Depression-Era Songs

     There’s a legend of sorts about the Federal Music Project (FMP), a subdepartment of the Works Progress Administration of FDR’s New Deal. That legend holds that many of the songs that became popular during that era were actually commissioned by the FMP – i.e., their composers were paid to compose popular songs. It could be true. Consider these titles:

• We’re In The Money
• Red Red Robin
• The Sunny Side Of The Street
• Brother, Can You Spare A Dime
• Pick Yourself Up
• Boulevard Of Broken Dreams
• No Depression In Heaven

     All these songs were composed and became popular during the Depression years. There were others, of course, but these are the ones I can remember offhand. (No, I wasn’t alive then, but my father was, and he used to hum all of the above until Hell wouldn’t have them.) I’m not sure whether they were FMP-funded tunes, but their association with those years is strong.

     One of my more unusual college classmates was addicted to several of the above songs. He had a habit of bursting into one or another of them in public, and regardless of the circumstances. It made the rest of us consider him a trifle odd...not the sort of bloke who’d enjoy a Led Zeppelin concert, don’t y’know. But then, his favorite band was Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians, so he probably didn’t give a damn about the tastes that prevailed among the rest of our generation.

     Considering the tremendous effort the Usurper Administration is putting into returning America to the conditions that prevailed during the Great Depression, it wouldn’t surprise me if Depression-era songs were to experience a renewed popularity. In fact, just this morning I woke up with “Red Red Robin” playing in my head. Not a pleasant awakening, I must tell you...especially as the clock read 2:15 AM, an early arising hour even for your humble Curmudgeon. But then, I probably would have enjoyed the experience more were it not for the Newfoundland puppy (at ten months of age, well over 100 pounds) drooling into my left ear at the same moment.

     Bread lines and soup kitchens...25% unemployment...indigents with their hats out on every corner...gangland warfare and blood running in the gutters...hairy nuisances in sandwich boards proclaiming that “the end is near”...

     Ah! The memories!

Masks And...What?

     You think the mask mandates are bad? Want to get really upset?

     If you thought farts could just stink, think again. A new body of research suggests that farts might be the newest form of transmission to spread the COVID-19 infection.

     So far, more than 2.5 million people have been infected worldwide and the death rate has crossed to 1,77,641 as of today (April 22).

     What does the research say?

     An Australian doctor, appearing in a podcast recently alarmed citizens about a possible link between flatulence and the spread of coronavirus infection. While the doctors talked about the nationwide prevention by using masks, the doctors said that farting, albeit without wearing clothes could actually lead to the spread of the nasty infection.

     Quite a lot of stores, professionals’ offices, and so on not only require you to wear a face diaper; they also take your temperature before allowing you to enter. But what if they were to require you to prove that you’re unable to “pass one” while you’re in their establishment? I mean, you can’t be too careful these days, now can you?

     It’s one thing to hand out complimentary masks. It’s quite another to offer a prospective customer a complimentary...no, please forgive me, it’s too much. I can’t even bring myself to type it. And there’s this: those things are expensive. The store would surely want them back as you exit. Sterilize and make ready for the next user.

     (How would you like to be an employee responsible for any part of that procedure? Don’t Let Newsom or Cuomo see this. Please! They’d latch onto it as a stroke against unemployment. I mean, all those idled greeters would be happy to have jobs again, right?)

     There’s funny, there’s cringe-inducing yet moderately laugh-worthy, and then there’s...this.

An Odd Practice

     ...puzzling over which fits my odd 5:30 AM mood. It started with these observations by my secret sweetie Adrienne:

     It is with continued amazement that today people spew their guts in emails, post terrible stuff on Facecrap, and make videos where they threaten bodily harm - often to an elected official. Now we have the added fun of watching people incriminate themselves on live streamed goofy Zoom meetings, like the mook in the following clip.

     The clip Adrienne mentions is embedded in this tweet. (I have no idea how to copy a clip from Twitter for embedding in a piece here.) And yes, you really have to wonder just how stupid some people can be, yet still be allowed to leave the house without a minder.

