Season 7, Episode 12 February 25, 2024

On this episode, we’ll hear about the origins of the Republican Party, the Zimmerman telegram, an attack on the United States Capital, but not the one your thinking of, and diversity.  Not the Headlines tells of a new treatment for allergies, and the tiktok president.

Transcript

Hello!  Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube!  I’m your host, Bob Woodley.  I am officially suspending my presidential campaign, mostly because I never started one.  On this episode, we’ll hear about the origins of the Republican Party, the Zimmerman telegram, an attack on the United States Capital, but not the one your thinking of, and diversity.  But first (Not the Headlines)!    

There could be some good news on the horizon if there’s something in your life that makes your nose run and your eyes watery and itchy and you miserable.  It’s called an allergy, and they can be an annoyance or they can be deadly.  If you suffer from one, as many of us do, a treatment may be in the works thanks to a discovery by researchers with McMaster University and a Danish pharmaceutical company.  They’ve discovered the cell that remembers what it is that triggers your allergy.  It’s called a type-2 memory B cell, and those of us who don’t have allergies have very few of them, if any, according to a co-lead of the study, Josh Koenig from McMaster.  
B cells make antibodies that can help fight off infections, but they also cause allergies.  Koenig give an example when he says, "Let's say you're allergic to peanuts. Your immune system, because of MBC2, remembers that you're allergic to peanuts, and when you encounter them again, it creates more of the antibodies that make you allergic."  
Using the latest technology to run some experiments, the scientists discovered that it is these B cells that are, as the story puts it, the home of allergy.

The discovery gives scientists and researchers a new target in treating allergies.  The research, published in Science Translational Medicine, calls the brand-new cell as a type-2 memory B cell, or MBC2.

This discovery may lead to treatments for allergies, if not an outright cure.  There’s still a lot to learn about allergies themselves, as well as how these B cells may be used to develop treatments, but there are two avenues of treatment being explored.  
One way is to eliminate the B cells from the body of an allergic person.  Now that scientists know what they are and how to identify them, there may be a relatively simple way to destroy them without damaging surrounding cells.  Another approach would be to modify the B cells so that they perform some other function that doesn’t trigger the allergy.  
Worldwide, allergies are the most prevalent of diseases.  This discovery could lead to a new understanding of how they work, possibly bringing relief to millions of people with allergies.  I don’t personally suffer from any allergies, but this discovery might someday help me, too.  I have a condition that’s been examined by a variety of doctors with no real conclusion about what causes it.  My head clogs up while I sleep, and when I wake up in the morning, I can hardly breathe.  I have to blow my nose about a half-dozen times as soon as I get out of bed.  I thought it was an allergy, so I got tested for allergies.  About two dozen of the most common ones.  No positive results.  I had one doctor tell me it was “silent heartburn” and my immune system was trying to fight it, even though I wasn’t feeling any heartburn.  I’m hoping this discovery might lead to a treatment that can help me, too. 

In case you haven’t noticed, Taylor Swift has been on just about every type of media there is lately.  She happened to get lucky enough to be dating a guy who played in the Super Bowl, and she’s also in the middle of a world-wide concert tour that’s reshaping the economies of every city in which she appears.  There’s an entire sub-economy surrounding her every appearance, and she’s been very generous with the money she’s making.  She’s donated millions to charities, given bonuses to her crews, and she even gave money to the family of the woman who was shot and killed near the end of the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl celebration.  
But just in case she hasn’t got enough attention, there’s a new (at least new to me) tactic to generate social media clicks for Taylor, or more likely someone who’s posting independently of Taylor.  I’ve seen a few of them, and they’re clearly a ruse to get people to click on the same thing multiple times.  Here’s how it works:  The post shows a short clip of Taylor Swift performing in concert.  Accompanying the clip will be a sentence that will say something like, “Did you catch the mistake Taylor made?” or “Can you spot Taylor’s wardrobe malfunction?”  Well, you didn’t catch the mistake or the wardrobe malfunction.  So you watch it again, this time looking or listening more closely.  You still don’t catch it.  So you watch it again.  Eventually, you realize there is no mistake or wardrobe malfunction, but by then, you’ve already done what the post wanted you to do:  Click on the same 6-second video clip several times.  What does this accomplish?  Not much, except that now instead of a video of Taylor Swift getting a million clicks, it gets three million.  That changes the algorithm of the post, and social media will spread it even further, thinking it’s extremely popular, based on all the clicks it’s getting.  Even if two-thirds of the clicks were by people who were tricked into clicking on it again after seeing it the first time.  While the technique may not be new, being able to use a world-wide superstar like Pennsylvania native Taylor Swift is a power this social media trick never had before.  If you’re a fan of Taylor, you might have clicked on a six-second video clip of her multiple times anyway, but the rest of us are simply victims of an internet trick.  While I’m not a big Taylor fan, I don’t mind looking at her, so the joke’s on you, person who posted the clip!

