Back on-line

Some mysterious force seized my Windows OS - XP SP3 (beta). After it booted the keyboard was useless and the mouse if I touched one of the keys. If I used the Accessibility option "On-screen Keyboard" I could "type" with the mouse a few short emails or perform other operations. So I reloaded Windows XP SP2 again and made sure I had the firewall (Comodo) and anti-virus software (AntiVir). I thought I'd try what I am supposed to use on Verizon, MSN Premium with McAffee software, but I found it used too much of my machine and then whatever it didn't really stop that from happening. MSN was supposed to months ago get "tabbed" with IE 7.0 but disappointingly it has not yet. I like the tabs in IE 7.0, Maxthon2, Opera, Firefox, Flock and last but not least (there are others) Safari from Apple. Wait yes it is "optimized for MSN" with IE 7.0. I also noted that Blogger left the music off but now you can post video which is better. Who cares (Pete does? I saw him in a jumpsuit at Stony Brook U. from the back door) that I'm listening to "Calico" from Buzzy Linhart's new album "Studio" I purchased from iTunes? He was up there with Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock and appeared on another album with him I think. Still inspiring performer, sounds like some of its live. Apple let me download it again! I backed it up too! Wow! Off to Republic Airport tomorrow...

Dynamites Found at Fort Edward Dredging Site

Dynamite Found at Dredging Site Destroyed August 24, 2007 - 7:56PM More than 800 sticks of dynamite found buried on the site of a future de-watering facility in Fort Edward was safely destroyed Friday, according to the Washington County Sheriff. General Electric is currently building a treatment and transport facility there as part of a dredging project. ... Local News: Dynamites Found at Fort Edward Dredging Site | edward, workers, fort - cbs6albany.com

My "Dutch" uncle

One of the definitions of urban archaeology sites I've read are "pits within pits within..." the idea that the urban site has been "dug up" and redeposited from one place to another. An example in New York City is shown in the land filling that began in recessions (keeps me awake at night) to create property, the last one the Battery Park complex abutting the World Trade Center on the west side of the island of Manhattan extensively filled to create "wealth" which as an economic pattern generally might follow there but not necessarily the only reason that land gets made and filled, i.e., the health commissioner points to the open soggy boxes of filling as places for disease, Mr. Oothouse I think a distant "Dutch uncle" maybe. Another is the movement of skin processing tanks for tanning moved further and further out of the community, breeding places for flies, though what made much of the original wealth of New York City it's written, "I don't know, you're going to need shoes" (what Johnny thought he might want to do when he grew up) started very early in New Amsterdam. Local zoning and citizen research moved them finally out of the city. In North Creek, New York, apparently when the railroad was built across the country it was also built to the large concentrated area of hemlock trees and earlier nascent tanneries, finally processing 10,000 skins or furs a year from all over the world in as many as four tanneries with sluice ways from the hills carrying the hemlock log sections for their bark high in tannins, sluiced into the Tannery Pond which today is a site of public meeting and exhibit place recently completed in the North Creek and the town of Johnsburg center. Nearby the original weavers of calico in New York State started by John Thurman who owned the post office on Wall Street, was neutral during the American Revolution, was one of the first highway contractors and also in a partnership to keep the Hudson River clear of trees and other flotsam and jetsam. The folk-urban continuum also comes to play I think researched by anthropologist Robert Redfield, so we have distant related industries also in the mix. I was trying to say that from what I've see one of the urban archaeology problems is that you might have a feature that's chock full of artifacts that you might want to excavate carefully, yet it may have been redeposited from fire or other ruination (riot, revolution, etc., after it a French observer stated we had solved our returning troop unemployment problem in America, as many as 5,000 were involved in leveling the former battlements and making solid land where there had been none in Manhattan) filled in in a short couple of hours or part of a day. Then what good is the stratigraphy if it costs too much to prove so little.

Newsvine - Pigeons' Toll on Minn. Bridge Documented

I was on the Mianus River I-95 bridge (near Greenwich Connecticut) three times the afternoon before it collapsed in the early morning resulting in deaths. One of the results was to build a weigh station abutting singer/entertainer Diana Ross's place. I have often gone past it a number of times, it's on the western side closer to the traffic leaving the "New York" side and have often seen it empty. It appears to me that it probably should have been on the other side to get the traffic coming toward NYC than the traffic leaving, but I have not seen the traffic volume studies.

Inspection is a problem on those types and one unique solution I've seen on-line was employed by the California DOT. They have a rotary engine powered ducted-fan on a umbilical control tether with video to inspect under their overpasses. Like the Mazda RX-4 I once owned, the rotary engine, credited to Wankel, has also been used in personal planes, burning regular instead of aviation fuel at the same rate and power output. NASA, I read worked on the seals that contain the combustion and resulting gas passed as power and exhaust on the 3 apexes of the triangular "piston," an engine with less moving parts to service and repair though the seals could wear out.

