Another reason why I stopped watching the local news station, years after its weatherman, “Gary said it would be like this” Dobbs, a former neighbour of ours who always looked scary with his heavy cake makeup at the grocery store before/after going on the air, left and came back: the owners/producers have no sense of humour.
Tag Archives: mass media
Daring to let go of past illusions
Are nation-states an illusion to you? If so, read on…
[from the NY Times]
Garry Davis, Man of No Nation Who Saw One World of No War, Dies at 91
By MARGALIT FOX
Published: July 28, 2013
On May 25, 1948, a former United States Army flier entered the American Embassy in Paris, renounced his American citizenship and, as astonished officials looked on, declared himself a citizen of the world.
Carl Gossett/The New York Times
Garry Davis, dean of the One World movement, in 1956. He had his own flag and passport, and often his own jail cell.
The New York Times
In 1948, five years before starting an agency to issue passports, Garry Davis distributed handbills in Paris. A stateless man, he was a relentless force behind a movement to erase national borders.
In the decades that followed, until the end of his long life last week, he remained by choice a stateless man — entering, leaving, being regularly expelled from and frequently arrested in a spate of countries, carrying a passport of his own devising, as the international news media chronicled his every move.
His rationale was simple, his aim immense: if there were no nation-states, he believed, there would be no wars.
Garry Davis, a longtime peace advocate, former Broadway song-and-dance man and self-declared World Citizen No. 1, who is widely regarded as the dean of the One World movement, a quest to erase national boundaries that today has nearly a million adherents worldwide, died on Wednesday in Williston, Vt. He was 91, and though in recent years he had largely ceased his wanderings and settled in South Burlington, Vt., he continued to occupy the singular limbo between citizen and alien that he had cheerfully inhabited for 65 years.
“I am not a man without a country,” Mr. Davis told Newsweek in 1978, “merely a man without nationality.”
Mr. Davis was not the first person to declare himself a world citizen, but he was inarguably the most visible, most vocal and most indefatigable.
The One World model has had its share of prominent adherents, among them Albert Schweitzer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Einstein and E. B. White.
But where most advocates have been content to write and lecture, Mr. Davis was no armchair theorist: 60 years ago, he established the World Government of World Citizens, a self-proclaimed international governmental body that has issued documents — passports, identity cards, birth and marriage certificates — and occasional postage stamps and currency.
He periodically ran for president of the world, always unopposed.
To date, more than 2.5 million World Government documents have been issued, according to the World Service Authority, the group’s administrative arm.
Whether Mr. Davis was a visionary utopian or a quixotic naïf was long debated by press and public. His supporters argued that the documents he issued had genuine value for refugees and other stateless people.
His detractors countered that by issuing them — and charging a fee — Mr. Davis was selling false hope to people who spent what little they had on papers that are legally recognized almost nowhere in the world.
What is beyond dispute is that Mr. Davis’s long insistence on the inalienable right of anyone to travel anywhere prefigures the present-day immigration debate by decades. It likewise anticipates the current stateless conditions of Julian Assange and Edward J. Snowden.
Mr. Davis, who spoke about the One World movement on college campuses and wrote books on the subject, seemed impervious to his critics. In a voice trained to be heard in the last balcony (he was once a Broadway understudy to Danny Kaye), he would segue with obvious relish into a series of minutely reasoned arguments concerning the need for a world without nationalism.
“The nation-state is a political fiction which perpetuates anarchy and is the breeding ground of war,” he told The Daily Yomiuri, an English-language newspaper in Japan, in 1990. “Allegiance to a nation is a collective suicide pact.”
The quest for a unified earth was an objective on which Mr. Davis had trained his sights very early. It was born of his discomfort with a childhood of great privilege, his grief at the loss of a brother in World War II and his horror at his own wartime experience as a bomber pilot.
Sol Gareth Davis was born in Bar Harbor, Me., on July 27, 1921, a son of Meyer Davis and the former Hilda Emery.
Meyer Davis was a renowned society orchestra leader known as the “millionaire maestro”: at his height, he presided over an empire of 80 ensembles — employing more than a thousand musicians — which played at debutante balls, national political conventions and White House inaugurations.
Garry was reared in Philadelphia in a glittering milieu in which the family car was a chauffeured Rolls-Royce and family friends included Bob Hope and Ethel Merman. As a young man he was considered unserious, he later said, known for roguish wit but lacking direction.
