Imperial scouts who contributed to the selection of the moon as the Death Star II construction site [The Illustrated STAR WARS Universe]. They must have been known to the security troops on the ground. They probably were known to at least some civilian departments of the Imperial government, since the moon was designated as a nature sanctuary. Endor was probably reserved for the purpose of protecting the natives from exploitation, and allowing them to progress at their own technological pace. Whether the "sanctuary moon" status was granted by the Empire or Old Republic is unknown.
The Imperials were not consistently pure in their motives towards the ewoks. Emperor Palpatine did not seem interested in his government's standards of environmental protection and non-intervention with primitive species. In fact he left contingency orders for the moon's destruction in the event that the rebel commando team succeeded in lowering the security shield. This may have been no more than a taunt for Luke Skywalker, since the moon's nearby explosion would seem to threaten the station itself, unless the Death Star's modest internally-generated shielding ensured safety,
As the battle station rocked from the impact of Executor and internal damage inflicted by rebel starfighters, Moff Jerjerrod was already attempting to carry out the command. The station was already turning upon the moon when Palpatine began attacking Skywalker, as demonstrated by the motion of stars visible through the throne room windows. By the time of its destruction, Death Star II had turned away from the rebel fleet and the superlaser almost reached firing orientation.
The record of the Rebel Alliance's involvement with the ewoks is also far from flattering. The commando team clearly exploited the naive natives in their attack upon the Imperial ground facilities. Though the rebel starpilots deserve credit for thwarting Jerjerrod's attempt to eliminate all Endorian life, the rebel actions indirectly caused gross environmental damage. To establish the degree of culpability we must consider whether the rebel leaders and tacticians were aware that Endor was inhabited.
At the Rebel Alliance general briefing there was no mention of native intelligent life. However the presence of Ewokese in the linguistic repertoire of C-3PO suggests that although obscure, the ewoks should have been known to mission planners. Perhaps the ewoks were omitted from the information leaked to the Bothans by Palpatine; it would be quite in character for the Emperor to entice the Alliance into ugly moral ambiguities, forcing them into an accidental genocide. Alternatively, the ewok information may have been received by rebel leaders but deliberately omitted from subsequent briefing reports so that the lower officers and enlisted men could fulfil their orders without guilty qualms of environmentalism.
In the Return of the Jedi Radio Drama, Princess Leia explicitly complained that her reports made no mention of intelligent lifeforms. At least the rebel commandoes were ignorant of the ewoks' existence, and were dealing with the primitives in good faith. That's not to say that there couldn't have been concealment higher up the rebels' executive chain.
Their strategic calculus might demand that the battle station be destroyed, for the greater good of the majority of sapient species in the galaxy. Considering the importance of the Emperor and his superweapon, a biosphere lacking sapient natives would be a justifiable sacrifice, which could save other worlds from obliteration. War is cruel and desperate, and the rebels might not have reconsidered their attack under any circumstances. However some may believe that a knowing willingness to endanger an intelligent species would expose severe hypocrisy in the propaganda of the Alliance / New Republic. Whether or not the rebels had foreknowledge, the fate of Endor would probably remain a secret of the New Republic government. Although the uninformed personnel of the fleet and ground operations are blameless, the decisions of the highest rebel leaders deserve scrutiny. It may have been clumisiness and poor research, or it may have been ruthless utilitarianism.
The truth, which remains unexplained to this day, is likely to involve more clumsiness than malice. Rebel intelligence was not excellent in the Battle of Endor. Their spies clearly were manipulated by the Emperor to the extent of providing wholly false information about the condition of the Death Star II and the distribution of security forces.
In any case, the disaster situation must have been an embarrassment after the battle. The inclination of Endor references in post-Return of the Jedi stories hints at a high-level cover-up. Most citizens and military personnel of the New Republic would be kept unaware of the deep shame which accompanied the birth of the new regime.
It is unknown whether the rebel forces and the successive New Republic government made any systematic efforts to evacuate and eventually resettle ewoks in secret. It seems likely that they would have at least indulged in the rescue and protection of a token number of the ewoks from the tribes who had allied themselves against the Empire. The neutral Svivreni hosted a large population of ewok immigrants on their homeworld; they probably were evacuees [The Last Command Sourcebook]. A long-term terraforming project is possible.