When one of the smaller wire cables stretching from the large suspension cables to the roadway holding the Brooklyn Bridge out over the East River, between the two towers which my great-grandfather helped build as a mason (Panama Canal too), broke, there was an investigation into the cause. One of the problems that can happen with metal is what the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, NY looked for, called "hydrogen migration" which occurs from the exposure to hydrogen gas, which it's said causes a brittleness of iron as it "migrates" through the interstitial spaces between the ferrous molecules. It's thought to be a problem in the storage of hydrogen as an alternative fuel to petroleum based products. As I recall it was found not to be the cause and the pigeon's excrement exposure, and the wire "rope" continually under tension, was what caused it to snap, in a process as described in this article.

Newsvine - Pigeons' Toll on Minn. Bridge Documented

Was That My Pet Goat In A Jar?

Yesterday my companion came home and asked me if I knew about all the goings on outside. I had sort of turned outside off after moving the cars for alternate side street sweeping when a car alarm went on sounding like some recording of dripping water through a Marshall amplifier on volume "11". I went outside and the street was closed at both ends by police cars, a police services car was a few doors down in the street, a large Medical Examiner van was on the block and the street closed off at both ends by police cars. There were a number of camera crews (NBC, CBS, Cablevision 12) and most of the neighbors were out behind crime scene flagging. Gee just a block or two from where Regis Philbin grew up in the Van Nest/Morris Park section of the Bronx reported by the various television journalists as Pelham Parkway (see Forgotten NY for the Regis 'hood and other interesting New York City areas).

At first I heard the tenants had complained that the heat or hot water wasn't working and the Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) had sent someone to look at the boiler and they had found a human skull and they called the medical examiner who was investigating the scene from about 2:00 p.m. until about 10:00 p.m. Still that car alarm, now boxed in by cars and the large van continued to beep beep beep like a dripping faucet.

It was reported this morning that the house had belonged to a convicted child molester and bottles of animal parts were found, one was being examined to see if it was a human fetus. The building owner was convicted after younger male teens he took cave exploring Upstate New York testified to his molestation at his sleep-away camp. I'd only passed him a few times enough to say hello or hi. Lifelong residents at the time (2000) were quite surprised, he was such a usually pleasant guy.

I went to the edge of the crime tape and saw a Newfield High School alumnus I had attended "Junior" and "Senior" high with Louis Young the investigative television journalist whom I hadn't seen since I once had lunch with him and the injured police officer who was once assigned the duty of guarding the former Mayor's ex-wife, a journalist and actor herself, Donna Hanover. I waved called hey Lou and he recognized me. I never saw him "on the job" missing him once when Eyewitness News was following presidential hopeful Rev. Jesse Jackson's speaking tour on Long Island at Stony Brook University as it was canceled due to Rev. Jackson having a fever, which wearing an orange watch-cap on a break from working in East Patchogue, was a good thing the crowd was kind of hostile.

I had been with a small crew in the woods on the Roe Blvd. site, who requested we go see him speak. Mr. Roe was one of George Washington's spies who owned a tavern in Setauket nearby the university, where he and others gathered information at their peril and delivered it to Washington often through New York City to Connecticut. The Roe House in Selden was pulverized by British Army musket fire because of it but he wasn't home and he would later make cherry-wood furniture on Mud Creek in today's East Patchogue, a small ponded mill there in the 19th century. Upon setting off after George Washington stayed the night in the Roe Tavern, now on the south side of North Country Road, on George Washington's triumphal tour of Long Island after the success at Yorktown, Virginia, his cinch slipped and he fell from his horse and broke his leg and had to stay behind. George Washington was returning in part to where he had been to after the French and Indian War on a doctor's recommendation that he visit to the goings on in Boston, the Bay Colony and had traveled there via the Greenport passage, and perhaps also had visited family ties, as evidenced by some of its more recent residents, particular the hardware store on the old entry of the Sag Harbor Turnpike once toll road in Bridgehampton, NY where Captain Hulbert a noted "East End" patriot in the defense of Montauk Point from the British Navy grew up in his father's cobbler's house. He and a number of men marched up the hills there within the hungry sight of the British Navy offshore, reversed their coats and marched down another side of the hill convincing those off shore of their great number thus protecting the livestock kept there. Washington's diary is interesting in regard to some places on Long Island, always the surveyor he started out as. The Nature Conservancy owns some of the properties along the turnpike today.

