Willis's Walkabouts Newsletter 104, August 2019 — At Long Last

Our Seasons — Not What You Think

How Many Seasons Are There?

If you live in a temperate climate, your seasons are summer, fall, winter and spring. If you are not a regular reader of this newsletter, you probably think ours are wet and dry. Not so! Anyone who has lived in a tropical monsoonal climate like Darwin will recognise at least three: wet, dry and build up. Anyone who is in tune with nature will recognise more.

The CSIRO Indigenous Calendars page gives the different seasons as recognised by different Aboriginal groups. In northern Kakadu, they recognise six; in southern Kakadu, five. I spend a lot of time out bush. I don't live in air-conditioning. I have no problem recognising six. I have no problem recognising that those six don't happen at the same time every year. Want to know more?

• Parks Australia Kakadu Seasons Page
• Mandy explains the six seasons
  This 5½ minute video is one of the best summations I've seen. Mandy is one of Kakadu's senior traditional owners and runs the Kakadu Billabong Safari Camp where we stay on a few of our tours.

We are now in Gurrung or the hot dry weather season. That will be followed by Gunumeleng and Gudjewg — The True Wet Season. The link will look terrible on a mobile, but if you have even a little curiosity as to what it's really like, you should grab a device with a big screen and have a look. If you are still interested when you get to the bottom of the page, click the link to the next and then the final of three pages about bushwalking in the Wet.

One of the most spectacular wet season trips we offer, Bungles in the Wet: 2-15 February already has bookings. If you are even slightly interested, have a look at the or the 2008 trip gallery and/or or some video clips from 2008. All our wet season Bungles trips are good but 2008 remains the wettest and most spectacular so far. Maybe 2020 will break that record.

Note our 20% advance purchase discount is still available on all our wet season trips.

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5G — Beyond the Hype

A selection of articles. 5G is not going to be the magic that some are claiming. It's unlikely to be a disaster either.

• From New Scientist. Your 5G guide: Will we all benefit from super-quick mobile internet?
• The Wikipedia page on 5G has a wealth of technical detail.
• NBN an 'obsolete network: How Australia became a 'third-world broadband country.
  Where 5G gets rolled out, the existing NBN may seem even worse.
• Your 5G Phone Won't Hurt You. But Russia Wants You to Think Otherwise. *
  "RT America, a network known for sowing disinformation, has a new alarm: the coming '5G Apocalypse.'"
• Brussels and Geneva ban rollout of 5G for health reasons and call for investigation

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A Cashless Society

In some parts of the world cash is disappearing. While in some ways it's more convenient, I'm not sure I'd want to live in a society where the government (or someone else) could trace every cent I spent? Is that the kind of future you'd like to see?

• China is showing the rest of the world how to build a cashless society
  And the government knows virtually everything you spend money on.
• Swedes are getting implants in their hands to replace cash, credit cards
  "Thousands of Swedes have elected to have microchips implanted under their skin to act as digital wallets and payments systems. These microchips contain both information on the users' bank accounts, personal health and personal profile as well as monitoring devices to track financial payments, heartbeats, blood pressure and personal information. Users love the convenience. There's no more reaching for wallets, credit cards or cash. They simply wave their hand near a scanner that reads the needed information from the microchip transmitter and the transaction is complete. Yet there's a dark side to this technology that the implant users seem not to have considered. If a merchant can read your microchip, so can the government or a hacker simply by getting in close proximity. If the government wishes to track your whereabouts or subject you to arrest, it's relatively easy to place scanners on buses or taxis or in restaurants to identify you. Even if drastic surveillance is not imposed, scanning the microchips can result in everything from targeted advertising to political propaganda based on your 'profile.'
• We are trying to become a cashless society — but is that a great idea?
  The article is a bit long but well worth the read. Going cashless has serious costs.
  "Every transaction that is done using cash is a missed opportunity for Visa and MasterCard to earn the transaction fee it charges. Thus, it is in their interest to showcase cash as redundant, inconvenient, and inefficient."

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Privacy — What's That?

Here are a variety of stories from around the world. What can happen in a country like China can happen here — if we let it. In some cases, parts of the English speaking world are leading the way.

