The Athol Connection

Athol, Idaho

Connections. They are the unexpected things which spice up road trips in New England and beyond.

On a recent drive to Dover, Vermont, we enjoyed a scenic interlude on the Mohawk Trail (portions of Massachusetts Routes 2 and 2A). Free of the hectic traffic of the Mass Pike, we were able to enjoy the hills and ridges and rivers that flowed around us.

First Athol, a town in northern Mass nestled between Templeton and Orange, and the butt of many idiotic jokes. Your erstwhile columnist learned, many years ago in a humor writing class, that such jokes concerning Athol were common, cheap, insulting to the residents, and given no credit by our course instructor. Thus chastised, we were doomed to search, mostly unsuccessfully, for humor elsewhere.

Athol was first settled in 1735 and incorporated in 1762. The town was named by one of its founders for his ancestral home of Atholl, Scotland, a name meaning “new Ireland.” Powered by abundant flowing water, the town became an industrial hub known for precision toolmaking which led to its nickname, “Tool Town.”

After continuing to Erving and a satisfying lunch at the Freight House, we drove on west and then north into Vermont. Climbing and swerving for what seemed hours into the Green Mountains, we arrived in Dover which is nearly 2,000 feet higher than Attleboro. The main attraction here is snow and snow sports, and what you would think is the eponymously named Mount Snow (3,600 feet).

But you would be wrong. While as the mountain has benefited from copious snow, over five feet in the previous few weeks, it was named after farmer Reuben Snow who sold his land in 1953 to the ski resort’s founder.

Finally headed back south, we descended through Wilmington, Vermont, to scenic, rural route 100 then to route 112, passing sugar shacks and small settlements, reentering Massachusetts in historical Colrain. Gentle mountain foothills, winding rivers, and abundant apple orchards dot this bucolic area. Peaceful, beautiful, it is with regret that we leave Colrain to join the hordes on I-91 and the Mass Pike to return home.

And now the connections we promised. Only a month ago, on a trip with friends to Idaho, we ventured through the town of Athol, Idaho. The name of the town was not the only surprise, but also the coincidence that both Athols (MA and ID) were positioned just a few miles north of Interstate 90. According to a history of the area, initially named Colton, “the town was renamed Athol by a settler who came from Athol, Massachusetts.”

Less than an hour to the north of Athol is the fabulous, family-friendly Schweitzer ski resort at Sandpoint in the Selkirk mountains. Much as Athol, Mass, is a bit over an hour from Mount Snow, Vermont.

To compound the connection, we learned that Athol is situated close to Lake Pend Oreille, one of the deepest lakes in the nation at 1,150 feet. You might be surprised to learn that the United States Navy has a permanent submarine research center located there. Apparently, the extreme depth and stillness of the water makes it ideal to test submarine acoustics.

Friends of ours assure us that Navy and Electric Boat personnel from Rhode Island and Connecticut have made regular visits to northern Idaho.  Who knew?

While Athol to Athol is a five-day drive across the country, they are connected by their proximity to Interstate 90. They are connected by their proximity to family friendly ski-mountains, Mount Snow and Schweitzer. They are connected by their striking rural scenery, peaceful environs, and friendly people.

It’s enough to make some future 2,700 mile road trip seem worthwhile.

Our Nation’s Inspiring Naval Heritage

USS Lexington CV-16 underway, November 1943

Some years ago, when Mom and Dad were still with us, and healthy, they were excited to be taken on a tour of “Big Mamie,” the battleship USS Massachusetts moored in Fall River. A floating museum, this wonderful exhibit is a living memorial to the brave crew and officers who served aboard her during World War II.

Dad was mesmerized. He had served aboard an aircraft carrier in the war and found many similar features aboard the Massachusetts, such as the narrow, crowded racks that the seamen slept in, elbows locked in the frame to keep from being tossed out in heavy seas. His descriptions of life aboard, roaring seas, battle stations, manning the twin-barrel 20mm antiaircraft gun, chipping paint, peeling spuds in the galley, veered between deadly boring and just plain deadly.

A few months ago, on a trip to Corpus Christi, Texas to visit his big sister, our 93-year-old aunt, we were stirred by these memories to visit the USS Lexington (CV-16), another floating museum. “The Blue Ghost,” an aircraft carrier launched in September, 1942, was initially to be named the Cabot. But when word arrived that the prior USS Lexington (CV-2) had been lost in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May of 1942, CV-16 quickly assumed her predecessor’s name, becoming the fifth US Naval vessel to honor the opening salvo of the Revolutionary War, the battle at Lexington, Massachusetts.

The prior Lexington, CV-2, was originally intended as a battlecruiser in 1916, but was repurposed as an aircraft carrier in 1922 due to a vestige of World War I which was intended to limit the number of battleships in the world’s navies. Little did the negotiators know at that time that aircraft carriers would become far more powerful than battleships. CV-2 was fortunate to be at sea during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and thereby survived to become part of the avenging fleet.

