Way down below the ocean... Donovan

Two Clinton Voters On Why They’re Not On Board With Obama - Horserace

In the little church in Penalt, Wales on the Wye River valley, between England and Wales, where Robert Plant once lived and a friend of mine, a FitzHerbert is from, there is an old painting and on it in the church is the Latin motto: Semper Eadum ''always the same'' a motto of the monarchy of Great Britain a place mistakenly thought of as having everywhere the same language, English. I hope the coming campaign stays civil, and we don't all end asking "Why vote?"

Clip: Alanis Morrisette Discusses Her Lesbian Days With Howard Stern

I hope she's not too sad having played "God" in "Dogma" (Kevin Smith film) with George Carlin who played the cleric in the church she appears out of. Listening to Mr. Smith's writing (Silent Bob) it was a role George Carlin always wanted to play and he played it finally. I will miss Joji Carlin.

Comment to the “Los Angeles Times”

One unsolved death was that of hospital worker Kathy Nguyen, a resident of the Bronx, NY and I think former Vietnamese citizen. There was no associated evidence near her, either in the workplace or at her home. The Washington Post published an excellent book on anthrax research, which in it they state that recently Conscientious Objectors to their drafted service (Selective Service lottery system was sponsored by a NY legislator) were awarded medals for their participation in anthrax exposure experiments conducted by the US Government. Another Washington Post reporter published articles on the use of an unapproved anthrax vaccine that was in some cases killing US military personnel, and arguably should never been used and in one or two cases, refused, leading to legal action against the objecting soldier. After the mailbox exposure, and I thought I heard while working in archaeology in the flood effects of the Raritan River in Bridgewater, NJ, where a Johnson & Johnson wound research facility was closed in an "envelope" scare while I was there, the radio media describe that something to the effect that the letter that arrived in Florida had the "seal of Solomon” on it and a reference to the Castle Hill, Bronx, NY Hispanic entertainer, referred to as J.Lo (Jennifer Lopez). It may have been overlooked also that the former NY Mayor, Rudolf Giuliani's company was put in charge of the cleanup of the post offices I read. It's also more recently been disavowed that it was ever "weapons grade".

Which leaves me wondering how many people were killed or maimed today in Vietnam from unexploded cluster bombs? Banning them is not enough, we need ordnance clearing.  Anthrax ... the ultimate whodunit

Second Amendment musing...

Newsvine - The real winner in the Supreme Court's gun-rights decision

I think we should look at the context of the Bill of Rights as New York, which became the first capital of the new republic. New York would not ratify the Constitution without the 10 Amendments. The National Guard, was originally just that, and other states in the union wanted guarantees that they would not be taken over by a strong central military at the command of the Executive, which at the time, the President and the Vice President could and were from different parties, until amended, showing perhaps the concern and therefore the language of "militia". When the Civil War "Draft Riots" occurred, and a subsequent National Guard courts martial of its leading officer for a reason I've not been able to determine, the regiment from the Bowery, of the original "capital" guard then composed of mostly very northern New Yorkers, were called out in defense of Washington, D.C. where they went to protect the 'final' capital of Washington, DC, and where a new dome, forged in the Bronx, NY was being erected on the Capitol for a little over $1 million. That National Guard unit was later mustered out on Big Brother Island in the Bronx. In the Draft Riots there was a report that the NY Times offices were protected from the rampaging mob, who had read the published report that printed that draftees could escape service for $300, with a primitive form of repeating "machine gun". I'm not sure where director Martin Scorsese got the cannon fire in "The Gangs of New York" probably part of his dramatic artistic license.

Above us only sky...John Lennon

Sky at Night

This is the longest running television program on record. ©

In the US it might be: "The Open Mind is a half-hour public affairs interview show. First broadcast in May 1956 over WRCA television (now WNBC) in New York City, it currently originates from the studios of the CUNY Graduate Center and airs on public broadcasting stations nationwide." (Wikipedia)

Silent Service news

Underwater Archaeology Discussion List

I was thinking the other day how two actors, who also once played father and son archaeologists in an "Indiana Jones" film ("the name of the dog junior") had both been in other films, Soviet submarine commanders ("K-19: The Widowmaker" (Harrison Ford) and "The Hunt For Red October" (Sean Connery). People on this list might be interested to know that:

"On June 2, 2008, divers from Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit Two in Norfolk, Virginia arrived and began preparations to raise the sub."

The Wikipedia entry for Soviet submarine K-77 has an interesting history of the retired Julliett class submarine now on the river bottom in Providence, Rhode Island, USA.

A "Silent Service" monument is now in New Suffolk, NY out on the North Fork of Long Island, NY where until about 1903 the Holland Torpedo Co. was on Broadway there. It had been started by a New Jersey math teacher, Mr. Holland whose small one man effort, where he started to work out the hydraulics was on exhibit in NJ. A replica of the "Turtle" used by Americans against the British Navy in the Revolutionary War, was on exhibit in Fort Clinton in lower Manhattan, built by the "History Channel" just prior to the events of 9/11/01 and they had promised a much more realistic one to follow. More recently an artist decided to float a "Turtle" replica with himself aboard and created a stir among the harbor patrols.

Marvin the Martian reporting in...

Newsvine - Mars lander finds salty environment in taste test

Yippie! Thirty years after "Viking" which had some problems with its experiment compartments leading to inclusive and non-results, there is progress in the field of planetary atmospheres! Today another three studies, non related, stated the northern top of Mars one time was hit with an asteroid the size of Earth's Moon. Booo! Mass extinction perhaps...

Newsvine - Record drug haul unearthed in Taliban trenches

Odd, hashish is often in bricks or slabs and once made in Morocco under royal supervision, smoked sometimes at the end of fasting at the end of Ramadan I think I read, though it's also reported Bruce Lee ingested it.  One sailboat in NY full of bricks ended up belonging to the US Merchant Marine Academy.  Where was this "hash" going?  How many are addicted to opium in Afghanistan that this might also be used in place of, if that's what it is?  Wasn't there to be, like in Pakistan, a plant growing program to replace poppy, to manufacture PABA for sunscreen, that would have made a good cash crop? Newsvine - Record drug haul unearthed in Taliban trenches

Katie Couric's Notebook: George Carlin - Couric & Co.

