Quote:“I’m gonna tell you if you have youngsters in the living room tell them not to be alarmed at this ‘cause it’s a fantasy, the whole thing is animated…”

    -- Ed Sullivan introducing the apocalyptic short film A SHORT VISION on the May 27, 1956 broadcast of The Ed Sullivan Show

    “Years later I met a man from Canada who had shoulder length dark hair, but in the center of his head was a small spot where his hair grew out a silvery white color. I asked him about it, and he told me that he was a medically documented case of a person whose hair had turned white from fright. As a child, he had seen A SHORT VISION while alone in a house, and he experienced extreme panic and terror for some time, and one result was that his hair began to grow out white from that one spot on his head.”

    -- Excerpt from a remembrance written for CONELRAD by Michael Mode, baby boomer, who also saw the end of the world on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956

INTRODUCTION: Sunday Night at the Apocalypse

From the vantage point of today’s media-saturated, 24/7, TV-in-every-room, on-demand world, the concept of a must-see, live, prime time television show starring an awkward newspaperman nicknamed “Old Stone Face” is hard to fathom. Throw in the fact that the show was a bona fide institution for over two decades and the premise begins to sound like science fiction. The closest current analog to The Ed Sullivan Show in terms of popularity is FOX’s American Idol, but Idol producers would sell what is left of their souls to get Sullivan’s audience share. The proudly untelegenic host dominated Sunday nights in an era well before TV fractured into 500 channels. But today Ed Sullivan’s significance to broadcasting is practically unknown to Americans born after the baby boom generation.

The primary purpose of this article then is to present the rich history of a remarkable film so that it is no longer shrouded in a haze of uncertain recollection. Another goal we hope to achieve by posting this comprehensive feature is that more people will come forward with their unique memories of seeing A SHORT VISION back in 1956. A sidebar to this article presents the testimony of several baby boomers who remember watching the film on Sullivan. Given The Ed Sullivan Show’s immense viewership, there must be many more people out there.

It is easy to see how even a black and white broadcast version of A SHORT VISION could traumatize a generation of children who were accustomed to the benign animated fare of Eisenhower-era kiddie shows: it depicts a phantom object from the sky decimating all life below with a giant fireball. And to be fair to the baby boomers, the melting faces sequence would probably freak out today’s most sophisticated five-year-old, too.

The Fifties kids were also at a psychological disadvantage because of the way Sullivan soft-pedaled his first parental advisory: “I’m gonna tell you if you have youngsters in the living room tell them not to be alarmed at this ‘cause it’s a fantasy, the whole thing is animated…” As we will quote in full later in this article, the host would strengthen his warning considerably when he ran the film a second time two weeks later.

Quote:At American insistence, the ship [HMS Victorious] underwent significant changes for Pacific service. She immediately entered drydock upon her arrival in the United States, remaining there until 31 January 1943. Dockyard workers performed an extensive and apparently badly-needed overhaul, and made a number of changes to the ship. Her flight deck was extended by ten feet at the aft end and new American search radars (air and surface), communications gear, homing systems and cypher equipment were installed. She received additional 20mm anti-aircraft guns, expanded mess space and fire-suppression systems in her crew areas.

After a great deal of discussion and bureaucratic wrangling, the Admiralty and the U.S. Navy agreed that Victorious would retain her British air crews, but they would operate American aircraft using American procedures. New arrestor wires were fitted to the flight deck to handle the heavier American planes, and the British deck crew learned American take-off and landing procedures. All of the British crew received American-issued dungarees (for the enlisted men) and khakis (for the officers) to wear while operating in the Pacific.

Together with the American destroyers Pringle, Bache and Converse, Victorious set out from Norfolk on 3 February, conducting flight exercises as she steamed southward. Her official call sign, “Robin,” became the unofficial name applied to her by American and eventually British sailors while she served the U.S. Navy. The Avengers proved just as troublesome in flight as on deck, with two fatal accidents claiming British aircrew.

Victorious barely fit through the Panama Canal, even after her crew removed some of her sponsons and aerials. She exchanged scrapes and gashes with the Gatun Locks, prompting the canal management to present a bill for damages to their facility before she entered the Pacific. Mackintosh scrawled “Lease Lend” across it and handed it back.

