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Mist Computing

When this post was first envisioned, when writing Made Without Repression, in 2019, I was mainly concerned about developments in Hong Kong. Since then, the situation in other countries has revealed a greater need for insights into the challenge of censorship. It is easier to prepare for censorship before it happens, than after. That said, it is probably time for everyone, everywhere to prepare themselves for internet censorship.

Various organizations, with assorted mandates and disparate reasons, make lists of countries engaging in internet censorship and surveillance. Some of the counties currently on their Countries under surveillance list by Reporters sans frontières, (RSF) = Reporters without borders, include: Australia, France, South Korea, and Norway – the last one with a proviso that states that this only applies to metadata on traffic that crosses the Norwegian border. A more serious RFS list, introduced in 2006 and last updated in 2014, Enemies of the internet, is more important because: all of these countries mark themselves out not just for their capacity to censor news and information online but also for their almost systematic repression of Internet users. Of the twenty countries on this list at its 2014 update are: China, India, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, United States.

On 2013-12-13, RSF published a Special report on Internet Surveillance, with two new lists: 1) State Enemies of the Internet, countries whose governments are involved in active, intrusive surveillance of news providers, resulting in grave violations of freedom of information and human rights = Bahrain, China, Iran, Syria, and Vietnam. 2) Corporate Enemies of the Internet, companies that sell products that are liable to be used by governments to violate human rights and freedom of information = Amesys (France), Blue Coat Systems (U.S.), Gamma (UK and Germany), Hacking Team (Italy), and Trovicor (Germany).

Of course, not all people, organizations or companies exhorting free speech are sincere. Recently, the current CEO of Twitter has been encouraging free speech, at least for himself and a former president of the United States, but not necessarily for anyone else, especially those who express opposing views.

Thus, everyone should be preparing their own plan for managing an internet censorship situation. In addition, they may want to consider how they can help others already caught in one, such as people living in countries listed on the Enemies of the Internet, list.

There are many approaches to dealing with internet censorship, but an easy one is to become acquainted with Psiphon, an open-source Internet censorship circumvention tool, originally developed by the Citizen Lab in 2006.

The Citizen Lab, was founded in 2001, at the University of Toronto, Canada. It studies information controls that impact internet openness and security that threaten human rights. Computer-generated interrogation, data mining and analysis are combined with intensive field research, qualitative social science, and legal and policy analysis methods.

In 2007, Psiphon, Inc. was established as a Canadian corporation independent of the Citizen Lab and the University of Toronto. It uses a social network of trust model, to provide tools that offer internet access to people who live in censored countries. Psiphonode is server software that is easy to install, while psiphonite is client software, that is even easier. These products give ordinary people the opportunity to circumvent internet controls. The key is that the people involved have to trust each other.

Psiphon is currently engaged in developing/ maintaining two related projects: A cloud-based run-time tunneling system, and a cloud-based secure proxy system. Their original home-based server software is no longer supported. This software has been in development since 2006, initally with psiphonites from all over the world, including central Asia and the Middle East, accessing a test psiphonode server.

While the risk to psiphon users is never zero, if appropriate measures are taken, it is much safer than using any other method to visit a censored site. A psiphonite must connect to a unique, and traceable, IP address. Psiphon has been built to run as a private network connecting to home computers, where the connection information is never publicly disclosed. Encrypted psiphon messages are buried inside other commercial traffic.

The software uses a combination of secure communication and obfuscation technologies, including virtual private networks (VPN), secure shell protocol (SSH) = cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. and a web proxy = an intermediary between a client requesting a service, and a server providing it. It is designed to protect the client, Psiphon is both centrally managed yet geographically diverse. It is a network of thousands of proxy servers, using a performance-oriented, single- and multi-hop routing architecture.

With Psiphon effectively out-sourced, the Citizen Lab has been able to concentrate on investigating situations where internet openness and security are restricted, and human rights are threatened. Notable reports include:

Tracking GhostNet (2009) documented a cyber espionage network of over 1 295 infected hosts in 103 countries between 2007 and 2009, with many high-value targets, including ministries of foreign affairs/ embassies/ international organizations/ news media/ NGOs.

Shadows in the Cloud (2010), documented an ecosystem of cyber espionage that compromised computer network systems for government/ business/ academia at the United Nations, as well as in India and other countries.

Million Dollar Dissident (2016), documented the tracking of Ahmed Mansoor, a human rights defender in the United Arab Emirates, with Pegasus software, developed by Israeli NSO Group.

My views are influenced by La Crise d’Octobre (1970-10-05 – 1970-12-28) that started when members of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) kidnapped the Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James Cross. Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau then invoked the War Measures Act for the first time in Canadian history during peacetime. This limited civil liberties and granted the police far-reaching powers. There were 3 000 searches, and 497 arrests. Everyone arrested was denied due process. Habeas corpus = an individual’s right to have a judge confirm that they have been lawfully detained, was suspended. The Government of Quebec also requested military aid to support the civil authorities, with Canadian Forces being deployed throughout Quebec. Canadian historian Desmond Morton (1937 – 2019) later wrote: “It was unprecedented. On the basis of facts then and revealed later, it was unjustified. It was also a brilliant success. Shock was the best safeguard against bloodshed.”

In the United States, four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by 19 al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, 2001-09-11. The attacks killed nearly 3 000 people and instigated the Global War on Terrorism. Criticism of this war has focused on its morality, efficiency and cost. A 2021 Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs study concluded that the several post-9/11 wars have displaced at least 38 million people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines. It estimated these wars caused about 900 000 deaths and cost $8 trillion. Despite the U.S. Constitution and U.S. law prohibiting the use of torture, this became common practice.

More recently, on 2020-01-06, following Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election, a mob of his supporters attacked the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., seeking to keep Trump in power by preventing a joint session of Congress from counting the electoral college votes to formalize the victory of Joe Biden. This was the seventh and last part of a plan by Trump to overturn the election.

These events show that democracy is not guaranteed anywhere, and that people have to be vigilant.

A Plan to prevent Internet Censorship

One of the first tasks a person can engage in, is to visit the Psiphon website. It claims that: Where other VPNs can not connect, Psiphon will find a way. These connections are free, built on leading edge, research driven security and network technologies. These services are designed to keep people connected. They provide everything from social media, to games, to voice over internet protocol (VOIP) = a telephone service based on the internet, Psiphon is designed to help people access online content and services they appreciate, even if they are blocked by the authorities.

Once these internet connections are in place, it is much easier to provide content to people. My intention is that in 2023, I will set up a website, possibly mist.mclellan.no, but more likely an equivalent website with a more neutral name, that will be able to house courses/ lectures/ labs on technical subjects that will be freely available to people anywhere in the world. I specifically think about political hotspots of the world, currently: Hong Kong, Iran, Ukraine. It is not something I can do alone, since I have no knowledge of Cantonese or Farsi. My knowledge of Ukrainian is so elementary that it is of no practical use. Thus, I hope content can be translated by others, potentially learners who have a good understanding of English.

It would be interesting to know what other people feel they can contribute. They can send me an email at first name @ last name.no, where the first and last names are found as the name of this weblog.

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Collectors

Gotham Garage uses this photo on their website to welcome visitors. As far as I am aware, I have not seen this Nissan hut used as a workshop. While it might offer sentimental charm, it does not make effective use of space for the revitalization of a vehicle. Some of the vehicles processed by Gotham Garage are shown in the photo. Photo: Gotham Garaage

At some point in their lives, many people admit to being collectors. They use this term because it is neutral: less pious than saver, which would suggest an ethical motivation; less compulsive than hoarder, which would admit to an addiction.

The pronunciation of these terms provides insights into the mind set of listeners. Sometimes, I deliberately mispronounce saver as savior. No one has ever misunderstood or commented on this mispronunciation. I do this when I am trying to represent saving as a religious mission, perhaps even regarding collected stuff as an environmentally sustainable alternative to buying new things. One can also feel the greater intensity of negative impressions, when the term hoarder is pronounced almost normally, but with increased emphasis on the first syllable.

In this weblog post, there will be no attempt to prevent anyone from living in their own fantasy world. The actual thing collected/ saved/ hoarded varies. The economic elite might engage in ostentatiously collecting Renaissance art or incunabula = books printed before 1501. Members of a middle-class might collect hard-covered books, stamps or coins. Sports enthusiasts might collect baseball cards. My mother collected representations of birds, one from each of her trips.

In the 1960s, pennants were popular with children, and we at Cliff Cottage still have remnants of a pennant collection. Many of these were subsequently displayed on bedroom walls. The attached photo of a pennant of Hope, is for a location that represents a boundary, separating polite, sustainable, environmentally conscious Cascadia from the wild, ruinous, environmentally indifferent interior of British Columbia. Hope is on the banks of the Fraser River, about 110 km eastwards/ upstream from New Westminster, and 70 km southwards/ downstream of Hell’s Gate. While five species of Pacific salmon can be found there, with one depicted on the pennant, I am more interested in the declining number of White Sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus), found south of Hell’s Gate. Sometimes I try to impress some people by mentioning that the area was used as the location for the film Rambo – First Blood (1982). Others are more impressed when I mention that the Othello tunnels, part of Coquihalla Canyon Provincial Park, take their names from the works of Shakespeare.

A pennant, as collected in the 1960s. Hope is on the banks of the Fraser River, about 110 km eastwards/ upstream from New Westminster, and 70 km southwards/ downstream of Hell’s Gate. It is an area where five species of Pacific salmon transition between spawning grounds and the sea. It is also an area with a declining number of White Sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus), all of which are only found south of Hell’s Gate.

Some insights into collecting will be offered by looking at how others approach the acquisition of things. As this paragraph is being written, our teletype replacement reports that over half of newly baked Norwegian fathers have bought something used on Finn, the Norwegian equivalent of Craigslist. This is a change of attitude. In contrast after 42 years in Norway, we have bought our first new sofas. Previously, we have only had used sofas. Before that, it was covered mattresses on the floor.

Unfortunately, the art of buying used equipment online requires diligence. On one occasion, I bough a computer with a hard drive that contradicted the product description. Since I intended to upgrade it anyway, I ignored it. On a second occasion, stage clips were missing from a stereo microscope, both in the product description provided by the seller, as well as in the sending, but not in the photo used as part of the product description.