The Godfather Of Trek: This Day in Sci-Fi History - August 19th

One of my Newfield High School friends co-illustrated the first Star Trek Medical Reference with a neighbor and went on to create landscapes, props, and even appeared a few times in Star Trek, Doug Drexler. The reference also presented a "time-line" which showed our "first contact' and subsequent history. No wonder "Bones" was often skeptical. Please, Mr. President gives us one too! Doug Drexler also co-won an Academy Award for make-up in "Dick Tracy." We once worked together in a Bavarian fast-food franchise, Zum Zum (no Hell or Dunkel beer, the owner was busy bustin' the former FBI guys on the take in the commission who wanted a piece of the action) which was how I came to, was it in the NY Hilton Hotel? The science fiction convention, was it the first, around the time of Bruce Dern in "Silent Running" co-starring robots, Huey Dewey and Louie? We saw it before the convention there way back then in NYC to get in the spirit of it. There was quite an interesting lecture on why science fiction should be kept alive, much like Star Trek, in the interests of science and our collective humanity. I'd thank Gene and thank Majel Roddenberry for giving us examples of the human spirit, as we've gone boldly where we might not have gone, and giving us something more than re-runs of "The Prisoner" to watch and learn from. LiveVideo.com - The World is Watching ---------------- Listening to: Bjorn Lynne - [Relaxing Mountain Stream] Mountain Stream (low-quality) [foobar2000 v0.9.4.4] via FoxyTunes

Huffington Post: Marty Kaplan "The Truths Rove Told"

Comment: Part of the problem with getting people to vote is the "no choice" perception. Here in NYC we found that a switch inside the ancient voting machines (ordered to be replaced by the Feds or else) produced false votes for a number of years which, however in review, after this duopoly cabal was agreed to and then forgotten over some other voting impropriety, had not actually affected any outcome. After 9/11, a primary day in NYC, about which candidates had been queried some night before on what they would do as mayor with the "windfall" from the sale of the "World Trade Center" which was being sold by the NY/NJ Port Authority (which did not perhaps ever meet NYC building codes) on WABC-TV news, various ballot measures, it seemed to me, disappeared. The NYC Voters Guide, became what was purported to be on the ballot and not the reality and perhaps further evidence of "no choice" given voters. One perception here is that the attack on 9/11/2001 had not occurred the Public Advocate, a fairly powerful position in the City of New York, a position then held by the popular Mark Green, may have had a good chance of becoming the mayor. His brother recently bought "AirAmerica" the radio station that presents liberal and progressive views about the current political quagmire and has reported some of the things reported in this column. The truth of the matter is that there is a video-tape of electronic election machines in the great state of Ohio of being criminally tampered with, how widespread however, is speculative. Was the election stolen as environmental lawyer RFKJr. asserts? And if there is a question, why wasn't it investigated? "No choice" again.

Steven Seagal Accuses FBI of Ruin, Demands Apology

I thought it was over him busting the Mafia in the film industry around him as reported in the press. That would screw up some people's careers, make heroes out of others like former Federal prosecutor Rudolf Giuliani. Five year investigation of the Fulton Fish Market turned up one misdemeanor, set new rules then hired a lawn-mower entrepreneur, gave them new hi-los (NY Post said unregistered) as then a mayor, turns out the lawn-mower man was in Federal court. No wonder the Teamsters sued. Now the same happened to the EPA ordered filtration plant in the Bronx golf course (could have been in 3 other locations) more recently. Fishing boats don't come to lower Manhattan anymore all the fish trucks now get unloaded in the Bronx, near where Herman Wouk lived I heard. Tai Zen.

posted 03:10 pm on 08/17/2007 Huffington Post

Yesterday, a Pro-Peace Picnic

Pro-Peace Picnic planned for Pel Bay Park   in the Bronx Times Reporter of August 16, 2007 www.bxtimes.com by Lorna Montalvo          Pelham Bay Park might soon join Union Square and Central Park as a major staging site for political protest -- though the Bronx variety is expected to come with a dash of barbecue sauce.          On Saturday, August 18, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Pelham Bay Park will be the setting for a first-ever "Pro-Peace Picnic." Organizer Billy Wharton, a socially active Pelham Bay resident and Bronx native, decided to reach residents who normally wouldn't attend antiwar demonstrations but have many of the same political convictions as other demonstrators.      "We want to invite people who haven't been invited in the antiwar movement, who usually shy away form the picket lines and demonstrations. We wanted to create a space that is safe for families to come out." he said.      He says the idea came from a news poll released in January by the Associated Press that stated 70% of Americans are opposed to sending more troops to Iraq. Residents have already handed out fliers at the Westchester Square and Pelham Bay Park #6 stations, Wharton said. The organizer picked Pelham Bay Park because it is the largest community green space in the city and he wanted to focus the event on community building.          Wharton has designed a relaxed schedule for the day, with speakers, music and crowd discussions in support of a "peaceful and just resolution" to the war. Discussions will include effects of the current U.S. occupation of Iraq, the impact of lost soldiers, including eight from the Bronx, and the monetary cost of the war.       Bring a blanket, food to share, sunscreen and an open mind. For more information, call (718) 869-2279.

