Season Two, Episode III

 Season Two, Episode Three

Welcome, and thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube! I’m your host, Bob Woodley. On this episode, we’ll look at the Magna Carta, what happens when the defense department and the postal service team up, and stupidity on an atomic level. But first, (not the headlines)…

There’s hope for people losing their minds! Well, that might be a slight exaggeration. Losing their memory is more accurate. If you’re losing your mind, please consult a professional, if you’d like to keep your memories, a promising study shows that a drug already approved by the FDA for an ailment, may also work to help your brain maintain memories. Maybe even MY brain! Although there are some things that I’ve purposely tried to forget, the journal Nature tells of a study done at UCLA that shows how memories are linked and stored in the brain. We lose the ability to recall certain memories as we age, because the brain loses it’s ability to classify and store the memories. The research shows a molecular mechanism that enables the linking of memories, which is an important part of the brains standard operating procedure for storing them. Your brain doesn’t remember each individual thing that happens. It remembers groups of things. That’s why one memory can trigger another. This is fascinating to me because I sometimes wonder why, while I’m doing some mundane task, like washing dishes, and a memory will pop into my head and I don’t even know why it’s still in there because it happened so long ago and was so irrelevant to the rest of my life that I never recalled it before, and it’s been 30 years and all of a sudden I’ll remember being somewhere at a party or by a lake with people who I haven’t seen or thought of in years, and I have to wonder what triggered that memory? I’m just standing here minding my own business! The author of the research, Professor Silva, says “The ability to link related experiences teaches us how to stay safe and operate successfully in the world.” Hmmmm. I’m pretty sure I don’t have bank of memories of looking both ways before crossing the street stored somewhere in my brain. However, if you touch a wire and get a shock, you’ll probably remember that next time you need to touch a wire. But I sure hope I don’t accumulate a whole group of memories of getting a shock from touching a wire! Anyway, before I forget why I started talking about this, there’s something called a CCR5 molecule, and there’s a gene that encodes a receptor for it in our brains. As we age, the amount of CCR5 rises, and that reduces our abilities to remember stuff. As it turns out, there’s a drug we already use that can keep CCR5 in check. Not only keep it in check, but enable our brains to link memories again. That helps the brain regain the ability to use the file system you’ve been building your whole life. Originally, the CCR5 gene had to be genetically deleted from the mice in the study. But a drug approved in 2007 to fight HIV infection called maraviroc is shown to suppress CCR5 in the brains of mice. So odds are, it’ll work on us, too! Clinical trials are planned, and the professor says the discovery has the potential to slow down the process of memory loss, and even restore memory. On a personal note, I think that if my memory was too good, that I remembered everything, I might spend so much time rewinding my life that I might not move forward. The good news is, if the CCR5 suppressor doesn’t work on humans, nobody will remember.