Victorious arrived at Pearl Harbor on 4 March, continuing to exercise her air and anti-aircraft crews during the voyage. More Avenger landings proved that the British arrestor system simply could not handle the huge brutes. The carrier went into dockyard hands again at Pearl Harbor to receive new arrestor wires, additional 40mm and 20mm anti-aircraft guns, and a coat of U.S. Navy battleship-gray paint outside and fireproof paint inside. Victorious also received a Coca-Cola dispenser and three ice-cream machines. “Ice cream is always available in large quantities,” Mackintosh reported to the Admiralty in a description of American practices, “and is much appreciated and is looked upon as essential.”

South Pacific: USS Robin (Part One)

Quote:Chris Sheehy, "USS Robin” - An Account of HMS Victorious’ First Mission to the Pacific:

Ray Barker remembers the time spent at Pearl Harbor as a great adventure. He and others explored the islands of Hawaii, though there was much grumbling about the 6 pm curfew imposed on all military personnel. The people of the island, both military and civilian, were helpful and generous and made sure the crew were well entertained. Barker also recalled the changes made to the ship while at port, including the removal of rugs and carpets and repainting most of the interior with a non inflammable paint. The exterior of the ship was also painted the blue grey favoured by the USN. The final addition to the ship, that he considered truly made Victorious into a USN ship, was the installation of three ice cream machines and a coca-cola machine. The crew adopted the work dress of the USN, a request made by Commander Ross earlier in the voyage. The new dress of denim shirts and pants replaced the RN’s traditional tropical whites.

Jim I. Gallie, RN, (HMS Victorious from Mar. 29, 1941 to Sept. 12, 1945): Manuscript

On a lighter note, the dehydrated potatoes and eggs did not get a vote of approval when they first appeared on the menu. The potatoes were like wallpaper paste and the eggs defied description. An SOS was sent out, and shortly thereafter a destroyer pulled alongside Saratoga, and two senior cooks were transferred, via the destroyer, to us, along with 80 one gallon buckets of ice cream as a consolation prize. The two American cooks stayed on board for two weeks, and by the time they left, we were being served with top quality creamed, mashed potatoes and delicious scrambled eggs. I don.t know what other magic the American cooks worked, but our overall menu was vastly improved, And the supply of ice cream became a regular thing.

It became a joke among us; their order of priority when taking on stores. First was the mail, then the latest films, then Ice Cream, followed by food stocks, and last of all ammunition.

Quote:Families across the country have been increasingly struggling with the soaring cost of child care and monthslong waitlists after more than 100,000 workers left the industry and more than 16,000 child care centers permanently closed during the pandemic.

The military has offered child care on its bases for several decades after Congress mandated in 1989 that the Defense Department develop its own formal child care system. The Pentagon now has the nation’s largest employer-run child care operation, providing subsidized child care to more than 200,000 children. But like other child care providers, it too has struggled to find enough workers since the pandemic, leaving around 9,000 children on monthslong waitlists for military-run child care centers.

...
She said the struggle to find child care and the frequent moves have prevented her from working in the 14 years since she married her husband, despite being a registered nurse and having a degree in geospatial intelligence.“Child care is so very expensive. We’re here on a military salary, which doesn’t compete with the private sector,” said Robinson. “I see a lot of people struggling with ‘How do I pay for the child care that I need to get a job, but I don’t have a job to pay for the child care?’”

Robinson’s family is currently stationed in the Washington, D.C., region, where the demand is so high that the only children to receive spots at her husband’s base are those of single parents or parents who are both in the military, she said. The privately run day cares in the region average $24,000 a year. As a result, she says, she’s had to put her professional aspirations on hold indefinitely.

America's child care shortage is pushing military families to a breaking point

Quote:A retired Vice Chief of Naval Operations was arrested Friday on charges of bribery stemming from an alleged government contract scheme between 2020 and 2022.

Robert Burke, a retired four-star admiral, allegedly worked with two CEOs to arrange a contract with their company to provide training for the Navy in exchange for a position with the company.

Burke is charged with bribery, conspiracy to commit bribery, performing acts to affect a personal financial interest and concealing material facts. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted, according to the DoJ.

Yongchul “Charlie” Kim and Meghan Messenger, the co-CEOs of the company, which was not named in the Department of Justice release, were also arrested.

Allegedly, Kim and Messenger secured a government contract to provide training for a group in the Navy from 2018 to 2019, when the Navy ended the contract and ordered Burke to no longer contact the two CEOs.

Instead, the three met in 2021 to set up a situation in which Burke would use his influence as a Navy admiral to get the company a contract with the Navy, the release alleges.