Speaking of social media, tiktok continues to gain in popularity in America.  So much that President Biden began using the social media app to reach younger people in an attempt to get them to vote for him this November.  Now, you might think that’s a pretty smart move considering his likely opponent, former President Donald Trump, has his own social media site, Truth Social.  Certainly, social media can be an effective tool when used properly.  I’m sure the current president has a staff of people working on just that with respect to tiktok.  Tiktok has a larger number of younger users that other sites like facebook, which tends to attract an older audience.  President Biden can’t just rely on buying votes by canceling student debt, so he’s gotta come up with some new ideas.  Joining tiktok is one of them.  Plus, what a prize for the Chinese-owned social media company to land the President of the United States!  By now you might be thinking, “But Bob, didn’t the Biden administration threaten to ban tiktok in the U.S. just last year?”  Why yes!  They did!  You might also be thinking, “But Bob, didn’t the Biden administration order tiktok be removed from all federal phones and other devices?”  Well, what do you know...they did!  Remind me again why.  Sure!  As you may know, tiktok collects data.  More data than we probably know about.  Right now, tiktok is collecting data from millions of Americans.  Not just about what they say on tiktok, but some speculate the Chinese government is using tiktok to spy on Americans, too.  They say tiktok can read the keystrokes on your phone even when you’re not using tiktok.  They say tiktok is gathering so much data that they know who you are, where you live, who you spend time with, where you go, what you buy, and everything all the other apps know about you, but they’re using that data to build a plan to bring the U.S. to its knees when the Chinese Communist Party feels the time is right.  Through tiktok, the Chinese might have all the information they need about who they can use to do their bidding, either through intimidation or blackmail or bribery.  If they need to resort to those options.  
For their part, tiktok claims it doesn’t share its data with the Chinese government, but all the Chinese government would have to do is force them to share it.  Otherwise Bytedance, tiktok’s parent company, would cease to exist and its top echelons would be executed.  But even though tiktok is banned on federal devices in the US, the hypocrite-in-chief joined anyway.  All for the sake of spreading Democrat propaganda to the nation’s young people.  And I say Democrat propaganda for a good reason.  I see such propaganda every other day on my social media newsfeed.  I follow the Democrat party, the Republican party and the Libertarian party on facebook.  While the Libertarians post some pretty extreme stuff and the Republican party posts hardly anything at all that shows up on my feed, the Democrat party spews half-truths and outright lies all the time.  I won’t bore you with examples here, but you can bet that the same garbage will be splashed all over tiktok as a direct message from the President of the United States.  To hell with security, just get the kids to vote for Joe.  The story on Axios does say how the Biden administration plans to address the security issue.  They say they are "incorporating a sophisticated security protocol to ensure security" while on the app.  I can only imagine what their sophisticated security protocol is.  They obviously can’t use a government-owned phone to create an account, so what do they use?  A privately-owned phone would have to be used, right?  In who’s name is the phone?  Joe Smith from Washington, D.C.?  Yea, that’ll fool ‘em!  Or maybe they made up a fictitious identity like they do for people in the witness protection program.  He’s got a backstory and an educational history and currently works in the agriculture industry in Iowa.  Only problem is, the factory is owned by a Chinese company, so they already know it’s a false identity and trace it back to the White House.  In any case, the President of the United States has thrown caution to the wind and fell prey to the weapon the Chinese Communist Party values most:  Data.  All for the sake of reaching a demographic with the lowest voter turnout, the president turned his back on his own directive, sacrificed the security of his own country.  The biggest prize tiktok could ever hope for surrendered to its lure.  What choice did he have?  He sees his low approval rate among the American people.  Lowest since Jimmy Carter, who, by the way, has been in hospice for a year now.  His vice-president’s approval numbers are almost a low as his.  Knowing where voters stand, Joe Biden figures he has to find a whole new group of voters who haven’t yet experienced the buyer’s remorse many Democrats are right now.  Those are the young men and women he thinks he can reach on tiktok.  Depending upon how you look at it, it’s a brilliant move or an act of desperation.  It’s clearly an act of desperation, as in order for it to be a brilliant move, it wouldn’t be a move that contradicts everything the Biden administration warned us about.  It wouldn’t be a contradiction of the very policies the Biden administration implemented.  It’s not just a desperate move, it’s also shameful and condescending.  It establishes that the only federal employee who’s allowd to use tiktok in an official capacity is the President of the United States when he needs to win an election.  Otherwise it’s bad.   