Vehicles

A large number of former male colleagues acquire vehicles with personality, when their economy allows it. The vehicles vary. I know some who have bought: (former) military trucks/ motorcycles/ muscle cars/ sports cars/ vans.

One colleague specialized in buying Land Rovers. He confided that he told his wife that he owned eight, because that was the number of vehicles that were registered. I believe the real number was fourteen. Some of these may have just been kept for their parts. Soon the number was reduced to thirteen as he gave one to his daughter, at the time one of my students. I suspect this was in order to buy her silence about the real number of vehicles involved. She admitted to me that she had obtained the very best of the vehicles in his collection.

I had noted that a disproportionate number of male workers in what can be regarded as female-dominated professions, such as teaching and nursing, own uber-masculine vehicles, such as large trucks and muscle cars.

To test this hypothesis, I have watched documentary/ reality programs to see if these stereotypes are common. Not only are the results inconclusive, they seem to point to the opposite conclusion, at least in three series involving vehicle collectors.

Marshal Chapman, was a professor of geology who lived on Isle au Haut, population 70, in Maine, when he appeared in the fifth episode of the documentary, The US East Coast (2014), starting at 33:08. He has a relaxed and modest approach to collecting his two functioning older vehicles, a 1924 Ford Model T coupe, and a 1930 (?) Ford Model A flatbed truck. Among the characteristics he appreciates about his Model A is its high ground clearance and low top speed (33 mph = ca. 50 km/h) allowing him to see more of the landscape as he drives through it. He claims he has no problems obtaining spare parts, with old restorers dying off, and their widows wanting these obsolete vehicles out of their lives. He also claims that once there is one vintage car in a barn, it starts to reproduce so one ends up with four or five vehicles. He is unsure how this happens, just that it does. He also allows his vehicles to take a day off, if they need it, accepting that old cars have quirks. These are internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, but Chapman’s approach to collecting involves several ethical principles that are needed if the world is to successfully transition to a greener future.

Mike Hall, appears in Rust Valley Restorers, a reality series set in Tappen, British Columbia on Shuswap Lake. I know the area well. For most of my childhood, our family stayed for a week at a waterfront cottage at Blind Bay, 15 km from Tappen. Hall is the opposite of Chapman. When the series started, he claimed to own 400 vehicles from the 1950s – 1970s, rusting away in what he describes as a field of dreams. Towards the end of the series, he gives up on his dream, and auctions most of them away, because he is unable to restore them. Hall is a hoarder, and his collecting habits are an obsession and probably an addiction.

Mark Towle, from Gotham Garage, appears in Car Masters: Rust to Riches, another reality series that looks at car revitalization, so far in 32 episodes, from 2018 to 2022. Gotham Garage uses two workshops located in Temecula, a city in Riverside County, California, with a 2020 population of about 110 000. While there has been some discussion about the authenticity of the program, the important point here is that Towle and Gotham Garage are portrayed, not as collectors, but as distributors/ dispensers/ vendors of enhanced/ customized one-off vehicles, built on an existing chassis/ body. Despite claims to the contrary, these are not usually restorations. Rather, vehicles are rebuilt to incorporates the dreams of typically wealthy clients into their newly reconstructed vehicles.

Tools

I am still in a state of denial with respect to my collector status about tools. Starting about 2016, I built up a woodworking workshop to assist in the restoration of Cliff Cottage. I soon learned that it can be economically advantageous to buy specialty tools even for a single specific task. Hiring a worker is usually more expensive, and here in rural Norway, there is no option of renting unusual tools. Thus, the perpetual question asked is, what quality should that tool be?

To begin with, I often bought cheaper house brand tools that, while capable of performing assigned tasks, are less effective than better quality tools. I regret some of these earlier purchases.

I have replaced a Scheppach table saw (that suddenly stopped working), with a Bosch table saw, that continues to operate. The one tool that I have been most disappointed with is a Ryobi compound mitre saw. I should have opted for a Bosch model, even though it is three times more expensive. The Ryobi is the one tool in my collection that I refuse to allow anyone to inherit. I have left clear instructions that it is to be recycled!

I own several Meec battery electric tools, because they use the same standard battery, of which I have four. These tools are gudenuf! Many people regard DeWalt as the highest quality woodworking tool brand commonly available in Norway. When I look at their prices, I accept that Bosch has a quality that meets my needs. Most of these woodworking tools have been so little used that they will last not just my lifetime, but the lifetime of the next generation of user that inherits them, and possibly the generation after that.

Computers & Peripherals

I hope to apply what I have learned about woodworking tools, to computers and peripherals. My attitude to collecting computing equipment is that while the quantities exceed basic needs, they are still manageable.

I still recall one day, when indulgence took the overhand. I contacted a Norwegian company whose mission is to sell used computing equipment. I asked specifically about its holding of older Asus EEE PCs and netbooks. A white Asus EEE PC 702 from 2007 is arguably the first netbook. With a profusion of good will, one can almost regard this device as a PDA = personal digital assistant! Almost!!

I then mentioned that I might be interested in acquiring an Asus tablet. Originally launched in 2010 as an EEEpad, its name was later changed to ZenPad. Fortunately, they had neither. This obsession with an ancient EEE equipment is totally irrational. Despite having no need for obsolete kit, I am still attracted to the EEE netbooks, writing about them in 2016 and 2018. They are totally useless in this modern era.

Asus (which takes its name from the mythical winged horse, Pegasus) is a Taiwanese multinational computer company, the sixth largest in the world by unit sales. It was founded in 1989. I often claim that Asus is my go-to brand of computer, but if I consult my records, it turns out that Acer is bought almost as often. Acer is another Taiwanese mulitinational computer company, ranked as the fifth largest in the world by unit sales. It was founded in 1976. I think the main difference between the two brands is that Asus is pushing performance limits, which results in thermal = heat issues. Acer accepts that its products will be less powerful, but without thermal issues.

I also have a collection of Logitech products. Logitech is a Swiss-American multinational manufacturer of computer peripherals and related software, with headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland and Newark, California. It was founded in 1981.

My fascination with particular items of computing equipment can be found in earlier weblog posts, including: here, here, here and here. My main challenge is that I tend to treat each device as an individual, with its own personality. This attitude can be expensive.

Saved/ Collected/ Hoarded Equipment:

The easiest way to recover from excessive collecting, is to transition from collector to dispenser. Product enthusiasts may want to systematize their behaviour, establishing criteria for the acquisition, use and disposal of equipment.

Before acquiring any item, its life expectancy should be determined. This allows the user to count down to a disposal date. Use the term, it helps reduce attachment to an item. For computers of various types, the useful life has not crept up significantly over the years, since we first acquired a computer in 1986. Because of its expense, our first machine was kept five years. Many of the subsequent ones also lasted about that time, but with exceptions – especially after laptops became the norm. The next step is to determine how to get rid of that item, when it has reached the end of its operational life. A typical answer involves recycling. This is often a machine’s fate if it has failed in some way, shortening its expected life. For me, the most common cause involves chronic overheating, because I am always buying equipment that is too powerful, relative to its components, and too cheap, relative to its power.

Another situation arises if some temptress of machine becomes too alluring, encouraging one to acquire a new machine before the expected end of life. My rule is that I have to find someone who could take over that older machine, and give it away to them. With one exception, that I regret to this day, I have never sold a computer, keyboard or rodent. They are either recycled or given away. That means that few machines end up being stored at the end of their life.

Yet, I often feel compelled to give a plausible, rational explanation for my desktop machines. I tell them that sometimes, I need to work with multiple documents. Here having a large screen is the most sensible approach. If the person looks skeptical, I add that age, and the increasing weakness of my body (eyes and hands especially) encourage the use of ergonomic equipment (keyboards, rodent and screen) and the use of desktop machines. I conveniently forget to mention that docking stations are available for laptop computers. The truth of the matters is that I am impressed with miniturization, and how much computing power that can be fitted into a litre of space. My PN machines occupies just over half a litre. My hand-held device, just under 0.1 litre. Much of the time, I simply prefer using a desktop machine. Yet, at other times I prefer the convenience of a portable machine. Then again, nothing beats a hand-held device, for photography and telephony.

Computer Costs

One way to look at costs is to compare amortized costs = costs per time period (day, week, month, year). I have selected monthly costs for comparative purposes. Capital costs are the one time expense of acquiring an asset. For cars and related products, operating costs are significant, so that the costs of insurance, registration and fuel should be included. For computing equipment, operating costs, such as the cost of electricity to run a machine, are difficult to take into consideration, with any degree of accuracy.

A Disciplined Collector

Disciplined collectors maintain control over the objects they are collecting, and are not controlled by them. They set physical limits on the size of their collection, and the amount of money invested.

Collecting an object is not a life-time commitment to that object. The size of a collection can be up-sized or down-sized. Newer objects can replace older objects. Regardless, there should be a plan, and this plan should be revised regularly.

The collection lifecycle involves several stages. Stage 0: A plan is worked out in advance for the life cycle of an object, involving a further 7 stages. Stage 1: Investigation. The characteristics that an object needs to meet are determined. Stage 2: Acquisition. One determines suitable specifications and price, enters the marketplace, and buys, or in some other way, acquires an object. Stage 3: Enthusiasm. The object is used with passion and joy, because it meets specified needs. Stage 4: Satisfaction. The object is used, but without enthusiasm, because one observes that other objects perform better or faster. Stage 5: Disappointment. The object is used, but its failings dominate its use. At this stage, the collection process for a new and better object starts at stage 1. Stage 6: Replacement. The new item reaches stage 2, and there is a transition in usage between the old and new object. At the end of this stage the old object is no longer in use. Stage 7. Disposal. The old object is sold/ given away/ recycled.

Comments

The US East Coast (2014), mentioned above, is a series I watch repeatedly. It is not so much the video content that attracts me, but more the incidental music by Gianluca Cerchiello!

When I mentioned the topic of this weblog post to Trish, she told me that I should write about my video collecting habits. The short version is that from 1998 , a large number of DVDs have been acquired. Starting in about 2000, their content has been transferred onto assorted hard drives. So I believe the question she really wants answered is: Why are these DVDs still kept? Except, that question is too kind. It should probably be rephrased: Why I am unable to discard these useless DVDs? Yes, I would like to know that myself, because they could be given to others to enjoy. I don’t have an answer, except to say, I am a hoarder!

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Geoscheme: A Database

The Geoscheme overview showing the 22 of the 26 different areas.

