S2 Episode 9

 S2 Ep 9
Welcome, and thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube! I’m you host, Bob Woodley. On this episode, we’ll explore the lasting effects of the Scopes Monkey Trial, what happens when government tries to control the language you speak, and what happens when government tries to control what you think. But first, (not the Headlines!

It looks like we have company! Yes, all of us. The United Nation’s latest report as cited by our world in data dot org says the population of the planet will reach 8-billion by the end of the year. We’re currently adding a billion people every 12 years, and we hit 7-billion in 2011. This billion more people every 12 years trend began in the mid 1970’s, and has remained about the same ever since. The estimates moving forward are predicted to fall, though. The latest population growth rates are falling in most parts of the world, and have been since the 1960’s. China, Russia, eastern Europe and the norther area of South America are experiencing the lowest growth rates, with all but China in the negative, and China remaining relatively unchanged. Although the United States is still maintaining growth, it’s the lowest rate in decades. Part of the current results are the 15-million people who died from Covid-19. But the long-term cause is falling birth rates. The global fertility rate is 2.3. So the average woman gave birth to 2.3 children. Back in 1950, the birthrate was near 5. So it’s less than half of what it was then. That’s the world estimate. The numbers change a bit for women in high-income countries. For them, the birthrate can drop to as low 1.3 births per woman. But even though birthrates and population growth rates are falling, that doesn’t mean our overall population isn’t growing. But it’s not growing at the rate it was. Earlier estimates expected we’d have a worldwide population of almost 10.9 billion people by the year 2100 and still not have peaked. But now, the UN estimates the world population will not reach 10.9 billion by 2100, but that world population will peak at just over 10.4 billion people 14 years earlier in 2086. The same UN study expects the population of India to exceed that of China sometime next year.

This next not the headlines story comes from the “your tax dollars at work” file. The San Francisco Unified School District spent over a half a million dollars of the 744 million in bond funding it got to fight a court battle. If the San Francisco Unified School District is going to spend a half a million dollars on a court battle, I would expect it to be a court battle that will result in a better education for the students there. But that’s not the case. This court battle was fought for the right to cover a mural of President George Washington at Washington High School. The school board claimed the mural is “offensive and demeaning to Native Americans and African Americans.” They insisted that they had to cover the George Washington mural at George Washington High School because it caused psychological harm to students. A school alumni association filed a lawsuit over the decision to cover the mural, and the lawsuit was settled when the district agreed to pay the association 345,000 dollars, plus the 180 thousand dollars it paid lawyers to defend the district’s decision to cover the mural. The money came from a bond fund for remediation of health and safety risks to the school buildings. Because the mural was part of the school building at Washington High School, they felt that using the money to pay for the lawsuit was justified. The Chairman of the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee says he want the school district to put the money back. He says as far as he’s concerned, the San Francisco Unified School district is using the bond money as a slush fund. Of course, if the school district were to put the money back, they would just be taking it from one group of taxpayers and giving it to another.
Can’t be right liner

So, is your butt warm enough? How about your hands? If not, Bavarian Motor Works has a solution for you! For a mere 18 dollars a month, they’ll activate the seat warmers that have already been installed in your new BMW. For another 10 dollars a month, they’ll also activate the steering wheel warmer that was also previously installed. Motor1 dot com has a story about BMW’s Connected Drive store in South Korea where the “features” are available. You can skip the monthly fees for the heated seats if you want by paying176 dollars for one year or 283 dollars for three years. Of course, the heated seats will work for free the first month. If you want it for as long as you own the car, that’ll be 406 dollars. Just to use something the car already has. The privilege of using the heated steering wheel can be bought for 222 dollars instead of 10 dollars a month. This is the future of owning a car. The manufacturer will be able to determine which of the features you’ll be allowed to use. All of the features will be built-in, but you must pay extra for them to be activated. Other options are available already. Apple Carplay will cost you extra, as will the high-beam assist on your headlights, a driver recorder that uses cameras and other safety systems. Remember when talking cars were all the rage? Your car would tell you that the key was in the ignition, if your headlights were on, if your door wasn’t properly closed. Next, your car will remind you that your next payment for the privilege of controlling the car at all is due. Bing! Please deposit 100 dollars for the ability to manually steer the car. Should you decline, the car will park itself at your nearest BMW dealer. 