Let’s go back liner

1854
The Republican Party of the United States is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin.  Isn’t it fitting that The Republicans started their party during Black History Month!?  Then, six years later, this week in 1860, 
Abraham Lincoln makes a speech at Cooper Union in  New York City that is largely responsible for his election to the Presidency.  Gee, what could he have said that was so influential?

Look that up liner.

Abraham Lincoln’s speech at Cooper Union was less a speech and more a legal argument against the spread of slavery in the Northwest Territory, which at the time, was the only territory of the United States of America.  It was an examination of the Constitution and the men who signed it in relation to the jurisdiction of the federal government to control slavery rather than local governments.  It was a power play to solidify the federal government’s authority to eliminate slavery.  Abe Lincoln used the Constitution itself to argue against slavery and the right of the federal government to abolish it.  The end of slavery became the platform on which the Republican party would hang its hat, and Abraham Lincoln would carry the torch to light the way.   Yes, it was the Republicans who fought for the freedom of all people, regardless of the color of their skin.  Somewhere along the way, Democrat ideals that created social programs began to enslave people once again, and have held them down ever since.

1873
E. Remington and Sons in Ilion, New York begins producing the first practical typewriter.  Wow, what a revolutionary invention.  In case you’re too young to have noticed, the typewriter led to the keyboard that now accompanies every computer.  Typewriters were the first word processors, but they didn’t come with italics or different colors of type, or different sizes or fonts, for that matter.  Eventually, some variety began to appear, but it was a long time coming.  At first you could add red type to your document.  Erasing a mistake was almost as difficult as starting over.  But eventually, typewriters became more user friendly.  When the ball typewriter came along, different fonts were available by swapping out the ball.  The ball was a metal attachment that had all of the letters, numbers and symbols on it that would rotate to print the letter or symbol you chose on the keyboard.  It was cumbersome by today’s standards, but revolutionary for its time.  Typewriters are more or less obsolete now.  Collector’s items.  But in their heyday, they gave the general public the opportunity to be writers.  Typewriters inspired people to put their thoughts on paper, or to create thoughts solely for the purpose of typing them.  Realistically, we still use typewriters today, they’re just electronic instead of mechanical.  Instead of typing class in high school, we have keyboarding class in middle school.  I recently heard that some schools are bringing back cursive writing classes, because kids today don’t know how to sign their own names.

1917
The U.S. government releases the unencrypted text of the Zimmermann Telegram to the public.  What an outcry that produced!  The Zimmerman telegram was what was supposed to be a secret message between Germany and Mexico.  This was during World War I, or as it was known before World War II, the Great War.  In the message, the German Foreign Office suggested to Mexico that if the United States entered the war against Germany, Germany would help Mexico reclaim the states of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico if Mexico was willing to form an alliance with Germany.  The message was intercepted by the British, and passed on to the Americans.  Mexico passed on the offer, though.  They listed a variety of reasons, according to wikipedia.  Some of the reasons were that Mexico was in the middle of a civil war at the time, the U.S. had a stronger military, they didn’t have faith in Germany’s promises, and perhaps most poignant, Mexican generals agreed that even if they were awarded the states of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, the civilian population was better armed than the Mexican authorities would have been.  Thanks to the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Nevertheless, tensions between the U.S. and Mexico, which were already strained, became worse.  The plot didn’t keep the U.S. out of the war, with President Wilson asking congress for a “war to end all wars.”
Today, Mexico has done what it can to peacefully retake Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, as well as California, Denver, Chicago and New York City.  Thanks to the Biden administration, they didn’t need any help from Germany.

