Failurebration

Toasting another year of the Browns officially missing the playoffs. It’s a nice annual tradition for about 20 years now.

A Day In The Life

We had a great time at the Sgt. Peppercorn’s all-day Beatles Marathon at the Bluestone. I was there from 11:45 to 11:45, hanging in from the great introduction to the show from Sir Paul McCartney though all of the early songs and Sgt. Pepper, to the second disc of the White Album. At that point, with my feet aching from standing for 12 hours straight, Revolution No. 9 dead ahead, and looking at about 2 a.m. as likely target for the end of Abbey Road, I decided to call it a day. We left hoarse but happy.

But what a day! If you like Beatles music (and singing aloud with a group of friendly, lubricated, singalong strangers), it’s a must-attend event. It’s impossible to go, listen to that music, and not be happy — and impressed at both the musicianship and stamina of the great band. It will definitely put you in a holiday mood!

Next year we’re going to get there even earlier in hopes of getting actual seats.

A Word From Sir Paul

One of the performers for the Beatles Marathon wrote to Paul McCartney about today’s event, and Sir Paul responded with a video clip wishing the performers well (and lots of stamina) and kicking off the show with the first notes of the Beatles’ first hit: Love Me Do.

Pretty cool!

Let The Beatles Marathon Begin!

Involuntary Singing

I’m in the midst of a two-day singing binge.  Yesterday I sang in the “Vorys Choir” at the firm — an ad hoc group that sings a few Christmas carols and parody songs at the Columbus office every year.  I’ve been doing it for years, and fortunately there is no requirement of any talent or singing ability.  The main criterion is that you are willing to don a Santa cap and sing out loud, as Buddy the Elf instructed — and that’s something that I can do.  It’s fun.

Today, we’ll be going to the all-day Beatles marathon at the Bluestone.  Starting at 12:30, the performers will run through every song in the considerable Beatles repertoire — with a few others thrown in.  The Sgt. Peppercorn performers are a lot more talented and professional than the “Vorys Choir,” but there’s no doubt that, at many points during the show, I’ll be joining in.

When I hear Christmas songs I just find myself singing along, and when I hear Beatles songs I do the same.  I can’t help myself, really.  I know all of those Christmas and Beatles songs by heart, and I’ve sung along to them since I was a kid.  When I hear them now, I just naturally join in.

For the record, I think it’s easier to sing along with the Beatles, because all you need to do is follow the lead singer in the Beatles’ recordings, in whatever key and tempo and vocal stylings they chose.  When I sing Ticket to Ride, I think I sound like John.  When I sing Hey Jude, I think I sound like Paul.  Christmas songs sung by the “Vorys Choir” are harder because of the key chosen by our musical accompanists — so you might start out in a comfortable vocal range on Silent Night, for example, and mid-song find yourself beyond the top end of your capabilities and needing to downshift into a lower register.  In any professional choir, that would be verboten.  Fortunately, with the racket created by the “Vorys Choir,” nobody notices and nobody cares.

I hope that every Webner House reader gets to sing a favorite song of their choosing, aloud, during this holiday season, and enjoy the chance to make a little noise.

The U.S. Space Force

Earlier this week, Congress approved the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.  Among its other provisions, the legislation has officially created the U.S. Space Force, which will become the sixth branch of the U.S. military — after the Navy, Army, Marines, Coast Guard, and Air Force.

Although the legislation authorizes the creation of the U.S. Space Force, it does so in a cautious way.  The U.S.S.F. will initially be created under the Department of the Air Force, and it won’t be able to start hiring new service members.  Instead, to reduce redundancy and maximize efficiency, no new “billets” are authorized, which means that the U.S.S.F. will use existing personnel from the Air Force Space Command to staff the new branch.  That means that, at least initially, the U.S.S.F. will have a very strong Air Force feel to it.  During its first year, the Space Force will establish a headquarters, and the President is empowered to appoint a Chief of Space Operations, who will report to the Secretary of the Air Force and be a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

What, exactly, will the U.S. Space Force do?  The legislation identifies its core functions as follows:  “protect the interests of the United States in space; deter aggression in, from, and to space; and conduct space operations.”  That’s a pretty broad mission.  You can read one recently retired Air Force General’s view of the case for the Space Force, the need to seize the “high ground” of space, and the need to counter actions by the Chinese government in space, here.  His remarks also indicated that significant new technology has already been developed, and is currently being developed, that will help the U.S.S.F. fulfill its broad mission.  We can expect to see some advances in satellites, spacecraft, communications, space transportation, robotics, and life support technologies, among others, as the U.S.S.F. gets underway in earnest.  And don’t be surprised to see contracts awarded to SpaceX and other private space technology and exploration companies.

When the creation of the U.S.S.F. was first suggested, some people made fun of it as a silly Buck Rogers adventure, and others bemoaned the official militarization of space as inconsistent with the notion of space as the peaceful final frontier.   Congress, however, clearly saw a strategic need for a new branch of the service to focus on space, and the legislation approving the creation of the Space Force passed by overwhelming, bipartisan majorities.  The U.S. Space Force is here, and it signals a new era in the “Space Race.”  Exactly what that new era will look like will be sketched out in the next few years.