The same article predicts that people will come up with phone hacks to bypass the payments, but that it would also probably void the warranty. For those who’s warranties have expired, the aftermarket business will thrive with ways around the manufacturer’s ransom demands.
Let's go back liner

This week in 1864, to conclude the Battle of Atlanta, Gen. Sherman defeats Confederate defenders. This reminds me of the first time I crossed the border into Georgia. I stopped at the Georgia Welcome Center. When I walked in, I spotted the main information desk, and when I approached, nothing happened. After some gentle prompting, I got the lady to say, “Welcome to Georgia!” That was great. She was younger than me, probably in her early thirties, and I told her what part of Georgia I was there to visit, and asked if there are any tourist destinations I should be sure to see. She said, “Well, you could go to Macon. They have historic building there. At least the ones General Sherman didn’t burn down.” I remember thinking, “Gee, these Georgia people really know how to hold a grudge.”

1903

The Ford Motor Company sells its first car. It was a Model A, and it was sold to a gentleman from Chicago named Ernest Pfennig. Most people couldn’t afford the 850-dollar price tag, but ironically, Mr. Pfennig, who’s name is the same word used to describe a German penny prior to the Euro becoming the official currency, bought the first of three that were built. And just in the nick of time, too. According to a 2020 article in MoneyWeek, Ford had just a few hundred dollars left of his start-up money when the Dodge Brothers wrote off some of Ford’s debt and contributed cash for a stake in the company. By October, Ford was operating in the black and went on to develop the Model T, insuring the company’s success for decades to come. 

1925 John Scopes is found guilty in Tennessee for teaching evolution. Most of us probably recall hearing about the Scopes Monkey Trial, and that it was about evolution. But this was the biggest show trial since Pontious Pilate condemned Jesus of Nazareth. This was bigger than Watergate, bigger than the O.J. Simpson trial. This was the trial of the millenium. The trial was a publicity stunt from the start, with the defendant, Scopes, recruited to be arrested for breaking the relatively new law that prohibited the teaching of evolution. Scopes himself only agreed to be the defendant if it could be proven that he did, because he wasn’t even sure he had! He was a substitute teacher, and had at one time used a textbook that had an evolutionary chart in it, so he agreed to be the scapegoat. When big-name attorneys and organizations joined in on both sides, the media swooped in. More than 200 newspaper reporters were in Dayton for the event, thousands of miles of telegraph lines were installed to get the word out to the home offices. There was even a special runway built for planes to carry exposed film out of town. This was the first trial ever to be broadcast on radio. That’s hitting the big-time. Back then, there was no television. Even today, radio reaches over 90 percent of Americans. As part of the circus, trained chimpanzees danced on the front lawn of the courthouse. Front-page headlines were featured in the largest newspapers around the country, and reporters from London also sent reports back home. This was a show-trial. 

The defense attempted several avenues of vindication. They would claim the Butler Act, which made teaching evolution illegal, was a violation of a teacher’s individual rights. They claimed there was no conflict with evolution and bible teachings. All the experts brought in to support evolution were denied the opportunity to testify, but rather were allowed to submit written statements in case of an appeal to a higher court. Ultimately, the judge ruled most of the defense testimony inadmissible. The only conclusion to which the jury could arrive was guilty, even though many of the jurors thought the law was unjust. They followed the law and the judges instructions, and returned a guilty verdict. John Scopes was fined 100 dollars, which would be about 1500 dollars in 2021, but more today because of recent inflation. 

