Fletcher DeLancey's Blog, page 4

Brexit view from the continent

Yesterday, the papers were full of news of Teresa May’s fruitless attempt to break the negotiating stance of the EU regarding Brexit. Or at least, the UK papers were full of that news. Continental papers, not so much. It was a fascinating real-time example of the wildly divergent view that different people, cultures, and governments can have of the same event.

When the Brexit vote hit in June 2016, it was front page news everywhere in Europe. It continued to be front page news as the ramifications were explored and as the UK invoked Article 50, which activated an unstoppable two-year clock.

With the clock now counting down the final months, the UK continues to be consumed with Brexit, both in its government and its news coverage. Over here on the continent, however, interest in Brexit has declined on a daily basis. The EU has plenty of things to be concerned about: the migration issue, Italy’s financial stability, the alarming assault on democratic norms in Hungary and Poland. And of course, every country has its own internal concerns. Brexit is considered regrettable and costly, but it is not by any means the top news, and hasn’t been for a long time.

Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Theresa May has fought a running battle in her own cabinet between hard Brexiteers who crave no deal at all (also called “crashing out”) and the moderates who are horrified at the towering economic, environmental, and social costs of that. Her solution was a proposal called Chequers, which made absolutely no one happy — not the hardliners, not the moderates, and not the EU negotiator, whose stance has been unchanged since this whole thing started. So the process has been something like this:

EU: We will not accept a deal that alters A, B, C, or D, any of which would undermine the integrity of our union. We will negotiate on the other items.

UK: We want to change A and B.

EU: No. A, B, C, and D are non-negotiable.

UK: What if we only change A and B a little bit?

EU: A, B, C, and D are non-negotiable.

UK: Okay, here’s this deal called Chequers. It changes A and B, but you really need to give us some political cover here.

EU: A, B, C, and D are non-negotiable.

That last bit occurred Thursday, when Theresa May went to an EU summit in Salzburg to present her Chequers plan. The EU negotiator had already dismissed the plan as unworkable months earlier, practically the day after it came out. Everyone has known the EU would not accept it.

The EU did not accept it.

The following day, the UK news was full of the “ambush” at Salzburg, saying Theresa May was “blindsided,” “humiliated,” and other choice descriptive phrases. It’s as if no one could have possibly predicted such an outcome. Except that over here on the continent, everyone predicted that outcome. How can that be an “ambush”?

Here, then, is an illustration of different views of the same event. First, a pro-Brexit British tabloid called The Sun:

The tommy guns are a nice touch, as is the subheader: “We can’t wait to shake ourselves free of the two-bit mobsters who run the European Union.”

The Times was more sober, but still apparently astonished:

The Guardian has a roundup of all the UK front pages on Friday. They’re all along the same theme.

Meanwhile, here is the front page of one of Portugal’s largest newspapers:

The prime photo real estate goes to Portugal’s president, who was a professor of law before taking office. He was teaching one final class.

Over on the right is the news about Salzburg. The headline is: “EU says to May that her plan for Brexit is unacceptable.” And right below that is the headline, “Should it be legal? Debate joins ex-prostitutes in Lisbon.”

As you can see, it wasn’t big news.

“Portugal is not the USA”

I’m guessing this was not trumpeted all over the US news, but the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, met with Trump at the White House last week.

The meeting started off with a handshake. It’s clear from this video that Marcelo had undergone diplomatic training in how to deal with Trump’s infamous “grab and pull” handshake-disguised-as-dick-waving.

It seems the training went well.

This isn’t what made the Portuguese headlines, however. The big news here was Trump’s attempt at a joke and Marcelo’s withering reply.

It started when Marcelo commented that if Trump was going to be in Russia to meet Putin, he should attend the World Cup, where the greatest footballer in the world was playing.

Trump joked, “Could Cristiano run against you [for president]?”

“He wouldn’t win,” Marcelo replied instantly. “Portugal is not the US; it’s a little different.”

The Portuguese loved this. Because it’s true. Cristiano Ronaldo might be the most famous person in Portugal (and surely one of the wealthiest), but the Portuguese are not swayed by fame or wealth in their elections.