1936
The Hoover Dam is completed.  My wife and I vistited the Hoover Dam last spring.  I had lived in Las Vegas before, but never ventured over that way, so we made a point of it.  It’s definitely a sight to see, with utility towers at odd angles coming out of the canyon walls, and the sheer engineering of it.  What’s also cool is that if you walk across it, you walk from Nevada to Arizona, so my wife was able to cross off another state she’s visited, however briefly.  We also visited California, so we worked in three states in one week.  I had already been to Nevada, California and Arizona, so the only new state I was able to visit was the state of disbelief as to how much Las Vegas had changed in the 25 years since I lived there.

1939
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that sit-down strikes violate property owners’ rights and are therefore illegal.  This dealt a big blow to unions, as it meant that companies could hire replacement workers.  Union members call them “scabs” perhaps to describe how they protect an open wound from getting infected.  Anyway, if the union doesn’t want to work, they can’t keep anybody else from occupying that space and doing the work.  Granted, calling in replacement workers might not be the best idea, but sometimes the work just has to get done.

1939
The erroneous word “dord” is discovered in the Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition, prompting an investigation.

Look that up liner

Whoa, whao!  Of course I’m going to look it up.  It’s literally a story about the dictionary!  The word “dord” got into the dictionary five years earlier in 1934, according to merriam-webster dot com.  They explained how it happened.  You see, back then, entries for the dictionary were handled through an exchange of three-inch by five-inch index cards that passed from editors to proofreaders.  Through etymologists and others who’s job it is to make sure the dictionary has all the words, and all of the words only.  Not made up stuff.  On a 3x5 card for an addition to the definition and usage of the letter D,  the upper case d and the lower case d, was its use as an abbreviation for the word density when used in physics and chemistry.  But the way the entry was typed onto the card, with an upper case d and the word or then a lower case d made it look like the word “dord.”  That’s how dord got into the dictionary.  It took until 1939 for another editor to notice and submit another 3x5 card to make the correction, referring to dord as a ghost word and calling for an urgent plate change.  A plate change was required to make the correction on the printing press.  It wasn’t until 1947, 13 years after the error, that the word dord was removed from the dictionary.  Merriam-Webster claims dord is the only such ghost word to ever appear in their publication. 

1943
The Rosenstrasse protest starts in Berlin.  It is the only pro-Jewish demonstration inside wartime Nazi Germany.  Twenty-five of the 2000 Jews in so-called mixed marriages who were held at the community center on Rosenstrasse were sent to Auschwitz.  At the time, there were, according to the holocaust encyclopedia, about 9,000 Jews in Berlin who the Gestapo considered “exempted” because they were spouses or children in mixed marriages.   

1954
Puerto Rican nationalists attack the United States Capitol building, injuring five Representatives.  Four people unfurled a Puerto Rican flag and began firing semi-automatic pistols as the House floor from the balcony.  Luckily, the five wounded representatives recovered.  The shooters were arrested, tried and convicted.  They said they did it to get Puerto Rico out from under U.S. rule, but were sentenced to the equivalent of life sentences.  But about 25 years later, Jimmy Carter commuted their sentences and all of them returned to Puerto Rico, which, by the way, is an American territory.

1964
The government of Italy asks for help to keep the Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling over.  Hey, we have this building over here and uh, well it’s a-not looking so good right now…

1990
Steve Jackson Games is raided by the United States Secret Service, prompting the later formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  If you’re wondering why the Secret Service would raid an electronic game company, it was because the owner of the company, Steve Jackson, was allegedly a recipient of a document that showed how the 9-1-1 system works.  You know, the number you call in an emergency.  The Secret Service claimed that if hackers knew how it worked, they could disrupt it and put peoples lives in danger.  So the Secret Service raided the guy’s place, took all the electronic devices they could find, and nearly ruined the man’s business.  There were no copies of the document found on any of the confiscated devices, so no charges were pressed.  But when Jackson got his computers back, they discovered all the e-mails were gone.  Not just gone, but gone over by the Secret Service before being deleted.  That’s where the Electronic Frontier Foundation stepped in.  In fact, it was their first case.  The foundation was created in part because of the Jackson Games raid.  The result was that a court ruled that email should be considered to be as private as a telephone call, which as we all know, the government needs a warrant to intercept and listen.  The major difference is that a telephone call will eventually disappear, while an email will never disappear.

1993
In New York City, a truck bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center explodes, killing 6 and injuring over a thousand.  This was a serious explosion.  It was considered a miracle that the building itself didn’t sustain more damage.  About eight and a half years later, we would discover that the buildings of the World Trade Center weren’t as indestructible as we thought they were.