Our Roots Were in Duopoly

Comment on the American Vice President not having military power (did not order shoot-down 9/11/2001 (call 911 or in Great Britain 999): Is that from the early days of the Republic when The POTUS and the VPOTUS (taxus yews shrubs planted around Federal buildings) could be from two different parties? Maybe so one could not order a military operation against the other. Didn't work too well when half the Cabinet (Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis who became POTCS) conspired to transport weapons of mass defense into the South. Does anyone know if they left that out when the duopoly foundered in new law? So they should today from the same party be able to order military operations? The VPOTUS didn't have to answer with the notes requested by the executive GAO (Ed. - I meant the OMB - Office of Budget and Management who was suing VPOTUS for the secret meeting of energy companies. GSA had moved to Jamaica, Queens from the World Trade Center, bringing the gov't to the people instead of...another site I worked on. It was also stopped by the minority construction organization until some previous terms were ironed out) back in the early first term so maybe its a good thing. Permalink Taylor Marsh "Stephen Hayes Hearts Dick Cheney" Huffington Post

World's Largest Camera and Photo

Guinness Certifies World's Largest Photograph and Camera
(Press Release)
Wednesday, August 8, 2007

The Great Picture -- the world's largest photograph -- will have its premier showing September 6 to 29, 2007 at Art Center College of Design, South Campus Wind Tunnel, Pasadena, California.

Local station WFUV to start alt. rock music channel - - Topix

I am a sometimes listener, sometimes member of WFUV and have watched the FCC and Bronx Botanical Garden tug-of-war over, what I thought quite intelligently designed and "pretty" radio antenna that was going up on the small green space between the road and the sideline of the Fordham University football field (the team has a tug-of-war with a Bronx Zoo elephant at the beginning of the season). Michael Powell, (General and former Sec. of State Colin Powell's son) has also left the Bush admin and the antenna has been moved to the roof of Montefiore Hospital, who offered when the Botanical Garden found the antenna eleven (11') too close to it's view of the plants. One of its DJ's when the antenna clung to a chapel tower was actor Alan Alda. I can't think of a better use of "payola" money, they have a wonderful dedicated station, and the longest running sports broadcast in the country, and have introduced and continue to broadcast some wonderful performers.

Local station WFUV to start alt. rock music channel - - Topix

Richard Belzer: Defaming History or, Who Didn't Kill JFK - Politics on The Huffington Post

Congratulations on becoming the first television character to appear in more shows than any other character, Mr. Belzer. Speaking of shows I used to be a big fan of "The Marvin Kittman Show" his column on television. One of his last columns I read in "Newsday" (that paper is on Long Island, NY a place once reported with the most per capita "disposable income" in the US, hard selling door-to-door "Public Citizen" for $10 a year though) was about the Marine he spoke to at the rifle range who tested the "Oswald" weapon. He said there was no way he could have been aiming at the President. He would have to have been aiming at Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy to hit where he did the Marine said after testing the rifle. The report was left out of the Warren Commission I think I read. There was also talk about Marina Oswald's obsession with Mrs. Kennedy. Mr. Kittman writes here at the Huffington Post. I hope no one "asks him" about it, to me it was his last published column. I was waiting for a clarinet lesson (the only one with a black one in the Wood Road School band) from Mr. Abrams who never showed up offstage. Walked back into the six grade class with my case right into the tragedy being shown on the television.

Richard Belzer: Defaming History or, Who Didn't Kill JFK - Politics on The Huffington Post

Agreement to clean up gas sites in Brooklyn and Nassau County

After (Google Earth)

Before (Virtual Earth)

Agreement to clean up gas sites in Brooklyn and Nassau County

I worked on the archaeology of one in Saratoga Springs, NY. "After and Before" from on-line public aerial photos. The brick gas-holder is now on the US National Register of Historic Places thanks to local participation. Gas-holders floated on vertical rails though inside of a brick tower with water in the tank below ground to seal the gas in. They stored the manufactured "coal gas" and as "city gas" lit the public and private lights of Saratoga Springs, manufactured across Excelsior Ave. from "Old Red Spring". The EPA mandated clean-up site was on a geologic fault with an underground concrete drainage tunnel under it, robot video-taped as a suspect, by the company also working on the US Navy facilities in Connecticut. The Niagara Mohawk electric utility yard was also on the border of two geological zones, the Adirondack and the Taconic regions. The rectangular underground drain may have drained into nearby Lake Loughberry. It looks like they dug up the much of site leaving the early electrical generating plant and moved the brick circular gas-holder once used as a garage away to empty its toxic potential. Most of the "historic" coal tar was once probably removed and spread in unknown locations I was told until a use was found for it. Holy cow, was it! It began the chemical revolution in the 1870s, and from it, aspirin, fabric dyes, synthetics, etc., were created from it, primarily in Germany at first to great profit. There had been a number of other cylinders and tanks, one a twin of the surviving gas-holder, the ruins of which we re-located and mapped in a cesium magnetometer survey in the then active yard next to a large regional natural gas line. Other tanks and manufacturing remains, some all metal, had been scrapped but survived in the ground. Historically it was also next to a rail line and one of the maps show a transition to "coal oil" storage perhaps resulting from the "cooking" of coal for the "city gas". Nearby to the north, near Wilton, former President Ulysses S. Grant passed away after completing his memoirs. The site, Mount MacGregor, is on a correctional facility grounds

"Agreement to clean up gas sites in Brooklyn and Nassau County"

Name the baby elephant

"I was born at the Dublin Zoo on 9 May, 2007. My wonderful keepers tell me that I am the first elephant ever born in the Republic of Ireland." RTÉ News> "Name the Elephant competition"

I think the "Dharma" for one baby elephant should be:

Adyapi

In one of the oldest verses recorded in the human language, that is in Sanskrit, every stanza of this very old poem, starts with "Adyapi" which means roughly "Even now I recall" or remember, in particular, the "pendulous breasts of the elephant" is what I remember from reading the very long poem in English translation.