This whole thing is eerily reminiscent of the Susan B. Anthony tactic used to get the right of women to vote to the Supreme Court. That one didn’t work, and neither did this one. Because the defense didn’t provide a summation of their case, because they were hoping for a guilty verdict, the prosecution was also prohibited from making a closing argument. William Jennings Bryan instead gave a written summation of the trial to the press, but was not read in court. It said: “Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm-tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endanger its cargo. In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane, the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times as bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future. If civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene. His teachings, and His teachings alone, can solve the problems that vex the heart and perplex the world.”

I’m sure he spent a lot of time preparing that speech, so it would be a shame to let it go to waste. But the next battle still had to be fought, whether morally or not. The guilty verdict gave the defense the opportunity to appeal the case to the Tennessee Supreme Court. Using the same arguments they used in the original trial, they were all shot down by the Tennessee Supreme Court. But, they did dismiss the case on a technicality. The judge imposed the fine of 100 dollars, the law at the time prohibited a judge from imposing a fine of more than 50 dollars. As it turns out, the jury had to impose the fine, not the judge. Case dismissed. Then they did something totally unexpected. They recommended something called nolle prosequi, which essentially means don’t waste our time with this issue again. Don’t prosecute it. It wasn’t until another ruling, Epperson vs. Arkansas in 1978, that bans like the one prohibiting teaching the theory of evolution were determined to be in violation of the first amendment. 

There’s a lot of debate today about what should and should not be taught in public schools. When it comes to science, we should probably let the scientists decide. When it comes to theories, we should make it clear that it’s a theory and not yet established. When it comes to religion, they should all be taught as philosophies. If we looked at science with the same skeptical eye a scientist uses, we would continue to learn more about science. If we looked at theories in the same way the critics do, we’d weed out the bad ones more quickly, and advance the good ones. If we looked at religion in the same way philosophers might, we’d have a better understanding of each other, and more peace between us. The Scopes Trial covered all of that, and ultimately accomplished nothing. When your teacher told you it was about evolution, that was only partly true. Evolution was a sub-plot of the Scopes Trial. Although it may have been presented as the substrate of the entire thing, the real motivation was publicity. Not just for the cause, but for the city of Dayton, Tennessee, the Baltimore Sun, and all of the other media outlets that sent hundreds of reporters to watch people argue about the Bible. The verdict was irrelevant, the appeal was irrelevant, and the influence of the trial itself is debatable. But I’m sure the photos of chimpanzees dancing on the lawn of the courthouse was a great way to get the people talking about the trial, and getting people to buy more newspapers. After all, you can’t watch dancing chimpanzees on the radio. 

1925 Adolf Hitler publishes his personal manifesto Mein Kampf. There is no exact English translation, but it roughly means, “my struggle or my battle.” Hitler began writing it in prison, and it eventually became required reading in schools controlled by Nazi Germany. I won’t summarize it here. I’ll simply point out that those who forget history are destined to repeat it. Knowing what Hitler professed is a good way to filter out what we should avoid moving forward.

1929

The Fascist government in Italy bans the use of foreign words. This is a good one, because right off the bat I’m thinking, “Wait a second..if Rome is in Italy, and there was once a roman empire that spoke Latin. Not just Italian, but practically all western hemisphere and eastern European languages are based on Latin. So, if most of the world’s languages are base on Latin, what words could you possibly be banning? All that’s left is the only other language from which most western languages are derived: Greek. So, on the surface, this looks like an attempt to ban any Greek language being spoken in Italy. But it really wasn’t that precise, and it’s not the only time that’s been attempted. I say attempted, because it’s an impossible task only undertaken by politicians or academics. But back in 1929, regional languages were the norm in Italy, and there was no universal Italian language. One might hypothicise that the reason Italians could communicate even though they spoke many different regional languages is that their hand movements somehow complimented their words. I guess we’ll never know. Even more recently, France took measures to remove words that had seeped into the French language through technology. Words like Satellite dish, jumbo jet and others were replaced by french-based words to describe the same thing, but in a way that sounded more authentically French. Despite all of the pitfalls of the English language, one of the things that’s great about it is its willingness to absorb words from other languages. People who speak English are happy to say major faux pas, or beuceu bucks, or shrimp scampi. By the way, scampi is the German word for shrimp, so if you’re in Germany and you order shrimp scampi, don’t be surprised if you get twice as much shrimp as you thought you were going to get! Look, language should be easy. Especially if you’re speaking it. If you’re writing it, that’s a different story, but the easiest way for us to communicate is to speak to each other and listen to each other. What good is the freedom of speech if nobody understands what it is you’re saying? 

