Quote:A Eunuch's Dream

This painting, inspired by Charles Montesquieu's Persian Letters (published in 1721), depicts a eunuch who wanted to marry a harem slave. He experienced a vision of her while smoking his opium pipe, but her little companion holding a knife dripping with blood reminds us that the eunuch's anatomy precludes the fulfillment of his dream. The outline of a hand next to the signature is a khamsa, a symbol used to ward off evil.

Jean Lecomte du Nouÿ was the descendant of a noble Piedmontese family that settled in France in the fourteenth century. In 1861, at age nineteen, he entered the studio of Charles Gleyre (1808-1874) and two years later trained under the guidance of Émile Signol (1804-1892). With his fascination for historical and exotic subjects in mind, Lecomte du Nouÿ entered the studio of Gérôme (q.v.) in 1864. Lecomte du Nouÿ began exhibiting at the Salon in 1863 and received his first critical approval two years later for Le sentinel grec (1865), based on the tragedy Oresteia (458 BC) by Aeschylus. One year later he won a gold medal for another classical subject, Invocation de Neptune (1866, Musée des Beaux Arts, Lille), which exempted him from jury approval for future Salons. In 1865 Gérôme encouraged him to join Félix Clément (1826-1888) on a trip to Egypt, as the latter had received a commission to decorate the Choubrah Palace of Prince Halim near Cairo.

(04-08-2024, 02:10 AM)EndtheMadnessNow Wrote: April 7, 1964: IBM announced the System/360, a line of computers that took over the computer industry. The big idea was that all the systems were compatible and supported all applications (a 360° range from business to scientific). Designing the System/360 was an extremely risky "bet-the-company" project for IBM, costing over $5 billion. Although the project ran into severe problems, especially with the software, it was a huge success, one of the top three business accomplishments of all time. System/360 set the direction of the computer industry for decades and popularized features such as the byte, 32-bit words, microcode, and standardized interfaces. The S/360 architecture was so successful that it is still supported by IBM's latest z/Architecture mainframes.

The IBM System/360 Model 50 was a powerful mainframe computer in 1964. It rented for $150,000 a month (current $), weighed 3 tons, and used 7600 watts. Now an iPhone has about 10 million times more processing power and 10,000 times more memory.


In the 1960s, mainframe used core memory for storage; 128 kilobytes filled a large cabinet and weighed 610 pounds. Core memory consisted of tiny ferrite cores on a wire grid. By 1970, IBM produced 20 billion cores a year.

World Inventory of remaining IBM System/360 & 370 CPU's.

Quote:Shield: The cross of St. George and the fleur-de-lis are adapted from Churchill's augmentation on an inescutcheon on his ancestral coat of arms. Red is emblematic of valor and sacrifice. The red cross on the white field refers to the flag of St. George, who became the patron of the Order of the Garter in 1348. The gold lion on the red field recalls Great Britain's heritage. The lion embodies strength, courage and determination. The nebuly alludes to the sky or clouds and highlights Britain's taking of the full thrust of German airpower in the Battle of Britain. The stylized book underscores Winston Churchill's reputation, not only as a gifted statesman and inspiring war leader, but also a great orator and author who was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. He unified the British people with his stirring oratory, energy and resolve.

Crest: The trident symbolizes sea prowess and highlights USS Winston S. Churchill's vertical launch capabilities; the three tines represent anti-submarine, surface, and air warfare capabilities. The trident is divided per chevron suggesting a "V" emphasizing victory in war (Winston Churchill's famous rallying sign) and defense strength in peace. The laurel recalls honor and high achievement; while the oak represents strength and resolve.

Symbolism:

Shield: Per fess enhanced nebuly Argent and Gules, a cross of the like surmounted by a fleur-de-lis Azure, in base a book expanded Or, leaved of the first below a lion passant guardant of the fourth.

Crest: From a wreath Argent and Gules a trident head per chevron Azure and of the first superimposed by a wreath of laurel and oak.