Speaking of memories, remember when the state of Washington had law and order? Well, it wasn’t that long ago, but the memories of lawlessness are linking up quickly. Thanks to Washington State House Bill 1054, Washington State Police are practically powerless to pull over a car for an obvious violation of the law, provided the suspect refuses to pull over. That’s right, all you have to do to get away with a crime is keep driving. Let me be clear. You can’t break the law and just drive home. You actually have to try to get away. When that happens, then the new law prohibits the police from chasing you. Even if the police are in pursuit of a car they know is stolen, they can’t continue the pursuit if the suspects begin to flee, and since it’s a stolen car, they have no idea who’s driving it, so arresting them after the car is found parked is impossible. A state police spokesperson named Sergeant Darren Wright, who’s obviously a guy but in Washington you’re not supposed to say “spokesman” says something’s changed. He’s quoted in a story from Motorious. “People are not stopping right now. It’s happening three to five times s shift on some nights and then a couple times a week on day shift.” The new law was meant to keep people safe, but the unintended consequences of the law are what stand out so far. To be fair, the law also outlines protocols for police officers concerning choke holds and neck restraints, which are no longer allowed. But it adds a lot of other restrictions on what the state of Washington calls “Peace Officers.” For example: Cops can no longer use an unleashed dog to apprehend someone. Cops can no longer use teargas to disperse crowds or for any purpose. Cops can no longer acquire or use military equipment. The law, which I did read, goes on to describe exactly what “military equipment” is, and the list includes any armored vehicle or vessel, even those that are resistant to mines, long-range acoustic hailing devices (I wonder if that includes a GI-issue whistle?), rockets and grenades as well as the launchers to make them go farther, plus no missiles, direct energy systems, electromagnetic spectrum weapons (that’s some high-tech stuff, there) and of course, bayonets. Bayonets? What the…? Bayonets? Keep in mind, this bill became law just last year, as a knee-jerk reaction to all of the defund the police cries after the 2020 riots, which it seems are being blamed on police officers in Washington State instead of the thieves and looters who ruined cities and businesses there with riots and autonomous zones and firebombs. After all that, the Washington State Legislature decided that the best thing they could do to improve public safety would be to restrict the tactics and tools police use to keep the peace. I was going to pause here for dramatic effect, but the length of pause needed to exemplify the amount of drama worthy of the pause would have resulted in you thinking I may have got up and left the room. But let’s get back to the pursuit of suspects part. Section 9, Part 2 says officers are prohibited from engaging in a vehicular pursuit unless certain prerequisites are met. There are four of them: Number One, There is probable cause to believe that a person in the vehicle has committed or is committing a violent offense or sex offense. So, you can chase someone if you know for sure that they committed a serious crime. Odds are they aren’t committing a serious crime while they’re driving, unless the driving itself is considered violent. (ii) The pursuit is necessary for the purpose of identifying or apprehending the person. Well, that sounds reasonable. It also seems to cover any reason a police officer might have to pursue a suspect. If you can’t catch them, at least get a good look at them so maybe you can catch them later. So why do people think they don’t have to pull over? What part of the law has given people the confidence that nothing can be done if they keep driving? Well, (iii) Under the circumstances, the safety risks of failing to apprehend or identify the person are considered to be greater than the safety risks associated with the vehicular pursuit. So before a police officer in the state of Washington engages in a vehicle pursuit with a criminal suspect, they have to first assume that they will fail. Now, I don’t know what the success rates are for police pursuits, and I’m sure it varies depending upon training, environment and other factors, but if the first thing you have to do before you begin any pursuit, be it a vehicular or any kind, is assume you’re going to fail is a shame in and of itself! “If I Fail” is it worth the risk to public safety? A police officer isn’t permitted to assume he will be successful. and (iv) The officer has received authorization to engage in the pursuit from a supervising officer. So in a situation where seconds count, first you have to consider what might happen if you fail, and then if you decide it’s worth the risk, you still can’t be trusted to make the decision on your own, or perhaps in agreement with your partner, you still have to get permission from a superior, who isn’t on the scene, to commence the pursuit. Part iii, the public safety clause, is so subjective that it’s easy for an officer to be charged with breaking the law by merely engaging in the pursuit in the first place. One Washington State fugitive even had the gall to call 911 and tell the dispatcher to call off a chase in progress, citing the law.

But that’s not the only deterrent. The law also includes strict record-keeping on vehicular pursuits. Every law enforcement agency in the state must report information on vehicular pursuits including the age, gender, race, ethnicity, and national origin of operators and passengers of vehicles pursued by law enforcement officers, as well as reporting on other data deemed by the commission to be pertinent to the model policy. So if they catch you, they have to find out how old you are, and try to figure out what gender you are, which of the four or five races you are, any ethnicity you may be, aside from your race, and national origin. But don’t ask them if they’re in the United States legally, as that’s somehow a violation of their rights. All of the information will then be put into a report for the commission on public safety so they can compile it and release their own report due on December 1st of every year. So if the thought of being brought up on charges for engaging in a vehicular pursuit of a suspect isn’t enough to deter you, the paperwork is. All in the name of “public safety” but putting more people at risk for the sake of making you think the Washington State government is doing the right thing in the name of justice. How the federal government’s refusal to allow marijuana producers and retailers to use the federal banking system is also causing a lot of crime in states where marijuana is legal. All transactions must be made in cash, which makes marijuana retailers prime targets for violent robberies. Not just for the marijuana, but for the huge amounts of cash they’re accumulating. In Washington State, all a perpetrator has to do is use a stolen car in a robbery of a marijuana retailer, get all the pot and the cash, then drive through a busy area to insure they won’t be chased by the police. Although the chase may have never even begun because the officer at the scene’s supervisor was in the bathroom at the time. So this Washington state law is counterproductive and doesn’t accomplish the goal it set out to accomplish: Public Safety. Meanwhile, across the country in Washington, D.C., the Democrats can’t push through legislation to allow marijuana retailers to use the federal banking system because of people like Cory Booker, who doesn’t want to allow it based on his view of “equity.” In other words, too many white people will make money from it.

