An alpine sojourn

Deep snow - Cervinia, Italy

The Blizzard of 1978 dumped nearly three feet of snow on Southeastern New England in 33 hours. It is a searing event burned into Yankee lore.

Imagine a place that receives over 30 such “Blizzards of 1978” each and every year.

Cervinia, Italy, is located on the steep, southern slope of the Alps. The Matterhorn looms over the village, but its shape is a bit unfamiliar to us, the Italian visage, not the more familiar Swiss profile.

“Il Cervino,” the Italian name of the Matterhorn, looms nearly eight thousand feet above the village, which itself is at 6,700 feet. Cervinia served as a base of operations for alpine explorers who finally succeeded in 1865, after numerous deadly failures, in ascending the Italian side of the enormous 14,700-foot peak.

But we were here to ski.

Or so we thought, because upon our arrival, an enormous storm blew in from the North Atlantic, driving moisture across Ireland, England, France, and then up into the Alps where it was precipitated as heavy snow. For nearly three days, the ski slopes were closed due to high winds and deep snow. The road below the village was closed, and the outside world (and ski lift operators) were unable to reach us.

So we explored.

The first thing we noticed was the constant beehive of activity. From residents shoveling their doorsteps, to shop owners running snow blowers on their sidewalks, to huge diesel earthmovers dumping loads of snow into trucks to be carted off, everyone was in the snow removal business. Large, beefed up lawn tractors with front-end buckets cleared tight spaces in parking lots. Hotel employees cleared fire escapes of deep snow and chipped ice from the walks. Their energy was enormous.

We walked the small shopping district, ankle deep in snow in spite of a recent scraping. The snowfall was relentless. There was only one solution – an Italian bar.

Italian bars are unlike ours. Although they sell beer, wine, and liquor, the main attraction is the coffee and the food. They also tend to be smaller and brighter than ours, with large windows and bright lighting. But, oh my goodness, the food! Paninis, piadinas, salads, pizza slices, and more. And coffee – espressos and cappuccinos, lattes and macchiatos – the caffeine was absolutely levitating. It is difficult to describe the delicious result of these simple preparations.

We had found a particular bar that appealed to us. Operated by a mother and her son, they were efficient but kind, and patient with our pidgin Italian. Then we noticed that the local folks were among the frequent patrons. The mailman. The shopkeeper next door. The snowplow driver. This was not a typical tourist trap. And the quality of the food, and service, so attested.

Then, on day three, we skied. The lifts had been dug out and were running, the sun was bright, the sky was blue. It was time to head up the mountain.

After taking several lifts, we approached the ridge, at nearly 10,000 feet. Looking north, into Switzerland, we saw glaciers shot through with deep, blue, ice. To the south, Italy, with huge snowfields all above the tree line, and billowing fog in the valleys below. And above it all, the towering mass of Il Cervino, the Matterhorn. The vista was enormous, humbling.

And then we skied down, swooping and carving, feeling free as birds enjoying the sensation of flight. While there were many hundreds of other skiers on the mountain, it was so huge that we often saw no one, and absorbed the surrounding beauty in solitude. Descending, floating, thanking the mountain. These moments were spiritual, never to be forgotten.

The last day, another storm. So back to our Italian bar, for now the fourth time. Although the Italians don’t drink coffee with milk (lattes, cappuccinos), except in the morning, our now favorite barista didn’t criticize. After having paninis and several coffees, we told her, in pidgin Italian, that we were departing the next day. She held a hand to her heart, then reached out for a firm handshake and whispered, “Grazie!”

It was a too-short sojourn in northern Italy, to a locale that deals with 1,000 inches of snow each winter. The mountains were towering, the snowfields broad, the skiing intense, the glaciers immense.

But it was the people, the simple heart-to-heart contact, that mattered. We would return in a heartbeat.