Phone and email liner

One of the things that progressives champion while conservatives shake their head in bewilderment is diversity.  First, let’s take a look at why diversity is something the left has hung its hat on.  It seems like a worthy goal, as diversity in its purest form is what gives us different ideas and more solutions and another way to look at something with the hope of gaining a greater understanding of a social issue.  It’s a way of inviting everyone to the table and letting everyone contribute.  Diversity in its current form is a little different.  Today, diversity is defined not by ideas and a broadening scope of input, but only by skin color.  Diversity is so much more than skin color.  To relegate the definition of diversity to only skin color is a violation of the law of diversity itself.  Conservatives don’t have a problem with diversity.  But many people have a problem with the progressive limitations put on diversity.  If diversity is defined solely by skin color, then diversity is a racist ideal.  Diversity as a tool to improve society shouldn’t be limited to a diversity of skin color.  That literally limits our ability to be truly diverse.  Only self-interest would limit the boundaries of diversity.  The way the word diversity is used today, those who scream the loudest for diversity are calling for the exclusion of someone else because of their skin color.  
When you get a group of people together to be the leaders of something, a company or non-profit organization, there’s a good chance one skin color or another will be under represented.  It might be a result of who lives in the neighborhood or who you went to high school with or all kinds of factors.  One thing you don’t normally look for when forming a leadership group is the color of a person’s skin.  But that’s what we do today.  It’s commonly referred to as diversity.  Setting corporate standards based on the skin color of its leadership.  Sound familiar?  Our government does it, too.  Joe Biden made it clear that he chose Kamala Harris to be VP because she’s a person of color, or, not white.  That’s racist.  He also nominated a Supreme Court Justice because of the color of her skin.  That’s racist.  You can judge for yourself how well the vice-president and justice are doing their jobs.  I’m not criticizing nor praising them here, but to admit that they were chosen because of the color of their skin wouldn’t be accepted if I was selected as White House Press Secretary because they figured it would be a good idea to put a white guy in there prior to the election.  In every scenario but me being press secretary, race is the most important factor to achieve diversity.
The truth is, America is perhaps the most diverse country in the world already.  Even prior to the wave upon wave of illegal immigrants crashing upon our shores, America was the great melting pot.  People came here from all over the world to start a new life.  Every large city in America today, and many of the small towns, too, have ethnic neighborhoods and social clubs.  There are Chinatowns and Little Italy’s, Polish Clubs and Elk’s Clubs.  But I’ve never heard of Americatown in Beijing or Little Chicago in Italy.  There’s not a single company in China that has a diverse board of directors based on skin color.  Granted, in China you have to be very careful about how diverse you are about anything, but that’s a different subject.  Diversity has always been an American value.  That doesn’t mean bigotry doesn’t exist.  That doesn’t mean favoritism doesn’t occur.  I’m not defending either.  But when it comes to welcoming people of all backgrounds and ethnicities, regardless of your skin color or genetic makeup, America is a welcoming place.  Diversity is all over my part of the world, and nobody seems to have a problem with it.  Nobody forced it upon the neighborhood, either.  Organic diversity is preferred over forced diversity.
There are occasions when forced diversity has resulted in positive change.  And by diversity, I mean by skin color.  Sometimes a gem is discovered among an under represented group that enriches us all with inspiration and hope because of racist programs that have good intentions.  I’m sure there are artists and politicians and organizers out there who might be over looked because of the color of their skin, and that’s a shame.  It’s almost as if there’s not enough room in the world of diversity to accommodate all of them.  But maybe that’s the result of natural selection.  The most healthy of the group survive.  Limiting your food source to skin color is like a hummingbird limiting its beak to one kind of flower.  If we limit diversity to skin color, we limit our food supply.  
There are other, more important factors to take into consideration when it comes to making important decisions, moderately important decisions, completely unimportant decisions, or any kind of decisions than the color of somebody’s skin.  Skin color might be the first thing you notice about somebody, and that’s natural, but making any other decisions because of that initial observation is racism, and maybe even bigotry, depending upon what decisions are made.  
When diversity becomes something that benefits society because it’s diversity of thought, and not just a recognition of somebody’s skin color, then we’ll be able to take an unbiased look at diversity and how society might benefit from it.  Until then, today’s definition of diversity will merely be a catch phrase for “not enough different skin colors.” 

The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly.  Copyright 2024.  Thank you for putting your ear to The Listening Tube.  Subscribe today.  Thank you, Dave.  Thank you, Jeanette.  I’m your host Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum.