Blog Mirror: Wyoming Catholic College Students Surrender Their Cellphones For Four Years

 

Wyoming Catholic College Students Surrender Their Cellphones For Four Years

Blog Mirror: Forever Elsewhere

 

Forever Elsewhere

Monday, March 17, 1924 Telephones and grim news.

The first around the world flight attempt was commenced by the United States Army Air Service.  The aircraft consisted of four Douglas World Cruisers.

The initial leg of the trip was from Santa Monica, California, to Seattle, which was the actual departure point.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 17: St. Patrick's Day: 1924  Work began on a dial telephone system at Guernsey. 

If Guernsey was getting good news, there was grim news on this St. Patrick's Day for central Wyoming residents.

Last prior edition:

Saturday, March 15, 1924. Passing symbols and elections.

Blog Mirror: 1924 Telephone Workers: Risking Life and Limb

 

1924 Telephone Workers: Risking Life and Limb

Sticky Notes

Why, in an era in which we have 1) voice mail, 2) email, 3) intraoffice electronic messaging, do some people assume that the best way to let me know that somebody has called is to write their name and telephone number down on a sticky note?

Because I want more paper to add to the sea of paper I already have?

The worst way in the world to let me know that somebody has called is to put the information on a sticky note.  

Ugh.

Wednesday, October 17, 1973. The Arab Oil Embargo begins.

OPEC having doubled prices the day prior, Arab oil producing nations, led by Saudi Arabia, now went further and cut production overall by 5% and then placed an embargo on the United States, the Netherlands, Canada, the United Kingdom, West Germany,  Japan, Rhodesia, South Africa, and Portugal.  Western oil producers Venezuela nor Ecuador refused to join the embargo.

This causes us to recall part of what we recently posted here:

Friday, October 12, 1973. President Nixon commences a transfer of military equipment that leads to a Wyoming oil boom.

Congressman Gerald Ford was nominated to be Vice President by Richard Nixon.  

Also on that day, President Nixon authorized Operation Nickel Grass, the airlift of weapons to Israel.

 

M60 tank being loaded as part of Operation Nickel Grass

The operation revealed severe problems with the U.S. airlift capacity and would likely have not been possible without the assistance of Portugal, whose Azores facilities reduced the need for air-to-air refueling.  The transfer of equipment would also leave the United States dangerously short of some sorts of military equipment, including radios, something that was compounded by the fact that the U.S. was transferring a large volume of equipment to the Republic of Vietnam at the same time.

This would directly result in the Arab Oil Embargo, which had been threatened. The embargo commenced on October 17.  

U.S. oil production had peaked in 1970.  Oil imports rose by 52% between 1969 and 1972, an era when fuel efficiency was disregarded.  By 1972 the U.S. was importing 83% of its oil from the Middle East, but the real cost of petroleum had declined from the late 1950s.

The low cost of petroleum was a major factor in American post-war affluence from the mid 1940s through the 1960s.  The embargo resulted in a major expansion of Wyoming's oil and gas industry, and in some ways fundamentally completed a shift in the state's economy that had been slowly ongoing since World War One, replacing agriculture with hydrocarbon extraction as the predominant industry.

We often hear a lot of anecdotal information about this topic today.  

In this context, it's interesting to note that petroleum consumption is not much greater today in the U.S. than it was in 1973, but domestic production is the highest, by far, it's ever been.  Importation of petroleum is falling, but it's also higher than it was in 1973, but exportation of petroleum is the highest it's ever been, exceeding the amount produced in 1973.  If experts are balanced against imports, we're at an effective all-time low for importation.  In effect, presently, all we're doing with importation is balancing sources.

People hate this thought locally, but with renewable energy sources coming online, there's a real chance that petroleum consumption will fall for the first time since the 1970s, which would have the impact of reducing imports to irrelevancy.  Any way its looked at, the U.S. is no hostage to Middle Eastern oil any more.

It turned out that Europe wasn't hostage to Russian hydrocarbons either, so all of this reflects a fundamental shift in the world's economy.

Price has certainly changed over time.

Juan and Isabel Person were sworn into office as the elected president and vice president of Argentina

Judge John Sirica ruled that the Senate Watergate Committee was not entitled to have access to President Nixon's tape recordings, but that the U.S. Department of Justice special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, could subpoena them as evidence.