In May, 1942, Lexington CV-2 participated in the Battle of the Coral Sea. While US forces suffered heavy losses, this was considered a strategic victory. Lieutenant Edward “Butch” O’Hare, flying an F4F Wildcat from the flight deck of the Lexington, destroyed five attacking Japanese bombers and disabled one more, thereby preventing an attack on the Lexington. As a result of his bravery and effectiveness, he became the first naval recipient of the Medal of Honor. His citation read as follows:

“Having lost the assistance of his teammates, Lieutenant O'Hare interposed his fighter between his ship and an advancing enemy formation of 9 attacking twin-engine heavy bombers. Without hesitation, alone and unaided, he repeatedly attacked this enemy formation, at close range in the face of intense combined machine gun and cannon fire. Despite this concentrated opposition, Lieutenant O'Hare, by his gallant and courageous action, his extremely skillful marksmanship in making the most of every shot of his limited amount of ammunition, shot down 5 enemy bombers and severely damaged a sixth before they reached the bomb release point. As a result of his gallant action—one of the most daring, if not the most daring, single action in the history of combat aviation—he undoubtedly saved his carrier from serious damage.”

In spite of O’Hare’s bravery, the Lexington was attacked again on May 7, 1942, and was seriously, grievously, damaged. As a result, she was fired upon by an American destroyer to be scuttled, thereby avoiding her capture.

Following the loss of Lexington CV-2, O’Hare was reassigned to the USS Enterprise. The center of momentum of the war was changing in our favor, but the Japanese were still very dangerous. In November of 1943, he was lost in an attempt to repulse an attack on the Enterprise. His F4F Hellcat was never found. The first air ace, and naval Medal of Honor winner of World War II, was gone.

Meanwhile, the new Lexington CV-16 was creating havoc for the Japanese. Repeatedly attacked and reported sunk, she continually reappeared, patched and repaired. The Japanese called her the “ghost ship,” as she kept showing up after supposedly being sunk. This, along with her dark blue camouflage, inspired her crew to call her “The Blue Ghost”. She participated in several major World War II battles and survived, not decommissioned until 1991.

The Lexington is well worth a visit, if you venture to Corpus Christi. Many Navy veterans have served aboard her, including dear friends of ours.

And the next time you travel by air and pass through O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, be aware that you should be honoring Lt. Edward “Butch” O’Hare.

Password nonsense

We have all been tortured, for some time, by passwords.

Your password must be complex, we’ve been told. It must not contain any easily guessed patterns, such as “password” or “qwerty” or “123456” (actually among the most common passwords).

In fact, when setting up a new account, we are chided to follow their password rules, for instance:

Your password has to be at least 8 characters long.

Must contain at least one lower case letter,

one upper case letter,

one digit.

and one of these special characters ~!@#$%^&*()_+

So we get clever and come up with something like “Pa$$word1” (which follows the rules but is nonetheless easily guessed).

We are also encouraged to use a different password for each of our accounts: banking, email, credit card, Facebook, etc.

The resulting burden, to create different passwords for each account, each one complex, to remember them, and to change them periodically is enormous. (Oh, and don’t write them down).

Computers were supposed to make our lives easier, what the heck happened?

You can thank our federal government, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in particular. The above rules for creating a password are the result of a NIST recommendation in 2004. But the author of those recommendations, Bill Burr, has since apologized.

“In the end, [the list of guidelines] was probably too complicated for a lot of folks to understand very well, and the truth is, it was barking up the wrong tree,” said Burr. It turns out that short, complicated, passwords are easier to crack than long, simple ones. Burr was not totally at fault. There had been very little research into password security to build on, so he had to make his best guesses. And he was wrong.

NIST has since reconsidered. In June of 2017, they issued a new set of recommendations that should make our password lives much easier. The major changes are:

1.       Remove the requirement to periodically change passwords. A good password will remain so over time.

2.       Replace the complexity requirement (upper case, lower case, number, special characters) with longer passwords, up to 64 characters, which may also include spaces.

3.       Require that the website or application requesting that you create a password screen it against a dictionary of known compromised passwords before accepting it.

These changes would make your passwords much easier to create and remember and provide much greater security than the prior recommendations. For instance, with the new regime, you could create a password like this:

“I like Facebook because I can see what my grandkids are up to”

This password, 61 characters in length, would pose an enormous challenge to a brute-force attack because of the large number of bits of information and all their possible permutations.

There is only one problem. Even though this new recommendation was made mid-last year, almost no websites have been upgraded to allow such passwords. They will not accept it and will insist on some nonsense like “jHr$o8cRt4,” which is actually much easier to crack because it contains far fewer bits of information.

Here is the good news. Computers are becoming far more powerful and are now capable of identifying us based on our fingerprints or even by scanning our face. The newer iPhones already do this. It is now possible to unlock a bank ATM door and initiate a withdrawal based only on your thumbprint. And this technology will rapidly improve and expand, eventually replacing the need for any password.

What is a poor, hungry hacker to do? Almost certainly, they will escalate phishing attacks. A good example is the email that appears completely authentic, apparently from your bank, asking you to click a link in order to confirm account status (or some such excuse). The website you are directed to also looks completely authentic, and when you log in, you have just given away your credentials. How to defend against this? Don’t click that link!

If you think the request might be legitimate, use your browser to go directly to your bank’s website and conduct whatever business that needs done.

Another, perhaps more dangerous attack, is socially engineered to make you trust the sender. Say that a hacker has compromised the system of a friend and now has access to your email address. They will then send an email to you, apparently coming from your friend, saying “hey, what a great article!” and giving you a link to click. Don’t click that link!

Even though the email looks like it came from your friend, that is easily spoofed. And, if you click that link, your system is now exposed to malware.

In this murky, dangerous, world, you must at all times remain skeptical.

And don’t click that link!

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.