T. Buckingham Thomas Archive 2023 May

When we transmitted from the studios of my college radio station WOBC-FM, the speakers and our headphones were not fed from the output of the control console. Instead, their audio came from an FM receiver tuned to our broadcast.

In this way, we heard what our listeners were hearing. If there ever was a technical problem, we'd notice it immediately. In the unlikely event that we knew how to fix it, the ten-watt transmitter lived in a closet right down the hall.

(The exception was when the Croxall Loop was in operation. The talk-show host sitting in Studio A needed to hear the live console, not the delayed off-air signal.)

Half a century later, in the mornings I customarily listen to WDVE-FM Pittsburgh. Sometimes, without warning, they have technical difficulties which cause them to go silent for a minute or two. On May 17, the studio was somehow offline for the first 25 minutes of the DVE Morning Show; we heard a few songs, a few recorded clips, and a few stretches of dead air.

When the audio returns after an incident like that, I'd expect the announcer to say something like “Are we back? Yes? Sorry, folks, we were off the air for a little bit there, but the problem has been fixed. Here's what you missed: As we were discussing....”

But that's not what I hear. Suddenly the broadcasters have returned, perhaps in the middle of a commercial, with no acknowledgement that they were ever gone. I have to assume that they were unaware of the lapse because their headphones were feeding them something other than the off-the-air signal. Bad broadcasting technique!

Well, no, not really. The transmitter is in another location, so there might be electronic delays in getting the signal there and back. That would result in slight echoes in their headsets. More importantly, an additional seven-second delay is built in so that any inadvertent obscenities can be caught before being broadcast. It would be very confusing to listen to the transmission of one's words seven seconds after having spoken them.

UPDATE, NOVEMBER 5, 2024: Apparently the announcers aren't even hearing the commercials on their own show. The spots must be inserted not at their studio but somewhere downstream.

On the morning of Election Day 2024, they congratulated each other about how great it was no longer to have to listen to those incessant political ads with candidates denouncing their opponents in our battleground state of Pennsylvania.

But their comments were interspersed with fear-mongering political ads, just as they had been for months! The announcers forgot that the polls would remain open for another 12 hours or so, and the ads would remain on the broadcast schedule as long as there was still a slim chance of swaying voters. Peace would be deferred until the next day.

Image posted by Mike Weaver

MAY 27, 2023
GOING LOCO ON COKE?

The Indianapolis 500 has been around since 1911. In considering the fuel that the racecars use, let's turn the clock back even further, to the Locomobile pit in the 1908 Vanderbilt Cup Race.

Notice the fuel cans on the pit wall. They could be used to fill the tank of “Old 16” in one minute 15 seconds. The car won the race at an astonishing average of 64.38 mph.

The cans are clearly labeled GAS, for gasoline.

Another angle reveals that at least one of those cans bore an additional label. Had it originally held soft drinks?

No, silly, that's not Coca, it's Loco — part of the logo of a marque not often remembered nowadays.

The Locomobile claimed to be “the best built car in America.”

MAY 24, 2023 PT OFF

I'm seeing online references discussing when one ought to make use of “PTO.”

When I was growing up in Ohio farm country, PTO referred to the Power Take-Off on a tractor. That was a universal joint where the farmer could hook up a driveshaft, like the yellow one here, to allow the tractor's engine to run an accessory implement like a mower. Or maybe the PTO was an engine-mounted pulley onto which the implement's drive belt could be threaded.

Apparently PTO means something else now. It's Paid Time Off, a pool of paid days when employees can “take off” from work for various reasons. Employers find PTO easier to administer than keeping separate accounts for sick days, personal days, parental leave, and vacation days. While a third of firms offered such plans in 1995, it's up to two-thirds today. Now I know.

But nearly 50% of workers don't take full advantage of their paid time off benefits, according to a new Pew survey. Not only does this have a negative effect on work, but it appears to be physically unhealthy. “Workers may be reluctant to use PTO when they are sick because they want to save it for vacations,” says Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute. “They may also be reluctant to use PTO because they feel that they have to save it for health or personal days. It could go both ways.”

Why do pipe organs have multiple keyboards? It's to facilitate contrasting one sound quality with another.

For example, St. Mary's Catholic Church in Auburn, New York, has published a list of the voices available on its 1890 organ for the benefit of any guest musician who might be planning to visit. In addition to pedals for the feet, the instrument has two manuals or keyboards for the hands. They're apparently named for synonyms of “good.”

One of them, called GREAT, controls eleven different ranks of pipes; the largest is 16 feet tall for the lowest octave while the others are half size, quarter size, and so on. They can be selected individually or in combination.

The other manual, called SWELL because its pipes are enclosed in a box with shutters that can be opened to “swell” the volume, has eight more ranks.

If an inspiring effect is desired, perhaps from the GREAT the organist will select Open Diapason plus Principal plus Fifteenth. Throw in a Mixture and a Trumpet for even more drama.

For softer passages, perhaps from the SWELL the choice might be Stopped Diapason plus Fugara. It's easy to move quickly from one manual to the other.

