The Economist fights for freedom in Chicago

Zanny Minton Beddoes 

     Forbes magazine listed her among its 100 “World’s Most Powerful Women.” A graduate of Harvard and Oxford and, since 2014, the first female editor-in-chief of The Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes is in Chicago to host the Open Future Festival, “a global summit on the role of markets, technology and freedom in the 21st century” this Saturday at Union Station.
     Though when we spoke, I put a different spin on it.
     ”A day of speeches in a train station...” I ventured. “That sounds very 19th century in this social media age. What do you hope to accomplish?”
     ”I hope it’s 19th century married to 21st century,” she replied, noting that the event will be Livestreamed and posted to YouTube. “We were founded in 1843 and started the first Open Futures Festival marking our 175th anniversary. We wanted to have a chance to re-make the case for open society and open markets. We want to do it by engaging in a global conversation with both supporters of our world view and our critics.”
     Speakers range from Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to Ryan Fournier, co-founder of Students for Trump. From Bhaskar Sunkara, author of The Socialist Manifesto, to Gabby Giffords, the former congresswoman who survived an assassination attempt in 2011 and is now a gun control advocate.
     ”It’s important to get different people of different ages in a room together to discuss the future of technology, capitalism, free speech and identity politics,” Minton Beddoes said. “We want to engender the discussion.”
     What discussion? It seems discussion is the one thing that isn’t happening in society today. Everyone alternates between digging their own ideological trench a little deeper and lobbing shells at anyone who isn't exactly like their own precious selves.
     "I think there are some people who are looking for new solutions, who are debating," Minton Beddoes said. "There is an awful lot of polarization, a lot of people in their own echo chambers shouting at the opposition. That's really who we are trying to address."
     She tries to hear all sides.
    "Whenever I come to this country, I force myself to watching MSNBC for 15 minutes, and Fox for 15 minutes. It's not very fun."
     I almost interrupted her with, "I couldn't do that if you put a gun to my head," but kept quiet.
     "It gives me a window into the polarized nature of this country. It's very striking," she said. "I left in 2014, and it's much more polarized. Two different sets of people having two different conversations with very little willingness to reach across and have an intellectual debate."

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Not lost in a Waze

     
     A columnist has to be careful about falling into a trap I call "discovering common knowledge." That is, hailing something as a wonder when it really is a commonplace. You don't, for instance, want to breathlessly relate that you can buy books on Amazon. Not in 2019.
     I narrowly avoided this pitfall last month, when I drove up to Ontonagon. The Audi we took was a newer model, with one of those big video displays. The driver used Waze, Google's crowd-sourcing navigation system. It not only tells you which direction to go, in a clear, pleasing fashion, but it also announces upcoming hazards: cars at the side of the highway, objects in the road, and waiting police speed traps.
    There were several reasons to be intrigued by this. First, Google already has a marvelous navigation system, Google Map. So with Waze, Google is competing with itself. Second, that such a big corporation sells something to facilitate speeding—a high tech fuzzbuster, as we used to call the radar devices that sat on your dashboard and told you when the cops were ahead, busting speeders. It seems rather naughty of Google.
      When I got back, I looked into the system. Created in Israel, a dozen years old, available in 40 languages (we passed the hours driving back from the UP having it speak in the Cookie Monster's voice, in Japanese). The Illinois Tollway Authority works in cooperation with Waze, plugging it into its road service communication system. It seemed almost incredible that IDOT would participate in an enterprise designed to thwart the police. But it does.
    Part of a columnist's job is to cause trouble, so I shot off a query to the Illinois State Police: 

Using Waze, drivers are informed that police are ahead, and slow down. Is this a good thing, in that it encourages drivers to slow down before even seeing a patrol car? Or bad, in that it seems to encourage reckless speeding? If the latter, is it also bad that the Illinois Tollway Authority is cooperating with the Waze platform? For instance, when an IDOT truck turns on its lights, a notice goes out to Waze users. Should the state be encouraging a system that facilitates speeding?    