The ewok population is effectively extinguished. Most were killed in a mass-extinction event affecting life on their homeworld, due to unavoidable fallout and debris from the destruction of the Death Star II. The Rebel Alliance is culpable but perhaps innocent. All ewoks would have been better off if the tribe which made contact with the rebels continued with their original plan of killing and eating the commando team's leaders. However once the shield fell and Jerjerrod began his attack, the ewok's best interests were served by the Alliance naval forces bringing about a swift destruction of the battle station; the chance of ecological devastation ameliorated by partial evacuation and rehabilitation is better than near-instantaneous obliteration of the whole moon.
Knowledge of the Endor Holocaust is based primarily on the facts of the Return of the Jedi film, and the supportive passage in the Wedge's Gamble is only secondary corroborative evidence. None of the Endor references in other tales of the New Republic era are in unresolvable contradiction with the catastrophe, though a very precise interpretation of Dark Apprentice may be necessary.
Studying the mechanics of the orbit and explosion of the Death Star II reveals, in brief:
Avoiding the Endor Holocaust is completely impossible. It is an inevitable consequence of observable facts of the Return of the Jedi film. Endor is a depopulated wasteland.
Why don't we see debris raining from the sky during the ewok celebration?
We actually do. We see rebel starfighters flying amidst an abundance of material breaking up in the atmosphere. The Return of the Jedi radio play describes it as material from the Death Star. Furthermore the whole sky is darkened, as if overcast with fallout. Large ground-shaking impacts matching and exceeding the yield of nuclear weapons must have struck parts of the moon beyond the immediate vicinity of the village.
Why couldn't the rebel fleet use tractor beams to move the debris somewhere safe?
It's a matter of inertia and energy. The trouble with any attempt by the rebels to do something about the explosion is that the combined mass of the rebel fleet is equal to only a tiny speck of the Death Star's surface. If they used tractor beams on the station's wreckage the result would be for the ships to be dragged by the debris while the debris would be only slightly deflected. The difficulty and amount of energy involved in containing or shifting the stuff of a moon-sized explosion is the same or greater than for moving the intact battle station around. If the rebels had been physically able to do something about the Death Star II explosion, they also would have had the capability to knock the station around the Endor system like a billiard ball. They plainly weren't able to do that. Besides, the debris cloud was close enough to reach the forest moon within minutes or seconds, so the rebels had little time for large celestial manipulations.
Why couldn't captured Imperial ships help to do the same?
Because the combined power and mass of the Imperial and rebel ships at Endor is insignificant compared to the energy/timeframe of the explosion and the mass of debris.
Could the disaster have been averted if the Death Star was actually moving towards the Alliance fleet [and away from the moon at its moment of destruction]?
In principle you could inadvertently protect the moon, if the station's initial outwards motion was greater than the maximum velocity of the fireball (of the eventual explosion). But in that case the fireball would have seemed to be receding away in the sky, rather than having pieces falling down as seen in the movie. For viewers on the ground, it would have seemed to be shrinking. As shown in the movie, the fireball expanded much faster than the velocities typical of orbital motion at the Death Star's altitude. In any case, the operational status of the station's sublight propulsion systems is uncertain.
Does it matter whether the bulk of the station was vaporised?
No. Material that is turned to vapour does not vanish. Vapour cools rapidly by radiating its heat to space and also by conducting heat to air once it hits the atmosphere. The result of this cooling is that the vapour would recondense as solid soot, like water precipitating as snowflakes. Indeed the margins of the Death Star II explosion appeared sooty before many of the ground troops noticed the fireball. Therefore some condensation began to occur only seconds after the detonation. In any case the explosion shows numerous large tumbling solid fragments, each of which alone is sufficient to cause a global mass-extinction event. In summary, there are two extreme alternatives, and a mixture of intermediate possiblities in between: (1) big solid chunks of the DS impacting on the surface and throwing up fallout dust; or (2) huge volumes of metallic vapour condensing in the atmosphere to give a similar amount of dust.
What if it wasn't metal?