     But it’s everywhere! People take photos and make recordings of themselves doing things beyond my imagination – and I’ve got a rather vivid imagination. Hunter Biden’s now-famous videos of himself smoking crack, having sex, and so forth, are only one example. You may recall that a few years ago we had the “scandal” of Jennifer Lawrence’s nude photos getting into circulation. By my lights, the true scandal was how an actress that talented, wealthy, and widely admired could possibly be that stupid.

     (Digression: As many have asked, I will now answer: Yes. Jennifer Lawrence was, in an inverse way, the inspiration for Love in the Time of Cinema. I wanted to portray an actress with Lawrence’s assets of beauty and talent, but with good values and good sense. You may judge for yourselves whether I succeeded. Digression endeth here.)

     I blame it on television.

     These days, television is ubiquitous. People watch TV on their BLEEP!ing phones. They watch it while they’re driving, for the love of God. I know a fellow whose sister destroyed a brand new Corvette, given to her by her fiancé only a week before, doing exactly that. To millions upon millions of people, television is reality.

     Many of those people have only a vague sense of self. They’re not distinguished by any remarkable asset or talent. Many of them aren’t good for much of anything at all. When they look at their respective screens, they see people who’ve got other people watching them. Why, those folks on the screen are undeniably real. And the doofi (plural of doofus; study your Latin) watching them, in some foggy, formless, semiconscious way, are led to think that “If only I were on a screen being watched by someone, I would be real, too!”

     So they video themselves. Doing what? Whatever comes to mind. Preferably something they’ve seen actors do on television. And these days, actors do some scandalous things with the cameras running.

     The consequences, as Adrienne has noted, are conspicuously before us. They extend to politics: the sayings and doings both of politicians and of those of lesser station. Didn’t the odious Joe Biden brag on video about blackmailing the nation of Ukraine with federal money to get a prosecutor off Hunter’s case? Hasn’t everyone in America seen that video?

     (You might think it takes significant smarts to win a seat in the United States Senate. You’d be wrong. Biden is only one counterexample.)

     It’s television, Gentle Reader. Television is reality to uncounted millions of Americans. Unless and until they see themselves on a screen, they cannot sincerely believe in their own existences. You may rest assured that a lot of people go into politics because it’s the quickest way to get themselves on television...and that observation points to a fertile but as yet unharrowed field for future scholars of the madness of politics in this Year of Our Lord 2020. I wonder if it will survive to reach them.

Yes, Size Does Matter

     In this case, the sizes of supergiant stars and the Milky Way Galaxy:

     Supergiant star Betelgeuse has been getting dimmer at an unprecedented pace over the past few months, leading some astronomers to wonder if it might be in the process of the collapse that precedes a supernova explosion. But there are other possible explanations, and we should have a better idea of what's happening to the massive star by the end of the month.

     Veteran Villanova University astronomer Edward Guinan has been watching Betelgeuse for decades and reported earlier this month that the star appears to be "the least luminous and coolest yet measured from our 25 years of photometry."

     It's well known Betelgeuse has no more than about 100,000 years left to burn and could start its death throes just about anytime between now and then. When it does go supernova, it's expected to result in a dramatic light show that could be visible in daylight and appear brighter than the full moon for a few weeks. The last time humans were treated to such a sight was the 17th century.

     Betelgeuse is enormous. Its diameter is very nearly the same as that of Jupiter’s orbit. As a class M star, it’s expected to have relatively few years remaining before it...does what?

     Well, it might gutter out. Or it might go supernova. Both deteriorations are possible, supported by models of stellar physics that have not yet been disproved and might never be. But those observing Betelgeuse are rooting for a supernova. Why? Because the last known supernova occurred before the development of astronomical instruments capable of appreciating the event!

     The last supernova on record was observed in 1604: Kepler’s Star, which was about 20,000 light years distant from Earth. It was very bright for a while, peaking at a visual magnitude of -2.5 and fading to invisibility only after three weeks.