In reverence of beautiful minds - Hedy Lamarr

 

Hedy Lamarr, inventor of Frequency Hopping Radio

The early years of World War II were grim. US forces were deploying torpedoes against Axis ships to little avail. Aerial, shipborne, and submarine-launched torpedoes were inflicting shockingly little damage against the enemy. Top US submarine commanders often made dangerous, close approaches and fired eight or ten torpedoes against enemy ships, none of which exploded. To say this was frustrating is an extreme understatement.

Sometimes the torpedoes dived too deep and missed underneath. Often the magnetic explosive heads detected the ship too soon and exploded prematurely. And occasionally the gyroscopically controlled torpedoes circled around and became a threat to the US ship or submarine that had launched it. Our technology sucked.

There were many villains. The Newport, Rhode Island, torpedo development labs were hamstrung by limited budgets. The Navy didn’t want live testing because target ships might actually be sunk. The torpedoes themselves were expensive and scarce, so sacrificing some to test runs was problematic in a tight budget environment. So the torpedoes given to the fleets were assumed to work based on engineering models, but were untested. The results were tragic, with many of our submarines sunk after mounting unsuccessful attacks.

The Navy, realizing that something had to change, began to seriously explore alternatives, one of which was radio guidance systems. But the problem was that radio signals could easily be jammed by the enemy. If a torpedo were launched under radio control, but the enemy jammed the signal, the guidance system would be rendered inoperative.

Enter Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, who with co-inventor George Antheil, designed a method to prevent the jamming of radio signals. This method was based on frequency hopping, in which the sending and receiving radios (for instance, submarine and torpedo) would simultaneously and rapidly change the frequency they used to communicate with each other. This method would render enemy jamming ineffective, and allow the torpedo to follow the commands of the controlling US ship, aircraft, or submarine. It was impossible for the enemy to jam an unpredictable signal with constantly shifting frequencies.

While this technology did not come to fruition during World War II, it did become useful, in different ways, later.

Frequency hopping is considered the basis for spread spectrum communication. And this is the technology that allows your cellphone to communicate with the nearest cellphone tower along with thousands of other cellphones, simultaneously, without you hearing your neighbor’s salacious gossip. Spread spectrum transmission provides privacy, eliminates the issue of signal interference, and reduces noise problems. Without this technology, we would be back to the days of CB radio. 10-4, good buddy!

Hedwig Kiesler, a.k.a. Hedy Lamarr, was an Austrian-born star of the golden age of cinema. She was a revered poster girl and adorned the noses cones of multiple B-17 and B-25 bombers. She was the star of many Hollywood blockbusters in the 40s and 50s, and performed with leading men such as Clark Gable and Spencer Tracey. She was at once gorgeous and brilliant.

In 1997, she was awarded the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Award. In 2014, she was posthumously inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame. While a beautiful, famous movie star, she was at the same time a serious scientist. She was said to observe “My face has been a misfortune, a mask I cannot remove. I must live with it. I curse it.”

She passed away at the dawn of this century on January 19, 2000, almost exactly 18 years ago, after seeing, and being a part of, the sweep of the twentieth. What a wonderful life.

The next time you use your cellphone to check up on your kids, please thank Hedy.

Sweet unto death

“Americans are eating and drinking too much added sugars which can lead to health problems such as weight gain and obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. To live healthier, longer lives, most need to move more and eat better including getting fewer calories from added sugars.” 

These words from your Centers for Disease Control (CDC) echo those of the American Diabetes Association (ADA), American Heart Association (AHA), and many academic organizations such as Harvard Health.

The sad truth is that sugar, in excess, is a toxin. And to make things worse, to many, it is addictive.

First a few definitions. We are talking here only of added sugars, those used by food processors during preparation to increase the allure of their product. Natural sugars, such as those found in fruit or milk, are not the issue.

Added sugars take many forms. You would need to carefully check package nutrition labels and ingredients to even know you are consuming a sugar. For instance: anhydrous dextrose, brown sugar, confectioner's powdered sugar, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, honey, lactose, malt syrup, maple syrup, molasses nectars (e.g., peach nectar, pear nectar) raw sugar, and sucrose are all sugars.

