Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[BIAD]

I just don't see what all the ooh-hah is all about -except to appreciate the concern that the people
who steer the Public Relations of the Royal Family would have if a such a photograph didn't originate
from one of their own outlets.

A very elegant and gracious lady.  

Cheeky lad.

Kind regards,
Bally)

Breaking News!! 
Kate has bravely stepped in only a couple of hours after the MSM wanted something else beside Gaza
to elaborate on and replied:
"Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing." -BBC:

Lawks-a-mercy! BIAD and the beautiful mother of three kids are Photoshop fans!

[EndtheMadnessNow]

March 11, 1916: the Navy's "super-dreadnought" USS Nevada (BB-36) was commissioned. The Nevada would survive Pearl Harbor and go on to provide support at Normandy, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. After the war, the Nevada was painted bright ORANGE and used as a target ship for Operation Crossroads Able Nuclear weapons tests in July 1946 at Bikini Atoll.


It survived the nuke, but was heavily contaminated with radioactivity and was deemed unfit for service. The Navy ordered her to be sunk as a target by Naval gunfire 65 miles southwest of Pearl Harbor on July 31, 1948 by the battleship Iowa and two other ships. Much to everyone's surprise they could not sink Nevada, so she was given a coup de grâce with an aerial torpedo hitting amidships. Down she went.

R.I.P. her final moments:




March 11, 1935: Naval Security Group (NAVSECGRU) formed. Tasked with intelligence gathering and counterintelligence; active 1935 to 2005. The group was then transferred to the Naval Network Warfare Command (NETWARCOM) under the TENTH Fleet Cyber Command with parent being United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM). US Tenth Fleet has operational control over Navy information, computer, cryptologic, and space forces.



The 32-character string "9EC4C12949A4F31474F299058CE2B22A", located in the inner circle of the Cyber Command patch is the MD5 hash of their bureaucratic-sounding mission statement:

"USCYBERCOM plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes and conducts activities to: direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and when directed, conduct full spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries."


25 years ago today was the last time a US Navy submarine sank (sort of) a freighter with a torpedo. March 11, 1999, Los Angeles-class submarine USS Bremerton (SSN-698) blew the M/V New Carissa in half off the Coast of Oregon, near Coos Bay by firing a Mark-48 Advanced Capability (ADCAP) heavyweight torpedo from 8,000 yards. They are designed to sink deep-diving nuclear-powered submarines and high-performance surface ships.


Dubbed "The Ship That Would Not Die" by the media, New Carissa had plagued the coast for over a month, leaking fuel oil after running aground in a storm. Prior attempts included an EOD team using 400lbs of high explosives & 69 point-detonating 5-inch, 54-caliber projectiles from USS David R. Ray (DD-971).

The bow was successfully towed out to sea and sunk. However, the stern section became a tourist attraction as it remained on the beach for nine years until it was finally dismantled and removed in 2008.

I remember going to the beach to see this odd sight. It was on the local tv news every evening and turned into a hilarious clown show. Everytime the local news needed a filler you got the latest snapshots from reporters camped out on the beach.

Mk-48 and Mk-48 ADCAP torpedoes can be guided from a submarine by a thin trailing wire attached to the torpedo. They can also use their own active or passive sensors to execute programmed target search, acquisition, and attack procedures. Upon acquiring its target, the wire is cut and the torpedo's internal computers take over, guiding the underwater weapon home with lethal precision.

The "one-shot, one-kill" torpedo is designed to detonate under the keel of a surface ship. The massive pressure bubble that results from the gigantic explosion doesn't just slice through the bulk of the target boat - it also literally lifts the ship out of the water and snaps the keel, essentially breaking its back.
When attacking a submarine, it detonates in close proximity to the pressure hull of the enemy boat, corrupting it immediately with a massive shockwave.

In the event of a miss, it can circle back for another attempt. It was also designed to operate under the ice cap. The Mk-48 torpedo measures 19 feet in length and 21 inches in diameter, and weighs nearly 2 tons. These ADCAP fish run about $5 million each.


The warhead is located directly behind the nose, with a 650-pound barrel of high-explosive material optimized to inflict the maximum possible damage on the target. Following the warhead is the fuel tank, filled with 95 gallons of the liquid monopropellant, Otto Fuel II.

The highly toxic fuel was invented by Dr. Otto Reitlinger (1891-1971).

U.S. NAVY TORPEDO PROPELLANT RESEARCH & OTTO FUEL II
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgi4ta5HZjk


On March 8, the Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Hampton (SSN 767) surfaced through the ice at Ice Camp Whale on the Arctic Ocean, kicking off ICE CAMP 2024. The three-week operation will allow the Navy to assess its operational readiness in the Arctic...so we are told.





Biden's unveils $7.3 TRILLION budget with massive tax hikes

Bukowski died of leukemia on March 9, 1994, in San Pedro, aged 73, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp. The funeral rites, orchestrated by his widow, were conducted by Buddhist monks. He is interred at Green Hills Memorial Park in Rancho Palos Verdes. An account of the proceedings can be found in Gerald Locklin's book Charles Bukowski: A Sure Bet. His gravestone reads: "Don't Try", a phrase which Bukowski uses in one of his poems, advising aspiring writers and poets about inspiration and creativity. Bukowski explained the phrase in a 1963 letter to John William Corrington: "Somebody at one of these places [...] asked me: 'What do you do? How do you write, create?' You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or, if you like its looks, you make a pet out of it."

Charles Bukowski's influence on popular culture:

Charles Bukowski has been depicted on television as well, namely on the Showtime comedy-drama series Californication. The show's main character Hank Moody, played by actor David Duchovny, is an author based in Los Angeles who subscribes to the same kind of lifestyle that Bukowski became known for. The show depicts profuse indulgence of alcoholism, sex and narcotics, which many critics have described as a television adaption of Bukowski's third novel Women.[15] In the ninth episode of the first season, Moody's girlfriend can be seen reading Sifting Through the Madness For The World, The Line, The Way: New Poems, a collection of Bukowski's posthumously-published work.

Don't Try - The Philosophy of Charles Bukowski
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMTDAHK-tkE

The Genius of the Crowd by Charles Bukowski
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSGfTuDWMaY


How can someone who kept writing in the face of failure not try? It doesn’t make sense. Well, here is the first stanza of his poem, So You Want To Be A Writer:

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.




The Frogs who ask for a King – a request that has unfortunate consequences when they are granted a frog-eating heron – is disturbing in a different way. The frogs were tired of their democracy and asked Jupiter for a king. He threw them a log but the frogs were disappointed by its inaction. They asked for another king and Jupiter sent them a crane, which began to eat them. They asked for another king but Jupiter said they should have stuck with what they had got.

This amplifies how populations are often never satisfied with what they receive, even if the people demand it. More modernly, this story represents how societies want structure and guidance—a government, president, or king—but are unhappy when leaders do not act in their favor or how they imagined.

Moreau’s illustrations of the Fables of Jean de La Fontaine (1621-95) were made between 1879 and 1884 for the collector Antony Roux (1833-1913). There were originally 64, but nearly half disappeared during World War II.
Speaks alot to the Rothschild dynasty's interest in such an illustration and how they view the sheeple.


WADDESDON MANOR, AYLESBURY, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE


What a time to be alive!!



LOL, it's real...

The Roswell Police Department has a new official patch, a symbol of the department worn on the shoulders of officers’ uniforms and the image of which is used on various RPD printed and online materials.

The new patch contains elements connecting it not only to the police department, but also the City of Roswell, the State of New Mexico and the Roswell community’s long association with UFO lore. The patch includes the city logo, a Zia symbol, a pair of small alien faces, and the phrasing, “Protect and Serve Those That Land Here.” The patch also features the year the police department was established (1891), recognizing its 133-year history.

Roswell New Police Badge - And they're hiring too!

[EndtheMadnessNow]

March 12, 1989: Sir Tim Berners-Lee submits his proposal to CERN for an information management system, which subsequently develops into the World Wide Web, the magic carpet. His boss at CERN at the time — Mark Sendall — labeled it the now classic understatement of the century: "Vague, but exciting."



Before there was the web, there was the internet — a.k.a. ARPANET. The first person to invent anything like a modern computer was British mathematician Charles Babbage, who spent the 1820s and ’30s day dreaming and developing the concept for a programming machine that contained the equivalent of a modern computer processing unit. About 110 years later, (see TimeLine) scientists finally built what would become the modern computer as we know it, and the first computer company, Electronic Control Company in 1946 that built the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945. In 1947 the company was incorporated and changed their name to Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) (March 1946 – 1950). In 1950, the company was sold to Remington Rand, which later merged with Sperry Corporation to become Sperry Rand, which later merged with Burroughs Corporation in 1986 forming what survives to this day as Unisys.

As everyone knows by now (I think), the Internet, however, comes to us not from a computer company but direct from the United States Cold War military strategy. One could say straight outta Manhattan project. In the 1960s, American intelligence officials were seeking ways to diversify their information caches, so that information would be easier to share among operatives, and so that if foreign agents managed to destroy one cache, they wouldn’t be destroying all of the military’s intel. At the time, the military organization ARPA, short for the Advanced Research Projects Agency, was a pioneer in computer innovation.

Note that video games had been around circa 1958. The first video game looked like this:



The very first portal, err I mean web address was info.cern.ch and it is still open.

Do you hear that dial-up modem ringing in your ears? That is the sound of inevitability... It is the sound of your death... Goodbye, Mr. Anderson.

Enjoy your travels on the magic carpet through an endless diamond sky and spooky dimensions.




CERN Secret dimensions


On this the 22nd anniversary of the unveiling of the much ridiculed Terror Alert Chart. DHS secretary Tom Ridge unveiled the color-coded "Homeland Security Advisory System" aka the Terror Alert Chart. The chart was retired in 2011. You can watch the very boring C-SPAN video of the news conference. The FBI Counterintel operative comes on at about the 31:20 mark, talkin about how we (they) can get the public's anxiety level elevated and welcome the public's input on our wonderful color-coded chart (probably) created by a bunch of think-tank interns.

X-share report for today in 2009.


Homeland Security Advisory System Current Threat Level for March 12, 2009.

Colors could disappear from terror alert system (July 14, 2009; San Diego Union Tribune)


US To Roll Out New Terror Alert System (Sky news, Dec 7, 2015)

In more recent Homeland funnies...


U.S. Government Seeks “Unified Vision of Unauthorized Movement”

Another border "Unity" initiative failure in the making, but we're gonna use AI this time and spend $6 billion tax-dollars over 10 years, potentially 14 years to complete which will bloom to $60 billion before realizing it doesn't work, just like the Israelis and we paid for that unity surveillance wall too. Yay, let's go!

“a unified vision of unauthorized movement” via virtual border walls.

Integrated Surveillance Towers



Goog Maps > from April 2023 MIT article:

The US is pouring money into surveillance tech at the southern border


They don't want you to know there's an adrenochrome shortage worldwide and the royals are looking like Emperor Palpatine. Lyndon LaRouche, where are you? We need you! LOL. Funny thing is back in my photoshop days I did alot experimentation using scanned magazine photos and scanning used to be an art in of itself. Good looking woman with beautiful kids to me.