Not to mention that these days, most citizens of Europe are looking across the pond in utter horror. Having our president affirm that Portugal isn’t the US was a point of civic pride.

The exchange made headlines the next day:

Here’s another Marcelo story that I’m sure no one outside Portugal has heard: on his first day as President, he walked to work. He happened to live near the Palácio Belém (the Portuguese version of the White House), so why not?

No, Portugal is not the US. It’s a little different.

The giant salmon was my favorite

This video is a 100% accurate depiction of my home state. More or less.

The right-wing megacorp controlling your local news

Once upon a time, your local news stations were a reliable bastion of independent journalism. Chance are good that isn’t the case now.

If your local station is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, then it is required to run certain news and opinion pieces produced by Sinclair, not by any local journalist. It is required to air a daily “Terrorism Alert Desk” segment — also produced by Sinclair — regardless of any actual alert or danger. It is required to read transcripts written by Sinclair. Those programs and transcripts serve a political agenda.

This brilliant video demonstrating the power of Sinclair’s propaganda machine is just 1:38 minutes long and might freeze your blood.

If the word “Orwellian” just popped into your head, you are not alone.

An excellent Guardian article delves into Sinclair and its newfound power under the Trump administration, which is busily relaxing regulations that had previously limited Sinclair’s reach. Michael Copps, a former FCC chairman appointed by George W Bush, calls Sinclair “probably the most dangerous company most people have never heard of.”

John Oliver ran an informative and darkly humorous segment on Sinclair as well — if you don’t want to dig into the Guardian article, watch it below.

Wikipedia has a list of stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group. I checked it to see which Oregon stations are under its thumb, and found that Sinclair has a strong hold on Oregon broadcasting:

KVAL and KMTR in Eugene, the CBS and NBC affiliates (which also air in Coos Bay and Roseburg on four satellite stations).
KTVL in Medford.
KATU and KUNP in Portland, the ABC and Univision affiliates.

Between those five stations and their four satellites, Sinclair can reach the majority of Oregon households. The only major city it doesn’t cover is Salem.

Frightening. And very likely to get worse.

Why our oven clock is slow

File this one under “I’ll be danged, I didn’t know that.”

Over the last couple of months, the clocks on our oven and microwave have been…off. First a minute, then a couple, then five, then six. I hadn’t consciously thought about why, but simply did what we humans are so good at and adjusted, because I was too lazy to reset the clock. “Hm, the oven clock says it’s 12:45, so that means it’s 12:51.”

It turns out that this was happening all over Europe. And the reason is…Kosovo.

There are two important bits to understanding this bizarre situation:

1. Cheap electronic clocks don’t tell time via a quartz crystal or an internet connection, which are relatively expensive methods. Instead, they use the cheaper method of synchronizing to the frequency of the mains electricity supply, which should be precisely 50 Hz.

2. Europe has the world’s largest synchronous electricity grid. Regional power companies coordinate with each other to keep electricity moving smoothly across the borders of 25 countries — and to maintain the frequency at 50 Hz.

But from mid-January to March 6, a tiny bit more power was being consumed than produced, leading to an average Europe-wide grid frequency of 49.996 Hz. So for around two months, all of those cheap clocks that tell time by frequency synchronization were convinced that time was moving a tiny bit slower.

Why is it Kosovo’s fault?

Having only declared independence from Serbia ten years ago, Kosovo is not a unified nation (or even fully recognized). Many in the north still consider themselves Serbian and refuse to pay Kosovo for their electricity, even though that’s where it’s generated. Thus Kosovo is unable to bill for some of its output, which of course affects production. In January, Kosovo failed to balance this out, and for two months continued to produce less power than was used. This net loss affected the entire European grid, reducing the grid-wide frequency by 0.004 Hz.

And all of our cheap clocks ran slow.

The Powers That Be (literally, ha) tell us that Kosovo has rebalanced and that the grid is recovering, but getting back to 50 Hz might take a bit of time. And since the political situation that caused the issue is unsolved, there’s no telling when/if it might happen again.

In the meantime, my expensive and extremely accurate laptop clock tells me it’s currently 13:33. The oven says it’s 13:27. I guess it’s time to finally fix it.

