A number of members of Congress have commented on the sorry state of affairs in the processing of Special Immigrant Visas issued under the Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2009. They did so in a letter to US President Barack Obama.
5 March 2013 Congressional Letter
If you see your representative’s name as a signatory, a note of thanks would be appropriate. If you don’t, a mention of this letter might be appropriate if you send any correspondence promoting support of the AAPA.
It is nice to see attention given to the issue of immigration for interpreters and others supporting the ISAF mission in Afghanistan. It will be nicer when the headlines remark on the successful completion of the process; as those who have placed themselves at risk are provided with safe haven in a country they have assisted.
Afghan interpreters in legal bid for UK settlement
Staff cuts have started to happen at Harris Broadcast – perhaps more properly “the company that will be called Harris Broadcast for less than three more years.”
SCRI reported in this fashion;
Harris Broadcast Cutting Staff
This is nothing new at Harris. In the days of operations headquartered in Quincy it was always possible to lay off staff and hire the same people back on a few months or a few years later. Is this and the departure of Dielectric the harbinger of the death of the broadcast industry? Does convergence imply that all that we used to receive on the “public airwaves” will now be delivered in some other fashion now that the same airwaves are the subject of auctions and sales?
Tune in after a few years – – – if you can.
Afghanistan’s broadcast spectrum is a mess. The rush to get radio and television signals on the air after the fall of the Taliban crammed more signals than could be accommodated into the available spectrum. Things were done in too big a hurry to allow for careful planning. Instead, shoehorning in all the new licensees was the procedure, particularly in Kabul which remains the center of business development in the country and the largest market by a wide margin.
Broadcast licensing is a two Ministry function in Afghanistan. The Ministry of Information and Culture passes judgement on the suitability of the applicant after receiving assurances from the prospective broadcaster that the intended programming will not violate cultural norms or run contrary to Islamic values. From the MIC comes what is usually called a broadcast license.
The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology is the other Ministry. Here the Afghanistan Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (ATRA) authorizes spectrum space for the broadcaster. This is called the frequency license.
When commercial broadcasting returned as the Taliban departed it seemed that everyone had a reason to want to become a broadcaster, most particularly in Kabul. There was no structure for competitive bidding for licenses defined in a table of allocations. Licenses were granted to the point of frequency congestion and near chaos. The Kabul geography simplified things a bit there since most broadcasters would locate on what came to be known as TV hill. However, channel spacing standards were never considered. Kabul has three UHF television stations assigned on adjacent channels.
Further complicating the spectrum issues is the absence of regulations for spectral purity or out of band emissions. Many transmitters operate without output filtering. With most Kabul broadcasters located on the same hill this allows endless options for intermodulation. A spectrum analyzer display on the hill is a scary sight. ATRA was never funded so as to be able to establish an enforcement arm that could ensure compliance with the ITU regulations to which it is bound or even to verify that broadcasters were operating within the limits of their license.
All this is about to change. In the manner of WHTZ, Afghanistan will go from worst to first. Not having any digital transition baggage to discard Afghanistan can step from the realm of analog transmission technology directly to DVB-T2. MCIT published this month the tender to make the nightmare of hasty spectrum allocation go away.
Rollout and coverage conditions are specified. Eighty percent of the population must be served within five years of license grant. Analog television turn off will occur five years as service is established in each area.
By lagging behind in technology Afghanistan is now poised for a great leap forward. While many Western nations debate what can be done to allow a transition from some intermediate digital stepping stone, Afghanistan will move from the realm of analog transmission to DVB-T2 and DVB-RCT with a single frequency network.
There is some very interesting technology planned on this side of the Durand Line. Tender mercies.
It’s not detail, it’s dynamic range.
4K is the next big thing. That seems to be the conclusion of broadcast’s big equipment show – the NAB Convention. Deborah McAdams got it right. Nobody is going to make an investment in a technology that makes viewers nauseous. 3D has gone the way of quadrophonic.
But what is it that makes 4K (and beyond) a better experience than standard definition? The name implies that the heightened detail, higher definition is the sole ingredient. But why are HD videos so much different than SD? Surely it is more than the equivalent resolution of 35mm film that gives them the quality we call ‘filmic.’