The scope of the problem is huge. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, as of 2015 (last year full data available) there were 129 pounds of caloric sweeteners (sugar, corn syrup, etc.) available per person. While some folks consume far less than the average, some consume far more. Since a pound of sugar is about 87 teaspoons, that 129 pounds per year equates to 30 teaspoons per day. To put that in perspective, the recommendation is that men should limit their consumption of added sugars to 9 teaspoons per day, and only 6 for women and children.

Here’s another quote (from Harvard Health) that may focus some of your attention. “Over the course of the 15-year study on added sugar and heart disease, participants who took in 25% or more of their daily calories as sugar were more than twice as likely to die from heart disease as those whose diets included less than 10% added sugar. Overall, the odds of dying from heart disease rose in tandem with the percentage of sugar in the diet—and that was true regardless of a person’s age, sex, physical activity level, and body-mass index.”

This means that even if you are young, slim, and in good physical health, your risk of dying of heart disease is increased if you consume excess sugars. So much the worse if you are, like many of us, older, a bit pudgy, or lack six-pack abs.

Keep in mind that the greatest threat to your health comes from the sugars added to processed foods. So what can we do to minimize the damage, and try to meet the 9-teaspoon and 6-teaspoon limits for men and women (and children) respectively?

Like any other addiction, this is going to take a bit of effort, but the resultant health benefits are more than worth it. Try these ideas.

1.        Consider changing your breakfast cereal. Shredded wheat, sweetened with blueberries or bananas, has no added sugars, while some processed cereals contain 4 teaspoons or more of sugar per serving
2.        Try zero-calorie flavored water drinks instead of green iced tea, which can contain up to 8 teaspoons of sugar per bottle.
3.        Do you like your coffee sweet? The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has recognized that aspartame and saccharin-based sweeteners are safe substitutes.
4.        Switch to Coke Zero from regular Coke and save over 8 teaspoons of sugar per 12-ounce can.
5.        If you like chocolate, try to acclimate yourself to the 90% cocoa variety with no added sugar. Surprisingly, this is a high-fiber food and quite tasty to boot.

Here is an easy nutrition-label decision to make when you are shopping for any food item. Based on a Harvard Health study, you should select foods whose dietary fiber (in grams) is at least ten percent or more of total carbohydrates. This will do two things. It will help you select high-fiber foods, and it will automatically disqualify items that have an inordinate amount of added sugars. Both the ADA and AHA will applaud your choice.

Like everything else in life, the key is moderation. After all, you can’t be asked to give up that occasional donut, can you? Of course not.

Just ensure that it is truly occasional.

Net Neutrality – Government Fiat or Consumer Choice?

The topic of “Net Neutrality” has been fiercely debated recently, with the left lining up on the side of heavy government regulation and the right opting for free market forces. Who is right?

Who knows. Only time will tell. But here is a little background for your consideration.

First, let’s start with a little history. The topic is human communication, and let’s arbitrarily begin with the Pony Express, a mail delivery service started in 1860 and operating for 19 months until October, 1861. At that time, California was a new state, and had a burgeoning population and economy. The gold rush was in full bloom and economic opportunities were enormous. There was an extreme demand to reduce the time of communication between the east and west coasts, and the Pony Express was a business started to meet that need.

Using relays of riders on fast ponies, the service promised to reduce the time to deliver mail between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, to only 10 days. This was unheard of in those days, and the business was immensely successful.

But then a curious thing happened.

Simultaneously, a new technology, the telegraph, was being established. Stations were being built, poles planted and lines stretched, and messages transmitted by Morse code over hundreds of miles instantly. In October 24, 1861, the final connection was made and messages could be sent nearly instantaneously from coast to coast. The Pony Express ceased operation two days later, no longer economically competitive. This was no accident. An early example of technological disruption.

Fast forward to the 1990s. AT&T was the dominant telecommunications provider in the country. Voice, data, and fax traffic were distributed over their huge network of circuits. Intelligence was engineered into the network, with such things as voicemail, call waiting, call routing, and calling card charging all handled by the network. The end devices (telephones, fax machines), were dumb. Profits were huge and phone bills correspondingly large.