Long live the humanities

In an essay for the Chronicle of Higher Education, English professor Nina Handler laments the extinction of her species:

Charles Smithson, a character in John Fowles’s 1969 novel, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, is a wealthy, idle gentleman who faces the challenge of realizing that he, as a type, is becoming extinct. The novel is set in 1867, and Charles, a devotee of Darwin, considers the recently published On the Origin of Species to be his bible. His social class will cease to exist within a generation, and Charles has both the wisdom to see that he must adapt and the self-awareness to know that he is incapable of it. He is being swept away by evolutionary change but is helpless to change his fate.

I am a college English instructor. This is a bad time for my species — and a bad time for the study of English. In academe, we are witnessing an extinction of fields of study once thought essential. I teach at a private university that has just canceled majors in English, religious studies, philosophy, and music. The English major is becoming the useless gentleman, the Charles Smithson, of the modern university.

It’s a disheartening essay, particularly when she points out that as education becomes merely a hoop to jump through in order to find work, the values assigned to that education relate solely to its vocational utility.

I fully understand that, because when I declared for English as my major — way back in the mid-80s — everyone had the same question: “Oh, so you’re going to be an English teacher?” As if getting a bachelor’s degree in the study of literature could not possibly qualify me for anything other than turning around to teach others to study the same thing.

“No,” was my answer.

“Then what?”

“I don’t know.” At the age of 19, how would I know what I planned to do with my life? I thought the point of a university education was to equip me with the tools I could use to figure that out — and for the rest of my days thereafter.

Thirty years ago, most people could not comprehend choosing a university degree that had no immediate and obvious path to employment. I don’t think what Nina Handler is experiencing is new. But I do think it has gotten much worse.

What I know for certain is that my English major taught me critical thinking skills. It taught me philosophy and the universality of human experience. It taught me about worlds, times, and cultures I could never live in, but could visit in my mind. It led me to the realization that I was not just an American, but a citizen of the world living on a tiny point in the vast tide of human history.

As I watch the alarming rise of racism, nationalism, and other-blaming hatred in my home nation, in post-Brexit Britain, and in too many other places, I don’t think it’s the humanities that are in danger. I think it’s what the humanities create: educated citizens of the world who care about more than just themselves. People who see the improvement of others’ lives as a benefit to all, not a threat to their pocketbook or sense of identity. People who respond to differences with curiosity, not fear.

But as a humanities major, I know that all of this has happened before. I know the horrors it can lead to. I also know that humans have approached this brink — and gone over it — time and time again. Yet even in the worst of times, there are brilliant lights of our species’ greatest potential. There are creators of wondrous music, art, and literature. There are scientific breakthroughs. There are people who risk themselves to help others they don’t even know, simply because it is the right thing to do.

If I could go back to my 19-year-old self, I would offer a different answer to that question of “What are you going to do with an English degree?”

I would say: I am going to live a rich, diverse life that takes me places I never expected. And I am going to hope.

Happy holidays to all those who celebrate in their diverse ways.

(I took the photo at top in Normandy, France. Les Breves was sculpted by Anilore Banon, and stands in the sands of Omaha Beach as an homage to the many who died there in order to liberate a captive land. The three sections represent three elements: the Wings of Hope, Rise Freedom, and the Wings of Fraternity. Created for a temporary installation, this luminous art has been so popular that it remains indefinitely, a blending of art and nature: humanities at their finest.)

MIND BLOWN: the lightning edition

Stop what you’re doing and watch this video. But watch it the right way: full screen, in a darkened room, and with a good sound system turned up.

This is 3:18 minutes of the best lightning footage I’ve ever seen, cut and edited into a jaw-dropping video with music that perfectly complements the drama. After watching it with me, my son said, “I never knew lightning moved that way.”

I said, “No one did until a few years ago. The technology didn’t exist to capture something that moved at the speed of light.”

