But the news that Oscar Pistorius, the South African who became the first double amputee to compete against able-bodied runners at the London Olympics last summer, had been arrested for the murder of his supermodel girlfriend on Valentine's Day, was more brutally shocking, on several levels.

First, and most obviously, the crime of doping pales dramatically compared with murder. Second, there were no highly publicized rumors of Mike-Tyson-type bad behavior leading up to the incident, so we (the general fan/reader public) had no warning. Our image adjustment was abrupt and severe. And third, the news shattered a fantasy story—or stories—that we really, really wanted to believe.

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It's a powerful and uplifting message that we want to believe, in all its simplicity and potential for a happy ending. Fade to credits, everyone leaves inspired.

Unfortunately, the equation of achievement is far more complex.

In a revealing profile of Michael Jordan at 50, published this week on ESPN.com, Wright Thompson writes that the young Jordan believed his father preferred his older brother, and spent a lifetime driven to achieve as a way of proving his worth. "This appetite to prove—to attack and to dominate and to win," Thompson notes, "... has been successful and spectacularly unhealthy."

Even Jordan acknowledged that his self-esteem has always been "tied directly to the game." Hence the drive, the rage, the relentless pursuit of victory that led to astounding feats of skill and six championship rings in his dresser drawer. But Jordan also talked to Thompson about what the process of that pursuit does to a person. "You ask for these special powers to achieve these heights, and now you got it and you want to give it back, but you can't. ... I drove myself so much that I'm still living with some of those drives. ... I don't know how to get rid of it."

It's an aspect to achievement that we often shove aside in our focus on the shining moments of record-breaking triumph. And that goes for more than just sporting feats and icons. A friend of mine, whose job gave him access to many of the top CEOs in America, told a similar tale about their motivations and demons. I'd kidded him, back in my single days, to keep me in mind if he knew an interesting CEO who was single and age-appropriate.

"I do," he answered. "But the truth is, I wouldn't wish any of them on you."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because they're generally not easy on their wives or families," he answered. He went on to explain that he'd developed a theory about top-achieving CEOs. "Almost to a person, they've been denied something that really mattered to them, early in their lives. So they spend the rest of their lives making up for it. Achieving. And not only does that make them pretty focused on themselves, it also means that no achievement is ever enough. They're driven."

Maybe we shouldn't be so shocked. But we are. Because we don't want to look at the complexity or costs of achievement.

Top-level achievement requires talent, to be sure. But it also requires tremendous focus and great sacrifice. It makes sense that many of the people willing to devote that kind of effort and make those sacrifices have some driving emotional or psychological need that makes the trade-offs worthwhile. For everything in life is most assuredly a trade-off. To be a Michael Jordan or a gold-medal Olympic athlete requires such single-minded focus that it also necessarily requires trading off a whole lot of balance in life and development—a weakness that can then be amplified with the rush of fame, money, and attention that success brings. Perhaps the surprising thing is that there are actually exceptions to the rule; top athletes, celebrities and CEOs who do manage to be balanced individuals, with balanced lives and an ability to focus on others instead of themselves.

In view of all that, it's not hard to believe that a kid who had both legs amputated at age one, who was six when his parents divorced and 15 when his mom died, would possess an excruciating drive to prove or overcome the insecurities or damage from those losses. Or that the same drive and traits that got him to the Olympics might be less suited for healthy interpersonal interactions. Or that the insecurities still lurked inside—demons that only got scarier with all the world's focus on him as a perfect poster child.

So maybe we shouldn't be so shocked. But we are. Because we don't want to look at the complexity or costs of achievement. We want to paint our heroes pure, so we can indulge in our happy-fantasy hero-worship without having to feel queasy about it.

It wasn't always so. The epic journey tales—from The Odyssey to the Arthurian and Holy Grail legends to Star Wars—always told of heroes who were flawed, and whose wisdom, strength, and triumph sometimes came at a messy cost and with many scars. We too often forget that fact in our modern equation of achievement with romantic appeal. It's a bit ironic, actually. Would Oscar Pistorius have had a cover girl model girlfriend like Reeva Steenkamp if he hadn't been an Olympic celebrity? Possibly not. Many women find competence attractive. The higher the achievement, and the more lauded a man's achievements are, the more appealing he will be to a whole lot of women, regardless of his other traits. And yet, the same traits that make those men celebrity athletes or super-achievers may, in fact, make them a bad bet as an actual romantic partner.

Granted, Pistorius would appear to be an extreme case. To be clear: All charges against Pistorius are alleged, at the moment. And domestic violence, if that proves to be the cause of Steenkamp's death, cuts across all segments of society, in the U.S. as well as abroad. High achievers do not have a corner on that market. The combination of insecurity, anger, and other damaged psychological traits that lead a person to abuse or turn violent toward women exists in all too many individuals and all too many places.

But it's worth pondering for a moment: For all of Michael Jordan's ego and anger and moods, two sportscasters discussing the ESPN piece last week noted that Jordan wasn't even in the top 50 of arrogant, egotistical sports figures they'd interviewed. That should give us pause, just as my friend's comments about the motivators and costs of top achievement in the business world gave me pause. Why do we view people who achieve great personal success or achievements—especially those that involve an almost narcissistic focus on themselves—as romantic figures or role models?

We should, by all means, acknowledge great achievement. Because it does come at great cost. Nobody has it all. Nobody can have a level-10 career and excel in their personal life, as well. Not even men. They may look like they have it all, but they don't. Just ask their neglected wives and children. There are hard, firm trade-offs in where a person's time and energy get directed, and every choice has a consequence. (And there's much, much more that can and needs to be said on that subject.)

But when we look for role models, why do we gloss over all the demons, flaws, and costs, and build these singular high achievers into all-around "10s" in our images and minds? I'm not sure, but I suspect it's because we want to believe the fairy tale. We want to believe that Prince Charming actually is a great guy, through and through. We want the simple, happy ending. And, perhaps we also want to believe that we, too, can focus on ourselves and achieve whatever we want without someone else bearing the cost that achievement requires.

To admire our sports superstars while acknowledging the likelihood of the flaws that either contributed to their success or came about because of what that success required or created would take a lot of the fun out of our fantasies about them, of course. It might also make those athletes a little tougher to market. On the other hand, it might take a little pressure off of them and, as Michael Jordan put it, allow them to "breathe."

I recognize that there are far too many forces at play for that scenario to come about anytime soon, if ever. But imagine how the world might change if balance ever became as valued as singular achievement. Now, there's a fantasy I could get excited about.

Despite the wide coverage it received, the news last week that 11 people had died in two separate incidents just days apart on the slopes of Mont Blanc, high in the French Alps, was probably not a surprise to anyone familiar with the mountain. It has the highest fatality rate of any mountain in Europe. Some estimates put the fatality rate at an average of 100 hikers a year; others that more people die each year in the Mont Blanc range than in any decade in the Alaskan mountain ranges, including the far more dangerous and challenging 20,320-foot summit of Denali (otherwise known as Mount McKinley).

The odd thing about those numbers is that while Mont Blanc is the tallest mountain in Europe (approximately 15,780 feet), it is not, from a purely technical standpoint, the most difficult to climb. Indeed, many guiding companies describe Mont Blanc as more of a "long walk" than any kind of challenging climb, although it does require crampons and ice axes to summit. So clearly, there's a bit of a disconnect involved. If climbing Mont Blanc is more of "a long walk" than a high-stakes, technical climb, why do so many people perish on its slopes?

In the end, there are a number of reasons. But one big factor is the fact that European tour companies do portray the climb as a "long walk" that anybody who is in good physical condition can accomplish, with no previous climbing experience. The mountain also has extremely easy access -- teleferiques (gondolas) can take climbers up the first 9,000 feet or so. As a result, many of the 20,000-plus people who attempt the summit each year are inexperienced or completely novice climbers. They rely on the expertise of paid climbing guides to get them up and down the mountain safely.

The advisability of having paid guides take climbers up challenging mountain peaks that they are unqualified to attempt themselves has been a hot topic of controversy in the climbing world ever since the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, chronicled in Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air, in which 8 people died. In Europe, however, using paid guides to assist climbers is a time-honored tradition. The first ascent of the Matterhorn, in 1865, on the Swiss-Italian border, was a guided climb. Worth noting, perhaps, is that four of the five "clients" perished on the descent. But while guided climbs of peaks like Mount Everest may have become a far more popular (and highly paid) phenomenon in the past 20 years, relying on the skill of a guide to get recreational climbers safely up and down a mountain is the accepted norm in Europe.

