D'ye Want The Fried Calms With That?

     You can "clam up," but you can't clam down. Conversely, you can "calm down," but no one ever calms up. And yet they're not opposites -- it's totally possible to calm down and clam up.

      This is one of the great mysteries of the the English language.

The Orville, Four Episodes In

     Looks like we have a St@r Tr*k series back, only it's not smug or pompous.  The Orville is still The Original Series-type stories on a The Next Generation-level budget, playing with familiar tropes in a competent manner.

     Episode Four cribs from Heinlein and Asimov -- and they were cribbing from Tsiolkovsky and Emerson (or at least playing off their work) when they wrote their versions two generations ago, or perhaps three. 

     My hope is that it it is ST-like enough to keep the network happy, while getting enough Barney Miller effect* from the humanizing effects of humor to remain enjoyable.
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* Though it was a situation comedy, Barney Miller is consistently rated as one of the most realistic police TV shows by working law enforcement personnel.

Puerto Rico: This Is An Actual Emergency

     While The Nation was fuming over the people of Peurto Rico left suffering without air-conditioning thanks to cold, uncaring Mr. Trump, various agencies both public and private were rushing aid to the battered U.S. Territory.  The Feds bestirred themselves to wink at the 1920 Jones Act, which limits cargo transport between U. S. ports to U.S. flagged vessels, and lo, the containers are piling up on  the docks--

     And piling up and piling up.  No phones, no fuel, torn-up roads and running out of places to set cargo containers down, open 'em up and get out the helpful items inside: how's any of that going to move to where it is needed without communications or haulage?

     Mass communications are down to a handful of surviving radio stations* and unless commercial power is restored soon, they're going to start going dark as they run out of fuel for their generators.  Point-to-point comms is limited to radio -- public safety, amateur radio, CB and FRS -- and it., too, is only as good as its power source.

     This is going to be a slow-motion humanitarian disaster.  People are going to die.  There's already a lot of finger-pointing, doom-saying and feckless optimism, depending on the source, but none of it means a damn.  The rural poor are best off in this kind of situation: if you already lived in a shack and got your water from an open well or hand pump, you're unlikely to be much worse off.  Poor as the territory is, most people aren't at that point, don't know anyone at that point and may not have access to clean water or possess the skill set to get by for long without access to a level of civilization you might think pretty meager -- but which is nonetheless essential.  Refrigeration alone changes the patterns of people's lives and vanishes as soon as the power goes away.

     There will be a lot of posturing and shouting but won't mean much.  Even "sending in troops" (what troops, from where?  The 2075th Airborne Roadbuilders, the Marine Lineman/Generator Corps and the USAF Parachutable Cellular Tower Bombers have been just sitting around buffing their nails? Seriously, the part of the .mil devoted to rebuilding stuff is already busy; I'm sure they'll lend a hand but it's going to take a lot of hands, in a place that's having a tough time feeding the people who are already there) won't make a big difference, quickly.

     Puerto Rico will be a long time recovering.  No amount of speeches in D.C. will fix it and stacks of dollars are of slightly less immediate use than those stacked-up cargo containers on the docks.   There are going to be locals working for three hots and a cot for themselves and the kids for quite awhile before things begin to look as if they might be on the way back to something approaching the previous level of normal life there.
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* Inshore AM stations with relatively short or strong towers appear to have survived best; this should not be surprising and it's actually helpful.  In terms of sheer coverage, old low-fi AM gives the most coverage per Watt: that means for a given amount of fuel, you can run the AM station longer than an FM with the same coverage.  But the remaining stations are not only low on gas, they're short on people -- and the people are, like everyone else there, short on food and water.  The clock is ticking and prioritization of resource allocation has to start at a very basic level: pretty much every assumption you might make runs up against needing to fix the stuff to fix the stuff to fix the stuff to get things to the people who need them.

"Had This Been An Actual Emergency..."

     There was another national-level test of the EAS -- the modern synthetic replacement for the old-fashioned Emergency Broadcast System -- yesterday and it appears this will be a yearly thing.

     For decades, the FCC had been assuring various Federal civil-emergency agencies (of late, FEMA)  that EBS and then EAS was absolutely spiffing, all worked out, set up and ready to go, yessirree Bob!  --Then several years ago when worried FEMA staffers, I'm told mostly the nuts-and-bolts type who have to make things work rather than bureaucrats, insisted on trying it, it failed pretty miserably.  A low-bidder system used to send spoken messages from the Feds to the very first level of big radio stations conked out and a big chunk of the nation heard a mumbling garble instead of "...This is only a test...."

     Since then, the system has been cleaned up, augmented by an all-new Internet-based emergency message collection/distribution system, and generally revamped under the (respectively) watchful and worried eyes of FEMA and the FCC.  Last year's test wasn't too bad and this year?