Supporters: In 1953, Queen Elizabeth II made Churchill a Member of The Most Noble Order of the Garter, the premier British Order of chivalry and the highest honor she could bestow.

Ship's Crest

Quote:'Heavy' history: ULA launches final Delta rocket after 64 years (video, photos)

After six decades of launches, the liftoff of the last-ever Delta rocket on Tuesday (April 9) brought with it a change in the way the U.S. sends satellites, interplanetary probes and spacecraft into Earth orbit.

United Launch Alliance (ULA) ignited its last Delta IV Heavy rocket to launch NROL-70, a classified payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The powerful booster departed Space Launch Complex-37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 12:53 p.m. EDT (1653 GMT), literally setting itself on fire for the 16th and final time.

The two boosters were jettisoned about four minutes into the flight, followed by the core, or first stage, separating one minute and 45 seconds later. A single RL10C-2-1 engine on the Delta cryogenic second stage then took over, propelling the NROL-70 payload into space. Due to national security concerns, coverage of the launch ceased following fairing jettison at about 6 minutes and 40 seconds into the flight.

ULA is retiring the Delta IV, and eventually its other legacy rocket, the Atlas V, in favor of its newly introduced Vulcan, which flew a near-perfect first mission in January. The Vulcan was developed to replace both long-flying rockets in all of their configurations.

In addition to being the 16th Delta IV Heavy, Tuesday's launch was also the 45th liftoff of a Delta IV, the 35th Delta IV to fly from Florida and the 389th Delta launch of any kind since 1960 (of which 294 were sent skyward from Cape Canaveral).

The first Delta launch on May 13, 1960, attempted to put the world's first passive communications satellite experiment into space, but was unsuccessful due to the Delta's attitude control thrusters failing to fire. (The Delta initially flew as the second stage atop a Thor ballistic missile, hence the vehicle was called the Thor-Delta.)

Quote:Instead, during the opening credits, the Ink Spots crooned their 1940 hit “Maybe” as a dark screen gave way to the flickering of a black-and-white television. The camera pulled back to reveal the tranquil, empty skyline of a ruined city as narrator Ron Perlman calmly explained how the world as we knew it had blown itself up while fighting over resources. But your family had escaped this destruction by heading into one of many underground vaults built by the cheerful folks at the Vault-Tec Corporation, allowing you and many other humans to live beneath the surface for decades. Now your vault was about to kick you out into the wasteland on an important mission, and your character—at the start of the adventure, a delicate rookie with few skills—would have to figure out what the hell was going on in what was left of the planet.

As someone who (along with millions of other players) has explored every installment in the series, I had my doubts about whether a television show, which Amazon first announced in 2020, could fully capture the game’s quirky weirdness. I’m happy to report that the Fallout show—out today—is dark and thought-provoking, but also often hilarious. The adaptation centers on a young woman named Lucy who was raised in Vault 33, a community modeled on a stereotypical midwestern town. (The Vaults are all identical steel warrens, but each has its own peculiarities.) Lucy, having never lived anywhere but her subterranean hometown of “33,” is nice to a fault. She doesn’t even swear: She peppers her speech with the occasional “okie dokey!” and never uses an expletive stronger than “fudge.”

Lucy embodies the ethos of the Fallout world, a retro-futuristic, atompunk pastiche of 1950s America. In the alternate history of the Fallout games, the stress of constant wars for resources pushed the United States, in the late 20th century, back toward the warm Baby Boomer heaven of stay-at-home moms in aprons and high heels, big cars, and mindless jingoism. All of this nostalgia was wrapped in an insipid consumer culture, and serviced by a small group of paternalistic corporations whose many products still litter the destroyed landscape.

Quote:UFOs Shape Legacies of CIA Officers

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) recently declined to further declassify a heavily redacted 1949 FBI letter to the Director sent from the New York Field Office. NARA explained in a Dec. 2 email it identified biological warfare as the subject of the records composed as part of a domestic security investigation.