“They allegedly further agreed that Burke would use his official position to influence other Navy officers to award another contract to Company A to train a large portion of the Navy with a value Kim allegedly estimated to be ‘triple digit millions,’” reads the release.

Retired 4-star admiral busted

Quote:Drew McKenzie Smith spent most of his life cooking for the rich and famous, unaware of his ancestral home’s connections to early Scottish distillers. He tells Gavin Smith about the day he decided to leave the kitchen and build a distillery at Lindores Abbey.

‘My great-grandfather had bought the Lindores Abbey farm in 1913 and my grandfather gifted it to my mum when she got married. It’s a huge thing for me to think that through the distillery we can keep the abbey in the family for another 100 years and, perhaps more importantly, preserve the abbey ruins for future generations of whisky lovers, enabling them to make their own pilgrimage to the spiritual home of Scotch whisky.

‘I first got the idea for the distillery around 20 years ago, when Helen and I were running Myres Castle, an exclusive-use property in Fife. After finishing a busy evening service, I sat down at the computer (I don’t think laptops even existed then) and I was looking at a website called Connoisseur Scotland, which was dedicated to the finer things in Scottish life, one of them naturally being whisky. I was just scrolling through when the words ‘Lindores Abbey’ sprang out at me, it was the first I had heard of Friar John Cor and the Exchequer Rolls of 1494.

Quote:On something seemingly unrelated - UFO conspiracy theorists often quote names of Air Force programs that they believe have actually obtained extraterrestrial hardware. I am not a UFO conspiracy theorist - however, I have found validity in the project names mentioned at least. The one I am curious about is Blue Fly. I have documentation from the AF Historical Research Agency that states Blue Fly was a part of the Air Force Missile Development Center (Holloman AFB).

Project Blue Fly originated in 1961 as part of the Foreign Technology Division project activities to “exploit” when possible enemy materials. There were three projects, Blue Fly, to exploit Soviet hardware when it comes more or less permanently into US or allied hands, Round Robin, to exploit Soviet hardware when it comes temporarily into US hands (e.g. Russian aircraft landing at international or US airfields) and Moon Dust, to exploit big booster or missile and satellite equipment which fell from the air hence the name applied (e.g. the piece of Soviet equipment which fell into Wisconsin). There were two teams at Holloman ready to deploy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Another input we got was a lot less specific and the dates were earlier, and the author related it to Project Blue Book, the AF UFO investigation.

Air Force Missileers Newsletter (page 18 of Volume 19, Number 4 December 2011)

Quote:By the time Magnus Hirschfeld died in exile on May 14, 1935 — his sixty-seventh birthday — the German sexologist had already witnessed his own annihilation at least twice over. Presumed dead after a brutal attack by far-right thugs in early Weimar-era Munich, he got to read his own obituary in the newspaper while convalescing. And years later, shortly after the Nazi takeover of Germany, an exiled Hirschfeld viewed a newsreel of the first major book burning, which showed the SA not only casting decades of his research onto the pyre, but a bust of Hirschfeld himself.

Magnus Hirschfeld was born to a Jewish family in the Prussian spa town of Kolberg in 1868, but the man whose investigation of difference so incensed his countrymen came forth on a later birthday — May 14, 1897 — when Hirschfeld formed the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee at his medical practice in Berlin. Arising out of culturally conservative Wilhelmine Germany, this Committee was the world’s first gay activist group, from which Hirschfeld later emerged as one of history’s most important figures in the study of gender and sexuality.

Quote:June 2024 Skywatching Tips from NASA

All month – All the planetary action continues to be in the morning sky, with Saturn and Mars rising in the early morning hours. They are joined later in the month by Jupiter.

June 2 – In the hour before sunrise, reddish Mars hangs just beneath the crescent Moon. Find the pair low in the east with Saturn lurking nearby, toward the south.

June 3 – The crescent Moon sits beneath Mars in morning twilight. Look for them low in the eastern sky.

June 6 – New moon

June 21 – Full moon

June 24 – Jupiter is now visible low in the east before sunrise. Look for the bright planet around 10 degrees above the horizon this final week of June, forming a line with Mars and Saturn that stretches toward the south.

June 27 – Look for the Moon rising in the east with Saturn around midnight. By dawn this morning, you'll find them high in the southern sky. They appear super close together – close enough to appear in the same field of view through binoculars.