After studying theater at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Mr. Davis made his Broadway debut in October 1941 in a small role in “Let’s Face It!,” the musical comedy. He was also the understudy for its star, Mr. Kaye.
Then the United States entered the war. Mr. Davis and his older brother, Meyer Jr., known as Bud, went overseas — Bud with the Navy and Garry with the Army Air Forces, flying B-17 bombers. Bud Davis did not return: he was killed in 1943, when his ship, the destroyer Buck, was sunk off the coast of Italy by a German submarine.
That, and a dark epiphany during a bombing run over Brandenburg, Germany, Garry Davis later wrote, would alter his life’s course.
“Ever since my first mission over Brandenburg, I had felt pangs of conscience,” Mr. Davis wrote in a 1961 memoir, “The World Is My Country.” (The volume was later reissued as “My Country Is the World.”) “How many bombs had I dropped? How many men, women and children had I murdered? Wasn’t there another way, I kept asking myself.”
The other way, he came to believe, was to eradicate conflict by eradicating borders.
In November 1948, six months after renouncing his citizenship in Paris, Mr. Davis stormed a session of the United Nations General Assembly there.
“We, the people, want the peace which only a world government can give,” he proclaimed. “The sovereign states you represent divide us and lead us to the abyss of total war.”
His act, reported worldwide, earned the support of the intelligentsia, including Albert Camus, and of the French public, so recently racked by war. Less than two weeks later, speaking at a Paris auditorium, Mr. Davis drew a crowd of 20,000.
In 1949, Mr. Davis founded the International Registry of World Citizens and was soon inundated with requests to join from around the globe. “We’re bigger than Andorra,” he told The Boston Globe in 1981, when the registry was a quarter-million strong.
Today, more than 950,000 people are registered world citizens, according to the World Service Authority, based in Washington.
Mr. Davis, who lived for long periods in France, appeared on Broadway a few more times in the early 1950s, including in a revue called “Bless You All” and “Stalag 17,” the prisoner-of-war drama. But the One World imperative occupied him increasingly.
In 1953, he founded the World Government of World Citizens. The demand for its documents proved so brisk that he established the service authority the next year.
More than half a million world passports have been issued, though there are no statistics on the number of people who have successfully crossed borders with them. A half-dozen countries — Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Mauritania, Tanzania, Togo, Zambia — have formally recognized the passport. More than 150 others have honored it on occasion, according to the service authority.
Fees for the passport range from $45 (valid for three years) to $400 (for 15 years). The passport has text in seven languages, including Esperanto, the artificial international language.
Carrying world passport No. 1, Mr. Davis spent decades spreading his message, slipping across borders, stowing away on ships, sweet-talking officials, or wearing them down, until they let him in. The newspapers charted his comings and goings:
1949: “Garry Davis Arrested in Paris”; 1953: “Garry Davis Held Again: Arrested When He Camps Out Near Buckingham Palace”; 1957: “France Expels Garry Davis”; 1979: U.S. Court Rules ‘World Citizen’ Davis Is an Alien and Rejects His Passport; 1984: “Japan Expels American ‘World Citizen’ ”; 1987: “ ‘World Citizen’ Announces Presidential Bid.” (It was the United States presidency this time.)
In 1986, Mr. Davis ran for mayor of Washington, receiving 585 votes.
Mr. Davis was arrested dozens of times, usually for attempting to enter a country without official papers. He had canny ways of circumventing authority.
In the 1950s, when France was trying to deport him, he conspicuously shoplifted items from a Paris department store. (His haul, United Press reported, was “$47 worth of peach-colored lace panties, black-silk brassieres, black garter belts, lace petticoats and pink slips.”) He made certain he was arrested.
As a result of his arrest, Mr. Davis was legally enjoined from leaving the country.
Mr. Davis was married two or three times, depending on how one counts. His first marriage, to Audrey Peters, an American whom he courted by mail while detained in France and whom he met for the first time two weeks before their wedding in 1950, ended in divorce. In 1954, the newspapers reported his “marriage” at sea to Gloria Sandler in a ceremony he performed himself; that union, too, was dissolved. His marriage to Esther Peter in 1963 also ended in divorce.