The letter is part of a large, partially released FBI file identified as number 100-HQ-93216 and maintained by NARA. The file consists of some 8,500 mostly not yet released pages pertaining to mid-20th century investigations of potential bacteriological warfare threats. It first came to the attention of this writer in 2019 when the Bureau advised that the file contained material responsive to a FOIA request submitted on Col. Joseph Bryan III, a deceased former CIA officer and member of the Board of Governors of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP).

After publishing a blogpost about the records subsequently obtained, an attentive reader pointed out an interesting item they found while browsing the hefty FBI file on bacteriological warfare: A May 31, 1949, FBI memo in which Asst. Director Ladd updated Director Hoover on an advisory committee operating under the Secretary of Defense. The committee consisted of representatives from universities and intelligence agencies, including the CIA, which met at a doctor's apartment on Park Avenue in New York City.

Clearly indicative of the 1949 Project Bluebird, which was a forerunner to Artichoke (1951) and MKULTRA (1953), Ladd informed Hoover that a CIA chief scientist, Dr. Willard Machle, told the advisory committee the Agency was seeking its support “for a program of vigorous exploration” using drugs and hypnosis for “methods of isolation of the subconscious mind.” Of particular historic interest was Machle's apparent claim the 1949 Advisory Committee to the Secretary of Defense was the first group outside the CIA notified about the ongoing research. Ladd further informed Hoover the Committee reportedly expressed “considerable interest.”

This writer subsequently requested NARA do a Mandatory Declassification Review on the intriguing document, resulting in some further clarification of committee attendees and activity. From the further declassified May 31, 1949, memo:

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Quote:As the sun rose on April 14, 1561, over the German city of Nuremberg, the residents saw what they described as some kind of aerial battle take place in its glare — complete with the erratic dance of orbs, crosses, cylinders, and the appearance of a large and mysterious black arrow-shaped object — all followed by a crash-landing somewhere beyond the city limits. Later that month, local artist Hans Glaser produced a broadsheet (pictured above) offering a woodcut engraving of the scene, and a detailed description of what was witnessed. The text reads:

Quote:In the morning of April 14, 1561, at daybreak, between 4 and 5 a.m., a dreadful apparition occurred on the sun, and then this was seen in Nuremberg in the city, before the gates and in the country – by many men and women. At first there appeared in the middle of the sun two blood-red semi-circular arcs, just like the moon in its last quarter. And in the sun, above and below and on both sides, the color was blood, there stood a round ball of partly dull, partly black ferrous color. Likewise there stood on both sides and as a torus about the sun such blood-red ones and other balls in large number, about three in a line and four in a square, also some alone. In between these globes there were visible a few blood-red crosses, between which there were blood-red strips, becoming thicker to the rear and in the front malleable like the rods of reed-grass, which were intermingled, among them two big rods, one on the right, the other to the left, and within the small and big rods there were three, also four and more globes. These all started to fight among themselves, so that the globes, which were first in the sun, flew out to the ones standing on both sides, thereafter, the globes standing outside the sun, in the small and large rods, flew into the sun. Besides the globes flew back and forth among themselves and fought vehemently with each other for over an hour. And when the conflict in and again out of the sun was most intense, they became fatigued to such an extent that they all, as said above, fell from the sun down upon the earth ‘as if they all burned’ and they then wasted away on the earth with immense smoke. After all this there was something like a black spear, very long and thick, sighted; the shaft pointed to the east, the point pointed west. Whatever such signs mean, God alone knows. Although we have seen, shortly one after another, many kinds of signs on the heaven, which are sent to us by the almighty God, to bring us to repentance, we still are, unfortunately, so ungrateful that we despise such high signs and miracles of God. Or we speak of them with ridicule and discard them to the wind, in order that God may send us a frightening punishment on account of our ungratefulness. After all, the God-fearing will by no means discard these signs, but will take it to heart as a warning of their merciful Father in heaven, will mend their lives and faithfully beg God, that He may avert His wrath, including the well-deserved punishment, on us, so that we may temporarily here and perpetually there, live as his children. For it, may God grant us his help, Amen. By Hanns Glaser, letter-painter of Nurnberg.

