Right Angle Club (RAC) Monthly Member Newsletter
for
April, 2021
Upcoming Zoom Speakers & their Presentation Topics
April 2: There is no speaker/presentation due to Good Friday remembrance
April 9: Parker Kitterman, Director of Music and Organist at Christ Church, Philadelphia, and composer. Balancing act: composer, keyboardist, conductor and collaborative musician
April 16: Linda Beck, Professor, Harrisburg University of Science & Technology and Braver Angels Ambassador. Supporting a more perfect union and a house united.
April 23: Susan Glassman, Director, Wagner Free Institute of Science. Sustaining the relevance of a 19thC museum of science in the 21stC.
April 30: Carlos Basualdo is an Argentinian curator who is now the Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Curator of Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Curator at Large at MAXXI-Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo in Rome, Italy. How a Curator harmonizes the interests of the public, the PMA membership, the art market and his own aesthetic sense in curating.
Lunches
It is estimated that a sufficient percentage of members will be vaccinated by mid-June to resume weekly lunches. The club’s budget assumes resuming lunches in June & Zoom speakers have been scheduled through June. The Board of Control expects to start tracking the membership’s vaccination rate & to start contract negotiations with the Pyramid Club soon.
President’s Dinner
The annual Right Angle Club (RAC) Black Tie President’s Dinner will be held from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.mp on Wednesday, May 12th, on the “Porch” of the Merion Cricket Club, 325 Montgomery Avenue, Haverford, PA 19041. RAC members will receive an invitation to register for the dinner via e-mail. Registrations must be received by May 3rd.
Membership
Tom Howes, past president, has resigned from the club because his age precludes his regular attendance @ lunches & events. However, as a past president he is authorized to attend special events @ no charge.
Monthly Newsletter
The Board of Control re-instituted a monthly newsletter in 2021 to notify the club’s members about matters relevant to them. The Corresponding Secretary requests feedback from club members on whether the newsletter provides a sufficiently useful service to club members to warrant its preparation & delivery. Please provide feedback to broach@udel.edu
Past Month’s Speakers’ Presentations Summarized
(prepared by Bob Haskell)
March 5, 2021. Jim Meigs, the former editor-in-chief of four magazines, including Popular Mechanics, a pioneer in delivering digital content, and a longtime podcaster, discussed three phases of the digital revolution and how it has destroyed journalism (and might help it rise from the ashes). Phase 1 was “A Thousand Flowers”, which began in 1999 when the Internet really started to blossom. It promised to liberate journalism from the costs and limitations of print. With the rise of blogging, suddenly anyone could be a journalist, while established outlets could recruit new readers by the millions. Phase 2 was the “Rise of the Gatekeepers”. Web traffic and online revenues became monopolized by Google and social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter. As ad revenue shifted away from print media, the business model for balanced, fact-based journalism was undermined, while extreme partisanship was being rewarded. Hence, societal ideological change was growing (e.g., wokeness, cancel culture, extremism, racism, anticolonialism, intolerance). To counteract this situation, Phase 3 is now “The Big Push Back”, where journalists and content creators are increasingly breaking out of traditional journalistic silos and again finding new ways to reach audiences. Heterodox writers and readers, interested in a variety of viewpoints and debate, are emerging. Newsletters, podcasts, text-based platforms (e.g., Substack), and new online-only publications are allowing diverse voices to be heard—and be paid—outside the confines of legacy media brands, and out from under the thumb of the digital Gatekeepers. It is too early to say how successful this push back will be. There were 39 participants.
March 12, 2021. Glenn Nye, President & CEO, and Richard Phillips, Trustee, of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC), Washington, DC, discussed the CSPC’s Commission on Civility and Effective Governance. The Commission is a bipartisan group of national public service figures, and private sector thought leaders from business, media, and academia. Their mission is to address the twin crises of federal government dysfunction, and the consequent lack of faith in the federal government. We are in a vicious cycle of ever-greater partisanship; zero-sum governing and tribal gridlock; computer-assisted gerrymandering, which is hollowing out the vital center of our body politic where consensus-building traditionally occurs, and encouraging lawmakers to play to extremists on the far left and right; the dominant role of money in politics, which feeds the perception of government corruption and a deep cynicism within the electorate; and partisan media “echo chambers” that promote a political discourse of growing crudeness and incivility. They indicated that public trust in government is down 50% post-Watergate; polarization in Congress has doubled since 1996; and the Partisan Conflict Index has doubled since 2010. The Commission is focusing on things that can be fixed without the heavy lifting of a Constitutional amendment. For example, they are recommending: 1) end gerrymandering by establishing independent commissions to draw voting districts; 2) establish ranked-choice voting; 3) open up primaries to real competition by letting independents vote; 4) encourage corporate activism with an eye towards economic stability. Although 80% of Americans support some form of bipartisan reform, members of both parties are resistant to changing the current system. There were 39 participants.