Substances that don't react chemically in the Endorian atmosphere will end up as condensed atmospheric soot, either directly or via impact ejecta. This is the standard scenario described above.If the station were composed of combustible materials involving lighter elements like C and H, the byproducts would be water and carbon-dioxide. However the mass of solid material visible at the station's surface is large enough that it would deplete atmospheric oxygen if it burnt upon entry. (At the maximum possible size of the moon (5600km radius) the mass of atmosphere should be about 4x1018kg. If the station's mean density is at least equal to air — for a total mass of about 3x1017kg — then the combustion of all this material would consume much or all of Endor's free oxygen.)
What if much of the material of the station was annihilated in matter/antimatter or similar reactions?
Then a horrendously lethal burst of gamma rays would have burnt everything on the moon with a line of sight to the explosion. That didn't happen in the movie, and we saw huge chunks of debris moving towards the moon. An impact by any one of them is sufficient to create a climatic catastrophe on par with the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction on Earth.
What if the debris goes into hyperspace?
Sending the debris into hyperspace (presumably involving local misfiring of hyperdrive systems within the station) would solve nothing. It is a well established fact that objects in hyperspace collide with objects in realspace destructively. ("You can fly right through a star ... and that will end your trip real quick.") The debris that flies off in the direction of the moon will crash into the moon. The only question is whether the material would revert to realspace or just dump its mass-energy in the moon's atmosphere. The former scenario will have consequences similar to those outlined in the main parts of the commentary. The latter scenario effectively means irradiating the near side of the moon with the equivalent of the annihilation energy of much of the station's mass — an unfathomable dosage of hard radiation.
Could the rebels have activated the shields from Endor right after the explosion of the Death Star II, thereby containing most of the matter within the confines of the shield radius?
No. The trouble is that they blew up the shield already, in order to allow the rebel fighters access to the station.
The Endor moon has lower gravity than Earth. Won't this prevent a calamity?
True, the gravity must be lower than Earth's. That circumstance is estimated and taken into account in this commentary. The gravity cannot be indefinitely low, otherwise there would be no atmosphere, and the humans and ewoks on Endor would bounce high whenever they attempted to walk. The Endorian gravity msust be at least as great as on Earth's airless moon, and even there objects falling from space land at violent, crater-inducing velocity.Furthermore, the observed expansion speed of the debris chunks is much greater than the speed that the same material would attain by falling freely from the sky. The chunks impact harder than free-fall velocity.
The moon and ewoks seem unharmed in the Ewok movies. How can this be?
Those movies document events that took place before ROTJ and before the construction of the Imperial outpost in the system. This is acknowledged in official timelines and literature concerning the Ewok movies.
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What's Up With Resolutions?
It's that time of year! You know, where everyone is thinking back on all of the things they wish they had actually accomplished this year and they're convincing themselves they'll get it done next year. It's time to set some New Year's resolutions!
But what's up with that? Why does it take people a whole year to reflect on what's going right or wrong in their life and try to change their direction? Why does it take you a year to realize your diet and exercise regime is something you couldn't stick to and you're no better off than you were last year? Why were you still unmotivated in your career doing the same old thing? Why didn't you get your head in the game for school? Why did you continue to pursue toxic relationships?
Continuous Improvement
Resolutions are all about trying to get better; we're trying to continuously improve. Often when I talk to people about "agile" software development, all that I really try to drive at is that "continuous improvement", in my own personal opinion, is really the important part.
So to continuously try to improve, you need to analyze what's going well and what's going not so well, set some goals, try things out, and re-evaluate. It's a nice iterative cycle. It's kind of like setting mini resolutions for yourself (or in the case of software development, maybe for your team or teams).
The big difference is the amount of time between measuring whether or not your change is having an effect! Waiting an entire year to try and measure your success would be absolute insanity in a fast moving software environment… why haven't we gotten better at realizing this for our own personal continuous improvement?
Mark Manson
I've been reading a ton of Mark Manson material lately because of events going on in my life and the fact that the way he writes really aligns with how I often talk to my close friends. There's analysis, there's some humour, but it's often a bit blunt and to the point. It's actually a really nice change from many leadership, self help, or similar content where everything almost feels impossibly positive. This just feels like a real person talking to you.