Interpreted religiously at the time, more recently some have considered the event an early sighting of extraterrestrial beings — the witnessing of some kind of alien spaceship battle occurring in the Bavarian skies. Although one, perhaps, shouldn't entirely rule out such a far-fetched interpretation, it is more likely that what the good people of Nuremberg witnessed that morning, and subsequently elaborated upon, was a natural meteorological phenomenon (possibly "sundogs", or to give them their scientific term, "parhelia"?). Another interesting idea relates to the fact that a year earlier Vannoccio Biringuccio published De La Pirotechnia, Europe's first book on metallurgy which contained several chapters on the preparation and use of rockets in warfare and festivals. Could this Italian book have made its way to the hands of a Nuremberg resident keen to try out the firework recipes it included?

This mysterious event in Nuremberg, and its depiction in Glaser's broadsheet, would go largely unmentioned until the twentieth century, when it appeared in Carl Jung's 1958 work Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.

For more on sixteenth-century broadsheets depicting wondrous, celestial events see our post here.

Quote:EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA — It was a beautiful spring afternoon in 1962, April 14, to be exact.

According to the News-Times, after his journey on the USS Enterprise from Norfolk on April 14, 1962, to Onslow Beach, Kennedy met there His Imperial Majesty Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, to view an amphibious landing staged by the Marine Corps with 10,000 to 12,000 Marines. The Shah was responsible for a movement in Iran in the 1960s and ’70s with the goal of turning it into a global power. The Friday edition of the News-Times that week noted the Shah had arrived on Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

Our Coast’s History: JFK’s Visit

Quote:When it came out the book was huge, not just in scope (it contained a 42,773-long word list) but also in size: its pages were 18 inches (46 cm) tall and nearly 20 inches (50 cm) wide. Johnson himself pronounced the book "Vasta mole superbus" ("Proud in its great bulk"). One of Johnson's important innovations was to illustrate the meanings of his words by literary quotation, of which there are around 114,000. The authors most frequently cited by Johnson include Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden but also included sentences taken from the popular press of his day.

An entire scan of the first edition of Johnson's book can be found at the wonderful Johnson's Dictionary Online site - and also a nearly 8% (at the time of writing this) complete transcription.

Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1785) (6th edition, 1785 copy at link)

Quote:They did it. On April 18, 1943, 16 U.S. Army Air Forces fighter pilots from Guadalcanal flew more than 400 miles to ambush Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto as he flew to Balalae airfield in the Solomon Islands. They sent the Japanese Combined Fleet's commander in chief to a fiery grave in the jungles of Bougainville. The United States had exacted revenge against the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack and one of the Imperial Navy's highest-ranking officers--but at what cost?

Behind the scenes, President Franklin D. Roosevelt reacted with glee, writing a mock letter of condolence to Yamamoto's widow that circulated around the White House but was never sent:

Dear Widow Yamamoto:

Time is a great leveler and somehow I never expected to see the old boy at the White House anyway. Sorry I can't attend the funeral because I approve of it.

Hoping he is where we know he ain't.

Very sincerely yours,

/s/Franklin D. Roosevelt

Ironically, the success of the mission, aptly named Operation Vengeance, threatened to expose the most important secret of the Pacific War: the U.S. Navy's ability to read the Japanese navy's top-secret JN-25 operational code. If the Japanese suspected a broken code had led to Yamamoto's death, they would drastically overhaul all their military codes and the United States would lose its priceless strategic advantage. As nervous commanders waited to see if there would be a day of reckoning, America's own servicemen would prove to be the gravest threat to this crucial secret.

...

On May 11, 1943, Lodge filed his story with the censors for transmission back home. Although he did not mention the breaking of Japanese codes, he wrote that American "intelligence had trailed Yamamoto for five days" and that American pilots had specifically targeted him. The story included Lanphier's description of the mission and quoted Strother as saying that the U.S. military had known Yamamoto's itinerary.