Survivors include a daughter, Kristina Starr Davis, from his marriage to Ms. Peters; two sons, Troy and Kim, and a daughter, Athena Davis, who confirmed her father’s death, from his marriage to Ms. Peter; a sister, Ginia Davis Wexler; a brother, Emery; and a granddaughter.
His other books include “World Government, Ready or Not!” (1984) and “Dear World: A Global Odyssey” (2000). He was the subject of a short documentary, “One! The Garry Davis Story,” released in 2007.
In old age, Mr. Davis was far from idle. Last year, he had a world passport delivered to Mr. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.
Just weeks before he died, Mr. Davis had a world passport sent, via Russian authorities, to Mr. Snowden, the fugitive former national security contractor accused of violating espionage laws, whose United States passport was revoked in June.
Mr. Snowden could not be reached for comment.
Stacks of bound wood fibre
[notes to self stored here for posterity]
If nothing is guaranteed, when even death and taxes are illusions, then what’s next for me?
I use seven billion data points for references as to the types of behaviour I am capable of emulating.
What I don’t always have is the set of previous behaviours and environmental changes which led to the current behaviour that every one of the seven billion is exhibiting in this moment.
Am I or am I not a caged beast?
As a caged beast receiving food, clothing and shelter, what am I getting now that I wouldn’t get if uncaged?
And the opposite, what am I not getting now that I would get if uncaged?
All the objects in this room contribute to me and my set of memories, the result of previous behaviours and environmental changes which led to the current behaviour, writing here in this blog instead of something else like finishing a fence, sealing the crawlspace, going out for lunch with coworkers or reading a book bought at full retail price.
I use police/military/government/authority references as a form of self-flagellation, punishing myself for thoughts of actions I have not taken.
I do know who am I, sometimes in forethought, sometimes in hindsight, often as I am in the moment.
How many of us treat our lives like a Disneyland ride, pretending to be alive, teasing ourselves with the idea of dangerous adventure, looking at photos of ourselves pretending, and are completely satisfied?
I have the fortune of a good, working body, unfamiliar with the different levels of “caged beast” feelings like a quadriplegic, extreme schizophrenic or locked-in syndrome person would describe.
I, I, I. When it’s not about me, it is about me. Altruism is a guilt complex, not necessarily always a default position to take.
These words fall on the deaf ears of history, repeating the works of both the great and the famous, the insecure and the infamous.
Either I am going to break the stitches of bound stacks of wood fibre and get outside the books within which I hide myself or I am not.
It is not so much the risks I fear as it is overcoming the lazy habits of a caged beast that would require working more constantly to secure my uncaged state that keeps me here.
What is happiness and does it have anything to do with what I’ve written so far?
What about these musings from Lady J?: [How much am I like her husband? I need not ask my wife. I already know I am.]
We talked. Yet again. This time, however, we chatted casually in the kitchen. It wasn’t intense. This conversation needed to happen though, and I didn’t know how to have it without sounding like a nagging harpy. I really want to believe the best about people, and I make a point to look for what is good in others. That was my starting point.
I don’t know how the conversation got started, but I do remember this:
“I have two choices. I need your help in telling me what is true. From where I’m standing it either looks like you don’t care, or it looks like you are forgetting to do what you said you would do. I want to believe that you care, but I also want the truth. So, I need you to be honest with me.”
He looked shocked. “Of course I care! I love you!”
“Okay…So, you care. Then, I want you to explain to me why you don’t keep your promises. Are you forgetting?” I asked him this question very calmly in an almost friendly manner. I had to feel almost as if I wasn’t invested in his answers so that he wouldn’t feel accused or cornered because I had a theory regarding his forgetfulness.
“What promises?”
“Well, have you read Dr. Amen’s book? Have you called your internist for a referral to a psychiatrist so that your medication could be changed? You said you would do that last December. It’s July.” He blanched. “Have you taken care of the backyard?” I gently asked him.
“Well, I went to Home Depot today to look at some products…” he explained.
“We went to Home Depot almost three weeks ago and already bought something for the backyard. Do you remember that? It’s out back.” He looked mystified. “It sat on the kitchen floor in the Home Depot plastic bag for a few days. The cat started sniffing around it. She got her head caught in the bag. It scared her. She thought the weed killer was chasing her so she ran around the house with the bag around her neck and hid under the couch. Does any of this ring a bell?” He looked up in an effort to jog his memory.
