California Free Press

The Eponymous Clifton E Lawrence

According to the dictionary, you're eponymous if you have something named after you.  But also the thing that is named after you is also eponymous. Now it seems to me that it should be one or the other or there should be two separate words - one for the person who has something named after them and one for the thing that is named after someone. At any rate my father is eponymous because there is a school in northwest New Jersey that is named after him - the Clifton E Lawrence Elementary School.

My Dad was a special person. Before he came to Sussex, he had been voted the most popular teacher at Highland Park High School in the early years of World War II when most of his students were going to go directly from high school into the military. He taught "Problems of American Democracy." I wished I would have asked him what those problems were, but I never did. He was the principal of Wantage Consolidated school starting in 1943 and then the school system sort of grew underneath him to the point where he became superintendent of the Sussex-Wantage Regional school system. When he retired at age 62, he had been in the school business for 42 years having started as a teacher at the age of 20. Unfortunately, he died within a month of his retirement of a heart attack. He never collected one iota of his richly deserved pension. He still had a lot to give as he had just won the primary election for state assemblyman and probably would have won the general election as well. He was the ultimate civic-minded person!

But my Dad's professional accomplishments don't really tell you what kind of person he was. He was an extremely cheerful, optimistic person who brought out the best in everyone. He was a genius at human relations and he really genuinely liked people. His values were very mainstream, middle of the road American, and he kidded about being middle class. He had a great sense of humor and a lot of folksy sayings. He was intelligent, but his intelligence was infused with an emotional sense and he had excellent judgment and wise decision making abilities. He touched a lot of people's lives.

I remember as a kid his telling about this little girl in kindergarten or first grade. I guess she was a few years behind me in school because I don't remember her personally. But I remember her name  - Yvonne Petroliwicz - at least I think that's how you spell it. My Dad would say he felt sorry for that little girl because he didn't see how she was ever going to learn to spell her name! Well, fast forward about 50 years and I was in the Sussex Ben Franklin one day. I had taken in an old picture of the Wantage School (seen above) circa 1940 to get it framed. The person in the framing department looked at the picture and asked me if I had gone to school there. I said yes, did she? She said yes. Her name was Yvonne Petroliwicz. I told her that my Dad had been principal there, and she proceeded to tell me the story of how every year on the first day of school (or maybe it was the last) - I don't remember - she would bring my Dad some cupcakes. On the day she graduated my Dad presented her with a doll and she told me, "I was the only one he gave a doll to."

That was the kind of man my Dad was. He touched a lot of people's lives. He made it a point to know all the kids in his school by name even when there got to be several hundred of them. He carried a brief for his kids, looked out for their best interests. He fought for school additions when the kid population grew even though he made some enemies with the folks who didn't want their property taxes to go up. He seemed to know everyone in the county both children and adults.

I remember another time when Abie South died. Abie was about 14 at the time and lived with his mother and sister in Butler's alley, the "ghetto" of Sussex where the poorest people lived in ramshackle huts. Abie was in a coal car parked on a siding probably stealing coal to heat their house when suddenly a load of coal came down the shute positioned above and into the car smothering Abie. It was a tragedy for Abie's mother because she didn't have a husband and Abie was the "adult" male of the family. I remember my Dad driving up Butler's Alley - because I was with him - till he found Mrs. South to express his condolences. I remember her saying, "You don't know who your friends are till something like this happens." A lot of people wouldn't have bothered to contact Mrs. South. He cared about people whether they were high or low.

My Dad was very active in the community. He was President of the Board of the Alexander Linn Hospital for 20 years. He was active in the Masonic Lodge, and he was out a lot at night at meetings. One year he was secretary to the Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge, Adrian Hommell, and was out at some lodge meeting or other almost every night. I remember he used to say Abe drove 80 miles an hour with the heater on full blast, the radio on full blast, the windows rolled up and smoking a cigar! Abe was quite a character. Dad was an American history major in college and was active in all the historical events like the Bi-Centennial celebration in 1976. I remember my Mom saying that on their honeymoon they visited all the Civil War battle fields. Dad loved all the civic institutions - church, school, hospital, the Boy Scouts.

My sister had cerebral palsy. She must have had massive brain damage due to lack of oxygen when she was born. She looked normal, but she never learned to talk and walked only for a few years. Her balance was always precarious and she fell a lot. From her teen-age years on she was heavily sedated and not too active. My Dad was so good to her. He played with her and made her laugh. The only thing my sister had in life were our parents. She used to sit by the window all day waiting for them to come home and, when they pulled in the driveway, she let out a big cheer and clapped her hands. They were all she had, and they were so good to her.

