Category Archives: General

General

9000 Year Old Painting of Volcano Linked to Real Eruption…

This is the type of stuff I absolutely love to read about: An ancient painting of an exploding volcano has been linked to a real-life eruption that happened in and around that same time in Turkey:

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/9-000-year-old-painting-volcano-linked-real-eruption-8C11498570

The bottom line is that the painting is about 9000 years old and scientists have been able to determine that the Hasan Dag volcano erupted “8,970 years ago, plus or minus 640 years, according to a new dating technique that analyzes zircon crystals in volcanic rock“.

Which means that the painting was probably made in and around the same time the volcano actually erupted.  Therefore the painting may well be our very distant ancestors making a note of something they personally witnessed!

Fascinating, fascinating stuff!

General

More on the War of the Worlds Broadcast…

Yesterday I linked to an article from Slate magazine that explored the reality of the “panic” created by Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast of 1938 (you can read about that here).

Here’s another interesting article by Michael Roffman for Time magazine concerning the broadcast and its effects on culture.  As with the Salon article, I agree with many of the points Mr. Roffman makes.  Even if the so-called “panic” that supposedly resulted from the broadcast was probably more myth than reality, this does not negate the huge impact the broadcast had on the media, both then and -yes- up to and including today, even if many may not realize this.

Just goes to show, that Orson Welles fellow was pretty damn clever and anticipated many  of the things to come…

http://entertainment.time.com/2013/10/31/the-real-legacy-of-orson-welles-war-of-the-worlds-broadcast/

General

The Myth of the “War of the Worlds” Panic…

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I’ve always had this nagging suspicion that the stories of the panic that followed the broadcast of The War of the Worlds for radio by a young, pre-movie stardom Orson Welles and based on the equally famous science fiction novel by H. G. Wells (no relation) were exaggerated.

Granted, all this happened a long time ago -1938 to be exact- and mass media wasn’t quite as overwhelming as today so most of the stories I read furthered the idea that the broadcast did create a panic.  Yet I couldn’t help but think for this to have happened, we had to believe people back then were, bluntly, rubes.  Easily swayed.  Easily fooled.

But let me back up a moment.  The story of the radio broadcast of The War of the World goes like this:  The radio-play was presented as a “newscast” and it was the nature of the serious “reporting” within the play itself that fooled many people into thinking the events unfolding were actually real, that Earth/New Jersey was being invaded by Martians at this very moment.  Naturally, this was what supposedly caused the panic that followed.

Again, the question I (and others of course) asked was exactly how much of this panic was true?

In honor of 75 Anniversary of the transmission, Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow offer a fascinating article for Slate.com exploring the myth and reality of what actually happened when Orson Welles and company staged their infamous radio play, and the reality of the “panic” that followed:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/history/2013/10/orson_welles_war_of_the_worlds-panic_myth_the_infamous_radio_broadcast_did.html

At the risk of ruining a big chunk of the article, the authors state there is scant evidence there was any “massive” panic at all (the article goes as far as saying almost no one was “fooled” into thinking there was a genuine invasion and what panic there was was so minimal as to be “immeasurable”).

Which brings up the more intriguing question: Where did this panic story come from and why?

I found the answer to that one of the more fascinating things in the article and, no, I won’t give it away here.

Give the article a read, it offers a fascinating window into myth making.

General

The things you find on the internet…

…how about a fascinating article by Rebecca Onion for Slate magazine which offers examples and a link to a book of criminal slang from the 19th century?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/10/22/criminal_slang_19th_century_rogue_s-vocabulary_by_george_matsell.html

If this has you interested, check out the link to the full book on 19th century (more specifically circa 1850’s) slang:

http://archive.org/stream/cu31924073798740#page/n0/mode/2up

Some random words I came across in the book:

“Easy” = Killed

“Fork” = A pickpocket

“Frog” = A policeman (interestingly, “Pig” was also used as slang to describe a policeman, and this very insulting term remains used today.  You can find plenty of references to animals and many of them, like “Pig”, remain familiar even today.  “Pigeon”, for example, retains its meaning from the 1850’s, ie a criminal who may engage in a crime and then inform on his partners to the law.  A “Rat” remains a cheat).