The purpose of this weblog post is to introduce the concept of a database primary key, Without it, a database will not work because data conflicts will arise. A primary key is a single attribute or group of attributes that can uniquely identify an individual record. Part of the challenge of database design, is determining what to use as a primary key.

Often, the solution is simply to generate a number in sequence. In many cases this is effective. In other cases, it might be more expedient to use an existing code, that can access more information, when that is needed. In many cases, geographical information is wanted, that is not contained in a database. such as the name of a mayor of a city, or a chronological list of mayors.

Geoscheme is my way of organizing geographical data. The land area of the Earth is divided into 26 different regions, labelled A to Z. Each region is populated by countries that can be further sub-divided. This process can continue into smaller and smaller units.

When a data set about a geographic area is being assembled for inclusion in a database, it is important to assess existing keys to see if one distinguishes itself from others. For geographical jurisdictions, this can be an agreed upon international code, for subdivisions of countries national or other codes may be appropriate.

I have used Geoscheme for so many years, that its origins are lost in the depths of time. Needless to say, the map with regions did not originate with me. I have simply appropriated it for my own purposes. The alphabetic coding, on the other hand, is something I recall creating.

Africa: [A] Southern Africa; [B] Eastern Africa; [C] Middle Africa; [D] Western Africa; [E] Northern Africa. Europe: [F] Southern Europe; [G] Western Europe; [H] Northern Europe; [I] Eastern Europe + North Asia. Asia: [J] Western Asia; [K] Central Asia; [L] Southern Asia; [M] Eastern Asia; [N] South-Eastern Asia. Oceania: [O] Australia and New Zealand; [P] Melanesia; [Q] Micronesia; [R] Polynesia. Americas: [S] Northern America; [T] Caribbean; [U] Central America; [V] South America. Other: [W] Antarctica; [X] Atlantic Ocean; [Y] Pacific Ocean; [Z] Indian Ocean.

My current work with Geoscheme is the collection of outline maps and flags for most countries, often using Fortnight Insider as a source of black on white maps. It provides answers to the Worldle game, that I lost interest in playing, that offer white on black maps.

ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes are currently used in Geoscheme as a primary key for countries. These three-letter country codes are defined in the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), to represent countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest. There is also a two-letter coding system, referred to as ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes. The 3 letter codes give a better visual association between the codes and the country names than the two-letter codes. There is also a purely numeric code that offers no visual association. ISO 3166 became a standard in 1974. It is updated at irregular intervals. Some of the codes used are: CAN (Canada); MUS (Mauritius); NOR (Norway); TWN (Taiwan); UKA (Ukraine); URY (Uruguay); USA (United States of America).

Since ISO does not allow duplicate 3166 codes to be used, there are no issues using them as primary keys.

As noted, it is possible to expand these areas to use codes to define areas that are smaller than an unit with a 3-letter code. ISO 3166-2 defines codes for identifying the principal subdivisions. These use two-letter country codes, as well as two-character subdivisions. Thus, the province of British Columbia in Canada is CA-BC; The Moka district in Mauritius is MU-MO; Trøndelag county in Norway is NO-50. It was the result of an amalgamation of North (-17) and South (-16 ) Trøndelag on 2018-01-01; the state of Michigan in the United States is US-MI.

This approach can also work at lower levels. Inderøy municipality has its own municipality number. These representations are not written in stone. Municipality numbers were first introduced with the Norwegian census of 1946. Even municipalities that had dissolved before then, were given municipality numbers, that could be used for statistical purposes. Municipality numbers use four digits, with the first two being the county number.

Inderøy municipality was officially founded in 1837. The municipalities of Hustad and Røra were established on 1907-01-01 when the old municipality of Inderøy was divided into three municipalities: Røra (population: 866) with municipality number 1730, in the southeast, Hustad (population: 732) with municipality number 1728, in the north, and Inderøy (population: 2 976) with municipality number 1730, in the west. In 1912, Hustad changed its name to Sandvollan, but retained municipality number 1728. During the 1960s, there were many municipal mergers across Norway. On 1962-01-01, the three neighboring municipalities of Røra (population: 1003), Sandvollan (population: 750), and Inderøy (population: 3 194) to form a new, larger municipality of Inderøy.

Mosvik and Verran formed a municipality in 1867 that lasted until 1901, when Verran (population: 1 456) became its own municipality. Mosvik (population: 969) had retained the old municipality number, 1723. Adding to the confusion, 1968, the Framverran area on the south side of the Verrasundet strait (population: 395) was transferred from Verran municipality to Mosvik municipality. When Mosvik (population: 811) joined Inderøy in 2012, this newest iteration of Inderøy were assigned municipality number 1756. This lasted until 2018, when it became municipality number 5053.

These amalgamations, splits and transfers are mentioned in detail, because this is the reality of geography in the world. Situations change, and people interested in geographic realities have to be aware of the changes and their consequences. One cannot assume that boundaries are fixed.

Since primary keys are generally confined to database operations, there is no problem making artificial constructs as keys. One example is combining a 3-letter country code with a 2-letter subdivision code, even if this is not an acceptable international standard.

Geographical information about a country/ sub-division can contain a variety of information, that have to be formatted correctly. A jurisdiction name, or the name of its capital are generally a sequence of letters. Its population and its area in square kilometers are often integers. Typically when information about a country is assembled it occupies a single row in a table, but where every column will be formatted to accommodate the data collected.

Some people ask, why not just use longitude and latitude as a primary key? In such a system, the prime meridian and the equator dividing the world into four Eurocentric mathematical quadrants. So that: lines of longitude north of the equator are positive (+) from 0 at the equator to 90° at the north pole, while those south of the equator are negative (-) from 0 at the equator to 90° at the south pole; lines of latitude east of the prime meridian are positive (+) from 0 to 180° in the middle of the Pacific ocean , while those west of it are negative (-) from 0 to 180°at that same position in the middle of the Pacific ocean. One of the major problems with a geographical jurisdiction, is that it occupies an area not a point. So point data is uninteresting, and difficult to specify.

Another approach is to codify a small area. Because of radio interference issues, amateur radio operators are less interested in precision than a short code that gives an approximate position that is gudenuf. John Morris G4ANB originally devised such a system and it was adopted at a meeting of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) Very High Frequency (VHF) Working Group in Maidenhead, England, in 1980. The Maidenhead locator has an interesting historical development. A sub-square can be described using two letters, then two digits, ending with two more letters. Two points within the same Maidenhead sub-square are always less than 10.4 km (6.5 mi) apart, which means a Maidenhead locator can give adequate precision from only six easily transmissible characters. There is no guarantee that a Maidenhead sub-square will be located in the same country. EN82lh is such an example. In the north of this map, one finds Detroit, Michigan, USA while the south of the map is in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

This map shows the EN82 Maidenhead square, that is divided between USA (more to the left) and Canada (more to the right). A blue line indicates the boundary. The EN82lh sub-square is found where lower parts of the letters etro are found in Detroit. The map origin is at the bottom left, with the first square labelled aa. The first lower-case letter (l) indicates the position of a sub-square to the right of origin, while the second lower-case letter (h) indicates its position above the origin. So the sub-square lh occupies the 12th column from the left, and the 8th row from the bottom.

Another approach is to use what3words, which has given every 3m square (9 m2) in the world a unique 3 word address. The words are randomly assigned, but will always remain the same.

Cliff Cottage is located at 63° 50′ 31.596” N and 11° 5′ 26.178” E which converts to 63.8421098 N and 11.0906046 E in decimal format. It occupies Maidenhead sub-square JP53nu. Its What3words are casual.year.messaging (in the middle of the living room), conqueror.lawn.consented (in the middle of the kitchen), popular.feuds.positives (in Trish’s work room) and hides.lake.proclaims (in my work area). The multiplicity of codes for a single dwelling creates its own problems.

While a well designed database-engine can ease the workload of creating data-structures and algorithms, and running a database, database administrators study the types of data that are needed. Some of the most difficult decisions involve finding ways to structure the database content so that a collection of data values, relationships between them, and operations/ manipulations/ functions that can be applied to them, work for the benefit of users. Once that is done, users can concentrate their time on adding/ editing/ deleting data that can go inside a database, and transforming data into valuable information.

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International Mountain Day #20

Mountain Day, has its origins at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College), founded by Mary Lyon (1797 – 1849), and opened 1837-11-08, in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Every year in early fall, since 1838, its students participate in Mountain Day. On a random autumn morning, at the sound of ringing bells from Abbey Chapel, all classes are cancelled and students hike to the summit of Mount Holyoke.

Thomas Cole (1801 – 1848) View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow (1836).

There are two approaches to mountain views. One is a view of a mountain from a distant point in the lowlands. Another is a view from a mountain top. Here the artist can concentrate on that particular mountain’s characteristics. This is seen in the above work, Thomas Cole (1801 – 1848): View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow (1836).

Mount Holyoke, like much of the Metacomet Ridge, is composed of basalt. The mountain formed near the end of the Triassic Period, from about 250 – 50 million years ago, with the rifting apart of the North American continent from Africa and Eurasia. Mount Holyoke’s summit is 285 m high. It offers a variety of micro-climates, including hot, dry upper slopes; cool, moist ravines; mineral-rich ledges of basalt talus. These produce microclimate ecosystems on the mountain that support plant and animal species uncommon in the area.

Since then, many other American educational institutions have initiated their own mountain days.

The United Nations has celebrated International Mountain Day since 2003, The twentieth celebration is being held on Sunday, 2022-12-11. This year’s theme is, Women Move Mountains!

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization , who coordinates events, writes about this year’s theme:

“Women play a key role in environmental protection and social and economic development in mountain areas. They are often the primary managers of mountain resources, guardians of biodiversity, keepers of traditional knowledge, custodians of local culture and experts in traditional medicine.

Increasing climate variability, coupled with a lack of investment in mountain agriculture and rural development, has often pushed men to migrate elsewhere in search of alternative livelihoods. Women have therefore taken on many tasks formerly done by men, yet mountain women are often invisible due to a lack of decision-making power and unequal access to resources.  

As farmers, market sellers, businesswomen, artisans, entrepreneurs and community leaders, mountain women and girls, in particular in rural areas, have the potential to be major agents of change. When rural women have access to resources, services and opportunities, they become a driving force against hunger, malnutrition and rural poverty and are active in the development of mountain economies.  