If Lodge's story had seen the light of day, the JN-25 code might have quickly become a thing of the past. Not only did his story show that the United States knew of Yamamoto's death, which Japan had not announced, but also that the Americans had known Yamamoto's location. No Australian coastwatcher would have known his precise schedule; a compromised JN-25 code was the only explanation.

The censors could not believe what they read. They quickly passed the story up the chain of command. Nimitz immediately ordered Halsey to "secure and seal in safe" Lodge's notes and story. He told Halsey to "initiate immediate corrective measures and take disciplinary action as warranted." Lanphier, Barber, and Strother returned from leave to find a summons to meet Halsey on his flagship. When they arrived, an irate Halsey refused to return their salutes and simply stared at them. When he finally erupted, the bombastic Halsey outdid himself. As Barber recalled:

  He started in on a tirade of profanity the like of
  which I had never heard before. He accused us of
  everything he could think of from being traitors to
  our country to being so stupid that we had no right
  to wear the American uniform. He said we were
  horrible examples of pilots of the Army Air Force,
  that we should be court-martialed, reduced to privates,
  and jailed for talking to Lodge about the
  Yamamoto mission.

Halsey's bark was worse than his bite; he simply reduced their Medal of Honor recommendations to the second-highest valor award, Navy Crosses.

...

Even though the war was over, the navy was still upset by the story. Its officers were debriefing a high-level Japanese intelligence officer who had provided them with valuable information. The naval officers planned to interview other captured officers, too, but feared the code-breaking revelation might shame the Japanese officer into drastic action. "[W]e do not want him or any of our other promising prospects to commit suicide until after next week when we expect to have milked them dry," radioed a navy officer based in Yokohama.

An exasperated navy department sent back a memorable reply:

  Your lineal position on the list of those who are
  embarrassed by the Yamamoto story is five thousand
  six hundred ninety two. All of the people over
  whose dead bodies the story was going to be published
  have been buried. All possible schemes to
  localize the damage have been considered but
  none appears workable. Suggest that only course
  for you is to deny knowledge of the story and say
  you do not understand how such a fantastic tale
  could have been invented. This might keep your
  friend happy until suicide time next week, which is
  about all that can be expected.

The question remains: why didn't the Japanese follow the clues and realize that their JN-25 code had been compromised? In retrospect, it is incomprehensible. Otis Cary, an American navy officer who debriefed Japanese naval officers after the war, wrote that while the Japanese suspected Yamamoto had been ambushed, they "never seemed to have considered seriously that we might be breaking their secret codes." It is almost impossible to believe that if the shoe was on the other foot, American or British intelligence would not have figured out what had happened. It remains one of the great and enduring puzzles of the Pacific War.

Quote:AUTHOR: Bernard Mannes Baruch (1870–1965)
QUOTATION:
Let us not be deceived—we are today in the midst of a cold war. Our enemies are to be found abroad and at home. Let us never forget this: Our unrest is the heart of their success. The peace of the world is the hope and the goal of our political system; it is the despair and defeat of those who stand against us.

ATTRIBUTION: BERNARD M. BARUCH, address at the unveiling of his portrait in the South Carolina legislature, Columbia, South Carolina, April 16, 1947.—Journal of the House of Representatives of the First Session of the 87th General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, p. 1085.

The phrase “cold war” was coined by Herbert Bayard Swope, who occasionally wrote speeches for Baruch, and was first used in this speech. It was popularized by, and sometimes mistakenly attributed to, columnist Walter Lippmann, whose 1947 book was titled The Cold War.

Baruch used the phrase again on October 24, 1947—“Although the shooting war is over, we are in the midst of a cold war which is getting warmer”—in testimony before the Senate’s Special Committee Investigating the National Defense Program, part 42, p. 25740 (1948). William Safire, Safire’s Political Dictionary, pp. 127–29 (1978), gives an extensive account of the coinage and use of this term, though the date for Baruch’s testimony is given there as 1948.