Or perhaps the left hand will play sweet accompaniment chords on the GREAT's Dulciana while the right hand plays a constrasting melody on the SWELL's Geigen Principal, which sounds somewhat like a violin.

Could the organist combine the GREAT's Gamba with the SWELL's Piccolo for an unusual effect? Yes, and doing so doesn't require pressing the same keys on both keyboards. A SWELL TO GREAT coupler enables playing on the GREAT while the SWELL follows along. Older instruments (built before electricity) accomplish this with a complicated arrangement of mechanical levers, while newer consoles simply connect electrical circuits.

For our Latvian viewers, here's Liene Andreta Kalnciema performing Bach at the Riga Cathedral.

Her hands are on the lowest manual, but the red circle points out that another manual's keys are spookily following along via a coupler.

And her foot is playing a bass note on the pedals, while the green ellipse points out that two of the manuals are simultaneously playing the same note.

This phantom action of the keys can seem unnerving.

Don Knotts was unnerved by it in the 1966 film The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, when the organ in a “haunted” house began playing at midnight. Cobweb-covered keys were moving up and down, apparently pressed by an invisible ghost.

Later a janitor explained how he made the organ seem to play by itself. “There's a tuning keyboard under the pipes,” he said.

I never heard of a tuning keyboard, but apparently it's a thing. When a technician is inside the organ's forest of pipes gently bending the metal, he needs to be able to sound middle C even though the manuals are not within reach — maybe far away — and an accomplice may not be available. A handy tuning keyboard would solve the problem. And a visitor would be baffled when the organ kept sounding the same note over and over with no one in sight.

Sometimes a news story overstates the situation. Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported that “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” are now banned from Florida campuses:

Notice that the schools aren't prohibited from spending other money on DEI efforts. Perhaps the ACLU or the Southern Poverty Law Center could offer donations.

For example, although the State University System of Florida reports that it receives 65% of its funding from the state lottery plus other “general revenue” including government grants, more than a third of its funds come from elsewhere.

The actual text of the law:

A Florida College System institution, state university, Florida College System institution direct-support organization, or state university direct-support organization may not expend any state or federal funds to promote, support, or maintain any programs or campus activities that violate s.1000.05 or advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, or promote or engage in political or social activism. ...Student fees to support student-led organizations are permitted, notwithstanding any speech or expressive activity by such organizations which would otherwise violate this subsection.

So don't worry, liberals. DEI programs can continue in Florida, provided that any necessary changes are made to the bookkeeping.

Nevertheless, in an article headlined “Ron Santis's big idea: Make Florida students ignorant,” Jennifer Rubin of the Post wrote yesterday that “Academic freedom is under assault around the world... seeking to bend instruction to the will of the state and turn academics into handmaidens of state propaganda. ...Parents, students, and businesses seeking well-educated workers might decide it is better to decamp from Florida for states that prepare students for the real world, help them function in a diverse society, and foster intellectual excellence. Sadly, that will leave Floridians less prosperous and less capable of performing the obligations of informed citizenry. Perhaps that's the point.”

The matchups have been determined for the National Hockey League's two conference championships. “The 2023 Stanley Cup winner,” writes Chris Branch of The Athletic, “will either be a team from the South or a team from the desert, just as the hockey founders intended when they invented the ice-based game in the 1800s.” And if one includes the preseason and postseason schedules, the sport that originated on frozen winter ponds is now played in every month except July and August.

One of the final four teams will raise the Cup a month from now. Those four are the Golden Knights, Stars, Hurricanes, and Panthers. They play in Las Vegas, Dallas, Raleigh, and Miami respectively.

In June, the temperatures in those four US cities average out to a sweltering high of 92° F.

Sorry, Canada.

I fell asleep watching CBS last night. About an hour into my nap, I dreamt I was standing outside a Moscow hotel. (I don't know how I got there in my dream; I've never been there in reality.) I overheard bits of conversation. (They were in English because my Russian isn't that good.) A man reassured a woman, “All you have to worry about now is getting well.” A man with an accent and a darker complexion, probably from one of the farther provinces, mispronounced “matzo ball soup.” Another man corrected him, and the first man repeated the corrected version. An officious type brushed past the doorman, declaring “The elevators are mine.”

When I woke up and opened my eyes, Hawaii Five-0 was on. The scene was in a hospital room, where a woman patient was eating Chinese food for lunch. Wait a minute, I thought; there are similarities with what I just heard in my dream. Could snippets of the TV show have leaked into my semi-consciousness?

Then I realized there was a way to find out. My DVR had been recording CBS all this time. I hit “rewind” to spin back three minutes to the beginning of the hospital scene, then hit “play.” The first thing I heard was a Hawaiian man telling the patient that her lunch was an even better cure than matzo ball soup, and another man correcting his pronunciation. The other lines of dialogue were in there, too. Remarkable! The line between wakefulness and soundlysleepingfulness is a fuzzy one, it seems.