That doesn't mean the practice is without risks. For one thing, it makes the slopes of mountains like Mont Blanc crowded in the summer months, since the number of "qualified" climbers is much higher than if only those capable of scaling the peak themselves were attempting it. Aside from the environmental cost of that many humans on a mountain (an issue even at places like Mount Everest as well as Mont Blanc), so many climbers means more people are exposed to more of the risks that a high-altitude mountain presents. There were, for example, 28 climbers caught by the avalanche on Mont Blanc on July 12.

The crowded slopes also mean competition for footing in narrow places, as teams attempt to pass each other, and long waits at some points for access to passageways -- which means that climbers are exposed to high-altitude health risks, as well as cold and bad weather, for longer periods of time.

The crowded nature of Alpine peaks like Mont Blanc means that spots in the overnight huts along the summit route are difficult to get. So if a team has a date reserved, and the weather looks iffy or someone doesn't feel good, there's still tremendous pressure to "go," because rescheduling or delaying a trip is difficult. Added to that is the pressure paid guides are under -- especially in Europe -- to get their clients up and down as quickly as possible, so they can get to the next group. One American climbing guide I spoke to referred to this approach as the "production line" approach to mountain climbing. But that pressure to get the climb over with as quickly as possible, and push as many people to the summit as possible, also adds pressure to the "go" decision, regardless of conditions or how slow some members of the group are moving.

"That 'production line' mentality tends to permeate to everyone else around those people," says Aidan Loehr, an American climbing guide who has guided clients up peaks including Denali and Aconcagua (the tallest peak in South America). "One person makes a bad decision and everyone else assumes it must be safe and follows. With Mont Blanc, there's also the fact that so many thousands of people have managed to climb it that it kind of dumbs down the challenge, in many people's minds. But the truth is, it's a really big mountain, and most of the people who climb it don't even know or understand what the dangers are."

Dangers, one is tempted to mention, that include avalanches like the one that killed nine climbers on July 12th. "An avalanche doesn't just come out of the blue," Loehr says. "They are predictable. The guides [with that group on Mont Blanc] would have known the conditions were right for an avalanche there. But again, that's part of what the production line mentality does. People ignore the avalanche danger on mountains quite a bit on big mountains, because it's a hit or miss risk. And guides often stop thinking it's dangerous because they're up there so much, it's easy to get complacent."

That complacency, and even the risks caused by a production line mentality of guided climbing expeditions, can and do happen everywhere. But American guides -- even those who certify other guides to work in Europe -- say that those risks are markedly higher in Europe than in the United States, because Europeans have a distinctly approach different to guiding, and to climbing and risk itself, than their American counterparts.

"I think it's just how the different climbing cultures grew up," says Ed Crothers, Climbing Instructor Program and Accreditation Director of the American Mountain Guides Association. "Europe takes a really different approach to risk and death in the mountains than we do here. Europeans are far less risk-averse. Chamonix (the French town at the base of Mont Blanc) is where extreme skiing was born. The fatality rate there just wouldn't be tolerated by land managers here."

But it's not just that higher risks are more tolerated in Europe. Europeans, Crothers says, have a different approach to climbing itself -- a result, he believes, of the long history of guided climbing in Alpine climbing culture.

"Here, people want to learn skills, so they can be more independent," he explains. "So your guides spend much more time teaching people skills. In Europe, climbers are much more objective-oriented, and less interested in learning the skills. They're more willing to rely on the expertise of the guide, and the focus is more on speed."

Loehr agrees. "Americans hire us to keep them safe, not just to get them to the summit," he says. "So it's just a different dynamic. In Europe, the guides are more likely to teach just enough for you to follow them, not enough for you to really develop a skill or understanding of the risks and how to manage them." And that difference, both Loehr and Crothers argue, affects the risk level for the whole group.

"People who view the guide as a god, not an instructor, are, I think, less inclined to speak up and ask questions, even if they feel something isn't right, in their gut," Crothers says. "If you increase the competency level of the clients, overall, the team is much more prepared to handle the risks better.

"The fatality rate on Mont Blanc doesn't reflect the inherent, fundamental risks of that mountain," Loehr says. "Guiding isn't the problem. It's the approach to guiding there that's the problem. It's a combination of the sheer numbers of people on the mountain, the low level of experience of the people climbing the mountain, and the approach of the guides, that's causing the fatality rates on that mountain."

Loehr is quick to note that his view reflects only his own opinion and experiences. But the critique offered by both Loehr and Crothers correlates with my own experience on Mont Blanc, four years ago.

In 2008, I was recruited to be part of a guided climbing team attempting to summit Mont Blanc. Only about five of our 22 team members had any climbing experience, and I was not one of them. But I, too, was assured by the guiding company that no previous climbing experience was required. It was really just a long walk, they said, and as long as I was in good physical condition, it would be no problem.

For four months before the climb, I ran four to five mile a day, worked out at the gym three or four times a week, and hiked seven to 20 miles each weekend, so I was in pretty good physical condition. I also had hiked up an 18,000-foot mountain in the Himalayan mountains 10 years earlier, so I had some familiarity with high-altitude hiking and knew I could handle the altitude. But I also knew that the three days the guides had allocated to climb a 16,000 foot mountain wouldn't give us enough time to acclimate to the altitude. When two climbing friends and I climbed up that peak in the Himalayas, we took nine days to go up and down -- and that was starting at 7,000 feet. But when I voiced my concern to the Mont Blanc guides ahead of time, however, I was told not to worry about it.

I was also concerned, because I'd never used crampons or an ice axe before. Again, I was told not to worry. As a result, I learned to use crampons on the incline pictured below. It's a narrow spine that leads down from Aiguille du Midi, with a drop of almost 9,000 feet on one side. (We took the teleferique up to the peak and then put on crampons for the first time to climb down, and then back up,this spine -- which was crowded with climbers going both ways at the same time, despite its narrow width.) 

Despite the wide coverage it received, the news last week that 11 people had died in two separate incidents just days apart on the slopes of Mont Blanc, high in the French Alps, was probably not a surprise to anyone familiar with the mountain. It has the highest fatality rate of any mountain in Europe. Some estimates put the fatality rate at an average of 100 hikers a year; others that more people die each year in the Mont Blanc range than in any decade in the Alaskan mountain ranges, including the far more dangerous and challenging 20,320-foot summit of Denali (otherwise known as Mount McKinley).

The odd thing about those numbers is that while Mont Blanc is the tallest mountain in Europe (approximately 15,780 feet), it is not, from a purely technical standpoint, the most difficult to climb. Indeed, many guiding companies describe Mont Blanc as more of a "long walk" than any kind of challenging climb, although it does require crampons and ice axes to summit. So clearly, there's a bit of a disconnect involved. If climbing Mont Blanc is more of "a long walk" than a high-stakes, technical climb, why do so many people perish on its slopes?

In the end, there are a number of reasons. But one big factor is the fact that European tour companies do portray the climb as a "long walk" that anybody who is in good physical condition can accomplish, with no previous climbing experience. The mountain also has extremely easy access -- teleferiques (gondolas) can take climbers up the first 9,000 feet or so. As a result, many of the 20,000-plus people who attempt the summit each year are inexperienced or completely novice climbers. They rely on the expertise of paid climbing guides to get them up and down the mountain safely.

The advisability of having paid guides take climbers up challenging mountain peaks that they are unqualified to attempt themselves has been a hot topic of controversy in the climbing world ever since the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, chronicled in Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air, in which 8 people died. In Europe, however, using paid guides to assist climbers is a time-honored tradition. The first ascent of the Matterhorn, in 1865, on the Swiss-Italian border, was a guided climb. Worth noting, perhaps, is that four of the five "clients" perished on the descent. But while guided climbs of peaks like Mount Everest may have become a far more popular (and highly paid) phenomenon in the past 20 years, relying on the skill of a guide to get recreational climbers safely up and down a mountain is the accepted norm in Europe.