My Dad was a very sociable, gregarious guy sort of the opposite of me. He was very balanced between introversion and extroversion, but he was mainly an extrovert, I think. He loved social occasions. Psychologically, he had his head on straight. It seemed like he was always "up", always in a good mood. I don't think I ever saw him lose his temper, ever saw him angry. I always wished I was more the outgoing type like him but I'm not. Even in the same family you can have seemingly opposite personality types. I'm more like my Grandfather who was very introverted, almost autistic. I've come to terms with the fact that my Dad and I are different types, and I'm glad I didn't try to follow some life path that required the social and psychological skills and abilities that he had because I just don't have them. I think everyone has to first find out who they are, and then follow the path best suited for them, not necessarily the path that their father or mother followed. Parents have to realize that their off-spring may or may not be like them. I think psychological predispositions are genetically  inherited and not just from parents but from grandparents, great grandparents - who knows how far back certain traits go - and there certainly is a diversity of personality types in any given family if you go back far enough.

When my Dad died, the Board of Education promised my Mom that, if they ever built another school, they would name it after my Dad. Well, about 10 years after my Dad died, as it turns out, they did build another school. However, the local paper announced that it was to be called the "Ryan Road" school because it was to be located on Ryan Road. When I was a kid, Timothy Ryan was the dog catcher in Wantage Township, and I guess he was the most prominent citizen living on that particular road at the time, which, if I recall, was a dirt road. So Timothy Ryan, through no fault of his own, was about to not only have a road named after him but a school as well. And the school would have been named after him had it not been for my Mom. She went into high gear writing letters to the editor, getting her high powered friends to write letters to the editor, and in general going on a campaign to make the Board of Education follow through on their promise to her to name the school after her late husband. After some initial resistance, the powers that were gave in and decided to honor their promise and name the school after my father after all. My mother was a relentless campaigner and there was no stopping her when she got on her high horse.

So that's how my father got to be eponymous. He had a great life. He enjoyed himself immensely, but not every minute. I remember him saying, "Some days I wouldn't give you a nickel for this job." He was a genuinely nice person. I don't think he had a mean bone in his body, and he seemed to have the milk of human kindness by the quart in every vein. He had a real sense of wonder about life, about the universe. My Dad was pretty down to earth and liked to joke around a lot. They used to like to have picnics in the summer time, and my Dad would say, "This tastes pretty good for an old dead cow." He also had a sense of his own mortality, and I heard him say numerous times, "But life goes on."

Tesla the Man, Tesla the Car

There is a new car on the road called the Tesla, the first car not named for a horse or a large cat or some other fanciful creature but named for an electrical engineer. Nikola Tesla was a Croatian immigrant who invented AC electricity and the electric motor among other things. It's only fitting that in the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth, an all electric car named after him is hitting the road. It'll go from 0 to 60 in about 4 seconds and about 250 miles between chargings, and the cost to run it is about 1 cent a mile.

Born at the stroke of midnight in a lightning storm, the conditions surrounding Tesla's birth seemed to presage his life's work as an electrical genius. Although Thomas Edison invented and was a champion of DC electricity, Tesla's AC has proved to be the current that changed the world.  Electric trains, busses and machinery of all sorts - anything that plugs into the wall - would not be possible without his inventions.

Although born in Croatia, Tesla was of Serbian descent. He trained to be an engineer, attending the Technical University at Graz, Austria and the University of Prague. Beginning his studies in physics and mathematics at Graz Polytechnic, he then took philosophy at the University of Prague.

From the biographical web site Nikola Tesla:

He sailed to America in 1884, arriving with four cents in his pocket. He found immediate employment with Thomas Edison - who quickly became a rival - Edison being an advocate of the inferior DC power transmission system. For the remainder of his life, Tesla would have, at times, difficulty getting his ideas and inventions funded because most financiers were in Edison’s corner. Even later in his life, many of his ideas and inventions could not get funding, and so remained in notebooks, which are still examined to this day, by engineers searching for clues from his brilliant scientific mind. Edison and Tesla parted company within a year due to a false promise made by Edison. The story went like this; Tesla was told (by Edison) that if he could repair all of the faulty and broken down motors and generators in the Edison plant that he would receive $50,000.00 for his effort. This Tesla did, and in record time, no less. At the completion of the repair work, Tesla approached Edison for the monies that were promised, at which time Edison replied that he was only "joking" about the money. Tesla described the nature of the benefits from his proposed modifications, and reminded Edison that he had worked nearly a year to redesign them and that in doing so, gave the Edison company several enormously profitable new patents in the process. When Tesla inquired again about the $50,000, Edison replied to him, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor," and reneged on his promise. Edison reportedly offered to raise Tesla's salary by $10 per week as a compromise - at which rate it would have taken almost 100 years to earn the money Edison had originally promised. Tesla resigned on the spot. Tesla did not find it very amusing and left his employ for good.

Tesla's premier invention was the AC induction motor. In 1888 he discovered that a magnetic field could be made to rotate if two coils at right angles are supplied with AC current 90 degrees out of phase. Tesla designed the AC generators at Niagara Falls that are still operational to this day. In 1885 Tesla teamed up with George Westinghouse who had bought many of his patents. An important event was the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago at which, for the first time, a building was devoted to electrical exhibits. The exhibits included a switchboard, polyphase generators, step-up and step-down transformers, transmission line, commercial size induction motors, commercial size synchronous motors, and rotary direct current converters (one of which was operating a railway motor). The working-scale system allowed the public a view of a system of polyphase power which could transmit long distances.