They was an interview with TV talk show host Merv Griffin (ed. - Cinematical.com) where he appeared with Yoko Ono and John Lennon on the internet. He said he always wanted to be an actor and went on a journey of sorts to get there and realized he'd rather be writing the material than trying to speak parts others had written. Ironically, he became one of our great American stage comedians. Katie Couric's Notebook: George Carlin - Couric & Co.

Dear Mr. Seinfeld:

Sometimes I think we know each other. That Fiat? There were some surfers who pre-purchased a small Landrover in Morocco. When they got there they put their surfboards on top for a surfin' safari across Africa with a return trip through Israel. Unfortunately around Idi Amin, the rainy season ruts from the huge "lorries" caused the Landrover to roll over. Most of the guys went home except for one who was doing an independent photo study for class credit on the effects of Western culture on Africa. At one place he had to hide his camera by pretending to be peeing off the back of the truck. With only one radio station, maybe foreigners traveling through central Africa were considered perhaps to be spying. To make a long story shorter, he crossed the continent, went surfing in the Seychelles, instead went to Lourdes, returned home to Long Island, drove that Fiat to Buffalo's new Amherst campus (new dorms designed by I.M. Pei and Davis-Brody) where he showed me the photos of the journey. I had lost my former room-mate Cramer when I moved to the new dorm, our party of four had once spent a night in the Calais, Maine jail after a border agent found a single marijuana seed in the crack of the bench seat of the "station car" clunker he had borrowed from his father who ran a gas-station (he had to fly up and repurchase the book value of it) in Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn.  We had taken "spring break" on Grand Manan Island, in Seal Cove where my family once had a large house falling off its foundation (don't put beach rocks in your concrete mix, they're salty) next to the schoolhouse. After watching your show about "nothing" (were you in Lawler's "Existentialism" class? I wonder how the tenure petition went.) I sometimes think perhaps our dharmas crossed somewhere, making that "Dharma for 2".

Sincerely, I hope the hurricane season stays mild, my mom got married in one and hardly anyone showed up in the Bronx,

George Myers

Four-Star Woman

I hope its not to cover-up matiriel lost in ''Desert Storm'' estimated by the Pentagon to be $1.5 billion, it made it to the "beach" but nobody knew where anything was. They awarded a GPS RFID inventor for coming up with a solution. I wonder if it has been implemented. There is a gag order reported at the BBC on the missing what? over $30 billion in Iraq? Send in the ''bean counters'' and bring the ''boys and girls'' home! PABA for opium didn't work, let's try something else. Katie Couric's Notebook: Four-Star Woman - Couric & Co.

Gitmo Detainee Ordered Released, But His Lawyer Is Not Allowed To Tell Him - Politics on The Huffington Post

Hunter S. Thompson warned about betting on basketball in his last column. He left two words on his typewriter when he departed this life, "Fourth Amendment". This is a terrible example to show the world denying in a way the Supreme Court as almost a joke, '...well they didn't say we had to tell him, yuck, yuck, yuck." Nearby on Cape Maisi, "Wanderer" sank in a storm in the fruit trade after becoming the "last slaver" boarded by British slavery blockade in 1858 off the coast of Africa. It was thought too fine to be used that way but put-in after loosing 1/3 of its human cargo on Jekyll Island, Georgia. It was used by both the Confederacy and the Union in the ensuing civil war. This administration reminds me of it, wandering away from the virtues of a world class democracy, based on the principles established in the Constitution, the outcome of the "Declaration of Independence" signed by a William Floyd a Long Island, New Yorker and nearby where the "Wanderer" was built before twisted into the terrible aims of avarice (greed). A beautiful yacht, sinfully used. Gitmo Detainee Ordered Released, But His Lawyer Is Not Allowed To Tell Him - Politics on The Huffington Post Ed. - "Smoking Gun" copy of the police report "On the typewriter in front of Thompson was a page bearing letterhead reading "Fourth Amendment Foundation". Upon this page, centered near the top was typed "Feb 22'05", and the page contained only one word, "counselor".

Subject: Re: urban cemeteries

Back in 1999, after working in NYC's City Hall Park's, "first almshouse cemetery" which could be literally, the first cemetery of a "poorhouse" in that there were other charities prior, perhaps the distinction a public vs. a private vs. church vs. state (purity vs. danger) for Parsons, Inc., in the middle of a rehabilitation effort to restore the City Hall Park and to upgrade its security (bollards, stronger fence, etc., and paving stone with outlines of former structure locations in darker stone from excavation and cartographic research) in which I found in a planned location for a water fountain, two skeletons atop another, almost bare, except for a piece of what might have been a small wooden piece on one wrist what had been impressed with some material that had left an archetypal "judeo-christian" tablets outline. I have not been back there, it was closed since 9/11 and just recently reopened, (so to visit the Horace Greeley and Joseph Pulitzer monuments and other park uses), so the "fate" of the drinking fountain remains a mystery. I assisted the research of the "Cooper Square Urban Renewal" an area once to have decimated 25 blocks for housing projects in the early 1970s, reduced, in my research with Nancy Stehling, MS, RPA, to the parts of three blocks on Bowery and Houston streets (in NYC they say "how ston") which had shown on the maps as containing a Methodist and a Quaker cemetery. Just outside the study area are two marble vault cemeteries, the first non-denominational ones in the city and what may also be nearby, shown on one map, further down the Bowery from that intersection, a "Negro Burial Ground". As urban sites are often "pits within pits" on top of accumulated building and other efforts, we researched the history of the cemeteries and found the Quaker and Methodist had been removed in the 1840s, from the "...oldest street in America" (Leo Hershkowitz, Encyclopedia Americana) in the neighborhood of New York's original "theater district" and later Yiddish theater district. We were not privy to any of the excavation that went on there, though I did watch city hearings on the subject of the demolition and heard a resident of one of the structures, noted Oxford-trained scholar and feminist Kate Millet speak. I would suggest that researchers be given some "heads up" on work or have the rumor mill continue to grind as this does. Or hire the locals.