Bartleby Quotations

Quote:Did you ever, at any point, think the war could be pulled off, that the U.S. was going to succeed?

"I'm afraid I never wavered from my belief that this was a distraction that was going to come to a bad end in Iraq and an even worse end in Afghanistan."

The Huffington Post

Quote:AUKUS Underwater Capability Developments Target Torpedo-tube UUV System

Australia, the UK, and the US formally announced the AUKUS accord in September 2021. Two focus areas have been declared to date, named Pillar 1 and Pillar 2. Pillar 1 encompasses development and delivery of a nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and the UK Royal Navy (RN), using the SSN-AUKUS design being developed under the RN’s lead. Pillar 2 focuses on developing a range of capabilities to further enhance combined interoperability between AUKUS members. Pillar 2’s coverage continues to expand, and currently includes artificial intelligence (AI), cyber, electronic warfare, hypersonic, information-sharing, innovation, quantum, and underwater capabilities.

Quote:On April 18, 1945, just six days after President Franklin Roosevelt succumbed to a fatal stroke, a bullet from a Japanese machine gun prematurely ended the 44-year-old journalist’s life. In less than a week, Americans everywhere found themselves collectively mourning—and publicly commemorating—the loss of two national heroes.

Renowned for his adept reporting from foxholes and frontlines, Pyle bridged the gap between soldier and civilian, in a way few columnists could. His artfully prosaic observations captured profound truths about human complexity and the horrors of war, and his simple, narrative-driven style attracted more than 14 million readers across 300 different publications.

The first known memorial erected in Pyle’s honor was a notably nondescript marker built by Corporal Landon Seidler on the day of Pyle’s death. A single wooden post with a plain, unadorned sign stood as a fitting tribute to a man who appreciated unpretentious simplicity. Hand-painted black lettering stood out in stark contrast on pale wood.  It read: “At this spot, the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April, 1945.”

....

Efforts to honor Pyle’s legacy on the Home Front also abounded. The Hoosier journalist’s last residence in Albuquerque, New Mexico was repurposed and transformed into the Ernie Pyle Library with its own Pyle memorabilia and archival holdings. The original picket fence and the grave marker of Pyle’s beloved dog, Cheetah, were both preserved, and the site was later designated a national historic landmark.

College campus halls, collegiate scholarships, elementary and middle schools in Indiana, California, and New Mexico, roads in Maryland and Kansas, a stretch of US Highway 36, and a small island in Cagles Mill Lake all bear Pyle’s name. They are everlasting tributes to a life well lived and constant reminders of his courage and heroism.

Almost immediately after the war, the Army exhumed Pyle’s remains and reinterred them at a US military cemetery on Okinawa before permanently relocating them in 1949 to Punchbowl Cemetery in Honolulu, Hawaii. There, under pleasant tree-cast shade, Ernie Pyle was laid to rest on plot D 109 beneath an unembellished gray marker between two unidentified soldiers. For a man who paid the ultimate price in order to immortalize the ordinary foot soldiers who selflessly risked their lives, perhaps that is the greatest tribute of all.

Quote:In the early 1970s, Bowerman said, he gained a special sensitivity toward problems facing the environment when he served as a technical adviser to writer Stanley R. Greenberg and actor Charlton Heston for the science-fiction movie “Soylent Green.”

His job was to give the filmmakers “a correct prediction of what things would be like in New York City in 2022.” The futuristic yarn supposed that the 21st-Century nation would be overpopulated and rapidly outpacing its ability to produce food. In the plot, national leaders, attempting to deal with the dwindling food supply, introduce a new synthetic food called “soylent green.” But the new food, it turns out, is made from human corpses--older people who are enticed into death in exchange for being able to see movies about how the Earth looked before being ravaged by man.

“I guess working on the movie gave me a sense of focus about the environment and the serious threats that lurked out there,” Bowerman said, adding that an underlying theme of euthanasia in the movie made him think seriously about overpopulation.

LA Times (April 1, 1990)