By 1890, Tesla was a young, striking and desirable bachelor.  Handsome, magnetic and elegant, he was the "catch" of New York society, yet remained unmarried and a misanthrope. He was wealthy, gifted, accomplished and recognized. He wore his clothes well and was quiet and modest. Many a designing matron with a marriageable daughter was eager to capture him for her salon. Social leaders and businessmen considered him a good contact and the intellectuals of his day found him an inspiration. However, Tesla proved to be impervious, an unattainable prize. Except at formal dinners he always dined alone, and never under any circumstances would he dine with a woman at a twosome dinner. At the Waldorf-Astoria and at the famous Delmonico's restaurant,  he had picked out particular discrete tables, which were always reserved for him. In spite of all of the adulation that was heaped upon him, Tesla had but one desire – to continue his work. He lived the life of a celibate and a hermit. He enjoyed poetry and the opera and though he was not a drinker, he appreciated a glass of beer and advocated the limited consumption of liquor as an elixir of life. ... Impractical in financial matters, eccentric and compulsive, Tesla had few friends, but those included Mark Twain, John J. O’Neill and Francis Marion Crawford. He never married, and cited on at least one occasion that marriage wasn’t good for inventors. He was driven by compulsions and had a progressive germ phobia, washing his hands frequently and avoiding shaking hands and measuring the volume of his food before he ate it. He liked a fresh tablecloth with every meal. Always a fastidious dresser, Tesla wore new gloves weekly and a new tie daily. He maintained the same weight through his lifetime, 142 pounds, and always slept only four hours per night; lying down resting a total of six hours, but sleeping no more than four.

Tesla also demanded that napkins in a quantity precisely divisible by 3 be placed by his table setting at the Walforf.

In addition to AC electricity, Tesla invented fluorescent and neon lighting as well as the "Tesla coil" which provides the spark to the spark plug every time you start your car. Tesla was posthumously awarded the patent for the invention of radio by the Supreme Court which overturned Marconi's original patent. Another of his inventions was radar. In all he had over 700 patents.

Despite his accomplishments, by 1915, at age 60, Tesla was living on credit and drifting from one cheap hotel to another, a victim of his own poor business decisions, underdeveloped ideas and inability to create another innovation as profound as the AC paradigm. In 1931, at the age of 75, Tesla received birthday greetings from Lee de Forest and Albert Einstein. In his later years he spent most of his time at the New York Public Library or feeding pigeons that he called- “my sincere friends". ... By 1943, he had begun suffering heart trouble and fainting spells along with some mental confusion. On January 1st, 1943 he complained of chest pains during an experiment and returned to the hotel room where he lived. The last person to see him alive was a hotel maid on January 5th, 1943. It is assumed that he died January 7th, 1943 in New York City and his body was discovered on the following day. Over 2,000 people attended his funeral in Manhattan. So, at age 86, the great inventor died alone, nearly penniless and all but forgotten.

But today Tesla is being honored by having a very impressive all electric automobile named after him. Available for purchase in early 2007, Tesla Motors is gearing up for a splashy publicity campaign for this automobile which will cost initially in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This is from Tesla Motors web site:

A Bright Moment to Honor the Man Who Lit the World UNESCO has declared 2006 the Year of Nikola Tesla, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of his birth. We are delighted that the world unveiling of the Tesla Roadster falls on July 19, 2006 [this blogger's birthday!]— just days after his birthday. [Tesla was born July 10.] “Were we to seize and eliminate from our industrial world the result of Mr. Tesla‘s work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our electric cars and trains would stop, our towns would be dark, and our mills would be idle and dead. His name marks an epoch in the advance of electrical science.” — B. Behrend, Vice President of the Institute of Electrical Engineers

When his mother died in 1892, he paid a visit to Croatian capital Zagreb, and gave a lecture about alternating current. On that occasion Tesla said: "As a son of my homeland, I feel it is my duty to help the city of Zagreb in every respect with my advice and work." There is a monument to Tesla in Zagreb as well as one at Niagara Falls.

Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise

Marion, the titular head of my cultural exchange group, asked me if I wanted to go to the Impressionist exhibition in Auvers-sur-Oise. It was being held in a large chateau on the outskirts of this small village where van Gogh had spent his last days and is buried next to his brother, Theo, at the local cemetery. The tickets were reasonable so I hopped the train for the hour or so journey to Auvers. We stopped at Pontoise (also on the Oise River), another Impressionist landmark, as Camille Pissarro, one of my favorite impressionists, had lived here. An excellent book by Irving Stone called "The Depths of Glory" is about Pissarro's in some ways tragic life. He was the only Jewish impressionist and, after marrying the family "bon" (the maid), his mother wouldn't even speak to her grandchildren for the rest of her life. Also Pissarro had many of his paintings destroyed when the Germans used his house for a stable in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

I arrived at Auvers which is a very small village. Here van Gogh lived in a small room above the Ravoux Inn which he painted and can be seen here. He also painted some of the buildings of the town like the church (below), but mainly painted en plein air in the fields outside the village. I stopped into a French bakery for a tarte tatin since I couldn't resist French pastries, and made  my way to the Exhibition Impressioniste. The ticket taker asked me if I had come "seule," which I didn't understand so I was frustrated again because they understood me, but I didn't understand them. Later I realized he was just making small talk by asking me if I had come "alone" which I had since, I guess, there were no other takers in Marion's cultural exchange group. It was a very impressive exhibition for having been staged way out in the middle of nowhere albeit a place with a rich history in terms of van Gogh's having lived there in very spartan quarters I might add.

After touring the town and seeing van Gogh's room, I walked to the cemetery to see where van Gogh lay next to his brother, Theo. Theo's wife gave up her place at his side so the two brothers could be buried next to each other. They had a lifetime friendship (although not without a few rough spots) and Theo, an art dealer, was Vincent's main financial support. Their correspondence contributed much to documenting Vincent's life.

After that I caught the next train back to Paris pondering the fact that van Gogh had only sold one painting in his lifetime and was another tragic figure who had given up everything for his art only to live in poverty and not be rewarded. Ironically, now his paintings sell for millions of dollars and are exhibited in museums all over the world including the van Gogh Museum - entirely devoted to his work - in Amsterdam. Another great collection is in the Kroller-Muller Museum also in the Netherlands which is located in a National Park. One rides a free white bicycle to get to it, and then leaves the bicycle at the park entrance when finished.

Irving Stone has also written an excellent book about van Gogh: "Lust for Life."  It was also made into a movie. Vincent van Gogh didn't have any children who might have benefited from his legacy, but Theo's wife and son, Vincent Willem van Gogh, continued the family business after Vincent's death in 1890.

This is from Wikipedia:

Auvers-sur-Oise (May - July 1890) In May 1890, Vincent left the clinic and went to the physician Dr. Paul Gachet, in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, where he was closer to his brother Theo. Dr. Gachet had been recommended to him by Pissarro, as he had previously treated several artists and was an amateur artist himself. Here Van Gogh created his only etching, a portrait of the melancholic Doctor Gachet. As it turned out the doctor was as much in need of help as his patient: Van Gogh commented that Gachet was "sicker than I am, I think, or shall we say just as much". Wheat Field with Crows with its turbulent intensity is often, but mistakenly, thought to be Van Gogh's last work (Jan Hulsker lists seven paintings after it). Daubigny's Garden is a more likely candidate. There are also seemingly unfinished paintings, such as Thatched Cottages by a Hill. Van Gogh's depression deepened, and on July 27, 1890, at the age of 37, he walked into the fields and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. Without realising that he was fatally wounded, he returned to the Ravoux Inn, where he died in his bed two days later. Theo hastened to be at his side and reported his last words as "La tristesse durera toujours" (French for "the sadness will last forever"). He was buried at the cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise. Theo had contracted syphilis (though this was not admitted by the family for many years) and, not long after Vincent's death, was himself admitted to hospital. He was not able to come to terms with the grief of his brother's absence, and died six months later. In 1914 Theo's body was exhumed and re-buried beside Vincent's.

You Guys

The second person plural personal pronoun has always been a problem in the English language simply because officially it's the same as the second person singular personal pronoun - you. Most people use the word "you" to refer to another person, but the use of "you" to refer to a group of people has long gone by the wayside. Instead, most people use "you guys" to refer to a group of people. The problems with this is that "you guys" borders on the vulgar. I'm sure the first group of blue-haired old ladies who were approached by their waiter with the greeting - "How are you guys doing today?" - cringed. My mother, who was an English teacher is, I'm sure, turning over in her grave every time someone says "you guys" to refer to a group of people.

The word "guy" originated with a man by the name of Guy Fawkes who was part of a plot to kill King James and blow up both Houses of Parliament. The plot was detected, however, and Guy Fawkes was executed for treason. Guy Fawkes's failure is remembered with Guy Fawkes Night on November 5.

There has always been a tendency to pluralize the word "you." I think the Southerners had it right when they referred to a group as "you all." It makes a lot of sense and isn't vulgar. I think everyone should adopt this, and we should make it an official part of the English language that the correct second person plural personal pronoun is "you all."

There have been other attempts to come up with a second person plural personal pronoun such as the Bronx version: "Youse." This makes some sense too as usually the plural of a word is formed by adding an "s." However, "youse" is considered very vulgar while "you all" is quite stylish, I think.

The whole "you guys" thing culminated for me when I attended a wedding recently at which the minister repeatedly refered to the bride and groom as "you guys." I thought, "How gross!" Surely, we can do better than that as a language.