Motorola Corporation's engineer's filed for a patent on the DynaTAC, the first hand-held cellular telephone.  It would be issued two years later and our long modern nightmare would accelerate.

The DynaTAC would not enter production until 1983.

The Mets took game four of the World Series against the A's.  I surely would have watched that on the television with my father.

iPhone 14 Plus | Battery for Miles | Apple

Accurate representation of farming?

No, but amusing.

A few technological observations

1. Once the wrong phone number gets in a record of any kind, it's permanent.

It doesn't matter how many times you tell the record keeper you gave them your wife's cell phone number by mistake. They aren't correcting it, ever.

And it doesn't matter that your old landline number that you never use is in the records, and you've tried to replace it with your cell phone number, they aren't going to.

2.  Once you give your cell phone number to somebody, even with a "use for official business this one time only", that's the number you are going to.  It doesn't matter if you have a receptionist employed full time to take calls, they'll bypass it.  Even if your cell phone voice message instructs the caller not to do this, they're going to do it anyway, leave a message there, and not call your office number.  Ever.

3.  Anyone you give a cell phone number to for work purposes will take up texting you at night and on weekends.

This add was entitled something like "The Future Of Work Sucks".

And while it is just an ad, it's pretty much right on the mark.

 

Tuesday, April 3, 1973. The beginning of the end of personal space and time.

Today In Wyoming's History: April 3:  1973  The T E Ranch Headquarters, near Cody, WY, which William F. Cody had owned, was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The first handheld cellular phone call was made by Martin Cooper in a demonstration call by Motorola.

Would that this would never have occurred.

Montreal announced Canada's first lottery in an effort to help pay for the upcoming 1976 Olympics.

The USSR launched Salyut 2, it's second space station.  It would be a failure due to hitting fragments soon thereafter, and it would crash back to Earth on May 28.  Well, not crash.  It burned up before it hit.

The Kingdom of Sikkim within India experienced a large-scale revolt which would require Indian intervention, and result in eventual Indian annexation.

Seal of Sikkum, downright scary.

Thursday, April 1, 1943. Operation I-Go

SIGSALY, a vocoder, went into operation for a secure phone connection between the Prime Minister and the U.S. President.

The Allies took Sedjenane Tunisia.

The Japanese launched Operation I-Go, an air offensive in the Solomons featuring attacks on air installations and shipping.  It would run until April 16.

Japanese aircraft in Rabaul.

Saturday, July 15, 1922. Flat tire.

The Saturday Evening Post hit the stands and mailboxes with a classci Cole Phillips' illustration of a woman beset by a flat tire.

The Japanese Communist Party (日本共産党 or Nihon Kyōsan-tō) was formed by three former anarchists, proving that one goofball crackpot body of thought can easily yield to another.  It would be outlawed, but wouldn't really go away, in 1925, and then be allowed again following Japan's defeat in World War Two.

The first fully automated telephone exchange appeared in the United Kingdom.

I'm surrounded by electronic communications devices. . .

 and I don't like it.

Richmond and Backus Co. office, Detroit, Michigan, 1902.  This is obviously a law office.  A set of CJS's are on a rotary shelf.  On the window sill are a set of corporate seals.  The bookshelves on the left are barrister cases.  The office is sort of a mess, like most real law offices are.  Missing, however, is the dread telephone.

This week I started using an iPad.

This isn't because I love the latest and the greatest in technology,  I don't.  Not at all.  In fact, I tend to be a contrarian on it.

This is partially as I just view tools for their utility.  I don't understand, for example, why people trade in perfectly functioning cars they own for new ones. The old one would have gotten you from point A to point B just as well in lots of instances.

"Well, it's new!"

Yeah, so what?  You spent money on something you didn't need to get a job done, something you already owned did.

M'eh.

But I have a computer in my home.  Two actually, as I have my own laptop that I got for work purposes back during the first part of the pandemic.  I already had a work issued one, and I frankly can't really tell you know exactly why I thought I needed my own, but I did.  It might be because things were really topsy-turvy at the time, and a person with a good workplace laptop risks somebody purloining it for a temporary purpose that become permanent, or in some instances you actually need to in order to run things for trials.  Indeed, I took my own and my issue laptop to a trial in August in Denver and I mostly used my own in my hotel room, not my issue one.  My issue one I took to court each day with me, but I didn't use it much there.