That doesn't mean the practice is without risks. For one thing, it makes the slopes of mountains like Mont Blanc crowded in the summer months, since the number of "qualified" climbers is much higher than if only those capable of scaling the peak themselves were attempting it. Aside from the environmental cost of that many humans on a mountain (an issue even at places like Mount Everest as well as Mont Blanc), so many climbers means more people are exposed to more of the risks that a high-altitude mountain presents. There were, for example, 28 climbers caught by the avalanche on Mont Blanc on July 12.

The crowded slopes also mean competition for footing in narrow places, as teams attempt to pass each other, and long waits at some points for access to passageways -- which means that climbers are exposed to high-altitude health risks, as well as cold and bad weather, for longer periods of time.

The crowded nature of Alpine peaks like Mont Blanc means that spots in the overnight huts along the summit route are difficult to get. So if a team has a date reserved, and the weather looks iffy or someone doesn't feel good, there's still tremendous pressure to "go," because rescheduling or delaying a trip is difficult. Added to that is the pressure paid guides are under -- especially in Europe -- to get their clients up and down as quickly as possible, so they can get to the next group. One American climbing guide I spoke to referred to this approach as the "production line" approach to mountain climbing. But that pressure to get the climb over with as quickly as possible, and push as many people to the summit as possible, also adds pressure to the "go" decision, regardless of conditions or how slow some members of the group are moving.

"That 'production line' mentality tends to permeate to everyone else around those people," says Aidan Loehr, an American climbing guide who has guided clients up peaks including Denali and Aconcagua (the tallest peak in South America). "One person makes a bad decision and everyone else assumes it must be safe and follows. With Mont Blanc, there's also the fact that so many thousands of people have managed to climb it that it kind of dumbs down the challenge, in many people's minds. But the truth is, it's a really big mountain, and most of the people who climb it don't even know or understand what the dangers are."

Dangers, one is tempted to mention, that include avalanches like the one that killed nine climbers on July 12th. "An avalanche doesn't just come out of the blue," Loehr says. "They are predictable. The guides [with that group on Mont Blanc] would have known the conditions were right for an avalanche there. But again, that's part of what the production line mentality does. People ignore the avalanche danger on mountains quite a bit on big mountains, because it's a hit or miss risk. And guides often stop thinking it's dangerous because they're up there so much, it's easy to get complacent."

That complacency, and even the risks caused by a production line mentality of guided climbing expeditions, can and do happen everywhere. But American guides -- even those who certify other guides to work in Europe -- say that those risks are markedly higher in Europe than in the United States, because Europeans have a distinctly approach different to guiding, and to climbing and risk itself, than their American counterparts.

"I think it's just how the different climbing cultures grew up," says Ed Crothers, Climbing Instructor Program and Accreditation Director of the American Mountain Guides Association. "Europe takes a really different approach to risk and death in the mountains than we do here. Europeans are far less risk-averse. Chamonix (the French town at the base of Mont Blanc) is where extreme skiing was born. The fatality rate there just wouldn't be tolerated by land managers here."

But it's not just that higher risks are more tolerated in Europe. Europeans, Crothers says, have a different approach to climbing itself -- a result, he believes, of the long history of guided climbing in Alpine climbing culture.

"Here, people want to learn skills, so they can be more independent," he explains. "So your guides spend much more time teaching people skills. In Europe, climbers are much more objective-oriented, and less interested in learning the skills. They're more willing to rely on the expertise of the guide, and the focus is more on speed."

Loehr agrees. "Americans hire us to keep them safe, not just to get them to the summit," he says. "So it's just a different dynamic. In Europe, the guides are more likely to teach just enough for you to follow them, not enough for you to really develop a skill or understanding of the risks and how to manage them." And that difference, both Loehr and Crothers argue, affects the risk level for the whole group.

"People who view the guide as a god, not an instructor, are, I think, less inclined to speak up and ask questions, even if they feel something isn't right, in their gut," Crothers says. "If you increase the competency level of the clients, overall, the team is much more prepared to handle the risks better.

"The fatality rate on Mont Blanc doesn't reflect the inherent, fundamental risks of that mountain," Loehr says. "Guiding isn't the problem. It's the approach to guiding there that's the problem. It's a combination of the sheer numbers of people on the mountain, the low level of experience of the people climbing the mountain, and the approach of the guides, that's causing the fatality rates on that mountain."

Loehr is quick to note that his view reflects only his own opinion and experiences. But the critique offered by both Loehr and Crothers correlates with my own experience on Mont Blanc, four years ago.

In 2008, I was recruited to be part of a guided climbing team attempting to summit Mont Blanc. Only about five of our 22 team members had any climbing experience, and I was not one of them. But I, too, was assured by the guiding company that no previous climbing experience was required. It was really just a long walk, they said, and as long as I was in good physical condition, it would be no problem.

For four months before the climb, I ran four to five mile a day, worked out at the gym three or four times a week, and hiked seven to 20 miles each weekend, so I was in pretty good physical condition. I also had hiked up an 18,000-foot mountain in the Himalayan mountains 10 years earlier, so I had some familiarity with high-altitude hiking and knew I could handle the altitude. But I also knew that the three days the guides had allocated to climb a 16,000 foot mountain wouldn't give us enough time to acclimate to the altitude. When two climbing friends and I climbed up that peak in the Himalayas, we took nine days to go up and down -- and that was starting at 7,000 feet. But when I voiced my concern to the Mont Blanc guides ahead of time, however, I was told not to worry about it.

I was also concerned, because I'd never used crampons or an ice axe before. Again, I was told not to worry. As a result, I learned to use crampons on the incline pictured below. It's a narrow spine that leads down from Aiguille du Midi, with a drop of almost 9,000 feet on one side. (We took the teleferique up to the peak and then put on crampons for the first time to climb down, and then back up,this spine -- which was crowded with climbers going both ways at the same time, despite its narrow width.) 

Few people would argue that having a sense of purpose in life is anything but a good thing. The Egyptian Book of the Dead even contains a prayer for it: "May I be given a god's duty; a burden that matters." In the modern world, exhorting young people to seek a sense of purpose in life is a mainstay of college commencement speeches, and a collective longing for a feeling of purpose and fulfillment drove evangelical minister Rick Warren's book The Purpose-Driven Life into the best-selling stratosphere.

Medical professionals have also found correlations between a person's sense of purpose and their physical health and survival. As far back as 1946, the Austrian psychiatrist Victor Frankl, who spent several years in concentration camps during WWII and lost his entire family in the Holocaust, found that the people who survived the concentration camps best were those who believed they had a reason, mission, or purpose that required their survival. Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl's classic book on the subject (which he wrote in nine days following his release from the camps) also notes that people who could find a reason or worthwhile purpose for their suffering were far less debilitated by it.

More recently, medical researchers have found that a strong sense of purpose and well-being correlates with better physical health, especially in older adults. But now there's another reason to rethink that stable but meaningless job versus a more meaningful job, life path, or vocation: it appears that a sense that your life has purpose, and that what you do matters, may actually protect your brain from the clinical effects of Alzheimer's disease.

In a paper coming out this week in the Archives of General Psychiatry, a group of researchers from the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago published the first results of a longitudinal study involving more than 1,400 senior citizens. The goal of the study is to evaluate how a strong sense of purpose in life changes the pathology of Alzheimer's disease, from a neurobiological perspective. A couple of previous studies (including one by Dr. Patricia A. Boyle, the lead researcher on this study) found a link between a sense of purpose in life and a lower risk of cognitive impairment. But in this study, Dr. Boyle's team wanted to find out how, neurobiologically, a strong sense of purpose provided that protective effect.

"What distinguishes this from symptomatic research is, you don't know why something is beneficial until you look at what's going on in someone's brain," Boyle explained. "We can say that physical activity, for example, [is] protective against dementia, because it lowers your risk of developing the clinical side of the disease. But until we know what's actually happening in someone's brain, we don't know how physical activity is working. So the element we added was the measured quantification of the actual changes of Alzheimer's disease. We're the first people to look at how purpose in life changes the effect of the Alzheimer's pathology by measuring in this way."

The study has been underway since 1997, and none of the study participants presented with signs of dementia when they entered the research group. The participants received baseline assessments in physical, social, psychological and cognitive health at the beginning and then received follow-up assessments every year. Along with those health- and lifestyle-oriented assessments, participants were also rated as to how strong their sense of purpose in life was, based on their range of answers to a 10-point questionnaire.