For me, geek that I am, one of the coolest things about this video is that it exists. I remember when the first footage was made available from a scientific study of lightning that involved a concrete bunker (for sheltering the scientists), an electrical system designed to attract a lightning bolt, and what was then a state-of-the-art slow motion camera. The scientists shot unending amounts of film recording absolutely nothing when their system didn’t attract a bolt, but eventually managed to capture a few important seconds amongst all those hours and hours of footage. Their published article, with accompanying video, changed the body of thought on how lightning traveled.

That wasn’t very long ago — but technology has moved only a little slower than the speed of light.

Photographer Dustin Farrell spent the summer of 2017 chasing storms while toting a 4K camera rig that takes 1000 frames per second of raw, uncompressed footage. (For comparison: most movies are shot at 24 frames per second.) After driving 20,000 miles over a 30-day period, he had recorded 10 terabytes of data, which he then whittled down to 3:18 of spectacular video.

What enabled his success was not just the ultrafast frame rate of modern cameras, but also the recording technology in which a camera constantly records, writes to RAM, then overwrites, and overwrites again…until a button is pressed to save the RAM contents. This is the tech currently used in police body cameras. It’s why, when an officer activates a body cam, the recording actually starts 30 seconds earlier. It’s not that the camera is a time machine, it’s that it is saving the footage already recorded but not yet overwritten.

You can imagine how handy this is in taking video of lightning. Now, instead of “rolling film” for an hour-long storm and waiting for a bolt to happen, Farrell could simply press a button the moment he saw a bolt and voila, he caught it.

So…take a look at what he caught.

(Hat tip to Ally.)

A side note to Anita Hill’s story

Many of us are remembering Anita Hill’s trailblazing courage these days, as the dams are breaking and so many women are telling their stories of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

What is rarely recalled now is that the 1991 Senate confirmation vote was a huge fight, with six Democratic senators switching their “yea” votes to “nay” over the weekend after the hearings. It wasn’t enough, and Clarence Thomas was confirmed by a vote of 52-48.

Only two Republicans voted against Thomas. One was James Jeffords from Vermont. The other was Bob Packwood from Oregon.

One year later, we Oregonians realized the great irony of Packwood rebelling against his party to prevent a sexual abuser from being seated on the Supreme Court. Ten women, most former lobbyists or Packwood staffers, came forward to accuse him of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault. The Washington Post had the story but held it until after the November election, in which Packwood defeated Democratic challenger Les AuCoin. (I remember that race well.)

For three years, my state was roiled by the ongoing investigation into Packwood. Eventually, a total of 19 women were willing to follow the example of courage that Anita Hill burned into our national consciousness.

Packwood’s diary became a topic of water-cooler conversation and considerable legal wrangling. Could it be subpoenaed, or was it covered by the Fifth Amendment? He eventually turned over 5,000 pages to the Senate Ethics Committee, but when it became obvious that those pages were edited, the committee demanded another 3,200 pages. Packwood refused.

And here is where Packwood made his fatal mistake. Angry at what he perceived as being singled out, he issued a veiled threat to the effect that many others in the Senate had done the exact same thing (which of course we know was true) — and demanded that his hearings be public.

That did not go over well. The Senate Ethics Committee recommended that Packwood be expelled from the Senate “for sexual and official misconduct,” a truly nuclear option that forced Packwood to resign.

In the special election to replace him, Oregon elected then-US Representative Ron Wyden, a Democrat. He has since become a powerful voice for affordable health care, human rights, and civil liberties, while voting against the war in Iraq and the reauthorization of the Patriot Act. He has done a great deal to raise awareness of, and attempt to limit, the vast American surveillance state currently spying on its citizens. In short, he has been everything I could hope for in a senator.

Meanwhile, Bob Packwood retired on a comfortable $90,000/year pension with full benefits. For years, I had a printout of one of his diary entries on my office wall, because it was so indicative of the entitled mindset that eventually brought him down. It was from November 8, 1993, and said:

“Well, I did wrong, and I know I did wrong, but I’ve been caught, so I’ll call it misjudgment.”

Portugal wildfire (we’re okay)

I’ve had quite a few emails from readers asking if we’re okay after learning of the horrific wildfire in central Portugal. So to start out: we are fine; we live a half-day’s drive from the area where this occurred. Nor do we know anyone who was injured or lost their homes. Thank you so much for thinking of us.

