Tips for London

Many of my friends in the U.S. are thinking about summer vacation. The British Pound is down to $1.25, so it's a great time to visit the U.K. To put this in perspective, the pound was $1.70 just several years ago. The all-time low of the pound against the U.S. Dollar was $1.05 in 1985. No one can predict what will happen to the pound, but $1.25 is very attractive from the perspective of history. So if you've been thinking about the U.K., go now.

I have spent about one-quarter of the last six years in or around London. Here are a few travel tips:

• If you fly into Heathrow and land in the early morning, bite the bullet and take the pricey Heathrow Express to Paddington station where you can easily get a taxi to your hotel. During the inbound morning rush hour, the less expensive Heathrow Connect trains to Paddington are packed, the M4 highway into London is clogged, and the subway ("tube" or "Underground") stations will be congested too. And be mindful that most tube stations do not have escalators or elevators ("lifts"). Dragging your heavy bags up one flight of stairs after another is no fun. With Heathrow Express you will not have to climb a single stairway between Heathrow and your hotel.
• Instead of the traditional overnight flight eastbound, look for a "day flight" that leaves the U.S. in the morning and arrives at Heathrow in the late evening. These are so much easier on one's body! You may have to connect to a flight at New York, Washington Dulles, Boston, or Chicago, but it's worth the inconvenience.
• Find a hotel in tube Zone 2. It will probably be less expensive than a hotel in Zone 1, it will probably be quieter in the evenings, and restaurants nearby are certain not to be overrun by tourists.
• Wherever you stay, don't start a journey on the tube before 9 am or you will compete with a million plus people who commute into the center of London for work. By 9:30 the tube system has cleared out. Many tourist attractions don't open early in the morning, anyway. The evening rush hour is more spaced out and less of a timing challenge.
• If you have any one-pound coins, be sure to spend them. New coins are being issued, and the old ones will become invalid for commerce in October. Likewise, if you have paper notes from long ago, you may find that they're invalid — but a bank might have mercy on you and exchange them for new notes. Americans are not used to thinking that old money becomes invalid, but that's how it works in most of the world.
• Before you leave the U.S., order a London Travelcard or a visitor Oyster card. Almost all ticket windows at tube stations have been closed, and queues at the remaining tube stations can be quite lengthy during tourist season. For the Travelcard, zones 1-2 are sufficient. For four days or less, go with the Oyster card. In any event, don't plan to buy individual tickets on the tube; that's the most expensive way to go.
• The bus may be as fast as the tube for some journeys, and you will see more of the city on a bus. But I mean a TfL (Transport for London) bus, not a tourist bus. I am not fond of the tourist bus.
• Don't spend your entire holiday in London. It's easy to make day-trips by train. I recommend Brighton, Portsmouth, Bath, Bletchley (for Bletchley Park), Henley-on-Thames (via river from Reading), Whitstable, and Winchester. You can save a lot of money by buying your train tickets in advance. You can retrieve prepaid tickets from a machine at the departing train station in London. By the way, pay attention in the London train stations. Track information is often not posted until 15 or even 10 minutes before departure. When you see the track posted, move quickly.
• Find a pub that still serves true English beers and ales on tap. Globalization has had its unfortunate impacts, and you will find that Beck's, Peroni, Heineken, etc. are everywhere. Authentic English beer and ale is a national treasure. If a pub sells only the continental European products, move on.
• London has more things to see and do that you could possibly visit in a week. I've been to the following: Abbey Road Studios, British Library, British Museum, Buckingham Palace (State Rooms), Churchill War Rooms, City Museum of London, Corthauld Gallery, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, Hampton Court Palace, HMS Belfast, HMS Wellington, Harrods, Imperial War Museum, Kensington Palace, London Canal Museum, London Symphony Orchestra, London Transport Museum, Millennium Bridge, National Gallery, National Maritime Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Royal Observatory Greenwich, Saatchi Gallery, Shard, St Paul's Cathedral, Tate Modern, Thames boat tour, Tower of London, V&A Museum, Wallace Collection, Westminster Abbey, Whitechapel Gallery, Wigmore Hall, Windsor Castle, and 10 Downing St. They're all worth seeing. My favorites? Hampton Court Palace, Kew gardens, Wigmore Hall (closed for much of the summer), National Maritime Museum, London Canal Museum, Courthald, Saatchi, the V&A, and St Paul's.

