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Post by slowcoach on Oct 4, 2017 22:35:01 GMT 2
I guess it will not have gone unnoticed that it is 60 years to the day since man created Earth's first artificial satellite with the launch of Sputnik, so that is not where my current focus is. Rather a strange event that occurred a few days later.
To be Continued ...
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Post by auntieannie on Oct 4, 2017 22:53:18 GMT 2
waiting with bated breath
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Post by slowcoach on Oct 6, 2017 14:49:50 GMT 2
Keep that breath on hold
It isn't the Windscale Fire (10th October 1957) the UK's and at that time, Europe's worst nuclear accident, and one that set the trend for people discovering that when nuclear reactors go bad it is very difficult to know what is going wrong, and why, and no one knows what to do for the best, as the operating manuals don't cover the current crisis, and that it is best to lie to the public about how serious it is and just how much of a close-run-thing it was.
To be Continued ...
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Post by slowcoach on Oct 9, 2017 9:14:56 GMT 2
It is October 1957, the world is agog with the news of Sputnik, and the pit of fear and loathing that is the Cold War had just got a whole lot more menacing.
Meanwhile just outside the small town of Dover in Kent County, the capital of Delaware, a waitress and the manager of a Howard Johnson restaurant have managed to get through their day so far without making a pivotal intervention in geopolitics when two men in suits walk through their door.
One of them is handed the two 30c orange juices he requested, but they have been packaged to go by the waitress who tells them that they are not entitled to use the restaurant facilities, the manager is summoned and he tells them the same.
The man proffers a dollar, tells them to keep the orange juices, and the change, and that they hadn't heard the last of this.
He, Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, Minister of Finance of Ghana, the worlds newest Country and the first of Britain`s black African colonies to gain independence, was right, they hadn't heard the last of this, it was rather quick to become big news.
A foreign emissary had been snubbed, for which the White House apologised, and Gbedemah was invited to have breakfast with Ike.
Gbedemah wanted to breath life back into the Volta River Project, which had stalled when the UK revealled that it didn't have the money to back it. Dick, the WH dog's body, who already knew Gbedemah was dispatched to sort out some meetings with the State Department.
And that is how the project got US backing, and the Volta River was damned to provide electricity to power Kaiser Aluminum's smelters.
Ever since I first heard this story I have always wondered whether it was a put up job. Somehow it just seems too cute.
I have since discovered that it seems that Prime Minsiter Kwame Nkrumah thought it could have been a stunt.
The other gentlemen involved in the incident was Bill Sutherland. Here is a post event annotation made on a diplomatic telegram from: Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Ghana (Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Africa, Volume XVIII)
Here is the whole telegram from Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles:
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Post by slowcoach on Oct 27, 2017 10:11:10 GMT 2
One of the world's great scientists, Walter Munk, was born just over 100 years ago, perhaps you have never heard of him.
Better still, he is still alive.
Much of his work was defence related, including predicting sea states for amphibious landings during WWII, and work that he did for JASON.
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Post by tzarine on Oct 28, 2017 3:16:51 GMT 2
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Post by slowcoach on Nov 21, 2017 21:51:47 GMT 2
It was forty years ago today!
Well not exactly and this is not about Sgt Pepper and fifty years.
No! It is about this record which changed popular music massively and permanently:
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Post by slowcoach on Nov 21, 2017 21:56:42 GMT 2
How come you ask?
On its initial release (1st May 1977), its B-Side was: PLAY LOUD
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Post by tzarine on Nov 29, 2017 17:45:11 GMT 2
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Post by slowcoach on May 16, 2019 10:36:59 GMT 2
A little bit of history that seems to have been lost and then found.
Plaques commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Liberation of Paris, of which the lower one looks rather like an afterthought:
Courtesy of Wikipedia
It is the story of "La Neuve" the Spanish antifascists that comprised the vanguard of the liberation.
I knew nothing about this until few months ago.
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Post by tzarine on Aug 23, 2019 16:14:31 GMT 2
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Post by Baz Faz on May 8, 2020 10:56:04 GMT 2
News just in (on VE day) of the last German military communication as decoded by Bletchley Park:
"Closing down for ever - all the best - goodbye."
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Post by suzanneschuelke on May 22, 2020 21:56:01 GMT 2
One of my favorites, from the University of Michigan (15 minutes from here) press release -
April 12, 1955
POLIO VACCINE EVALUATION RESULTS -- FOR RELEASE AT 10:20 E.S.T.
ANN ARBOR: The vaccine works. It is safe, effective, and potent.
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Post by slowcoach on Jun 14, 2020 4:58:22 GMT 2
If there is one thing that most Britons know for certain it is likely that it is the nature of "The Few", i.e. the pilots of Fighter Command who fought the Battle of Britain against German bombing of the UK during World War II.
The term comes from a speech to the House of Commons by Prime Minister Churchill on the 20th August 1940. The part that is quoted comes from a paragraph about halfway through the speech:
So there is little doubt that he is referring to airmen. The next paragraph provides clarification as to whom in particular he is referring:
Whereas he rightfully acknowledges the efforts of Fighter Command, it is to Bomber Command and in particular the daylight bombers that the heaviest of his praise is directed. At that time it was really only Bomber Command that could take the fight to the enemy.
At best one could say that the usual attribution to Fighter Command is a touch dubious at worst plainly wrong.
