Haystack
Cold War USAF Considered Space-Based Atomic Warship (Video)
One of the secret projects discussed in Annie Jacobson’s new Area 51 book is Project Orion, an ambitious 1950’s-1960’s era attempt to develop a nuclear fission-propelled spacecraft capable of interplanetary travel. Like many of the Cold War aeronautics projects developed at Area 51 and related test sites, it was way ahead of its time. According to Jacobs, however, when ARPA and the USAF took over the project, they had a far more Strangelovian vision in mind:
“From high above Earth, a USS Orion could be used to launch attacks against enemy targets using nuclear missiles. Thanks to Orion’s nuclear-propulsion technology, the spaceship could make extremely fast defensive maneuvers, avoiding any Russian nuclear missiles that might come its way…For a period of time during the early 1960’s the Air Force believed Orion was going to be invincible. ‘Whoever builds Orion will control the Earth!” declared General Thomas S. Power of the Strategic Air Command.” [Jacobson, p. 305]
In this fascinating TED lecture George Dyson, son of Freeman Dyson, shares his special knowledge of the project. Not much information about Project Orion’s proposed weaponization has reached the web, but pay special attention to what he says at around 3:30-3:50…
Dina Babbitt – Painting Prisoners for Dr. Mengele
Dina Babbitt narrowly survived Auschwitz when her art skills came to the attention of Josef Mengele, who needed watercolor portraits to accurately document the skin tone of Gypsy prisoners whom he was studying. Sometime after the war, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum claimed ownership of the paintings. Babbitt died in 2009 after an emotionally-charged, and ultimately unsuccessful battle to have her work returned to her. Her story was related in this 2006 NY Times article by Steve Freiss:
At 83, Dina Gottliebova Babbitt still recalls the rickety easel where in 1944, under orders from the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, she painted watercolors of the haggard faces of Gypsy prisoners.
But her memories of the Auschwitz concentration camp, vivid though they are, aren’t enough for Mrs. Babbitt. Seven of the 11 portraits that saved Mrs. Babbitt and her mother remain not far from where she created them, on display at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and…
“Prodigy of Color” – The Art of Aelita Andre, Age 4
Four year-old Aelita Andre has a solo show opening at New York City’s Agora Gallery on June 4th. It might not come as too much of a surprise that a child should be able to produce beautiful, abstract expressionist art on par with the professionals, who are probably tapping their “inner children,” anyway. Aelita Andre, however, has been given free reign to so do, with as much space and materials to explore her creativity as anyone could want. Moreover, she displays real talent; working in thoughtful, methodical way, and making deliberate creative choices. Discovered via BoingBoing:
Charles Koch Buys Right to Choose Economics Professors at Florida State University
This via the St. Petersburg Times:
A foundation bankrolled by Libertarian businessman Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University’s economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting “political economy and free enterprise.”
Traditionally, university donors have little official input into choosing the person who fills a chair they’ve funded. The power of university faculty and officials to choose professors without outside interference is considered a hallmark of academic freedom.
Under the agreement with the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, however, faculty only retain the illusion of control. The contract specifies that an advisory committee appointed by Koch decides which candidates should be considered. The foundation can also withdraw its funding if it’s not happy with the faculty’s choice or if the hires don’t meet “objectives” set by Koch during annual evaluations.
Edward H. Rulloff, Victorian New York’s Evil Genius
Edward H. Rulloff's brain on display at Cornell.
E. H. Freeman’s biography of the criminal-scholar Edward H. Rulloff is finally back in print. Victorian Gothic looks at his bizarre life and obsession with philology:
Visitors to Cornell University’s psychology department would be hard pressed to overlook the eight pickled brains, preserved in heavy glass jars, which are proudly showcased on the second floor of Uris Hall. A small sample of the 122 specimens in the university’s Wilder Brain Collection, each belongs to a notable scholar or learned individual whose think-meat was once deemed worthy of anatomical examination.
One of these brains, however, is not like the others. If the brain of Edward H. Rulloff, a.k.a. Professor Leurio, were able to come alive, glowing and pulsating as it issued angry, murderous commands to you from inside your head, it would.
Rulloff was a criminal genius who left no question of how he should like to be remembered.…
St. Kitts & Nevis: Citizenship For Sale
St. Kitts & Nevis
The recent discussions of birth certificates and citizenship have rekindled my interest in living and working abroad, and, consequently, my frustration at just very how hard this is for the average person to accomplish. Each government jealousy guards its citizenship and work permits, even from friendly countries with whom it shares close cultural and economic ties. “I want to immerse myself in Europe’s culture and history,” I reflected, “not pop its cherry. Is there any country in the world which is even a little, you know…easy?” That’s how I learned about St. Kitts and Nevis.
If my coveted United Kingdom is an ice princess that does not deign to look down upon me from her ivory tower, St. Kitts and Nevis is her busty niece who is a sucker for men with flashy cars. St. Kitts and Nevis is a tiny English-speaking island state in the Caribbean; an independent Commonwealth realm…
Measles Outbreak Linked to Anti-Vaccination Movement
The Seattle Times reports upon a recent measles outbreak in Minneapolis traced local Somalis fearful of a purported link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Andrew Wakefield himself has arrived on the scene. His 1998 study linking the MMR to a new syndrome dubbed “autistic enterocolitis” has since been retracted by the Lancet amid allegations of fraud, and his medical license has been revoked.
As CNN reports, Wakefield expected to earn as much as $43 million/year in revenue from “litigation driven testing” for autistic enterocolitis, a test for which he holds a potentially lucrative patent, and received more than $674,000 “from lawyers trying to build a case against vaccine manufacturers.”
From the Seattle Times article:
Health officials struggling to contain a measles outbreak that’s hit hard in Minneapolis’ large Somali community are running into resistance from parents who fear the vaccine could give their children autism.
Fourteen confirmed measles cases have been reported in Minnesota…
Homelessness: The Game
Zachary Sniderman writes on Mashabe.com:
It’s one thing to feel bad for homeless people; it’s another to be forced into their shoes. Advertising agency McKinney has teamed up with Urban Ministries of Durham (UMD), a non-profit based in North Carolina, to create SPENT, an online game that guides users through what it feels like to be homeless.
Here’s how it works: If you accept the challenge to play, you enter a simple point-and-click game, navigating multiple choice questions about your livelihood. The site says you have been stripped of your savings and are currently unemployed, asking, “Can you make it through the month?”
You’re given simple choices with varying consequences. Do you want to try working in a restaurant? A factory? If you live far from the city your rent will be cheap, but, as you’re informed through pop-ups, you’ll have to pay more for gas or transportation.
The game’s integration with Facebook is its best feature.…
Confessions Of A Thug
Victoriangothic.org reviews the classic novel which first popularized the Thuggee cult, a darkly psychological adventure story with a murderous anti-hero, Ameer Ali:
Philip Meadows Taylor’s 1839 novel Confessions of a Thug captured the imagination of 19th-century Britain with its chilling depiction of an organized death cult preying upon the hapless travelers of India’s wild and desolate roads. Based upon real accounts Taylor gathered during his work suppressing the Thuggee cult for the Nizam of Hyderabad, the book is ominously introduced as an authoritative exposé in which true events have been faithfully woven into a fictionalized narrative.
Group of Thugs c. 1864.
As portrayed by Taylor, the Thugs are the votaries of Bhowanee (Kali); the destructive aspect of the Supreme Being. Endowed with superior intelligence and cunning, they are sent forth to make “sacrifices” on her behalf. The reward for their piety is the plunder they gather from their victims. In so far as they observe her omens and obey…
‘My Car is My Lover’ – Meet the Mechanophiles
In this clip (via eBaum’s World) from the BBC documentary “My Car is My Lover,” two mechanophiles visit a car show and bond over their shared…enthusiasm. The one in the hat is Edward Smith, who counts the Airwolf helicopter as one of his most intense sexual conquests:
Creepy Naked Babies: The Memorial Art Dolls of Jennifer Stocks-Dearborn
Vermont artist Jennifer Stocks-Dearborn sculpts realistic clay babies for parents who have lost infants or unborn children. Much in the tradition of Victorian post-mortem photography, these “memorial art dolls” bear the likeness of the deceased. Leon Thompson of Seven Days writes:
…Stocks-Dearborn’s art began with anything but laughter. As much creativity does, hers originated in darkness — death, to be precise. Her 16-month-old daughter Madison died of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) on October 8, 2000. Within the next three years, Stocks-Dearborn married and had two sons. But the healing process from her daughter’s death did not really begin until April 2006, when a friend forwarded an email about Canadian sculptor Camille Allen’s “Marzipan Babies.”
“As I stared at these tiny, hand-sculpted babies made from clay, I thought, I can do that,” Stocks-Dearborn recalls. “And I did. I remember sculpting my very first piece, and how my anxieties and overwhelming tidal waves of emotions subsided. From…
How To Boycott The Koch Brothers
As Jane Mayer’s New Yorker Magazine piece argues, the Koch brothers prefer to stay in the shadows because they do not want the products they manufacture to become widely associated with their controversial and self-serving political agenda. With recent protests in Madison spotlighting their war on workers and the middle class, however, many people have found themselves wondering if any of the products they buy have been bankrolling these corporate douchbags.
Here is a list, compiled at the DailyKos:
Georgia Pacific Products: Angel Soft toilet paper • Brawny paper towels • Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups • Mardi Gras napkins and towels • Quilted Northern toilet paper • Soft ‘n Gentle toilet paper • Sparkle napkins • Vanity fair napkins • Zee napkins • Georgia-Pacific paper products and envelopes
Georgia Pacific Building Products: Dense Armor Drywall and Decking • ToughArmor Gypsum board • Georgia pacific Plytanium Plywood • Flexrock • Densglass sheathing • G/P…
Meet Jack Black, Rat-Catcher To The Queen
From “The Rats of London” at victoriangothic.org:
If you were a rat in mid-century London, [Jack Black] was your nemesis. “Moist as rabbits, and quite as nice,” was how he described the rats he cooked for his own consumption. Sewer rats, he insisted, were just as good as barn rats, if you gave them a few days’ chase before killing them.