To trigger real change towards sustainable development, it is important to engage in gender transformative change. 

International Mountain Day 2022 is an opportunity raise awareness about the need to empower mountain women so they can participate more effectively in decision-making processes and have more control over productive resources. By sharing excellence, opportunities and capacity development in mountains, the Day can promote gender equality and therefore contribute to improve social justice, livelihoods and resilience.”

For an overview about the use of mountains, see: Martin F. Price (1957- ), Mountains: A Very Short Introduction (2015). Both Trish and I have read this book, and found it informative and entertaining.

According to Price, for a place to be defined as mountainous, the altitude had to vary by at least 300 metres over a radius of 7 kilometres.

Japan has held it own Mountain Day national holiday since 2016, based on 2014 legislation, that states that the holiday is to provide opportunities to get familiar with mountains and appreciate blessings from mountains. It is celebrated in August (the 8th month), not December (the 12th month). It is often speculated that the specific date was chosen because the kanji for the number eight “八” looks like a mountain. With eight being August in the calendar and the date 11 looking somewhat like two trees.

Inderøy

Tittinghalla, the highest point on the Inderøy peninsula, with a height of 268 m, is located 1 850 m north of Cliff Cottage. It is below the treeline, and is regarded as a hill. Tittinghalla Round is an annual walk (for some, race) that was first held in 1966. The track is 13.5 kilometers long. It is mostly by road, but with some forest path down from the trail’s highest point, Ørdalen, with a view over Skarnsund, that patriots call spectacular.

Cliff Cottage is on a cliff overlooking this sound, 35 m above sea level. Mosvik, across the sound, was its own independent municipality until 2012-01-01, when it merged with Inderøy. In the old Mosvik there are several forested landforms with peaks above the treeline. The highest peaks here are Storknuken (502 m, 16 km south-west of Cliff Cottage) and Bjørnakammen (414 m, 10 km west of Cliff Cottage).

Having seen real mountains, I call this area hilly, rather than mountainous. Terminology can cause people to have different world views. Thus, today’s Norwegian lesson tries to define concepts related to mountains. At times it can be hard to distinguish between a hill and a mountain.

Ås = hill, a land form that is characterized by being higher than the surrounding terrain, which is usually covered with trees or forest.

Fjell = fell, in some northern English dialects = mountain, is traditionally defined in Norwegian as a landform that sticks above the treeline. Treelines in Norway range from about 1 200 m in the south, to sea-level in the north. The treeline where Cliff Cottage is located, is about 380 meters above sea level. Some countries require a mountain to be a certain minimum height. This is not the case in Norway. In the United Kingdom it is 600 m = ca. 2 000 feet.

Vidde = plateau or plain or open area that is generally higher than the treeline. Because it is above the treeline, this term is sometimes translated as mountain.

Further comments on Mount Holyoke College and Mary Lyon.

Mary Lyon Hall (1897), Mount Holyoke College. This hall replaced other buildings destroyed in an 1896 fire. (Photo: Kenneth C. Zirkel, 2016-03-18)

It was a unique institution, founded by people of modest means and serving their daughters, rather than the children of the rich. Mary Lyon, a pioneer in education for women, was especially influenced by Joseph Emerson’s (1777 – 1833), Female Education: A Discourse (1822) that advocated for women to be trained as teachers, rather than as companions to please the other sex. Further information on Emerson, can be found here. Note: Originally, the wrong Joseph Emerson was cited as the author of a book about female information. This and the book title have now been corrected. A copy of the book can be downloaded from here.

In keeping with Lyon’s social vision, tuition fees were low, but required students to perform domestic tasks, such as preparing meals and washing floors and windows. Students were required to walk one mile = 1.6 km after breakfast, or for 45 minutes during the winter.

A comprehensive, rigorous, and innovative education was provided, with particular emphasis on the sciences where students learned science through: laboratory experiments which they performed themselves; field trips on where they collected rocks, plants, and specimens for lab work, and inspected geological formations and recently discovered dinosaur tracks.

Originally serving 200 students, in 2021 there were 2220 undergraduates and 122 post graduates. It has been ranked #1 in the list of the Top 20 Best Schools for Making an Impact. It remains an institution for women.

Update

Den skandinaviske fjellkjede, Skandesfjellene, Kjølen, Nordryggen in Norwegian; Skandinaviska fjällkedjan, Skanderna, Fjällen, Kölen in Swedish; The Scandinavian Mountains, Scandes, the Keel, North Back in English. This mountain range has many names.

On 2022-12-11, Trish and I watched a National Geographic program in the 2019 series Wild Nordic. Kingdom in the Sky, the second episode, was about the Scandinavian mountain range, often referred to as the Keel/ Kjølen/ Kölen, in English/ Norwegian/ Swedish, respectively. Wikipedia reminds us, that the names Kjølen and Kölen are often preferentially used for the northern part, where the mountains form a narrow range near the border region of Norway and Sweden. In south Norway there is a broad scatter of mountain regions with individual names, such as Dovrefjell, Hardangervidda, Jotunheimen and Rondane.

In 2013, The Norwegian Trekking Association, and The Norwegian Geological Society, held a competition to find a new, but unofficial, name for the range. This was Nordryggen = North Back, sometimes translated as North Ridge.

The range is about 1 700 km long and 300 km wide. Examining the range from north to south, it starts in northern Norway, then forms a border area with Finland, before becoming part of the border area with Sweden. Sweden’s highest mountains are part of it: 2 104 m high Kebnekaise, with its glacier peak, and 500 m away 2 097 m high, Kebnekaise Nordtoppen which could become the highest point, if glacial melt continues.

Further south, the peaks are lower until one reaches Trøndelag, where they are only about 400 – 500 m, the low point for the range. South of Trondheim, and heading towards Stavanger, the mean altitude exceeds 1 000 m, with numerous peaks over 1 300 m. Here, one encounters Norway’s ten highest peaks, all 2 348 m or higher, with Galdhøpiggen the highest, at 2469 m. Ten of the thirty highest waterfalls in the world are found here.

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Databases

Murder victim Mahsa Amini (2000-09-20 – 2022-09-16)

In a recent weblog post, Classification, I wrote about Geoscheme, my approach to dividing up the geography of the world. Eleven days before this, 2022-09-16, Mahsa Amini (2000-2022), died in a hospital in Tehran, Iran, with a broken skull after being arrested by the Guidance Patrol = the Iranian government’s religious morality police, for not wearing a hijab. A photograph of Amini illustrates this weblog post.

Since then, Iranian women and men, girls and boys have protested daily. They have been joined by others throughout the world. Writer, comedian, and former president of Humanist UK, Shaparak Khorsandi (1971 – ), who fled Iran to Britain with her family following the 1979 revolution, wrote: The Iranian regime kills women for trying to live freely. This is not just Iran’s problem, it is the world’s problem. Do not look away. This denial of basic human rights is an affront to human dignity. Mahsa Amini cannot speak up any more. The world should act in solidarity and amplify her voice and the voices of all Iranian women who dare to speak up for choice and democracy.

On 2022-11-30, I decided that I could amplify Amini’s voice by using some of my working hours on a personal Women, Life, Freedom project to: 1) transform Geoscheme into a database, and 2) use that database as an example to teach the basics of database development. The example will use an open-source database, and the teaching materials will be freely available under a copy-left licence. A third step has yet to be worked out, which involves the translation of the materials into Persian, with the help of a local Iranian refugee, preferably one with little or no understanding of the workings of databases.

Later, while I was wondering what else could be built into a database as dinner approached, my housekeeper, Trish, was telling me that she was re-organizing her recipes. It then struck me, that many Iranian women probably knew a lot about cooking, and that combining this existing knowledge with databases, could help improve an understanding of them.

Since food is generally made from ingredients, such a database could also be expanded to include inventories for raw materials, goods in process, and finished products. It also could allow some accounting basics to be explored. In other words, this example offered greater scope.

Another point that could be made is that there is an opportunity for small-scale software-as-a-service (sssaas). No one says a cloud has to be huge and multi-national. In a previous post, titled Clouds & Puddles, I used the Xample family with mother Ada, father Bob, cat Cat and daughter Deb, as an example to explain cloud-based computing. I am sure more Persian sounding names could be found.

Geoscheme data will be discussed in another post, to be published 2022-12-11. The remainder of this post will discuss database choices. It provides a short and incomplete history of the evolution of relational databases.

Rather than using the overworked term, cloud, to describe sssaas, I propose to call it Mist computing. This topic will be explored in yet another post to be published 2022-12-18.

My own interest in databases has nothing to do with either Geoscheme or cooking, but digital asset management (DAM), a system to store and access different types of content, such as texts, photos, videos, audio (including music), so that they can be edited and otherwise combined to produce new content. While such a framework is most often called a DAM, at other times it is referred to as a content management system.

Data structuring

In the beginning there was a bit, the most basic unit of information that expresses either 0 or 1. It first appeared in Claude Shannon’s (1916 – 2001) paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication (1948), but he attributed its origin to John Tukey (1915 – 2000), who in a Bell Labs memo of 1947-01-09 contracted binary information digit to bit. Eight bits form a byte, which can take one of 264 values. The term byte was coined by Werner Buchholz (1922 – 2019) in 1956-06.

The total amount of data created, captured, copied and consumed globally was about 64 zettabytes in 2020. By 2025, this could increase to 180 zettabytes. 1 zetabyte = 1021 = 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 bytes = 1 sextillion bytes.

Data storage has always been problematic. In 1951 magnetic disks as well as magnetic tape was developed for data storage. To begin with, there were flat files, often they came with programming languages, with data stored within the program. Then, in the 1960s, hierarchical and network database models appeared and flourished. These early database implementations were imperfect. Some would call them messy, overly large and difficult to use.

Structuring data begins with Edgar Frank “Ted” Codd (1923 – 2003) and his A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks (1970). Codd’s model structures data in tables, with columns and rows, where one column holds unique keys. models were unable to use this model, as computer hardware only became powerful enough to deploy it in the mid-1980s. Within a few years (early 1990s), relational databases dominated, and continue to dominate in 2021.

Codd worked for IBM, but it was a mismatch. IBM failed to understand the importance of Codd’s work, and the need for data storage to have a theoretical basis, that ultimately resulted in a need for relational databases. Codd’s twelve rules, from 0 to 12 making 13 altogether, are important for anyone wanting to understand databases. The most important concept is that relational databases store information without unnecessary redundancy.