But then another disruption – computers and smart telephones that were capable of providing services that demanded only transport of the network.

AT&T’s business model was forced to change – there was no profit in providing intelligence in the network when the end devices were capable of doing it themselves. The network was reduced to simply routing packets of information from endpoint to endpoint, each of which was intelligent and could provide all of the functions that the customer wanted. The network became stupid, but the customers were happy with their smart devices.

Another leap in time, to 2017. We have evolved an economic landscape of wireline Internet Service Providers (such as Comcast, Cox, Charter) which provide cable or fiber internet access to our homes. At the same time, there are a number of wireless (mobile) providers (such as AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T Mobile) who provide mobile cellular data services. Our high data demands (TV viewing or streaming) are met by the wireline (cable) providers. Our mobile needs (phone calls, light data needs) are provided by the wireless providers. But another technological disruption is underway.

The next generation of wireless technology, termed 5G, is soon upon us. It promises to offer high speed data access competitive with the cable providers. All of a sudden, the wireless and wireline providers will become equally capable of streaming Netflix or Sneaky Pete to your TV. The difference is that the wireline guys will be anchored to your home while the wireless ones will be able to follow you around, providing cellphone service and TV streaming wherever you like, at your pleasure. The amount of competition will increase substantially.

A recent political cartoon summed up the position of the “Net Neutrality” proponents. If we don’t opt for heavy government regulation, we will suffer from lack of access to the information we want, we will be unable to share ideas, dissent will be squashed, network speed will be sacrificed, and diversity will be out the window. This is all possible.

But not likely. In an era where social media can dethrone a Harvey Weinstein, how much chance does a nefarious ISP have to abuse us?

If the free market is allowed to function, the force of customer demand will shape the market, providing the services we want at the prices we feel are fair.

After all, it works with widgets. Why not for data packets?

Only time will tell.

Our tumultuous heavens and an invitation to view them

A dark sky map for Massachusetts to find optimum viewing sites.

Things have surely been crazy here lately. Well-merited cultural and political upheaval in the United States, ICBMs launched from North Korea, Iran meddling in Iraq’s affairs, Britain pressing ahead with her exit. But as tumultuous we think things are here on Earth, it is nothing compared to what’s going on out there.

On August 17^th of this year, the collision of two neutron stars in the galaxy NGC 4993 was detected. But that galaxy is 130 million light years away, a distance requiring that length of time for news of the event to arrive here. In real time, it occurred about when the first birds and flowers appeared on Earth.

After spending several months consuming reams of data, scientists published a flurry of papers. We learned that the collision acted as a veritable foundry, creating gold, silver, platinum and other heavy elements. While these two neutron stars were relatively small, each only somewhat heavier than our sun, it is estimated that approximately “10 to 100 times the Earth’s mass in gold was spewed out into space.” (Science News Magazine, November 11, 2017). That is one heck of a lot of gold.

Further riches emerged from the analysis of this event:

• Proof that the collision of neutron stars creates heavy elements (which had heretofore been only a theory),
• The finding that mysterious short gamma ray bursts, whose origins have been previously unknown, come from the collision of neutron stars; and,
• An improved estimate of Hubble’s constant, the rate of expansion of the universe.

But what is amazing is the confluence of human capabilities and achievements required to allow us to make these findings:

• LIGO, a gravitational wave observatory, first observed perturbations in the very fabric of space from the collision,
• Then NASA’s Fermi space telescope detected a gamma ray burst 1.7 seconds later, and;
• The Dark Energy Camera in Chile saw a burst of visible light.

Any one of these observations would not have allowed us to understand what happened, but these, in combination and with nanosecond time synchronization, created a scientific bonanza. LIGO, in particular, is a brand-new technology that only recently began to monitor for ripples in space-time, a phenomenon predicted by Albert Einstein over 100 years ago.

With this as inspiration, winter is a good time to do some star gazing of your own. The air is dry, cold, crisp, and clear and the nighttime sky begs to be seen. December offers some particularly interesting shows, the Geminid meteor shower (which just ended early this morning) and the Ursids coming up on December 22. There is only one problem, the downside to living in the densely populated northeast: light pollution.