“God, why can’t I remember these things?!” he exclaimed with frustration.
“Do you really want to know? I have an idea.” I asked him. He nodded.
“Well, I think you have a working memory problem much like three of our daughters do. It’s often inherited. I’ve watched you struggle for years when it comes to planning things. I think your executive planning is impaired a bit. I don’t think it’s anywhere near where Grace’s is, but I do think it’s a problem for you. People with ADHD have executive planning problems. You will function much better in your relationships if you acknowledge that this is an issue for you and make allowances for it. You have more technology than you can shake a stick at. Start using it. Put reminders in your laptop or phone to remind you when you have something to do. Don’t count on your memory to remind you. It won’t. If you really care about me, then you need to start putting an action plan together that will help you keep your promises. As it stands, you are not able to do that. It’s affecting your credibility.”
He made his thinking face. “I’m sorry. I got distracted by work, and I was working last weekend, you know.”
I planned for this response. “You worked while we went to the movies on Saturday, but then you were done. Am I correct?” He nodded. ”You remained on your laptop for hours after that. You were reading Gizmodo and other sites. This tells me that you had time to read Dr. Amen’s book. You had time to close your laptop and engage your family. You had time to close your laptop and do something else. This is about choices, and this is about a habit or a lifestyle. You need to hear me when I say this to you. You are a husband, a father of four, and a homeowner. Technically, there is never a time when you have nothing to do. If you sit down in your room with your laptop to kill time, then it’s because you are deliberately choosing to ignore your parental responsibilities, spousal responsibilities, and homeowner’s responsibilities. When you say ‘yes’ to your laptop and killing time with that machine, you are saying ‘no’ to everyone and everything else, and you are placing your responsibilities on me in addition to my responsibilities. That is, in fact, the lifestyle that you have chosen to pursue for the majority of our marriage. You cannot continue to live like that if you want your daughters to respect you because they are beginning to figure some things out about gender roles. It’s simply not morally right for you to take your happiness at my expense. Have you ever seen me sit around and do nothing? Think about that before you answer. Have you? Why do you think it’s so hard for me to read the books for book club? When do I have time to even sit down and read a book? Where do you think that Fibromyalgia diagnosis came from?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re right. I…” he sighed. I swept the floor while he processed my words. It was a lot to take in, but I’ve said all those words before. There was nothing new in what I said, but sometimes you have to continually speak to a person’s identity repeatedly before the truth sticks. I don’t know how my husband sees himself. I can only tell him how I see him. He is my husband. He is the father of our children. He is my partner in life, and yet he lives as a bachelor who occasionally shows up to help. This is an identity problem. I’m not suggesting that we don’t need to take a break and recharge. We do, but he tends to take a break from his individualism to participate rather than taking a break from fatherhood and being my husband.
I have to stop here and explain something about expectations in marriage or even in relationships. We all have expectations–hidden expectations. If two people married, rented an apartment, maintained their own jobs and separate checking accounts, socialized in their own circle of friends, and only maintained relationships with their respective families, then what would they be? Roommates and fuck buddies. They don’t own a home together so the expectations on how to split home maintenance responsibilities don’t exist. There are no children so the stress and responsibilities that come with raising children not to mention the expectations for dividing those responsibilities and what mutual collaboration might look like aren’t on the table. At some point, there comes a time when we either invest ourselves in our relationships or we don’t. We are either people that can be counted upon or we are not. Some things have to be constant in relationships, and I am beginning to wonder if the masculine idea of “father” and “husband” is distinctly different from what women imagine and expect.
