Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

September 28, 1916: Peter Finch was born in London but brought up in Australia from the age of 10. He’s best remembered for his riveting performance as the ranting and raving TV news presenter, Howard Beale, in the film, Network (1976), for which Posthumously, he won British and American academy awards, as well as a Hollywood 'Golden Globe', for his role as the crazed television anchorman, Howard Beale.


“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy.”
– Howard Beale


Arthur Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today.

That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.

Howard Beale: Why me?

Arthur Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.


Shortly after Raid on Entebbe finished shooting, Finch undertook a promotional tour for Network. On 13 January 1977 he appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. George Carlin was also on the show that night; he joked about death. The day after, Finch had a heart attack in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel and died at the age of 60. He is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

George and his sister Dorothy had assumed custody of Peter before the divorce. They subsequently dispatched him to their mother Laura who presided over a salon of artists and musicians at Vaucresson, near Paris. Abandoning Continental sophistications for sub-continental simplicities, in 1925 she embarked on a pilgrimage to Adyar, the Theosophical community near Madras, India, with Peter in train. His waif-like aura and wafer-thin body proved irresistible, at least in the spiritual sense, for Adyar's twin panjandrums Dr Annie Besant and 'Bishop' Charles Leadbeater. From Dr Besant, Peter had lessons in meditation; 'Bishop' Leadbeater was more noted for his lessons in masturbation. Early in 1926, not unwillingly, the young Finch (without his grandmother) joined a shipload of Theosophists bound for their Australian headquarters in Sydney.

Frederick George Peter Finch (1916–1977) (Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 14, 1996)

Australian Women's Weekly (1933 - 1982), Saturday 27 February 1937, page 36.



September 28, 1923: The 1st issue of the Radio Times was published. It came about because newspapers initially refused to carry listings of daily radio programmes. In response, the BBC decided to publish its own on a weekly basis. The magazine later carried TV listings.


You might be surprised to know from November 2, 1936 - the first program was the weather forecast...which also happened to be the first day of TV. Which of course the service was only available to the comparatively well-to-do in London and the South-East since the signal would only reach so far.

TV programmes were only incorporated into the main magazine after the war when the service still had a limited reach.

1936 BBC Programme Index  | The Radio Times Nov 1936 Issue (PDF)



September 28, 1934: French film icon Brigitte Bardot was born in Paris. She was also a huge style icon during the 1950s, popularising the bikini and choucroute hairstyle (a sort of beehive). In the 1970s, she decided to retreat from the public gaze to promote animal rights.




Sept 28, 1948: the Vought Cutlass flew for the first time. Based on German WWII tech, the F7U became the Navy's first swept wing fighter. Nicknamed the "Gutless" by pilots, the F7U had a short service history because its weak thrust and difficult handling led to a high accident rate. Futuristic looking aircraft for it's time.




September 28, 1960: Deputy Administrator of the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization Lewis E. Berry (1914-2005) sent a letter to his management detailing his efforts concerning billboard messaging with attached "Preattack" and "Postattack" sample text. Needless to say, the latter category is far more amusing (and frighteningly Orwellian).




No "see-through, low cut or revealing clothing" Attire at top secret Mount Weather building. You can forget about Area B, so don't even ask.


FEMA SOLICITATION, OFFER, AND AWARD (PDF) for Construction, Alteration, or Repair.


September 28, 1990: The 1st episode of the topical satirical quiz show, Have I Got News for You (HIGNFY), was broadcast on BBC2. It was presented by Angus Deayton, with team captains Paul Merton and Ian Hislop. It transferred to BBC1 later same year. The news quiz show offering satirical and surreal comic observations on current events is still airing going into its 68th season.


In a 1994 episode, Angus Deayton read out the following: "The BBC are cracking down on references to Ian and Kevin Maxwell, in case program-makers appear biased in their treatment of these two heartless, scheming bastards." Unfortunately, the Maxwell brothers were about to go on trial, and on July 26, 1996, the BBC and Hat Trick Productions were fined £20,000 in the High Court for Contempt of Court.

Exiled ex-MI5 officer David Shayler appeared as a panelist via satellite link from an undisclosed location.

An episode due to be broadcast on Friday 10 May 2019 was pulled by the BBC at the last minute, as it would have featured Heidi Allen MP, head of the Change UK party. The BBC's publicly stated reason was that Allen's presence would have breached impartiality guidelines, since Change UK were vocally in favour of Britain remaining in the EU and Britain was shortly to take part in elections for the European Parliament. The HIGNFY team sent out a tweet protesting this; several members of the public (and Allen herself) pointed out that pro-Brexit Nigel Farage, due to stand as an MEP, had appeared on Question Time (1979) only the previous evening.


Casey Kasem American Top 40 flashback to 1977, The Emotions take the top spot at #1 - written by EWF's Maurice White & Al McKay.




Somehow never made the jump to 4K UHD...




The U.S. Army JFK Special Warfare Center & School dropped this video a few days ago:



Reminds me of the Army Special Forces PSYOP Group "Ghost in the Machine" from a couple years back. All the world's a stage.


C'mon BIAD, lets go climb aboard!


https://x.com/EduardHabsburg/status/1839239644547895430

You Can Climb Aboard a Massive Reproduction of a 17th-Century Spanish Galleon That’s Sailing Around the World

One of the rare nobility fellows, ambassador to the Holy See and Sovereign Military Order of Malta that engages with us plebs on twitter. I feel so privileged! LOL.