 To illustrate that point, it was this week in 1935 that Variety magazine's famous headline `Sticks Nix Hick Pix' was published. Sticks Nix Hick Pix? What the? 

Look that up liner

Variety took great liberties with the written word when it came to headlines. They would shorten words as a type of Hollywood slang by writing H-wood instead of Hollywood, and abbreviating show business to biz. They created what they called “slanguage” which could be used in headlines. The headline Sticks Nix Hick Pix was a way of saying that people in rural areas didn’t like movies about themselves. The sticks being the rural areas, specifically areas of Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska being cited in the article, nix being a slang for rejection, Hick being a slang term for the people who live in the area, which would now be considered a derogatory term, and pix, spelled pix, is the term for a motion picture. The thing about headlines is that the writer of the story rarely gets to write the headline to the story. Editors do that. Editors have great flexibility when it comes to the first impression of a story. I’ve read many stories that were completely different than what the headline led me to believe I was going to read.

This week in1937, the United States Senate votes down President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court of the United States. We’ve all heard recent talk about packing the court in an attempt to drive through legislation that it’s believed the current court would find unconstitutional. President Biden has suggested adding five justices to the court, which would bring the total to 13. Back in 1937, after FDR was re-elected, he had some trouble getting parts of his “New Deal” past the judicial branch of checks and balances. Roosevelt’s proposal would have allowed as many as six additional jurists. He proposed that an additional Supreme Court Judge be added every time a current Judge turned 70 years old and didn’t retire. Many members of his own party disagreed with the plan, including his own vice-president. The Senate Judiciary Committee held up the bill by delaying hearings, even though it was led by Democrats. Roosevelt took his plea directly to the people during one of his “fireside chats,” but the initiative ultimately failed.

This week in 1938, Douglas (Wrong Way) Corrigan leaves New York for Los Angeles. However, Corrigan ended up in Ireland. He blamed low cloud cover light conditions for heading the wrong way, but nobody believed him. He was a skilled aircraft mechanic, and had recently made modifications to his plane in preparation for a trans-atlantic flight. He had recently been denied permission to fly from New York to Ireland, and his flight plan was clearly made to fly from New York to Long Beach. It’s hard to imagine flying over a vast expanse of water and thinking you’re headed from the east coast of the US to west coast, but he never admitted flying to Ireland on purpose. Sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

This week in 1944, during World War II, American troops land on Guam to battle Japanese forces there. Guam was already a United States territory, but was occupied by Japan after the first Battle of Guam three years earlier. American forces would re-take Guam and the rest of the Marianas Islands, giving the Americans the forward bases it needed to attack the Japanese home islands. The battle for Guam would end on August 10th for most, but one Japanese soldier remained in hiding for 28 years before he was discovered living in a cave near some waterfalls in the southeast part of the island. 

In 1962, Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantic television program, featuring Walter Cronkite.

And this week in 1969, the 1st men to walk on the Moon, Neil Armstrong & Edwin Aldrin of Apollo 11 boldly went where no man had gone before. Armstrong famously pronounced as he reached the bottom rung on the ladder from the lunar lander, that he was about to take “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Several other missions to the moon were accomplished after that. We even built a car that we could drive around up there. As far as I know, it’s still there, just as the footprints of the men who walked there are still undisturbed due to the lack of atmosphere. Only the United States of America has had it’s citizens walk on the moon and only the flag of the United States of America has been planted there. 