Psy Opera track...




Another Boeing coincidence just dropped...


Boeing whistleblower John Barnett found dead in US

According to NPR framing via his family sounds like just another sad case. On the flip-side if the Boeing whistleblower was really suicidal, he’d have just booked a flight and sit next to the door plug. Or just book a flight on Clinton Airlines.

Another coinkydink is Boeing's lead criminal attorney does happen to be the former deputy AG Mark Filip who was the highest official to explicitly sign off on Epstein's insane 2008 plea deal.

Blowing the Door Off Boeing’s ‘Epstein Deal’

The father of Boeing general counsel J. Michael Luttig (former United States federal judge) was shot twice in the head, in his car, in front of his wife, by a teenager back in 1994.

You might recall from a few years ago that it was J. Michael Luttig who bastardized the famous Tom Clancy novel quote by using it against Donald Trump in stating, "Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy."




David Wolf is an embittered psychiatrist on the verge of an unimaginable journey. From one hundred decades in the future a woman called Silv arrives to seek David's help. One of Silv's murderous soldiers has traveled to the distant past of Napoleon's era and now has the power to manipulate the future. David and Silv must embark on an awesome quest to bring this man under control - before the very fabric of reality is torn to shreds.
His non-series novel Memories was nominated for a Philip K. Dick Award in 1987.

[EndtheMadnessNow]

It's National Sheep Day. On April 27, 2017, a freighter loaded with 9,000 sheep sank the Russian spy ship Liman in the Black Sea when the two vessels collided in heavy fog. The Turkish Coast Guard rescued Liman's crew. No sheep or Russians were injured in the incident.




Admiral Philippe Henri Xavier Antoine de Gaulle, son of the late General Charles de Gaulle, has died at the age of 102. He served with the Free French Naval Forces after escaping occupied France. He retired from the French Navy in 1982 and entered politics, serving as a senator from Paris until 2004.




The Victoria Cross posthumously awarded to Lieutenant-Commander Edgar Cookson (1883–1915) of HMS Comet during WWI was sold at auction today for £220,000 (USD 281,578.00). Armed only with an axe and under heavy fire from Turkish forces in 1915, Cookson boarded a dhow being used as an obstruction in the Tigris and attempted to cut the wires holding it in place. He was shot multiple times and died within a few minutes.


The Edinburgh Gazette; 25 January 1916


In 1924, the US public turned off their radios to help the Navy listen out for Martians.
A telegram sent to all Navy stations in the US:




Loss of confidence in one of our four horsemen. Not good!


CO of USS Ohio Gold Crew Removed from Command


Oh joy, new words by Cambridge


New words – 11 March 2024

Some say the criminalization of words will be the final nail in the coffin for humanity. I think it will eventually be the transformation of humanity. Like Ninurta said, we're in a transitory period right now. Nobody really knows what the globalist centrifuge is going to ultimately spew out later this decade.

There's something wrong with the world.. You don't know what it is but it's there like a splinter in your mind driving you mad. Hitting a midlife crisis just as the world is going to shit is confusing. I don't know if I should buy a new Corvette or get pregnant.



https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/176...5775442091

Full 60 minutes vid they posted Feb 25, 2023:



Now, just WTF kinda name is that??

Huh...

Klon Kitchen, Managing Director

Mr. KKK is also The Heritage Foundation.


Marines deployed to Haiti, again!


U.S. Southern Command


You know why Haiti scares the crap out of the empire system? Because those people got together in an alligator swamp and used Vodou rituals to overthrow the French who had enslaved them back in the day.


Most searched phrase on Google in the last 24 hours was "Best Haitian barbeque ribs." When/If western civilization finally crumbles into dust the loudest cries will come from the left and even at that point they still won't realize they were responsible.

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Well, isn't this special...


Port Talbot: Bletchley Park codebreakers finally meet at 100


Netflix Cold War docuseries Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War
Historians Gar Alperovitz v. Richard Rhodes on use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima & Nagasaki, from the first episode. Oh my, "Fear, gore, nudity, smoking, suicide" - Now streaming.


"It was if the sun came up tremendous." Journalist/historian/author Lesley M. M. Blume quotes Trinity survivor Barbara Kent. The quote is used as the title of the first episode of Netflix's TURNING POINT docuseries telling her chilling story of the Trinity-adjacent dance camp article at NatGeo:

U.S. lawmakers move urgently to recognize survivors of the first atomic bomb test (Archived link)





The Unmutual


Dreaming of electric sheep no doubt...


Link to Robopsychology and Computers: Love At First Byte article.


Apparently, Ralph knew his art history. 'Flaming June' by Fredric Leighton


Behind her, the Mediterranean sea glimmers with the last rays of the sun.
It is possible that through the beauty and eroticism of Flaming June, the artist wanted to explore the aesthetic connection between sleep and death, a concept that many Victorian artists were drawn to. This association has been postulated by the oleander (upper right), a beautiful but toxic flower that appears in various poems at the time, and that connotes death.

Flaming June is an oil painting by Sir Frederic Leighton, produced in 1895 on a 47-by-47-inch square canvas. The Victorian masterpiece is currently on loan to the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where it will be on display until 12 January 2025.


Fly in comfort, Pan Am 'Yankee Clipper' (Boeing 314). For its wing, Boeing re-used the design from the earlier XB-15 bomber prototype. The first was christened by Eleanor Roosevelt on 3 March 1939.


The Plane That Had It All: The Rise and Fall Of The Boeing Clipper 314



Belief that some of them are ours, intensifies...


Thinking of switching to Lockheed Martian.


Save me, save me from tomorrow
I don’t want to sail with this ship of fools.


Karl Wallinger, World Party "Ship of Fools" Private Revolution album (1986)



R.I.P. Karl Edmond De Vere Wallinger, Welsh musician, songwriter and record producer, born 19 October 1957 in Prestatyn, Wales, UK. Died 10 March 2024.

Another song titled, "Holy Water" from the B-side of the "Private Revolution" 7-inch single in the UK.

[EndtheMadnessNow]

"This is a REAL emergency. This is NOT a test. This is an ATTACK warning from the Office of Civil Defense." Pre-recorded LBJ/Nixon era EBS tape found by @DoomTape1981 sourced from the National Archives, Record Group 311.

After a few researchers spent years of filing FOIA's the missing tapes are no longer missing! Here's a 9 minute extract of the attack warning only audio:



This is an Authenticated tape to be broadcast per NORAD or Potus authorization on ALL radio/TV stations in the event of a real nuclear attack or eXtremely grave crisis.

Information about missing "Priority Four" tapes to be played during a federal EBS activation and extreme national crisis such as nuclear war originates from a 1981 memo revealed the existence of these pre-recorded tapes. The Reagan Presidential Library released this memo in the time period around 2021-22.

Here's EBS Pre-Recorded Information Tape Side 1 (93 minutes) sourced from the National Archives, 311-GENERALa-027. This tape was likely produced during the LBJ or Nixon administrations, though we do not know the exact year. May have remained in use through the Reagan era.

And the EBS Pre-Recorded Information Tape Side 2 (71 minutes)


The radio announcer has not yet been identified. Forensic work in progress.

If you're into this kind Cold War history artifacts I recommend you download those vids as they might disappear from the CensorTube platform. The Doomsday tapes were MIA for decades and just recently discovered. Also, DO NOT LOOK AT THE FLASH!


Jan 6, 1981 memo excerpt:


The tapes were kept at the cold war top secret Continuity of Government super-bunker facility codename "Special Facilities Division" or The "Special Facility" known as Mount Weather (aka High Point, aka Classified Location, aka Crystal Palace.) The public never knew it existed until TWA 514 (Boeing 727-231) crashed into the mountain on December 1, 1974, killing 92 people and brought widespread and much unwanted public attention to the top-secret facility. Soviets were probably having a party. Today it is simply known as FEMA headquarters.


The Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, created in 1958, then became DOD Office of Civil Defense from August 1, 1961 and a few months later was re-designated as the Office of Emergency Planning (OEP), later renamed the Office of Emergency Preparedness from October 21, 1968, and abolished on July 1, 1973 by Nixon. Next came the Disaster Relief Act of 1974, Nixon's creation of Emergency Management and 5 years later FEMA was formed by Pres Carter EO on April 1, 1979. Yep, no foolin.

Col. J. Leo Bourassa. He headed up the "Special Facilities Division" within the Office of Emergency Planning. He is the person mentioned in the Blue Book file dealing with the Kecksburg crash.

Aerial photographs of Mount Weather show the presidential heliport where the president is dropped off. The tower that directs in the president’s flight is known as "bluegrass tower." In the Kecksburg Blue Book file right after J. Leo Bourassa’s name you will find (Code blue grass). Another connection to the code "bluegrass" is a paranormal CIA project started in 1955, which I haven’t confirmed yet.

While at the Johnson library I was looking for files on Bourassa and on the "Special facilities Division" to see how it fit into the Kecksburg crash. What I learned about Bourassa while at the library is that he had also been heavily involved in the 1965 blackout of New York City. In fact, he wrote a report to Ellington detailing his findings. Bourassa’s findings hinted at the possible role of UFOs in the blackout.

The White House Role in Crashed UFO Retrievals by Grant Cameron.

This guy Bourassa was one of the deep state players (COG) and deep state UFOs. Cursory search does not even turn up any descent photos, not even when he was in uniform and the Larry King video does not appear online.



Mount Weather: A Random and Incomplete Oral History

Circling back to the Doomsday tapes, evidence suggests FEMA (and its predecessor agencies) mountain command post kept EBS tapes on large tape reels in or near a broadcast studio. Something like this:



Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorder: Tennessee State Museum

Either NORAD declared attack warning by phone to OEP, or POTUS requested activation. Tapes could be used in absence of POTUS or as 'fill' material following attack warning or Potus message. In periods without live programming over EBS, 2+ hours of tapes would play over and over during 2 weeks of fallout shelter hell life. This was the same basic deal as UK Wartime Broadcasting Service.

Bell System would patch the OEP "Special Facilities" into WTOP radio, CBS Washington, over phone lines. Then patch WTOP into all radio and TV networks (audio only). Every radio and TV would play whatever OEP and WTOP fed down the lines. For 2+ weeks. "WTOP Radio" and "WTOP News" is a commercial all-news radio station licensed to serve Washington, D.C. from 1943 up until 2006.

The WTOP-FM studios is the successor, referred to on-air as the "WTOP Glass-Enclosed Nerve Center", owned by Hubbard Broadcasting. Transmits on standard analog transmission and over three HD Radio channels, and is available online. 

* * *

Len Sirowitz's 'Winner of World War III' ad for the National Committee for a SANE Nuclear Police ran full-page in the New York Times on July 22, 1965.
The editors of the Lincoln Star Journal didn't seem to care much for it.