Make American Great Again?

If your point of reference is military and economic might that exceeds any other nation's, I have only one response: Dream on. This is not 1946 when war had devastated every major country in the world — except us. The U.S. achieved military and economic dominance in the 1950s because there was no competition.

Given how few high schools in the U.S. teach history of the 20th century, I am not surprised by the small number of Americans who understand this. The world in 1946 was ours for the taking, and we took it. But as soon as those other countries began to recover, life got more complicated. First the competition came from Germany, whose automobiles were obviously better than ours. Then came Japan, whose electronics were obviously better than ours. Then came China. It took them longer because the Japanese did horrendous things to China in World War II and then Chairman Mao shredded his country with his Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. But the Chinese are resilient and persistent.

Meanwhile we now see that our purported adversary to the death, the Soviet Union, was an economic weakling all along. Deprivation during World War I caused the Russian Revolution. The Russian people had not recovered when Stalin's Great Purge killed a million or two in 1936-1938. In terms of casualties and destruction, the Soviet Union was the big loser in World War II in every respect. Although Stalin grabbed a lot of territory in 1945-1948 and the Russians did develop the bomb, they were never a serious economic threat. Only the late discovery of natural gas makes Russia relevant to today's world economy.

The late historian Stephen Ambrose made waves in the 1970s when he said in plain language that the U.S. was the big winner of World War II. Americans were not accustomed to hearing the message in those terms, but he was bang on. Prior to 1939, the U.S. was merely one of many players on the world scene; for decades after, we were the unchallenged number one. But now the U.S. represents only 24% of the world's economy. Europe has the same 24%. China has 12% and continues to grow rapidly. You cannot turn the clock back to the 1950s because that decade was a fluke.

And if you smugly say that the U.S. retains technical superiority, are you aware that one-third of the patents filed worldwide last year came from China?

Yes, we still have a measure of military superiority, but at no time since 1945 have we been able to impose our will anywhere without cost. North Korea still exists, our intervention in Vietnam was a total failure, and more recently our interventions in the Middle East have done little to entrench peace and tolerance. Note that to achieve such a measure of military superiority, we spend $10,000 per household in America on our military each year. Other nations are able to spend that money on infrastructure, health care, education, or quality of life.

I am no fan of the messiah of many hardcore conservatives, Ayn Rand, but I believe she would puke in the toilet if told that Americans are taxed at $10,000 per household per annum to sustain a standing military. That's not what she left Russia for.

As for making America great again, I prefer this version over President Trump's (language NSFW):

Michael Peterson is not free

If you don't know the Michael Peterson story, read this Wikipedia article.

Kathleen Atwater was my good friend. Both of us had engineering educations yet loved the arts and discussions far afield from telecommunications. Her office was a few doors down from mine. We shared the frustrations and the occasional victories of middle management in a large corporation. We shared the uncertainties and fears that pervaded the business after the Internet bubble burst in 2001. We shared the ups and downs of raising teenagers. We flirted without intent.

And on a few occasions, I went to her house for a party and interacted with her husband Michael Peterson. He was enigmatic, both accessible and inaccessible in an odd way. When it became known that he had exaggerated his military decorations, I didn't trust him. But, I thought, live and let live. Although I had heard Kathleen say that her marriage was troublesome, many people griped about their marriages at work. Michael was always cordial to me, and I respected his profession as a newspaper columnist — a job I envy. I read one of his novels that Kathleen gave me. Not Dostoyevsky, but good.

When I first heard that Kathleen had died in her home on a stairway that I myself had walked down, I assumed she had fallen while inebriated. Despite weighing less than 100 pounds, I'm certain, she could put away wine. Remember Raiders of the Lost Ark? The Karen Allen character, Marian — also a lithe, short, feisty woman — twice drank a man under the table. That was Kathleen, and she could have a lot of fun and generate a lot of fun for everyone else in the process.

