Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Sept 21, 1866: Celebrate the 158th birthday of author H.G. Wells with this 1927 edition of Amazing Stories containing his classic story, "The War of the Worlds".



Here's a PDF copy of the August 1927 Amazing Stories

His non-fiction book, The New World Order (1940), Wells asserted that a socialist and scientifically planned world government would need to be formed to defend human rights. He states without a revolution in international affairs and the establishment of human rights, then further destructive wars were inevitable. Wells published in The New World Order his first version of a human rights declaration, which was a precursor to his work on the Sankey Declaration of the Rights of Man (1940). In 1947, both declarations became used as advisory works by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights for drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).


William Dean Howells' vision of a “one-class” socialist utopia, outlined in his novel A Traveler from Altruria (1894), has all people guaranteed a share of the national product on the condition they work at least three hours a day.

Originally published in instalments in Cosmopolitan, this piece of utopian fiction by William Dean Howells delivers a vision of a "one-class" socialist utopia while at once offering a biting critique of unfettered capitalism. The story centres around a visit to America of Mr Homos, a citizen of a mysterious island called Altruria, which is home to a one-class socialist Christian society, with no monetary system and no concept of the rich and poor. In the course of Mr Homos' visit he is appalled by what he sees occurring in late-19th-century America, a society which he likens to his country's own before "Evolution". He is clearly confused by the class system, continuously embarrassing his hosts — carrying his own luggage, bowing to waitresses, and other such acts — and finds certain activities simply bizarre, for example exercise for its own sake:

To us, exercise for exercise would appear stupid. The barren expenditure of force that began and ended in itself, and produced nothing, we should — if you will excuse my saying so — look upon as childish, if not insane or immoral.

In Altruria, all people are guaranteed a share of the national product on the condition they work at least three hours a day. In 1894, the year in which Howells' story was published, the fiction attempted to become reality when a Unitarian minister Edward Biron Payne — inspired by the Christian socialist principles espoused by Howells' book — founded "Altruria", a community in Sonoma County, California, which he set up with thirty of his followers. A hotel was started, and orchards provided fruit sold to a shop in Berkeley owned by Job Harriman (who himself set up the commune of Llano del Rio in 1913). Unfortunately, "Altruria" ran into unsurmountable financial troubles and it was abandoned in 1896. Howells would go on though, eventually creating an Altrurian trilogy, with the publication of Letters of an Altrurian Traveller (1904) and Through the Eye of the Needle (1907).

A Traveler from Altruria (1894)


Sept 21, 1950: the Royal Navy accidentally sank two yachts in Portland Harbour after a dummy torpedo fired from a test range ran amok. The runaway torpedo smashed through the two boats before coming to rest on the shore under the 16th-century Sandsfoot Castle, Weymouth, England.




Sept 21, 1971: The 1st episode of the BBC2 rock series, The Old Grey Whistle Test, was broadcast. The 1st host was Richard Williams, but its best known presenter was DJ Bob Harris ("Whispering Bob Harris"), from 1972 to 1980. It ran until 1988.

Toad the Wet Sprocket - Rutland Weekend Television. Monty Python star Eric Idle impersonating "Whispering" Bob Harris, the host of The Old Grey Whistle Test.



"How long have you been (working) on the album?"

"About 2 weeks on the music and 2 years on title." LMAO!


Sept 21, 1977: Operation Midnight Climax: CIA SOUGHT TO SPRAY LSD-25 ON PARTYGOERS...saved by the WEATHER. Surreal NY Times story for 1977.




Sept 21, 1987: President Ronald Reagan UN speech:
"...If we were to face an Alien threat from outside this world...is not an alien force already among us." Starting around 28:45.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL6PlM24JBQ


Sept 21, 1997: The USS Yorktown (CG-48) had been upgraded through the Navy's "Smart Ship Program" but the propulsion system failed when the computers crashed after trying to divide by 0 when a user entered a zero in the Remote Data Base Manager running Windows NT 4.0 which brought down all the machines on the network, causing the ship's propulsion system to fail, resulting in "dead in the water" for almost three hours.


Sunk by Windows NT  I hated that OS more than Win95. It made for a good home network file server, just don't touch the damn keyboard.





It's the 85th anniversary of Batman Day!



The Navy once stated that if Batman had a warship, it would be the stealth destroyer USS Zumwalt. However, when the top-secret experimental Sea Shadow was finally unveiled in 1993, some observers thought it was a prop for a Batman film (or Darth Vader's yacht).



It ended up being acquired by media mogul Elliot Carver where he and the Sea Shadow vanished mysteriously in the South China Sea, circa 1997. Ha.

The US Navy IX-529 Sea Shadow stealth ship was a great idea for the Navy but was scraped in 2012. Sea Shadow IX-529 was an experimental stealth ship built by Lockheed for the United States Navy to determine how a low radar profile might be achieved and to test high stability hull configurations which have been used in oceanographic ships. Sea Shadow was built in 1984 to examine the application of stealth technology on naval vessels. She was used in secret until a public debut in 1993. In addition, the ship was designed to test the use of automation to enable the reduction of crew size. The ship was created by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. Navy and Lockheed. Sea Shadow was developed at Lockheed's Redwood City, California, facility, inside the Hughes Mining Barge, HMB-1, which functioned as a floating drydock during construction and testing.

Short news clip about Sea Shadow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IMXQQaf9pA


The Ministry of truth headline department really working overtime...


NY Times Trauma Headline Dept

The silent response is more like, 'look, in case you haven't noticed we're in a war zone and we been tossin DEAD bodies for 11 months, give us a freakin break.' "Deeply disturbing" my ass. Been on Youtube much?


Well, on the surface it looks like one small Win for humanity...


Plans to introduce hate speech laws dropped in Ireland


Everybody Knows - Leonard Cohen born Sept 21, 1934 in Westmount, Canada.