I'm not the only one having this conundrum. Dr. Carol J. Burger, Associate Professor at Virginia Tech has this to say:

The correct usage in Chicago [where I grew up] is "youse guys."  Try as I might, I cannot seem to eradicate this term from my vocabulary. Since I have been in the South for over 25 years, I have tried to substitute "y'all" but in times of crisis [like at the end of class when I'm trying to remind the students of an assignment], youse guys always slips out.   Maybe some aversion therapy with electroshock would be useful..........?

Julie Armstrong agrees with me:

I nominate "y'all" as a perfect feminist solution to two problems: the English language's lack of a plural "you," and the related issue of trying to create a plural "you" using gender-specific words like "you guys." Or worse, "gals" and "girls." Southerners out there who want to retain their distinctiveness from the Yankee hordes who might soon defect to our linguistic side can always retain rights to my favorite bit of inclusive terminology: "all y'all."

The American Heritage Dictionary shed the most light on the subject:

The single most famous feature of Southern United States dialects is the pronoun y'all, sometimes heard in its variant you-all. You-all functions with perfect grammatical regularity as a second person plural pronoun, taking its own possessive you-all's (or less frequently, your-all's, where both parts of the word are inflected for possession): You-all's voices sound alike. Southerners do not, as is sometimes believed, use you-all or y'all for both singular and plural you. A single person may only be addressed as you-all if the speaker implies in the reference other persons not present: Did you-all [you and others] have dinner yet? You and you-all preserve the singular/plural distinction that English used to have in thou and ye, the subject forms of singular and plural you, respectively (thee and you were the singular and plural object forms). The distinction between singular thou/thee and plural ye/you began to blur as early as the 13th century, when the plural form was often used for the singular in formal contexts or to indicate politeness, much as the French use tu for singular and familiar “you,” and vous for both plural and polite singular “you.” In English, the object form you gradually came to be used in subject position as well, so that the four forms thou, thee, ye, and you collapsed into one form, you. Thou and thee were quite rare in educated speech in the 16th century, and they disappeared completely from standard English in the 18th. However, the distinction between singular and plural you is just as useful as that between other singular and plural pronoun forms, such as I and we. In addition to y'all, other forms for plural you include you-uns, youse, and you guys or youse guys. Youse is common in vernacular varieties in the Northeast, particularly in large cities such as New York and Boston, and is also common in Irish English. You-uns is found in western Pennsylvania and in the Appalachians and probably reflects the Scotch-Irish roots of many European settlers to these regions. You guys and youse guys appear to be newer innovations than the other dialectal forms of plural you. See Note at you-uns.

Evidently, we have a subconscious need to pluralize the word "you." However, "you guys" is not used in England (except by Tony Blair) as it's considered too American. They prefer "fellow," "bloke," or "chap." Since we've lost the old forms of English in which there was a distinction between the singular and plural forms of "you," we've been wandering in the wilderness searching for a plural form of "you" with the result that we don't have a polite form of you plural but only an informal form verging on the vulgar: "you guys."

Bifurcated Fascism

If you read "Mein Kampf," Hitler's autobiography, the most striking thing is his straightforward account about how he rose to power. It was totally based on his speaking ability. Hitler had served in the First World War which Germany lost and, as an aspiring artist, had also been twice rejected for admission to Vienna's Art Academy so he had suffered personal rejection as well as the humiliation and rejection all Germans felt from having lost the war. In fact Hitler, just eight years before becoming Chancellor of the Reich, had been a homeless mendicant selling picture post cards on the streets of Vienna.

A lot of people wouldn't read Mein Kampf in the mistaken belief that there is nothing to be learned from the writings of someone so evil. On the contrary, it is very well and intelligently written and there are huge parallels with what is happening in today's world. I knew a guy by the name of Fred when I was a student at Stanford. Fred had a "radio voice." Fred looked like a frog, but he could talk to a woman on the phone and she would literally fall in love with his voice. Radio voices are a "must have" to be a radio talk show host especially a conservative radio talk show host. But I'm getting ahead of my story.

The Nazi party in the 1920s was literally nothing more than a half dozen or less old men that got together once a week in a Munich beer hall to discuss politics and bemoan Germany's humiliation in WW I. That was until Hitler wandered in one week. Unbeknownst to even Hitler himself, when he got up to speak, he had a spellbinding effect on those listening. Within a few weeks word got around about all the excitement at the weekly meetings and more people began to flock to them. Before long they had to rent larger halls and then even larger halls as people couldn't get enough of what Hitler was dishing out. This was the basis of Nazi Party power in Germany and nothing more. Hitler had no qualifications or background as a politician or anything else. His rise to power, and I can't emphasize this strongly enough, was totally related to his speaking ability.

Hitler also had the artistic background that allowed him to come up with the Nazi party symbols such as the swastika, and the theatricality to stage torchlight parades. So what was it that the people ate up? German nationalism, basically; restoring Germany to its rightly deserved former glory. The glory it had known as victor in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Hitler also preached that it was Germany's destiny to be the world's pre-eminent nation. In other words, Germans were favored by nature to be the world's ubermensch, the top dogs. The philosophy of Nietzsche (a good war hallows all causes) and the operas of Wagner complete with Valkyries and Nordic paganism fanned the flames of German exceptionalism.