Anyhow, I never saw need for an iPad, even though my daughter has one and loves it.  She uses it for school.

Then, one of my younger confederates at work, upon whom I depend a great deal, bought a surface and started using it as a notepad.

A high-tech notepad.

I was impressed, to say the least.

I'm pretty much afloat in paper all the time, and it's easy to take notes and not recall where they were or memorialize what you need to do from them.  This can address this problem pretty efficiently.

And so now I have one, and I used it for the first time yesterday, the day I got it.

It is an improvement, although it reemphasizes my horrible handwriting.

I'd gone to fountain pens due to my poor handwriting, and they do help. This takes me back to writing too fast, so it's retrograde in that fashion.  But it's an improvement nonetheless.

And once I figure it out, and I will, it'll do a lot more than that.

When I started practicing law, we didn't even have computers.  We got them the first year I practiced, and it wasn't even super clear what we were using them for. They didn't have internet connections, and while the internet existed, it was dial up and all that.

Shortly after that, we did get dial up internet and soon after that, I got a computer myself, with an internet connection.  It was actually my second, as I'd had one without a dial-up before that, although why is really an open question.

Soon after that, the "Blackberry" came in, which served various functions for those who had them.  I never did, but I did have something similar that was passed down to me by a more senior lawyer who had upgraded to something else on the Afghan Warlord Principal.^[1]   I can't really recall what the thing did, other than that it stored contacts.  It wasn't a phone.

Soon after computers came in I started to type out my own work using them.  There was huge resistance to this and I was repeatedly ordered to dictate my work.  I did quite a bit of it, but I ended up abandoning that soon after we had computers.  Indeed, when I dictated I tended to write out, by hand, what I was going to dictate, first.  Anyhow, I was the first in the office to abandon the Dictaphone.  Now, I think, there's one semi retired lawyer left who uses a variant of one.

Dictaphones replaced direct dictation, which had been common before that.  With direct dictation the author dictated to a secretary who could take shorthand notation by hand, and then that person, usually a "she" in later years, transcribed it using a typewriter.  Before that, when secretaries were still "he's", that person usually wrote the document out by hand. People who did that were called "scrivener's" and were hired for their good handwriting.  Even today in the law we use the term "scrivener" as a substitute for author, because it's fun.

For notes, lawyers wrote everything out by hand on long yellow legal pads.  Many of us, myself included, still do.

But those days are ending.

Dictaphones have gone away, for the most part, and nobody is employed as a scrivener any longer.  The era of the true secretary, whose job was taking dictation and doing transcription, is over as well.  Scrivener's as an occupation no longer exist.^[2].    

Where all this leads I can't say, but I really don't like being tied to electronics so much.  I do like being able to publish myself, as in here, but I'm at the point, I think, where I'd rather not have to be on the constant office cutting edge of technology.  Some people love it, even tough, long term I worry it'll be our destruction.  I'm not one of the ones who love it, even though I've been a fairly heavy adopter of it.

On that, however, it's odd how the initial adoption sometimes came by force, and then sometimes obliquely.  My first home computer was really a toy from my prospective.  I probably played Solitaire on it more than do anything else, but it came with games.  My justification for getting it was that it would be a great home word processor and much better than a typewriter, all of which is true.

The internet at home was the same way.  It was a toy.  Now I have to have it due to work.

I resisted smartphones at first, but at some point it was no longer possible not to have one.  How many I have had by now I couldn't say, but it's quite a few.  I've adopted to the text world, and I'm glad that it lets me keep up with my kids in college, sort of.  And I like having, oddly enough, a little pocket camera, which of course it also is, all the time, something that's reflected on these blogs.  And I really like the iTunes feature, oddly enough.  Indeed, I had a little iPod before I had an iPhone that I used for music.  I think that I started listening to podcasts after I had my first iPhone, and I really like them.

But, given it all, while I don't like romanticizing the past, if I could place me and those I love back a century, before all this stuff, I'd do it.

