Season 3, Episode 5

 Season Three, Episode 5

Welcome to season 3, episode 5! Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube! I’m your host, Bob Woodley. On this edition, we’ll hear about a Pope who was really into time, when a headache could kill you, and the rise and fall of German Democratic Republic, but first, (not the headlines)…

A couple weeks ago, a bill that was signed into law last September was given the go-ahead by a federal court a year after tech companies objected. It’s a Texas law, similar to one struck down in Florida. But the one in Texas made it all the way to the US Supreme Court, where it was sent back down to the 5th Circuit Court, where it had already been passed. But before it got that far, it was blocked by a district Judge on First Amendment grounds three months after it was signed into law. So what law has caused so much bouncing back and forth? Texas House Bill 20, which prohibits social media sites with more than 50-million users in the United States from “removing, moderating, or labeling posts made by users in the state of Texas based on their "viewpoints". There are exceptions, such as any post considered illegal under federal law, a post with the purpose of sexually exploiting children, directly incites violence or criminal activity, among other reasonable measures to protect innocent people. There are other requirements of tech companies under the new law. Said social media platforms must also make available the algorithms they use to determine what you see, and twice a year publish a report on any moderation of users or their content. In other words, they have to disclose what they censored and explain why. Those last two requirements don’t seem to be getting as much attention as the main part of the law, prohibiting social media companies from censoring political viewpoints. Here’s the argument from the side of the social media companies: Preventing social media companies from removing certain types of posts is a violation of the company’s First Amendment rights. And yes, corporations have many of the same rights as people, thanks to Supreme Court rulings such as 2010’s Citizens United versus the Federal Election Committee. So the social media companies somehow figure that because they’re privately owned businesses, their free speech rights are violated if they’re forced to let others express political viewpoints that aren’t in line with theirs. That’s an interesting take on it. That’s kind of like saying, “I invented a megaphone that makes yours obsolete, and you can only use it if you’re saying something I would say. If you say anything else, we’ll take the megaphone away.” Plus, by expressing yourself on a site that was designed and marketed as a social media site, you’re somehow violating the First Amendment rights of the social media company. So the social media companies assume that since they own the megaphone, their First Amendment right supersede the First Amendment rights of the users on which they depend for the audience that supports the advertisements! They’ll take your advertising money and subject us to advertisements but only if we echo the same political viewpoints and agendas they prefer? The appeals court ruled that social media companies were seeking legal permission to actually muzzle free speech. Well, if protecting the First Amendment rights of social media companies over individual First Amendment rights isn’t enough of an argument for you, the social media companies have an additional argument. They maintain that the new law will force them to give equal treatment to all manners of speech. Imagine that, forcing equality on a corporation! If you do that, pretty soon you’ll have to say “equal opportunity employer” after all job listings. Madness!!! The Computer & Communications Industry Association, which sued the state of Texas over the law, along with a company called NetChoice said in response to the ruling, “‘God Bless America’ and ‘Death to America’ are both viewpoints, and it is unwise and unconstitutional for the State of Texas to compel a private business to treat those the same.” The statement didn’t say which phrase they were supporting. Well, as I’ve already mentioned, the law would allow a social media site to delete a post that said “Death to America.” That statement incites violence. The law would not allow a social media site to delete a post that says “God bless America,” as it neither incites violence nor is it a political viewpoint. America is a geographic area, not a political doctrine. Besides, the Texas law protects a broad range of “viewpoints.” It does not single out political viewpoints. But critics of the law seem to focus only on political viewpoints, specifically conservative viewpoints. Conservatives are convinced that the social media companies are silencing the right-wing opinion, and see the new law as a leveling of the playing field in an industry run primarily by people with liberal-leaning ideologies who don’t want to share the megaphone. And while the critics are quick to point out that social media sites will have to display conservative content contradictory to their agenda, calling it hate-speech, nobody is concerned with liberal content at all. It’s as if the social media companies only consider right-leaning speech to be harmful. There are radicals on both sides, the polar opposites of the lunatic fringe, but the powers that be only seem concerned with one type of speech getting through. Every story I read about this law only talks about right-wing propaganda becoming prominently displayed where anyone can see it. None of the articles mentioned left-wing propaganda, nor the dangers therein. None of the writers mentioned Libertarian propaganda, nor Socialist propaganda, nor Communist propaganda. They only wrote about how dangerous it would be if social media sites were prohibited from censoring conservative propaganda. So, social media companies want you to believe that their free speech rights are more important than yours, because they have the megaphone. They also want you to think that the Texas law will force them to display illegal content, and they want you to believe that the only thing the law will accomplish is exposing users to opinions that are dangerous because they aren’t in line with the opinions of the management of the social media company. Plus, they don’t want to be required to tell you how they decide what they show you, or justify why a post is censored. You can’t blame them, really. If you control the flow of information, you control the people. That’s why Russian media is told what to say by the tyrant Putin. The Texas law, and the tech companies aversion to it, demonstrates their desire to use social media as a way to manipulate us without us knowing how. At the same time, they claim to support free speech by using the platforms to promote pornographic literature in grade school libraries. But they do it by perpetuating the myth that keeping inappropriate material out of the hands of children is the same thing as book-banning. So, that’s their idea of free speech, but if you disagree with it, the Texas law will insure the people there will be able to say so without being censored. And, just as important, they’ll have the right to know more than the rest of the country how social media companies use the platforms to influence them by what is shown to them, not only as a society, but also how habits and opinions determine what the people of Texas see when on-line. That means the people of Texas might be the first people to find out if our cell phones are actually listening to us! But that still won’t explain why I get all those ads for baby diapers.