It's all over for the unknown soldier... Jim Morrison

'McCain' POW bracelet found in storage - Field Notes - msnbc.com
Would "equal time" require a story about finding a black armband with the white numbers "40,000" on it? I remember wearing one onto a WWII era diesel-electric submarine docked on the west-side of Manhattan. The guy who gave it to me to wear got into a heated discussion with the Navy CO. My grand-uncle a Master Mariner left in Jan. 1942 from nearby, captain of the "City of Atlanta" and torpedoed thereafter with two survivors of 48 by U-123 in "Operation Drumbeat". War had been declared. It never was for John McCain.

Re: urban cemeteries

In another archaeology tech job for the Queens Historical Association (NYC - Celia Bergoffen, PhD, RPA, Stanley Cogan, Borough Historian) we hand test excavated the landmarked Moore-Jackson Cemetery to determine what reconstruction had taken place in the historic cemetery, part of a block-to-block property acquired by the Queens Historical Association. Erroneously reported an extant cemetery, all the stones are in landscaped positions documented now from the WPA era. Additional remote-sensing or further excavation will be needed to “find” it outside the garden. Family residence associated with it was where the British Army headquartered and won the “Battle of Long Island” the first defeat of General Washington in the American Revolution. After, at trial, the owners, were found innocent of collaboration with the British Army, the house on a strategic crossroad of "information". It looks like a cemetery, once next to the Japanese-American garden supplier, but was arranged, i.e., all the stones had broken bottoms, where often they extend as much as 3 feet or more into the ground. Drive-by cemetery crashing in the early 1930s? If someone would be interested in trying a remote-sensing test there please contact them.

Tomorrow is “Custer's Last Stand at Little Big Horn, 1876”

Subject: Re: urban cemeteries

From: George Myers <georgejmyersjr@GMAIL.COM>

Reply-To: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY <HISTARCH@ASU.EDU>

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:21:48 -0700

One I was involved with, I am not sure meets the criteria, though it is in or adjacent to the New York State Urban Cultural Park at Sacketts Harbor, NY (last I heard there were 14, i.e., Buffalo, NY Theater District, the area in Ossining, NY next to the Sing-Sing Prison and the first Croton Aqueduct exhibit, an Erie Canal Lock in Syracuse, NY, and some others) which resulted after the Berger Co., found some scattered human remains in their shovel tests and were kind enough to visit from their work at nearby Fort Drum, NY to relocate the datum they had used, even though the client had not paid them.

The parade ground at Madison Barracks is an adaptive reuse of historic resources that were built on for a planned retirement community on Lake Ontario and part of what was once the largest military site in the US and some say the "birthplace" of the US Navy, over the War of 1812. A small extant cemetery is there, with cast iron fence from Buckingham Palace as a token of peace offered after the hostilities, which in an invasion of what has become Toronto, a bombproof there blew up in preparation of a "special weapon" which killed Zebulon Pike (western explorer/ officer of Pike's Peak fame) which resulted in the retaliatory bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore, MD and the burning of the White House. Zebulon Pike was returned in a barrel to Sacketts Harbor and thought to be buried in said cemetery though at the time it was not clear to us working in the what has become known as Fort Pike but at the time Volunteer Fort, manned by then grayed veterans of the American Revolutionary War.

When other remains were found in the parade field, where by the way Ulysses S. Grant first served after graduation from the West Point Academy (later as a Captain on Governors Island, NYC) we called the coroners office (as required in most states of the US when human remains are found, or you might be charged in messing with a crime scene) as the remaining buildings are used as rental units (the main barracks had fallen down perhaps in one of the northern NY state earthquakes, a 5.1 I experienced at Fort Drum in 1983) but they only offered there their services to work on the weekends as the remains were definitely historic. We thought the shallow finds disarticulated discards of war or other processes until, near the surface, Angela Schuster, now a senior editor of "Archaeology" magazine and I discovered the "archetypal" coffin outline, however for someone of a quite short stature or perhaps disarticulated by war. That stopped one of the condominiums rapidly going up around us and the area of the former "parade field" was left alone, I hope, at least that was the way I remember working there for Greenhouse Consultants, Inc., with William Sandy, RPA (who markets flotation processing and the equipment).

It was at one time decidedly "urban" today, still has that feeling, though many of the structures of the former installation that had fallen into disrepair were once taken out on the ice of Lake Ontario where they sank I was told. Some estimates of the circa 1812 era place the population at about 35,000 conservatively. Over 20 people were hung for military infractions, some for simply falling asleep while on guard duty and said to have begun the revision of military justice in the US services.

"Harbor Lights"

1880 On The Bay in Newsday (2008) The Huntington Bay home that once belonged to George B. Cortelyou, who was a cabinet member for President Theodore Roosevelt, is on the market. Cortelyou often entertained Roosevelt, an Oyster Bay neighbor, and other dignitaries at the 1880 house. The 8,000-square-foot home is located on almost 3 acres on the highest point of Huntington Bay. There are nine bedrooms, five baths and four half-baths. The asking price is $3.999 million. "It's a huge house," says Jody Schmid, who is listing the property on behalf of the Huntington office of Prudential Douglas Elliman. "The landscape is magnificent." - Valerie Kellogg

Did they really have to fire that guy?

NBC spent many months with a crew in Vietnam, trying to get the "soldiers point of view" according to Edwin Newman who read a letter canceling the investigative reporting team there as part of a eulogy in the UN Chapel for George Murray, a one-time director of "Huntley and Brinkley" and an award winning television news producer for "NBC Nightly News" (or/and "From New York") which stated the reason as "higher ups" after months of dangerous work and expenses. Though this story reminded me of it, I find that it seems a little odd, and wonder if there might be more to the story as there was Mr. Murray, a former US Army Captain and veteran of the Korean War. If not, what were the "higher ups" doing during the hiatus? Tim Russert's Wikipedia Updater Fired By NBC-Affiliate-Contracted Web Firm For Reporting His Death Too Early - Media on The Huffington Post

Newsvine - George Carlin mourned as counterculture hero

But father, what if the military-industrial complex, does take over?