The definition equivalent to 35mm film was reached somewhere before 4k resolution was achieved. There are plenty of real world considerations assigning a value to the resolving power of 35mm negatives but it is agreed that 4k scanning is sufficient for archiving these images. There is something else going on that simply resolution in the creation of filmic qualities.
As one who grew up printing photographs on paper, the world of high dynamic range is a new thing. The range of reflectivity for a paper print is about 6.5 stops, about 100 to 1. This is something close to the static dynamic range of the human eye. (With iris adjustment and chemical adaptation, the dynamic range of the human eye can handle better than a 1,000,000 to 1 ratio or about 20 stops.) The limited dynamic range available for a photographic print gave rise to the Zone System as refined and described by Ansel Adams. With the Zone System you matched the dynamic range available in the print with what you wanted to capture from the scene. You knew what the non-linearity of the gamma curve would mean for the finished product; what highlights and dark values would be without texture. Back then HD stood for Hurter and Driffield, the 19th century scientists who brought sensitometry and densitometry to the realm of photography.
In the days of film, the easy solution to all this was the projector. The still photographer worked with reversal film such as Kodachrome. The cinematographer would typically work with negative stock which could then be contact printed or otherwise prepared for duplication and distribution. The projector bypassed this severe restriction of dynamic range resulting from the reflection range of paper. With a strong lamp and sufficient film density your dynamic range went up dramatically. In McLuhan’s terms, you were dealing with light through rather than light on.
Thinking of the days of film, it was the dynamic range that made the difference between what could be accomplished as an image on paper and what could be done by projection. Halftone printing techniques could create images with wonderful resolution but their product paled in comparison with the same image projected. Just consider the effect of viewing a film or slide and then dimming the light source a few stops. Remember that each stop down halves the light intensity. It is easy to understand why dynamic range is such an important factor on image impact.
The Red One camera was specified to have 11.3 stops of dynamic range. It’s output was dramatically different than the video cameras of that time. It was this camera that started the shift toward “film” production by video methods. Today it is only necessary to shoot film when it is needed to meet the entry requirements of some film festivals.
Independent testing shows the sensor in the Red Epic and the Blackmagic Cinema cameras come close to 10 stops of usable dynamic range and that of the Arri Alexa a bit more than 13 stops. The Sony FS700 claims 14 stops of dynamic range in its AVCHD output. Resolution from the sensor used for the Red Dragon camera exceeds that of 65mm film. Since we are not approaching any limits established by the laws of physics it is safe to assume that resolution and dynamic range will continue to improve with each new generation of sensors in the near future.
With corresponding advances in compression technology there is no reason not to bring some of this advanced imagery to the world of broadcast. Other than the 8VSB transmission technology of course. US spectrum space is not allocated to handle material in the 4k realm in the manner of DVB-T2. These next few years will be interesting for the world of broadcast television. It would seem that, as happened with radio, that the competition for television broadcasters is no longer just other broadcasters. Broadcast quality, which used to mean technical quality at the highest level, has now shifted to mean something that is of inferior quality because of standards that keep technical specifications at a level of the state of the art thirty years ago.
Broadcasters can no longer compete on the basis of technical quality. The only recourse is competition with content by providing material that serves the local community. Let’s see if television broadcasters fare any better than radio broadcasters in this new marketplace.
Is this what the NAB has been talking about with the term convergence all this time?
The honorific Reverend really does apply to Chaplain Chris Antal. He is revered by those of us who knew him in his short time at Kandahar Airfield. The link that Bob LaVallee had passed on excerpting Chris’ 2012 Veterans Day sermon no longer works. Ministerial student Karen G. Johnston has published the ‘Confession’ on her blog. It, along with some background information she provided, does an excellent job of explaining why Chris Antal will be fondly remembered by those touched by his ministry at Kandahar Airfield.
Repentance and (no) Reluctance: A Confession for America
I was in the congregation that heard A Confession for America at the Veterans Day Service last year. The group was a fairly even split between civilians and uniformed service members. All were moved and none were offended. Any objections came later when the text was picked apart after appearing on Chris’ blog.
