Can you kill the devil?

That was the question on last night’s episode of Reaper, the CW series about a guy whose parents sold his soul to the devil. At age 21, Sam was contractually obligated to become a reaper: He catches souls who have escaped from way down under. Not exactly a fun job. Plus, he also punches the clock at the Work Bench, kind of like a Home Depot from Hell.

Anywho, in the most recent episode, Sam met up with a bunch of reformed demons, who tempted him to participate in a plan to slaughter Satan.

Of course, the plan didn’t work, because without the devil, well, there’d be no TV show.

But it did make me wonder: Is it possible to destroy the devil?

I asked two devil experts.

Henry Ansgar Kelly, author of Satan: A Biography, says no: “The body can be killed, the soul can’t. Angels and fallen angels are immortal, and the idea of killing them is nonsense.”
Greg Mobley, a Bible professor at Andover Newton Theological School, says, “In Christianity, the answer is ‘not yet.’ The devil can only be killed at the end of days." But even then, the Christian Bible says “and the devil … was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and false prophet are also, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

In other words … not dead!

But what about other religions around the world? Can their devils be killed?

Kelly  put the kibosh on that line of inquiry: “The devil is only in the Bible and Christian tradition. Calling any non-Christian entity ‘the devil’ is taking liberties or just making stuff up.”

Meanwhile, on another topic, when the devil visits Sam at the Work Bench, he makes a purchase. “Paper or plastic?” Sam asks. The devil opts for plastic (pictured, above). What an anti-environmentalist!

-Marc Silver

John Oliver, the Brit correspondent for The Daily Show has some surprising news about wind energy. "It turns out wind has actually been horrifically overfarmed," he asserts in Terrifying Times, his first standup special for Comedy Central. He forecasts that in a few decades, "there will be no wind whatsoever."

John, John, John. As long as politicians roam the earth, there will never be a shortage of wind.

But you are completely accurate in describing the interest in current affairs.

The U.S. is rapidly expanding its wind energy production and in a couple of years is expected to surpass the global leader, Germany.

The American Wind Energy Association forecasts that in the U.S. this year, wind energy will be “harvested” at a rate of 48 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), enough electricity for about 4.5 million homes. This will account for only about one percent of the national electrical needs, and far less than what we could be reaping. The association estimates that the U.S. energy potential from wind is 10,777 billion kWh per year.

Newly updated wind maps show which states have the most wind. Foreign maps are also available.

If you aren't blown away by the idea of wind power, take two minutes and watch this short animation from the Department of Energy set to techno music. The voiceover is wonky but the pro-wind video provides a quick and spirited look inside the guts of a modern windmill.

-Brad Scriber

America, good news! Only a week to go till the premiere of Farmer Wants a Wife, the new reality series airing on Wednesday nights on the CW.

I have seen the first episode. The premise is that a farmer (or to be more accurate, a shirtless farmer) has trouble meeting single women because, well, seems like there just aren’t many in Farmsville, USA. So the CW flies in a bunch of high-heel wearin’ ladies from cities and towns. It’s like The Bachelor meets Green Acres, with a touch of Survivor and the heady aroma of manure-laden fields.

Some critics are saying that this series scrapes the bottom of the reality barrel.

I disagree, for the following reasons:

1.    The reality barrel clearly has no bottom.

2.    This show calls attention to what is apparently one of the most pressing social issues in the world today: the inability of farmers to find wives. I base this on the fact that there are versions of the program all around the globe. The first Farmer show aired in the Netherlands, where it has been the most popular program on the air (check out the farmer and his tango lesson). There are also versions in Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, and Australia. Who can argue with the Australian producers: “Life is tough for men on the land with isolation and long hours, and it’s even tougher dealing with a lonely heart.” And what’s more: “The only winner in the end … is love.”

3.    The show promotes good values. Shirtless Farmer Matt points out, early on, “In the country, everybody helps everybody.”