“Jilt” = A prostitute who “hugs and kisses a country-man” while her accomplice(s) rob him.

“Pin-Money” = Money received by a married woman for prostituting herself.

“Roper-In” = A man who visits hotels and other places for the purpose of ingratiating himself with persons who have plenty of cash and little prudence…and then luring them to gaming houses, presumably to cheat them out of said cash.

“Shadow” = First class police officer.  Wonder if that was one of the original reasons why the name was chosen for the famous pulp character of the same name?

“Vampire” = A man who lives by extorting money from men and women whom he has seen coming or going out of houses of “assignation”.

This one is really fascinating: “Whip-Jacks” = Men who pretend to be shipwrecked sailors!  I imagine enough people pulled off this trick for this term to merit inclusion in the 1850 book, but I can’t help but wonder why people would pull that particular con in the old days.  In other words, what were they hoping to get for creating this story?  Sympathy?  Ill-gained charity?  Or perhaps lying their way onto cargo ships and a “real” job?

Fascinating, fascinating stuff.

General

Sports and Technology…

Absolutely fascinating article by Kevin Maney for Newsweek concerning SportsVU, a motion capture technology that will apparently be available to all viewers of NBA games starting with the next season, and what all this data means in terms of your viewing and -at least to me- what it might mean for the future of sports itself:

http://www.newsweek.com/nbas-tech-revolution-will-change-way-we-watch-sports-563

I’ve noticed on talk radio (I tend to listen to it while driving) how the conversation has shifted from generalities to data specifics.  We went from talking about how great a certain player was/is (generality) to where we now can find and look at their speed, their scoring percentages, their completion percentages, their success by quarter, etc. etc. etc.

The statistics are fascinating but, of course, can be messed up by player’s “off days”, where their performance may dramatically shift from their “norm.”

Then again, maybe we’ll get to the point where we can predict such dramatic shifts in performance.  How?  Perhaps by getting information regarding a player’s sleeping habits or how much they travel between games or how their diet, personal life, etc. etc. etc. affect their performances.

So much information to gather…so much information to sort.

Could it be possible that one day we take all this data and can effectively compute which team/player will win their given sporting event on a given day?

And if we do get to that point will sports, whose main draw is the fact that almost anything can happen and the outcome is often difficult to predict, no longer hold their luster to fans?

General

The pressure was getting to them…

…all of them apparently.  An apparently well known and liked Stenographer on the House floor snaps and rants on the floor following the vote to finally fund the government and raise the debt ceiling:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/17/stenographer-snaps-rants-on-house-floor/

Nothing much to add here but say that there obviously was plenty of pressure on everyone up there.

General

Vintage mugshots…

There’s a certain nostalgic fascination -at least to me- in seeing things like this, mugshots from the 1930’s and early 1940’s:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/08/vintage-mugshots_n_4044666.html

The very first presented image was especially fascinating:

2013-10-04-Lot59A.jpg

This young lady was 17 years old when the mugshot was taken in 1942, meaning that if she’s still alive today, she would be 88 or so years old.

Which makes one wonder:  What was her life like?  Did she continue to engage in these petty crimes (she was arrested, as noted in the mugshot description, for Shoplifting) or was this one of those silly teenage activities she did only this one time and learned her lesson?  Conversely, was this just one example of her criminal activities and spent the rest of her life in and out of correction facilities?  Could she have “moved up” to more serious crimes?

I’d like to think the rest of her life was far more pleasant than that particular moment in October of 1942…

General

Giant Asian Hornets Killing People in China…

The stuff of nightmares!

I first read about his at The Huffington Post here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/01/giant-asian-hornets-killing-people-china_n_4023249.html

But what really drew my attention to the article was this photograph of the Giant Asian Hornets’ queens:

 As I said before…the stuff of nightmares…Reminds me of something I saw many a moon ago…