The scary part of what is happening in America today is that German Fascism as embodied in one man, Hitler, who had the "radio voice" and the reins of power, has been bifurcated and separated in two parts. The "radio voice" belongs to Rush Limbaugh and a host of aspiring imitators and the reins of power belong to George W Bush who is little more than a talking head. To say he is a puppet would be to elevate his role. The deep, resonant "radio voice" of Rush Limbaugh continues to stir the souls of the faithful year in and year out regardless of which President or party is in the White House. He doesn't have to be elected to his job, and people flock to listen to him as they flocked to listen to Hitler.

On any given morning on San Diego AM radio you have your choice of two stations broadcasting Rush Limbaugh's diatribes followed by other conservative talk show hosts for the rest of the day. Thanks to a change in the broadcasting regulations, conservative opinion shows need not be balanced by liberal radio hosts. One needs to have XM satellite radio to pick up AIr America with its liberal ranters and ravers: Jerry Springer, Al Franken and Randi Rhodes. AM radio will serve up conservative ranting and raving on several different stations all day long and into the night.

Why is conservative radio so popular while liberal radio can hardly find an audience? For the same reasons that people flocked to hear Hitler. People would rather hear a message of machismo, chauvinism and jingoism delivered by "radio voices" than a message of intelligence and compassion delivered by people with ordinary voices. The theatricality of it moves reptilian brains. The ingeniousness of American Fascism is that it realizes that all the functions of fascism need not be realized or manifested in one person but can be bifurcated or even ramified so that Rush Limbaugh, supported by corporate advertising and becoming a rich man in the process, can carry the "radio voice" portion while George W Bush can be the talking head backed up by the real policy makers at various conservative and neocon think tanks like Project for the New American Century (PNAC) peopled by the likes of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.

The scary thing about this state of affairs is that just as television fare like "Crime Scene Investigation" pushes out documentaries, conservative talk radio has a vastly greater listenership than liberal talk radio which barely has a foothold in the door. Psychologists will have to figure out why the human brain prefers to be entertained by murder, gore, violence, fighting, intimidation, horror etc instead of the more lofty pursuits of literature, art, science, music and the theater. Over 100 years  of public education have not succeeded in getting Americans to get their heads out of the gutter and pursue loftier pursuits and this doesn't bode well for the type of politicians who get elected in a democracy where a majority of its people have this kind of mentality.

Edwin Howard Armstrong: The Inventor of FM

Edwin Howard Armstrong was born in 1890 in New York City. He studied electrical engineering at Columbia University inventing the Regenerative Circuit while a junior there. Also the Super-regenerative circuit (patented 1922), and the Super Heterodyne receiver (patented 1918). The superheterodyne receiver makes Am and FM radio as we know them possible, and is probably the single greatest invention affecting radio of all time. It makes tuning a radio possible. Each radio station has a different carrier frequency, and the superheterodyne receiver allows the information riding on the carrier to be stripped off when the radio is tuned to a particular station.

Armstrong didn't invent radio. Lee DeForest, among others, with his invention of the triode got the credit for that. Armstrong's inventions made radio feasible, practical and listenable. Regeneration was a form of positive feedback that allowed the production of radio waves. Such a circuit is called a transmitter. Similarly it allowed for the reception of radio waves by a circuit known as a receiver.

Armstrong patented the Regenerative circuit in 1914 and licensed it to the Marconi company. He then went to Europe to fight in WW I. When he came back he found himself embroiled in a patent fight.

From Wikipedia:

In particular, the regenerative circuit, which Armstrong patented in 1914, was subsequently patented by Lee De Forest in 1916; De Forest then sold the rights to his patent to AT&T. Between 1922 and 1934, Armstrong found himself embroiled in a patent war, between himself, RCA, and Westinghouse on one side, and De Forest and AT&T on the other. This patent lawsuit was the longest ever litigated to its date, at 12 years. Armstrong won the first round of the lawsuit, lost the second, and stalemated in a third. Before the United States Supreme Court, De Forest was granted the regeneration patent in what is today widely believed to be a misunderstanding of the technical facts by the Supreme Court.

In 1920 Westinghouse bought Armstrong's patent for the superheterodyne receiver and started the nation's first radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, Marconi's company RCA started buying up the patents of Westinghouse and AT&T including Armstrong's and DeForest's patents. RCA was content to let DeForest win the patent fight because it meant that they got the use of the patent for another 10 years even though they knew Armstrong should have won.

During the patent fight Armstrong started working on the invention of FM radio which was far superior to AM because it was static free and much higher fidelity. It was patented in 1933. Armstrong lobbied the FCC to create a frequency band for FM which it did - between 42 and 50 MHz. Armstong then helped to market a small number of high powered FM radio stations in the New England states, known as the Yankee Network. Armstrong had begun on a journey to convince America that FM radio was superior to AM, and, he hoped, to collect patent royalties on every radio sold with FM technology. FM was also chosen by the FCC to provide the sound for the fledgling television industry. Armstrong should have collected royalties for that as well.