Of Constitutional Concern

Through a vote yesterday, President Trump has been formally impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives.  The matter now moves to the U.S. Senate.

I’ll leave the impeachment proceedings to the talking heads — for now at least.  Today I’d like to focus, instead, on another area of constitutional concern that has been lost in the constant drumbeat of news on impeachment.  I’m speaking of an extraordinary order issued by the FISA Court earlier this week, in the wake of the recent Inspector General’s report on the conduct of the FBI and the Department of Justice in receiving authorization to conduct surveillance.  I’ve linked to the text of the Order above.

The FISA court gets its name from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the statute which created the Court.  FISA requires the government to apply for, and receive authorization from, the FISA Court before it can engage in electronic surveillance.  The applications are to be made in writing, upon oath or affirmation, by a federal officer from the agency, such as the FBI, that seeks to conduct the surveillance.  The FISA Court — consisting of judges appointed by both Democratic and Republican administrations — is then supposed to review the applications to decide whether they establish probable cause that the proposed surveillance target is a “foreign power” or an “agent of a foreign power” within the meaning of FISA.

This process is critical because — as the FISA Court’s Order issued this week notes — it was designed to allow the FISA Court to provide a check on executive branch power to conduct surveillance and thereby protect the Fourth Amendment rights of American citizens against unlawful search and seizure.  To allow the Court to do that job, FISA imposes a heightened duty of candor upon the federal agents and agencies in their applications to the Court.  The FISA Court considers candor to be “fundamental” to its effective operations.

The Order issued this week makes it clear that the FBI, in seeking the FISA Court’s approval of the surveillance order that was discussed in the Inspector General’s report, did not meet its duty of candor — not by a long shot.  To the contrary, the Court notes that the Inspector General’s report “documents troubling instances” in which FBI personnel provided information that was “unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession” and “withheld . . . information in their possession which was detrimental to their case for believing that [Carter] Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power.”

In addition, the Order notes that an attorney for the FBI engaged in conduct that “apparently was intended to deceive the FBI agent who ultimately swore to the facts in that application about whether Mr. Page had been a source of another government agency.”  The Court believes that the conduct of the attorney gives rise to “serious concerns about the accuracy and completeness of the information provided to the [FISA Court] in any matter (emphasis added)” in which the attorney was involved.

The Order adds:  “The FBI’s handling of the Carter Page applications, as portrayed in the OIG report, was antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above. The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable. The FISC expects the government to provide complete and accurate information in every filing with the Court. Without it, the FISC cannot properly ensure that the government conducts electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes only when there is a sufficient factual basis.”

The FISA Court’s Order concludes by ordering the FBI to provide a sworn written submission identifying what it has done, and what it will do, to ensure that the statements of facts in each FBI application accurately and completely set forth the material information in the possession of the FBI.  It will be interesting to see how the FBI responds.

In today’s world, there’s often argument about whether the news that is reported, and the characterization of events that is conveyed, is slanted or biased or accurate.  The FISA Court’s Order — which is only four pages long, and can be read and understood by any educated American — allows us to go to the source and see how a Court that is composed of judges with lifetime tenure who were appointed by both Republicans and Democrats is reacting to a detailed report on serious misconduct by the FBI.

The Fourth Amendment is there to protect all of us — Democrat, Republican, or Independent, liberal or conservative.  If the FBI is willing to distort, deceive, and misrepresent to pursue an agenda, that’s a concern for everyone.  We should all be grateful to the FISA Court for putting aside politics, recognizing that the ends don’t justify the means, and holding the FBI to account.

Capturing The Moment

Every once in a while a TV commercial aptly captures the prevailing zeitgeist and popular culture of the moment in a way that ponderous news articles or pontificating academics simply can’t match.

So it is with the classic, current “sunset heart hands” commercial for Taco Bell, which makes me laugh every time I see it.  It’s not only hilarious, it also deftly skewers the phony, social media-obsessed, it’s all about the photos world in which we now live.  Faced between a choice of eating some tasty chicken rolled tacos and taking another pointless Instagram photo, what self-respecting person wouldn’t opt for the tacos — even at the price of a snarling girlfriend?

Trash Tax

I’m a big believer in the “user fee” concept of funding governmental services.  The underlying notion is simple:  many governmental services benefit us all, but some benefit only the specific users of the service — so why not have them bear the lion’s share of the cost of providing that service?  If a municipal government operates an airport, for example, it seems eminently fair to fund its construction and operations through taxes and charges to the passengers who fly through the airport and the airlines, rental car companies, and other who profit by doing business at the airport.

I think governmental entities also should consider expanding the “user fee” concept to look not only at who benefits from government services, but also at who causes the need for the government service in the first place.  I’m thinking specifically about the trash that you find at the parks, and on the streets and sidewalks, of Columbus and other American cities.  At some point, for example, somebody from some governmental entity comes to Schiller Park, empties the refuse cans, and picks up the random bits of trash to be found on the park lawns and sidewalks.