Mark talks about setting goals in this blog post, and it got me motivated to reflect on my own goals and even write this post. In Mark's post, he talks about our identities being built up by a bunch of habits, and goes on to state that some research shows that often habits only take about 30 days to form. In his opinion, using a whole year to set a goal of changing, adding, or dropping a habit just allows us to procrastinate for the entire year and then ultimately we fail.
His suggestion? Shorten the time frame.
If it takes on average 30 days to make a habit, why not have a "New Month's Resolution"? Setting resolutions this way should then allow you to establish a new habit and then at the end of the month reflect on whether or not it worked well. You have less time to procrastinate. Your iteration is much shorter. Interesting.
My Own Goals
I figured I'd wrap this up by sharing some of my own goals publicly. I have a few things I'd like to work on coming up for the year, so I'll outline them briefly:
- Read more:
- I've definitely dropped the ball on this one. I always had the excuse for myself that I don't have time to do it. However, I found when I read the most consistently was when I found a decent book that I could read for a few minutes before I fell asleep every night. No pressure to get through it, but the books were there if I felt intrigued or needed to relax my brain a bit.
- Try meditation:
- I've always associated meditation with being spiritual or religious. Both of these things don't really mesh well with me, personally. Mark Manson mentioned meditation in his post that I mentioned earlier, and it gave me a different perspective. I know I get stressed easily and I used to have pretty bad anxiety problems. Maybe this is something I could try out?
- Write more:
- I used to blog a lot. Between this blog, my fitness blog, and my car blog, I used to write content multiple times per week. It was always a bit of a social media experiment to get a better feel for how internet traffic works and where different types of content get the best visibility, but it also let me express myself. My content production has been almost nothing over the past year, and it's something I'd like to look at more of.
- Try public speaking:
- This was something my HR Director had a chat with me about as a potentially cool opportunity. We were discussing getting more involved with the community and pushing boundaries, and she proposed speaking to students at local colleges or similar. I was turned off by it at first because I don't like public speaking. But then the more I thought about it, I don't know what public speaking is because I've never really done it. So why not try it?
But those aren't my resolutions! Those are all just ideas for things I'm interested in improving. So taking some of Manson's advice, I'm going to take ONE of those things and try to form a habit out of it for a month. Focusing on one thing at a time allows you to really give yourself an opportunity to establish the habit without worrying about too many other things, and ultimately setting yourself up for failure.
My first resolution is going to be to try out meditation. So for the first month, I'm going to try meditating four times per week for about 10 minutes at a time. I should be able to easily do this for two days on Saturday and Sunday where I don't really have any external commitments, and then during the week I should be able to find at least two days before work where I can give this a shot.
Small steps, but small steps still take you forward.


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Within the beauty industry, salons ride the trend wave, creating cutting-edge styles with cutting-edge products. For brands, stylists become the client's beauty advisor, their recommendations making or breaking a purchase. Therefore, marketing strategies must showcase how products complement the creativity of the stylist to maximize their enthusiasm for them. Education and communication between salons and brands are key elements of any strategy.
"The biggest difference in marketing for salon products versus other retail outlets is that we have a unique opportunity to speak directly to stylists," said Lori Green, director of marketing, American Crew. "This opens up a much larger range of subjects that we can discuss with them, most importantly, education. It's not just about the products and what they do for hair; it's also about how the products fit into their styling techniques, with their salon tools, and help them to become better [artists]."
Stylists choose brand lines not just for the products themselves, but also for how those products complement the salon's consumer base. The right mix of product offerings is a pillar of a salon's business.
"We aim to provide the salon with maximum opportunity to generate more business, and our products help to provide the tools to do this," said Nathalie Tang, vice president, Redken Global Marketing. "Our products are tailored to different hair needs and concerns fueled with the latest technologies. In this way, the hairdresser can prescribe the right regimens to fit their clients' needs."
Ergo, the most successful brands are both consumer-friendly and an instrument of the stylist.
Stylists make recommendations based on personalized regimens; brands understand this and add value to products by tailoring to individual needs. "Products designed for specific needs—such as color care, curly, straight and volume-specific formulas—are driving the technology," said Van Stamey, CEO, ThermaFuse. Additionally, trends create the need for fresh offerings that appeal to the short attention span of the consumer.