Dick Cavett Talks About His Depression

Mr. Cavett introduced an idiom? (odium ?) once I thought quite funny. I hope I have it right: "Fold it seven times and stick it where the Moon don't shine." I think it's from the great state of Nebraska. They were in a four way tie with Arkansas, Alabama, and New Mexico for the largest turnout (76%) for Bob Dole in the 1996 Republican primary. Only New Jersey (82%) and Puerto Rico (98%) had a greater turnout for Mr. Dole of Kansas (and New Hampshire). Just seeing what was left of Mr. Cavett's historic house on "Tick Hill" after it burned down from a blowtorch was enough to depress me, though he valiantly restored it to its original as best possible out there near Montauk Point. Another Mead Hall, at Drew University, in Madison, NJ, the former NJ governor Kean, was its president, also co-chairman of the "9/11 Commission" had a similar fire, though fortunately for cooling the structure has a large hidden interior brick "firewall". Woody Allen's wife went there. Can you imagine, the lighthouse at Montauk Point, on the end of America's largest island, (called its "front porch") commissioned by President George Washington, designed by McComb, who also designed, among other important structure, New York's City Hall, has to be saved from falling into the sea by an "earmark"? What would George have thought, or for that matter Groucho Marx? Dick Cavett Talks About His Depression

Newsvine - Obama Unveils His New "Eagle Seal" For The Nation

When I saw it, as a one-time fan of Carl G. Jung's (SPOILER: free association follows) one of Sigmund Freud's associates in the study of "WWI war neuroses" (recently "exonerated" found to be working behind "enemy lines" in WWII) book published in the 1960s "Man and His Symbols" my first thought was the symbol I think from the FDR administration, for the "NRA" the National Recovery Act, which was begun in the "Great Depression" and led to many improvements in American infrastructure and lives. An earlier "depression" was thought, averted by the Secretary of the Treasury, George B. Cortelyou>, the price of a loaf of bread had gone from 5 cents to 10 cents. He had been Chairman of the GOP, began teaching shorthand in NYC, a Sinfonian member ("1862–1940 (Alpha Alpha 1903?, Alpha Honorary 1914?; First United States Secretary of Commerce and Labor, 1903–1904; United States Postmaster General, 1905–1907; United States Secretary of the Treasury, 1907–1909") and when he invited the press into the White House to discuss then still living President McKinley's condition after being shot at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, NY, became technically the "first White House Press Secretary" according to a journal article of the National Archives, in which Dee Dee Myers, the first woman under the Clinton Administration, is however left out of the article. He was an early CEO of Consolidated Edison in NYC. His "Harbor Lights" home in Huntington, NY was recently put on sale, his Washington, D.C. one had appeared in "Victorian Homes" and I once corresponded with its then current owner, an historian of gaslight. Mr. Cortelyou's mother's family was part of my father's family way back when, a "great aunt" I remember, though my grandfather a Brooklyn "reform Democrat".

10 Scariest Asteroid Attacks on Earth: The Near Hits and Approaching Terrors

A few left out I think, though not verified perhaps. In 1938 (?) there was a NEO event reported, which might be because not many read or write Chinese and/or Arabic in the West. There's an ellipse of meteor falls on the map of western Saudi Arabia (there's one in Mecca I believe) which at the time orbital mechanics had yet to explain (ca. 1978). It was also reported here on the web that the "Chicago Fire" coincided with forest burning thought perhaps by its range and frequency to have resulted from fireballs from above. Considering they pick up quite a few in Antarctica, sometimes from helicopter missions to do just that, low altitude visual flight rules, see one stop and look, so there might still be a large one or crater to find there. There are some thought to have fallen quite slowly from an odd aerodynamic and "striking" angle that have survived somewhat intact, (3 million stone "skips") one in what became a sacred area in Africa I saw on-line. 10 Scariest Asteroid Attacks on Earth: The Near Hits and Approaching Terrors

Newsvine - Analysis: Will McCain's Carter link ring true? Part 2

General Norman Schwartzkopf's father as part of a US Expeditionary Force, put the shahs in power in Iran I read, and since then, the 1930s there has been a dialectic between the clerics and the political shah system, in part supported by the US. I would like to know which US party thought putting the mainstay of the US fleet in Iran was a good idea, to the tune of 100 Grumman F-14 fighter/bombers, like in "Top Gun" the film. I would also like to know if they had any problems, some were worked on at Langley and modified after said crisis and I 've also seen footage of unrecoverable horizontal spins as part of coverage of an air show crash while in Albany, NY collecting reports for the GE cleanup of the Upper Hudson River of PCBs. I've also recently, while looking for wreckage of missing record-setting aviator and millionaire Steve Fossett online in air and satellite coverage in Nevada have seen the purported practice runways where the failed military rescue attempt was practiced that was lost in the desert sandstorm in Iran. I was sitting with the test pilot, Tom Gwynne, on a belated birthday, when the mainstream media announced we were prepared to blow up all the F-14s if the USSR crossed their border into Iran. He said it must be the air-to-air missile technology, since most of the plane is known. I also read it had the capability to acquire 6 targets and keep track of them. So who put the Grumman Corporation's almost 4000 employees training Iranian F-14 pilots, ground crews and service people just outside of Tehran? Newsvine - Analysis: Will McCain's Carter link ring true? Wikipedia entry on Canada's "New Fighter Aircraft program" "Additionally, the F-14 almost ended up being purchased from Iran, as their fleet was facing the prospect of falling into disuse due to a lack of spares in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution. Canadian diplomats tried to convince the Iranians to sell its fleet of eighty almost-new fighters at cut-rate prices. However, the negotiations fell through in the aftermath of the Canadian caper in which six American diplomats were smuggled out of Iran from the Canadian embassy."

Newsvine - Analysis: Will McCain's Carter link ring true?