I am happy to report that a lot of what Chris began here has taken on a life of its own. The Sunday Unitarian Universalist services continue with Bob LaVallee serving as lay religious leader and other members of the fellowship taking their turn with the sermons and other duties each week. David Graham also went through the religious lay leader training and has taken over the Saturday Zen meditation practice established by Chaplain Antal. David is even performing the Japanese Tea Ceremony at the end of the meditation.
Some elements of Reverend Antal’s ministry cannot be carried forth by others. Chris was particularly skilled in support and counseling. The loss of those talents from the conflict zone is significant. The healing of moral injuries was an abiding concern for Chris. His spiritual counseling has been praised by those whose lives it helped turn around. One very moving example is found in this interview with a soldier who had struggled with the emotional trauma of incidents that occurred during his service in Iraq. A song he wrote which deals with one of those incidents was part of the healing process and begins the recording of the interview.
Chris Antal has continued his ministry of healing of moral injuries after his departure from Kandahar Airfield. He is Pastoral Care Coordinator with Soldier’s Heart whose goal it is to prepare families and communities for supporting and healing veterans to bring about a healthier and more successful reintegration of our nation’s veterans.
“It is impossible to say just what I mean!” But that doesn’t halt the attempt to express meaning and that doesn’t limit the expressions to a singular meaning without the capability of multiple interpretations.
So we find that some lines snipped from T.S. Eliot’s East Coker (Four Quartets) perfectly define the frustrations in the attempt to bring electronic media to the regions devoid of independent radio and television. I will admit to the trimming of some of this verse so as to detach the references that would make the reader view the lines as a description of writing poetry instead of the sorting through of the political and sociological intricacies of bringing new media to places where there is lack.
The commonly held belief among those that bring media to give voice to local communities is that this will necessarily be something positive; that being able to articulate emotions and desires will have a beneficial outcome. This belief is certainly expressed in these lines.
It is assumed that expression through the new medium will yield social benefits. It is expected that given the technical capability of communicating there is something of cultural value that is worthy of communication.
These assumptions and expectations are merely axioms and cannot be questioned. They provide the foundation which allows us to bring electronic media to where it is lacking and feel we are doing good.
Eliot’s verse serves to examine these beliefs and assumptions.
– – – –
And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate — but there is no competition –
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
In his book Silence, John Cage states, “The I Ching told me to continue what i was doing, and to spread joy and revolution.” I recently got a fiftieth anniversary edition of this book, originally published in 1961. I felt some of that joy, particularly as I read again Cage’s collection of anecdotes scattered amongst the more serious essays in this book. My original paperback copy is long gone on its mission of spreading joy.
Roger Ebert’s book Life Itself: A Memoir expands on this same idea. This excerpt from Salon got a lot of visibility immediately after Ebert’s recent death;
“That does a pretty good job of summing it up. “Kindness” covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”
More from Salon and Roger Ebert can be found here;
More recently I ran across the most concise statement of these lessons in someone’s posting on Facebook.
Cantinflas, like the others, has passed to the next realm. The impact of these three men came about because they spread their joy to others.
This editor sincerely regrets the publication of the single item that appeared in yesterday’s column that was said to have taken place one year ago today. Due to a clerical error in this publication’s records, the event in question took place on the same date one year ago in May rather than in April. Further, it seems we have nothing to suggest that happened one year ago from yesterday.
Surely something did take place one year ago yesterday. People were born, died, married, graduated, incarcerated. However we have no social contact with any of those people and it is no concern of ours. We will be properly reporting the erroneous item from yesterday’s column at the proper day next month. Please accept our apologies for this inconvenience.
It looks like the planned move of the thousands of gallons of human excrement and other wastes has been delayed as ISAF noted just before Christmas last year;
Reports of Poo Pond’s demise premature
Not much can be done about the smell, particularly as the weather starts to warm up and the fragrance is wafted in whatever direction the wind blows. Kellogg, Brown, and Root have devised a simple plan to give everyone a warm, fuzzy feeling about this crap circle until it gets moved further away from human habitation.
Only the name is new, but what a difference it makes!
Yes, by renaming this infamous hazardous waste site, the image has been transformed from excrement to a happy animal proprietary to the Disney Corporation. Who would object to being billeted next to a pond named after this fellow.
Namesake of the relabeled pond
Thank you KBR. It smells better already!