Initially, tables formed a basic unit for structuring data. These need storage space for data, and programming capabilities to create (insert), modify (update) and remove (delete) content.

Data is useless unless it can be retrieved = accessed in a form that is directly usable or can be further processing by other applications, that make it usable. The retrieved data may be made available in a form basically the same as it is stored in the database or in a new form obtained by altering or combining existing data from the database.

Administrative tasks include registering and monitoring users, enforcing data security, monitoring performance, maintaining data integrity, dealing with concurrency control, and recovering information that has been corrupted by some event such as an unexpected system failure.

The Alpha language was defined in Codd’s A Data Base Sublanguage Founded on the Relational Calculus (1971). It was never implemented, but influenced the design of QUEL, that was implemented by Michael Stonebraker (1943 – ) in 1976. This was part of the University of California, Berkeley project Ingres (Interactive Graphics and Retrieval System), used to demonstrate a practical and efficient implementation of the relational model. QUEL was supplanted by Structured Query Language (SQL, pronounced sequel, by some), based on Codd’s relational algebra defined in Relational Completeness of Data Base Sublanguages (1970).

SQL was (and is) available in several different flavours. It can be housed in the cloud (someone else’s server), one’s own server, a desktop machine, or a laptop. Handheld devices, such as smartphones, are less suitable.

SQL was implemented by Donald Chamberlin (1944 – ) and Raymond Boyce (1946 – 1974), based on an earlier language SQUARE (Specifying Queries As Relational Expressions).

By 1980, relational databases had became mature enough to enter the world of business. A number of startups such as Britton Lee, Relational Technology and Sybase were founded by people actively involved in the Ingres project at Berkeley. These were often implemented on cheap mini-computers, such as VAX machines made by Digital Equipment, rather than on larger, more expensive mainframes, such as System/ 370 machines made by IBM.

Postgres, was a successor project to Ingres, at Berkeley. Its goals were to make evolutionary improvements, including support for more complex data types, and improved performance. Most people exposed to Postgres, praised its extensible nature, allowing it to add new features, as required. This allowed databases to be used in new areas, such as support for geographical data as in geographical information systems (GIS) using a geolocation engine, and/ or time-series. Currently Timescale DB, launched in 2018 as an open-source product, offers the best possibilities for extending PostgreSQL in this area.

In the 1990s, the project drifted closer to SQL, so that by 1996 it was renamed PostgreSQL to reflect this support for SQL. There are many database practitioners who regard PostgreSQL as the standard database system to use, unless something dictates otherwise.

For me, no discussion of databases is complete without a mention of the closed-source Microsoft Office and its Access relational database system. It was promoted as a database for everyone, that provided a graphical user interface and the Access Connectivity Engine (ACE) that I originally knew as Joint Engine Technology (JET). The Norwegian Department of Education, in its wisdom, decided that computer science at the senior secondary school level would be taught with the help of this software. This approach to teaching, was a mistake.

Fortunately, not all Norwegian school programs were using Windows software. The Media and Communications program, that I transitioned to, used Apple equipment, notably iMac G4 machines with flatscreens, and software that included ProTools, to create a digital audio workstation, along with Adobe Creative Suite, and Claris FileMaker database system.

FileMaker is superior, and Access inferior everywhere one looks. FileMaker had more extensive capabilities but, more importantly, it just works. My experience with Access was that it was impossible to make coding changes with it. It was more time-efficient to just scrap an existing database, and to write a new one.

Thus, when it comes to other databases designed for everybody, I take this experience with me. Base, the LibreOffice/ OpenOffice equivalent of Access, performs equally badly. One reviewer noted: It [Base] doesn’t support Insert, Delete, and Update statements [all fundamental to any database] through its query designer, and the SQL tool [is not standard, because it] doesn’t parse [= analyse symbols that are written in] ANSI [American National Standards Institute] compliant SQL. There are no easy solutions.

The next database problem child is MySQL, originally developed by MySQL AB, a Swedish company founded in 1995 by Michael Widenius (1962 – ) who programmed the database system – and named developed products after his children: My, Max and Maria; David Axmark (1962 – ); and Allan Larsson (? – ). It offered dual licence database software. A Gnu General Public Licence (GPL) version was offered free of charge, but the database system was also sold under other licences. This closed-source version included additional components that improved the operation of the database. In 2008, MySQL AB was acquired by Sun Microsystems. In 2010, Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle Corporation.

MariaDB is a forked = branched version of MySQL, also developed by the same Michael Widenius, starting in 2009. MariaDB maintains high compatibility with MySQL, allowing it to function as a drop-in replacement for MySQL. However, new features diverged. MariaDB includes new storage engines. While MariaDB was originally entirely open source and non-commercial, a merger with SkySQL in 2013, resulted in a more commercial profile, especially the emergence of software-as-a-service (SAAS) activities on Google Cloud Platform.

Avoiding redundancy is not just a matter of saving space. It is a means of avoiding data conflicts. If, for example, a person’s address is only saved in one place, if that address changes, that change only has to be recorded once. It should be noted that redundancy has nothing to do with backup which, at a minimum should follow the 3-2-1 rule: 3) Create one primary backup and two copies of data. 2) Save backups on two different types of media. 1) Keep at least one backup file offsite.

Relational databases use an ACID test to monitor the suitability of a database. ACID involves atomicity, consistency, isolation and durability properties that guarantee data validity despite errors, power outages, and more. This has to operate at the transaction level. Other types of databases find this test impractical to implement, and accept data loss to a varying degree.

DB-Engines ranks the most popular databases. In 2022-12, the top five ranked databases were, in order: Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL server, PostgreSQL and Mongo DB. Microsoft Access is #9, Maria DB is #13, FileMaker is #22. Base uses the FirebirdSQL DB-engine, which is ranked #32.

So far, one would get the impression that all modern databases are relational, and in some way related to SQL. This is not the case, and is exemplified by Mongo DB in the above list. It is a document database, often described as NoSQL. There are a large and increasing number of NoSQL databases, a 21st century term variously translated as not SQL, not only SQL and not a relational database.

Document databases typically store archived records, then use their database engines to extract metadata. It is a more complex arrangement, and is not the place to begin when teaching database techniques.

It is my intention to encourage everyone to use open-source databases, where these are appropriate. This includes, especially, oppressed women wanting software solutions in a country experiencing sanctions, such as Iran. Even profitable corporations, such as Google, have found it appropriate to develop and support open-source software.

The conclusion of this post is that I will begin to use PostgreSQL to implement a Geoscheme database, with the aim of making it a example to be used for teaching basic database management techniques. After that, everything is open.

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Behringer

The Behringer Odessy synthesizer. Photo: Behringer.

When this weblog post was being planned, it was hard to decide if the focus should be on Swiss engineer Uli Behringer (1961 – ), or on the audio equipment company he founded. Currently the company is privately owned by his holding company, based in the Philippines, but with production facilities in Zhongshan, China. It will be both.

Did Uli Behringer have any options in life apart from becoming the founder of an audio electronics company? Much of his family were professional musicians. He started to learn piano at age four. At age five he assisted his father to built an organ with over 1000 pipes and integrated them into the family house. At age sixteen, he built his first synthesizer, the UB1.

Behringer, the company, was started in Germany in 1989. By 1990, it had moved to China, with products being made by subcontractors to reduce production costs. In 1997, Behringer himself moved to Hong Kong, in an effort to improve product quality. In 2002, the company completed a 110 000 m2 manufacturing complex in Zhongshan. Here, ten separate production locations form a vertically integrated, eight-building facility where 2.5 million products, including assorted electronic units, speakers, guitars and digital pianos are produced annually.

Synthesizers have been produced by Behringer since 2016. In Norway, there are 18 distinct Behringer desktop synthesizer models available, some with keyboards, some without. These are analogue instruments, meaning that they will produce sound through a headphone or speaker, without the use of additional equipment. Many of these are clones of earlier synthesizer products, whose intellectual properties (such as patents) have expired. There are also 63 different Eurorack components available.

A Behringer Deepmind 12, all the synth anyone could possibly want. Photo: Behringer.

The first synths produced were a twelve voice Deepmind 12, a six voice Deepmind 6 that effectively imitate a Roland Juno-106. The Deepmind 12D is a simpler desktop version. In 2022, these cost about NOK 7 800, 5 500 and 6 850, respectively. While these models offer relatively good value for money, they are expensive as a first synthesizer, where a user will want to experiment in order to find something that suits her/his soul. Others disagree.

The next synth, the Neutron, provides a 56 point mini-jack patch bay. This is ideal for enthusiasts addicted to patch cables. For others, the appeal of the Neutron is its low price, currently NOK 3 355, and the fact that it is equipped with a clone of the synth on a chip technology used in the Curtis CEM3396 integrated circuit (IC). This IC was responsible for the main voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) used in many synths from the 1970s and 1980s including: the Oberheim OB-Xa, OB-Sx & OB-8; the Voyetra 8; the Roland SH-101, MC-202, Jupiter-6, and early model MKS-80; the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 Rev 3, Prophet-10, Prophet-600, Pro-One, and Prophet T8; Moog Memorymoog; Banana Polysynth; Crumar Spirit; Digisound 80 VCO modules; the Synton Syrinx; Steiner Parker EVI; and, Doepfer A-111-1 High End VCO. This allows the Neutron to recreate the sound of many of these former synths. Here is a video that shows the operational characteristics of the Behringer Neutron.

A Behringer Wasp Deluxe analogue synthesizer, launched in 2019. Photo: Behringer.

Electronic Dream Plant (EDP), an Oxfordshire, England based synth manufacturer, was started in 1977 by Adrian Wagner, a synthesist, and Chris Huggett (1949 – 2020), an electronics engineer. Huggett designed the Wasp, and EDP started selling it in 1978. In 2019, Behringer made a clone of the original Wasp, the Wasp Deluxe. The Wasp will appeal to those wanting to avoid patch cables. Once again, it includes a clone of the Curtis CEM3396 IC. It is also ideal as a starter synth. Here is a video that shows the operational characteristics of the Behringer Wasp Deluxe. When it first came out, the its price was NOK 3 400. Now it is a little over NOK 2 300.

A Behringer MS-1 analogue synthesizer. Photo: Behringer.