However, RCA CEO David Sarnoff, a Russian immigrant, conspired to have Armstrong's FM radio put out of business partly because RCA was so heavily invested in AM and partly because it would interfere with the launch of television by RCA after WW II. RCA lobbied the FCC to change the frequency allotment for FM which it did thus making all of Armstrong's radios and radio stations obsolete overnight.  Most experts believe that FM technology was set back decades by the FCC decision.

From Wikipedia:

Furthermore, RCA also claimed invention of FM radio and won its own patent on the technology. A patent fight between RCA and Armstrong ensued. RCA's momentous victory in the courts left Armstrong unable to claim royalties on any FM radios sold in the United States. The undermining of Yankee Network and Patent Court battle brought ruin to Armstrong, by then, almost penniless and emotionally distraught.

From Edwin Armstrong: The Creator of FM Radio:

During World War II, Armstrong did important research on long range radar for the War Department and gave his FM patents to the military for no fee, an important gift, once the U.S. commanders realized that the German army traveled on AM, which they could easily jam. FM was unjammable. By the end of the war, Armstrong had developed his continuous wave FM radar to the point where he was able to bounce a radio signal 238,000 miles -- to the moon and back again. He had proven that FM waves, unlike AM waves, could penetrate the ionosphere. That paved the way for radio communication in space, and it gave astronomers a new tool to measure distances from the earth to the ends of the universe. By the end of World War II, FM had been proven. Much to the disgust of RCA's David Sarnoff. "I thought Armstrong would invent some kind of a filter to remove static from our AM radio. I didn't think he'd start a revolution -- start up a whole damn new industry to compete with RCA." Furthermore, FM was a distraction. Sarnoff wanted RCA to put its resources into the development of television, which was taking up huge chunks of RCA's working capital. "A new kind of radio," said Sarnoff, "is like a new kind of mouse trap. The world doesn't need another mousetrap." Armstrong would see no personal rewards for all his work and all his genius. Now he found that RCA and all of America's big communication giants were teaming up to stifle FM, and take away all the rewards Armstrong had been waiting for. He'd expected royalties on the manufacture of FM receivers. He expected to negotiate contracts with FM broadcasters. He also expected royalties on every TV set sold -- in the U.S. and, eventually, abroad, for TV's sound system was his -- FM. But that wasn't going to happen. RCA tried to circumvent Armstrong's patents, and began producing televisions with his sound system, but paying him nothing, and then, finally, offering him $1 million for a non-exclusionary license. It was something like a scene from the Old West, the rich rancher going to his upstart competitor next door and saying, "I'm going to give you $1 million for your spread. Do you want me to pay you, or do want me to pay your widow?" In 1948, Armstrong turned to the courts -- charging open theft, infringement on five of his basic FM patents. RCA responded with an army of lawyers who tied him up for six years with trickery, truth-twisting, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, and botheration. RCA had time. For Armstrong, time was running out. RCA could afford the legal fees. Armstrong had to sell many of his assets, including his stock in Zenith and RCA and Standard Oil, for $200,000. With all of his other expenses, including the expense of running his research facility at Columbia University, Armstrong could afford to pay only $22,000 to his lawyers. By 1954, he was ready to settle. He asked RCA for $2.4 million. RCA countered with $200,000, less than the outstanding bill for his legal fees. Armstrong appealed to his wife, Marion. Would she advance him some of the money he had given her years ago? She objected. That was the money for their retirement. Exhausted and out of hope, frustrated by all the litigation, Armstrong exploded in a great rage. He swung a poker at Marion. The blow landed on her arm. She fled to her sister in Connecticut. Armstrong had shattered his happy marriage of nearly 30 years. He spent Christmas and New Year's alone in his New York apartment. Then, on January 31, 1954, he wrote a final letter to Marion. "I am heartbroken because I cannot see you once again. I deeply regret what has happened between us. I cannot understand how I could hurt the dearest thing in the whole world to me. I would give my life to turn back to the time when we were so happy and free. God keep you and may the Lord have mercy on my soul." Next morning, Edwin Howard Armstrong put on his hat and coat, wrapped a scarf around his neck and walked out the window of his apartment on the 13th floor. David Sarnoff told the press, "I did not kill Armstrong."

The moral of this sad story is that a single solitary individual no matter how meritorious, no matter how ingenious, no matter how deserving of recognition and reward is no match for a corporation with large capital assets and a team of well-paid corporate lawyers. This poor man, Edwin Armstrong, having contributed so much to society was driven to despair simply because Sarnoff and RCA had the power to do it. They squashed him like a bug, and they didn't care.