That’s not right liner

There’s an article in Fortune dot com posted this week with the headline: “The American dream is broken. The best hometowns for raising a family could offer solutions.” First of all, who starts a headline with “the American dream is broken” in a magazine called Fortune? Plus, that’s obviously an opinion, not a fact. But then it offers some suggestions for whatever might ail you if you’re raising a family. Yea, what started out as doom and gloom is actually a list of the 25 best places in the United States to raise a family. It sounds to me like who ever wrote that headline is going through a divorce right now. So Fortune did research on almost two-thousand places around the country to try to discover which ones stood out. It says they analyzed more than 215,000 data points. It couldn’t be a remote out post, and it couldn’t be a big city, with a population between 25 and 750-thousand residents. They studied data over five major categories that would be important to a stable, multi-generational family: Education, Aging resources, General wellness, Financial health and Livability. All worthy aspirations. They cited 29 private and government sources for the data they used to compile the information they took into consideration to create what would be a data-driven, educated opinion. They took into account statistics like how many people are raising children and caring for their parents. They considered income levels and real estate prices, the quality of education from pre -school to post-secondary. Job opportunities and the availability of public parks. They found 25 that they thought were note worthy. Some seem very nice. Rich with opportunity and culture. Nice neighbors who care as much as you. Good graduation rates and convenient medical care. Median income and the price of a home. Yes, Fortune took everything into consideration. They found 25 places where it’s ideal to start a family and maintain that family for generations, putting down roots, making a name for your self and generations to come. A place where all people, regardless of race, creed or color,...no, wait. The story says that part of the criteria was that any place that had a population of 90 percent white, non-hispanic people was automatically disqualified. Now, nationally, according to the 2020 Census, 61.6 percent of us claim to be white, so 90 percent white is a lot more white than average. I’m guessing there aren’t many places where more than 90 percent of the population is black or Asian. There may be Native American reservations where more than 90 percent of the population is one race. Come to think of it, they even have separate agreements with the federal government. But this Fortune list only omitted places that had too many white people. The article says, “Fortune wanted to highlight places that offered diverse neighborhoods. To that end, the editors cut any town where more than 90% of the population is white, non-Hispanic. From there, Fortune compared the racial breakdown of a place against state benchmarks, eliminating any place that was less diverse than either state or national medians.” 

So, after all of more than 215,000 data points about nearly 2,000 places in America where it might be a great place to put down some roots were collected and categorized and sorted and analyzed, and this vast gathering of knowledge and wisdom was about to be released to the public, they kept the super-majority white places a secret. Well, maybe not. The county where I live is 90.6 percent white. I doubt that’s why we didn’t make the list. In fact, according to the Washington Post, anyway, more than 30 percent of America’s counties have a population that is at least 90 percent white. So, that’s 30 percent of America that was excluded from even being considered for the list of 25 best places to raise a family, based on the color of the skin of the people who live there. 

let’s go back liner

1582

Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian Calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, October 4 of this year is followed directly by October 15. So if your birthday was from the 5th to the 14th, it was like being born on a leap year. I don’t know if people kept track of their birthdays in the 1500’s, but they did keep track of leap years, and that’s why the Julian calendar was replaced. If you have one every four years, as the Julian calendar did, you have too many of them. The Gregorian calendar corrected that by removing the leap day from certain years. Here’s the rule, from the United States Naval Observatory: “ Every year that is exactly divisible by four is a leap year, except for years that are exactly divisible by 100, but these centurial years are leap years if they are exactly divisible by 400.” If you do the math, that means the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years, but the year 2000 was. There are currently more than two dozen different calendars in use around the world. Does anybody really know what day it is? It’s Friday somewhere, right?