Len Sirowitz, an award-winning advertising art director whose creative work in the 1960s included memorable print ads for the Volkswagen Beetle — like one declaring, “Ugly is only skin-deep” — and a campaign for Mobil in which a car was dropped off a 10-story building to make a point about the perils of speeding, died on March 4 at his home in Manhattan. He was 91.

His daughter, Laura Sirowitz, confirmed the death.

Mr. Sirowitz joined the influential Doyle Dane Bernbach advertising agency, known as DDB, in 1959, at 27, and spent the next 11 years at the firm conceiving the look of ads for numerous accounts with wit and passion.

“It was quite early in my career that I began to realize that my message needed to not only be bold and daring, but it must stem from the truth … and touch people’s emotions,” he told Dave Dye, who runs the advertising blog From the Loft, in 2015.

Volkswagen was perhaps Mr. Sirowitz’s most important account, and the homely Beetle, nicknamed the “Bug,” was his and copywriter Robert Levenson’s automotive muse. Their collaborations for the German car maker included the ad “Will We Ever Kill the Bug?” in which they positioned a Beetle turned on its roof, like a dead bug. The answer to the question: “Never.” (Though, after a few shots of the car, its roof collapsed.)

Full article: Len Sirowitz, Whose Bold, Offbeat Ads Captured an Era, Dies at 91


March 14, 1988: Pi Day, Chinese and Vietnamese forces enaged in a fierce skirmish over the ownership of the Johnson South Reef in the highly disputed Spratly Islands. The outgunned Vietnamese lost 3 ships and more than 60 men in the fight. China now occupies the reef and has fortified it.





USS Preble (DDG-88) is the sixth U.S. Navy ship named in honor of Commodore Edward Preble, who served in the American Revolutionary War and was one of the early leaders of the Navy. Her motto is "Intrepid Patriot" and was the first destroyer to be equipped with a High-Energy Laser and Integrated Optical-Dazzler system (HELIOS) to counter surface craft and shoot down drones. 

In the 2009 science fiction film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, USS Kidd fires at and destroys a Decepticon named Devastator with a railgun (mounted in place of the standard 5-inch gun) during the movie’s climactic battle in Egypt. Moments earlier in the film the captain of USS John C. Stennis queues USS Kidd into action but the hull # of USS Preble is shown instead. The footage of the combat information center and the forecastle with the railgun was shot on USS Kidd (DDG-100).

The Four Horsemen of the DDG class were originally built for the former Imperial Iranian Navy, (ordered by the shah of Iran), the Kidd-class destroyers were nicknamed the "Ayatollah class" when they were integrated with the U.S. Navy after their contracts had been canceled due to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. They were specifically built to operate in hot & humid climates of the Persian Gulf, with powerful air conditioners and fitted with specialized filters to block out sand/dust and the potent results from NBC warfare.


All four ship were decommissioned in 1998-99 and then sold to the Republic of China Navy (ROCN) in 2003. USS Scott became ROCS Kee Lung (DDG-1801), the lead vessel of the new ROCN Kee Lung-class destroyers. The USS Kidd (DDG-993) was the original lead ship of the class for the US Navy.

After almost two years of refit and training in the U.S., the Kee Lung was commissioned on 17 December 2005 at Keelung naval port in northern Taiwan. The ROCN paid just over $690 million for the four Kidd-class destroyers, giving it extensive anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) capabilities.

The Kidd-class destroyers were a series of four guided-missile destroyers (DDGs) based on the Spruance class. Each ship in the class was named after a U.S. Navy Admiral who had died in combat in the Pacific in World War II:

    USS Kidd (DDG-993) was named after Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, who died on the bridge of his flagship, USS Arizona, during the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

    USS Callaghan (DDG-994) was named after Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan, who was killed during a surface action at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, 13 November 1942, aboard USS San Francisco.

    USS Scott (DDG-995) was named after Rear Admiral Norman Scott, who was killed during the same surface action that killed Admiral Callaghan at the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, aboard USS Atlanta.

    USS Chandler (DDG-996) was named after Rear Admiral Theodore Chandler, who died on 7 January 1945, as a result of burns received from a kamikaze crashing into his flagship, USS Louisville, the previous day.

All four were initially offered for sale to Royal Australian Navy in 1997 for A$30 million each. In 1999, the offer was rejected, based on extensive problems the Royal Australian Navy had encountered during the acquisition of two other US Navy ships in 1994.

Next, the four ships were offered to Greece, but they also refused.

In 2001, the U.S. authorized the reactivation and sale of all four ships to Taiwan where they have served in the Republic of China Navy as the Kee Lung class since 2005.

[EndtheMadnessNow]

https://twitter.com/NavyLookout/status/1...4275212764


At ~5000 tons, Starship is the largest flying object ever made.


And on this day in 2002, SpaceX was founded.


Starship prediction...




"Selling Space" - mock ads encouraging space colonization published in OMNI, July 1989...






Its not enough to remake/reboot every franchise under the sun, now they are trying to recreate infamous maritime disasters.


Titanic replica plans resurrected – and it could set sail in 2027


Dark nationalism has a great ring to it.


The Telegraph








Let's be careful out there. It's a jungle that eats everything.







C-ya on the other side.

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Happy Friday. - Time magazine, March 15, 1954
"The story you are about to see is true", "Just the facts, ma'am", "We were working the day watch."




Beware the Ides of March! Julius Caesar was assassinated on this day in 44 BC. This coin was issued by his betrayer Brutus.


The British Museum


Beware the Ides of March! March 15-16, 1889: a cyclone wrecked six warships in the Samoan Islands. However, the disaster may have helped avert a war by ending a tense standoff between the United States, Germany and Great Britain over control of the islands.


SMS Adler was wrecked together with the German gunboat SMS Eber, the German corvette SMS Olga, the United States Navy gunboat USS Nipsic, the U.S. Navy screw steamer USS Trenton, and the U.S. Navy sloop-of-war USS Vandalia on 16 March 1889 in a hurricane at Apia, Samoa, during the Samoan crisis.

According to a 1889 NYT article:
American crews: 4 officers & 46 enlisted drowned.
German crews: 9 officers & 87 enlisted.

Only the Royal Navy ship HMS Calliope nicknamed "Hurricane Jumper" escaped the cyclone wrath as her captain had well-prepared for foul weather with all boilers lit off and ready for full speed. Seamanship matters then and now.


After retirement from active service, Calliope served as a training ship until 1951, when it was stripped and sold for parts & scrap. The name "Calliope" also lives on in the Royal Navy. In 1951 the ship's successor as training ship on the Tyne took that name, and now the shore establishment itself bears the title and honours the memory of HMS Calliope.

Sources:
SMS Adler (Gunboat, 1885-1889)

NY Times article (PDF) published March 30, 1889.

HMS Calliope (1884)

HMS CALLIOPE (GATESHEAD)


March 15, 1924: Lieutenant General Robert Lee Bullard (January 5, 1861 – Sept 11, 1947) is made a blood brother of the Arapahoes at New York’s Governor Island, as the Indians including Chief Go-in-Lodge (far left) return to the U.S. from a European tour.




March 15, 1968: the day before announcing his bid for president, Sen. Robert Kennedy at the Sky Island Club attracted national attention when he inadvertently launched his presidential campaign at the Garden City Hotel. Kennedy was the guest of honor. There was a belly dancer.




March 15, 1985: the very first .COM domain, http://symbolics.com, was registered. Symbolics was a spinoff from the MIT AI Lab, one of two companies to be founded by AI Lab staffers and associated hackers for the purpose of manufacturing Lisp machines. The early origins of AI funded in part by DARPA.


Symbolics.com Museum

Happy World Contact Day or Mass Meditation day. For those International Flying Saucer Bureau members, good luck on sending a telepathic message into space.






March 15, 1970: the SS Columbia Eagle became the first U.S.-flagged vessel in over a century to be seized in a mutiny. Carrying napalm under contract with Military Sealift Command, the ship was taken by two armed crew members, Clyde McKay and Alvin Glatkowski to protest the Vietnam War and who then sought asylum in Cambodia. They were arrested and the ship was returned to U.S. control. McKay escaped custody in Cambodia and his fate was unknown until decades later when evidence revealed that he had been executed by the Khmer Rouge. The Manson Family cheered them on, according to the media. Glatkowski survived only to spend over 7 years in Lompoc, California federal prison.


The Columbia Eagle was a Victory-type cargo ship constructed by Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation of Portland, Oregon in 1945 for the U.S. Navy and originally christened SS Pierre Victory. She was designed to carry all types of dry supplies and munitions to Pacific theaters during World War II. SS Pierre Victory survived three separate kamikaze attacks by the Japanese in 1945.

The last mutineer

Here's a 2019 podcast interview with transcript of the mutineer who survived.


Latin exulans, exile, wanderer, derived from the Latin name of the Wandering Albatross, diomedea exulans, who spend most of their life in flight, rarely landing, going hours without even flapping their wings. The albatross is a symbol of good luck, a curse, and a burden, and sometimes all three at once. Pronounced “ek-suh-lan-sis.” From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Ne’er-Be-Gone (n.) a person who has no idea where their home is, or was, or when they might have left it—which leaves their emotional compass free to swing around wildly as they move from place to place, pulling them everywhere and nowhere all at once, making it that much harder to navigate.



"To teach well, we need not say all that we know, but only what is useful for the pupil to hear."
- Jean-François de La Harpe

[BIAD]

@BIAD - Holy Rockin Alice I did not know that! The rock nor about Carroll...

(Just as a little add-on -if I may, to the 'Alice' post)


In the afternoon on the fourth of July in 1862, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was with the Liddell sisters
enjoying some boating on the river Thames and entertaining the daughters of his Dean at Oxford University with his
newly-formed fantastic tale of regarding a girl called Alice.

The book 'Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland' would be published later in July of 1865 and Lewis would be so
unhappy with the reproduction that he recalled all the copies. It's believed only six are known to survive today.
It wouldn't be until November of the same year that the second edition would be published and by then, Carroll
had managed to cajole the story into a better reflection of how he strangely perceived reality.

A decade before the tranquil boat ride with the Liddell girls, Lewis Carroll's father was the Canon-in-residence at
Ripon Cathedral and spent three months of each year on the hallowed estate. The young man was there during
the Cathedral's restoration and one part of the renovations was enhancing the misericords, the wooden ledges
on which members of the clergy could rest their rumps while standing.

The unnamed craftsman decorated the cleric stalls with curious carvings of creatures such as pelicans, griffins,
dragons, monkeys and Blemya, which were headless, shrunken humanoids from Greek legend. One display
shows a griffin chasing a rabbit towards its burrow.


Carvings on the misericords.

Four years after the publication of 'Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland', Lewis' sister -Mary, married the Reverend
Charles Collingwood and lived in the Holy Trinity Rectory of the North-East village of Southwick. The Collingwoods
are said to have had a stuffed walrus at their home and just four miles north in Whitburn, Carroll is said to have
met a carpenter coming home from a Sunderland ship-building company.

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things:
Of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax, Of cabbages, and kings,
And why the sea is boiling hot, And whether pigs have wings."

Although, some suggest Carroll's idea for the Walrus & The Carpenter poem could've came from his visits to Whitby
where his brother got married in the coastal village of Sleights.