I'd probably be the only one I know, however, who would.

I wonder, if I ever retire, what of this stuff I'd keep?  I don't think I'd keep it all.

Footnotes

1.  "The Afghan Warlord Principal".  Years ago I saw a photograph of a body of men, all armed, in Afghanistan.  They were tribesmen fitted out to fight the Soviets. Some were boys.  The boys carried ancient rifles, and if I recall correctly one had a muzzle-loading rifle.  One man, squatted down dead center, had an AK47, the only one so armed.

He looked like he was 80, if he was a day.

He had the most effective combat weapon not because he was the most effective combatant, but because he was senior to everyone else.  Much technology in any one office setting works the same way.

2.  To my surprise, although I shouldn't have been, it exists as a last name, however.  

Makes sense.

Monday Morning Repeats. From the Week of June 11, 2011. Communications and Road Miles

This entry was actually the only post for June, 1911.  This blog used to have big intervals between publication.

Communications and Road Miles

April 11, 1921. Glass Arm Eddie, First Broadcast Lightweight Boxing Match, 67th Congress, Transjordan, Cigarettes in Iowa.

Eddie Brown.

On the same day that Eddie Brown, Centerfielder, was photographed, the first radio broadcast of a lightweight boxing match may, or may not have, been done:

Old Radio: April 11, 1921: The First Lightweight Boxing Match...: April 11, 1921: The first lightweight boxing match on radio between Johnny Ray and Johnny Dundee was broadcasted live on this day ...

Pity the poor blogger on something like this. . . 

On this Monday of April, 1921, the 67th Congress was sworn in.

The United Kingdom established the Emirate of Transjordan, which today is the Kingdom of Jordan. Abdullah, the future king, was the Emir.  His grandson is the present king. 

The kingdom has been in the news recently as it may be that a case of sibling rivalry has popped up, and is even potentially dangerous.  

Iowa lifted a prohibition on the sale of cigarettes, a retrograde act that shows the could happen.  

Indeed, cigarette prohibition was an early 20th Century thing that shows the dangers of tobacco, while not really fully understood, weren't completely unknown either.  Prior to Iowa three other states had banned the sale, and even the possession, of cigarettes.

World War One, however, hadn't helped matters.  Indeed, while the Great War had helped push alcohol over the top in terms of being passed, the same factors were somewhat at work.  Thousands of men had been exposed to young drinking during the war and to societies in which, at that time, alcohol was simply part of life and a matter of routine daily consumption.  And cigarettes had poured into the trenches during the war in no small part due to the stress of the situation, and the fact that cigarettes were easier to smoke than their competitors.

1919 cigarette advertisement with  youthful smoking veteran.

For whatever reason, cigarettes really are more dangerous than pipes or cigars, health wise, which doesn't mean any of them are safe.  Lung cancer rates would start to spike in the 1930s due to them.

It's odd to think that my father's father, who was from Iowa originally, was a lifelong Camel cigarette smoker, albeit "life long" is deceptive as he died in his 40s.

On the same day, telephone service was established from Florida to Cuba, and as that lays on the path to cell phones, it was also a retrograde movement. A look at somebody in a distant land, from what seems to be the distant past:

April 11, 1921: 'Abdu'l-Baha at Pilgrim House

Monday Morning Repeat for the Week of November 8, 2009.

 Again, the only post that week, and posted a bit late this week.

The Telephone

Iphone voice recorder to computer transcription?

Is there an app for that?

I.e., is there anything for which I can record on my Iphone, jack it into my computer, download the audio file, and have the computer transcribe it?

It's broken.

A few weeks ago, as I've noted here, my dog was bitten by a rattlesnake.

He's better now, except he lost a bunch of fur on one cheek which has expanded into a streak down his left side.  We now know that sometimes rattlesnake bits result in skin necrosis. That didn't happen, but his hair follicles were damages in the path that runs down his lymph system on that side.

The fur is now growing back.

Our dog, fwiw, is a "double doodle". That means he's 75% poodle, and in the remaining portion of his blood line he's mostly golden retriever and and a little lab.

Effectively, he's a standard poodle, and he thinks and behaves like one. Which makes him, I'll note, a really good hunting dog.