Star gazing and meteor hunting, in particular, require dark skies for optimum viewing. Get away from cities and towns as best you can. There are great reaches of central and western Massachusetts and a band of western Rhode Island which qualify as “dark sky” areas. Residents of Cuttyhunk, an island at the end of the Elizabeth Islands, are especially fortunate, as their island home qualifies as “dark sky” with no travel required. The rest of us will have to find a spot the best we can.

You can use the Blue Marble Navigator to help. Just type your state or city into the search box and make sure that map type "night" is selected. 

For the Ursids, try to find a hilltop with an unobstructed view to the north. Ursid meteors will appear to be emanating from the dipper of the “Little Dipper.”

Take a blanket or sleeping bag with you – dress warmly and prepare to watch and wait in comfort.

You most likely won’t see a neutron star collision, but may well spot some Ursids. And if we’re particularly blessed, you might even see another Star of Bethlehem.

Peace on Earth and good will to all.

Happy is as healthy does

It seems that when humans are given our head, we often find surprising ways to create goods and services, art and entertainment, technology and beauty. It’s a random, untidy process that would be impossible to manage. Fortunately, we don’t even try.

Or when we do try, the result is a Venezuela or North Korea, with extreme poverty and immense human suffering. No, we are doing something right by keeping hands off.

We depend on the creative spark and gumption of individuals to get things done. But the argument that we need regulation is sound. And that is to create and maintain a commons, or rather, a set of commons.

Think about goods and services and resources. They may be owned privately or in common, with the attendant rights of use, sale, and profit. A commons may be real property (such as a town common, a state forest, or a fishery) or less tangible, such as the stratosphere, wireless radio spectrum, or a corpus of knowledge.

A clear sign of a commons is if you pay taxes to support it. Your local schools. The highway system. The United States military.

The set of commons that define our economic environment act as a foundation for individuals to operate within. Every successful business, from the sole proprietor bookkeeper working at home to Walmart, Apple, and Facebook all require this foundation.

Before the collectivists among us get too excited, it must be noted that the individual, with her creativity and labor and risk taking, is of equal importance. Just creating the playground is not enough. Both collectivism and individualism are required, in a fine balance. We seem to have found it, or at least close enough.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reflected on why immigrants make great entrepreneurs, starting and running businesses at a rate far in excess of their population. In fact, in 2016, nearly one third of all new businesses were started by immigrants. Why? The author, an African immigrant himself, posited that America truly is the land of opportunity. Three immigrant entrepreneurs he spoke with agreed: “They were amazed by the quality of free education, by the benefits of the infrastructure and most of all by the lack of awareness by the natives of how lucky they were.” Commons, and the quality thereof, are vastly superior here.

Here is another commons that greatly influences our energy, drive, happiness, and contentment: the collective health of our human herd.

Think of this as one of those intangible commons. The better our collective health, the more energy we have for intellectual and physical pursuits, be they for profit or recreation. This contributes to our national wealth and satisfaction. Conversely, poor health distracts focus, impedes us mentally and physically, and increases real costs for treatment and care.

And the state of our collective health is not good. In October, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that nearly 40% of Americans are obese. Here are two observations from their report:

·         Obesity-related conditions include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, some of the leading causes of preventable death.

·         The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the U.S. was $147 billion in 2008 U.S. dollars; the medical costs for people who have obesity were $1,429 higher than those of normal weight.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report that total health care spending in 2015 was nearly $10,000 per person, approaching 20% of our total economy. There are many reasons, but obesity and its attendant ills is a huge factor.

And here is another fascinating finding: obesity is contagious, the conclusion of a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007.

As explained by the Brookings Institute, “your chance of becoming obese is much higher if you have a close friend who is obese. Obesity appears to be socially ‘contagious.’” The reasoning is that we can rationalize and give each other permission to be overweight, and contrariwise encourage ourselves to health depending on our social network.

Here is a thought for your New Year's resolution coming up only one short month from now. Get fit. Eat better. Lose weight. Encourage your friends to join you.