     Now, you might be thinking “Bring on the fireworks!” You might be thinking that if Betelgeuse is observed to go supernova, we’ll have ourselves a few weeks’ light show, and the astrophysics community will get a chance to confirm a few things and disprove a few others, and that’s about it. But there are a few possibilities physicists dislike to discuss out loud. Some of them pertain to a supernova that occurs relatively close to Earth, which Kepler’s Star was not.

     A supernova is highly exoenergetic. Its emissions include both matter and electromagnetic radiation. The radiation covers a very wide portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. And radiation can travel a very long distance. Especially ultra-short-wavelength radiation of the sort that’s dangerous to living creatures.

     Now, I did say “a supernova that’s relatively close to Earth.” How close is that? Well, it would have to be closer than Kepler’s Star at 20,000 light years...but Betelgeuse, a supergiant star 700 light years away estimated to be about twenty times the mass of our Sun, might be close enough to qualify.

     Now, there’s no cause for alarm. I mean, no power on earth could do anything to prevent Betelgeuse from going supernova. (Don’t bother writing to your Congressman.) Besides, it’s already happened...if it happened at all.

     Light, the fastest moving phenomenon of which we know, moves at...the speed of light! And that speed is...one light-year per year! So if astronomers in this Year of Our Lord 2020 do get to observe a supernova at Betelgeuse, it will be because it happened 700 years ago.

     What’s done, as they say, is done. No point wringing our hands about it.

     But the physics of stellar collapse is largely a matter of theory that needs confirming data. Astrophysicists think they know what happens in a nova or supernova. However, we lack enough observational data to have high confidence in the models. Moreover, some of the data we really need could only be amassed from rather close to an exploding star...a place I, for one, would not care to be.

     But there is at least one certainty available to us: a certainty that recent events have “nailed to the wall” so tightly that no one, be he astrophysicist or layman, can doubt it for a moment. Whether you regard it as an occasion for laughter or tears, it’s as certain as the Sun rising in the East. And it is only this:

     Whatever happens, the Democrats will blame Trump.

Hostile Technology: A Vent

     I am a retired engineer: a technologist by trade. Thus, I expect to find the technology I confront comprehensible. Sadly, that isn’t always the case. These days, now that there’s software in everything, the software artisan in me is often close to apoplexy.

     Many have been the times when a badly designed website has made me want to ferret out the designer and throttle him to within an inch of his life. This impulse becomes especially strong when the website in question is one that offers something for sale that I’d like to purchase. Worse still is when the website is operated by some vendor with whom I must do business – e.g., a local utility company – and I can get assistance from that vendor in no other way. Such companies have little idea what they’re doing to themselves with their websites’ poor human engineering.

     But today’s adventure isn’t about a website. Oh no. It’s about something even more diabolical. Yet it’s a device you probably already have, and have learned to cope with.

     Yes, that’s right, Gentle Reader: The Last American Without A Smartphone has just acquired a smartphone. I didn’t want one. The proliferation of Internet two-factor security systems that require one has forced my hand.

     “They’re really simple and convenient,” said my beloved wife Beth, whose uses her phone mostly for playing variations on Bejeweled. “It’s like having the world in your hand. You’ll fall in love with it.” I forbore to comment.

     The lovely young lady who assisted me in this purchase advised me not to get a bottom-tier model. (She assured me she wouldn’t get a commission on the sale.) She steered me up the pyramid to what she called a middle-of-the-road device. I walked out of the store $560 poorer, with a device I had no idea how to use even to make or take a phone call. I sit here today fulminating over this purchase, and I shall tell you why.

     First, the phone doesn’t come with a User’s Guide. Oh no. That’s so last year. It comes with a “Quick Reference Guide”...which doesn’t tell you how to turn the thing on, much less how to make or accept a call. So I went to the vendor’s website to search for a downloadable User’s Guide. Believe it or not, Gentle Reader, I had to compel the website’s Help system to connect me to a human assistant to find the damned thing and download it...and it still didn’t tell me how to turn the phone on.

     I figured it out by experimentation, after nearly twenty minutes’ frustration. But that was just the start of my agonies. Now I had to figure out how to make a call.