None of which keeps people from repeatedly pointing out to me the recent news story in which the guy who came up with "doodles" is quoted as hating the breed. The best comment about that is that he sounds like a "wackadoodle".

I don't know exactly what his problem is, and I don't care, but I will note that the creators of things who rapidly lose control of what they created often go on to be bitter about it and even hate the thing they created.  I think what they hate is the loss of control, quite frankly.  Anyhow, yes I've heard the comments about "did you hear that the guy who came up with. . . "

By the way, did you hear that the guy who came up with the telephone wouldn't have one in his house?

Yep.

The dog and I went out to jump ducks from prairie ponds in the late morning.  When I got to the first pond I went to load the pump shotgun with 3" shells and accidentally put a 3.5" shell in the chamber and one in the magazine.  It's not chambered for that.

Somehow that error, which could have been pretty bad, occurred to me before I shot at anything, but it necessitated a fifteen minute exercise in completely dismantling the shotgun there in the field.

None of which prevented me from repeated the chambering error, which I caught immediately, again a little later.  I know better than this, but I was really, really tired.  And for no good reason.

A little later, on the same trip, the dog barfed up yellow barf.  It turns out that he'd only eaten yellow leaves from the backyard for some weird reason that morning and refused to eat his dog food.

Anyhow, my Dodge D3500 has a rusting body above the wheel well and that needs to be fixed.  It also needs four new tires really badly.

I haven't fixed either of those but I need to.  I was pondering going to 35" wheels (comments please if you have done that) which would mean that I'd have to put a leveling kit on (comments please if you have done that), and I just haven't gotten around to it.

Part of the reason I haven't gotten around to is is that the D3500 went to Laramie with one of my students and has not returned.  It went to Laramie as the 97 Dodge 1500 broke down on the way to Laramie and I had to have it fixed, which took about a month given everything that was wrong with it.  I'd have swapped it out last weekend, and needed to do so as I had plans that fell through and I didn't want to drive the D3500.

I didn't make the swap, however, as my long suffering spouse didn't want me to make a day trip to Laramie she couldn't go on, and since the kids have left, I've noticed that she's oddly switched her parenting instincts on me.  I'm getting a lot of additional instructions on how to do things. . . as in everything, and back seat driving has increased exponentially.  I'm hoping this phase passes quickly.

Anyhow, the unsuitability of the 1500 for a long trip was pointed out to me when I hit black ice on the highway at 80 mph.  I was lucky to come out of that alive.

Meanwhile, my Jeep, which is my daily driver, has the heat stuck on, needs an oil change, and there's a short in the light system.  I might be able to take are of all of that stuff myself, if I had time, but I don't.  I noted these problems to long suffering spouse recently who blandly noted I should take it in to be fixed, so I scheduled an appointment to do that, for which I was rebuked last evening for failure to take into account expenses in light of the 1500, which actually had come in considerably under budget.

That was also accompanied by the comment that "my car needs an oil change".  It might, I have no idea, but it seems to be perpetually in need of an oil change.  While I normally suggest that this gets scheduled in a mild way, having a frustrating evening I simply replied "well call and schedule one then".  My wife drives the newest car in the house and she doesn't really want me to do it.

The problem here is that for some reason I'm supposed to schedule the oil change.  I don't drive the car, so I don't know when the oil needs changed.  The shop is right near work, so just schedule it and I'll drive it down.

Not the right thing to say.

The reason I was frustrated is that I got tired of the old radio in the 1500 and swapped it out for a new blue tooth one.  I'm driving it, I figured, and I'd like a better radio.  That went fine, except in the process I discovered that the prior radio, which was in it when we bought it  half a decade ago, but which was an aftermarket radio, was amazingly poorly installed.  The frame for it is no better now as that's the way they did it, which bothers me.  Anyhow, after getting it in, I went to test it and found that now that my Iphone has updated to IoS 13.1.2, the setting menu will not stay up and I can't use it.

I need to use it.  I get into my settings quite a bit.

So I asked long suffering spouse about where I should go to get it looked at (I had in mind that this was Best Buy, but wasn't sure). Long suffering spouse, however, gave me a long lecture on the advantages of Samsung phones over Apples.