1648

Peter Stuyvesant establishes Americas 1st volunteer firemen. It was four guys who went around inspecting chimneys of thatched-roof wooden houses and make them pay a fine if the chimney wasn’t swept. They used the money from the fines to buy equipment, including buckets made of leather, built by a local shoe maker, ladders and hooks. They’d patrol what was at the time New Amsterdam from 9 at night until dawn, just looking for fires to put out. They had several names, including Prowlers and The Rattle Watch, but they are perhaps best remembered by the term Bucket Brigade. That is the origin of the New York City Fire Department. There are still many volunteer fire departments around the country, and I suspect, around the world. I’m a life member of West End Fire Company #5. Today, fire companies raise funds not by fining people for not sweeping their chimneys, but by hosting block parties, and operating bars and restaurants in the same building where they keep the fire trucks. If your town has a volunteer fire company, I encourage you to support them in their mission. 

1683

German immigrant families found Germantown in the colony of Pennsylvania, marking the first major immigration of German people to America. 

1864

during the American Civil War the USS Wachusett captures the Confederate ship CSS Florida, while in port in Bahia, Brazil. So, why was a ship battle between the Union and the Confederacy going on in Brazil?

Look that up liner

The USS Wachusett was a type of ship called “sloop of war” which had limited armaments, and could propel with sails or steam. Wikipedia tells us She had been through battles before, and had just been recommissioned after extensive repairs at the Philadelphia shipyard. The captain was ordered to patrol the West Indies in search of Confederate commerce raiders, of which the CSS Florida was one of two they sought, the other being the CSS Alabama. After months of chasing around leads, the Wachusett spots the Florida entering the harbor at Bahia, Brazil. The Captain put the Wachusett into position, and sent word to the Florida to come out and fight. The Florida politely declined the invitation. Commander Napoleon Collins gave the order to his men to steam the Wachusett into the harbor prior to sunrise and rammed the Florida as it sat in port. After a brief exchange of artillery, the Florida surrendered, and the Wachusett towed the damaged Florida back to north America, where Commander Collins was promptly court-marshaled for his actions. He was soon returned to his command by order of the Secretary of the Navy.

1918

During World War One, an explosion kills more than 100 and destroys the T.A. Gillespie Company Shell Loading Plant in Sayreville, New Jersey. Hundreds more were injured as fires and explosions continue for three days, forcing massive evacuations and spreading ordnance over a 1.2 mile radius, pieces of which were still being found a hundred years later. Three areas, Sayreville, South Amboy, and Laurence Harbor were evacuated and reconstructed following the ordeal. More than 300 buildings were damaged and windows were broken as far away as 20 miles. The initial fire that led to the explosion was caused by human error. The plant was assembling munitions to be used by our military. Also this week during World War One, in 1918, in the Argonne Forest in France, United States Army Corporal Alvin C. York kills 25 German soldiers and captures 132. Not all by himself, but with a team of what started out as 17 men, but had been reduced to about 8 by the time the prisoners were taken. York was actually a private, acting as a corporal, and was promoted to sergeant after he led the raid. He received the Medal of Honor for his heroism, and was also recognized with decorations from France, Italy and Montenegro. He was a farmer and blacksmith from Tennessee who initially claimed

conscientious objector status because of his deep religious beliefs when he was drafted. He was later convinced he could serve without conflict with his religion.

1927

Gutzon Borglum begins sculpting Mount Rushmore. There are people today who criticize and condemn Mount Rushmore as a monument to old white guys. What those people fail to recognize is the truly monumental accomplishment that is Mount Rushmore. They don’t appreciate the planning and workmanship and ingenuity it took to create such a work of art. Instead they see it through a purely political lens, focused on racism, that blurs out the beauty all around them. They believe they’re making that sacrifice in the name of justice and equality, but what they really want is restorative justice and equity. 

1949

The German Democratic Republic is formed. Commonly known as East Germany, it was the result of the Four Powers Act, which spit up Germany and Berlin among the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France. The Soviet part became East Germany, while the rest became West Germany. The Capital, Berlin, was also sliced into four. While Berlin continued to be the Capital of East Germany, West Germany moved its capital to Frankfurt. More on this subject a little bit later...