BBC - History - Viking Ship Voyage - ArchaeoSeek

Thank you. The Suffolk County Historian on Long Island, NY once published an account thought to be perhaps from the saga, to relate to Vinland. In the account two Irish slaves were sent out from the drowned meadow (Port Jefferson, NY) to the top of the moraine where they recounted seeing a large bay a barrier beach and the ocean beyond. We worked in Fort Golgotha then a Queens Ranger headquarters in a cemetery on-top of a hill in Huntington, NY where Nathan Hale was thought brought to before hung in New York City having but "one life to lose for his country".

Around the same time the Hargrave Vineyards opened up (1979) who had searched all over New York State for a vineyard location and decided the Town of Southold, which receives more days of sunlight than any other location to be the ideal location. Local legend also had the 17th century would be European vineyard grower (Mr. Moses) unsuccessful in planting the European root stock, unresistant to the local soil biota, until grafted onto the local grape rootstock shown how by the Rocky Point Indians (a confusing toponym for a couple of places on Long Island). Vineyards there were blown off by hurricanes in the 17th century and in the 1840s. Since 1979 there have been over 25 vineyards started and producing wine on Long Island.

Interesting also lately the so-called "Vinland map" has been under scrutiny partly at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, now run by a consortium, led by Stony Brook University, once under the direction of the US Dept. of Energy. The argument I read has been that because the ink contains titanium it must be more modern than its provenance suggests. During WWII, in the foothills of Mt. Marcy, titanium ores were mined from the vicinity of the origin of the Hudson River the "Tear in the Clouds" and the old McIntyre Iron Mines and foundry of the 19th century shown first by a "St Joseph" Indian as a dam in the mountains of solid iron, a "titaniferous magnetite." It said, the titanium oxide mined from there painted all the Allied tanks of WWII white for winter combat, a railhead established at Tahawas (another name for Mt. Marcy, the tallest mountain in NY State) which ran through North Creek, NY where Teddy Roosevelt had been driven to on a relay of buckboards through the night, after the death of President McKinley to assume his role as President inaugurated in Buffalo, NY after reading the telegram and taking the special train from North Creek.

I'd recently did some research and mapped what were probably the remains of an early 20th century slaughterhouse which serviced the various Adirondack hotels and retreats. North Creek is where modern skiing in New York may have begun, moved to nearby Gore Mountain. A proposed ski-trail interlink may spur development. Anyone an expert on those early industrial facilities that were the fore-runner of the modern chemical industry (everything but the squeal) please contact Greenhouse Consultants, Inc. in NYC.

The Official Site: Sea Stallion from Glendalough 2007

The return of the Viking longship - 1000 nautical miles from Denmark to Dublin "The Vikings Are Coming, Again" The Irish coverage of it.

Turning the Clock Back Two Millennia to Recreate Scotland's Wild Past (TreeHugger)

Turning the Clock Back Two Millennia to Recreate Scotland's Wild Past (TreeHugger)

Perhaps they could do something similar with Gardiners Island, NY which is the "last manor" in North America technically and still has that status. The reproduced document that I read in the Huntington Free Library at Westchester Square in the Bronx, granted the property of the island as such, signed by King James, King of Scotland, it's signed. Many ospreys have nested there and often the deer herd has to be culled.

WeirsCAM Remote Window

The big lake in New Hampshire where the new President of France visited America. The motor-ship Mount Washington arrives here at Weirs Beach and in Wolfeboro across the lake. Then VP George H. W. Bush asked for a moment of prayer from the ship's deck before he was whisked away in a limo to become President for a day when Ronald Reagan went under anesthesia for a colon operation. The Doles are said to own a place nearby, a judge's and former VP Dan Quayle was once seen in town near the Wright Museum of World War II in Wolfeboro Falls, NH. The first Supreme Court Justice of Canada came from nearby Tuftonboro, appointed when he got into a row in London with the only royal governor to survive the American Revolution, John Wentworth, (later governor of Nova Scotia) over nepotism in the colony and America's "Oldest Summer Resort". Any tree over 24" was for the King's Navy and the wrong size floorboards could get one arrested. WeirsCAM Remote Window

BBC - History - Viking Ship Voyage

From Denmark to Dublin Follow the reconstructed Viking ship, 'Sea Stallion', on one of the most perilous archaeology experiments ever attempted. Check back regularly for updates. BBC - History - Viking Ship Voyage "The Vikings are coming, again" The "Sea Stallion" arrived in Dublin, Ireland ("world's oldest Dr Pepper bottling plant") The Irish coverage is at RTÉ: "Sea Stallion Viking ship sails into Dublin" http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0814/viking.html

Norman Horowitz: Don't Mess With the Long Ranger or Walter Cronkite - Politics on The Huffington Post

I'm not sure if this is relevant but I heard that at the United Nations Chapel, Edwin Newman, also like Walter Cronkite, a famous television journalist, read a eulogy about my cousin George Murray, an award winning television producer of NBC news, who started in the "film at eleven" news editing room, becoming a director of "Huntley and Brinkley" one of the early pioneers of TV news along with CBS's and eventually producing both Democratic and Republican convention coverages for CBS in 1976. He died in Mexico where his wife was introducing Avon beauty products there.