Then President Jimmy Carter also "inherited" some world class problems and headaches brought by history and Republican policies I believe. One was the Grumman Corporation's compound of almost 4000 employees, mostly from the Republican stronghold of Long Island, who were training the Shah of Iran's air-force to fly the 80 F-14s it had taken delivery on (to have been 100) reported in the press there, Newsday. I had the pleasure of meeting the test pilot and was a fellow student of anthropology with his wife, an archaeologist who also had traveled to Iran, prior to the occupation of the US Embassy in Tehran (or as it used to be spelled Teheran) by students who voiced opposition to their being spied upon both there and while attending school in the US by Savak, the "secret police" of Iran. It had also brought Iranian students to the US, primarily engineering students, some specifically to Stony Brook University, where I attended classes and drove sometimes for Tootsie Taxi, sometime transporting students, based at the old train station. Where I also worked in Security on the weekends, it was literally wide open to the public except for what little I and other work-study students could muster-up on often single or double person shifts at the gym, a popular destination for sports and music. One group, the "Allman Brothers", with Capricorn records, raised quite a bit o money for then Governor of Georgia's presidential race, now the former President Carter and play every year in New York's Beacon Theater since they once opened for "Mountain" at the Stony Brook Gym.

It seems disingenuous of the presumptive Republican candidate to judge one of the few presidents we've had from Annapolis, who also received a degree in nuclear engineering in New York State. Although then Governor Ronald Reagan began his presidential campaign in upstate New York, a then Republican stronghold, it would be wise to see that some of the problems of United States has come from New York Republicanism. Said jokingly, once its Chairman of the Republican party and Cabinet member, George B. Cortelyou, is cited by the National Archives as the first "White House Press Secretary" when he invited the press into the White House to discuss President McKinley's condition, then expected to recover. The rest they say is history. Newsvine - Analysis: Will McCain's Carter link ring true?

Mel, I just missed 86...

Wait, What Did He Just Call the Pope? - The Lede - Breaking News - New York Times Blog

87. June 17th, 2008 5:22 pm Maybe it’s a “Jungian slip” and he’s there for advice about his brother Neil Bush’s past who testified in his ohno! divorce where he said he slept with a lot of call girls in SE Asia. Neil Bush also had dinner with Scott Hinckley the would be assassin’s brother the day then President Reagan was shot, with special bullets, according to sources on the web.— Posted by George Myers

You and I…

Hello again.

I am still sorting out the years in archaeology.   I have had quite a bit of field experience and what that often entails, a challenge, especially when people apparently just forget what was done and go back to previous simple procedures. I feel "our" experience and reputation is somewhat maligned though the reviewers should be shouldered with more responsibility for how things get done in my opinion, and actually, in New York state, are doing that I think.

Bernadette Castro, who once ran and lost against the powerful Democrat, US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a "Castro Convertible" furniture millionaire heiress, is no longer in charge of "Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation" though she will always appear on "This Old House" reruns with Bob Vila in Frederick Church's "Olana" (Arabic: 'on high') state historic site, the founder of the Hudson River School of landscape art I visited just before starting grad school. His painting "Niagara Falls" was the first artwork to be purchased by the US Congress. One of her last duties was to open Fort Montgomery state interpretative site, which you and I worked right near by on the cargo boat hulks under the Bear Mountain Bridge, which apparently the fort's features were "secretly" excavated over a number of years by a Bear Mountain State Parks employee. Parts of the nearby Fort Clinton are said to be under the Palisades Interstate Parkway traffic circle at the western approach to the Bear Mountain Bridge. A small suspension bridge to Fort Montgomery from inside the park, near Hudson River level, spans across Popolopen Creek, for foot travel, today right next to "our" boats site, and is shown on Google satellite maps.

A huge battle in the early Revolutionary War was fought on land and sea there, at one of the "Great Chain" locations once stretching across the Hudson River at a number of locations in the lower Hudson Valley, in an effort to stop or slow down, the British king's forces from their effort to "divide and conquer" the northern and southern colonies. They would have done this by controlling the Hudson River and with a chain of forts stretching into Canada from nearby Albany. Combined American and French troops, who arrived having marched from a debarkation in Rhode Island, crossed the Hudson River at the Kings Ferry, near Cortlandt, NY (coyote attacks there last night) and marched to Virginia and with the French fleet defeated General Cornwallis (Admiral Cornwallis was in charge of New York City. It's speculated there may have been a discussion about retaking nearby NYC). Something of the 6,000 French troops was left on "French sites" in their "long march" across New England and has been searched for recently.

Bernadette Castro's very last official duty may have been to announce the creation of the "US Purple Heart Center" at the New Windsor Cantonment, near Vails Gate, where we've met a number of years ago. As a teenager I had camped there in a pup tent in 9 degree weather as an Explorer Post 222 member, we carried on even though the Boy Scouts had canceled one early January. It has certainly changed for the better since and once when there for a Council for Northeast Historical Archaeology meeting, where we saw a film made of the "Hanover Square Site" (Nan Rothschild, PhD, the P.I.)  a NY state archaeologist, Paul Huey, showed me the cannons kept by the state there in another building. They also found offsite an original timber cabin from then and transported it back onto the site, there were many. More of those sites have been opened since too. General George Washington had asked the troops to winter-over after the treaty was signed with King George just in case further hostilities broke out instead. Many had some of their families there too. I more recently saw Paul Huey at a small lecture, on the early Dutch fort settlement of Albany excavated between highways and overpasses, in Yonkers, NY in the vicinity of another project we worked on, near the historic Otis Elevator factory. They are doing a lot of redevelopment in the Yonkers waterfront now, once home to jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, a statue there in her honor. US Senator Hillary Clinton has made the "Purple Heart" stamp permanent, not called up by politicians every so often as it suits them.

My last employer, Greenhouse Consultants, was scraping off the plow zone of a flood plain where eagles visit in Montoursville, PA with a couple of guys. There's at least 3 types of aboriginal pottery in small hearth features we documented in the early winter and spring, but for very short times, and fortunately shallow features. Nearby in the early winter near there, a 640 pound black bear was shot. As a child with my brother we had stayed as part of a NYC Police Athletic League program for two weeks (8 and 7 traveled there alone by train) on a Mennonite dairy farm of 200 acres about 65 dairy cows, just nearby there in Roaring Branch, PA probably what happens sometimes when it rains.