All of this marijuana talk is making me hungry for some reason. It’s a good thing I’m not a school kid from a struggling family in South Dakota. If I were, I might be looking at being hungry during the school day because of what my state government has done and what the federal government is threatening to do. Back in February, the South Dakota governor signed a bill into law that prohibits transgender women and girls from playing school sports. In a story from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, the governor is quoted as saying, “South Dakota will continue to defend basic fairness so that our girls can compete and achieve.” Now whether or not you think that’s the right thing to do is a topic for another time, but we all saw what that Penn swimmer who was a guy and now says he’s a woman did to women’s swimming records, while natural-borne women were powerless to compete at the same level. I think what the South Dakota law is trying to do is keep the playing field level for the established gender leagues, where excelling can be the difference between a full scholarship or not attending college at all, if college is what you’re striving to achieve. What to do with people who are in-between genders who want to compete in sports is, I believe, never going to be decided in any concrete way, because there’s no single physical definition of where a person is in their transition, so the bar keeps moving. But the federal government doesn’t think that way. Our federal government has already decided what they want the rules to be, without giving it much thought. “We can’t discriminate” they said. “You have to let them play in the gender league with which they identify, and you also have to let them use whichever gendered bathroom they prefer.” In the case of sports, bathroom also means locker room. Well, I’m not a fan of discrimination, either, but one could argue that the natural-borne females on the team are the ones being discriminated against. Are not the parents of the girls who kept their bodies the way they were at birth being discriminated against? Well, grade school kids in South Dakota probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, but maybe they should. Because the United States Department of Agriculture has taken it upon themselves to not just preach the trans discrimination rhetoric, they’re also going to use food to punish states that don’t toe the line. And the food they’re using is the food served to school kids through free and reduced price lunches. About a month ago, the department of agriculture decided that schools from Kindergarten through 12th grade would risk losing federal funding for the school lunch programs if they don’t follow the federal LGBTQ+ policies. The Agriculture Secretary made a statement when the rule was proposed: “USDA is committed to administering all its programs with equity and fairness, and serving those in need with the highest dignity,” He went on to add, “A key step in advancing these principles is rooting out discrimination in any form—including discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. At the same time, we must recognize the vulnerability of the LGBTQI+ communities and provide them with an avenue to grieve any discrimination they face." Why the department of agriculture is getting involved in the whole gender debate is beyond me, but withholding free and reduced school lunch monies from states that pass their own laws about it is unconscionable. This isn’t like when the Department of Transportation threatened to take highway funds from states like Montana, because they didn’t have a speed limit. No, this is using food for the children of struggling families as a weapon in the left’s war against common sense laws concerning issues that are near and dear to them. This is no different than Vladimir Putin using the threat of a worldwide food shortage if he doesn’t get his way with Ukraine. If the plan to take away funds for school lunch programs to force a doctrine down kids throats, then the South Dakota Governor plans to sue the federal government over it. A public comment and rules review period is currently underway. 

Lets Go Back liner

This week in 1215, King John signs the Magna Carta at Runnymede England. The Magna Carta, or in English, the Great Charter, is a big deal. It was an agreement between King John and unhappy Barons that guaranteed protections from their government and certain rights. It was first drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and included the protection of church rights and from illegal imprisonment for the barons themselves, among other rights. It’s sometimes though of as the first bill of rights. The agreement didn’t last, though. That led to a war.

1752

Ben Franklin flies a kite in a storm. But nothing happened.