I heard at the eulogy in the UN chapel that Mr. Newman read a letter George Murray had to send to his crew in Vietnam who were in a long investigative job of trying to show the "common soldiers view" of the conflict, which was canceled by higher-ups. If you recall sometime after the end of the Vietnam War, the entire NBC network was sued by General Westmoreland for millions, settled for an undisclosed amount, over an NBC News retrospective of the war, where in it was alleged or shown, that body counts had been manipulated by the US military to show, or alleged to show, that it was winning not losing. His crew had spent many dangerous months there and it was a shame that these "higher-ups" had made sure the documentary got nowhere I believe.

Norman Horowitz: Don't Mess With the Long Ranger or Walter Cronkite - Politics on The Huffington Post

Between the "screws" the Cuba Reef

Interesting places to visit...on land. My Live Search Maps collection Large propeller, Kings Point, NY Large propeller outside the Kings Point Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point , NY Large ship propeller, Bronx, NY One of the four propellers from the SS United States, the "fastest liner ever built" at SUNY Maritime College, Bronx, NY

`A Bronx Tale' to Open on Broadway

Link to North Carolina article.

...for all the marbles (histarch)

I recall the now of late late night TV host Tom Snyder who once visited with a man in the Seattle area who (as i recall) had over an estimated 1 million glass marbles in his collection. I think it was tied in with a contemporary artist on a wharf there who worked in the furnace "glory holes" of art glass making and blowing. It was an interesting show. There was an excavation in lower Manhattan which recovered some clay marbles as you describe in "Alphabet City" which is named from the avenues made on top of land fill, where previous the various shipyards had been (Webb, whom our government ignored became an Institute of naval architecture on Long Island) and their "church on a barge" (around 10th Street and Avenue C?) are named using the alphabet rather than a negative number, using Avenue A, Avenue B, etc. instead of 0 Ave., -1 Ave. -2 Ave. from west to east into the East River. Not really a river it was also called the Sound River as it connects with the Long Island Sound through the former Hellgate (from Dutch "light gate" foaming water over rocks) and because of prevailing west to east winds, made it advantageous for the mooring of ships in the age of sail. In this cistern feature, "circa Civil War water control feature" next door to a ship "furniture" workshop, apparently occupied by two tailors over it, were also "abolitionist" coins that were minted and distributed in the coinage of the city to remind people of the cause of abolition, perhaps in competition with "bar tokens". On the same lot the Steven Spielberg film "Batteries Not Included" was filmed and nearby were local gardens that were threatened under the former Mayor Giuliani administration which was stopped by an effort started by Bette Midler to purchase all the community gardens from the city to keep the small pocket gardens alive which was followed by larger donations. She was given an award in parks and preservation on Long Island, NY sometime after. The behavior you cite seems to be consistent thrown away along with the remains of over a dozen chamber pots which may have coincided with arrival in that neighborhood with public water. It seemed to be a complete set with large shooters and smaller marbles, glazed, hand painted and glass. The site was to be a housing police headquarters for all public housing below 42nd Street and to contain some low to middle income housing. The contractor hired non-union workers and we had to cross a picket line there to work. I lost a toolbox perhaps as a result. We used to have lunch around the corner in the Castillo de Jaguar. It was a rough neighborhood, and one episode of "Law and Order" with Jerry Orbach was taped while we were there. The "PSA 4 (Police Service Area) Site".

Kings Point Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, NY

There is a large P-2 troop carrier ocean going propeller in front of the Merchant Marine Museum at Kings Point Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, NY. My grandfather served as an officer on the U.S.S. Buckner in WWII.

Inside there are many exhibits of the Merchant Marine Service, once the most integrated (both minorities and in ages of troops) service in the US armed forces, though granted only half the pension and recompense of the other branches, though suffered the most casualties as a percentage of those involved in the conflict of World War II.

In the 1970s the Emperor of Japan's "Sword of Surrender" a plain white samurai sword given to the US during the terms of surrender signed, was stolen from this museum. It was returned in the 1990s with a note that explained that the person who took it did so to draw attention to the lack of treatment merchant mariner veterans received. Just recently the Canadian government recompensed to equal amount their own merchant mariners to reflect their other armed services. However, the US has yet to. When the "thief" died of cancer, he left instructions for its return. It was left on the entrance step with a note explaining the theft and reason for it.