As a dedicated litter fighter who tries to pick up and throw away the random trash found at Schiller, I know first hand that much of the contents of the trash cans, and virtually all of the litter on the lawns and sidewalks, is fast food debris — coffee cups and lids, cheap styrofoam containers, straws, straw wrappers, sandwich wrappers, napkins, and carryout bags.  It’s virtually inevitable that at least some portion of fast food carryout will end up as litter, and as you move from the area around the McDonald’s to the area around the Starbucks you see the change in the litter patterns that reflects that.

So why not impose a targeted “trash tax” on fast food restaurants that helps to defray the cost of picking up the litter that those businesses generate?  It would be different from any fees paid for maintaining dumpsters at the fast food restaurant that get emptied from time to time, and would instead focus on the cost of the consequences of fast food carryout from a neighborhood trash standpoint.  And if fast food restaurants wanted to pass on the cost by charging carryout customers a bit more, I’d be fine with that, too.

Litter is a curse that can ruin enjoyment of parks and neighborhoods.  It seems eminently fair to require the businesses that cause the litter problem to pay for addressing it.

Tin Time

The cookies and fudge have been carefully — and more or less equally — distributed to their respective tins, in the last step in the holiday baking process. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I baked just the right amount to fill up our tins, without a lot of tempting cookies left over or an egregious shortfall.

This year we’ll be sending out 24 tins to friends, family, and colleagues– the most ever. And I can fairly say that, after the last few days, I will be perfectly content not to see a cookie for a while.

Icing On The Cookie

Tonight has been spent icing sugar cookies. It’s a very labor-intensive chore, but it affords an opportunity for creativity and it’s just plain fun.

Icing the cookies is the penultimate step. Tomorrow morning we’ll put the cookies into tins, and then we’ll be done.

Whiz Kids

The younger generation gets a pretty bad rap these days.  They’re often depicted as shallow, selfie-obsessed snowflakes who spend all of their time looking at their phones, texting emoticons to each other, and failing to actually experience the real world.

No doubt some young people fit that mold — but not all.  Consider Fionn Ferreira, an 18-year-old from Ireland who just won the $50,000 grand prize at the 2019 Google Science Fair for coming up with a process for removing microplastics from the ocean.

Plastics of all kinds are clogging our waterways and oceans, wreaking havoc for marine life.   Larger pieces of plastic can be removed with nets and mesh scoops, but microplastics — which are defined as bits of plastic that are less than 5 mm long — pose a different problem.  They are so small that they escape water filtration systems, end up in rivers and oceans, and are ingested by all kinds of fish and marine animals.  They end up in humans, too — especially if the humans tend to drink a lot of bottled water.  But how can something so small be successfully removed from the world’s waterways?

Fionn, who lives in a coastal town in southwest Ireland, noticed tiny bits of plastic sticking to an oil-covered rock.  Based on that observation, he began experimenting with a substance called ferrofluids to see whether they also would attract microplastics — because chemistry teaches that like attracts like.  His experiments showed that microplastics adhere to ferrofluids, and ferrofluids, and the microplastics attracted to them, can then be removed from waters through the use of magnets — leaving the water free of microplastics.

Fionn Ferreira’s use of ferrofluids to attract microplastics is an elegant but practical solution to a significant problem, and it’s based on a real-world observation — which is often the source of scientific discovery.  Thank goodness he didn’t have his head buried in his cellphone when he passed that oily rock on the Irish coast!

Another Baking Day

Today was another full day of baking and fudge preparation, and I’m almost done. Tomorrow night I’ll ice the sugar cookies and fill up the tins. For now, though, it’s time to rest my aching feet, drink a beer, and watch the Browns gag away another game.

Mystery Flavor

Some Dum-Dums appeared by the fifth floor coffee station on Friday. I don’t like candy so I wasn’t tempted, but as I was waiting for my coffee I idly noted that some of the suckers were described as a “mystery flavor,” with a bunch of question marks on the wrapper.

That seemed weird to me. When I mentioned it to Kish that night, she patiently explained that Dum-Dums always have a mystery flavor, and that trying one is part of the fun.

Well, I guess you learn something every day. As for me, “mystery flavor” sounds uncomfortably close to the gray, formless “mystery meat” that we used to complain about at the high school cafeteria. I didn’t eat it because I didn’t know what it was. Similarly, not knowing what flavor you’re going to be tasting until you put a sucker in your mouth doesn’t seem very enticing to me.

Who knows? Maybe, like Dumbledore as he tried a Bertie Botts Every Flavor Bean, I might draw earwax.

Baking Day — 2019

We’ve been baking all day and making good progress on this year’s batch of holiday cookies. So far we’ve baked the cranberry hootycreeks, the peanut butter and almond cookies, the Dutch spice cookies, the sugar cookie cutouts, and the lemon ricotta cookies. I’m having some fun experimenting with some new toppings– like maraschino cherries — and have managed to resist spoon-licking temptation (for the most part, anyway).

Tomorrow we’ll tackle this year’s new cookies, make some fudge and bar cookies, and try to show some decoration flair with icing the sugar cookies.