March 19, 2021. Michael Fitzgibbons described the 1973 expedition “Las Balsas”, which was the longest raft voyage on record, 9,200 miles, on a balsa raft under sail for 177 days from Guayaquil, Ecuador to Ballina, Australia. Mike was recruited to be part of an international crew of 12 men, to follow Kon-Tiki in proving that the ancient civilizations of South America could have navigated fleets of balsa rafts to trade or migrate across the Pacific and settle in Polynesia. The crew built three identical rafts in Ecuador, which were based on designs used by the indigenous South Americans before the arrival of Spanish explorers and conquistadors in the 15th and 16th centuries. Each measured 14 meters long and 5.5 meters wide. Balsa tress were cut from the jungle and floated downriver. The logs were sorted, dried, coated with pitch, notched for rope channels, and roped together (no nails were used). Each raft had spaces cut in for moveable keel boards (for stability and for steering), a mast and square-rigged sail, and a small thatched-roof cabin large enough to sleep three. Each raft had a crew of four (one always required to stand watch in 3 hour shifts at night). For water, they collected rainwater in buckets. For food, they stowed dried meats, grains, beans, etc. preserved with ancient techniques, and used freshly caught fish (mainly tuna and mahi-mahi) as their main source of protein. A propane stove was used for cooking. Leveraging the southeast trade winds and the Humboldt Current, their route across the Pacific passed the Galápagos Islands, Society Islands, Cook Islands, Tonga and New Caledonia. Navigation aids included a compass, sextant, charts, and the stars (at night they used the Southern Cross). One major six-day storm with 45’ seas was experienced (plus other smaller ones). Storms presented a challenge in keeping the rafts close together and in sight of each other. Visibility at sea is about 5 miles. One raft did once get separated, but by following the preestablished navigation plan, they eventually rejoined after 5 days. The New York Times in its reporting at the time observed: “All 12 men, long‐haired and heavily bearded, and three cats were reported in good condition although their food supplies had run low and they had augmented their meager diet with raw fish in the last stages of the voyage.” There were 43 participants.
March 19, 2021. Congressman Earnest IsTook, former seven-term member of the United States House of Representatives from Oklahoma’s 5th congressional district and member of the Appropriations (Transportation chair) and the Homeland Security committees, discussed the implications of the Belt and Road foreign policy initiative of the People’s Republic of China, which is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted in 2013 to invest in nearly 160 countries and international organizations. Congressman IsTook focused on the maritime aspects of the policy. Ninety percent (90%) of world trade goes by ship. He used marinetraffic.com to give a real-time view of global shipping volume, trade routes, and potential chokepoints. The Suez Canal is one such chokepoint. The current blockage highlights the implications of disruption to the orderly flow of goods. 12% of all seaborne trade is being blocked, with an economic cost estimated at $9.5B per day. China, with a State-backed and sponsored shipping industry, is on a shipbuilding and seaport shopping spree. They are building 1,200 ships per year to our 8 ships, and have already acquired control of many seaports at chokepoints (e.g. Suez Canal, Straits of Malacca). Both civilian construction and civilian logistics are being leveraged for military purposes. China’s military strategy is to control maritime logistics, with ports (military facilities) around the world to supply and enable worldwide operations (as well as maritime control) As such, China would try to win a war with the US through indirect attacks on logistics, not direct attacks on Navy ships. China is also weaponizing the global supply chain. With “Made in China 2025”, they want to be a major producer of goods and to also control their delivery (ala Amazon). The problem is that most Chinese companies have direct or indirect links to the Chinese military (civil-military fusion). Regardless of possible Chinese international dominance, the current Jones Act shelters all US domestic shipping from foreign ownership. Full paper describing the benefits of the Jones Act is found online at bit.ly/JonesWhPaper (https://www.ff.org/wp-
Carter Broach
Corresponding Secretary