Hope things are fine. I feel like a gossip!

A Tree Grows in the Bronx...

A Bronx Tree Honors a Slain Journalist - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog 3. June 19th, 2008 3:09 pm On the other hand, Bette Midler who has since won an award from a Long Island Parks organization, helped stop the city’s auctioning off of community parks, by buying them outright and enlisting others with means to and made them a gift back to the NY community. I recall one in particular across the street from the lot where “Batteries Not Included” was filmed by Mr. Spielburg, which offered some nice shade on a hot day and a pleasant respite, community park activist Adam Purple, a sort of “Johnny Appleseed” would have been proud of in Alphabet City. The lot? It was to become the center for all Housing Police south of 42nd St. and also was to provide apartment housing. Crossing a picket line there and waving to Detective Lennie Briscoe (actor Jerry Orbach) who was in an episode of “Law and Order” I was part of an archaeology team on the lot. Nearby was an important shipyard that became the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture on Long Island. Bette Midler helped found the “New York Restoration Project” of which I am a member, which has opened new parks, one in Harlem. — Posted by George Myers

Northernmost settlements in the world...good low-methane producing coal mined there

Store Norske Spitsbergen Grubekompani

Very interesting...

China: Chinese UFO Looks Like Emergency Life Raft, Spies on You

For quite awhile the California DOT has/had a rotary engine powered one with video on a tether to inspect under overpasses and such. I'm not sure how far that got, but I thought I read NASA had helped research the seals on the "vanes" which seal the internal combustion. I had a Mazda RX-4 and some of their 13B engines are in the air, burn regular fuel and get aviation fuel economy. 3X on the Mianus Bridge in Connecticut the day it fell down (recently inspected) I'm here asking this and others be used for peaceful purposes.

Women's Space History

Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees: RIP Janet Dietrich, One of the “Mercury 13” Women Astronaut Trainees

After Amelia Earhart (recent TIGHAR aviation archaeology research) and the militarism of the air I imagine it was hard to be allowed into the "culture of secrecy" around some of the future plans for space too, i.e. the military use of Gemini to gather intelligence, and other missions, the public loss of which, with women, would have been considered "counter-productive" to the mission as it was once defined. It took a long time to get a woman educator in space, Ms. Sally Ride's anniversary there a few days ago notwithstanding, and after the Challenger space shuttle disaster too. They named the planetarium in Concord, New Hampshire after her, Christa McAuliffe, who said "What are we doing here? We're reaching for the stars."

Looking through a glass onion...

U.S. Finally Closes Last Internment Camp - Asylum | For All Mankind

Although the government finally admitted that "racism" was the reason most of the Japanese internments occurred (there were others in camps, Germans, Italians, most POWs) and they were recompensed for the hardship to a degree, there were many who were not. These were ethnic Japanese citizens of 17 other countries who were removed from mostly Latin America who were placed in internments camps in the US, primarily I thought I read in Texas. They were never recompensed a nickel. I also read there were some kept at Ellis Island perhaps at Angel Island, the entry ports of immigration on the East and West coasts respectively.

I was iron man...

The Incredible Hulk: The Hulks That Almost Were

I was once a member of the "Iron Kingdom" and there were a few green disc weights that belonged to Lou Ferrigno's gym in the Bronx, NY, I think they were his. Maybe they were a gift to Butch Nieves, once a Mr. America or did the Hulk visit now and then?

Recently the former location of the "Iron Kingdom" became a purple people eating "Karma" club open from 10pm to 4am. It was innocent looking on paper, "Marcia's Restaurant" in the old Underhill Building, there's a Muslim Center across the street that was once the union hall of the Communication Workers of America. There's a hearing this month...in part resulting from the "boys" shot, probably will be closed.

My huckleberry friend...

Around The River Bend: Covering The Flood - Couric & Co.

Maybe something like the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) for a National Water Control effort should be convened for the Mississippi. I worked on the Tenn-Tom Barge Canal (which hooks the Tennessee R. with the Tombigbee R. through the state of MS and AL into Mobile Bay, which was touted as an alternative to the Mississippi River, in times of flood or drought (chosen by the Congress in the 1970s over an "energy island" offshore for NYC) in the archeology around the Waverly Plantation, near Columbus, MS (author/playwright Tennessee Williams hometown) where ice from Boston once traveled to, and if they could accomplish that maybe states would not be so prone to arguments upriver and downriver and a nice Federal inter-pleader could be created. It's a shame, former President Lincoln won his case against the riverboats for the bridges, and the smokestacks had to be put on hinges.

Low gravity, high geoid

Satellites solve mystery of low gravity over Canada - space - 10 May 2007 - New Scientist Space

Interesting research, historical snowfall today is deep on the southern Ontario. I have a map of the differences plotted from the regular spheroid of the Earth vs. The observed anomalous heights above that geoid has also been looked at for this and other phenomena by the National Geophysical Data Center (Ibn al-Haytham "spherical trigonometry"). Not too far away is a large anomaly in the area around Yellowstone and larger region. I once was thinking if crater events have an opposite reaction somewhere in the mantle.