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Post by slowcoach on Jun 25, 2020 15:07:32 GMT 2
I was viewing some old B&W footage of London (1890-1920). One thing was very obvious, just how filthy dirty "The Smoke" used to be, at least the bits in the foreground were obvious, anything further afield was obscured by the incessant air pollution. It is not that it was badly littered, it wasn't, litter is a more recent disorder. It is that the structures are so blacken with soot and grime. This much seemed all to familiar. What did surprise me was the view of Threadneedle Street and the Bank of England building, for it was the old building. If you look at a picture of the modern BoE, and here is one from Wikipedia: You might, could hardly fail to, notice a portico 20 metres above were a portico ought to be, I have for years loathed its presence with some passion. What I now know is that it was an addition made above the facade which is all that was kept of the old John Soane design when the Bank was rebuilt. The video is set to start with an After and Before shot of the Bank contrasting present day with with past. The Portico is at the very top of the left hand image. FWIW, it is not just me that thinks like this, it is stated that Nikolaus Pevsner described the reconstruction as " the greatest architectural crime, in the City of London, in the twentieth century." I now know some of what he meant.
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Post by slowcoach on Sept 30, 2021 16:25:37 GMT 2
Forty Fifty years ago, something oddly significant happened in a basement on 265 West 54th Street NY. Some guys started making some boxes that modified sounds.
My limited connection with them started a little later, also in a basement, but at the southern end of Brick Lane, Whitechapel, London. That was site of the original SARM studios in Osborn Street and just a few steps to the north that of the first of the "Whitechapel Murders".
To begin with they made an analogue Phaser, but soon after that came a long line of digital audio modification devices. First a delay line, but after that, and most significantly the Harmonizer.
Their company was called Eventide Clock Works and they changed the way things sounded.
I am not sure that we knew precisely how the Harmonizer worked, or much cared. It made the human voice sound better, and that is all that mattered. Fuller, richer, smoother, are some of the adjectives that might apply, but perhaps at the expensive of also sounding a tad artificial, synthetic, electronic, cybernetic.
That was long ago, and I imagine much progress has been made since by many different manufacturers. Sometimes audio modification/distortion is obvious as when Cher sang through an auto-tune on Believe, sometimes it is a subltle, insidious, part of mainstream music, and sometimes the unmistakable staple of hip-hop.
I believe it is one of the reasons that records of the different eras sound so different, there is music before Eventide and music after Eventide.
ETA Because it was longer ago than I could believe!
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Post by slowcoach on Feb 1, 2022 16:34:21 GMT 2
I read today that someone has sold to someone else a game called wordle.
I recall visiting a computing dept at a local university, sitting a computer terminal and playing a game called moo. Moo was substantially the same game, just exchange four digits for five letters and restricting the hidden data to an English word. And in it being the 2020s and not the 1970s
Does anyone else remember moo?
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Post by Voy on Feb 2, 2022 4:32:47 GMT 2
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Post by auntieannie on Feb 2, 2022 8:33:07 GMT 2
ah, mastermind. now that brings back memories of hours spent playing this game with my family, in the chalet, on rare wet holiday days.
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Post by Voy on Feb 2, 2022 15:55:20 GMT 2
I had a mini mastermind, and had it with me in Peru - and played it nonstop on the train across the AltiPlano from Cuzco to Titicaca. Perfect - you didn't need a common language !
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Post by slowcoach on Aug 23, 2022 15:45:50 GMT 2
On the August 4, 1930, Pancho Barnes got into a plane, broke a record, and became the "Fastest Woman Alive".
Years later she ran and owned the Happy Bottom Riding Club at Muroc Field made famous by Tom Wolfe.
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Post by Baz Faz on Aug 26, 2022 11:04:44 GMT 2
The hunt is drawing to a close for the next British prime minister. The electorate is the 180,000 members of the Conservative Party, They are overwhelmingly white, middle aged, male and suburban. In no way do they reflect the UK population.
The frontrunner is Liz Truss. Since postal ballots are overwhelmingly in it is really pointless what they 2 candidates say each day. Except the stupid things they do say will have consequences when he/she is PM. So yesterday Liz Truss said something stupid even by her standards. She said "the jury is out" on Macrom the French president. How crass. Next month she will have to deal with Macron. Instead of praising him so he feels well disposed towards Britain she turns him against her (and therefore us).
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Post by Voy on Aug 26, 2022 13:56:15 GMT 2
Baz, when did she turn into the leader in the race? the last I heard it was Sunak ahead??
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Post by slowcoach on Aug 26, 2022 14:40:16 GMT 2
Sunak was favoured by Tory MPs, but Truss was the favourite amongst the Tory membership and has been since well before there was a vacancy.
ETA: The joke was that Truss was keeping Johnson safe in his job.
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Post by Baz Faz on Sept 24, 2022 11:23:07 GMT 2
It was World Paella Day on the 20th. Slow news brings this to you on the 24th.
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Post by slowcoach on Mar 5, 2023 17:58:59 GMT 2
Seventy Years Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili;[d] 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878[1] – 5 March 1953)
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Post by tzarine on Mar 5, 2023 19:20:32 GMT 2
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Post by tzarine on Sept 30, 2023 7:53:59 GMT 2
Sunak was favoured by Tory MPs, but Truss was the favourite amongst the Tory membership and has been since well before there was a vacancy. ETA: The joke was that Truss was keeping Johnson safe in his job. look what happened to truss www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-63334457
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Post by shrjeff on Sept 30, 2023 9:54:20 GMT 2
Keep that breath on hold
It isn't the Windscale Fire (10th October 1957) the UK's and at that time, Europe's worst nuclear accident, and one that set the trend for people discovering that when nuclear reactors go bad it is very difficult to know what is going wrong, and why, and no one knows what to do for the best, as the operating manuals don't cover the current crisis, and that it is best to lie to the public about how serious it is and just how much of a close-run-thing it was.
To be Continued ... slow certainly has summarized here Japan's original and ongoing responses to its nuclear mishap...
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