In most situations an open-source software/ app synth on a computer is a suitable substitute for an analogue synth, saving space and money. The challenge is the lack of a musical keyboard for input. On 2022-04-01, I took home a Behringer MS-1 RD in red, as my first analogue synth, their cheapest keyboard synth with 32 semi-weighted, full size keys. It cost NOK 3 600. Another characteristic of this synth, was that it was one of only two MS-1 synths available anywhere in Norway, the only other one was a MS-1 BU in blue, not my favourite colour. The purported reason for this was, once again, a chip shortage.

The other synth under consideration was a Behringer Odyssey, previously mentioned. It increases the number of keys to 37, is duophonic, but occupies considerably more desk real estate. It also costs almost NOK 5 000. While marginally more capable than a MS-1, the Odyssey would not be a stopping point, should my skills develop sufficiently.

At some point in the future, I might be tempted to supplement/ replace the MS-1 with a polyphonic synth with more keys and aftertouch = the ability of a keyboard to change tone (or other sound qualities) in response to velocity, pressure or other playing variations. The Behringer Deepmind 12, previously mentioned, offers more synth at a cheaper price than most other polyphonic analogue synths available. However, the design is dated and it is not on any future shopping list. The main reason is a three letter word, fan = a device that moves air, usually for cooling purposes. It also produces unwanted noise.

My current conclusion is that I have bought my first (and last) Behringer synth. However, they offer good value for money for any individual wanting to buy a first synth.

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Guerilla Art

Keri Smith’s The Guerilla Art Kit (2007) is providing people with everything they need to know to put their message out into the world, for fun, non-profit and world domination.

2023 is the year for guerilla art. It is not really a matter of choice. The world is burning, and the insanity of fossil fuel consumption has to stop. This weblog post is the second of two parts. It is about the hows, developing skills to become a guerilla artist. The first part was about the whats, supporting Tuvalu’s call for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty.

Guerilla arts #1

Yet another of my favourite books is The Guerilla Art Kit (2007). Keri Smith, the author, taught conceptual illustration at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, in Vancouver. She then went on to live in NYC. She is a street art enthusiast, and regards guerilla art as free, accessible and for everyone. She then encourages everyone to find their inner guerilla artist, quoting Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948): “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

The Guerilla Art Kit is about leaving your mark. Yet, all of the exercises in Keri’s book/ kit are meant to be temporary/ transitory. She challenges readers to make pieces that embody impermanence. The biggest hurdle in creating guerilla art is deciding what ideas a person wants to promote.

Guerilla arts #2

Approaches to guerilla art:

1. beautifying: altering surroundings.

2. questioning: challenging the status quo.

3. interacting with people or the environment.

4. Reflect on the three things you want to put into other people’s heads.

Essentials: small toolkit, paint, wheat paste, brushes, gloves, something to carry leave-behinds and/ or stensils, clothing with pockets, that doesn’t signal deviance. Consider high-vis clothing, they can make you anonymous day or night.

Guerilla arts #3

Why is advertising in public spaces (billboards, bus shelters, etc) considered acceptable, but free personal expression is regarded as damaging, if not illegal? It may be preferable to post things on temporary construction walls, than on privately owned buildings.

Scouting is a preliminary step to producing guerilla art. Look for potential locations (Keri suggests: temporary walls, empty planters, objects that could be turned into characters) but based on the project a person wants to do. Avoid: security cameras, signs prohibiting posters/ signs, police.

Start small. Choose a familiar place. Suggestions: quiet alleys or in the woods. Decide the time of day that feels right. Work quickly. Bring a lookout.

Guerilla arts #4

My 2023 Guerilla art project will support Tuvalu and demand an international fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, which would phase out the use of coal, oil and gas.

I am especially critical to the greenwashing of hydrogen. The various colours of hydrogen were discussed in a weblog post, nominally about Toyota.

To begin with, everyone loves hydrogen because, when it burns, it combines with oxygen to create energy = heat, with water as the resulting end product: 2H2 + O2 → 2H20. That means there is no production of carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, some methods used to create hydrogen produce carbon dioxide.

Blue hydrogen is hydrogen produced from natural gas using steam methane reforming, where natural gas is mixed with very hot steam = water = H20, and a catalyst. A chemical reaction occurs creating hydrogen and carbon monoxide: CH4 + H20 → 3H2 + CO. More water is then added to that mixture, turning the carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide and more hydrogen: CO + H20 → H2 + C02 , or as a combined equation: CH4 + 2H20 → 4H2 + C02. If the carbon dioxide emissions are captured and stored underground, the process is considered carbon-neutral. The resulting hydrogen is labelled blue.

This is controversial engineering. One challenge is methane emissions from fugitive leaks = leaks of methane from the drilling, extraction, transportation and processing. Some estimates place these at between 10 to 20% of the gas extracted.

Methane does not last in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, but does more damage as a greenhouse gas. Over 100 years, one gram of CH4 is equivalent to 28 – 36 g of CO2. Even if the amount of methane that escapes into the atmosphere is 10% of that extracted, it represents, somewhere around three times the damage as the CO2 produced from burning methane.

In Norway, Shell, Aker Clean Hydrogen and CapeOmega are going to produce hydrogen at a Hydrogen Hub using natural gas (mostly methane) from a local processing plant on the island of Aukra, near Molde. The gas would come ashore from the Ormen Lange field in the North Sea, to be initially processed at the Shell plant at Nyhamna.

Shell is also an owner of the Northern Lights Joint Venture, a CO2 transportation and storage partnership, which it claims will provide emission-free hydrogen to consumers, because all the emissions will be captured and stored. I have serious doubts about their capability to achieve this.

The guerilla art project about this situation, will start life just behind the workshop facing Trondheim fjord. In particular, it will look at evocative but non-descriptive names, such as Northern Lights, that lull people into accepting damage because of a cute name.

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The Cow and the Coke Bottle

A Coke bottle washed up on Scotland’s isle of Mull. Break Free From Plastic’s audit found Coca-Cola to be the world’s top plastic polluter for the past four years. Photograph: Will Rose/Greenpeace

This weblog post is about food, in an increasingly environmentally stressed world. To begin, there are comments about the food systems pavilion at Cop27, the annual United Nations climate change conference, held at Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, between 2022-11-06 and -20. Most of today’s weblog post looks at both the past and the future of food. The past is symbolized by the cow, and the coke bottle; the future by fermentation vats, and the rewilding of agricultural land.

Food Systems Pavilion

The Food Systems Pavilion offered Cop27 participants 11 days of programming about transforming food systems, as part of climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience. Below is a list of themes. A program booklet is available about the program.

2022-11-06 Enhance resilience to climate and shocks.

2022-11-08 Enable a culture of sustainable, healthy and nutritious diets.

2022-11-09 Increase sustainable investments and financing to build food systems.

2022-11-10 Accelerate innovation and digitalization.

2022-11-11 Boost nature positive production and soil health.

2022-11-12 Scale climate resilient agriculture

2022-11-14 Embrace sustainable water and aquatic blue food diversity for climate smart food systems.

2022-11-15 Champion youth action in food systems.

2022-11-16 Protect and restore nature.

2022-11-17 Transform value chains and develop inclusive markets.

2022-11-18 Closing

The current food system is broken and unequal: Three billion people can’t afford a healthy diet; over two billion people suffer from micro-nutrient deficiencies; two billion people are overweight; almost five hundred million people are underweight; one third of greenhouse gasses are produced by the current food systems.

Nordic/ Scandinavian approaches were presented on 2022-11-12.

The Cow

Much of the content in this section, is from George Monbiot (1963 – ), author of Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet (2022) and the Reboot website, where he is quoted as saying: The elephant in the room at Cop27 is the cow. But thankfully this time, there really is a recipe for success. By rebooting our food systems with precision fermentation we can phase out animal agriculture while greatly increasing the amount of protein available for human consumption..

In my daily life, I do not practice the principles found in the reboot manifesto. Currently, it is just not available. However, as a chemical engineering student, I worked with bacteria in fermentation vats. My graduating essay relates to its use, along with genetic engineering, including gene splicing, in the production of antibiotics rather than food. In both cases, the principles are the same. Thus, I have a belief that these can be the foods of the future. Unlike today’s processed foods, that typically remove nutrition, but leave tasty yet empty calories, I have a firm belief that foods based on the use of fermentation vats, can be engineered into nutritious, healthy, tasty foods.

Confession 1: We currently buy milk and eggs directly from local farmers. In addition, we eat cheese, and I drink a type of buttermilk the local dairy – so far – has been unable to produce. However, I have assisted them in a trial production of a substitute. Other animal based products we eat include honey and meat. Of the twenty-one meals we eat weekly, about four of them contain meat: one with fowl (turkey sometimes, but mainly chicken), two with fish (white fish once, salmon once) and one with red meat.

The Reboot Manifesto

[People] are standing on the cusp of a revolution, a food revolution, one unprecedented since the dawn of farming 10,000 years ago. Agriculture today is the largest single cause of biodiversity loss and emits more greenhouse gases than all our cars, planes and ships put together. Most of the damage is caused by livestock farming, which on its own covers 28% of the Earth’s surface, more than all the world’s forests combined. The non-human living world is squeezed to the margins, and wild species have been decimated. By weight, just 4% of the world’s mammals are wild, 36% are humans and 60% are our livestock.

But it no longer has to be this way. Game-changing innovations in precision fermentation and biotech now make a different future possible, one where we no longer have to cruelly exploit animals for food, and where the majority of the land currently used for livestock can be returned to nature, even as the world’s population climbs towards 10 billion and the Global South emerges from poverty.

It’s time to Reboot Food.

The four principles of rebooting food are:
1. Make it plant-based.

2. Brew don’t slaughter. Healthy, whole and varied plant-based foods should be at the centre of everything. Animal farming should be phased out and replaced by identical precision fermentation products wherever possible.

3. Use as little land and ocean as possible, rewild everything else.

4. Open source everything to guarantee a just transition.

High yield, low impact farming must be prioritized to make as much space for nature as possible. Farmers should be paid to rewild the spared land. [I am not convinced that this is the best idea in many jurisdictions, because it would allow the private ownership of what are essentially nature reserves, are prevent access to the land. For the mental health of the population, it is important that there be provisions for a general right of access.] The benefits of the food revolution should be shared with all, with new technologies made open source and corporate concentration actively mitigated.