As mentioned in an earlier post, the north-eastern hamlet of Whitburn seems to surface quite markedly in the Lewis
Carroll narratives. He did visit Baronet and prominent Freemason Sir Hedworth Williamson's -now-demolished manor
house in Whitburn village. It was here where the young Carroll played croquet and watched white rabbits that the once
Member of Parliament and  High Sheriff of Durham had introduced to his estate.


Whitburn Hall.

In 'Alice Through the Looking Glass', Carroll related his Jabberwocky poem and in it he denotes 'my beamish boy' as
the slayer of the weird beast. Leaving the Sockburn Worm connection to one side, 'Beamish' is also a village in County
Durham.
...................

Forgive my interruption of your fine thread.

[EndtheMadnessNow]

BIAD - Wow! Feel free to interrupt anytime. Did not know he had recalled all copies. I can only imagine what one would go for in a (private) auction. That Ripon Cathedral is amazing. The age alone is astonishing to me.


March 16, 1926: Robert H. Goddard (October 5, 1882 – August 10, 1945), a professor in physics at Clark University, successfully launched the first liquid-fueled rocket at Aunt Effie's Farm in Auburn, Massachusetts. The rocket, propelled by liquid oxygen and gasoline, went up to an altitude of 41 ft; average speed 60 mph; in air 2.5 sec; landed 184 ft from launching frame. This event was the "Kitty Hawk" of rocketry.


With new financial backing, Goddard eventually relocated to Roswell, New Mexico, in summer of 1930, as recommended by Charles Lindbergh where he worked with his team of technicians in near-isolation and relative secrecy for years.

Goddard was able to flight-test many of his rockets, but many resulted in what the uninitiated would call failures, usually resulting from engine malfunction or loss of control. Goddard did not consider them failures, however, because he felt that he always learned something from a test. This is very similar to Elon Musk's SpaceX adventures. Too bad Goddard didn't live a little longer when the Nazis came on scene as he was very secretive of his work and very distrustful of the militaristic Germans. Goddard was credited with 214 patents for his work; 131 of these were awarded after his death.

"Don't you know about your own rocket pioneer? Dr. Goddard was ahead of us all."
– Wernher von Braun, when asked about his work, following World War II.

Jeff Bezos Blue Origin Goddard is the name of the first development vehicle in Blue Origin's New Shepard program, which flew for the first time on November 13, 2006. Named after rocketry pioneer Robert H. Goddard, the vehicle is a subscale demonstrator and flew up to a height of about 279 ft during its initial flight.


March 16, 1945: Maj Gen Harry Schmidt declared that Iwo Jima was secure after 25 days of combat. A pocket of Japanese defenders continued to fight for two more weeks. ADM Nimitz's quotation about the courage of the Marines is inscribed on the USMC War Memorial in Arlington, VA.




March 16, 1968: Robert Kennedy announces bid for presidency...and The My Lai massacre...And everything yet to come.


The days of 1968 match up with 2024 now that we passed Feb 29th.
March 31, Sunday, will be Easter this year. It is also the Sunday (night) when LBJ announced he would not run. Let’s hope 2024 is not as tumultuous as was 1968. Sadly, I think it will be worse.


March 16, 1979: THE CHINA SYNDROME opened in New York and Los Angeles. 12 days later... well, you know.




Disruptive children at play...


Climate Protesters Disrupt Broadway Play Starring Jeremy Strong

Put them on a ship back to England. The US Navy needs a target for practice. Err, maybe a little too coarse. Set them on a heading for Pitcairn Island.

The Mutual Assured Destruction cult:




An Enemy of the People (1978) - Steve McQueen, Bibi Andersson. A scientist stands against an entire town when he discovers their medicinal spa is polluted.






Youtube playlist of interview excerpts: Feynman: the Pleasure of Finding Things Out

March 16, 1995: Mississippi formally ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment was officially ratified in 1865. Minor oversight...sigh.






In 1987, Casio released the TM-100, possibly the most unusual digital watch. It embedded circuitry to transmit audio signals with a telescopic antenna and could broadcast the audio to nearby radios over FM frequency.

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Actress Angela Greene says Happy St Patrick's Day!


Actress Angela Greene was born February 24, 1921 in Dublin, Ireland. Died February 9, 1978 in Los Angeles, California from a stroke. She was married to Stuart Warren Martin, on Dec 7, 1946; real estate tycoon and scion of the wealthy Wall Street Strauss family; divorced in February 1975. She dates Navy lieutenant John F. Kennedy and on their first date he takes her to Gary Cooper's house.
Late August 1962, she is among the guests honoring President John F. Kennedy in Beverly Hills. On his way out, Kennedy stops momentarily in the vestibule to shake hands with her and her daughters Madeline, 10, and Patricia, 8. "I first knew the President when he was a naval officer in PT boats. I didn't think he would remember me. My daughters were thrilled and so was I that such a busy man would be so kind as to stop and say hello."


Another day, another reminder that The Twilight Zone is the only thing that makes sense.


Amazon (2024)


Beer port arrival...Royal Navy Vanguard-class ballistic missile submarine coming into Faslane, Scotland - March 17, 2024.



First section of Irish Navy’s new submarine delivered...





GYPSY ROLL 100. A U.S. Navy Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet of Strike Fighter Squadron 32 "Fighting Swordsmen" launches from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) in the Red Sea on 5 March 2024. Their radio callsign is Gypsy and their tail code is AC; motto: Deus et Patria ("God and Country"). The Fighting Swordsmen of VFA-32 are the 2023 recipients of the Mutha Fighter Spirit Award, awarded annually at the Navy’s Strike Fighter Ball in Norfolk, VA.


All aboard the Boeing 737 Classic!









Apple Vision Pro interest dead by St. Patrick's Day.






Van Halen song "Jump" hit No. 1 on the US singles charts, March 17, 1984.

[EndtheMadnessNow]

R.I.P. Lieutenant General, USAF Thomas Patten Stafford, born Sept 17, 1930 in in Weatherford, Oklahoma, passed away March 18, 2024. He was an American Air Force officer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut, and one of 24 astronauts who flew to the Moon.

He flew aboard Gemini 6A in 1965 and Gemini 9A in 1966. In 1969, Stafford served as the commander of Apollo 10, the second crewed mission to orbit the Moon. On the mission he, along with Gene Cernan, became the first to fly an Apollo Lunar Module in lunar orbit, descending to an altitude of nine miles.


Beginning in 1973, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) team trained extensively in Russia and the United States. Soyuz 19, carrying Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov, launched on July 15, 1975, at 12:20 UTC, followed by Apollo at 19:50 UTC. After two days in space, Soyuz and Apollo docked on July 17, where the crews met and conducted joint experiments and held press conferences. After remaining docked for 44 hours, the two spacecraft undocked on July 19. Soyuz returned to Earth on July 21; Apollo remained in orbit until July 24. While descending, the Apollo command module began filling with nitrogen tetroxide from the reaction control thrusters. The crew donned oxygen masks, but Brand lost consciousness and had to be assisted by Stafford. All crew were safely recovered aboard USS New Orleans, and were hospitalized in Hawaii for edema (swelling) from fuel inhalation.

Stafford became a Lieutenant General on March 15, 1978, and on May 1, 1978 assumed the duties as the Deputy Chief of Staff, Research, Development and Acquisition, at USAF Headquarters in Washington, D.C. During that time he was personally involved in initiating the F-117A Stealth Fighter program. In early 1979, Stafford wrote the initial desired specifications on and started the development of the B-2 "Stealth Bomber." Stafford retired from the Air Force in November 1979.

In June of 1990, Thomas Stafford chaired a team to independently advise NASA how to carry out President H.W. Bush's vision of returning to the Moon, this time to stay, and then go on to explore Mars. He assembled teams of 40 full-time and 150 part-time members from the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and NASA, to complete the study called "America at the Threshold," a road map for the next 30 years of the U.S. Manned Space Flight Program. In 1994, Stafford chaired the committee to review and make recommendations to enhance the efficiency of the research and development initiatives of the NASA Human Exploration Enterprise.

Stafford co-founded the Technical Consulting Firm of Stafford, Burke, and Hecker, Inc. in Alexandria, Virginia. He also is on the Boards of Directors of six corporations listed on the New York Stock Exchange, one listed on the American Exchange, and two others, including Seagate Technology, Inc. He has served as an advisor to a number of governmental agencies including NASA and the Air Force Systems Command.

In addition to being just the eighth person to earn the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, General Stafford also holds two NASA Distinguished Service Medals, two NASA Exceptional Service Medals, the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters, the Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross with one Oak Leaf Cluster, the Air Force Outstanding Unit Award with one Oak Leaf Cluster, the Air Force Commendation Medal, and the Air Force Command Pilot Astronaut Wings. He currently resides in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Thomas Stafford quote:

"This is the greatest honor of my life. I am very proud to have contributed to our nation's future in space and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have participated in the beginning of America's venture into the new and endless frontier." (Upon receiving the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.)

The New Mexico Museum of Space History

Eagle Has Landed - Man's Journey To The Moon (1969)

March 18, 1965: Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov (30 May 1934 – 11 October 2019) became the first human to walk in space. Hero of the Soviet Union (twice) in 1965 & 1975. Art by the man himself:




March 18, 1956: Navy vets William and James Conway launched Mister Softee. Mister Softee Inc. was founded in 1956 by brothers William Aloysius Conway (1922–2004) and James Francis Conway (1927–2006) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Headquartered in Runnemede, New Jersey since 1958, Mister Softee became one of the largest franchisors of soft ice cream in the United States with more than 600 trucks in 15 states.

Even more memorable than the company's soft ice cream is its jingle, played on a music box and broadcast through a loudspeaker atop each truck. Once heard, the song is not soon forgotten. For some listeners, it heralds summer. For others, it recalls childhood. For still others, it constitutes a form of torture. Their sons now run the company.


Did you know that Mister Softee ice cream trucks were part of the Civil Defense network during the Cold War? They carried a generator, water, freezer and PA system that could provide aid in the event of an attack or so that was the plan.




In June 1961, Doug Quattlebaum, an American Piedmont blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, was "re-discovered" playing popular and blues songs through the public address system of his Mister Softee ice cream van. The blues historian, Pete Welding, who became known for discovering talent in unusual places, heard his performances and arranged for him to record an album. Released by Bluesville Records, Softee Man Blues (1963) had a photograph of Quattlebaum in his ice cream uniform on its front cover.

By 1961, the mobile soft serve industry was referred to as "one of the fastest growing phenomena in the nation’s economy" and it was estimated that there was about $80 million in sales during 1960. In addition to Mister Softee and Dairy Dan, there were about a dozen or so other privately held mobile soft serve companies, many of whom were based out of Pennsylvania and New Jersey because nearly "80% of all the soft serve ice cream consumed in the United States” was produced in four states: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Indiana." The rapid growth is best exemplified by Mister Softee, which started in 1955 with six trucks with $100,000 in sales and grew to 1600 trucks by 1960 grossing approximately $25 million.