Prolific blogger Mark Evanier has this to say about sports on television: “If you have two top teams with players that are in the news a lot and those teams meet in a game that might determine who wins the pennant, that game will have more tune-in than a game between two last-place teams with unknown players. No one complains that ratings are low because the crew that covers the game — the sportscasters, the director, etc. — didn't do a good job.”

On the other hand, I would add that if a lot of viewers do want to watch a game and the ratings are high, we broadcasters are quick to take credit. “It’s because of our superior production,” we claim. “Our announcers, our bracketologist's predictions, the four analysts back at our studio in New York, our graphics, our music, the cool video effect we use for replays — all these elements lead to higher ratings.” At least that’s what we encourage potential advertisers to believe.

Here are some other Evanier comments from the last year or so which make sense to me.

On allowing gays to marry: “Opponents of this kind of thing keep using the term ‘defend marriage.’ They made up an imaginary war on marriage, deciding letting gays do it would destroy it for everyone. The real point is that it doesn't threaten marriage in any way. But marriage is kinda losing its importance in society. More and more heterosexual couples are opting to live together without the benefit of legal marriage. More and more children are being born to couples who have not officially tied the knot. The divorce rate is also on a slow, steady rise as it has been for decades now. There's hard, inarguable data that this is happening, whereas the notion that Gay Marriage harms marriage in general is at best an unproven, hard-to-articulate theory. So if someone is worried that marriage is ‘threatened,’ aren't they ignoring the real threat? Shouldn't they be working to ban divorces and co-habitation instead of that small group of gay folks who are fighting to get married?”

On crazy political theories: “This is the scary thing to me about someone who gets up and yells that there’s incontrovertible evidence that Barack Obama is a Kenyan-born Socialist Muslim. It’s not that that person is loony. It’s that there are auditoriums in this country where that rhetoric plays well for that person ... places where people cheer their agreement. In most cases, I don’t think people believe rubbish because their leaders say it. I think the ‘leaders’ say it because people believe it. It’s what enables them to retain their status as ‘leaders’ with all the perks (the money, the attention, etc.) that are attached.”

On a family of psychics who admit cheating their clients out of $25 million: “I am of the opinion that all psychics are frauds. Some of them seem to believe their own bull, but that doesn’t mean it’s not bull. It just means they believe it. Over the years, I’ve encountered a range of believers. I had a girl friend who not only believed in psychics but she believed in all psychics. Anyone who called themselves that could sense the future, chat with dead relatives, etc. I’ve also encountered people who say, ‘I don’t believe in psychics,’ and then there’s a pause and they cautiously add, ‘Although my Aunt Helen sometimes knew things she couldn’t have known about....’ I can’t debunk the Aunt Helens from afar but I do think there’s always an explanation — usually either coincidence or a case of the onlooker wanting so badly to believe that they mentally rearrange the evidence.”

On inconvenient truths: “Physicist Richard Muller, once the darling of those who insist Global Warming is bogus, now says it's real and that human activity is its main cause. Kevin Drum makes a good point: ‘Climate skeptics are skeptics because they don't like the idea of global warming, not because there's truly any evidence that it doesn't exist. It's politically inconvenient, economically inconvenient, and personally inconvenient, so they don't want to hear about it.’ I think that's it. This is not about science. It's a battle between reality and denial. One friend of mine will never admit Climate Change might (might) be happening because that would mean Al Gore was right and we can't have that.”

The single-syllable question Eh? is “used to ask for confirmation or repetition, or to express inquiry,” according to Merriam-Webster.

It's apparently known not just in Canada but all over the world, as I determined from my extensive research. That research consisted of watching the 1954 Godzilla movie, in which I learned that the Japanese pronounce it just like it's spelled in English, with a short e like the first syllable in “every.”

The fire-breathing, smoke-belching, puffing mechanical monster is obviously going to spook the horse. Not only is its appearance extremely frightening, it also represents a threat to the animal's future employment opportunities.

The minstrel of the dawn is gone.

I hope he'll call before too long, and if you meet him you must be the victim of his minstrelsy. He'll sing for you a song — the minstrel of the dawn.

Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot died last night at the age of 84.

Several years ago I recalled imagining that I was still an early-morning DJ on college radio. At sign-on I could summon that minstrel to gently awaken students in their upstairs dorm rooms across campus.

background photo by Dave DiCello

Up the steps you'll hear him climb,
All full of thoughts, all full of rhyme.
Listen to the pictures flow across the room.

Sidenotes: I also mentioned in that piece that the song includes a somewhat improbable shoutout to the comic actor who called himself Stepin Fetchit (1902-1985).

I also recall hearing the college station play a hilarious record by the comedienne known as Moms Mabley (1894-1975).

Then a few months ago on a cable network I came across Moms starring in a 1974 movie called Amazing Grace — “a comedy about an old Black woman of such grit and gumption she almost single-handedly masterminds the successful campaign of a Black candidate for Mayor of Baltimore,” according to Vincent Canby's review. And making a cameo appearance in the movie is Stepin Fetchit!