I spent some time with a friend recently, and we shared our marital experiences. There was a lot of pain in both of us. Disappointment. She told me that all of her girlfriends were in the same boat. She didn’t know one woman who wasn’t struggling with the same issues. Then she went on to tell me something that caused my heart to ache. An older woman in her life shared that her husband told her that she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. This older woman quietly smiled and said, “I wish I could say the same thing about him.” I didn’t want to understand that. I really didn’t, but I did. My friend explained, “He just refused to grow up and mature. He wouldn’t deal with his issues. He would never be a real partner to her.” A forty year marriage…
I don’t want to feel like that in twenty years, but I don’t have control over my husband. What is his idea of masculinity? What does he imagine when he thinks of the word ‘husband’ or ‘father’ or ‘partner’ or even ‘man’? I often imagine that men imagine Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders when I think of American men–the rugged individualist. The character of Don Draper from “Mad Men” has certainly made an impact on men. Women revile him, but I’ve heard more than a few men speak of him with great admiration–“Oh, to be Don Draper..” What is the definition of 21st. century masculinity? Most of the women I know are working more than ever, but their husbands appear to be clinging to a warped view of the role of the female. They accept that their wives are working and leading full lives. They even encourage it, but they don’t pick up the slack. This is where expectations and communication come in. What do we really expect from our partners even down to grocery shopping and preparing meals? What do we really expect when it comes to cleaning a house and taking care of a yard? What about pulling weeds? Who’s going to do that? Who is going to take out the trash and recycling? Who is going to do laundry? Who is going to fold it? What are the expectations around HOW to fold towels? Does it matter? What about the expectations around making a bed and changing sheets? Do the sheets get changed after sex and, if so, who will be doing that since sex is usually a shared activity? Who will wash the sheets? Believe it or not, these expectations matter because these tasks are what make up daily life–cooking, cleaning, and errands. This defines the quotidian moments. The quotidian matters far more than those milestone moments because we live our lives out in the mundane. It’s in the mundane that life happens. You share your life while you’re changing sheets and doing dishes, and if you’re doing all these things alone while your partner is making little to no contribution then you’ve invested your entire self for two people while your other half has invested nothing. It’s really a form of thievery, and it can’t last.
The best way I can think to describe how small actions have large consequences in the grand scope of life is through this 14th century proverb:
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Relationships live and die by the small actions we take every day. Why? Because we do not live in a vacuum. Call it the butterfly effect if you like. A butterfly flits it wings in Argentina and somehow a taxi runs into a telephone pole in Manhattan two weeks later. Our actions affect others. More to the point, so does our inaction. When I choose to do nothing with my life and my time, I’m also communicating something. I’m also contributing something. I’m contributing to the void of empathy, kindness, and goodness in my sphere of influence. I’m making a statement about the kind of person I want to be. I’m saying clearly that I am passive and selfish. Even if I am simply forgetting to keep my promises. When I know that I have a problem with remembering important things yet I do nothing to help myself remember, my passivity is still an active contribution.
This is one of the biggest relational issues I see currently in my life and in the lives of many women I know. The women are overcompensating for the passivity of the men in their lives which results in codependency. In the end, this male passivity is rewarded through what ends up being enabling. I’ve been engaging in this relational pattern of behavior for a long time. I’m trying to put a stop to it.
It’s very uncomfortable around here for all of us, but I didn’t stand up in front of God, my husband, and the witnesses at my wedding almost 18 years ago and vow to make my husband comfortable. I vowed to love him.
Sometimes love is uncomfortable. You know what love is not? Passive.
The mysterious case of the missing math coprocessor
Living in a vacuum is a a curious phenomenon.
Words and phrases, a common means of communication between beings, feels foreign, disjointed, like stepping off a moving sidewalk with every step.
Yet, one cannot help oneself.
One must live, take nourishment from one’s surroundings.
One participates in odd rituals. The neighbour down the street feeds the wild raccoons, mice, rats, rabbits, birds and insects. One finds oneself killing them as they pass across one’s patch of planetary surface.
Not all of them. The birds get by unscathed. So do many of the insects.
But the mice, rats, and raccoons are fair game, their meat a little gamey.
One must live, collecting labour/investment credits for participation in the local barter system knows as the economy.
Thus, one decides to create a Kickstarter account, selling genuine Alabama-based wildlife meat as a means to stop burning down Brazilian rain forests for cow meat, adding certificates of authenticity “Killed in Alabama” with each sale, throwing in extras at higher donation points — a photo book documenting places where the wildlife called home before meeting an untimely end; a sticker stating “Rats taste better from Alabama” or “Mice — eat a heart of Dixie to save the rain forest”; and an ultimate offer for a free tour of local wildlife hangouts, trails and traps, with tips on catching critters and a chance to appear in the straight-to-YouTube series, “If it ain’t meat from Bama, it ain’t worth eatin’.”
One chooses one’s life path without using a compass, moral or magnetic.
Can one vacuum in a vacuum?