A day later the reports of Kathleen's death became ominous. As the facts came out, there was no doubt in my mind that Michael had killed her.

I went to Kathleen's funeral at Duke Chapel. Those of us who believed Michael guilty, sat on the left. Those who believed Michael innocent, sat on the right. We stared across the aisle uneasily to see which side our acquaintances had chosen while the organ played Barber's somber Adagio for Strings. The two sides kept separate when leaving.

Months later I was interviewed on background by a reporter from the News and Observer. Placed on the list of potential witnesses by the prosecution, I was never called because I had no unique insight or facts to provide. I took a day off from work to attend the trial with its circus atmosphere and to see Michael in person from the back row of the courtroom. Much of the time, the movie crew from France blocked my view.

The verdict was announced while I was at my desk at work. Guilty! I found myself surrounded by blood-thirsty comrades who hoped that Michael would get the death penalty. I refrained from that; I've demonstrated at Central Prison in Raleigh for abolition of the death penalty. Besides, the Durham County prosecutor had already ruled it out. Michael went to prison pending appeal, and I believed justice had been done —  not merely for Kathleen, but for Michael's first wife.

You know what happened. The conviction was rightfully overturned because of procedural errors. Last week Michael submitted an Alford plea to voluntary manslaughter. He and his lawyer maintain innocence, but don't be misled by courtroom procedure in North Carolina. He did it.

The public and the irreversibly alienated families of Kathleen and Michael are spared a second trial. He was sentenced to less time than he had already served, and he now walks the streets.

But I say he's not free, and thus I can accept the outcome. He stands convicted of intentionally taking another person's life, and he will live with that infamy for the rest of his. Tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, perhaps he will kneel and seek forgiveness, but he's not free of his memories. He never shall be. Nor will those of us who knew Kathleen.

On Strike! Oh, no

Dad was a union man. I joke that his politics were to the left of Leon Trotsky — an exaggeration not without justification. He railed against the excesses of capitalism and the difficulties faced by the working man and woman. He received the annual Friend of Labor award from the Alabama AFL-CIO (Alabama being the most unionized state in the South) and consulted for the AFL-CIO on unemployment compensation into his 80s. Aside from family, the largest contingent at his funeral were representatives of organized labor.

Reluctantly I differ with Dad on one point. In my travels to Europe I am often confronted by one kind of "labor action" or another in the transportation sector. Sometimes it's an airline, sometimes it's rail, sometimes it's mass transit. Next week, for example, much of the London Underground system — the "Tube" — will be unserved or underserved because of a strike. Is it ethical for a relatively small number of people to inflict inconvenience or even financial loss on millions of citizens, just as a way to resolve a workplace dispute? I'm doubtful. Hostage-taking is reprehensible.

I'm reminded of the 1981 strike by air traffic controllers in the U.S., who didn't appreciate the difference between then-new President Ronald Reagan and previous President Jimmy Carter. Reagan noted that each of the 11,345 controllers had signed a sworn affidavit promising never to strike. He fired them all. The union collapsed but more importantly the American economy carried on.

That kind of reaction has been unthinkable in Western Europe… until now. Watch what happens if the UK and France follow the U.S. by handing control to UKIP and the National Front, respectively. It could happen.

No pardon before trial

Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are both software professionals. Both are currently in hiding, out of reach of European and American authorities. Neither should be pardoned at this point; rather, both should be charged and then tried in open criminal court.

The now-former President Obama might or might not have done the right thing by commuting the sentence of Chelsea Manning; I haven't decided yet. But at least Manning was tried, convicted, and sentenced before Obama intervened. After sentencing, a pardon or commutation can be considered on its merits. That's the standard process available to everyone.

Of course, the government might still screw up the prosecution; it happened in the Daniel Ellsberg case. I mean a fair trial, not a sham.