On the questionnaire, participants are asked to rate, on a five-point scale ranging from "totally agree" to "totally disagree," their reaction to statements like: "I feel good when I think of what I've done in the past and what I hope to do in the future." "I used to set goals for myself, but that now seems like a waste of time." "I live life one day at a time and don't really think about the future." Or, "I enjoy making plans for the future and working them to a reality."

When the study participants die, their brains are then autopsied to allow the researchers to correlate the physical condition of their brains with the results of each person's cognitive, physical, psychological and "purpose in life" assessments. So far, 246 individuals in the study have died and had their brains analyzed. And the results are surprising.

From a neurobiological perspective, two of the biggest markers of Alzheimer's disease are an accumulation of plaque and what neurologists call "tangles" in the pathways of the brain. The researchers did not find any physical difference in the level of plaque or tangles in the brains of people who rated highly on the purpose of life scale, versus those who did not. (A strong sense of purpose in life does not, in other words, prevent the accumulation of potentially harmful material in the brain.)

But when the Rush researchers looked at participants whose brains, upon autopsy, had identical levels of plaque and tangles, and then correlated that with how those people had rated in terms of both cognitive functioning and a strong purpose of life -- controlling for other factors ranging from overall physical health, exercise, education, and IQ to personality traits and inclinations for depression and other psychological issues -- the people who rated highly on the purpose of life scale had a 30 percent lower rate of cognitive decline, over the whole study period, than those with low scores on the purpose of life scale.

What that means, according to the researchers, is that a strong sense of purpose in life evidently strengthens or provides a higher level of what's known as "neural reserve" in the brain. "Reserve" is the quality that allows many physiological systems in the human body to sustain what the Rush researchers call "extensive organ damage" before showing clinical deficits. Neurobiologists specializing in aging have already determined that this concept also applies to the human brain, because most of us -- regardless of whether we develop clinical symptoms of "Alzheimer's disease" or not -- will accumulate harmful amounts of plaque and tangles in our brains as we age. Autopsies show that. What the Rush researchers' results indicate is that having a strong sense of purpose in life, especially beyond the age of 80, can give a person's brain the ability to sustain that damage and continue to function at a much higher level.

"[The results suggest] that purpose in life is either somehow making someone's brain quicker, brighter, or a faster processor, or it's somehow contributing to the development of other systems that can come on board to compensate when your systems that support memory, language and those things are being littered with bad stuff," Boyle said. The researchers were surprised, she added, at just how "robustly protective" a strong sense of purpose in life really was.

"It's very hard to identify factors that provide reserve, because reserve is a very complex thing," she explained. "There's lots of bad stuff happening in the brain as people get older, and it's hard to protect against it. So we were excited to find something so positive and so helpful, so beneficial. We looked at a whole host of things that would indicate how cognitively active someone was, how socially connected they were, whether they were exercising a lot ... all those things that have been shown to be protective against cognitive outcomes. And the findings for purpose in life was robust even when we adjusted for those things. This suggests that purpose in life really does promote cognitive health as people get older."

I asked Boyle if it was possible that people who rated high on the "purpose of life" scale might have stronger, more curious, and more flexible brains to start with ... making their strong sense of purpose more of a result than a cause of their brain's resiliency.

"I think it's some of both," she answered. "There probably is some association with purpose in life and your computing power, because by virtue of the fact that someone is goal directed, and focused and intentional, they're probably engaging in a whole repertoire of behaviors that do grow their brain and help it become stronger and more flexible. And I think it's certainly the case that people with purpose in life probably engage in a whole wide array of behaviors that are good for them. That said, we did control for those things and we still see this protective effect, which suggests that there may be a direct effect, as well."

Interestingly enough, other research (notably, work by Dr. Carol Ryff, published by the Institute on Aging) has found that the kind of protective effect that purposeful living offers does not accrue from mere happiness, or what researchers call "hedonistic well-being." It would appear that humans are hard-wired a bit like working dogs -- we may dream about a life of ease aboard luxury yachts, but we are at our best when we are gainfully engaged in meaningful work.

In a speech he gave in 1993, John W. Gardner, who was President Lyndon Johnson's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare before founding Common Cause, the Experience Corps and, at the age of 76, taking a teaching position at Stanford University, said that he believed the key to a vital old age (he was 82 when he gave the speech) was to stay interested in life. "Everyone wants to be interesting," he said. "But the vitalizing thing is to be interested. Keep a sense of curiosity. Discover new things. Care. Risk failure. Reach out."

Twenty years later, the Rush University research team is essentially saying the same thing -- just with a bit more neurobiology to back it up. If we want to live well into old age, instead of just seeking happiness, pleasure, or a secure retirement of leisure, we should seek, instead, what the ancient Egyptians prayed to be given: "a god's duty; a burden that matters."

Few people would argue that having a sense of purpose in life is anything but a good thing. The Egyptian Book of the Dead even contains a prayer for it: "May I be given a god's duty; a burden that matters." In the modern world, exhorting young people to seek a sense of purpose in life is a mainstay of college commencement speeches, and a collective longing for a feeling of purpose and fulfillment drove evangelical minister Rick Warren's book The Purpose-Driven Life into the best-selling stratosphere.

Medical professionals have also found correlations between a person's sense of purpose and their physical health and survival. As far back as 1946, the Austrian psychiatrist Victor Frankl, who spent several years in concentration camps during WWII and lost his entire family in the Holocaust, found that the people who survived the concentration camps best were those who believed they had a reason, mission, or purpose that required their survival. Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl's classic book on the subject (which he wrote in nine days following his release from the camps) also notes that people who could find a reason or worthwhile purpose for their suffering were far less debilitated by it.

More recently, medical researchers have found that a strong sense of purpose and well-being correlates with better physical health, especially in older adults. But now there's another reason to rethink that stable but meaningless job versus a more meaningful job, life path, or vocation: it appears that a sense that your life has purpose, and that what you do matters, may actually protect your brain from the clinical effects of Alzheimer's disease.

In a paper coming out this week in the Archives of General Psychiatry, a group of researchers from the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago published the first results of a longitudinal study involving more than 1,400 senior citizens. The goal of the study is to evaluate how a strong sense of purpose in life changes the pathology of Alzheimer's disease, from a neurobiological perspective. A couple of previous studies (including one by Dr. Patricia A. Boyle, the lead researcher on this study) found a link between a sense of purpose in life and a lower risk of cognitive impairment. But in this study, Dr. Boyle's team wanted to find out how, neurobiologically, a strong sense of purpose provided that protective effect.

"What distinguishes this from symptomatic research is, you don't know why something is beneficial until you look at what's going on in someone's brain," Boyle explained. "We can say that physical activity, for example, [is] protective against dementia, because it lowers your risk of developing the clinical side of the disease. But until we know what's actually happening in someone's brain, we don't know how physical activity is working. So the element we added was the measured quantification of the actual changes of Alzheimer's disease. We're the first people to look at how purpose in life changes the effect of the Alzheimer's pathology by measuring in this way."

The study has been underway since 1997, and none of the study participants presented with signs of dementia when they entered the research group. The participants received baseline assessments in physical, social, psychological and cognitive health at the beginning and then received follow-up assessments every year. Along with those health- and lifestyle-oriented assessments, participants were also rated as to how strong their sense of purpose in life was, based on their range of answers to a 10-point questionnaire.

On the questionnaire, participants are asked to rate, on a five-point scale ranging from "totally agree" to "totally disagree," their reaction to statements like: "I feel good when I think of what I've done in the past and what I hope to do in the future." "I used to set goals for myself, but that now seems like a waste of time." "I live life one day at a time and don't really think about the future." Or, "I enjoy making plans for the future and working them to a reality."

When the study participants die, their brains are then autopsied to allow the researchers to correlate the physical condition of their brains with the results of each person's cognitive, physical, psychological and "purpose in life" assessments. So far, 246 individuals in the study have died and had their brains analyzed. And the results are surprising.

From a neurobiological perspective, two of the biggest markers of Alzheimer's disease are an accumulation of plaque and what neurologists call "tangles" in the pathways of the brain. The researchers did not find any physical difference in the level of plaque or tangles in the brains of people who rated highly on the purpose of life scale, versus those who did not. (A strong sense of purpose in life does not, in other words, prevent the accumulation of potentially harmful material in the brain.)

But when the Rush researchers looked at participants whose brains, upon autopsy, had identical levels of plaque and tangles, and then correlated that with how those people had rated in terms of both cognitive functioning and a strong purpose of life -- controlling for other factors ranging from overall physical health, exercise, education, and IQ to personality traits and inclinations for depression and other psychological issues -- the people who rated highly on the purpose of life scale had a 30 percent lower rate of cognitive decline, over the whole study period, than those with low scores on the purpose of life scale.

What that means, according to the researchers, is that a strong sense of purpose in life evidently strengthens or provides a higher level of what's known as "neural reserve" in the brain. "Reserve" is the quality that allows many physiological systems in the human body to sustain what the Rush researchers call "extensive organ damage" before showing clinical deficits. Neurobiologists specializing in aging have already determined that this concept also applies to the human brain, because most of us -- regardless of whether we develop clinical symptoms of "Alzheimer's disease" or not -- will accumulate harmful amounts of plaque and tangles in our brains as we age. Autopsies show that. What the Rush researchers' results indicate is that having a strong sense of purpose in life, especially beyond the age of 80, can give a person's brain the ability to sustain that damage and continue to function at a much higher level.

"[The results suggest] that purpose in life is either somehow making someone's brain quicker, brighter, or a faster processor, or it's somehow contributing to the development of other systems that can come on board to compensate when your systems that support memory, language and those things are being littered with bad stuff," Boyle said. The researchers were surprised, she added, at just how "robustly protective" a strong sense of purpose in life really was.

"It's very hard to identify factors that provide reserve, because reserve is a very complex thing," she explained. "There's lots of bad stuff happening in the brain as people get older, and it's hard to protect against it. So we were excited to find something so positive and so helpful, so beneficial. We looked at a whole host of things that would indicate how cognitively active someone was, how socially connected they were, whether they were exercising a lot ... all those things that have been shown to be protective against cognitive outcomes. And the findings for purpose in life was robust even when we adjusted for those things. This suggests that purpose in life really does promote cognitive health as people get older."

I asked Boyle if it was possible that people who rated high on the "purpose of life" scale might have stronger, more curious, and more flexible brains to start with ... making their strong sense of purpose more of a result than a cause of their brain's resiliency.

"I think it's some of both," she answered. "There probably is some association with purpose in life and your computing power, because by virtue of the fact that someone is goal directed, and focused and intentional, they're probably engaging in a whole repertoire of behaviors that do grow their brain and help it become stronger and more flexible. And I think it's certainly the case that people with purpose in life probably engage in a whole wide array of behaviors that are good for them. That said, we did control for those things and we still see this protective effect, which suggests that there may be a direct effect, as well."

Interestingly enough, other research (notably, work by Dr. Carol Ryff, published by the Institute on Aging) has found that the kind of protective effect that purposeful living offers does not accrue from mere happiness, or what researchers call "hedonistic well-being." It would appear that humans are hard-wired a bit like working dogs -- we may dream about a life of ease aboard luxury yachts, but we are at our best when we are gainfully engaged in meaningful work.

In a speech he gave in 1993, John W. Gardner, who was President Lyndon Johnson's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare before founding Common Cause, the Experience Corps and, at the age of 76, taking a teaching position at Stanford University, said that he believed the key to a vital old age (he was 82 when he gave the speech) was to stay interested in life. "Everyone wants to be interesting," he said. "But the vitalizing thing is to be interested. Keep a sense of curiosity. Discover new things. Care. Risk failure. Reach out."

Twenty years later, the Rush University research team is essentially saying the same thing -- just with a bit more neurobiology to back it up. If we want to live well into old age, instead of just seeking happiness, pleasure, or a secure retirement of leisure, we should seek, instead, what the ancient Egyptians prayed to be given: "a god's duty; a burden that matters."

There was a bit of a buzz last week about Sky & Telescope's cover story for its April 2012 issue, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, which occurred on April 14, 1912. In the article, two astronomers from Texas State University-San Marcos, along with a senior contributing editor of Sky & Telescope, put forth an intriguing theory about what might have caused the high number of icebergs that made their way into the shipping lanes used by Titanic and other passenger and cargo ships in 1912.

The theory of the Texas astronomers is that a highly unusual confluence of cosmic events might have been an invisible causal factor in the wreck. Specifically, they explain that on January 4, 1912, the Moon passed closer to the Earth than it had in the previous 1,400 years. Not only did that event coincide with an almost full moon, which normally leads to higher tides each month, but it happened the day after the earth reached its annual perihelion, or its closest point to the Sun. The researchers theorize that the increased gravitational pulls of such a close pass of the Moon, at a full moon, when the Earth was at its closest point to the Sun, could have created a record-setting high tide.

How would a high tide lead to a dramatic increase in icebergs in the shipping lanes? The Texas astronomers theorize that perhaps it lifted "grounded" icebergs that had gotten stuck in shallow water on their southward voyage from Greenland and allowed them to continue their journey, causing an unusually high number of icebergs at the 42-degree latitude mark where the Titanic sank, with the loss of 1500 lives.

"Did the Moon Sink the Titanic?" reads the magazine's cover blurb. To be sure, it's a titillating headline and theory, which accounts for some of the wide play it received. In addition, the Titanic was such a terrible tragedy -- half the lives lost to icebergs over a 200-year period were lost that single night -- that it also seems poetically fitting for the calamity to have been caused by a literal lining up of the stars (well, celestial bodies), against astronomical odds. Almost as if the gods themselves had willed the accident to happen. Unfortunately, it appears that the causes of the accident are much more down to Earth.

Truth to tell, I'd never really given much thought before to how all those icebergs got in the Titanic's path in the first place. So I started looking into it.

It turns out that April through June are the high risk months of icebergs in the North Atlantic. As far back as the early 1800s, ship captains would note any sightings of icebergs in their ship's logs on North Atlantic crossings. That data was collected by the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office and reported in weekly notices to shipping companies. The data was incomplete, to be sure, although it got much better with time and the invention of the wireless radio. But as a result of the reports, a kind of "best practices" advice would be issued to shipping companies about the best routes to follow across the Atlantic to avoid iceberg risks.

In addition, as a result of the Titanic tragedy, the International Ice Patrol was formed in 1913, which sent ships to locate and note the position of icebergs in the North Atlantic (a task made much easier today with airplanes and satellites). And a look at the International Ice Patrol data on how many icebergs end up in potential shipping lanes each year is instructive:

There was a bit of a buzz last week about Sky & Telescope's cover story for its April 2012 issue, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, which occurred on April 14, 1912. In the article, two astronomers from Texas State University-San Marcos, along with a senior contributing editor of Sky & Telescope, put forth an intriguing theory about what might have caused the high number of icebergs that made their way into the shipping lanes used by Titanic and other passenger and cargo ships in 1912.

The theory of the Texas astronomers is that a highly unusual confluence of cosmic events might have been an invisible causal factor in the wreck. Specifically, they explain that on January 4, 1912, the Moon passed closer to the Earth than it had in the previous 1,400 years. Not only did that event coincide with an almost full moon, which normally leads to higher tides each month, but it happened the day after the earth reached its annual perihelion, or its closest point to the Sun. The researchers theorize that the increased gravitational pulls of such a close pass of the Moon, at a full moon, when the Earth was at its closest point to the Sun, could have created a record-setting high tide.

How would a high tide lead to a dramatic increase in icebergs in the shipping lanes? The Texas astronomers theorize that perhaps it lifted "grounded" icebergs that had gotten stuck in shallow water on their southward voyage from Greenland and allowed them to continue their journey, causing an unusually high number of icebergs at the 42-degree latitude mark where the Titanic sank, with the loss of 1500 lives.

"Did the Moon Sink the Titanic?" reads the magazine's cover blurb. To be sure, it's a titillating headline and theory, which accounts for some of the wide play it received. In addition, the Titanic was such a terrible tragedy -- half the lives lost to icebergs over a 200-year period were lost that single night -- that it also seems poetically fitting for the calamity to have been caused by a literal lining up of the stars (well, celestial bodies), against astronomical odds. Almost as if the gods themselves had willed the accident to happen. Unfortunately, it appears that the causes of the accident are much more down to Earth.

Truth to tell, I'd never really given much thought before to how all those icebergs got in the Titanic's path in the first place. So I started looking into it.

It turns out that April through June are the high risk months of icebergs in the North Atlantic. As far back as the early 1800s, ship captains would note any sightings of icebergs in their ship's logs on North Atlantic crossings. That data was collected by the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office and reported in weekly notices to shipping companies. The data was incomplete, to be sure, although it got much better with time and the invention of the wireless radio. But as a result of the reports, a kind of "best practices" advice would be issued to shipping companies about the best routes to follow across the Atlantic to avoid iceberg risks.

In addition, as a result of the Titanic tragedy, the International Ice Patrol was formed in 1913, which sent ships to locate and note the position of icebergs in the North Atlantic (a task made much easier today with airplanes and satellites). And a look at the International Ice Patrol data on how many icebergs end up in potential shipping lanes each year is instructive:

There was a bit of a buzz last week about Sky & Telescope's cover story for its April 2012 issue, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, which occurred on April 14, 1912. In the article, two astronomers from Texas State University-San Marcos, along with a senior contributing editor of Sky & Telescope, put forth an intriguing theory about what might have caused the high number of icebergs that made their way into the shipping lanes used by Titanic and other passenger and cargo ships in 1912.

The theory of the Texas astronomers is that a highly unusual confluence of cosmic events might have been an invisible causal factor in the wreck. Specifically, they explain that on January 4, 1912, the Moon passed closer to the Earth than it had in the previous 1,400 years. Not only did that event coincide with an almost full moon, which normally leads to higher tides each month, but it happened the day after the earth reached its annual perihelion, or its closest point to the Sun. The researchers theorize that the increased gravitational pulls of such a close pass of the Moon, at a full moon, when the Earth was at its closest point to the Sun, could have created a record-setting high tide.

How would a high tide lead to a dramatic increase in icebergs in the shipping lanes? The Texas astronomers theorize that perhaps it lifted "grounded" icebergs that had gotten stuck in shallow water on their southward voyage from Greenland and allowed them to continue their journey, causing an unusually high number of icebergs at the 42-degree latitude mark where the Titanic sank, with the loss of 1500 lives.

"Did the Moon Sink the Titanic?" reads the magazine's cover blurb. To be sure, it's a titillating headline and theory, which accounts for some of the wide play it received. In addition, the Titanic was such a terrible tragedy -- half the lives lost to icebergs over a 200-year period were lost that single night -- that it also seems poetically fitting for the calamity to have been caused by a literal lining up of the stars (well, celestial bodies), against astronomical odds. Almost as if the gods themselves had willed the accident to happen. Unfortunately, it appears that the causes of the accident are much more down to Earth.

Truth to tell, I'd never really given much thought before to how all those icebergs got in the Titanic's path in the first place. So I started looking into it.

It turns out that April through June are the high risk months of icebergs in the North Atlantic. As far back as the early 1800s, ship captains would note any sightings of icebergs in their ship's logs on North Atlantic crossings. That data was collected by the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office and reported in weekly notices to shipping companies. The data was incomplete, to be sure, although it got much better with time and the invention of the wireless radio. But as a result of the reports, a kind of "best practices" advice would be issued to shipping companies about the best routes to follow across the Atlantic to avoid iceberg risks.

In addition, as a result of the Titanic tragedy, the International Ice Patrol was formed in 1913, which sent ships to locate and note the position of icebergs in the North Atlantic (a task made much easier today with airplanes and satellites). And a look at the International Ice Patrol data on how many icebergs end up in potential shipping lanes each year is instructive:

Fox

At the beginning of World War II, blacks were not allowed to serve as pilots in the military. A 1925 U.S. Army War College report had gone so far as deeming them not just inferior, but also incapable of operating complex machinery. But the country desperately needed more pilots. So a small training program for black pilots was initiated at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. It was called the "Tuskegee Experiment" because the Air Corps brass fully expected the men in the program—many of whom were college-educated and quite accomplished—to fail. Some of the early white instructors in the program, in fact, tried to make sure that outcome came to pass. 

"All of the instructors were volunteers," Lt. Col. Floyd J. Carter, one of the Tuskegee Airmen, told me. "Now, some of them volunteered because they believed in the program. But others volunteered to try to keep us from succeeding. They'd call us stupid niggers and try all kinds of things to provoke us into getting angry, or coming back at them. Because the minute you did that, you washed out." 

There are some technical inaccuracies in 'Red Tails,' but one Tuskegee pilot told me the movie had actually brought back some memories that hurt.

This is point where George Lucas picks up their story. Red Tails is an action-adventure movie set on the Italian air field the 332nd used as its base from 1944 to 1945. Lucas also decided to focus on the action-adventure aspects of the story more than deep character development. As Lt. Col. Harry Stewart, another Tuskegee veteran, put it, "The movie did a good of of portraying the story. Lucas did it in his fashion, of course, with kind of a Star Wars glitter, but it did parallel the story of the real Tuskegee Airmen."

The pilots flew several different types of fighter aircraft, and flew both ground attack and air cover missions. They gained the respect of the Army Air Corps brass in Washington for their air-cover performance at Anzio and several other Allied beach landing operations in Italy—just as the movie portrays. But what they became famous for—indeed, almost legendary for—was their record escorting bombers on missions deep into German-occupied territory, including a massive raid on Berlin itself that Lucas makes the climax of the film. 

To understand the significance of those bomber escort missions, one first has to understand just how dangerous it was to be a bomber pilot in World War II.  In some of the early raids, fewer than half of the Allied bombers returned home from any given mission. There were some 8,000 U.S. heavy bombers lost in the European theater (each carrying 10 crew members)—more than twice the number of fighter airplanes lost there. And as the war progressed, Germany focused more of the Luftwaffe's efforts on shooting down Allied bombers. (One Tuskegee pilot told me that German pilots were awarded four kills for each four-engine bomber they shot down, as extra incentive.) 

Against those efforts and odds, the only protection the bomber crews had was their fighter escorts—especially the P-51s, which were the only fighters with enough range to stay with the bombers all the way to their targets and back. Of course, fighter pilots being what they are, they sometimes got drawn off the bomber formations to chase down enemy aircraft. What made the Tuskegee Airmen so legendary was their reputation for doggedly and effectively sticking with the bombers, fighting off or discouraging enemy attacks, rather than going off to seek their own glory. 

For many years, legend had it that the "Red Tails," (named after the bright red tail markings every plane in the 332nd carried) didn't lose a single bomber to enemy fire. The reality isn't quite that movie-perfect: Between June 1944 and May 1945, as many as 27 bombers might have been lost. However, that number (and some argue the number of bombers lost was less than that) still represents half the average number of bombers lost by other fighter groups. The reason for that achievement, according to every source and Tuskegee Airman I've consulted, was Col. Davis—who understood just how much was riding on how well his men followed their orders to protect the bombers. If they didn't turn in significant results on that front, it would give the group's critics a reason to shut them down—a threat the other fighter groups in Europe did not face.  

"We stuck a lot closer to [the bombers], because if you didn't, you were going to catch it when you got back," Lt.Col. Bob Friend, who was Col. Davis's wingman, told me with a chuckle. "You'd have hell to pay." 

As a result, by the end of the war, there were bomber crews specifically requesting the 332nd Red Tail pilots as their escorts. 

Sadly, the Tuskegee Airmen continued to experience racism, even after their heroic exploits in the skies over Germany. Some 160 pilots were arrested and three Tuskegee pilots were court-martialed for walking into an officer's club at Freeman Field, Indiana, in 1945, despite a direct order from Washington that all pilots, regardless of race, were to be given access to the club. The records of the pilots were not cleared until 1995, even though the "Freeman Field Mutiny," as it was called, was considered a critical step in the Civil Rights Movement and the integration of the armed services. 

So I get why George Lucas wanted to make a movie about these men. I also understand why he struggled for years to get a workable script, and why he really thinks the story needs to be told as—surprise!—a trilogy. There's just too much material in the story to fit into a two-hour movie. If this movie does well, Lucas has said he'd like to do a prequel (about the training) and a sequel (about what happened after the Airmen returned home). So Red Tails is a bit like Episode IV in the Star Wars series: a slice of the story, taken from the middle. And it helps if you understand that. 

Like Star Wars in its time, Red Tails also offers some impressive special effects, particularly in the quality of its combat scenes, which are entirely computer-generated. The only "real" airplanes in the movie are on the ground. But Lucas manages to make the P-51 and bomber combat scenes much more exciting that way, while still feeling plausible, for the most part. So, OK. There are some technical inaccuracies. (The closure rate of a German jet fighter flying head-on with a P-51 Mustang, for example, would be somewhere around 650 mph, which means they'd be in either other's sights and gun range for about a blink of an eye. And the fighters would have been flying above the bombers, not in between them.) But that subtle shading of truth helped to convey the emotions of battle well enough that one Tuskegee pilot told me the movie had actually brought back some memories that hurt. 

The character portrayals were also more realistic than I expected. I thought the two group commanders (Col. Bullard and Maj. Stance, played by Terrance Howard and Cuba Gooding, Jr.) were disappointingly two-dimensional—especially when compared to their real-life counterparts, who were two of the first pilots to complete the training and went on to win honors including (for Col. Davis) a Distinguished Flying Cross. But when I asked about the other fictional pilots in the squadron, Col. Friend laughed and said, "Not only were there guys just like that, I could almost tell you who those characters were supposed to be! Even if they were two or three guys in one!" 

The movie also has some flaws. Even biting off just a slice of the story, Lucas and screenwriter John Ridley clearly struggled with trying to fit too much material into too short a time. As a result, there are some awkwardly abrupt leaps in the story progression, and some heavy-handed dialogue that's used as a short cut for more time-consuming, dramatic exposition.  The story itself is also a challenge, because it lacks not only a single Indiana Jones or John Wayne-type of central hero, but also a single event or mission to anchor the story and build tension around. 

The Tuskegee Airmen weren't saving one soldier, or storming a beach, or taking out a Death Star. Their enemy and challenges were multifaceted, and their triumph was a series of quiet victories that evolved over the course of years. They proved they could be the equal of white pilots. They brought bomber crews safely home. They were instrumental in starting to change the attitude toward blacks within the military. They maintained their dignity in the face of continuing discrimination and humiliation, back home. And they went on to be exemplary role models and lead extraordinary lives of service, no matter where they went. 

That's amazing stuff, but it doesn't fit a typical screenplay or story structure—which is doubtless one of the reasons Lucas struggled with the script for so many years. Another reason the film took so long to make it to the big screen, however, is that Hollywood (according to Lucas) was unwilling to back a movie with an all-black cast, because the studios didn't think a "black" movie had enough box-office and international sales potential to pay off. 

For my part, I wished the film had contained some flashbacks that showed the difficult road the Tuskegee pilots had traveled to get to that base in Italy, and had further emphasized of the greater impact the group had. That said, it did a great job of portraying, in the style of the film Memphis Belle, a piece of the Tuskegee Airmen's experience as combat pilots in a global, all-out war, with George Lucas-style special effects and action sequences. 

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If those ordinary pilots had happened to rescue the Ark of the Covenant, blow up a Death Star, or save a Republic single-handedly, the movie would have a much more action-adventure-worthy satisfactory and punchy ending. But the ending of this story has one quality none of the others can match: It really happened. It happened to real people—some of whom are still alive to talk about it. Sure, maybe the happy scene with the bomber pilots in the Italian officer's bar didn't actually take place. But as Col. Friend said at the end of our conversation, "You know, I went to a bomber group reunion last year, in San Diego. And people came up to me, and they all said, 'I want to thank you for what you did for my grandfather. For my father. For me.'" He paused for a moment. "That felt really good," he said. 

In case anyone's wondering, seeing their story finally make it to the big screen feels pretty good to them, too. It's been a long time coming. 

Fox

At the beginning of World War II, blacks were not allowed to serve as pilots in the military. A 1925 U.S. Army War College report had gone so far as deeming them not just inferior, but also incapable of operating complex machinery. But the country desperately needed more pilots. So a small training program for black pilots was initiated at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. It was called the "Tuskegee Experiment" because the Air Corps brass fully expected the men in the program—many of whom were college-educated and quite accomplished—to fail. Some of the early white instructors in the program, in fact, tried to make sure that outcome came to pass. 

"All of the instructors were volunteers," Lt. Col. Floyd J. Carter, one of the Tuskegee Airmen, told me. "Now, some of them volunteered because they believed in the program. But others volunteered to try to keep us from succeeding. They'd call us stupid niggers and try all kinds of things to provoke us into getting angry, or coming back at them. Because the minute you did that, you washed out." 

There are some technical inaccuracies in 'Red Tails,' but one Tuskegee pilot told me the movie had actually brought back some memories that hurt.

This is point where George Lucas picks up their story. Red Tails is an action-adventure movie set on the Italian air field the 332nd used as its base from 1944 to 1945. Lucas also decided to focus on the action-adventure aspects of the story more than deep character development. As Lt. Col. Harry Stewart, another Tuskegee veteran, put it, "The movie did a good of of portraying the story. Lucas did it in his fashion, of course, with kind of a Star Wars glitter, but it did parallel the story of the real Tuskegee Airmen."

The pilots flew several different types of fighter aircraft, and flew both ground attack and air cover missions. They gained the respect of the Army Air Corps brass in Washington for their air-cover performance at Anzio and several other Allied beach landing operations in Italy—just as the movie portrays. But what they became famous for—indeed, almost legendary for—was their record escorting bombers on missions deep into German-occupied territory, including a massive raid on Berlin itself that Lucas makes the climax of the film. 

To understand the significance of those bomber escort missions, one first has to understand just how dangerous it was to be a bomber pilot in World War II.  In some of the early raids, fewer than half of the Allied bombers returned home from any given mission. There were some 8,000 U.S. heavy bombers lost in the European theater (each carrying 10 crew members)—more than twice the number of fighter airplanes lost there. And as the war progressed, Germany focused more of the Luftwaffe's efforts on shooting down Allied bombers. (One Tuskegee pilot told me that German pilots were awarded four kills for each four-engine bomber they shot down, as extra incentive.) 

Against those efforts and odds, the only protection the bomber crews had was their fighter escorts—especially the P-51s, which were the only fighters with enough range to stay with the bombers all the way to their targets and back. Of course, fighter pilots being what they are, they sometimes got drawn off the bomber formations to chase down enemy aircraft. What made the Tuskegee Airmen so legendary was their reputation for doggedly and effectively sticking with the bombers, fighting off or discouraging enemy attacks, rather than going off to seek their own glory. 

For many years, legend had it that the "Red Tails," (named after the bright red tail markings every plane in the 332nd carried) didn't lose a single bomber to enemy fire. The reality isn't quite that movie-perfect: Between June 1944 and May 1945, as many as 27 bombers might have been lost. However, that number (and some argue the number of bombers lost was less than that) still represents half the average number of bombers lost by other fighter groups. The reason for that achievement, according to every source and Tuskegee Airman I've consulted, was Col. Davis—who understood just how much was riding on how well his men followed their orders to protect the bombers. If they didn't turn in significant results on that front, it would give the group's critics a reason to shut them down—a threat the other fighter groups in Europe did not face.  

"We stuck a lot closer to [the bombers], because if you didn't, you were going to catch it when you got back," Lt.Col. Bob Friend, who was Col. Davis's wingman, told me with a chuckle. "You'd have hell to pay." 

As a result, by the end of the war, there were bomber crews specifically requesting the 332nd Red Tail pilots as their escorts. 

Sadly, the Tuskegee Airmen continued to experience racism, even after their heroic exploits in the skies over Germany. Some 160 pilots were arrested and three Tuskegee pilots were court-martialed for walking into an officer's club at Freeman Field, Indiana, in 1945, despite a direct order from Washington that all pilots, regardless of race, were to be given access to the club. The records of the pilots were not cleared until 1995, even though the "Freeman Field Mutiny," as it was called, was considered a critical step in the Civil Rights Movement and the integration of the armed services. 

So I get why George Lucas wanted to make a movie about these men. I also understand why he struggled for years to get a workable script, and why he really thinks the story needs to be told as—surprise!—a trilogy. There's just too much material in the story to fit into a two-hour movie. If this movie does well, Lucas has said he'd like to do a prequel (about the training) and a sequel (about what happened after the Airmen returned home). So Red Tails is a bit like Episode IV in the Star Wars series: a slice of the story, taken from the middle. And it helps if you understand that. 