I was there when it went back on exhibit when as part of the annual meeting of the National Maritime Historical Society, we visited the museum. There is a monument to Merchant Mariners in Battery Park in lower Manhattan.

Google Earth Download U.S. Merchant Marine Museum - Large propeller.kmz

State University of New York Maritime College, Fort Schuyler, the Bronx, NY

One of the four propellers from the SS United States, 'the fastest ocean liner ever built' are here on exhibit on the grounds of the State University of New York Maritime College, Fort Schuyler, Bronx, NY. Another propeller! I once assisted in 1999 the monitoring of a new fence for "The Old Soldiers Cemetery" in the Bronx, next to the Bronx River and near the Delaware/Catskill Aqueduct running under the street a block from the Bronx Zoo, and in it separated from the public, were dead crows which I reported to the Health Dept. when a request for info on West Nile virus "dead birds" sightings was put on public television news. In the words of the renowned former resident poet of the Bronx, New York, Edgar Allan Poe, "Quoth the raven, nevermore!" Some of the stones apparently had been moved and through Parsons, Inc., the few bones in the trench were sent to the Smithsonian for analyses. The cemetery has New York City Landmarks designation, though an "abandoned" congregation with another church built later across the street from it. There are veterans of four wars in the churchyard (War of 1812 through World War I) though I suspect the name "Old Soldiers Cemetery" may be because of the one Union soldier Civil War statue in it next to the brick "winter" vault and not because of the statistical count of burials, though a good reason to landmark it. Al Pacino grew up about six blocks away maybe he knows. When I visited Fort Schuyler, there was a faded marker there that stated here is (now was) the cannon that was in the "Old Soldiers Cemetery" in West Farms. Very strange. I wonder where it is? They put up a new park nearby, Vidalia Park. Google Earth Download SS United States propeller.kmz

Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey (1903-1972)

What would have been Louis Leakey's birthday today. This references an interesting site "books and writers" maintained in a library in Finland (don't miss the live library cam of Finland, land of "187,888 lakes") and their entry. They have some interesting biographical info compiled from many sources. I had the Stanley Kubrick one changed a bit someone may have tampered with it, HAL 90000, indeed.

New York State's Oldest Lighthouse to Be Preserved?

The East Hampton Star "Shines For All"

$7 Million Earmarked For Lighthouse By Janis Hewitt (08/02/2007) With the approval on Friday by the House-Senate conference committee of $35 million through the Water Resource Development Act for Long Island projects, the Montauk Point Lighthouse came another step closer to a rock revetment project that will prevent it from tumbling off the bluff and into the sea. ... A House-Senate conference committee has approved $7 million to build an 840-foot-long stone revetment around the Montauk Lighthouse. Whom it once belonged to: "Gardiner Myths Debunked at the Clinton Academy" By Jennifer Landes

---------------- Now playing: Jethro Tull - Dot Com via FoxyTunes

New York architecture and archaeology

At 10:54pm on August 4th, 2007, said…

Thank you now I know about what was Calcutta! The NY Times once reported the jail next to today's New York City Hall Park (by architect John McComb also the Montauk lighthouse at the end of Long Island, commissioned by President Washington, which the locals told him where to put, according to geologists) was "blacker than any black hole of Calcutta" (1903) and it was where a British Major Cunningham is alleged to have or had tortured Ethan Allen and others in the American Revolution. They updated the park, to its, ah, appear more as it did in the later 19th century and outlined in the darker stones of the plaza (from around Binghamton, NY?) where some of the original buildings had been, i.e., that jail, the barracks, etc. They finally just this last Tuesday after seven years opened the northern entrance to the City Hall and the "Tweed" Courthouse (finished by Mayor Fernando Wood) past the Horace Greeley statue and Joseph Pulitzer monument ("newspaper row" was once across the street) and the "First Almshouse" former cemetery, which I was involved in trying to sort out where it was for a number of firms in archaeology over a number of years prior in short spurts. One new building at the foot of Broad Street actually incorporated some of the archaeology features in view-ports through the sidewalks, etc. back in the early 1980s into the architecture. Posted to Jeanne Heydecker at archN ---------------- Now playing: Jethro Tull - Spiral via FoxyTunes

Screen Vendors

I've used Stoney Knoll too and they look just like Archmat screens that were made in New Hampshire by a Navy Vietnam vet that I had the pleasure of speaking to once. I couldn't get the screen rushed order as he was visiting his mom with emphysema in Connecticut at the time. Quite frankly the only difference I can see anyway is the Archmat ones had a trowel holder (a small block of wood with enough space to take the blade of a trowel. Does someone know the story? Is it the successful succession of a design that was favored by us the consumer? Or a spontaneous invention? If you want a really good stationary screen for large volumes, Bruce Fullem once (?) of NY's SHPO, designed one that pushes back after every push you give it and works well at a stationary point, as it has to be driven into the ground. I've used it on a Hudson River terrace prehistoric site in summer, with 12 allowable C14 dates (might have been as many as 30) and on the winter excavation of the West Point Foundry "workers houses" thought 2 out of five might have been built by Virginians, i.e., like the ones in Glassie's study of architectural house "footprints" in Virginia the two closest to the foundry core) and with the four legged flexible steel with welded hinges holding a screen box, will process six buckets of dirt at a time! Once sold at another archaeology supply co. that disappeared, in NYC, called "Archeon" I think, Joel Grossman, Ph.D. had one welded up from Mr. Fullem's sketches. ---------------- Now playing: The Audience - I Wanna Be Your Man via FoxyTunes