Battlestar Galactica Review: Battlestar Galactica Goes Planet of the Apes

Bridge tower in the final cut looks like we might be standing in NYC. One of my granddads worked on it then the Panama Canal when he was older. Looked like it, not there for very long in the scene. Like the "archetype" maybe for it. There's a fault line I think between the Buttermilk Channel and Manhattan (between Brooklyn and Governors Island where I worked for 4 days in geoarchaeology when it was empty, where Reagan and Gorbachev, who's getting the Liberty Award in Philadelphia this year, last met. The US's first flight school was there, Wilbur Wright's catapults, Army Air Force as it was until 50 years ago or so, now apparently becoming a Christian cult) So let's see, to play Devil's Advocate and to "fight City Hall' (I've worked on almshouse burials in City Hall another small cemetery) a cataclysmic war fought with geo-fault weapons leaves us standing in the ruins of former President Clinton's re-gifting of Governors Island for $1, where there, someday in the 21st century there was a new "Globe Theater" made out of Fort Williams, thanks to Sam Wanamaker's brother and others (who had brought the one in London "back") and the Brooklyn Bridge, built to 1000% engineering is partially left, the world ripped asunder. Hmmm...or somewhere else. Battlestar Galactica Review: Battlestar Galactica Goes Planet of the Apes

Retro Futurism: Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Car to be Displayed in New York

There was an unfortunate accident in one, driven by a race car driver out Chicago way that put the public opinion in the "crapper" on the car. It was to be built in Bridgeport, Connecticut, more recently known for being "bankrupt". Some of his metal working structures or "huts" (for the handling of high temperatures at close-quarter) are still up in New Jersey. Small igloos like. Part of research and design on radio and radar, as I recall, also he was a Laplander.  Retro Futurism: Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Car to be Displayed in New York

Andy Worthington: The Supreme Court's Guantanamo Ruling: What Does It Mean? - Politics on The Huffington Post

It might also mean a type of "Her Majesty's Search Warrant" used to search any dwelling, car, boat, etc. based on suspicion of "drug" related crime will be challenged.

Some of the Gitmo defendants were even paid for I recall, turned in for a sum of money in very poor surroundings. Doesn't that sound like slavery? Nearby in the Guantanamo Province on Cape Maisi is where the infamous American "last slaver" "Wanderer" sank in the fruit trade not too long after the American Civil War. It was boarded by a British Navy officer of the slavery blockade off Africa in 1858, and thought too elegant a yacht to be involved in that terrible illegal trade. It collected many people to be sold into slavery and landed what was left of their numbers on Jekyll Island, Georgia. It would later sail under Confederate and Union service. It was built in the Captain Brewster Hawkins shipyard in Setauket, NY and sold to a Louisiana cotton merchant's broker.

Without this ruling, perhaps law officers would be searching through the pillow on your bed, based on anonymous suspicion instead of the rules of evidence, a warrant, which I understand in some countries requires a district attorney to be present when served.

Andy Worthington: The Supreme Court's Guantanamo Ruling: What Does It Mean? - Politics on The Huffington Post

Ed. - when the "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson passed away (by his choice or another's) he left one sentence on his typewriter at his home (and quite a few on the dangers of betting on basketball in his last column) that was, "Fourth Amendment". A part of the US Constitution - part of the Bill of Rights, it guards against unreasonable searches and seizures. I have here posited that the suspension of habeas corpus leads to violations of the Fourth Amendment and as such government officials should be impeachable on grounds of failing to uphold the Constitution. Indirectly they are becoming "Canadian" and should move to the wide open expanses of the province of New Brunswick, by the way the only officially bilingual province in Canada. Or at least to Maine which couldn't decide until 1820 whether or not to trust US.

Next door in New Hampshire, you could be arrested in colonial times for having wooden floorboards in your home over 24" on grounds that it was a theft of the royal timber used in Navy ship mast construction, it's written.

"Habeas Corpus Barely Saved" The Future of Freedom Foundation

Ed. - "Smoking Gun" copy of the police report "On the typewriter in front of Thompson was a page bearing letterhead reading "Fourth Amendment Foundation". Upon this page, centered near the top was typed "Feb 22'05", and the page contained only one word, "counselor".

Second Batch Of Secret Documents Found On UK Train - Politics on The Huffington Post

This is not your 10 Downing Street family photo film being sent to the local chemists by mistake. Unless they were meant to be found (highly unlikely) something is (was and will be) terribly amiss in what we've come to think of British Intelligence. Second Batch Of Secret Documents Found On UK Train - Politics on The Huffington Post

Further on "Space Shuttle Porn: Our Endangered Space Shuttle Glides, As Seen From Space"

I grew up on Long Island where the Grumman Co. built the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM, along with others the 80 F-14s in Iran just before the hostage crisis and almost 4000 of their employees, training the Iranians to fly. They never took delivery on 100. Once the mainstay of our fleet operations) and one friend's father, who started when the company was a small machine shop building for the "Cradle of Aviation" as it has come to be known, said that they had the LEMs built all over the island in small shops so no one ever had the "big picture". Is it engineering design limitations or does the Russian "Buran" (also a Soviet cruise missile: Wikipedia) look like a US Space Shuttle? The Russian lunar lander looked abit like LEM. Go Rutan! Space Shuttle Porn: Our Endangered Space Shuttle Glides, As Seen From Space

When "Space Shuttle Challenger" disintegrated Jan. 28, 1986 I was in Princeton, NJ in a tree nursery digging archaeology test holes in the ground for the then proposed Route 1 interchange. I felt a little similitude as I was wondering what has me and a few others out digging a grid of holes in the winter when warmer weather might be more efficient. Progress! When the first shuttle launched "Columbia" in 1981, I began working on the National Park Service archaeology of the William Floyd Manor, in Old Mastic, NY, he a signer of the "Declaration of Independence" (fourth and/or first New Yorker). When "Columbia" burned up it carried the Israeli pilot/astronaut who had flown in 1981 on the mission to bomb the French-built nuclear powerplant in Iraq suspected of making nuclear weapons. Flying in extreme formation, they flew through international airspace on radar as an errant jetliner. His notebook, which was recovered from the "Columbia" debris in Texas is being preserved and treated. Sometimes, the sooner the better. It took forever to get an educator in space.

Tim Russert: 1950-2008

"Meet The Press" is exceptional television journalism, though hard to watch, usually because it is often about politics and that's what politics are sometimes like watching sausage being made, you'd rather have the final product. Tim Russert made it easier to stay involved with issues, though I'm not sure being sometimes displaced by various sporting events made the producers very happy. As a student in Buffalo, NY, I appreciate his citizenship, which reflects also where he came from the "Queen City of the Lakes" and terminus for "Clinton's Ditch" the Erie Canal, after one of its governors. They can add another name to the exemplary citizens of that city. I still recall him asking Secretary of State Condileeza Rice, PhD, three times, "Are you running for President?" She said no, three times. George Myers, the Bronx, NY (Sent Saturday, June 14, 2008 7:08 PM) Tim Russert: 1950-2008 - allDAY - msnbc.com

Orion is a go...