1957

The Space Race begins when The Soviet Union launches Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth. Many felt that this technology put the USSR at a distinct advantage from a national security perspective. America had some catching up to do. Then, two years later this week in 1959, the

U.S.S.R. probe Luna 3 transmits the first ever photographs of the far side of the Moon. By then, NASA had chosen astronauts for the Mercury missions. 

1962

Dr. No, the first in the James Bond film series, is released. This might not be significant to anybody but me. I’m a big fan. When I was a kid, my dad took me to see On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in the theater, because back then, there were no other options. My first official date was to see James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me. I don’t have a favorite among the actors who’ve played the role. Now that Daniel Craig is finished with the franchise, the future is wide open. 

1964

First Buffalo Wings are made at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York. Today, wings are offered in a variety of sauces and rubs, from sweet to spicy. We’ve even had wing shortages. Millions of them are consumed ever year during the Super Bowl. I like whiskey wings, and I make them at home. Just two cups of hot sauce, a stick of butter and one-third cup of cheap whiskey. Bring it to a boil and then simmer for an hour, stirring frequently. Slosh your wings around in it, or use it as a dip.

1968

Motion Picture Association of America adopts film rating system. When it began, it had four different ratings: G for general audiences, which means anybody can see it, M for Mature audiences, which means parents should watch it first before deciding to let their kids watch it. Then there was R, which meant your mom or dad had to see it with you if you were under 16, and finally, X, which meant you had to be at least 16 to see it. We have a new system now, most of which went into effect in 1990. G is still the same, PG has replaced M. Parents should still watch it first, but teenagers are allowed in, then PG-13, which is the same at PG, but this time they really mean it, then R, which means mom or dad hast to go see it with you, and finally NC-17, which is the same as X, and now nobody under 17 is allowed in. X was replaced by NC-17 in 1996. The ratings are in place based on sexual content, nudity, violence, language and drug use. According to History and Headlines dot com, even cigarette smoking may prevent a motion picture from getting a G or PG rating. I think it’s ironic that the Hollywood people who restrict children from seeing a movie based on it’s content are the same people who cry foul when books with the same type of content are removed from elementary school libraries. How can you be fine with censoring your own films but not fine with censoring the books, some of which you’ll turn into movies? If it’s pornographic or needlessly violent, our kids should be protected from it regardless of the medium. And I’m not going to buy the argument that seeing it is more impactful than reading it. There’s nothing more vivid than a child’s imagination...or a child’s nightmares.

1982

Chicago Tylenol murders: Johnson & Johnson initiates a nationwide product recall in the United States for all products in its Tylenol brand after several bottles in Chicago are found to have been laced with cyanide, resulting in seven deaths. I was half a world away on the island of Guam when it happened, so being that removed from the situation, neither myself or the people who worked around me could really understand the level of panic this caused. Especially as the deaths continued to mount. I was a disc-jockey at the Air Force Base there, and the news reminded me of a song called “Aspirin Damage” from Alice Cooper’s Flush the Fashion album. So naturally, I had to play it on the radio. The Tylenol Murders have never been solved, and are still under investigation. The experience had a lasting impact on the packaging of consumable products like over the counter drugs. It was determined that the capsules had been taken off the shelves, poisoned, and then returned to store shelves to be bought by unsuspecting people in the Chicago area. Tamper-evident packaging lets you know if somebody has been here before. Seals that need to be broken, lids that pop when you open them and other alerting mechanisms are the result of the Tylenol Murders. One sick person sacrificed seven people. The packaging industry was quick to adapt to a new reality, and we’re all safer now, but I do hope that whoever did it can someday be discovered. 

This week in 1990, fifty years after it began, The German Democratic Republic a.k.a. East Germany, ceases to exist and its territory becomes part of the Federal Republic of Germany, formerly known as West Germany. East and West German citizens were now citizens of a re-united Germany. What was formerly the east is gradually catching up with the west. A satellite photo from 2012 of Berlin at night clearly shows where the border was through the brightness of the street lights. 

1993

The Great Flood of 1993 ends at St. Louis, Missouri, 103 days after it began, as the Mississippi River falls below flood stage. I drove through there on my way to the Pro Football Hall of Fame from my home in Southern California. I planned the trip a year in advance, got my maps from the American Automobile Association, bought my first convertible and headed east. I knew the Mississippi river was flooding in certain areas, but there was no news of any interstate highways being closed when I left California the last week in August. I remember getting to the Mississippi River long before I got to the sign that said “Mississippi River.” You could see the flooding all around you, but the interstate, I-70, was still passable. 