Like Star Wars in its time, Red Tails also offers some impressive special effects, particularly in the quality of its combat scenes, which are entirely computer-generated. The only "real" airplanes in the movie are on the ground. But Lucas manages to make the P-51 and bomber combat scenes much more exciting that way, while still feeling plausible, for the most part. So, OK. There are some technical inaccuracies. (The closure rate of a German jet fighter flying head-on with a P-51 Mustang, for example, would be somewhere around 650 mph, which means they'd be in either other's sights and gun range for about a blink of an eye. And the fighters would have been flying above the bombers, not in between them.) But that subtle shading of truth helped to convey the emotions of battle well enough that one Tuskegee pilot told me the movie had actually brought back some memories that hurt. 

The character portrayals were also more realistic than I expected. I thought the two group commanders (Col. Bullard and Maj. Stance, played by Terrance Howard and Cuba Gooding, Jr.) were disappointingly two-dimensional—especially when compared to their real-life counterparts, who were two of the first pilots to complete the training and went on to win honors including (for Col. Davis) a Distinguished Flying Cross. But when I asked about the other fictional pilots in the squadron, Col. Friend laughed and said, "Not only were there guys just like that, I could almost tell you who those characters were supposed to be! Even if they were two or three guys in one!" 

The movie also has some flaws. Even biting off just a slice of the story, Lucas and screenwriter John Ridley clearly struggled with trying to fit too much material into too short a time. As a result, there are some awkwardly abrupt leaps in the story progression, and some heavy-handed dialogue that's used as a short cut for more time-consuming, dramatic exposition.  The story itself is also a challenge, because it lacks not only a single Indiana Jones or John Wayne-type of central hero, but also a single event or mission to anchor the story and build tension around. 

The Tuskegee Airmen weren't saving one soldier, or storming a beach, or taking out a Death Star. Their enemy and challenges were multifaceted, and their triumph was a series of quiet victories that evolved over the course of years. They proved they could be the equal of white pilots. They brought bomber crews safely home. They were instrumental in starting to change the attitude toward blacks within the military. They maintained their dignity in the face of continuing discrimination and humiliation, back home. And they went on to be exemplary role models and lead extraordinary lives of service, no matter where they went. 

That's amazing stuff, but it doesn't fit a typical screenplay or story structure—which is doubtless one of the reasons Lucas struggled with the script for so many years. Another reason the film took so long to make it to the big screen, however, is that Hollywood (according to Lucas) was unwilling to back a movie with an all-black cast, because the studios didn't think a "black" movie had enough box-office and international sales potential to pay off. 

For my part, I wished the film had contained some flashbacks that showed the difficult road the Tuskegee pilots had traveled to get to that base in Italy, and had further emphasized of the greater impact the group had. That said, it did a great job of portraying, in the style of the film Memphis Belle, a piece of the Tuskegee Airmen's experience as combat pilots in a global, all-out war, with George Lucas-style special effects and action sequences. 

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If those ordinary pilots had happened to rescue the Ark of the Covenant, blow up a Death Star, or save a Republic single-handedly, the movie would have a much more action-adventure-worthy satisfactory and punchy ending. But the ending of this story has one quality none of the others can match: It really happened. It happened to real people—some of whom are still alive to talk about it. Sure, maybe the happy scene with the bomber pilots in the Italian officer's bar didn't actually take place. But as Col. Friend said at the end of our conversation, "You know, I went to a bomber group reunion last year, in San Diego. And people came up to me, and they all said, 'I want to thank you for what you did for my grandfather. For my father. For me.'" He paused for a moment. "That felt really good," he said. 

In case anyone's wondering, seeing their story finally make it to the big screen feels pretty good to them, too. It's been a long time coming. 

Question: Billy Beane and the people who agreed with his philosophy operated under the assumption that the old way of analyzing ball-players was mostly about a lot of talking and guessing and that they had a more scientific way of going about this. What was your sense of this?

CC: "I retired in 2000, so the Moneyball approach started a bit later. The thing that struck me about the movie is that the A's were actually pretty good. They had Eric Chavez, a young third baseman who had been playing for a number of years. Miguel Tejada had over 30 home runs and over 100 RBIs that year, I think. Jemaine Dye was on that team and had a great year. They also had Terrance Long, who was in the running for Rookie of the Year the year before. 

But most importantly, and this is the film's major problem, I think--the A's had a great pitching staff. They had Tim Hudson, who led the league in ERA and wins a number of years in a row. They had Mark Mulder, who won 19 games, and Barry Zito, who won 23 and was on the top of his game. The pitching was outstanding, but the movie doesn't even mention those guys. So this team was not like the Bad News Bears.

In terms of the Moneyball philosophy, I guess it makes sense to combine people on the team who can get on base consistently with guys who can drive them in. And as it said at the end of the movie, the Red Sox used this philosophy and went on to win the World Series. The Sox had many great players at the time and they are not a small market team, so they spend money. So I don't think it is a matter of assembling a team of all players that have a high On Base Percentage, which is what the movie portrayed. You have to have some people who can drive those guys in quickly."

Question: What was realistic about the film?

CC: "What was realistic was that Beane made a decision about how to re-create the process of how to win in a small baseball market. In that respect, it was unique, as they were trying to find a way to compete, and they had a good year. But, as I said, they had a really good team those years."

In other words, the simple, win-by-numbers revolutionary secret that made Moneyball such a phenomenon ("You, too, can beat the Yankees (or any other competition) at just half the cost!") appears, on closer inspection, to be not quite so simple. That's true of most easy, secret formulas for success, of course. But in baseball, as opposed to business, happiness, health, or other fields where sure-fire strategies for success abound, I think we're actually half glad to discover that truth.

Question: Billy Beane and the people who agreed with his philosophy operated under the assumption that the old way of analyzing ball-players was mostly about a lot of talking and guessing and that they had a more scientific way of going about this. What was your sense of this?

CC: "I retired in 2000, so the Moneyball approach started a bit later. The thing that struck me about the movie is that the A's were actually pretty good. They had Eric Chavez, a young third baseman who had been playing for a number of years. Miguel Tejada had over 30 home runs and over 100 RBIs that year, I think. Jemaine Dye was on that team and had a great year. They also had Terrance Long, who was in the running for Rookie of the Year the year before. 

But most importantly, and this is the film's major problem, I think--the A's had a great pitching staff. They had Tim Hudson, who led the league in ERA and wins a number of years in a row. They had Mark Mulder, who won 19 games, and Barry Zito, who won 23 and was on the top of his game. The pitching was outstanding, but the movie doesn't even mention those guys. So this team was not like the Bad News Bears.

In terms of the Moneyball philosophy, I guess it makes sense to combine people on the team who can get on base consistently with guys who can drive them in. And as it said at the end of the movie, the Red Sox used this philosophy and went on to win the World Series. The Sox had many great players at the time and they are not a small market team, so they spend money. So I don't think it is a matter of assembling a team of all players that have a high On Base Percentage, which is what the movie portrayed. You have to have some people who can drive those guys in quickly."

Question: What was realistic about the film?

CC: "What was realistic was that Beane made a decision about how to re-create the process of how to win in a small baseball market. In that respect, it was unique, as they were trying to find a way to compete, and they had a good year. But, as I said, they had a really good team those years."

In other words, the simple, win-by-numbers revolutionary secret that made Moneyball such a phenomenon ("You, too, can beat the Yankees (or any other competition) at just half the cost!") appears, on closer inspection, to be not quite so simple. That's true of most easy, secret formulas for success, of course. But in baseball, as opposed to business, happiness, health, or other fields where sure-fire strategies for success abound, I think we're actually half glad to discover that truth.

A Palo Alto resident looks upon the flowers, candles, and apples placed on the sidewalk outside Steve Jobs's home / Reuters

A Palo Alto resident looks upon the flowers, candles, and apples placed on the sidewalk outside Steve Jobs's home / Reuters

Family members of victims console each other as they gather to pay their respect at the reflecting pool at Ground Zero during the eighth anniversary commemoration ceremony / Reuters

Family members of victims console each other as they gather to pay their respect at the reflecting pool at Ground Zero during the eighth anniversary commemoration ceremony / Reuters

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Reuters

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