In addition to the concern about protecting small cities and towns and the pressure from the Federal government for industry and private corporations to do their part, the mobile soft serve companies likely saw volunteering their trucks as an easy way to gain publicity and further embed themselves as good citizens in the marketplace of the suburban neighborhood from whom they earned their livelihood. In addition to the appearance of the clean white truck, promotions for kids, their military-like uniforms, the Civil Defense decal served to help further position a sales truck as “in place” and acceptable in the uniform and highly regulated suburban neighborhood.

This notion of being “in place” and appearing as a good citizen was especially important during a time when there was an escalated degree of surveillance going on within neighborhoods. While the ice cream trucks of the 1950s and 1960s are often remembered fondly for their expected presence as a part of summer days and evenings of suburban American childhood, they are excluded from most narratives about participation in civil defense and the intersection of government, private corporations, and the suburban nuclear family. The ice cream trucks and their participation in civil defense illustrate the degree to which Cold War militarization pervaded the everyday experience. Not always delivered through expected channels, ice cream trucks’ civil defense volunteerism demonstrate the ways that the privatization of defense during the Cold War came cleverly cloaked in ice cream dessert, childish graphics, carefree music, and everyday ritual of neighborhood families.

Quoted from "Ice Cream Trucks & Civil Defense" thesis by Leah Scolere; Cornell Univ. PhD program, Department of Communication, Minor in History of Architecture and Urban Development.



Russian larp prophecy or a warning shot across the bow?


NY Post

Buckingham Palace has provided proof of life...




Catzilla on the prowl...


Not the Bee


I ordinarily don't care why anyone is nutty enough to crawl into a hole and pull it in after him; I just figure it is one less damn fool underfoot. But some residual tinge of professional conscience prevents me from letting any man, no matter how sorry a specimen, climb into one of these coffins while his brain is sodden with alcohol.
-Robert A. Heinlein, The Door Into Summer (1956)

The Door into Summer is a science fiction novel by American science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (October, November, December 1956, with covers and interior illustrations by Kelly Freas). It was published in hardcover in 1957.

The idea for the novel came from an incident outlined by Heinlein later:

    When we were living in Colorado there was snowfall. Our cat—I'm a cat man—wanted to get out of the house so I opened a door for him but he wouldn't leave. Just kept on crying. He'd seen snow before and I couldn't understand it. I kept opening other doors for him and he still wouldn't leave. Then Ginny said, "Oh, he's looking for a door into summer." I threw up my hands, told her not to say another word, and wrote the novel The Door into Summer in 13 days.

The novel opens in 1970 with Daniel Boone Davis, an engineer and inventor, well into a long drinking binge. He has lost his company, Hired Girl, Inc., to his partner Miles Gentry and the company bookkeeper, Belle Darkin. Darkin had been Dan's fiancée, deceiving him into giving her enough voting stock to allow her and Miles to seize control. Dan's only friend in the world is his cat, "Pete" (short for Petronius the Arbiter), a feisty tomcat who hates going outdoors in the snow.
Wiki

The Door into Summer parts one, two, and three with illustrations by Kelly Freas on the Internet Archive.


March 18, 1982: Hacker David Lightman shows off his skills to friend Jennifer by booking a flight. Then, he dials in to a computer with an interesting list of video games.




March 18, 2006: Somali pirates attacked the USS Cape St. George and USS Gonzalez. Pirate skiffs had chased a couple of small boats before opening fire on the ships with RPGs and small arms. The ships returned fire and set a pirate skiff ablaze with a .50 caliber tracer round. Now this brings back some memories...

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Marking the anniversary of the passing of Eisenhower administration staffer Bradley H. Patterson Jr. born Dec 5, 1921 - March 19, 2020. Mr. Patterson was involved in the Cold War Operation Alert '55 AND was deeply involved in COG matters.


He was a tough old goat, Brad summited five of America's 14,000 foot mountains. At 74 years old, Brad trekked to 17,500 ft to see Mount Everest.

He served in the Department of State from 1945 to 1954, and as the Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet under President Eisenhower from 1954 to 1960. In 1960, Brad won the Arthur S. Flemming Award as One of the Ten Outstanding Young Men in Federal Service. During the Kennedy Administration, from 1961 to 1962, he became the first Executive Secretary of the Peace Corps under Sargent Shriver. Brad then served, from 1962 to 1966, as National Security Assistant at the Treasury Department, graduating from the National War College in 1966. From 1966 to 1967, he was the Executive Director of the presidential National Advisory Commission on the Selective Service. In 1969, Brad returned to the White House to serve as an Executive Assistant to Leonard Garment under President Nixon. During his tenure under Garment, Brad helped to implement President Nixon's policy of Indian Self-Determination. He was instrumental in returning Blue Lake to the Taos Pueblo, restoring fishing rights to the Yakima, and passing the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. He personally intervened in the AIM takeover of the BIA building, the occupation of Alcatraz, and the standoff at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

Beginning in 1974, Brad served as staff aide to First Lady Betty Ford, and from 1975 to 1976, he was President Ford's Assistant Director of the Office of Presidential Personnel. From 1977 to 1988, Brad joined the Brookings Institution as a Senior Staff Member of their Center for Public Policy Education. Brad was elected National President of the American Society for Public Administration from 1984 to 1985. He served as a member of the American Political Science Association and an associate of the Center for the Study of the Presidency. For over 30 years he was also a member of the Potomac Corral of the Westerners.

Brad authored three books about the White House Staff, Ring of Power: The White House Staff and Its Expanding Role in Government (Basic Books, 1988), The White House Staff: Inside the West Wing and Beyond (Brookings Press, 2000), and To Serve the President: Continuity and Innovation in The White House Staff (Brookings Press, 2008). Washington Post Columnist, David Broder wrote that Brad "has made a specialty of examining the workings of the White House and probably knows as much as anyone about how to organize the presidency." In 2004 he was awarded the University of Chicago National Alumni Association's Professional Achievement Citation.

Bradley H. Patterson, Jr. Obituary

Note that Dr. Anthony Fauci's entrance into the permanent bureaucracy club when he received the Flemming award in 1979 and 5 yrs later becomes the director of NIAID in 1984.


Raise a glass (or two or three or...) to Patrick McGoohan, March 19, 1928 - Jan 13, 2009.




Larry Blake, the auteur behind the 1961 civil defense scare album, "The Complacent Americans," was born March 19, 1915 - died in 1971.



Tracklist:
This Side Is Not Pleasant... Nor Is Nuclear Warfare... Hear
It Is Suggested That This Side Not Be Played For At Least 10 Minutes, Following Side One. "You Will Survive"

The Complacent Americans Clip 1: Civil Defense Scare LP:




March 19, 1955: Former CIA black ops agent Frank Moses (and Bruce Willis himself), were born.





Your Daily Exclusive 'kinetic' encounters with UFOs!


Veteran paratrooper reveals British special forces recovered a downed 'non-human' craft in northern England in late 1980s



March 19, 2012: Amazon acquired the robot maker Kiva. Within a year, it had 1,000 robots and by 2015 had 15,000. In August 2015, the company officially changed its name from Kiva Systems LLC to Amazon Robotics LLC. Today, it has more than 750,000 robots. In July 2022, Amazon unveiled its first-ever autonomous mobile robot (AMR) Proteus.

In Greek mythology, Proteus is an early prophetic sea god or god of rivers and oceanic bodies of water, one of several deities whom Homer calls the "Old Man of the Sea". Some who ascribe a specific domain to Proteus call him the god of "elusive sea change", which suggests the changeable nature of the sea or the liquid quality of water. He can foretell the future, but, in a mytheme familiar to several cultures, will change his shape to avoid doing so; he answers only to those who are capable of capturing him. From this feature of Proteus comes the adjective protean, meaning "versatile", "mutable", or "capable of assuming many forms". "Protean" has positive connotations of flexibility, versatility and adaptability.

Proteus syndrome is a horrible genetic disorder that is also named after the Greek sea-god Proteus, who could change his shape. The techno billionaire nerds want to turn us into disfigured mindless zombie slaves. With help from the AI fake media world of course. Black mirror horrors beyond your wildest nightmares.


Wow, would ya look at that...


NY Gassin Times Clickbait headline and that's the whole article captured, with a video mocking the term. Parody times given they're not even using/defining the term correctly.






Foundation for Economic Education


Not sure how a sequel would work, but here we go...


Michael Mann confirms "HEAT 2" will be his next film & that he is deep into pre-production.
Radio France and IMDB


First look at a Wookie Jedi in...

[EndtheMadnessNow]

For the first day of spring... the glorious print of tulips from Robert John Thornton's stunning "Temple of Flora" and "The Sacred Egyptian Bean" (1807):



And.... for all in the southern hemisphere here's a rendition by the Trinity Choir of James Edmeston's 1820 hymn "Saviour, Breathe an Evening Blessing."

Rendition by the Trinity Choir of James Edmeston's 1820 hymn "Saviour, Breathe an Evening Blessing", which somehow, on its journey to disc, ended up being enigmatically appended with the title "Autumn". The composer is listed as being Louis Van Esch, about whom we couldn't find any information. An architect by profession, Edmeston was best known for his prolific hymn writing — the total number of which was said to total more than 2000, one written every Sunday.

"Savior, Breathe an Evening Blessing"
by James Edmeston

Savior, breathe an evening blessing
Ere repose our spirits seal,
Sin and want we come confessing;
Thou canst save, and Thou canst heal.

Though destruction walk around us,
Though the arrows past us fly,
Angel guards from Thee surround us;
We are safe if Thou art nigh.

Though the night be dark and dreary,
Darkness cannot hide from Thee; Thou art He who, never weary,
Watcheth where Thy people be.

Should swift death this night o'ertake us
And our couch become our tomb,
May the morn in heaven awake us,
Clad in light and deathless bloom.

The image seems to first appear in L’atmosphère: description des grands phénomènes de la Nature, written by Nicholas Camille Flammarion, a French astronomer in 1872. The image may have been made by Flammarion himself, and thus bears his name, but really we don’t know who created it. The image includes a caption which reads: “Un missionaire du moyen âge raconte qu’il avait lrouvé le point oû le ciel et la Terre touchent.” “A missionary from the Middle Ages says that he had found the place where heaven and earth touch.” We don’t know Flammarion’s source for this medieval missionary. All we know is that he appears to have used the image to showcase a mistaken understanding of the cosmos, namely a Christianized Ptolemaic understanding of the cosmos as one might find in Dante.

The Flammarion Engraving

The Flammarion engraving is a wood engraving by an unknown artist, so named because its first documented appearance is in Camille Flammarion's 1888 book L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire ("The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology"). The wood engraving has often, but erroneously, been referred to as a woodcut. It has been used as a metaphorical illustration of either the scientific or the mystical quests for knowledge and, more recently, of the psychedelic experience.