     This year, it mostly worked.  The magic black boxes at "broadcast stations in your area" grab the first tagged message they get from whatever source and file any later duplicates.  Stations that received the Internet-delivered version had pretty good audio quality; stations that got the station-to-station-to-station relay first had, in large part, adequate fidelity.*  A few, out at the end of long chains of pass-it-on, didn't fare quite so well.  Along with the audible message, TV stations and cable/satellite systems send a text "crawl" over the picture with content delivered over the same system and those came through just fine.

     So, for whatever its worth, had it been an Actual Emergency, you would have got the message -- and there's a whole other part of the system that pushes alerts to mobile phones that has yet to get a national-level test but is already in use for localized bad weather and "Amber Alerts" for children in imminent danger.  Five years ago, neither of those would have been true -- but thanks to a handful of people at FEMA who wanted to make sure, it's working.
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* In order to get the most reach from the fewest Primary Entry Points, national EAS messages begin on a few dozen powerful AM stations, who receive it from an Undisclosed Location (usually Mt. Weather but I'm sure that's only one of several possibilities) near Washington, D.C. via, ahem, "secure means."  In Indianapolis, the state primaries listen to signals from Cincinnati and some muddiness and static is normal: it's quite a distance and their receiving locations are all right by busy highways.  The station-to-station part of EAS is, however, fast, and that path beat the Internet-delivered one to Indy by about a minute.  So that's what people here heard.

Heard On The Radio

     On my morning commute, I usually listen to WICR, an FM station owned and (student) operated by the University of Indianapolis that picked up the classical and jazz programming once carried on WIAN-FM when that station became an NPR affiliate.*  The station plays classical music weekday mornings from what is now Classical Music Indy and used to be the Fine Arts Society of Indianapolis, and the light, pleasant fare of  Performance Today is my normal soundtrack.  Yesterday, they were playing "Night On Bald Mountain," perhaps best known from its use in Disney's Fantasia, and I tuned in near the end, when the music has turned lovely and lyrical--

(Here's a link.  I'd embed it, but YouTube has removed or hidden the feature that let me shrink the window to fit my blog's column-width.)

     "H'mm," I pondered, "Is that Mussorgsky or Rimsky-Korsakov?"  I couldn't remember and decided to check later.  Both, as it happens! Mussorgsky worked on the original for years and never got to hear it performed before an audience.  Rimsky-Korsakov published his own arrangement five years after Mussorgsky's death and that's the version we know.
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* Indianapolis is underserved for non-commercial radio compared to many cities of similar size. The history of it is tangled, but here's what I have puzzled out:  Butler University's WAJC, once the city's primary NPR station, had a commercial license and was sold in 1993 to operate as one; the Fine Arts Society had put an FM station (WAIV) on the air in 1961 but by the late 60s, decided to get out of the uncertainties of ownership and sold their station, which became WTLC, something of a legend for soul music programming.  About the same time, the Indianapolis Public Schools expanded WIAN to make it a full-power non-commercial station. WIAN and the Fine Arts Society worked out an arrangement to provide classical programming when that station wasn't presenting educational material.  WIAN also carried jazz and big band shows, and things went along that way until Butler sold their station and full NPR affiliation became available. (I'm a little hazy on  the history of local carriage of National Public Radio, as I'm only a casual listener.) IPS's WIAN was acquired by PBS TV station WFYI and became WFYI-FM, a fine example of an NPR station and these days, the programing provider to many of the smaller university stations throughout central Indiana -- and the Fine Arts Society's programming (and jazz) moved to the U of I station way down at the low end of the FM dial, which had moved their transmitter in with channel 6 TV to cure a mutual interference problem and incidentally upgraded their coverage a great deal.  "HD Radio" has given WICR additional program services on the same FM carrier and these days, the main FM has classical mornings, jazz in the afternoons and U of I sports and various public affairs-type shows (including a unique call-in history program presented by the indefatigable Nelson Price), while their HD2 operates as "The Mirror," playing jazz when the main plays classical and vice-versa...and HD3 is a contemporary music station.  Not bad for what started out as a ten-Watt FM that covered their campus and not much else! 

In My F*cebook Feed...

     The news and news-like items Facebook decides I should see tend to be pretty eclectic and I find value in that: it sends me headlines I might never encounter otherwise -- or at least not from that angle.

     Such was the case yesterday, when it decided I should read a Bernie Sanders (!) entry linking to an article in The Nation (!!) slugged, "The U.S. Government Fails Puerto Rico Again" (!!!).  It's a rambling, unfocused piece, ostensibly about how the island territory has been wrecked by the latest big hurricane (true) and the Feds haven't done a darned thing (patently false).  That's WTF number one -- I see the FEMA emergency and disaster declarations as they are released (over the President's signature, BTW); there's an e-mail listserver and I'm on it because part of my job involves making sure such information goes on the air when needed.  99.9% of the time, that list is a waste of my time (and I hope it stays that way) but it is publicly available information, no farther away than an Internet connection and a search engine.