The Need for Fresh
Today's transient culture has evolved into a brand-agnostic society, and, as a result, products have a short life cycle. According to the Natural Marketing Institute, consumer brand loyalty was down from 51% in 2005 to 44% in 2006. Consumers are more willing to try new products, particularly those perceived as the most innovative or coolest offerings.
"A demonstration of the power of brand-agnostic status can be seen in retailers such as Pac Sun, Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and Sephora, which experienced double-digit sales growth in 2006," said Maryellen Molyneaux of the Natural Marketing Institute. "They are able to adapt to the changing trends of consumers with a strategy that protects them against brands that fall out of favor."
This sense of consumer adventure can translate into increased retail business if a salon keeps its offerings fresh. To find novel products, salons turn to the brands with technically savvy innovations.
"As marketers, we strive to find the balance between the technical discussions for the stylists and the product and lifestyle conversations that appeal to the consumer," said Green. "When we are successful in communicating both of these directions, we can fully arm the stylists with the tools and communication materials they need to enhance both their service business and their retail business."
New technologies, including active ingredients and delivery systems, play a part in how products perform to meet consumer needs. Brands use these advances as criteria in determining the course for further development. Additionally, these product choices must pay tribute to consumer needs as well as a particular salon's menu, allowing the stylist to offer the product in conjunction with a service.
"Consumers respond to a variety of different things, and the most common are brand recognition, professional or personal recommendation and package appeal," said Green. "A brand like Modern Organic Products appeals to the consumer that is conscious of the trend toward more environmentally friendly products that also provide a modern sense of style, while American Crew makes a bold statement with quality grooming products for men that are uniquely packaged to be masculine."
The green movement continues to be one of the more dynamic trends garnering positive consumer response, as products appeal to lifestyles and social consciences. This trend has fostered brand stories that appeal to green consumers. Salons can also choose to market themselves as green, appealing to a specific consumer base through organic and natural menus and products.
Unique Retail Opportunity
Brand marketing in the salon arena may be similar to traditional retail, but the pampering experience within a salon can often be the deciding factor for a purchase. The entire ambience of the salon experience, supported by the efficacy of the products, encourages retail purchases and salon loyalty.
"Clients demand that their service and shopping arenas provide comfort and thoughtfulness to their needs. It is crucial for today's salon to consider the products they sell just as important as the services they provide," said Green. "These days, time is precious to everyone. And if the consumer doesn't feel comfortable and can't find the products they want easily, they will often not purchase products or services."
As a result, the experience the products create becomes a major selling point for salons and brands. These consumers are willing to spend in order to achieve that relaxing encounter over and over again, but the products must deliver the expected quality and efficacy that triggers the appropriate emotional response.
"If clients have a positive salon visit experience—typically stemming from a solid, trusting relationship with their stylist—they are naturally more apt to purchase products from the same salon that provided them with such an amiable experience," said Stamey.
Salons provide a unique opportunity for brands to build consumer loyalty through the experience provided by the stylist, and a symbiotic relationship thrives when brands offer the latest technologies and benefits that complement the stylist/consumer relationship.


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The complex irreps of a finite group come in three types: self-dual by a symmetric form, self-dual by a symplectic form, and not self-dual at all. In the first two cases, the character is real-valued, and in the third it is sometimes only complex-valued. The cases can be distinguished by the value of the Schur indicator $\frac{1}{|G|} \sum_g \chi(g^2)$, necessarily $1$, $-1$, or $0$. They correspond to the cases that the representation is the complexification of a real one, the forgetful version of a quaternionic representation, or neither.
A conjugacy class $[g]$ is called "real" if all characters take real values on it, or equivalently, if $g\sim g^{-1}$. I vaguely recall the number of real conjugacy classes being equal to the number of real irreps.
Do I remember that correctly?
Can one split the real conjugacy classes into two types, "symmetric" vs. "symplectic"?
With #1 now granted, a criterion for a "good answer" would be that the number of symmetric real conjugacy classes should equal the number of symmetrically self-dual irreps.
(I don't have any application in mind; it's just bothered me off and on for a long time.)