Charlie Rose: Robert Novak on Bush's Decision to Invade Iraq

WNYC AM once had an interview with a historian of the Bush family who wanted to refute the story that they had dealings with the Nazis directly in strategic metals. They had, but indirectly and their office was ordered shut down once WWII began. The author did make it clear that the current President and once Governor of Texas, made sure that he (Ed.- the "he" who owns it) owned the Texas baseball team the state of Texas had helped create and not the brother of the owner of CBS, Inc. who had also wanted to buy it. The profits from the sale of the team allowed the President to purchase the former German owned turkey ranch in Crawford, Texas, (coincidentally the British entertainer, Joe Cocker, owns a cattle ranch in Crawford, Colorado). Selling "Public Citizen" subscriptions door-to-door, one summer, an organization based in Texas once founded by Ralph Nader, I was surprised that a governor of a state was allowed to do that, and as a President, allowed to effectively create war without a public referendum, when "only Congress shall declare war" and I thought he was for us, the public who attends the games. When Pearl Harbor was attacked in Dec. 1941 and the Nazis declared war on the US a short week or so thereafter, and started the "battle of the Atlantic" sinking US shipping in January of 1942, there was no question, though some distrusted a "gut reaction" (the honorable woman Senator from Arkansas after the "day of infamy") about what had to be done. When a "team" from Germany of mostly Saudi religious fanatics caused the destruction and mayhem of 9/11, my gut reactions were not, "Iraq" but what was going on there in the "twin doozies"? And later, why was Judith Miller, a NY Times journalist in jail over "the source"? Robert Novak on Bush's Decision to Invade Iraq ---------------- Now playing: The Audience - Zig-Zag & Swirl via FoxyTunes

Are All Those Copyright Warnings Deceiving Us?

A number of years ago, just before the restoration work of the Main Reading Room of the NY Public Library, I recall reading a “Writers Guild of America” article on copyright. The author stated that photocopy was very regulated in other countries but not here. Also, in the same article I recall was the discussion of the Supreme Court ruling that found baseball was a “national past-time” and not subject to the rules limiting monopoly applied in other business and that speech (writing) about baseball not subject to the same rules. I recall a sports bar in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Dodgers or “The Dodgers” that was sued by the Los Angeles baseball franchise for copyright infringement, even though the team had originated there. Lately, I read the WGA is being sued for collecting foreign authors monies but not redistributing it correctly along with other problems, I wonder if they will go on the rumored strike.

Comment by George Myers - August 2, 2007 at The Wall Street Journal Law Blog 8:47 pm

Some other interesting sites:

Two great male actors:

My week: Patrick Stewart The Observer 7 Days in the Guardian Unlimited

Acting Out: The Interview: Alan Cumming The Observer: Review

A Great Gentleman Friend of America: the Marquis de Lafayette:

A New Hermione a New York Times slide show of the ongoing replication of the ship Lafayette sailed to America on. He was wounded in the Battle of the Brandywine. There are two white marble busts, one of him and one of George Washington, in the US National Trust "Lyndhurst Estate" near the Tappan Zee Bridge. Some of the property nearby was donated by the Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon.

Thank you Jean-Luc Picard...

Re: Hand Scanner (histarch)

I used a hand scanner to scan the profiles from the West Point Foundry "workers houses" from the field and then with Corel scan to vector software bring them into state plane coordinates in AutoCAD back in 1992-1993. It worked pretty well as you could adjust the input and all the graph paper lines would disappear leaving only the drawing. Once they were cleaned up and often "closed" as polygons they were exported back to image software where the strata were painted or filled further (then AutoCAD was mostly filling closed objects with hatching. There was a certain satisfaction in that what was drawn was what was "framed" by the rest of the drawing.

There was just a recent NY Times review of some of the scanners by David Pogue which he attempts to get the scoop on the Harry Potter book which is pretty funny over at the tech reviews he does. Some work solo some work with a notebook computer. I recall having to check with the library if you can scan some things because of light issues. I once stood on a large portable ladder the Map Room of the NY Public Library had to photograph a large scale map which hinted at a partnership with a large dairy owner with then "Boss" Tweed administration to control the land around the proposed new aqueduct. The map was the largest I'd ever seen on paper and tough to photograph, considering we were interested in the one section, where the high voltage underground cable that was going to come through from biogeneration at the world's second largest sugar refinery in Yonkers to the power grid at Dunwoodie, NY.

"State of the Art: Here is Your Pen Scanner, Mr. Bond"