"Planet Parade" note: Some online sources have shared excitement about a "parade of planets" visible in the morning sky in early June (June 3 in particular). In reality, only two of the six planets supposedly on display (Saturn and Mars) will actually be visible. In early June, Jupiter and Mercury will be at or below the horizon in morning twilight and not visible; Uranus and Neptune are far too faint to see without a telescope, especially as the morning sky brightens. The closest thing to a planet parade will be June 29, when Saturn, the Moon, Mars, and Jupiter will line up across the morning sky.

Quote:D-Day and the Combat Cameraman

This week marks the 80th Anniversary of the D-Day Operation. Starting on June 6, 1944, about 175,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, supported by 5,000 naval craft and more than 11,500 aircraft. By June 30, over 850,000 men, 148,000 vehicles, and 570,000 tons of supplies had landed on the Normandy shores. In what became known as the largest amphibious invasion in military history, the operation, codenamed Overlord, was the beginning of the liberation of Northern Europe from Nazi occupation.

How To Locate D-Day Footage in NARA’s Moving Image Holdings

Quote:In 1869, the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle horrified legions of spiritualists with a letter, printed in the American Scotsman, that described the new religious movement as a “Liturgy of Dead Sea Apes”. Carlyle enlisted a favorite insult: a fable held that when a wayward tribe, who lived by the Dead Sea, refused to listen to the wisdom of Moses, they were transformed into apes, “gibbering and chattering very genuine nonsense”, as Carlyle narrated in Past and Present (1843). “They sit, with… such an air of supreme tragicality as Apes may; looking out through those blinking smoke-bleared eyes of theirs, into the wonderfulest universal smoky Twilight and undecipherable disordered Dusk of Things”. For Carlyle, the notion that people could converse with the dead, encountering vaporlike spirits as they sat in the darkness, was the latest instance of ape-consciousness, the “truest, tragicalest Humbug conceivable by the mind of man”.

The Discarnates: Thomas Carlyle in the Spirit-World (1920)

Quote:Miniatures are a subset of portrait paintings, and within miniatures is yet another, more obscure, subset: paintings of a left eye, or a right eye, amid little else. Dubbed “lovers’ eyes” by a canny antiques dealer, nearly all miniature eye portraits were painted with watercolor on ivory in the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth century. They were set in rings, lockets, brooches, toothpick cases, and the like, and gifted between lovers. Luminous, exquisite, and fragile (a drop of water might wash away the tiny brushstrokes), lovers’ eyes did not mean, as it might seem, “I have my eye on you”, but rather, “You have my heart, and here’s my eye to prove it”.

The Lens of Desire: Eye Miniatures (ca. 1790–1810)

Quote:UN Secretary General António Guterres called coal, oil and gas corporations the “godfathers of climate chaos” who had distorted the truth and deceived the public for decades.

Just as tobacco advertising was banned because of the threat to health, the same should now apply to fossil fuels, he said.

His remarks were his most damning condemnation yet of the industries responsible for the bulk of global warming. They came as new studies showed the rate of warming is increasing and that global heat records have continued to tumble.

Last year was the hottest on record and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Wednesday that the record could fall again as soon as this year.

A group of around 50 leading scientists separately reported that the rate of global warming caused by humans has continued to increase.

They found that ongoing high emissions of warming gases mean the world is moving closer to breaching the symbolic 1.5C warming mark on a longer-term basis.

“I urge every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies,” he told an audience in New York.

“And I urge news media and tech companies to stop taking fossil fuel advertising.”

They need to fall quickly if global targets have a chance of being met, with every fraction of a degree of warming worsening climate impacts.

"Every degree matters; every tenth of a degree matters," says Ko Barrett, WMO Deputy Secretary General.

"The difference between 1.5C and say 2C could mean [...] dire consequences, for coastal communities, for fragile ecosystems, and the biodiversity that is contained within them, and for glaciers and the frozen parts of the world."

Ban fossil fuel ads to save climate, says UN chief

Quote:CHILDS , Circuit Judge: In 1983, during the Cold War, Leonard H. Perroots, then an Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence in the United States Air Forces in Europe, allegedly recommended a course of action to his Commander
in response to an elevated alert status demonstrated by the military forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (“Soviet Union”), which helped avert a nuclear crisis.