Sometimes a whistle-blower performs a public service. That's a judgment of history best rendered a decade or two later. Even when he or she does, I don't believe that an immediate exemption from prosecution is a good idea. The difficulty is that some whistle-blowers don't have clear thinking or pure motivations. Their revelations turn out to have insignificant positive impact but significant negative impact. We don't hear as much in the press about those. The whistle-blower effectively substitutes his or her personal judgment, often self-aggrandized, for the judgment of the government. As a society we must be careful about letting that become commonplace. A whistle-blower must know that there are consequences without deluding oneself that the end justifies the means. It seldom does. When it does, the whistle-blower has a moral basis to violate the law knowingly. But don't expect not to be prosecuted. Make your moral case after being convicted, if you are.

Sounds that touch my heart

Do you have favorite sounds? I don't mean human voices, music in the usual sense, animal, or natural sounds but rather non-musical sounds of human design. Here are the ones that come to my mind.

• The wind chimes on our back porch. Perhaps Gail remembers how we acquired them; I don't. They've been out there for 20 years, maybe longer. The soft sound beneath the bedroom window is comforting late at night and early in the morning… a familiar sound of solace and peace, a gentle reassurance that life goes on.
• The theme song of the Yamanote train, the hour-long loop around central Tokyo. Whenever the train stops at a station, the theme song plays. It's about ten seconds, and I've heard it hundreds of times —  each bringing a smile to my face. I'm grateful for my chances to travel the world.
• The pouring of water into a font before Baptism. Perhaps you the reader are not religious, but to me the sound of splashing, circling water triggers reflections about who I am, why I'm here, what I'm good for, and what happens next.
• The creaking of the moving sidewalks in Terminal 3, Heathrow Airport in London. I've been to London so many times that it seems like my second home. The creaking is distinctive and, in its peculiar way, shouts Welcome. Terminal 3 was built in the early 1960s. Within 10 years it will be replaced, they say. I can't argue with the rationale for that, but I'll be sad because the new terminal won't have those creaks.
• The horn that blows loudly when the Carolina Hurricanes score a goal in Raleigh. One of the more memorable moments in my life was attending Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals in 2006. Most sports fans go their entire lives without ever seeing a final Game 7 in baseball, basketball, or hockey. I've got that t-shirt and the horn reminds me of it.
• Morse code that goes "-.-. --.-", known as "CQ" which an amateur radio operator (ham) like myself sends when he or she wants to converse with anyone anywhere who hears the call. It's an invitation to make a new friend.
• The Windows 95 start-up sound. Don't remember it? Play it here. Windows 95 was ground-breaking in several respects, among them its inclusion of Internet support (technically the TCP/IP protocol stack) and multimedia support. When I booted Windows 95 the first time after installing it, out came herald of truly a new age of computing that has changed our lives in so many ways. The difference between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 was as large as the difference between punched cards and online computer terminals.
• Locomotive horns. They're not all alike! Some are blats, others are dissonant chords, still others are pleasant chords. They vary in keys, both major and minor (when they're properly tuned, that is). Motion is good.

What are yours?

So goes the circus

Sometimes an event must be understood in a broader context, and that's how I see the announcement that the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is ending its 146-year run.

It was once considered acceptable for a zoo to place animals in small cages permanently. Anyone my age remembers those. I always found them more depressing than interesting. The San Diego Zoo led a change toward open-air exhibits without cages, and among others they were followed by the North Carolina Zoo. It's better, although there is the perennial complaint at the NC Zoo that the animals are often hard to see in their faux naturale habitats.

The movie Blackfish gave focus for criticism of SeaWorld's holding killer whales in captivity. Attendance at these shows has been dropping and SeaWorld, if for no other reason than economics, will phase them out — at its parks in the U.S., at least.

I blogged a year ago about the decision of RBBB to drop its elephants. What became obvious to Feld Entertainment since then is that not enough people are interested in seeing an elephant-free circus. Attendance is driven mostly by children, and in a world where children have access to spectacular videos of animals on YouTube and are accustomed to more active entertainment such as video games, RBBB had already seen a drop in attendance before their decision to withdraw elephants. Feld saw correctly, I think, that attempts to reduce further the costs of the circus would be futile because even fewer customers would patronize what remained. Saving a business by downsizing it has a low probability of success.

RBBB will be in Raleigh next month… my final opportunity to see it. Will I go with no children in tow? I'll have to think about that.