Rat-catching was a regular profession among London’s poor, allowing one to leverage a childhood spent peeking under floorboards and playing with filthy animals into a full and rewarding career. Armed with quick dogs and well-trained ferrets, Black and his colleagues ’sterminated rats by the hundred, collecting their fees on a cash-only basis. It was a “peculiar and exciting” line of work, according to Ike Matthews, who wrote the book on rat-catching; one where you could be own boss and turn long sojourns into the country with your hunting animals into a remunerative business.
Like many a…
Sand Animation Depicts German Invasion of USSR (Video)
Kseniya Simonova gave this performance on Ukraine’s Got Talent:
You Can’t Un-Watch Klaus Nomi
Lady Gaga has nothing on Klaus Nomi, the surreal German countertenor whose short career spanned 1977-1983.
<
Sadly, Nomi died of AIDS in 1983 before he had the chance to render 80’s pop culture even more bizarre than it eventually became. As he was dying, Nomi gave this especially poignant performance of the “Cold Song” (lyrics follow)…
Should America Expand the Size of Congress?
Dalton Conley and Jacqueline Stevens make a pretty compelling argument in a recent NY Times op-ed:
With the Senate preparing to debate filibuster reform, now is a good time to consider a similarly daunting challenge to democratic representation in the House: its size. It’s been far too long since the House expanded to keep up with population growth and, as a result, it has lost touch with the public and been overtaken by special interests.
Indeed, the lower chamber of Congress has had the same number of members for so long that many Americans assume that its 435 seats are constitutionally mandated.
But that’s wrong: while the founders wanted to limit the size of the Senate, they intended the House to expand based on population growth. Instead of setting an absolute number, the Constitution merely limits the ratio of members to population. “The number of representatives shall not exceed one for every 30,000,” the…
Ass Reflexology Hoax Shames Integrative Medicine Conference
Readers may be familiar with the infamous Sokal Affair, where a physicist successfully published an utterly nonsensical article in Social Text, a journal of postmodern cultural studies, in order to demonstrate its poor editorial standards and idealogical biases.
Recently, professor of medical education John C. McLachlan pulled the same stunt on an “International Conference on Integrative Medicine” held in Jerusalem in 2010, where he was invited to present a paper on the promising new field of ass reflexology. He described his findings as such:
McLachlan's Ass Reflexology Map
Recently, as a result of my developmental studies on human embryos, I have discovered a new version of reflexology, which identifies a homunculus represented in the human body, over the area of the buttocks.
The homunculus is inverted, such that the head is represented in the inferior position, the left buttock corresponds to the right hand side of the body, and the lateral aspect is represented medially.
As…
RIP Captain Beefheart
Rest in Peace: Captain Beefheart: Jan. 15, 1941–Dec. 17, 2010.
Cult musician and visual artist Don Van Vliet died Friday after years of suffering from multiple sclerosis.
Found on YouTube below is “Making Love to a Vampire with a Monkey on my Knee” by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band.
[Image: Captain Beefheart at Convocation Hall, Toronto, 1974. Photo by Jean-Luc via Wikimedia Commons]
Thomas Edison’s Concrete Houses
Thomas Edison had notoriously bad judgment about the viability of his many inventions. He once embarked on an expensive scheme to construct entire houses, including furniture, out of cast concrete. This via IEEE Global History Network:
Edison’s concrete housing effort began around 1908. Portland cement (which Edison did not invent) was coming into fashion as a construction material. Edison and his team worked on perfecting a formula for mixing concrete (a mixture of cement and filler materials such as sand or gravel) and building re-usable steel molds to cast the walls of houses. By 1910, he had cast two experimental buildings — a gardener’s cottage and a garage — at his New Jersey mansion Glenmont. He announced in the press that he did not intend to profit from the venture, but would instead give away the patented information to qualified builders.
The publicity generated by this announcement attracted the attention of philanthropist Henry Phipps…
How The 19th Century Imagined The 21st
Paleo-Future has posted a collection of seven lithographs depicting a 19th century vision of the present day; and yes, it involves flying cars:
This lithograph from 1882 depicts the fanciful world of 2000; flying buses, towering restaurants, and of course, 1880’s French attire. Albert Robida is less well-known than Jules Verne but contributed just as much to the collective imagination through his amazing illustrations.
If you speak French I recommend picking up the Robida book La vie électrique. For the record, I don’t speak French. Much like a child, I got it for the pictures.
(UPDATE: Some very good questions have been raised about the date of production for this lithograph. The year 1882 came from a Library of Congress source. La Vie Electrique (published 1892) contains structures that look similar to the Eiffel Tower but are in fact lighthouses. However, I am definitely open to the idea that “circa 1900″ would be a more appropriate label.)
[See the…