Precision fermentation allows us to move from farming macro-organisms (cows, sheep, pigs) to farming micro-organisms (yeasts and bacteria). Using genetics, these microorganisms can be programmed to produce exactly the same proteins and fats we currently obtain from animals, powered by clean energy from solar, wind and nuclear [I object to treating nuclear power as a sustainable source of energy, in part because current technology requires the storage of waste products for thousands of years]. This [food production] technology is commercially proven and globally scalable, already producing 99% of insulin and 80% of rennet worldwide.

Protein from precision fermentation is up to 40,900 times [Why not say 40 000? A single digit 4, followed by 4 zeros might even be something people could remember] more land efficient than beef, making it technically feasible to produce the entire world’s protein on an area of land smaller than Greater London [Wikipedia says it occupies 1 569 km2. If one allows it to be 1 600 km2, it could form a square 40 km x 40 km which is about 25 miles x 25 miles = 625 square miles]. Precision fermentation products can supplement a shift to plant-based diets, with everything from non-animal milk, cheese and ice cream to non-fish omega-3s. Many of these products have already reached the market in the United States, and could come to Europe soon. In essence, we are talking about a transition to farm-free foods for everything which is currently only available from livestock. But this revolution won’t happen by accident, and isn’t inevitable. Although billions in venture capital funding is pouring into these new innovations, the scale and speed of the transition needs to be [accelerated] with public money and government support. This manifesto calls for a dramatic shift in government support for food and agriculture, away from subsidising legacy animal industries and towards encouraging delicious and low-cost animal-free foods, while supporting a just transition for farmers and fisherfolk currently in these sectors.

To Reboot Food, governments must:
1. Invest 2.5% of GDP over 10 years into rebooting our food systems.
2. Stop subsidies for animal agriculture, pay farmers a land-based subsidy to rewild and sequester carbon instead.
3. Bring agriculture into the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) so emissions are capped and costed.
4. Subsidize plant-based food at the point of sale to encourage a mass market.
5. Implement a just transition for farming and fishing communities.
6. Set land use reduction and rewilding targets, suspend organic targets until yields match those of conventional agriculture.
7. Limit patents on food innovation to 10 years and discourage corporate control.
8. Legalise gene editing, genetic modification and other new breeding techniques.
9. Make sustainability labelling mandatory.
10. Ban advertising of land- and carbon-intensive animal-based foods.

[Reboot Food] believe[s] that these measures, when combined, will make the food revolution unstoppable and make nutritious and affordable diets accessible to all the world’s people, while at the same time allowing an unprecedented regeneration of natural ecosystems on spared land. It is the single biggest thing we can do to stop and reverse the sixth mass extinction of biodiversity. And it is essential if we are to respect the Paris targets for tackling the climate emergency. The situation is urgent and the time is now. It’s time to Reboot Food.

Propaganda/ information from www.rebootfood.org // www.replanet.ngo .

Comments: While I am not anti-urbanist, I prefer to live in a rural environment, where I can have lots of trees as neighbours. A diverse community of trees improves the neighbourhood, making it a healthier place for people.

The Coke Bottle

Emma Priestland, a coordinator for Break Free From Plastic, a global alliance of organisations and individuals, said: Coca-Cola sponsoring the Cop27 is pure ‘greenwash’. Coca-Cola is one of the world’s biggest users of plastic. Over four years, we’ve found Cola-Cola to be the world’s top plastic polluter in our annual brand audits. It’s astounding that a company so tied to the fossil fuel industry is allowed to sponsor such a vital climate meeting.

Environmental campaigners described the partnership as baffling. At Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021, a petition called for an end to corporate sponsorship of Cop events, starting with the removal of Cola-Cola. Coca-Cola is the world’s biggest plastic polluter. It produces 120 billion throwaway plastic bottles a year. 99% of its plastics are made from fossil fuels. So far, Coca-Cola doesn’t acknowledge that this is a problem. They fail to explain their climate goals, or how they will end their plastic addiction.

Confession 2: I have drunk cola. Since returning to Norway on 2020-03-20, at the start of the pandemic, I have drunk 2 liters of Pepsi, when I was recovering from Covid-19, starting about 2022-09-13. The first sip tasted so terrible, that I vowed I would not repeat the experience, for the remainder of my lifetime. The orange and ginger beer drinks tasted much better.

Today’s assignment: Ahmed Rady, Coca-Cola’s vice-president of operations for north Africa, said: Coca-Cola’s firm belief that working together through meaningful partnerships will create shared opportunities for communities and people around the world and in Egypt. Comment on the greenwashing in the above sentence, especially related to: 1. meaningful partnerships, and 2. shared opportunities.

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Electriciens sans frontières

The installation of electricity networks is essential for social and economic development. Important buildings in every community, such as schools and hospitals, run better with electricity. Roads become safer, and electricity can be used to give people access to clean drinking water.

A lack of electricity imposes social injustice. Admittedly, I am just a kid of 74, but I have never understood how the world has avoided imposing a universal tax to ensure that everyone has basic services/ infrastructure, such as electricity, clean water, wastewater removal, roads, even the internet.

In terms of electricity:

Close to 1.5 billion people still have no access to electricity. The majority of them live in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. 80 % of these live in isolated rural areas and are excluded from development policies.

Three billion people are still dependent on traditional energy sources (candles, paraffin lamps, wood, etc). These forms of energy are often harmful and cause 4,3 million deaths each year.

Sustainable Development Goal No. 7 adopted by the United Nations General Assembly is to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”.

In terms of water:

50 % of the world’s population still does not have access to adequate quantities of drinking water.

2,4 billion people, i.e. 30% of the world’s population, do not have access to adequate sanitation.

663 million people live without having a source of clean water.

The aim of Sustainable Development Goal 6 adopted by the United Nations General Assembly is to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”.

Helping to provide solutions

Electriciens sans frontières (ESF) = Electricians without borders, is a non-governmental international solidarity organization (NGO) created in 1986 and recognized as a public utility by the French Ministry of the Interior on 2013-05-23. It works towards equality of access to electricity and water in the world. It promotes economic/ human development using renewable energies.

Bruno Léchevin (1952 – 2020), a French union leader, is credited with starting ESF in 1986, asking workers in the French electrical sector to use their skills on international solidarity/ development projects, so that electrical energy could act as a developmental lever.

ESF’s goal is to improve the living conditions of the poorest populations, living with energy poverty. It leads access to electricity and water projects in many countries in Africa, South Asia and Latin America. ESF also intervenes during humanitarian crises, notably in the Philippines in 2013 and 2015 following typhoons Haiyan and Ruby; in 2015 in Vanuatu after cyclone Pam; in Nepal after the Gorkha earthquake in 2015; in Haiti after earthquakes in 2010 and 2016; and in 2017 in Saint Martin and Dominica following the passage of hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Since 2017-12-19, ESF has been a partner of the Le Centre de crise et de soutien (CDCS) = Crisis and Support Center, to intervene in the event of a humanitarian crisis.

CDCS was founded in 2008, and is a department of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE). It is responsible for monitoring, anticipating, alerting and managing crises taking place abroad and requiring actions in response to a humanitarian emergency, and post-crisis stabilization support. Admittedly, it is specifically concerned about events that threaten the safety of French nationals abroad.

Within the CDCS system, ESF intervened after the Celebes earthquake in Indonesia in 2018; after cyclone Idai in Mozambique in 2018; in Lebanon in 2020, after the port of Beirut explosions.

ESF receives financial support and contributions in kind (labour, equipment, working space) from individual donors, companies, private foundations and public institutions. Volunteer work by members are significant, and represent more than that provided as financial aid.

ESF received the UN Climate Action Award at COP25, for its achievements on the island of Dominica. It received the Zayed prize for sustainable development, following its training program in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh.

ESF has defined a vast intervention program for African health care centres, whee each requires an individual response. Needs include: rehabilitation of solar photovoltaic production plants, and even emergency generators in certain cases, in order to guarantee a reliable electricity supply; the refurbishment of interior electrical installations, in order to prevent electrical risks and to allow the use of high-performance medical equipment; installation of surge protectors to protect solar power plants in case of storms; electrification and lighting of additional spaces to increase facility capacity; the provision of refrigerators and respirators; installation of solar pumps to meet water needs; deployment of solar street lights to secure access to health care centers. Starting in 2020, ESF launched programs in 8 African countries: Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali, Cameroon, Senegal, Benin, Niger and Madagascar.

Because the protection of human lives is its first priority, ESF is currently asking for funding to support its work in Ukraine. Their mobilization aims to be strong and long-lasting, but requires external financial support to effectively meet assessed needs.

The French model has been replicated: In Germany, by the NGO Elektriker ohne Grenzen (2012); In Italy by Elettrici senza frontiere (2015); in Spain by Electricistas sin fronteras (2016); In Switzerland by Electriciens sans frontières – Suisse (2018).

The North American (USA and Canada) NGO, Electrical Workers Without Borders in North America (EWWBNA), joined the international network in 2017. Its founding in 2016 is attributed to the efforts of Edwin D. Hill (1937 – 2018) who, as retired international president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), built up the organization. Unfortunately, the EWWBNA devotes about half of its website as a eulogy to its founder, which is an inappropriate resource allocation.

These six ESF organizations have signed an agreement specifying their mutual engagements.

There is an English language ESF website.

Part of the reason I became attracted to ESF are its videos, made by another French NGO, Sikana TV in collaboration with ESF. These provide an introduction to electrical work, so that young people can understand what it entails.

Sikana was founded in 2014 with the aim of equipping people with practical skills through free educational video programs. They observe: that billions of people do not have access to teachers to help them acquire basic skills, unlock their potential and lead happy and dignified lives; three billion people have access to screens that can be transformed into tools for instruction. Video is a powerful and cost-effective medium to promote skill acquisition, as well as health and environmental awareness.

Numbers: 400 million lessons delivered to 230 countries on 2 300 videos in 16 languages with 75 pedagogical programs. They gather communities of volunteers and expert organizations to co-create educational solutions. These are involved in the entire creation process: writing, production, dubbing, dissemination, and development of IT tools. They create pedagogical programs on a wide range of topics: Health, environment, vocational skills, sports and more. Innovative technological tools enable people to collaborate and design content, translate and subtitle it and to make it available to the widest possible audience.

Factory is Sikana’s collaboration tool, allowing volunteers to translate and subtitle educational videos, from their homes. People who are fluent in at least 2 languages can help translate videos that can then be used to provide subtitles and dubbing. Both are needed because some people are illiterate, and cannot read subtitles, while others have hearing disabilities, and cannot hear dubbing.