4.    The first show features chickens. Chickens are really funny. And watching city gals in stilettos trying to catch chickens is even funnier. One woman calls herself a “super sexy chicken chaser.” That kind of dialogue, you can’t make it up. It just emerges fullly formed from the brightly-painted lips of the cast.

The only thing is, the program really doesn’t give a lot of advice about how to catch a chicken. The owner of the chickens tells the contestants, “You just grab ‘em.”

For more useful strategies, I turned to Scott Beyer, assistant professor of animal sciences and industry at Kansas State University. He says: “It is best to pick them up using their feet, and hold them upside down.” The inverted position calms them and keeps them from flapping their wings. “Perhaps it is some sort of instinctive behavior to be still, preferring to wait until the predator loosens its grip giving them a chance to flee?” he speculates. He also notes that you shouldn’t hold a chicken upside down too long, pretty much for the same reason that people don’t like being upside down too long.

But chicken chasing is not a big job on farms today. Chickens in the coop are typically picked up by “automated equipment.”

As for the woman on the show who had a paralyzing fear that the chickens would peck her eyes out, Professor Beck says: “Chickens will sometimes peck instinctively at shiny objects when being held. I once had a bird peck my sunglasses. I suppose if you held one close to your face, the shininess of your eyes could attract them. But I doubt they'd do much harm. They don't have teeth, you know! Chickens are at the bottom of the food chain, so they would run rather than stand and peck out an enemy's eyes.”

So, ladies on the show, be not afraid of chickens! But if you have to chase a bull, please don’t grab it by the horns.

-Marc Silver

Laying aside, momentarily, the unexciting cinematography, the mediocre acting, the derivative fight scenes, and the unsettling plot similarities to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Turtles in Time, we must call attention to a deeper and slightly more troubling issue in The Forbidden Kingdom: its confusing relation to Mao.

All the action in film—including Jet Li urinating on Jackie Chan’s face—is inspired by the imprisonment of the legendary Monkey King Sun Wu Kong. In this new version of the ancient legend, the rebellious trickster with a heart of gold is imprisoned by the deception of the evil Jade Warlord. The benevolent Jade Emperor is also imprisoned.

So the movie significantly departs from Chinese lore. Tradition has it that the Monkey King was such a bother to the Jade Emperor that the ruler had a mountain dropped on the cheeky monkey, then a magical yoke attached to its head, keeping it in constant pain. His goal was to tame the rebellious primate and force it to do the Emperor's bidding. It’s a story of eternal rebellion and eternal oppression, but it’s funny.

So what does any of this have anything to do with Mao? The Monkey god was one of Mao’s favorite symbols of revolutionary Chinese spirit, strength, and innovation. He spoke frequently of the impish chimp and even dedicated a poem, “Kunlun," to the trickster.

It is unclear which interpretation of the Monkey King informs The Forbidden Kingdom. Perhaps director Rob Minkoff supports Mao’s view: bringing the yoked Monkey god back from imprisonment to save China. On the other hand, he could be freeing the Monkey King from Maoist dogma, reclaiming it as a symbol of rebellion and free-spirited joy. Then again, maybe the movie is just an elaborate excuse to see Jackie Chan revisit his 1976 The Drunken Master role and for Jet Li to act like a monkey. They also fight each other in an old temple. It’s pretty cool.

-Nicholas Mott

What does Paris Hilton want? Besides lasting fame and beauty and wealth?

Apparently, a cheetah.

According to the New York Daily News:
“A hotel spy tells us: "Every time Paris saw something she liked [on a recent trip to South Africa], like a woman's dress, she would ask how much it was. That included a cheetah she saw at an animal park. She asked how much it was and said, 'If I bought a cheetah, would it run away from me or could I keep it?'"

Actually, that’s the wrong question. A better question might be: Would it hurt me? Try asking the cheetah owner who was attacked by her cheetahs a few weeks ago. She owns a conservation center in Florida and was showing off the cats to an audience. Distracted by a child playing with a ball, they bit and clawed their owner.

The woman survived. Cheetahs are, as it turns out, not as dangerous as other big cats. “They’ll hurt you but they won’t kill you,” says Louis Dorfman, the animal behaviorist at the International Exotic Feline Sanctuary. But that doesn’t mean they’d make a good pet. In fact, he says a pet cheetah would be a “terrible idea.” Here’s why:

1.    They are wild animals, people!
“It’s always wild, it’s never a pet,” says Dorfman. “Wild animals have no inhibitions so they always will hurt somebody. It’s only their size that determines the severity of the injury. If they get angry, they’re going to strike out the only way they know how."

2.    They need lots (and lots and lots) of care.
A wild animal is “very sensitive,” says Dorfman. “No one should get one impulsively. You have to devote a great deal of your life to it.”

3.    They need lots of space for their mental health.
Cheetahs are the fastest cats: 70 mph in short bursts. If they’re cooped up, they get nervous and stressed out.

4. They get nervous and stressed out even if they do have enough space to run.
Since larger cats prey upon cheetahs and their young, cheetahs are “much more nervous” than other big felines, says Dorfman, and “need much more peace and quiet.” He adds: “They need someone with them that really knows how to react to their moods.”

In that respect, they sound a lot like celebrities.

-Marc Silver

I haven't been this stressed about math since high school, I thought to myself while watching the top grossing film 21. The stakes are high as a band of card-counting MIT whizzes racks up big bucks playing blackjack.  They pair their mathematical prowess with a system of statistics and signals their professor teaches them, all the while hoping to avoid the attention of casino security.  We're told counting cards isn't illegal, but the lead security guard, played by Laurence Fishburne, certainly does discourage it.  With his fists.

Card counting is more math than memorization. Unlike the autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, who also cleaned up at the tables, the gang doesn't try to remember every card played. Instead, they assign cards a value, and turn the deck into a running calculation.

The goal of blackjack, or twenty-one, is to get closer to twenty-one points than the dealer without going over. Everyone at the table is dealt two cards, although one of the dealer's cards is face down. Players can then hit (take another card, adding to the hand's total) or stand (stop taking cards). Unlike players, dealers are generally bound by house rules that require taking additional cards when their hand is below a certain level.

As the number of high value cards left in the deck changes, so do the odds of winning. With lots of tens and face cards remaining, it is more likely the dealer will bust (overshoot the target score of twenty-one) when forced to take an additional card. Counting cards is simply a way to track the number of high value cards remaining. At the shuffle the count is zero. Low cards add one to the count (2 through 6 are considered low in one system, but there are variations). High cards (10 through Ace) subtract one. The middle (7-9) is neutral.

The count is like a thermometer reading. It goes up when there are more high cards left in the deck than low cards. That means the deck is hot, and odds favor the players over the dealer. In the film, when the team spots a deck heating up, they wave in their ringer to join the table and bet large, playing his hand according to another set of statistical rules governing when to hit, stand, or make more advanced plays like doubling down (doubling the bet after the cards are dealt) or splitting (turning one hand into two). Counting doesn't require this division of labor, but it's how the counters manage to avoid being noticed. Remember the fists?

Throughout, the narrator keeps claiming it's just simple arithmetic. But grab a deck of cards and try it yourself. It's not easy to keep up. Remember, these are no average kids – the team's ace is blowing off his other hobby of building self-driving robots so he can spend his weekends gambling in Vegas casinos, and gamboling through Vegas nightclubs. Talk about applied mathematics.

-Brad Scriber

American Idol fans might not do a good job picking the best singer. (Melinda Doolittle, we still love you!) But viewers deserve nothing but kudos for their generosity during the annual "Idol Gives Back" pledge-a-thon. The show also deserves praise; a New York Times report this week said the $55 million in viewer donations have been dispensed to the proper nonprofits with a minimum of administrative expense.