It was and continues to be a terrible tragedy. Portugal is currently in the midst of three days of national mourning. So far there are 64 confirmed deaths, and 40 villages in the area have been evacuated. Forty villages!

The fire started from a “dry thunderstorm,” which means a thunderstorm in which the air is so hot that the rain evaporates before it can hit the ground. But the wind and the lightning strikes are still there.

This fire moved horrifically fast, due to the heat wave that has gripped Portugal (and much of Europe) for the last week or so. Many of the dead were caught on a highway, trying to evacuate when the fire jumped the road. They burned to death in their cars.

But there was one story, printed in the BBC, that really captured my attention because it so beautifully illustrates who the Portuguese are.

We found ourselves stranded in a village called Mó Grande, just off of the IC8 motorway; ourselves and others were directed there by an officer from the IC8.

As we drove up the mountain road you could see the flames jumping across from one side of the valley to the other. The accompanying wind threw branches at the car but you couldn’t stop, you could feel the heat.

Eventually we reached the small village at a crossroads surrounded by fire. Locals and ourselves were crying, overwhelmed by the heat and speed of the fire. It was dark, so dark, among the flames.

A man shouted for us to come and take refuge in his home, along with his mother. Several of us did.

His mum had an annex flat downstairs, where it was cooler and out of the way of the fire. During the time there, more people were arriving, knocking on the door, people just congregated where there were signs of life.

The guy’s mum poured us wine, and it would have been pleasant if it wasn’t for the circumstances.

[…] As the power went off, the flames hit hard, a fiery red tornado passed the windows. We crouched on the floor for a good hour, trying to breathe, praying, crying. […] Eventually the fire passed and we emerged to see the smouldering remains of the village. Miraculously, our house and the one next door did not burn.

And that, in a nutshell, is the beautiful hospitality of the Portuguese people. Not just that they would invite strangers into their homes in an emergency — that kindness is not limited to the Portuguese — but that they would pour wine for their guests during the apocalypse! That story did not surprise me at all, but it did make me smile in recognition.

I love my adopted nation for many reasons. This is just one of them.

*****

Now for a special note for readers of this blog. My Chronicles of Alsea website is being rebuilt, and I am not posting to this blog any longer. I am posting to my original Oregon Expat blog until the website is relaunched. At that point I will stop trying to maintain two separate blogs (which never worked well for me), and put all of my geekery onto the new blog, so that all of my work can be in one place.

Please save my Oregon Expat link in your bookmarks, or better yet: go there now and subscribe to the email list. That way, when I launch the new site, you’ll know about it right away and won’t be wondering why I never post on the old blog any longer.

See you over on Oregon Expat!

Raise your hand if you remember the modem dial-up tone

In this video from Wired, two sonic branding experts take us on a tour of the world’s most recognizable tones, chimes, and sound blends, and explain why they impact us the way they do. Sonic branding is designed to grab us in certain ways, and some of these sounds are very much embedded in our psyches.

They also date us. I remember the first time I heard the THX sound in a theater — it blew my eyebrows back and fried my brain. That sound was amazing. And then there’s the scratchy, awful, atonal, teeth-gritting sound of a modem dialup. Do you recall scrambling to turn down the volume so you wouldn’t wake up your parents/roommate/anyone else in the house with that infernal screeching? And yet it was a wonderful sound because it signified the opening of a gateway to a whole new world.

It occurred to me that my 16-year-old son has never heard that sound in real usage and won’t have any of the associations with it that I do. But then, he would probably recognize all of the gaming console sounds while I don’t know a single one of them.

Sounds are closely tied to memory and emotion. Sound embeds itself in our lives. The fact that some of these sounds make me smile or feel nostalgic is a testament to their power. It’s no wonder that Apple’s discard of the classic Mac start-up chime in the new MacBook Pros has left so many users feeling bereft. (But take heart: you can get it back with a simple Terminal command.)

And oh, that Law and Order dum dum. Who knew it was supposed to be the sound of a jail door closing?

(Edited to add: I’ve just learned that the embedded video is not viewable in the US. Try this site, which seems to have bypassed the regional restrictions.)