1752 just a few days later: Ben Franklin's kite is struck by lightning! Well, that’s the story, anyhow. The truth is, Ben didn’t claim his kite was struck by lightning, and his good friend Joseph Priestly, who wrote about Franklin’s experiment, didn’t make the claim either. What is true is that Ben Franklin flew a kite that had a metal wire attached to the top, and a twine made of hemp led from the bottom of the kite to a shorter silk twine held by Franklin. The metal key was attached where the hemp line ended and the silk line began. The kite need not be struck by lightning to prove what Franklin was attempting to prove, which was that lightning was composed of electricity. Ben’s description of it was published in the Pennsylvania Gazette: “As soon as any of the Thunder Clouds come over the Kite, the pointed Wire will draw the Electric Fire from them, and the Kite, with all the Twine, will be electrified, and the loose Filaments of the Twine will stand out every Way, and be attracted by an approaching Finger. And when the Rain has wet the Kite and Twine, so that it can conduct the Electric Fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the Key on the Approach of your Knuckle. At this Key the Phial may be charg’d; and from Electric Fire thus obtain’d, Spirits may be kindled, and all the other Electric Experiments be perform’d, which are usually done by the Help of a rubbed Glass Globe or Tube; and thereby the Sameness of the Electric Matter with that of Lightning compleatly demonstrated.” 

1775

US Army is founded. It should be noted that we were still colonies at the time. A year later, though, the army would be confident enough to take on the British and declare independence. 

But even before that happened, this week in 1776, Virginia was the 1st to adopt a Bill of Rights. See what the Magna Carta started! Virginians still defend their rights vigorously.

This week in 1787, without debate, the delegates of the US constitution agreed that Senators must be at least 30 years old. Although if you want to get elected to the House of Representatives, you only have to be 25.

In 1801 The State of Tripoli declares war on the United States. Today, Tripoli is a part of Libya, and we can kick their ass any day of the week. But back in 1801, after declaring independence from England, the American ships didn’t have the agreements in place to protect them from state-sponsored piracy in the Mediterranean Sea. Tributes had to be paid, and when the new American country failed to make the payments, war broke out. The United States defeated Tripoli with a combined naval and air assault by the Marines. That’s why it’s in the Marine Corps Hymn. From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. 

1869

Ives McGaffey patents his vacuum cleaner! Today, we take them for granted, and even have ones to get dirt off the bottoms of swimming pools! I had a recent conversation with a gentleman who owns a few apartment buildings, and he told me that the first thing he wants to know about someone who wants to rent one of his apartments is, “What kind of vacuum cleaner do you own?” If they say, “none” they’re automatically disqualified. 

This week in 1869, the ship Agnes arrives in New Orleans with the 1st ever shipment of frozen beef. Agnes was called a “reefer ship” and they would transport beef carcasses frozen in a salt/ice mixture from Indianola, Texas to New Orleans. Today, frozen beef is a common commodity, but back then, as it is now, transporting it that way was even more of a challenge. 

1898

China leases Hong Kong's New Territories to Britain for 99 years, which means that this week in 1997, the lease expired. 

1937

USSR executes 8 army leaders as Stalin's purge continued. Yes, continued. These eight generals were among the estimated 81 generals and admirals executed by Stalin. It’s believed Stalin had more than a million citizens executed, some with trials, some without. Many went to labor camps first. Everyone who helped bring the Communist Party to power in 1917 was ultimately executed. Stalin was right there with Hitler when it came to paranoid people with armies. Like Vladimir Putin today, he answered to no one.

This week in 1940, Element 93, Neptunium, is discovered. It’s radioactive, a solid at room temperature, and you don’t want to touch it.

This week in 1948, TV Guide is first published. TV Guide was once America’s most popular magazine. It listed all of the television programs for every day of the week on all the channels that were beamed into millions of American homes for decades. It had special features like crossword puzzles and trivia, weekly spotlights on the hottest stars and most anticipated television shows. It was a handy reference that was opened by every family member multiple times a week. It was a powerhouse for advertisers. That is, until cable tv came along. The first pay cable channels like HBO weren’t included in TV Guide. Eventually, the cable channels started putting the guide on one of the channels, so the need for TV Guide began to wane. You can still subscribe to TV Guide and if you’re really into television you probably do. The circulation of the magazine, I suspect, has fallen, as has it’s price to subscribe. 