Digital content is uploaded on the sikana.tv website and shared with partners who disseminate the content in the field. These partners include: Library Without Borders, Learning Equality, Electricians Without Borders, and the Digital Empowerment Foundation.

Sikana France has offices in Paris, Sikana Brazil has offices in Rio de Janeiro, Sikana India has offices in Pondicherry, Sikana Mali has offices in Bamako, and Sikana China has offices in Fuzhou.

The Electricity for Everyone series provides practical lessons to help anyone install electricity in their own residence. Topics are divided into five chapters: 1. An Introduction to electricity (8 videos); 2. How to Prepare Your Workspace (2 videos); 3. Electrical Boards (7 videos); 4. Lighting and Connections (7 videos); 5. Making-Of (1 video). The video lessons are suitable for two main groups of people. First, as a means of introducing individuals to the principles of electricity and to basic circuitry. Second, as a teaching aid to be used by trained electricians, to pass on their electrical knowledge/ skills/ insights to people who need it the most – particularly in the developing world and areas where access to electricity is unstable.

The videos emphasize risks when installing electricity and how to avoid them, how to save energy and how to get the most out of your electrical household appliances.

Another co-operative venture between Sikana and ESF consists of three videos about the installation of solar panels in the Discover Renewable Energy series.

A third series, Lower Your Energy Bills, does not involve ESF, but has been produced with the assistance of the Energies Solidaires organisation, and Energio, a research centre specialising in managing and economizing energy consumption. It is particularly concerned with fuel poverty. It is divided into five chapters: 1. Eco-tips (4 videos); 2. Saving on Your Heating Bills (3 videos); 3. Know Your Energy Consumption (4 videos); 4. Insulating Your Home (5 videos); and, 5. What is Fuel Poverty? (3 videos).

All of the videos produced by Sikana are free to watch and share. They can also be downloaded directly from the video player.

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Music Anhedonia

This artwork reproduces the Melophobia sleeve for the 2013 album by Cage the Elephant.

The reason for writing this weblog post is not because of this webloger’s competence in psychology, which is – at best – elementary. Rather, it comes from an attempt to understand music therapy as an approach to relieving depression. It seems to help some people, but not others. Another challenge is to find out why some people find one type of music pleasurable, while something kindred does not produce this type of response, in the same person!

Foreground

French psychologist Théodule-Armand Ribot (1839 – 1916) introduced the term anhedonia in 1896. Prior to this, symptoms were described in 1809 by the English physician John Haslam (1764–1844). Some describe anhedonia as a reduced ability to experience pleasure. Others refer to it as an (emotional) numbing of a reward. Some researchers suggest that anhedonia may result from the breakdown in the brain’s reward system, involving dopamine. They characterize anhedonia as an impaired ability to pursue, experience and/or learn about pleasure. About 70% of people with a diagnosis for depression show signs of anhedonia.

Many researchers distinguish between wanting and liking something. In wanting, it is the anticipation of something such as food/ sex/ music that provides a reward. In liking, it is the consumption of that reward that is pleasurable. These may have biological/ pathological considerations.

Anhedonia is common in people who are dependent on drugs, including alcohol, opioids and nicotine. While anhedonia becomes less severe over time, it is a significant predictor of relapse. People with Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease show increased levels of anhedonia. Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients and schizophrenics display symptoms that correlate strongly with the wanting aspects of anhedonia.

At this point, it could be helpful to distinguish between auditory agnosia, amusica, melophobia and musical anhedonia.

Auditory agnosia is inability to recognize or differentiate between sounds. It is not an ear or hearing defect, but a neurological inability to process sound meaning.

Amusia is a musical disorder that appears mainly as a defect in processing pitch but also encompasses musical memory and recognition. Two main classifications of amusia exist: acquired amusia, a result of brain damage, and congenital amusia, a music-processing deficiency present since birth. Some people with amusia, lose the ability to produce/ understand musical sounds but retain the ability to produce/ understand speech. Other forms may affect rhythm, melody, pitch as well as the emotional aspects of music.

Melophobia refers to a fear of music. Non-academic sources typically want to add irrational to the description, and then describe symptoms as increased heart rate, an increased breathing rate, higher blood pressure, increased muscle tension, trembling and excessive sweating. Also included are increased anxiety thinking about or listening to music, as well as the avoidance of music. Proposed treatments include exposure therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, anti-anxiety medications, meditation, yoga, exercise and caffeine reduction.

The reason why I take melophobia seriously, and the main reason why I dislike the term irrational being used with it, is the use of melophobia as a mechanism to control violence, in A Clockwork Orange (1962). The protagonist, Alex, is subjected to aversion therapy. He eventually becomes severely ill at the mere thought of violence, but is also prevented from enjoying classical music. The book’s author, Anthony Burgess (1917 – 1993), was a composer, as well as a novelist. Some of the depicted violence in this works can be considered a re-creation of the rape of his pregnant wife, Llewela Isherwood Jones (1920 – 1968), by four American soldiers in 1942, that resulted in the loss of their unborn child.

A film version of the book, directed by Stanley Kubrick (1928 – 1999), appeared in 1971. Another version, depicting even more violence, can be found in a fan-made version of the computer game, Grand Theft Auto 5: Online, from 2015.

While it is fifty years since I have seen the film and attempted to read the book, which remains an uncompleted task, the world seems to imitating the worst aspects of A Clockwork Orange. As I study Ukrainian on Duolingo, I am periodically reminded of Nadsat = -надцать = -teen, a fictional language used in the book and film, with many terms originating in Russian.

Fortunately, there are also positive developments. Natallie Kopp (ca. 1992 – ) provides a different, 21st century, feminine perspective on Melophobia that counterballance A Clockwork Orange. First, she informs readers that she is listening to Melophobia by Cage the Elephant [in 2013] for probably the 325th time.

Then she comments: Cage the Elephant didn’t mean a literal fear of music when naming the album Melophobia. In an MTV interview, [Matt] Shultz [(1983 – ), the group’s frontman] said he viewed the term more as denoting “a fear of creating music to project premeditated images of self, like catering to cool…rather than just trying to be an honest communicator.”

Kopp provides her own definition: a fear of looking bad musically, messing up in public, making the mistakes required for experimentation in a society where your projected image is supposed to bring grown men to their knees.

While I don’t accept the definitions provided by either Shultz or Kopp, I appreciated Kopp’s story, towards the end of her essay. She tells about volunteering at a week-long rock camp for girls and gender non-conforming youth, to lead a comedy workshop. Despite, some of the campers never playing a musical instrument before, in the course of this week they form bands, write an original song, and perform it in front of the rest of the camp in a joyous final concert.

She concludes by admitting that she experiments with sounds: some raw, some weak, some beautiful, some original, and allows her mind to fill in what is missing: accompanying instruments, perfect pitch, a sense of belonging, missed opportunities regained. The resulting music becomes louder than the words. She thinks about what it means to be loud and to be a woman, to be heard/ listened to with authentic imperfection. Her essay gives hope.

For many years, when I wanted to relax I listened to modern classical music, exemplified by Henryk Górecki’s (1933 – 2010) Symphony 3, Op. 36 = Symphony of Sorrowful Songs = Symfonia pieśni żałosnych (Polish) (1976 ). It is not as if I have only listened to classical music. I have allowed other people to impose their musical tastes on me when working, especially students in classroom situations. At home, children had a similar effect. In addition, I have sometimes chosen to listen to other varieties of music, but not normally to relax!

Yet, by constraining myself to listening to a narrow band of music for relaxation purposes, I had imprisoned myself. When I abruptly shifted to listening to other forms of music, exemplified by Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991) music video, I discovered something unexpected. This forbidden fruit, as it were, eased unwanted mental states, including anxiety and depression. Soon after, I took an interest in music anhedonia, and then other related audio challenges.

Recently, I purchased a synthesizer. It was not to become a musician, but to experiment with sounds. Like Kopp, I expect some sounds will be raw and weak. I don’t expect many to be beautiful or original. Yet, I agree with her that such an instrument allows the mind to fill in what is missing. It has also freed me from some of my expectations. I felt better able to enjoy my present situation, and to accept my fate.

Background

I am a person who has had a tinnitus diagnosis since the age of 50. I learned to live with it fairly quickly. I also live with a person (Trish) who has experienced another hearing disability since about the age of 40: a hearing loss that prevents her from comprehending mid-range sounds, essential for understanding speech. This disability has also eliminated her previous interest in music. Until she lost her hearing she played the piano and guitar, and sang.

To help Trish cope with her hearing situation, there is no background music played in our household. When I listen to music alone, it is always through a headset. I am careful not to play any type of music loudly, because this can worsen my tinnitus.

When Trish and I watch videos together, it is an activity that could involve up to 100 hours a year. I tried to track viewing hours for the past two weeks, but the total number of hours was zero. When we do watch something it is usually a single documentary, lasting up to an hour. I can’t recall the last time we watched a movie or a television series. I do remember watching Tiger King, with my son, Alasdair, although some would also classify this series as a documentary.

Most video content contains incidental music. To watch videos we use a media centre that supplies audio content to a hearing loop that allows heading aid users to receive signals directly in their hearing aids. In addition it is connected to speakers that, optionally, allow signals to be transmitted to a headset.

Many people editing videos do not seem to realize just how disruptive music can be for a person with a hearing disability. Music often overwhelms the spoken content. Thankfully, most videos we watch are now texted. In the worst cases, we turn the sound off, and read the text.

For those obsessed with clinical details

Some researchers report that while wanting or anticipatory deficits correlate with abnormalities in hippocampal, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and prefrontal regions. while liking or consummatory deficits correlate with abnormalities in the ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortex.

Auditory agnosia is caused by bilateral damage to the anterior superior temporal gyrus, part of the auditory pathway for sound recognition. In some patients deficit was restricted to spoken words, environmental sounds or music. There is evidence that each of the three sound types (music, environmental sounds, speech) could be recovered independently.

Determining if a person has amusia involves taking a battery of six subtests assessing pitch contour, musical scales, pitch intervals, rhythm, meter, and memory. An individual is considered amusic if they perform two standard deviations below the mean of musically-competent controls.

This weblog post was originally written: 2021-06-05 at 10:20. It was revised 2022-11-06 starting at 20:30.