This year’s pledge show, airing on Wednesday, includes Malaria No More, a charity recently featured in the National Geographic report on the disease and a “how to help” feature. Nearly one billion people contract malaria each year. The annual death toll is in excess of one million, and most of these victims are under age 5. One of the key weapons in the fight waged by Malaria No More and others is something remarkably low-tech: mosquito netting treated with insecticide. Our article notes, “According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, widespread use of treated bed nets has been shown to reduce transmission of the disease by about 90 percent.”

-Marc Silver

As a huge fan of both U2 and African pop music, I couldn’t wait to hear “In the Name of Love: Africa Celebrates U2.”

I was also a little worried. In this tribute CD, African pop artists cover U2 hits. But a lot of African pop falls into boring, easy-listening territory. And I’ll admit it – U2 has put out some boring songs, too. Bring the two together, and you can get either an interesting new take on a popular song, or a big collision of dull.

First, the duller news. Several tracks fall into the category of elevator music. I’m not sure a brass section improves the classic “Where the Streets Have No Name.” While singer Angelique Kidjo’s version of “Mysterious Ways” is fine, the arrangement is considerably less adventuresome than the original.

The cooler songs are those where the artist wanders farther afield. “One” takes on a new edge with Nigerian Keziah Jones’s sharp vocals. “Pride (In the Name of Love)” was apparently just crying out to be sung in the South African a cappella tradition: the Soweto Gospel Choir brings a lush choral sound to this powerful anthem. Les Nubians do a charming electronica-infused version of “With or Without You.” And in the hands of the African Underground All-Stars, “Desire” becomes a compelling hip-hop track about Africa’s yearning for peace and freedom.

The album wraps up with Angolan singer Waldemar Bastos’ take on “Love is Blindness.” His quavery vocals make this moody, slow song about love gone wrong even more haunting. Bastos fled Angola, which has been at war for decades, and now lives in Portugal; the song echoes the pain of his native country while evoking a Portuguese love song.

If the U2-Africa link sounds familiar, there’s a reason: Singer Bono’s work on behalf of Africa inspired the album, and part of the proceeds go to The Global Fund, which fights AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in Africa.

LISTEN: "Pride (In the Name of Love)," sung by the Soweto Gospel Choir.

—Helen Fields

Kites fight in The Kite Runner, the movie about life in pre- and post-Taliban Afghanistan that has just been released on DVD. Fighting kites is a sport many Westerners have never heard of.
In a fight, fliers try to use their kite's line to cut the lines of competitors' kites. When the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, they banned kites. Their reason: the hobby wasn't true to the precepts of Islam.
In a scene from the movie that's set in pre-Taliban Afghanistan, you can see a striking depiction of the sport. Childhood friends Hassan and Amir stand on a rooftop as their colorful kite and the kites of their rivals soar above the city. The filmmakers consulted with an Afghani kite fighting champion to make sure the flying strategies and techniques were accurate.
Kite fighting is now back in Afghanistan, and is also the rage in nations ranging from Korea to Brazil. In Thailand, kite flying became the national sport in 1921 with a "battle of the sexes" version. The "male" kite and "female" kite try to take each other down. In India, fliers use glass-coated kite lines to try to sever the strings of enemy kites. Kite dueling is popular among immigrant communities in the U.S., notes Elena Martínez, a folklorist with New York nonprofit City Lore. In New York City, she says, people from countries including Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan stage kite wars in public parks. And kite-fighting season in the U.S. has just begun.

-Ingrid Ahlgren

What is it about big mountains that drives some people a little mad? Somehow their scale and grandeur can create a powerful hypnotic undertow within the human imagination. Like alpine sirens, they often lure otherwise rational minds into dangerous terrain, convincing them to attempt death-defying feats of both ascent and descent.

This phenomenon is evidenced by the numbers of back-country sky enthusiasts killed every year by avalanches and falls. Last year in Europe a record 39 were killed. Authorities attribute the increase in deaths partly to the growing number of people—many with little training or experience—who are attempting to ski off piste. Meanwhile, among mountaineers the gold standard has long been to summit Everest, where roughly 10 percent of those who have tried to climb the world’s tallest peak have perished in the attempt. Yet every year more people show up at an increasingly crowded base camp. Last year a record 513 reached the top of the Himalayan mountain, and climbing industry insiders predict even more will attempt the feat this spring.

So what gives? What’s at the root of this mania pushing humans to such lengths in the name of recreation? That is the subtext of two new documentaries, Steep and Blindsight.

Steep, directed by Mark Obenhaus, tells the story of extreme skiing, a thrill-seeking pastime that began with a lunatic fringe of alpinists in the ‘60s and ‘70s and blossomed into a full-blown sport in the “just go for it” ‘80s. Now it is driven by full-time pros (mostly men with a few notable women, often sponsored by companies like Red Bull and North Face. They helicopter to remote peaks and launch themselves down mountain faces with inclines as steep as 70 degrees. These are places, notes ski author Lou Dawson, “where all it takes is a small tweak of your quad muscle and you can go flying.” That is, flying off the mountain to your death.

Steep boasts some of the most dramatic ski footage captured on film—no small feat considering the cult ski film industry (pioneered by the likes of legendary director Warren Miller) is based almost entirely on one-upmanship, who can film the absolute gnarliest descents from the most impossible angles. Yet Steep also introduces a new breed of skiers, including Shane McKonkey, who combine extreme skiing with BASE jumping, somersaulting off sheer cliff faces, then popping a parachute. The effect is nothing short of jaw-dropping.

Yet for all its sensational footage, the film isn’t really about skiing. Rather it’s about calculating the risk-reward equation of these endeavors and convincing one’s self that the fleeting moments of bliss are worth the injuries and deaths that statistically are sure follow.

At 49, Doug Coombs is the graybeard of the bunch and the main character of Steep. On camera he comes across as an engaging, phlegmatic everyman, though he is described as one of the world’s strongest, most experienced big mountain extreme skiers. The tragic twist is that he didn’t live to see the film’s release. In April 2006, he fell to his death skiing in the back-country near La Grave, France (here’s an eyewitness account of the accident). He was 49 and left a wife and a son.

In dozens of clips during Steep, he describes his love affair with back-country skiing in terms that verge on the religious. Mountains are living, breathing gods who occasionally allow mortals into their forbidden realm to experience brief adrenaline-fueled bursts of ecstasy, he says. Coombs and the other skiers represent themselves as truly enlightened skiers, scoffing at people willing to accept the rules of bourgeois “safe” slopes. This fraternity seeks the freedom to experience mountains in a primal way and, they acknowledge, that freedom comes with big risks. “I was shocked the first time one of my friends died skiing,” Coombs says late in the film, but after several died he admits, “I got numb to it. I don’t want to see my friends die, but it happens.” In a video of his memorial service, several of his family and friends repeat similar sentiments.

What’s missing in Steep is that no one is willing to seriously question that value proposition. (And the worst consequences Obenhaus ever shows are a few spectacular cart-wheeling wipeouts after which the skier bounces to his feet with an enthusiastic thumbs up. No bloody complex fractures, no body bags, no weeping widows.) Perhaps, these “truly free” athletes have the right to endanger themselves in pursuit of an endorphin rush, but don’t we criticize drug addicts for similar behavior? And what about those charged with attempting to rescue these self-absorbed kamikazes when they’re injured and stranded in treacherous terrain.

Obenhaus, a former news producer for Peter Jennings and Frontline, should have dug a little deeper and gotten beyond the tough guy braggadocio and mystical hokum to probe the psyches and motivations of these characters, clearly a more complicated lot than they are portrayed on screen.

Blindsight, on the other hand, offers a more complex view of mountain madness. It tells the story of six blind Tibetan teenagers and their teacher Sabriye Tenberken, a blind German social worker.

Tenberken, who as a graduate student created the official Tibetan Braille script and later established a school for the blind in Lhasa, wrote to American mountain climber Eric Weihenmayer, who in 2001 became the first blind climber to summit Everest. Inspired by Tenberken’s work, Weihenmayer offered to lead some of her students on an expedition up a Himalayan peak. 

The film explains that Tibet has unusually high rates of blindness, due in part to a combination of the high altitude and increased exposure to ultraviolet light as well as large amounts of dust particles in the atmosphere and a lack of vitamin A during childhood. Yet the blind are often treated as outcasts, believed to be demon-possessed or bearing punishment for wicked previous lives. At one point in the film a woman yells at two blind teenagers, “You deserve to eat your father’s corpse.”

Many of Tenberken’s students have been rescued from desperate situations. One boy Tashi was sold by his parents to a couple who brought him to Lhasa to beg. Another, Gyenshen, who went blind at the age of nine, had spent the intervening four years confined in his parents’ house. “He was the smartest boy,” his mother says with disdain, “now he’s turned into this.”

Even the students seem to believe they are somehow at fault for their disability. “It’s because of bad deeds in my past life that I am this blind one,” a boy earnestly tells the camera.

Determined to change her students’ outlook, Tenberken jumped at Weihenmayer’s offer. In 2004 the American mountaineer arrived with a full team of experienced Himalayan guides, one sighted guide for each blind student, an expedition doctor, and bags of brand-new clothes, equipment, and supplies donated by corporate sponsors. The four teenage boys and two girls chosen to make the trip vibrate with enthusiasm and expectation, and the film seems set to unfold in a Disneyesque march to the summit of 23,000-foot Lhakpa Ri Peak.

But quickly it becomes clear the physical challenges are more than some of the young climbers can handle. The mountain is higher than any peak outside the Himalayas and holds the potential for altitude sickness not to mention steep icy paths and narrow ledges abutting sheer drop offs. Yet not wanting to disappoint Weihenmayer and Tenberken, each soldiers on, insisting he or she can make it.

As the days go by and the group moves higher up the range, Weihenmayer and the other guides grow increasingly determined to see their charges summit. They repeat the mantra that their safety measures are sound and that the blind climbers need to persevere in the face of adversity. Essentially, they argue that pushing on is what mountain climbing is all about. After one particularly difficult day, when at least one teenager seems to be suffering the early effects of altitude sickness, Weihenmayer tells the camera, “I don’t think we’re anywhere near turning back.” He is clearly holding the students to the same never-say-die attitude that allowed him to become the first blind climber to summit the highest peaks on each of the seven continents.

Tenberken, however, isn’t buying that approach. She frets over the students’ health as well as their mental state, worrying that if they don’t summit they’ll consider themselves failures. In some of the film’s most compelling scenes, she and her partner Paul Kronenberg argue with the American guides that the ultimate goal should be taking the journey together, making the most of the experience, and—most important—ensuring no one is injured.

Eventually, with three climbers exhibiting signs of altitude sickness, the guides relent, and the team turns back all together, just a few hundred yards short of the summit. The students initially are disappointed, but in interviews after they return to Lhasa, they each seem emboldened by their adventure. Even Weihenmayer later revisits his expectations. “Part of me felt like a failure,” he told the Associate Press. “I wanted to make [those kids] feel special, and I thought maybe they felt the opposite.” But in the end, he said, “Everyone created their own meaning for the trip.”

Now four years later, the climbers have moved on to other adventures. Of the six who made the trek, two have since opened a medical clinic in Lhasa; one has studied at Oxford; and one has started his own Braille publishing company.

But what about the siren call of the mountains and living in the bliss found at the edge of life and death? “To be honest,” says Tenberken, “I’m too busy to think much about that.”

-Peter Gwin