     Unlike the Chicago cops, who rarely respond to any query, no matter how basic, the state police actually coughed up an answer, of sorts: 

One of the goals of the Illinois State Police is to encourage motorists to slow down or move over, if practical, when approaching emergency vehicles or any vehicles with their hazards on to prevent crashes, injuries or even deaths. We ask motorists to employ safe driving practices, including following the speed limit. If the Waze app can give motorists sufficient time to slow down or move over when approaching a car on the side of the road, then the Waze app can be a tool to help potentially save the lives of emergency responders as well as drivers broken down on the side of the road.

     Broadminded of them, and no argument here. I was tempted to put it in the paper. But first, everyone I spoke to already knew about it. And second, to work, Waze has to have a lot of drivers participating. Because not only does it process information from, say, IDOT, but it also uses data provided by other drivers. A motorist will note a tire in the road—or a cop at the side of it—and the information goes out over the network. If the tire is removed, or the cop moves on, other drivers will make note of it. To work, the system has to have a lot of participants. And there is something comforting and communal about that, a spark of human altruism crackling through the navigational machine. That's something worth mentioning.
   

Oaks gone wild: Illinois' key tree in spotlight

     It was not the smoothest pitch.
     ”Oaks are awesome.” the email began. “That is why Illinois renamed October OAKtober in 2015. But Chicago oaks are under attack from the following: Oak wilt; Bur Oak Blight; Oak Anthracnose; Root Rot; Sudden Oak Death...”
     My reply was not a sarcastic “Oh no, not oak wilt!” But an enthusiastic “Yes!” to the suggestion that I discuss the oak situation with an arborist. The reason? My own hidden agenda, a cloud of oak-based guilt, over the pin oak I murdered by planting it in my front yard almost 20 years ago.
     ”People like to live around oak trees,” said Shawn Kingzette, a certified arborist at Davey Tree base in East Dundee. “But our oak ecosystems are at risk.”
     We talked about the various oak ailments outlined in the email. Sudden Oak Death, for instance, is caused by a fungus carried in the soil of rhododendrons. “It’s a relatively new disease, especially in the Midwest,” Kingzette said. “It’s a phytophthora fungus.”
   

 Then I brought up the lost pin oak. Tall, with pointy leaves. I did my best to see it into the world, but ... sniff! ... it died. My fault?
     ”With pin oaks we have a saying: ‘The right tree in the right place,’” he began, soothingly. “It could be the soil you have. Pin oaks like an acidic, good-draining soil. It might not have been the right setting for a pin oak to thrive. You might not have done anything specifically wrong.”
     Whew. While I had him on the line, I had to ask: those deeply lobed leaves; what’s the purpose? I assumed they cut down on wind resistance.
     ”I don’t know whether you believe in God,” Kingzette began, betraying himself as a non-reader of the column. “But just the beauty, the shape. The rounded lobe of the white oak, the pointed lobs of a pin. I’m sure there’s some benefit, but it’s just pretty.”

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A little late for GOP conscience to kick in

     Will the Republicans break ranks? Will anyone bolt?
     That's the question.
     Maybe a naive one. 
     Because up to now, they've been shoulder-to-shoulder, rock solid behind Donald Trump. Despite his continual lies, patent unfitness, vindictive tweets, unpresidential pettiness, coddling of dictators, snubbing of friends, facilitation of racial hate, condescension to minorities, slurring of immigrants....
      Well, you get it.
      Or you don't.
      They sure don't. 
      Though some seem to think now they will, or might.
      I've just been reading the Monday opinion page of the New York Times, where David Leonhardt and Charles M. Blow were in rare unison, almost stereo: this, this is the moment for the scales to fall from GOP eyes, for them to realize who they've been in bed with, and to bolt out with a cry.
     "President Trump must go and you—only you—have the power to make it happen," Leonhardt writes, before appealing directly to individual Republican senators to break from the herd and thus redeem themselves from eternal damnation.
     "The Republicans in Congress, in the House but particularly in the Senate," writes Blow. "On which side of patriotism will history record them?"
     I'm of two minds.
     My gut tells me to curl a lip in unrestrained cynicism. "How cute! They actually think that this gang of cowards living in a fear-stoked phantasm for years will suddenly grow spines just because Donald Trump got caught dead-to-rights trading his country's best interest—a militarily robust Ukraine—for petty political advantage."
     In what world does that happen? Do politicians risk alienating their base and getting kicked out of office?
     I suppose it could happen. And I sincerely believe if one defected half of them would. But fear is a task master. As is the desire to keep your job.
     It does sometimes happen. 
     Funny. I like my job, but I have been willing to quit it, on several occasions. and once took the trouble of expressing my displeasure over a turn of events by finding a new, albeit lower paying job, writing a letter of resignation, and quitting. Another time I threatened to. Because if you have no standards, if you are willing to accept anything, well, then you end up doing just that. Accepting anything. Which explains the Republicans and their president. I can honestly say that I'd be burned at the stake before I'd act the way Mitch McConnell acts. Or Kevin McCarthy.  How those men look in the mirror, or hug their children, is a mystery to me. They must live in a bubble of cowardice, delusion and collaboration.
    Republicans usually only find their conscience when it's too late. There was former senator Jeff Flake in the Washington Post, urging Congressmen to a courage he toyed with displaying before his popularity tanked. 
     "My fellow Republicans, it is time to risk your careers in favor of your principles," he writes, forgetting that he is Exhibit A in the case for staying mum.      

     Yet I can't dismiss the hope entirely. While I don't feel capable of blowing on the faint spark, I can't mock those who do. It's hard to imagine our country sliding worse and worse toward despotism. Difficult to write off anyone, even a Republican, as immune to the prick of conscience. As beyond redemption. That might be part of what allows Trump to survive up to this point. People just can't quite believe he's happening. Not to compare the two, but that's also how the Holocaust occurred. People just couldn't believe what was happening, not until it was too late.
     So no, I don't think we're going to get anything near the end of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," where Sen. Joseph Paine, the corrupt politician played by Claude Rains, tries to shoot himself, and instead confesses to his schemes. Only in a Frank Capra movie. And we are not living in a Frank Capra movie.

AI might be the new electricity

Aron Culotta

     Someday you might have a significant relationship with your toaster. With a few silicon chips and the right programming, it’ll use its considerable downtime to compose original musical interludes to play while your English muffin is browning. It’ll text you Haikus designed to make you smile:

Toasting your bagel
brings light to my elements
And warmth to my heart

      This change won’t happen by itself. Students are working hard to master the art and science of designing machines that learn, make decisions, create, think. Staring this fall, the Illinois Institute of Technology — in recent years branding itself as the more brawny “Illinois Tech” — became the only college in the Midwest to offer an undergraduate major in artificial intelligence, creating the systems that will guide everything from robots to trucks to medical care.
     ”Traditionally, AI would be taught at the graduate level, because it’s a research degree,” said Aron Culotta, director of IIT’s bachelor of science in artificial intelligence program. “Occasionally, you’ll see it as a specialization inside of a computer science degree. But really it’s matured a lot in the past 10 years. We feel like a lot of the core principles can be taught at the undergraduate level.”

Devyani Gauri

      The change was announced last spring after admission deadlines, so new students haven’t yet enrolled as AI majors. But 10 of the school’s 500 computer science students shifted to AI. One of them is Devyani Gauri, 20.
     ”I’m interested in deep learning and neural networks,” she said. “Deep learning is something that uses huge amounts of data and also uses neural networks — artificial networks based off how animals’ brains work, using that pattern to solve problems quickly.”

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Lost in a tranche.

The Veteran in a New Field, by Winslow Homer (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     I have no trouble using the occasional exotic word, and certainly endorse the practice. How are you to ever learn new words if you never encounter an unfamiliar one?
     Still, I was taken aback not only to see a word I had never noticed, but see it in the very first sentence of an impeachment story in the New York Times, prominently placed on the upper right hand of the front page, under the masthead:

   "House Democrats, moving quickly to escalate their impeachment inquiry into President Trump, subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday, demanding that he promptly produce a tranche of documents and a slate of witnesses that could shed light on the president's attempts to pressure Ukraine to help tarnish a leading political rival."

     "Tranche?" That's a new one for me, and though you can guess what it means from the context—"a bunch" perhaps, or "a pile"?—I leapt to the dictionary to see why the Gray Lady feels the need to deploy it.
     "A cutting, a cut; a piece cut off, a slice" is how the Oxford English Dictionary defines it, noting "Now only as a loanword from French."
     Indeed, it comes from the French, trenchier, to cut, and thus is related to both "trench" and "trenchant." 
    A slice of documents? The "Now" in my Oxford is 40 years ago, so maybe the meaning has shifted. The online Merriam-Webster defines "tranche" this way:

"a division or portion of a pool or whole. Specifically: an issue of bonds derived from a pooling of like obligations (such as securitized mortgage debt) that is differentiated from other issues especially by maturity or rate of return."

    Plunging into Nexis, "tranche" seems chiefly related to financial dealings. Business stories speak of "tranche triggers." Though it does pop up in the political. On Sept. 19, a report from the British newspaper, The Independent contained this sentence:

       Mr Giuliani had, in particular, asked for an inquiry into the "Black Ledger", a tranche of information about Manafort which was supposedly forged.        

     Earlier this month, Alexandra Lange wrote this, in a column headlined, "Is Instagram Ruining Design?" 

     I'm an architecture and design critic. Buildings are my life. But it isn't that unusual to try to find and follow the tranche of people who love what you love. If you're in the visual arts, they are probably on Instagram.    

     So obviously "tranche" is in common use among the chattering classes.  Though I can't see myself using it, just because it doesn't bring anything to the table. Take "the tranche" out of Lange's sentence above. Improved, isn't it? 

   
 

The Saturday Snapshot: High-tech park bench

   
     I can't be everywhere, nor would I want to. Think of how tiring that would be and, besides, how would you dress?
     But my readers are far afield, and ace craftsman Tony Galati sent me these photos he took under the subject heading, "The future is here." 
     Tony writes:

I found this Solar Charging Station park bench at the marina in Bayfield Wisconsin. I've never seen anything like it. I love seeing clean energy ideas like this. They send the right messages—one of them being: Republican lawmakers can go fuck themselves.

    Well said. That would certainly give them a break from fucking our country. You know the solar future is chugging toward us when remote outposts start jumping on the bandwagon. Bayfield, if it doesn't ring a bell, is a town of 530 souls 450 miles northwest of Chicago, on Lake Superior.
     Speaking of lawmakers, I thought I would rouse someone from Bayfield officialdom, such as it may be, and try to squeeze out a little more information on this bench. I started at the City of Bayfield, where, despite promises of the phone system, typing the last name of mayor, Gordon T. Ringberg, does not in fact lead you to his voicemail. I tried the Chamber of Commerce and Visitor's Center. There a person did answer the phone. Thinking I might prompt her to rhapsodize Bayfield, I observed that I had just been up to Ontonagon, east of there, and speculated "if Bayfield were half as beautiful it would be very beautiful indeed," or words to that effect.

EnGoPlanet bench

     The Visitor's Center lady let that slow pitch thump into the catcher's mitt, and explained, and none too warmly, that I needed to talk to a Billie Hooperman, back at the city.
     Alas, Billie was not manning her telephone. A message was left for her, plus an email to the city for good measure.
      Poking around online, I quickly ID'ed Tony's find as an Uptown Charging Bench from  Sun Charge Systems of Cleveland, Alabama. The one I saw for sale was an invigorating electric blue and cost $3,000. But still, the thing stopped being high tech and began to seem almost cobbled-together when I encountered other, sleeker, more well-designed solar benches on the market, such as those from EnGoPlanet, which incorporate the solar cells in the seat of the bench.
     Still curious how this bench, which allows you to enjoy the scenery and charge your phone, ended up on the shores of Lake Superior, as Friday waned, I asked Tony which marina—there are several—and he said it was the Bayfield Civic League Memorial Park.  No luck there either. I suppose Bayfielders value their solitude, and let's just leave them in it.