1995

51 Pegasi is discovered to be the first major star, other than ours, to have a planet orbiting around it. Today, we know that there are planets all over our own galaxy. The James Webb Space Telescope will be analyzing the atmospheres of exoplanets, looking for any similar to ours. It’s an exiting time for space exploration. I’ve recently been looking at Jupiter through my telescope. I’ve seen up to six of its moons on one occasion, but usually just three or four. 

This week in 2001 brought us a couple long-lasting changes to our society as a result of the terrorist attacks. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan begins with an air assault and covert operations on the ground. After 20 years, America is out of Afghanistan, but the way it ended will forever be questioned and studied as a cautionary tale. Also this week in 2001, President George W. Bush announces the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security. The immediate effect of which is to make it impossible to fly across the country with an ounce of weed down your pants. The long-term effect seems to be more of a focus on domestic threats, either real or imagined, than protecting our country from threats that originate outside of school board meetings or wading across the Rio Grand.

2004

“Space Ship One‘’ wins the 10-million dollar Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight, by being the first private craft to fly into space. Actually, they had to do it twice in two weeks with the same spacecraft. And, there had to be somebody in it. Now, just because a space craft reaches space, that doesn’t mean it can orbit the earth. When we get to that point, where we can go out of the Earth’s atmosphere and fly around the planet and then come back in for a landing and then do it again, that’ll be a big step forward. I can’t wait to go. Once.

Email and phone liner…

Before I began making this program available, I thought about it for a long time. Before I even began thinking about how long it should be or what to call it, long before I got the girl with the cute voice to say the other stuff for me, I thought about what I would say. For months I wrote notes to myself on small pieces of paper and put them on a pile to be reviewed later. I’ve recently looked through the pile of notes and found notes on a variety of topics. Some were program ideas, while others were introspective looks at social issues or hypothetical questions. Well, hypothetical to me, anyway. Science may have an answer to this question I found among the pile: “If we travel faster than the speed of sound, do we hear the future?” On the other end of the spectrum, I wrote, “The only thing concrete about this world is our history. It’s done. You can’t change 1 second ago, or 500 years ago. But not two people experience history in the same way, even if they’re sitting next to each other.” If I were to expand on that, I would add that there can be a difference between what actually happened and how it’s recorded. The victors usually get to write the history. One exception would be the former Confederate States of America, and it’s some of the people there, and others who agree with them, who are claiming that their history is being erased when statues honoring Confederate leaders are taken down. It’s only through the freedoms the south fought against that those statues were allowed to be put up in the first place. Only in America would the survivors of a military of a government that seceded from the country and declared war upon it would the permitted to erect statues honoring the generals who led the rebels. But statues to Confederate leaders does nothing more than perpetuate the ideals of slave owners and the slave trade. You can call it heritage or whatever you want, but the south lost the Civil War. Nobody is trying to erase the history of the Confederacy. It will be taught in American schools for generations to come as a sad and shameful era of our country’s history. One that we can’t erase. But there’s a difference between remembering it and embracing it. Statues honoring Confederate leaders promotes slavery. But in addition to that, they honor losers. The south lost the war. It’s time those who cling to antebellum ideals accept the fact that you’re part of America now, so start acting like it. Maybe taking down statues of Confederate generals is a good start. After all, there aren’t any Hitler statues in Berlin. Some history you just don’t want to keep, but we have to so we don’t make the same mistakes twice. 

I’ve always been interested in verbal communication, even though there’s only one language I speak fluently. And yes, it is English! But many phrases that we use in English are derived from or are out right foreign languages. One of those phrases is Je ne se qua. It sounds fancy because it’s French, and it’s used by Americans to describe something special, something out of the ordinary. One day it dawned on me that the last word of the phrase, “qua” was the French word for what. If you speak French, please bear with me, as you know where this is going. Anyway, I couldn’t help but wonder how phrase we use to describe extraordinary could end with the word what. As it turns out, the phrase Je ne se qua is a confession of ignorance. It’s literal translation to English is “I don’t know what.” So when we tell somebody the performance we enjoyed because it had a certain Je ne se qua, what we’re admitting is that we don’t have the vocabulary to describe what it is we want to say. As in, the performance had a certain I don’t know what! But that’s alright, because words are just sounds we use to describe things. Those sounds only acquire meaning through repetition, and even then, those definitions evolve and even become the opposite of the original meaning. The important thing is that we understand each other. And those are about enough sounds from me this episode!

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 ad infinitum