1983 Winner of four Primetime Emmy's SPECIAL BULLETIN began with Mr. Zwick's dream of nuclear annihilation. The TV movie premiered on NBC on March 20, 1983. When this film was first broadcast, the network superimposed the word "dramatization" on the bottom of the screen every few minutes and ran disclaimers after every commercial break, to remind people it was only a movie. That didn't stop some people in Charleston, South Carolina from panicking anyway.


Excerpt from the director's book Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood (2024) by Ed Zwick:

During one such sob session, I told him about a terrifying dream I'd had the night before about seeing TV news of imminent nuclear annihilation, and how I woke up, sweating and unable to breathe, still believing it to be real.

"We should do it!" he said.

"Do what?"

"Pitch it as a movie!"

"I'm talking about an anxiety attack, not a development deal!"

"I'm serious," he said. "What if we were to tell a story on TV but we did it only through what you would be able to see on the news."

"You mean, like Orson Welles's War of the Worlds?"

"Except not about aliens. We'll choose something more plausible and terrifying."

"Like nuclear annihilation, you mean."

"And we'll create all the news footage ourselves."

"Like The Battle of Algiers?"

"Never heard of it."

And so it began.

Book excerpt: "Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions" by Ed Zwick

Dick Higgins, the Navy radioman whose amphibious plane was utterly demolished in the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, died Tuesday in Bend, Oregon. He was 102.

Higgins was born July 24, 1921, to a cotton-farming family in Oklahoma that was besieged by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl ecological disaster, Higgins said during a video interview in 2022 with the American Warriors YouTube channel.

He enlisted in the Navy in 1939 and trained as a radio operator.

At the time of the attack, Higgins was stationed on Ford Island as a radioman in a squadron of PBY Catalina amphibious planes, which were used for patrol bombing and anti-submarine warfare. They could carry bombs and torpedoes.

A PBY hangar on Ford Island was the first thing to be bombed that morning, noise that sent Higgins and his fellow sailors racing to get outside, he said in the interview. They were stopped by Marine Corps guards at the doors.

“They wouldn’t let us out until the first wave had slacked off a bit,” he said. “[The Japanese] were strafing everything that moved — and some things that didn’t.”

When they did exit, most ran to the runway to roll undamaged PBYs away from the blazing remains of others.

“We were very busy that morning trying to save planes,” Higgins said in the interview. “There were tracers going right past the wing of the plane I was pushing on,” he said.

“The plane I flew wasn’t there; it was a crater about seven feet deep and 20 feet in diameter. No PBY anywhere.”

It likely had disintegrated from the explosion of its full gas tanks and bombs, he said.

Higgins was unscathed by the attack.

“I didn’t even get a Band-Aid,” he said. “I guess I lucked out.”

Luck stayed with him for the rest of the war as he flew missions in a PBY in the vicinity of what is now Indonesia.

Higgins made a career in the Navy, retiring in 1959 as a chief petty officer. In subsequent years he worked for General Dynamics and Northrup Corp.

Stars And Stripes

When I was stationed on Ford Island I would sometimes walk the old airstrip tarmac and count the bullet holes (hundreds) from the Jap strafing.


Shall we play a game?

In Greek mythology, Tantalus so angered Zeus with his treachery that his punishment was to go thirsty and hungry while standing in an always receding pool of water with bountiful fruit trees just above his reach. His fate serves as a reminder to humanity that foolish actions can lead to unpredictable and enduring consequences.

At Sandia, the name Tantalus is associated with an experimental multiplayer online war game used to study different conditions within cyberdeterrence strategy. More importantly, the game is a human research study to gather data about how people’s decisions during threatening situations can impact national security.

“We’re interested in understanding the theory of cyberdeterrence — the notion that the threat of cyberattacks can modify or inhibit the actions of others,” Jon Whetzel, the lead online game designer, said.

To learn more about the human element of cyberdeterrence, researchers pursued increasing Sandia’s experimental war-gaming capabilities, and the Program for Experimental Gaming and Analysis of Strategic Interaction Scenarios created Tantalus. As part of the PEGASIS portfolio, Tantalus was a three-year Laboratory Directed Research and Development project on cyberdeterrence funded through the Energy and Homeland Security Investment Area Team. The project recently ended, and the team published its preliminary findings in September.

Combining scientific rigor with the art of war game design

Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences.

“We consider real-world problems,” said systems research analyst Jason Reinhardt. “And the war games are a laboratory where we can experiment on deterrence problems and understand how they change under different circumstances.”

Tantalus is a three-player war game where players navigate between building and defending their nation. Players act as the leader of a hypothetical country with a mission to increase key “metrics” in their country’s mining, infrastructure and manufacturing while fending off attacks from rival countries. The game consists of 12 to 18 randomly selected rounds, with four phases per round: Planning, Threats, Revision and Execution. Players choose to influence or deter each other by force (kinetic, cyber or nuclear) or engage in espionage.

“We wanted to have the players strive for something that could be taken out of reach by the other players,” Jon said.

Full article: Sandia cybersecurity analysts created an online war game - Press the "Start Tantalus!" button to access the tutorial and game! Only Chrome and Firefox are supported.



Another victim of the dreaded "loss of confidence" - WTF is going on!!!

Naval Special Warfare Command commander Rear Adm. Keith Davids relived the commodore of Naval Special Warfare Group Eight Wednesday, citing a loss of confidence.

The Special Warfare Command release does not indicate where Capt. Richard Zaszewski, who took on the command in August 2021, according to his releasable biography, will go. Deputy Commodore Capt. Stig Sanness assumed the commodore duties.

“There is no impact to NSWG-8’s mission readiness,” reads the release.

There are no additional details about what led to the loss of confidence in Zaszewski’s ability to command.

Zaszewski’s career has mostly been in special warfare since he commissioned into the Navy through the Villanova University Reserve Officer Training Corps. He reported to his first East Coast-based special warfare unit in May 1998.

Since then, he has been a part of nine other special warfare units. His releasable biography does not indicate which units or what billets he had.

Prior to taking over as commodore of Naval Special Warfare Group Eight, Zaszewski was at the Joint Special Operations Command in Fort Bragg, N.C.

Over his career, Zaszewski has been awarded a Silver Star, three Bronze Stars and a Legion of Merit, among other commendations.

Navy Removes Special Warfare Group 8 Commodore from Command

Hmmm, there's Fort Bragg again.



Ultra Rare Pepsi guaranteed original early 1950s cone top design can.


I've seen a few on eBay going for $1000 dollars, for one!


Sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor designed Ocean Atlas, a 60 ton, 18-foot high sculpture that lies beneath the sea near New Providence in the Bahamas. It represents a young girl holding the weight of the ocean. He has underwater sculptures all over the world.




First trailer for Fede Alvarez's Alien: Romulus (2024) movie. The new Alien film takes place between the events of Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) and while the film does not directly follow the Ellen Ripley story arc - it very much still connects to the first two films, as well as Ridley Scott's Alien prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Alien: Romulus' official release date is set for August 16th, 2024.




Weird Al warned us...

[EndtheMadnessNow]

March 21, 1924: Popular English music hall comedian T.E. Dunville kills himself at 56 by leaping into the River Thames in London. He leaves a note to his wife: "I feel I cannot bear it any longer. Goodbye!"




March 21, 1924: The first mutual fund, the Massachusetts Investors Trust, is launched in Boston. The fund pools cash from small investors to buy a basket of many stocks; its open-ended capitalization allows stockholders to withdraw at any time. Sherman Adams (Jan 8, 1899 – October 27, 1986) runs the venture. As a politician he was best known as White House Chief of Staff for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the culmination of an 18-year political career that also included a stint as the 67th governor of New Hampshire. He lost his White House position in a scandal when he accepted an expensive vicuña (wool) coat and an oriental rug.



The trust's initial $50,000 is raised through brokerage channels; this grows to $2.5 million in two years amid the 1920s stock boom. Although the trust loses 83% of its holdings to the Crash of 1929, it survives and is still in business today as MFS Investment Management. They are one of the oldest asset management companies in the world.


March 21, 1966: memo from Mount Weather: "Do Not Remove From Installation." Special Facility Bulletin No. 1 concerning "Rabies Problem." Found at the LBJ Presidential Library.




In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. Earth Day, and so it began, climate change, depopulation, a round table of Malthusians and puppet charlatans and here we are.


Earth Day is April 22, 2024 and the official theme for 2024 is "Planet vs. Plastics."



50 years ago, Candy Darling, transsexual actress and friend of Andy Warhol, dies of lymphoma in New York City. She was 29. Best known as a Warhol superstar, she starred in Andy Warhol's films Flesh (1968) and Women in Revolt (1971), and was a muse of the Velvet Underground.


She left a sad letter on her deathbed:

Finally, having spent most of his life emulating Hollywood's great tragic divas, Candy became one herself: "By the time you read this I will be gone," she writes in a letter to Warhol and other friends from her death bed. "Unfortunately before my death I had no desire left for life . . . I am just so bored by everything. You might say bored to death. (D)id you know I couldn't last. I always knew it. I wish I could meet you all again."

On March 19, 2024, Cynthia Carr published Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar, a biographical portrait of the queer icon and Warhol superstar.


March 21, 1963: Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, known for housing notorious criminals like Al Capone and the "Birdman of Alcatraz," officially closed after 29 years. The decision was made to close it based on high operational costs and deteriorating facilities due to its location in San Francisco Bay.




1969 British film Moon Zero Two, released in USA in March 1970. The film takes place in May 2021. What happened Elon???



Catherine von Schell, born July 17, 1944 in Budapest, Hungary, real name is Katherina Freiin Schell von Bauschlott, the scion of a once wealthy German patrician family. Her father, the Baron Paul Schell von Bauschlott, was a well-respected diplomat until the Nazis confiscated their estates during WWII, while her mother was Countess Katharina Maria Etelka Georgina Elisabeth Teleki de Szék.

Her family was living in poverty until 1948 when they sought asylum in Vienna and Salzburg as the communist regime began to take hold in Hungary. In 1950, her family emigrated to the States and Baron von Schell Bauschlott renounced his title in order for his family to gain citizenship. Catherine entered a convent school in New York's Staten Island area. In 1957, her father joined Radio Free Europe, taking the family to Munich where she developed an interest for acting and trained at the prestigious Falconberg School. Her inauspicious debut (sometimes billed as Catherine von Schell) was in the German film Lana, Queen of the Amazons (1964).

Through her German great-grandfather, she is a great-niece of King Louis XIV of France, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, 7th Prime-Minister of France, and Franz I & II & III, 50th Holy Roman Emperor and 8th Grand-Duke of Tuscany and former Duke of Lorraine.

Both the director and writer of "Lana, Queen of the Amazons" are of German aristocrat bloodlines.


Married twice, no kids, she is now known as Catherine Hays after her second husband, Bill Hays who died in March 2006. Retired from acting in 2004, but came out of retirement, starting with the Netflix series Dracula (2020).

Actor and dancer Yvonne Castelle was paralyzed for life after an accident on the film's Moon Zero Two set, remaining bedridden for 10 years.

The film's lunar surface sets and models were so well done some were re-used in other television productions for many years afterwards, appearing in the likes of UFO (1970), Moonbase 3 (1973) and Space: 1999 (1975), as well as the feature films Superman II (1980), Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) and as recently as Duncan Jones' debut film Moon (2009).