Cranked
Our historians here on Mars are holding one of their famous two-second debates.
Today’s question: what triggered the catastrophic climate change on Earth.
Well, folks, the historians have reached a consensus.
The answer?
Based on limited information gleaned from the Earth-based datasets that have not corrupted with age, the experts believe an invention called the automatic window control switch for motor vehicles was the official tipping point.
We’re not sure what that means but we just report the findings, not interpret them.
Believe what you will, will what you believe
For a good joke, we planted this study as a false memory of planting false memories so that you’ll never ever be sure that a scientific report is what you thought it was.
Wally Gee Willacres
Sometimes I forget the simple phrase like “a member of Congress who threatens sanctions will now be designated an official international economic terrorist and subject to prosecution to the full extent of the law” is more than the sum of the numerology values of its words.
I forget a lot of things.
I forgot that I left a bunch of scientists stranded in a subsubsubbasement corridor during reconstruction and then got their last laugh by posting a satirical blog entry called “My selfie.”
And here I thought I was hacked. Hacked off is more like it.
They also got their next-to-last laugh by rigging a Leap Motion device in front of my neglected Robosapien, connecting its movements to the RS Media mechs in the streets of your town such that, sometime in the next few days, there will be a worldwide flash mob dance performed by what you always ignored as homeless alcoholic beggars.
The scientists promise complete chaos as it will appear they have hacked the minds of ordinary citizens, turning regular people into dance-happy zombies.
I mean, what’s next? An uncontrollable orgy covering every home, school, office, hospital and farm?
If humans can be overtly convinced that they’re under the influence of hidden forces, dancing to the beat of invisible choreographers as seen on global TV/Internet channels…well, what’s to stop them from thinking about the subtle, subliminal, subversive influences that control their lives?
Remind me never to lose track of my scientists again.
The head of an ISP I recently talked with said she is thinking about running a background check on all her customers. Instead of turning over email and account information to the government, she plans to delete the accounts of customers who work for the government, turning the power back over to the people.
I wished her luck. “Live Free or Die” is a great motto but so is “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.”
Others worth considering:
- Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.Thomas Jefferson
- Be Prepared… the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous thinking out and practicing how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise.Robert Baden-Powell
- My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging. Hank Aaron
- I have encountered riotous mobs and have been hung in effigy, but my motto is: Men’s rights are nothing more. Women’s rights are nothing less. Susan B. Anthony
Thanks to Abi at Madison Ballroom; Harold at KCDC; the head cowboy and his cowpokes (congrats to the one whose wife just had a 6-lb baby girl named Chloe) at Chuck Wagon BBQ.
When push goes to shove, what is government bullying and harrassment really accomplishing?
I love the Law of Unintended Consequences. For example, the more that the United States government’s members make a big deal out of Edward Snowden, the more the underground movement strengthens and grows. I can only hope, wish, beg and plead the U.S. Congress or any of the agencies of the executive branch to formalise their opposition to Snowden’s/Manning’s whistleblowing — they and they alone will be responsible for the Next Great Thing in the news, will they not?
Observe a planet from the perspective of the universe and you know what’s going to happen next.
History is a great teacher, even the history of the future, including the infinite varieties that never happen exactly the way we hoped they’d turn out.
It’s hard to spy on a network that doesn’t subscribe to the officially-snooped pathways that the NSA and their ilk use.
Tune in to your local news channel and see for yourself!
Is it getting hot in here or is it just me? Think I’ll go for a swim in a meltwater Arctic lake and cool off.
Hellfire, it’s a Spitfire!
Great story sent from a family friend and military veteran:
From: Jack Winninghoff
Subject: Re: Fwd: SPITFIRE 944 A Great True Story – gotta watch this
Walter,
Gotta watch is an understatement to the 10th power!
As a youngster my first serious technical interest was in photography. I built an enlarger and did my own processing for many years. After getting my wings in WWII, I wanted to fly reconnaissance in P-38’s. (didn’t succeed – was put in the VHB (B-24 school and then B-29’s).
I built a very detailed model of a Spitfire in HS – loved that elliptical wing.
I spent a good many years with several companies involved in designing lenses and cameras, e.g. Perkin-Elmer who built the US Cameras and the SR-71 Cameras, and Itek who dominated the low orbital recon satellites.