1977 The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind control experiments. Although most of the documents related to the experiments were ordered destroyed in 1973, 20,000 documents were discovered to have survived. The CIA was building on the experiments done by the Nazi’s in concentration camps, and in response to the suspected mind-control techniques thought to be in use by the Chinese, Soviets and North Koreans. Some of the methods used included using psychoactive drugs like LSD, torture, verbal and sexual abuse, sensory deprivation, electroshock and hypnosis. The experiments took place all over the country at hospitals, universities and prisons. Most of the subjects didn’t know they were being used for experiments. Some of the goals of the experiments included finding substances that would prevent or promote the intoxicating effects of alcohol or produce euphoria, ways to produce amnesia, physical disablement or mental confusion, a knockout pill or aerosol that would be safe to use, and materials that could be used to make it impossible for a person to perform a physical activity. The CIA insists they experiments ended in 1972. 

1999

Falun Gong is banned in the People’s Republic of China, and a large scale crackdown of the practice is launched. The Chines Communist Party isn’t interested in religion, and continues to take steps to eliminate all religions within its areas of control. 

This week in 2011, NASA’s Space Shuttle program ends with the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-135. We lost two shuttles during the program, Challenger and Columbia. Challenger just after liftoff, and Columbia just before landing. For as much pride as the space shuttle program brought to NASA and the United States, the program was ultimately scrubbed for a variety of reasons, with Atlantis being the encore performance. The program had many successes. It helped in the construction of the International Space Station, did repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope, rotated crews and supplied the International Space Station as well as the Russian space station Mir. The space shuttle conducted many experiments that ultimately led to a greater understanding of how being outside the gravitational pull of the earth effects people and other earthly life forms. The shuttle was used to deploy satellites, and even participated in interplanetary missions like Magellan, Galileo and Ulysses. Sadly, when the program ended, the United States was forced to rely on Russia to get people and supplies to the space station. Today, private companies like SpaceX have been contributing to the efforts. 

Similar But different liner

Equality and equity. The inaugural segment of similar but different takes a look at two words that sound very much alike, and are sometimes used in place of each other. But they mean two very different things. Equality is something we should all strive to achieve. Equity, other than the kind you build by paying off real property, is often slipped into the equality conversation as if it’s somehow complimentary to equality, and that since it is, it should also be something we, as a society would benefit from if only we could reach it. Since I already used the look that up liner, and I’m only allowed to use it once per program, I’m not going to bore you with the dictionary definitions of the words. I have a better idea. To demonstrate the difference between equality and equity, I’ll refer to the 20th century visionary and poet Neil Peart. His poem called “The Trees” describes a conflict between Maple trees and Oak trees. You see, the Maple trees are upset because the Oak trees are much taller. By being taller, the Oak trees had first dibs on the available sunlight. But the Oak trees didn’t start out by being taller than the Maple trees. Both the Maple and Oak trees began at ground level, as germinated seeds that took root and began to grow. This is the very essence of equality. Everyone starting with the same basic struggle to survive. Your environment, along with your genetics, determine your chances of survival. But when the Maple trees and Oak trees grew, the Maple trees felt cheated out of their share of the sunlight. The Oaks couldn’t help the way they’re made, and really had no choice but to ignore the demands of the Maple trees. In fact, the Oak trees couldn’t understand why the Maple trees weren’t grateful for the shade. The Maple trees continued to claim they were being oppressed. They demanded that they have what they believed to be equal rights, meaning an equal share of the sunlight. The poem goes on to say how the problem was resolved. It says a noble law was passed. I’m not sure why Neil called it a noble law, perhaps he needed a two-syllable word to maintain the syntax of the poem. He could have just as easily used another two-syllable word like crazy, but the law was passed that declared that all the trees would be kept at the same height. No tree was allowed to be taller than any other tree. All of the fully-grown trees would be the same. The law even described how it would be enforced. Not by finding ways to make smaller trees grow higher, but by hatchet, axe and saw. That, my friends, is equity.

The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly. Copyright 2022. Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube. I’m your host, Bob Woodley for thou infinitum.