"We have a cancer — within, close to the presidency, that’s growing."

- John Dean to Richard Nixon, March 21, 1973



Audio and transcript: Watergate Trial Tapes


March 21, 1974: Belly dancer Zizi Mostafa (1943-2008) provides after dinner entertainment for Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, (seen third from left), and her husband, Greek shipping millionaire Aristotle Onassis, (wearing dark glasses, on right), who removed wine glasses from the table to make the way for the bejeweled feet of the exotic dancer at a Cairo nightclub late March 21st - the first day of the couple's private holiday to Egypt with a party of millionaires. At the age of 16 she quickly became one of the most popular actresses in Egypt and throughout the Arab world.






And now a word from our sponsor...

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Floppy top o’ the mornin to ya...




Today's Chuckle comes to us from the March 22, 1965 edition of the York, Pennsylvania Dispatch.

Dragoons were originally a class of mounted infantry, who used horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight on foot. From the early 17th century onward, dragoons were increasingly also employed as conventional cavalry and trained for combat with swords and firearms from horseback. While their use goes back to the late 16th century, dragoon regiments were established in most European armies during the 17th and early 18th centuries; they provided greater mobility than regular infantry but were far less expensive than cavalry.

The name reputedly derives from a type of firearm, called a dragon, which was a handgun version of a blunderbuss, carried by dragoons of the French Army.

The title has been retained in modern times by a number of armoured or ceremonial mounted regiments.

The Dragonnades were a French government policy instituted by King Louis XIV in 1681 to intimidate Huguenot (Protestant) families into converting to Catholicism.

March 22, 1965: Bob Dylan's LP "Bringing It All Back Home" was released. The album cover photo by Daniel Kramer includes one of the most famous Fallout Shelter Sign cameos in history. Daniel Kramer describes the creative process behind the cover photograph.




Der schwarze Kanal (The Black Channel)



Translation from German:

The digitized broadcast manuscripts - The black channel

In 1998, the German Broadcasting Archive decided to digitize the broadcast manuscripts of the GDR political magazine The Black Channel (1960-1989), whose preservation was at risk, and to make them accessible to a broad audience via the Internet as part of the Distributed Digital Research Library. This project was financially supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The presentation of the broadcast manuscripts is supplemented by references to sources and literature as well as the integration of audio and video material from the DRA's holdings.

Fade to Black

When WW2 ended in 1945, it left communist and capitalist systems eyeball-to-eyeball in the centre of Europe and no more so than in what remained of Hitler’s fortunately short-lived ‘thousand-year’ Reich.

With Germany divided geographically, politically and militarily, both governments in the country were left with a problem -broad swathes of western Germany and almost the entire eastern zone could receive each other’s radio and VHF television output.

For most west Germans and the Federal Republic’s government, this was not a real problem. While ARD and later ZDF picked up a reputation for quality television (by mainland European standards), the Democratic Republic’s television service was, to try to be fair, awful at all times. Western viewers would rarely tune in for anything other than a laugh and were certainly never propagandised by it.

However, the situation was rather different in the east. While the west, as an open society, made few moves against communist broadcasting, the rulers in the east were not so forgiving.

Geography prevented the number one choice – jamming the signal. The need for the largely isolated GDR to live up to its laughable middle initial also made it diplomatically impossible to jam ARD’s transmissions.

So the Orwellian Ministry of Information in East Berlin chose a different tack.

West German television didn’t openly aim propaganda at the east. But its existence itself was a challenge – providing easterners with unbiased and accurate news, ‘capitalist’ entertainment and a forward-looking world view that the Politburo did not share.

Unable to prevent the population from watching, they created Der schwartz Kanal, ‘The Black Channel’, a peak-time ‘news’ programme where government (or Stasi) approved journalists provided a commentary over re-broadcast ARD and ZDF programmes.

In these bizarre, not to say downright creepy, programmes, West German broadcasts were pulled to pieces, with the presenter explaining to the audience the ‘real’ meaning behind the broadcasts they knew the population had been secretly watching.

News was freely re-interpreted. Drama was shown as nothing but arch propaganda against East German ‘democracy’. The lives of westerners were shown to be empty, lacking fulfilment and above all cold to the concerns of each other except where money was involved.

The Stasi – the secret police – kept files on more than a third of the population. Building its profiles from informers, the Stasi requested that East German schoolteachers ask children to draw what clock they saw on television the night before.

Almost invariably it was that of ARD. And that, in the strange world that was communism, was reason enough to keep the Black Channel open.

Television in Germany began in Berlin on 22 March 1935, broadcasting for 90 minutes three times a week. It was home to the first regular television service in the world, named Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow (TV station Paul Nipkow). The station was named after Paul Gottlieb Nipkow (22 August 1860 – 24 August 1940), the "father of television" and the inventor of the Nipkow disk. Nipkow's glory was used by Hitler and the Nazi government as a tool of National Socialist scientific propaganda.

While still a student, he invented a device he entitled the "electric telescope". The key component of this invention later became known as the "Nipkow disc". Accounts of its invention state that on Christmas Eve, 1883 when he sat alone at home with an oil lamp, he conceived the idea to use a spiral-perforated disk to divide a picture into a mosaic of points and lines. Another important component of his invention was a selenium photocell.

Nipkow applied for a patent in the imperial patent office in Berlin for his electric telescope. This was for the electric reproduction of illuminating objects, in the category "electric apparatuses". German patent No. 30105 was granted on 15th January 1885, retroactive to 6th January 1884, the 30 marks fee being lent by his future wife. It was allowed to lapse after 15 years. Nipkow had taken a position as a designer in the Berlin-Buchloh Institute and did not continue further development of the electric telescope.

The first practical television systems used an electro-mechanical picture scanning method, the method that Nipkow had helped create with his disc; he could claim some credit for the invention. Nipkow recounted his first sight of television at a Berlin radio show in 1928: "the televisions stood in dark cells. Hundreds stood and waited patiently for the moment at which they would see television for the first time. I waited among them, growing ever more nervous. Now for the first time I would see what I had devised 45 years ago. Finally, I reached the front row; a dark cloth was pushed to the side, and I saw before me a flickering image, not easy to discern."

A few years later, the leadership of the Third Reich saw the propaganda value in claiming television was a German invention, and in 1935 named the first public television station after Nipkow. Paul Nipkow appearing on German TV in the late 1930sHe became honorary president of the "television council" of the Reich Broadcasting Chamber. Nipkow died on the 24th of August, 1940 in Berlin. By government order, he was given a state funeral.

BAIRD TELEVISION

And lest not forget...



In 2006, Baird was named as one of the 10 greatest Scottish scientists in history, having been listed in the National Library of Scotland's Scottish Science Hall of Fame. In 2015 he was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame. In 2017, IEEE unveiled a bronze street plaque at 22 Frith Street (Bar Italia), London, dedicated to Baird and the invention of television. In 2021, the Royal Mint unveiled a John Logie Baird 50p coin commemorating the 75th anniversary of his death.

This is a photograph of a live image of Paddy Naismith, the first color television image displayed for the public in the UK, a demonstration made by famed Scottish television pioneer, John Logie Baird in 1941. The image was produced by a two-color system using dual projection CRTs combining their image onto a screen. The image shows famed adventurer Paddy Naismith, known as a race driver, air hostess and model of the 1930s and 40s.

BAIRD TELEVISION

This site is primarily about John Logie Baird (1888–1946), the Scotsman who was the first person in the world to demonstrate a working television system. On January 26th, 1926, a viable television system was demonstrated using mechanical picture scanning with electronic amplification at the transmitter and at the receiver. It could be sent by radio or over ordinary telephone lines, leading to the historic trans-Atlantic transmissions of television from London to New York in February, 1928.

You will discover herein not only information on Baird and his life's work, but also snippets and stories about other pioneers of television and the development of the television industry to the present day. Updates are made to the site every few months by its creators Malcolm H.I. Baird and Iain L. Baird who are respectively the son and grandson of J.L. Baird.

This is the oldest surviving color television in the world. It uses a color system invented in 1937 by Scottish engineer John Logie Baird.



National Museums Scotland

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Continuing...

H.G. Wells and J.L. Baird

by Malcolm Baird, January 2021

This year the Royal Mint has issued coins to mark the 75th anniversaries of the deaths of two highly creative British figures, one in literature and the other in science and technology. A 2-pound coin will recognise the novelist H.G. Wells (1866-1946), one of the earliest writers of science fiction a 50 pence coin will recognise John Logie Baird (1888-1946) and his pioneering work on television. The idea of television provides a connection between Wells the writer and Baird the inventor.

In Wells' novel The Sleeper Awakes (1899) the leading character, Graham, falls into a deep trance from which he awakes two centuries later without having aged in any way. This passage gives an uncannily accurate description of a video player, although lacking technical details:

[Graham] puzzled over this peculiar cylinder for some time and replaced it. Then he turned to the square apparatus and examined that. He opened a sort of lid and found one of the double cylinders within, and on the upper edge a little stud like the stud of an electric bell. He pressed this and a rapid clicking began and ceased. He became aware of voices and music, and noticed a play of colour on the smooth front face. He suddenly realised what this might be, and stepped back to regard it. On the flat surface was now a little picture, very vividly coloured, and in this picture were figures that moved. Not only did they move, but they were conversing in clear small voices.

As a boy growing up in Scotland, John Logie Baird was an avid reader of Wells and he had this to say when he wrote his memoirs in 1941:

I read a great deal of everything and anything and it is interesting to consider what out of all this I have retained. ...One popular author, however, soars far above all others and takes his place among the classics. In my boyhood and youth he was a demi-god, the reading of any new book by him I regarded as a feast: this was H.G. Wells, and today he still occupies a high place although he is no longer a demi-god. I have met him in the flesh and not many can submit to this ordeal and remain gods, certainly not H.G. Wells, that pleasant stubby little man with the squeaky voice. Nonetheless of the popular authors of my youth he is the only one who survives and actually takes his place among the classics.

Although there is no firm evidence that Baird was inspired by The Sleeper Awakes, it seems probable. It is known that he acquired a book by the German physicist Ernst Ruhmer on the photoelectric applications of the metal selenium. He found that the electric signals obtainable from selenium were extremely weak, but the idea of television stayed at the back of his mind until the 1920s by which time amplifiers were available. After three years of intense research, he demonstrated television to members of the Royal Institution on 26 January 1926.



Baird and Wells met for the first and only time in October 1931 onboard the Aquitania, en route to New York. Rather disappointingly, the two men found little to talk about. A later passage from Baird's memoirs ends this story:

Mr. Wells proved to be a substantially built man of medium height with a cap pulled over his eyes, utterly void of any affectation or any effort to impress. A great anticlimax it seemed after the magnificent Sir Oliver Lodge and other overpowering press personalities. No imposing facade here, only a poor vulgar creature like myself. We had a short chat about youth camps. I said these organisations appear to ignore sex. 'Oh well' he said, 'every Jack has his Jill', and that is all I remember of the conversation with my demigod.