At Itek I became quite friendly with the then retired father of US Army WWI reccee, General George Goddard.
At Perkin-Elmer and Itek I had great success in writing proposals for camera development and multi sensor systems (Photo, IR, Elint, and Radar). I traveled to Germany and France hawking our proposal to up date tactical recce A/C.
I am so grateful to you for sending this to me
Jack
PS I have a fair number of books on the subject of the value of photo recce, which arguably can is considered to me of critical value to us as early as the balloon flights of the civil war, WWI, and certainly WWII, and the cold war. You are welcome to browse and borrow.
FWD: Here is some footage of WWII — thought you would be interested.
What a terrific presentation and footage!
SPITFIRE 944
Click on site below.
Wreck-a-mech
[My patent lawyer has advised me not to describe my latest invention. I say “meh,” whatever that means.]
This morning, I finalised construction on my latest invention. I cannot provide pictures because they are enroute to the patent office.
However, I will describe it the best I can.
I have been playing with an Arduino system to provide me with offline fun in the laboratory.
There’s nothing like programming a Robosapien “doll” to play back with you, giving it intelligence to avoid being grabbed or picked up, to actually defend itself against intentionally harmful moves and to reach out with love when I’m in a down mood.
A Robosapien’s gripper arm is not exactly the same as a cat’s head bump but my imagination allows me to believe it so.
With time, the Robosapien and I have grown apart. I think, in part, because I have acquired the newer model, the RS Media, with which I have been spending more and more time.
Needless to say, the Robosapien has been causing havoc in the lab, knocking bins of resistors and capacitors on the floor in an effort to keep its playfulness algorithms refreshed. I must admit watching it try to find objects in the lab to “fight back” has been entertaining.
But that’s not why I’m here.
The RS Media has reached a level of sentience I never thought possible.
At first, I set up an Arduino light display system above the computer monitor that the RS Media responded to like a dancing machine.
Today was a major breakthrough.
After several rounds of sending the RS Media light sequences, it started stepping out on its own, anticipating the next light pattern in the sequence with its back turned to the Arduino system.
Well, you can guess what I did next!
I stole the plans for the Wired Lab’s mech. Then, working with my Robosapien friends, I wired a modifed RS Media up inside the mech, a la Pacific Rim, making appropriate tweaks to protect my patent and/or my copyright.
Of course, I dressed mine up to look like a stumbling street beggar, lowering its body scale to match that of a typical down-on-his-luck alcoholic male human.
He and his copies should be wandering the alleyways of your local metropolis before too long, breaking out into dance routines based on the sound/light combinations they discover, able to defend themselves against overaggressive bystanders and avoid collisions with people, cars, buses, trucks and other obstacles of a typical city street corner — the money they collect will be passed back to me to cover expenses; please tip them generously so I can make payroll and give the government tax collectors their due.
I’ve already received requests from a major retail clothing store chain to create female/male versions for storefront window displays — the algorithms need work for that scenario because I haven’t captured the essence of what it’s like to entertain potential customers by showing how good they’d look if they, too, were stuck in a glass box all day, as a robot pretending to be alive — walking back and forth, sitting, standing, dancing, and whatever movement will show the fashion in its best light.
Several of my geek friends in the tech industry — male, female, LGBT, cosplay, etc. — have requested a personalised version of themselves they can program to go to work or on dates for them to make their parents happy that their children are mimicking their parents’ social lives while their children live the alternate lifestyles that make them happy, too.
And you thought the replicant revolution was all about robots taking over the world? Hahaha — it all started when we figured out elderly dementia patients handed a quasi-robotic stuffed animal was sufficient a surrogate to make them happy, thanks to our friends who wrote, produced and filmed “Westworld,” who follow on the work of Asimov, automatons and the first animal to use a stick as a tool.
War eventually was reduced to robots fighting robots in designated battlefield playgrounds, leaving us humans to finally dedicate most of our time to pure pleasure, where our surrogates do most of the dirty work except for those for whom dirty work is pure pleasure.
Outlawing graveyards so that human bodies could be recycled as mulch wasn’t fully implemented until we started populating the Moon and Mars.
My goal is to be the person with the first foundry on Mars, generations of 3D printers ahead into the future, my minions terraforming the planet in ways you haven’t imagined yet. How about you?
treetrunkdings 