• In Hong Kong Protests, Faces Become Weapons *
  "A quest to identify protesters and police officers has people in both groups desperate to protect their anonymity. Some fear a turn toward China-style surveillance."
• Apple claims it's tech's privacy king — but that reign is being compromised
  "It was revealed last week that voice assistant Siri has not only been listening and cataloguing users' highly confidential conversations — they're being heard by contractors who carry out quality control work for Apple."
  "Contractors 'regularly' overheard everything from drug deals, to details of medical conditions — and even people having sex — the report from the US in The Guardian detailed.
• How Google is watching your every move
  "Though the new technique can identify suspects near crimes, it runs the risk of sweeping up innocent bystanders, highlighting the impact that companies' mass collection of data can have on people's lives."
• One Month, 500,000 Face Scans: How China Is Using A.I. to Profile a Minority *
  "In a major ethical leap for the tech world, Chinese start-ups have built algorithms that the government uses to track members of a largely Muslim minority group."
  If it can work in China, it can work here — if we let it.
• Facial Recognition Tech Is Growing Stronger, Thanks to Your Face *
  "Large databases, built with images from social networks and dating services, contain millions of pictures of people's faces. Some are shared worldwide."
• Facial Recognition: Dawn of Dystopia, or Just the New Fingerprint? *
  San Francisco banned it, but many police departments say the technology is used no differently from DNA databases or other crime-fighting tools.
• A Future Where Everything Becomes a Computer Is as Creepy as You Feared *
  "Amazon and other tech giants have made devices connected to the internet increasingly prevalent. Now is the time to be freaking out about the dangers."
• Your Data Could Be at the Center of the Fight Against Big Tech *
  Germany's top antitrust official is urging other countries to take on Facebook and its peers by attacking what the companies value most: data
• Hi, Alexa. How Do I Stop You From Listening In On Me? *
  "Humans help train artificial intelligence, so someone may be listening to what you tell Siri, Google Assistant or Alexa. Here's what to do if you have a problem with that."

A lot of the above sounds a bit like George Orwell's '1984' — it just took us a bit longer to get there. But even that is changing. Order the book on Amazon and it might not be what you get.

Paging Big Brother: In Amazon's Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite *
"As fake and illegitimate texts proliferate online, books are becoming a form of misinformation. The author of '1984' would not be surprised."

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Eisenhower — Underrated?

Dwight Eisenhower was president of the US when I first became aware of politics. Back then, many thought of him as a sort of ineffectual father-figure. I suspect that he was underestimated then, not quite as underestimated now but perhaps still underestimated.

The idea for this section began when I came across a NY Times article, The Most Important Road Trip in American History *
"In 1919, Dwight Eisenhower set off to examine the state of America's roads — and showed that cars were the future."
As president, Eisenhower pushed for and began the construction of the interstate highway system which America depends on today.

That led me to a biography I'd seen at an American friend's place. That in turn led me to a second one.

• Ike's Bluff,' by Evan Thomas *
  The NY Times review called it, Subtle & Brutal
  "once Eisenhower 'extricated America from the Korean War in 1953,' his mission was to 'avoid any war.'
  "Eisenhower had enough confidence in his own judgments not to be pressured into policies he knew to be mistaken."
• 'Eisenhower in War and Peace,' by Jean Edward Smith *
  He made it look easy — NY Times review
  "Success in his mind, then, required not just avoiding the corruption of ends by means, but also their annihilation. How could the United States wage a war that might last for decades without turning itself into an authoritarian state, without exhausting itself in limited conflicts on terrain chosen by adversaries, without risking a new world war that could destroy all its participants? And how, throughout all of this, could the country retain a culture in which its traditional values — even the bland and boring ones — could flourish?"
  "Eisenhower's greatest accomplishment may well have been to make his presidency look bland and boring."

I grew up in America at a time when the Cold War turning Hot seemed almost inevitable, when thousands of people were building their own bomb shelters. That that hot war never happened is, at least in part, due to Eisenhower.

If only we'd listened

It's growth began in WW II and continued through Ike's presidency. He saw what it was and gave it it's name — 'the military-industrial complex". It's stronger than ever. It's a pity that his final address was so overshadowed by Kennedy's inaugural. But maybe, by 1961, it was already too late.

• Eisenhower's farewell and military-industrial complex — the Wikipedia article.
• The Farewell Address with comments & history
• The actual unedited speech. The video is a bit fuzzy but it's what Those interested Americans actually watched at the time.