     The phone’s home screen tells you nothing. It’s covered with icons, but there’s no help available for what they do. Hie thee to the User’s Guide, Fran! Which I did. But would you like to guess how far into that document I had to read to find out how to make a call? I was fifty pages deep into the thing before I threw up my hands. Then I asked Beth, who has a similar model. The procedure is relatively simple, though I wouldn’t call it intuitive. But there’s worse.

     The key to making the mastery of a new device pleasant is consistency of approach. Fundamental operations should be uniform. That makes them easy to master: the application of a common vocabulary of basic actions to a range of operations. How was I to know that phone calls are no longer considered fundamental operations on a phone?

     You’d think that a touch-screen device festooned with tap-and-go icons would use a tap-and-go approach to invoke the operations they govern. And that is indeed the case...with one exception that’s impossible to intuit. The exception: Accepting an incoming call.

     The ring tone sounds, the screen illuminates, and the number of the caller is prominently displayed. Below it are two icons: a green handset and a red handset. Green means “go,” right? So I tapped the green handset...and the ring tone continued uninterrupted. I tapped it again. I tapped it twice in rapid succession. I tried holding it down. No dice: the call went to voice mail.

     I couldn’t decline the call by tapping the Red handset, as I discovered soon afterward. The call still went to voice mail.

     The Quick Reference Guide was no help. Apparently, as with turning the device on, the knowledge of how to accept an incoming call must be transmitted genetically from father to son.

     Where’s that damned User’s Guide again? Read, read, scratch head, read further...did I buy a camera by mistake? Or perhaps a handheld PlayStation? Ah, here we go: Answering a call. I only had to read 77 pages to find it. So what’s the secret handshake?

     What? I have to swipe the green handset icon to the right? Swipe? Everything else this damnable device can do is accessed by tap-icon-and-go, but this, the most important thing anyone has ever done with a phone, has to be different?!

     This is evil. This is a mortal sin against good design principles. This is worthy of a life sentence programming a PDP-8 with nothing but an ASR-33 teletype.

     I hate this thing. I want to return it. But I can’t. I need it now. The world around me has decreed that Thou Shalt Have A Smartphone. I’d settle for slowly torturing the designer to death, but I suppose the satisfaction from that would be fleeting.

     I’m told the top-tier units are even less oriented toward making and taking phone calls. I suppose I should take comfort from that.

     Excuse me? You want to know the make and model? It’s a Samsung Galaxy A50. With this execrable device Samsung has guaranteed that I will never again buy any of its products. But this one, I’m stuck with. And please, don’t regale me with the improved ease of use and incredible new features the coming models will offer. I’d rather use a Dixie Cup on a thread...if it could send and receive text messages, anyway.

Conversations

     Much snark has been penned about “first world problems.” Indeed, we have it better here in the U.S. of A. than pretty much anyone else anywhere. Yet we, for all our material blessings, must individually face the same terminus as every man who’s ever lived or ever will.

     The Grim Reaper has recently taken valued friends from both myself and the C.S.O., which has put us in, shall we say, a strange frame of mind. We don’t agree on religious matters – I’m a Catholic; she’s a secularized Jew – but we agree that death is something “we’d rather not,” even if the afterlife that awaits us is utterly blissful. Yet it’s a notable fact, worthy of an extended ponder, that there are more jokes about death than about any other subject except sex. So this morning we had the following exchange:

FWP: I’m thinking about death from the perspective of “first world problems.”
CSO: Come up with anything yet?

FWP: Well, if you didn’t use up your frequent flier miles, forget ‘em, man. They’re gone.
CSO: Hmmm...

FWP: And you’ll never get to see the final season of Game of Thrones.
CSO: Whoa, yeah, there is that. And that bottle of champagne you were saving for a “special occasion?”

FWP: Your heirs will get it.
CSO: And they can’t tell Dom Perignon from carbonated Ripple.
FWP: It could be worse. They could open it and pass it around at the wake.

CSO: This death stuff is looking grimmer all the time.
FWP: Gotta tell ya, I’m in no hurry.

     Humor among the bereaved wouldn’t pass muster among persons not currently so afflicted, would it?