     WTF number two: the article manages to blame the current Administration both for failing to make Puerto Rico a state and for not granting the territory independence! (Mr. Obama's Administration seems to have overlooked the matter as well, and so on back to 1898, but oh, that dastardly Mr. Trump...)  Interestingly -- and to all appearances, unknown to the writer and editors at The Nation -- the processes by which a U. S. Territory may gain statehood or independence are largely bottom-up, not top-down: the people who live there start the ball rolling, something Puerto Rico does with regularity.  Recent voting has suffered from indecisiveness and/or low turnout; readers can sift through those tea leaves as they will.

     WTF number three is the extent to which "Presidential Derangement Syndrome"* causes the writer to link the President's recent Twitter-fights over NFL player behavior during the national anthem and with North Korea to A) racism and B) a lack of concern over the hurricane damage in Puerto Rico, to the point of comparing the number of tweets on each subject.  Now, if they were comparing with, say, tweets about the storm damage in Texas or Florida, or tracking FEMA performance across all three, they might be onto something; but the behavior of a celebrity President on a short-attention-span social media platform is not actually indicative of what the parts of the Fed.gov that actually do things (or at least write memos and checks that get others to do things) are actually doing.

     I'm not a big fan of Mr. Trump.  I didn't vote for him (nor Sec. Clinton, either) and I still think we'd've been better off with the Libertarian candidate sitting in that office right now (though I'd advise caution around the baked goods in that case).  But one thing I'm sure of: he could Tweet about Puerto Rico all day long and it wouldn't get help there any faster than ships can haul the goods and equipment they need.  I'm not at all sorry to see FEMA handling that while the Executive himself swaps barbs with NFL players and a fat little autocrat.  Each to his area of skill -- or, as Senator Sanders and The Nation might prefer, "From each according to his ability...."
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* An ailment suffered not by Presidents but by The People, usually most prevalent among those who voted for the other major party's pick.  It causes Presidents to appear bigger, more evil, and more organized than they actually are, and their Administrations likewise.  Personally, I'm taking more and more comfort in the knowledge that the job is really too big for any man.  YMMV.

I Can't Complain, But...

     No, I really can't.  Houston (etc.) is a mess.  A lot of Florida is a mess.  The Keys are in sad shape and they're all way ahead of the U. S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and less well-known places in the Caribbean.  A lot of that part of the world looks like a war zone and with widespread power outages, telephone service out, damaged infrastructure and a lack of people and parts to fix them, it's far from over.

     Here in the Midwest, we've had--  Well, hardly anything.  Over a week of 90 or more degree highs and humidity to match, so bad you can break a sweat hanging laundry.*   And every time I feel like complaining, pictures of smashed house and sagging dams crowd it right out.  Hot?  Humid?  So what!

     Our weird weather is likely to sort itself out this week.  The damage from two powerful hurricanes in a row will take a long time to put right, in places that can scarcely afford to and can't possibly afford not to.
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* So why would you?  I like to hang-dry quilts, blankets and sheets going into the Fall, trapping a little bit of the scent of warm outdoors for the Winter.

Today's Distraction

     The Invisible Themepark!  Kind of interesting.

Okay, I'll Level--

     I have not been well this past week.  Had a flu shot last Friday (and they usually zap me for a couple of days), had some nasty dental work Monday, I've been fretted over my Mom and related issues since getting crosswise with my big sister a couple of weeks ago* and maybe it's just the combination of all that.  Maybe I'm feeling old.  Next Spring, I'll turn 60 and I'm not ready for it.  (Maybe I'll start over at 50 instead.)

     But I haven't been 100% and neither has the blog.  Sleeping most of the time, not eating much, getting nothing done.  I'm not happy with this.

     Time for more vitamins and coffee.  Might not be a long-term fix but sometimes you need to use a cane for awhile before you start walking without one again.
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* Something the two of us are very good at.  It's easy for each of us to blame the other but I suspect it's the combination.  We react like vinegar and baking soda, two harmlessly inert household substances that foam and fume when combined.  Alas, we don't neutralize one another in the process but remain as base and acid as before.

Breakfast

     Sausage and eggs and this and that....

     It was good!

And Then My Phone Rang

     It's work.  They broke something kind of important, by doing something that shouldn't break it.  And now I'm troubleshooting over the phone.

Multicultural Square Eggs

     Because if pastrami and Swiss cheese on rye is good for lunch, why not sneak it into breakfast?  I was making a "gashouse" or "square" egg for breakfast, which is an egg fried in a hole punched in a lightly toasted slice of bread.

     Rye bread, as it happened, which reminded me that I still had sandwich makings in the fridge.  So when I flipped the egg-and-bread over and laid a slice of Swiss cheese on it, I already had a thin slice of pastrami cooking next to it (the pre-packaged stuff is too moist anyway!),  As soon as it was warm, the pastrami went on top, I set another slice of it warming, and flipped the whole stack over for a bit to make sure the cheese was melted.  Add the second slice of pastrami to serve and there you go -- adjust times and quantities as desired; I break the egg yolk and cook 'em firm but other people like runny yolks with this.

     It was delicious.