H.G. Wells and J.L. Baird

Flash forward to present, Germans can celebrate 420 day with us Americans come April Fools'. LOL!


Germany legalises cannabis possession for personal use from April


Great short story from 2018 by Kim Asch:

They were the women responsible for sending and receiving coded messages between federal agencies in the event of a cataclysmic attack on  Washington, D.C.

They practiced their work in the subbasement of Lewis Hall of Science in a classified mission so cloaked even their own families were not privy.

The facility itself was perhaps the worst-kept secret on campus, but the story of what actually went on inside the bunker secured behind vaultlike doors, and of the women who faithfully carried out their work there, remained a mystery until now. Years after the program ended and was declassified in 2000, three of the women recruited and trained to maintain the operational readiness of the facility feel they can safely share their story.

“That’s the first time I typed on an electric typewriter,” says Herr, who had worked as a secretary on a manual model. The women became early computer users, long before the College or most any other civilian institution adopted them. They also learned to send encrypted messages on the KL-7, a cipher machine developed by the National Security Agency. They became adept at decoding incoming messages.

Hering says she felt “a greater sense of urgency” the one time she accompanied her supervisor, Marjorie Spangler Zerkel, to “the mountain,” the nickname for the bunker nestled into a hillside at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. That was the facility designed to house every member of the House and Senate in the event of Armageddon. “I don’t remember exactly why, but I remember taking our work even more seriously after that.”

6 page PDF

Alice Liddell, who inspired Alice in Wonderland (or was it Alexandra (Xie) Kitchin) at 80 years with Peter Llewelyn-Davis. In 1932, two years before her death, Alice Liddell, who was then eighty, was invited by Columbia University to the events to mark the centenary of Lewis Carroll's birth. During this visit to the United States, Alice met Peter Llewelyn-Davies, one of the brothers who inspired the character Peter Pan. This event was the central theme for the excellent movie "Dreamchild" released in 1985.


So... does this mean that Wonderland & Neverland share continuity?

The film's opening prologue reads: "In 1932, Alice Hargreaves, who long ago was Lewis Carroll's 'Alice' in Wonderland, is invited to New York City to celebrate his centenary. It is her first visit to the New World."

An exhibition about Alice in 2021 at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, has the Dreamchild poster in it, along with a page of Dennis Potter's script depicting the tea party. There is also a short clip from the film, with the ageing Alice Liddell seeing the ghost of Lewis Carroll, as well as the Mad Hatter, March Hare and the White Rabbit.


Explore PDR essays on poetry themes, including pieces on John Milton, Walt Whitman, G.M. Hopkins, A.C. Swinburne, Lewis Carroll, and Phillis Wheatley.




March 21, 1989: USS Tennessee (SSBN 734) conducted the first undersea test launch of the Trident II ballistic missile off the coast of Florida. It did not go well:




March 22, 2233: James Tiberius Kirk (prime timeline) was born in Riverside, Iowa. He shares his birthday with his real life counterpart, William Shatner, who turns 93 today!




2017 headline / 2024 headline:



Feline D’Rothschild...









Stop in for a nightcap...Good night...

[Freija]

50 years ago, Candy Darling, transsexual actress and friend of Andy Warhol, dies of lymphoma in New York City. She was 29. Best known as a Warhol superstar, she starred in Andy Warhol's films Flesh (1968) and Women in Revolt (1971), and was a muse of the Velvet Underground.


She left a sad letter on her deathbed:

Finally, having spent most of his life emulating Hollywood's great tragic divas, Candy became one herself: "By the time you read this I will be gone," she writes in a letter to Warhol and other friends from her death bed. "Unfortunately before my death I had no desire left for life . . . I am just so bored by everything. You might say bored to death. (D)id you know I couldn't last. I always knew it. I wish I could meet you all again."

On March 19, 2024, Cynthia Carr published Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar, a biographical portrait of the queer icon and Warhol superstar.

Candy Darling is mentioned in verse two of Lou Reed's epic song, Walk on the Wild Side. Verse one refers to Holly Woodlawn a person of similar persuasion and another Warhol associate.

Holly came from Miami, F.L.A.
Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she

She says, "Hey, babe
Take a walk on the wild side"
Said, "Hey, honey
Take a walk on the wild side"

Candy came from out on the Island
In the back room she was everybody's darling
But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head

She says, "Hey, babe
Take a walk on the wild side"
Said, "Hey, babe
Take a walk on the wild side"

And the colored girls go
"Doo do doo do doo do do doo..."

[EndtheMadnessNow]

CBS newsman turned head of Office of War Information turned ABC newsman, Elmer Davis, (1890-1958; Rhodes Scholar) played himself as commentator (uncredited) in the original The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Director of the United States Office of War Information during World War II. Davis was considered to be one of the greatest news reporters of the mid-20th century, on a level with Edward R. Murrow.



“The first and great commandment is: Don’t let them scare you.”

OWI head Elmer Davis spread Soviet Katyn propaganda lie in World War II Voice of America broadcasts

President Roosevelt’s chief propagandist Elmer Davis was formerly a well-known New York Times reporter and CBS news commentator. FDR hired him because of his popularity as a radio announcer with a great voice for delivering news, and urged him to continue his radio broadcasts in the United States while working for him in the Office of War Information. Elmer Davis did, thus giving President Roosevelt and the White House an opportunity to propagandize to Americans during wartime. These domestic and international broadcasts did include a lot of useful factual information, as well as anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist messages. However, they also included pro-Soviet messages, including propaganda and lies which Stalin wanted Americans and VOA’s foreign audiences to hear.

At the same time, the Voice of America was not broadcasting in Russian because pro-Soviet Roosevelt Administration officials apparently were afraid of offending Stalin. VOA would not start its Russian-language broadcasts until 1947. While working as the head of the Office of War Information and recording commentaries for the Voice of America and domestic radio networks in the United States, Elmer Davis  managed to deceive and confuse U.S. media and public opinion by claiming that reports of Polish officers being killed by the Russians in the Katyn Forest massacre were “fishy’ and “phony propaganda stories.”

The New York Times reported his radio comments on May 6, 1943, but other New York Times reports highlighted facts pointing to Russia’s hand in the mass murder. At that time, the Voice of America would not report any negative news about the Soviet Union, Stalin or communist parties and front organizations controlled by Moscow. In 1943 VOA news was written and edited by Howard Fast, a best-selling author of historical novels  who later worked for the Communist Party USA newspaper The Daily Worker and received the 1953 Stalin Peace Prize. He also spent three months in a Federal prison after his conviction for contempt of Congress.

"The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people's minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized."
— Elmer Davis, as quoted in Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (1990).


So, you’re telling me that on Skull & Bones day 3/22, ISIS, a terrorist organization named after the Egyptian goddess of fertility, attacked Crocus City Hall, a place named after a flower that symbolizes fertility, during Ostara, a pagan holiday that celebrates fertility?

Like Easter, symbols of Ostara include the crocus flower and rabbits. And on the same day as the terrorist attack, CERN launched the White Rabbit Collaboration. Shortly after, NASA announced it will send discs to the Moon. The Moon is associated with fertility and rabbits in many pagan traditions as well.

People have also pointed out how the footage of the terrorist attack was reminiscent of Tenet’s opening scene. Tenet was a movie about time travel. And some conspiracy oriented folks claim CERN is a time machine. In movies like Donnie Darko and Alice in Wonderland, the white rabbit is linked with time travel.

Tenet was loaded with Saturn symbolism too. In Greek mythology, Saturn was called Cronus, the god of time. And NASA claims Saturn has a hexagonal storm on its North Pole that rotates at about 322 kilometers per hour. So, what does all of this mean? Nothing. Our world is run by sorcerers.



Wikipedia uses this reference image of the Crocus theatre, which not only looks a lot like the one in Tenet (set in Ukraine) but notice the calling card left behind in the one eye on stage.





Crazy synchromysticism...



CERNunnos of course and NASA is getting in on the high-tech sorcery shenanigans for the Equinox.


NASA to send discs depicting ‘essence of humanity’ to the Moon

CERN launches the White Rabbit Collaboration




The White Rabbit Project

One company directly involved with the Rabbit network is Integrasys, a privately owned company specializing on engineering and manufacturing Satellite Spectrum Monitoring Systems in the telecommunication and broadcasting markets. Conveniently located 20 minute drive from CIA HQ. Integrasys was founded in 1990 by a group of Hewlett-Packard engineers, experts on Automated RF & Microwaves Test Systems and Software.




Got'em!



"It has been said of dreams that they are a 'controlled psychosis,' or, put another way, a psychosis is a dream breaking through during waking hours."
— Philip K. Dick (VALIS, 1981)


When you are losing a War just call upon your terrorist outfits. ISIS is an Israeli proxy force maintained by the US. Problem is that "ISIS" has so many factions under so many names nobody on the outside really knows who they are other than a band of mercenaries, which every developed country has at least one on retainer. Also, I seem to recall Trump said when he was in Office that ISIS has been annihilated, as in exterminated, wiped off the planet, Gone! I guess that got resurrected...or were never wiped out.


VLAD VOWS REVENGE

The British taught the U.S. and Israel how to use proxy forces as a fulcrum to drum up conflicts on demand. In the 1920's MI6 agent St. John Philby helped to create the Arab proxy forces that eventually precipitated:

1. Muslim Brotherhood
2. Mujahedeen
3. Al-Qaeda (the database)
4. ISIS

The British have always been skilled at fomenting counter insurgent strife then benefiting gain from the ensuing chaos.


What came directly after finding oil? > WWII.

[EndtheMadnessNow]

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1...7266257987


March 24, 1919: USS Idaho (BB-42) was commissioned. During WWII, the Japanese claimed to have sunk the battleship three times but she survived the war and was in Tokyo Bay to witness Japan's surrender. This is the Idaho punching enemy installations on Okinawa in 1945.



March 24, 1944: 76 Allied officers tunneled out of Stalag Luft III in what became known as "The Great Escape". Today is also the birthday of actor Steve McQueen who starred in the 1963 movie based on the event. McQueen served in the U.S. Marines from 1947 to 1950.




Early 1950s...


Found a 52 page copy at State University Libraries of Florida


40 years ago today, on March 24, 1984, the students in "The Breakfast Club" spent their day in detention.




Pick one and sing along...




Magazine covers for March 24: 1947, 1953, 1958, 1974, 1986, 2003.




The Central Banks want to blanket The Earth with Internet...

So, everyone is tied into The Digital Control Grid...

Some claim Elon Musk is providing this service on Multiple Fronts...


CBDCs for the People

Speaking of multiple fronts...



The watchers of the techno overlords say the greatest threat humanity currently faces...is being pushed by RAND Corporation, The WEF & The Central Banks...

The Internet of Bodies Is Here

I have my doubts, but we'll see.


New York City’s longest-running arthouse cinema, The Paris Theater had The Parallax View screening today.




And across the pond...




50 years ago today, the jazz-fusion band, Weather Report, released their album, Mysterious Traveler.