In 1954, Pres Eisenhower signs the order adding words `under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance. I see social media memes that claim the Pledge of Alliance is no longer recited in American schools. It is. If you don’t believe it, call your local school and ask.

This week in 1959, the 1st official `missile mail' landed in Jacksonville, Florida. Now, if you’re wondering what in tarnation is missile mail, well…

Look that up Liner

Missile mail was the brainchild of a partnership between the postal service and the defense department. There’s a story about it on USPS dot com, and it describes how the Postmaster General at the time heralded the idea as “of historic significance to the peoples of the entire world," and was quoted as saying, "Before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to England, to India or to Australia by guided

missiles." The missile was launched from a submarine 100 miles off the coast, and landed where it was supposed to land. I guess we now know that we can do it if we want, but as I’m sure you can tell, we don’t have missiles delivering mail today. The closest thing would be when we drop bombs with messages in them to warn of an upcoming bomb that won’t be as polite. The story goes on to point out that there was an earlier effort to deliver mail by rocket, rather than missile, that happened in 1936. The attempt was to span 2000 feet across a frozen lake. Two rocket were fired, both landing short of the destination and sliding across the ice. The postmaster of the destination city had to retrieve the two bags of mail and drag them the rest of the way.

This week in 1963, President John F. Kennedy signs a law for equal pay for equal work for men and women. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we...one year later, in 

1964, the Southern filibuster on the Civil Rights bill ends. This was an historic filibuster that began in March, almost three months prior. Kennedy’s successor, President Lyndon Johnson, signed the bill in to law on July 2nd.

1967

Thurgood Marshall is nominated as 1st Black Supreme Court Justice. Today, the first Black female is awaiting her turn, already confirmed, to wear the robes of a Justice. I sometimes wonder if or when we’ll run out of “firsts” for women and Black people. What more can those groups accomplish that they haven’t? As it turn out, they may be out of categories, and that’s why now, instead of saying “first Black person” it’s first “person of color” which breaks us down into even more segments, and since women have accomplished so much that we’re now led to celebrate accomplishments by people who don’t claim a gender or are in between genders, which breaks us down into even more segments that the media can use to pit us against each other.

1967

Governor Ronald Reagan signs the California abortion bill that gave California the most liberal abortion laws in the nation. The conservative future President of the United States made them take out birth defects as a reason to get an abortion. 

This week in 1970, the US leaves Wheelus Air Force Base in Libya. Yea, we had an Air Force Base in Libya. The largest one outside the continental United States. It began operations in 1943, but according to wikipedia, its use began to wane in the 1960’s, after guided missiles replaced long-range bombers and oil made the country rich. There was already a deal in place to close the base when Mohammar Ghadafi took control. He became an enemy of America, and we bombed our former Air Force Base in 1986 in retaliation for the Berlin nightclub bombing, which we’ve talked about on the Listening Tube before.

1986

Pravda announces high-level Chernobyl staff are fired for stupidity. The Director and Chief Engineer were among others who were dismissed after the world’s worst nuclear disaster that killed many and forced the evacuation of the area north of Kiev in what is now Ukraine. Pravda also reported that many of the plant workers, including shift supervisors and senior operators, were still “on the run” and that they simply took off instead of following procedure. When Russia invaded Ukraine more than three months ago, the troops they sent in from Belarus easily took control of the Chernobyl area, where they promptly stirred up radioactive dirt that hadn’t been touched since 1986. For the tyrant Putin to send his army into a radioactive desert without a plan to prevent the spread of more contaminants, using his own soldiers as cannon fodder of nuclear poisoning is reprehensible. Not only to his own soldiers, but to the rest of the region that will have to live through the threat all over again, because Putin didn’t learn the lessons of the past. The Chernobyl plant is again in the hands of Ukrainian authorities, and was even before Putin ordered his troops to withdraw from the region. The Russian army realized they didn’t have the wherewithall to maintain the area in a safe manner, and relinquished authority back to the local experts that hadn’t already been killed. Soon, I hope, Putin’s army will also realize they don’t have the wherewithall to maintain any of Ukraine, and they’ll withdraw from the eastern and southern areas as well. And Crimea. Unlike Stalin, there’s still a chance that Putin will someday have to answer to somebody.

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.