Postscript: After his death, Armstrong's widow, Marion, renewed the patent fight against RCA and finally prevailed in 1967. Marion would get a little more than a million dollars, the same amount that Sarnoff had offered Armstrong in 1940. In effect, Sarnoff had finally gotten an answer to the question: "Do you want me to pay you, or your widow?"

Bush and Neocons Should Own Their Intentions

The Bush Administration, although hypocritical about the real reasons for the war in Iraq, nevertheless, is brilliant in its foreign policy, more so than the public has been able to appreciate since the whole debate about the war is phony. The real reason we're there is so we can own the oil fields in Iraq. And doesn't it make sense? Why would any country waste billions of dollars and countless young lives just to bring "freedom and democracy" to Iraqis. They really want us to believe that we're sacrificing all this blood and treasure just so that Iraqis can have a better society than we do? Who gives a rip about the Iraqis when it comes right down to it. What are we a bunch of wimps that we start a war of aggression, and then there's nothing in it for us?

We're not going to cut and run in Iraq. We want total victory, but to the victor belongs the spoils, and the spoils in Iraq are its oil fields. President Bush has said he won't settle for less than victory, but he hasn't gone far enough. Victory would be pretty hollow if we just packed up our bags and went home after creating this ideal society for Iraqis and just turned over the key to them and wished them good luck. But the Bush Administration and the neocons have no intention of packing up and going home. They just won't admit it, that's all. They pussyfoot around the issue of permanent bases in Iraq and what's going to happen to the oil fields, the world's second largest proven reserves. So they seem like a bunch of wimps and hypocrites! They start a war of aggression, but they don't have the guts to partake of the spoils? What is this, a Sunday School picnic?

But have no fear. The Iraqi Constitution has already been set up in such a way that western oil companies will have easy pickins when it comes to taking over the Iraqi oil fields. After all we're not taking them away from the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people never owned them. Sadam did. Having defeated Sadam, it's our right to take them over from him. So that's what our sons and daughters are really fighting and dying for in Iraq: access to Iraqi oil. And why not? America runs on oil. It's our God-given right to drive big gas guzzling pick-ups and SUVs.  As the largest oil consuming nation on earth, we need access to oil. All this talk about reducing our dependency on foreign, middle eastern oil, well, one way to do it, the ingenious way chosen by the Bush Administration, is to own the middle eastern oil ourselves. That will reduce our dependency on foreign oil, for sure!

Al Gore would have chosen to reduce our consumption of oil and production of greenhouse gasses by driving electric cars, Renaults and mini-Coopers. He would have mandated higher gas efficiency whereas the Bush Administration has chosen to bring freedom to the middle east by virtue of military victory in Iraq and auctioning off the oil fields. One of the components of freedom is the free enterprise system. As Bush has said, people everywhere want to be free which is to say they want the free enterprise system also known as capitalism. Eventually, the Iraqis are going to need a lot of help getting the oil out of the ground. Who are they going to turn to? Who has that kind of expertise? Just as you or I or anyone else would have the right to bid on the rights to Iraqi oil reserves, we would probably not have the same level of expertise as would an ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco or British Petroleum. Just as anyone or any company was free to bid on military service contracts in Iraq, only Halliburton had the necessary level of expertise. That's why they got the contracts.

Now the western oil companies will not own the Iraqi oil fields outright. They will enter into Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) with the Iraqis. Such Iraqis who also have expertise in the oil industry such as Ahmed Chalabi will get around 5% and the ExxonMobils will get the lion's share - 95% or so as befits the fact that to the victors belong the spoils. Bush says we're going to be victorious in Iraq, but he doesn't say what victory means. That's the problem I have with him. We've spent hundreds of billions of dollars there. At least we ought to get something for it in return. Now I understand that he can't promise the American people cheap gasoline. That's not how "freedom," meaning the free enterprise system, works. The first obligation of ExxonMobil is to maximize their profits for their stockholders. That means they will charge whatever they can for gas once they get their hands on Iraqi oil. Their profits should go through the roof since they won't have to purchase oil at a disadvantage from our enemies in the middle east. American motorists will pay for gas according to the Law of Supply and Demand, one of the tenets of the free enterprise system, secure in the knowledge that ExxonMobil is working overtime to maximize profits for its shareholders one of which every American has a right to become.

Now Al Gore would have us using public transportation and eating Tofu instead of American beef since cow flatulence contributes to global warming. All that methane gas is directly related to eating meat. There also is a lot of pig flatulence directly related to our consumption of bacon. But I believe that God will take care of the temperature of the earth's atmosphere. It's not up to us to micro-manage God's handiwork. We are here to have dominion over the animals and resources of the earth and use them as we see fit to enhance our lifestyle as it says in the Bible. As Americans we have a right to our gas guzzlers. Let's hear it for God, Country, Apple Pie, Mom and NASCAR. We have a right to have our love affair with the internal combustion engine! On the 4th of July, I'm going to cruise the freeways in my F-150, eating a Big Mac with bacon, with my stereo blasting Lee Greenwood. I'm Proud to be an American. God bless the USA!