Subsequently, in January 1989, Lieutenant General Perroots wrote an End of Tour Report Addendum (“Perroots Memo”) to detail the “chain of events” from 1983 to help the U.S. Intelligence Community learn lessons “as relates to our [Indications and Warning] capability and exercise planning.” JA250, JA278.

Approximately thirty-two years later, a non-governmental research institute known as The National Security Archive (“Archive”) submitted a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request to the Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”) seeking disclosure of the Perroots Memo. The CIA produced the Memo’s cover letter but did not provide any further substance of the Perroots Memo’s text. Thereafter, the Archive sued the CIA seeking to compel disclosure of the Perroots Memo under FOIA. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the CIA because the Archive conceded that the response was justified under FOIA Exemptions 1 and 3, 5 U.S.C. §§ 552(b)(1) and (6), and the CIA had not waived its right to claim the exemptions. Nat’l Sec. Archive v. CIA, C/A No. 21-2857, 2022 WL 5062523, at *5 (D.D.C. Oct. 4, 2022). The district court denied the Archive’s motion to amend judgment as well. Nat’l Sec. Archive v. CIA, C/A No. 21-2857, 2022 WL 18493099, at *1 (D.D.C. Nov. 16, 2022). The Archive appeals both decisions. Upon de novo review, we affirm.

National Security Archive FOIA Vs CIA (12-page PDF)

Quote:First trade edition (preceded only by a mimeographed version prepared for the press). Signed on the front free endpaper and on the half title by 25 of those involved in the production and destruction of the first atomic bomb.

We have been able to confirm that at the first 19 of these individuals (and likely the other 6 as well) were part of the 'Project Y' team at Los Alamos. Mounted inside the front cover is a 3x3" printed label with the symbol of the Los Alamos Laboratory, designed by George Beyers, head of security at Los Alamos. This is the symbol for "Project Y", code name for the laboratory that designed and fabricated the first atomic bomb. We can locate only one other mention of this symbol on any related artifact or document.

PBA Galleries Specialists in Exceptional Books & Private Libraries at Auction

Quote:On March 28, 1979, a handful of Air Force officers and a Mormon civilian employee from Hill Air Force Base arrived in Salt Lake City for an unusual meeting. They were seeking a blessing: For the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' top leaders to endorse a plan to construct 8,500 miles of roads and 4,600 concrete garages for a nuclear weapons system.

The system would constantly shuttle 200 missiles on racetracks, playing a "shell game" intended to keep the Soviet military guessing where America's nuclear warheads really were located at any given moment. The Soviets could, of course, just build more nuclear weapons and take out the entire missile field at once, so American war planners imagined the project—called "Missile, Experimental," or MX—would continuously expand, becoming 8,250 garages and 360 missiles by 1990. And so on.

Utah is home to several Northrop Grumman facilities producing missiles for nuclear warheads.

Of the population that did exist in the basing area, however, roughly 80% was Mormon, according to an account of the MX battle in The Mormon Military Experience, a book recently published by historians Sherman L. Fleek and Robert C. Freeman from West Point and Brigham Young University, respectively.

The generals left the meeting with the church's then-president, Spencer Kimball, and his two top counselors feeling "elated," according to an academic who interviewed one of the officers. They would later be blindsided by the church's opposition, apparently unaware on that March day that Kimball, who had visited Hiroshima for missionary work, was already entertaining dissent.

Kimball had—three years prior to the meeting—published a jeremiad about the state of the nation and the Cold War arms race. His essay, "The False Gods We Worship," was—somewhat awkwardly due to its critical take—featured in an edition of the church's official magazine that was dedicated to patriotism and America's bicentennial.

"When enemies rise up," Kimball wrote at the time, "we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance."

Quote:HAVANA -- Four Russian ships, including a nuclear-powered submarine, will arrive in Havana next week, Cuban officials said Thursday, citing “historically friendly relations” between both nations and as tensions escalate over Western military support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.

Cuba’s foreign ministry said in a news release that the ships will be in Havana between June 12 and June 17, noting that none of them will carry any nuclear weapons and assuring their presence “does not represent a threat to the region.”

The announcement came a day after U.S. officials said that Washington had been tracking Russian warships and aircraft that were expected to arrive in the Caribbean for a military exercise. They said the exercise would be part of a broader Russian response to the U.S. support for Ukraine.

The officials said that the Russian military presence was notable but not concerning. However, it's taking place as Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that Moscow could take “asymmetrical steps” elsewhere in the world in response to President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weapons to strike inside Russia to protect Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.