I don't dispute that, I just don't care.  I need an Iphone as it syncs with work, and that's the lawyers oppressive phone of choice.  Truth be known, I'd treat Steve Jobs the way that following generations of Englishmen and Irishmen have treated Oliver Cromwell, if I had my choice, which I'll leave you, the reader, to look up, but its evidence of my disdain of Iphones and cell phones of all types.

After the Glory of Samsung oratory was over I tried again and eventually got the information that it was Best Buy where I needed to go.

That was cheery news as I had been at Best Buy just the day prior to look for the radio.  There, I experienced the opposite of what I recently did in my search for a wrench, the big national chain only had display models but "could order that for you" whereas the local store I went to the next day had one right in stock, complete with advice from the youthful clerk/installer.

So I went back to Best Buy and was referred to the guy manning the "Geek Squad" desk.  I ran through the problem with him and he recommended trying the hard shut off that I had already tried several times, after having looked it up on the net.  It didn't work for him either.

He then gave me an explanation of the problem in Reformed Hittite, that language spoken by all members of Generation Z.  I had to have him slow down and do it again in English, slowly.  Basically it needs to be reset, which may not work.

Great.

If it doesn't work he informed me that it could go back to Apple, but he didn't know the cost. To which I stated "I'm sure it's high enough that it'd be cheaper to replace this Iphone 7 with an Iphone 11", which he confirmed, and made a derogatory comment about Apple in Reformed Hittite.

So I'll have a guy whose really good with that stuff look at it.

Just before I went out to work on the 1500, I took the boots off I wore to work. They're a pair of what used to be called "paddock boots", but which are now called "lacers", the same way that "ropers" are what used to be called Wellingtons.  I don't really care for them but you can wear them to work in a semi formal sort of way, and they're a pair that my son had that he rapidly outgrew so they have low use on them.  Might as well use them up.

I noticed that the seam has separated at the welt so the outsole is separating from the shoe.

And so I type this entry early in the morning, as all these entries always are.

Just after I ate breakfast.

I don't always eat breakfast (no, this isn't turning into a Dos X advertisement parody), but the paper had come and I was hungry. Oh, I found out when I went out and picked up the paper that I'd left the dome lights on in the 1500 all night. . .   Anyhow, I poured myself some Quaker Oat Square cereal and put in a bunch of raisins.

The I poured the milk.

Yup, completely and totally spoiled milk.

And at least my internal clock is working. Sometime last night I looked at my wrist watch and saw it a 11:15.  It didn't feel like 11:15, but I new it was the middle of night and went back to sleep.  Then again, early this morning I woke up and looked at my watch.

11:15.

The battery was dead.

And that's the second watch battery, and the second time this week I've had that happen.  It was 4:00, which I pretty much knew, so I got up 30 minutes later.

Boo hiss 9th Circuit

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Ninth Circuit Strikes Montana's Political Robocall Ban

March 5, 1919. Frightening and accurate predictions, Overreactions,

From the British newspaper, The Daily Mirror, on this day in 1919.  Scary, eh?

From the Cumberland Sentinel, a Tennessee newspaper:

The Sentinel reprinted an article from the New York Telegram about Alexander P. Watson, a Dickinson Law School graduate, being arrested for carrying a concealed gun he took as a souvenir from a German officer during World War I. A native of Knoxville, Tennessee, Watson was in Europe doing relief work for the YMCA when he was shot in the arm by the officer who was pretending to be wounded. Within 48 hours of returning stateside, Watson was taken into custody after he took the gun to a YMCA headquarters in New York City to put on display as a war souvenir.

We wrote earlier about the history of carrying concealed weapons in the United States, which is misunderstood, but the event relayed above is extraordinary and shows how early in the country's history New York state had taken a very restrictive view on something that was fairly unregulated elsewhere.  Indeed, at this point in history we'd note that the ownership of handguns in the United Kingdom was unregulated.

I'm not exactly sure what Watson's actual violation was, perhaps simply carrying the weapon concealed.  Hopefully he didn't suffer any long term consequences and was able to return to practicing law in Tennessee.  The souvenir handgun was likely a P08, although not necessarily so.

Artillery model, i.e., the long barreled model, of the P08.  Hope these guys didn't pack this around in New York City later.