Let’s tackle this intangible commons of our collective health. There are enormous benefits to be gained as the pounds are lost. Good luck to us all.

Veterans Day is not just a holiday

Veteran’s Day and the Marine Corps Birthday have both just passed. Across the nation, and on posts around the world, we have honored those who now serve, and who have served, and those who have passed. Parades, flags placed in cemeteries, speeches, solemn traditions remembering and honoring.

But there remains some confusion in this country as to what constitutes patriotism and what is a platform for dissent.

In the National Football League, some players continue to protest what they see as a deeply racist nation with no opportunity for people of color. Many agree with them. Others think that great advancement is being given short thrift. It is unfortunate that truth is a victim, and that these camps are shouting past each other. If only a little listening were going on.

Here is something to listen to. Let’s consider those who have gone before: black, white, red, all colors. And consider what they have done.

Toward the end of the Second World War, Allied commanders determined that Iwo Jima, a small island in the Volcano Islands, was of strategic value. Positioned 750 miles south of Tokyo, the island was put to good use by the Japanese to radio ahead alerts of incoming air attacks from Allied bombers. Further, if captured and the airstrips reconditioned, it would be a good base for our bombers returning from attacks on the Japanese homeland. Those were several good reasons to mount an attack.

So we did.

The US Navy and Army Air Corps mounted a relentless bombardment of naval shelling and aerial bombing for months prior to the February 19, 1945, landings. It was thought that these bombardments were unsurvivable, and that the landing forces would meet only light resistance.

But not until too late did we discover that the Japanese had been busily excavating deep tunnels and command posts, and that the terrible onslaught of Allied bombs and shells was largely ineffective. In the invasion that followed, the outcome was not in doubt. But the cost was a complete surprise.

The Allied force consisted of 110,000 US Marines, US Navy Corpsmen, USAAF pilots and crew, and over 500 ships. The Japanese force was only one fifth the size, approximately 21,000, but incredibly well dug in. In the end, the Allies suffered over 26,000 casualties with nearly 7,000 killed. The Japanese defenders were nearly annihilated, with 18,000 dead. An extremely expensive, hard-fought battle on both sides.

One measure of the difficulty of this campaign is the number of Medals of Honor awarded. The Marines earned twenty two Medals of Honor, ten of them posthumous. The Navy won five, two posthumous. It was a terrible battle.

All of the award citations describe and recognize heroic action, and are worth reading. Here is just one of the stories.

Jacklyn (Jack) Lucas was born in Plymouth, North Carolina in 1928. A big kid, he was nearly six feet tall and 180 pounds at 14 years old, and was active in high school sports. In 1942, he joined the Marine Corps by lying about his age and forging his mother's signature. After training as a heavy machine gunner, he was promoted to Private First Class and was posted to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Bored with regimental camp life, he stole away and snuck aboard the USS Duel, which was bound for Iwo Jima. Discovered and busted to private, Lucas was permitted to remain and join the Iwo Jima landing force just as he celebrated his seventeenth birthday.

On February 19, 1945, Lucas went ashore with the 26^th Marines, and found himself part of a four-man fire team trying to clear a ravine of enemy troops. While advancing in a parallel ravine, the Marines were assaulted by Japanese elements who threw two grenades into their midst. Shouting a warning, Lucas threw himself over the grenades to save his fellow Marines. With great good fortune, one was a dud and did not explode. But the other one did, and with devastating effect. Lucas was grievously wounded, but his comrades were saved.

After many months of surgery and recuperation, Lucas eventually recovered his health. Still only seventeen years old, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery and gallantry above and beyond the call of duty.

He seemed in full possession of his faculties, but several years later joined the US Army and rose to the rank of Captain, a traitorous act which many Marines tend to forgive. Jack Lucas lived a long and fruitful life, passing away in Mississippi in 2008. Semper fi, Marine.

The next time you are tempted to kneel for our national anthem, or cheer those who do so, please understand that this is your right. But remember those who have fought to protect that right. It is they who we honor.