Space Shuttle Porn: Our Endangered Space Shuttle Glides, As Seen From Space

In the beginning there was to be two "Orbiter" missions, one the USAF was to launch from Vandenberg, CA for military missions the other for civilian missions out of Cape Canaveral. One of the early DOS CGA simulators, "Orbiter" very accurate for what it was, would have laser weapons options. The public argued over the costs and as I recall became a compromise with five "orbiters" or Shuttles as the ISS got off the proverbial ground and was argued about too. The simulators main competition was the "Chuck Yeagar's Advanced Flight Simulator" c) 1987 which required "DOS 2.0 or greater". Many like Carl Sagan questioned the return on investment, if the program "devolved" into a solely military purpose, or took too much away from the unmanned exploration of the solar system. The Planetary Society for example has pursued a "solar sail" program with the Russians, aboard one of their submarines (rocket failed to get the upgrade, reminded me of the misplaced ',' vs. '.' in a software control program said to have doomed one launch) since the similar NASA mission is off in the future, if at all.

More water

High Water and the American Character - The Lede - Breaking News - New York Times Blog I worked on the archaeology clearance of the floodplain next to the Raritan River in Bridgewater, NJ which had quite a flood after Hurricane Floyd (worked at West Point Academy for the same reason) and we dug 1 meter deep shovel tests in the new buffer zone they want to create a wetland in. I also worked on the remediation of the Foundry Cove wetland in Cold Spring, NY once the site of the West Point Foundry, a part of Constitution Island, which was literally removed mixed with concrete and hauled out on rail. Now the earthen dam has been removed and the marsh is returning. Nickel cadmium contamination from battery production for the NIKE missiles that once ringed Western cities in the Cold War had been re-evaluated by the EPA and NY State and finally agreement was met over the once before cleaned up problem. I worked on the Passaic River Flood Control Project back in 1984, still no one wants it in the 100 miles of backyard, nor has the Newark Bay storm surge dam gone anywhere. Somethings to think about when the presumptive Republican candidate for President has his “town meeting” later in New Jersey. Why can’t anyone get anything done there? Can’t they see every time this happens more toxins are released?

America needs a “water czar” not a “drug czar” especially since this is a widespread problem that goes back to ancient irrigation. China developed the first civil service in the world (I’ve heard where Mandarin comes from) to administer water problems. — Posted by George Myers We've also dug hundreds of archaeology test holes in the flood zone of the Staten Island shore part of a study to prevent sea flooding there. The Newark/Raritan thing I misquoted was to protect the Hackensack Meadowlands, once to be brought under the "polder" system, drained marsh is turned over in sections and farmed, used in the Netherlands but was too rough for automation, i.e., it would have had to have been hand tilled and worked, which was dammed and draining until a hurricane breached it in the 1940s. As much as a 10' storm surge can develop in Newark Bay.

Newfield H.S., Marshall Drive, Selden, NY

Mass. gov's daughter says she's gay; Dad says he's proud - Topix Gee according to "Gray's Anatomy" many human bones haven't even finished growing yet. Some people's height and other features change after "18". Who's to say? When I was 18 I wasn't a citizen with voting rights and the Marine Corps had come to my High School, the first, in the town named after the former judge who was a "character witness" for the woman who dressed as a man to vote, Susan B. Anthony and was put on trial for it. She too, wasn't a citizen with voting rights, but because she was a woman. The town? Right here on Long Island, Selden, NY. The year for JROTC? 1969.

Ed. - A former Newfield H.S. student, US Army Specialist Ariel Marino, died in Viet Nam in 1968, and his name appears (no doubt "him") on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. He's cited as orginally a "Roman Catholic" "Negro" from NYC.

AP/UPI

Celebrities seek change in New York State law - Topix I read in an old Associated Press handbook/dictionary (UPI had one too) which has guidelines for journalists about libel, that something that cannot be libelous is that said about dead people. Or in other words though we say "don't speak ill of the dead" there is no legal reason not to, which is a shame, some part of that image should be protected along with free speech, free from profiteering.

New York: Time Ticking on Crime-Solving Bill!

What if, as stated on the web, John Hinckley had had the dinner plans with Neil Bush instead of Scott Hinckley his brother, that day of the attempted assassination of then President Reagan with what forensics later reported were “exploding bullets”?  Well one thing we might not have had the Brady Campaign which I contribute to.

ALERT: YOUR CALLS NEEDED BEFORE SESSION ADJOURNS!
NY STATE SENATE STILL REFUSES TO CONSIDER CRIME SOLVING BILL

Dear New York Brady Campaign Member,

There are five days left before the New York State Legislature officially adjourns for the year. The Senate leadership is once again caving in to the gun lobby by refusing to consider microstamping legislation, thereby denying law enforcement a vital tool in their efforts to solve gun-related crimes in our state. Does the Senate leadership believe it knows more than law enforcement about crime fighting? We need you to take action today!

CALL SENATE MAJORITY LEADER JOSEPH BRUNO: (518) 455-3191
Tell him: "I Urge You to Take Up and Pass Microstamping Legislation.
Help New York Police Solve Handgun Crimes."

BACKGROUND
In April, the State Assembly overwhelmingly passed A 9819, an important crime fighting bill. The legislation would provide law enforcement with a vital tool to track down criminals by linking shell casings found at crime scenes to the individual serial numbers of the semi-automatic handguns from which they were fired. This technology is known as microstamping.

In May, Assemblymember Schimel, along with the co-inventor of microstamping (Todd Lizotte), and gun violence prevention advocates hosted a "live fire" demonstration at State Police Headquarters for law enforcement, elected officials and the press. This demonstration once again confirmed the reliability and application of the technology.

LAW ENFORCEMENT SUPPORTS MICROSTAMPING
Over 50 police chiefs and major law enforcement agencies from around New York State have signed a resolution supporting microstamping, this list includes the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police, the New York State District Attorneys Association and the New York State Fraternal Order of Police.

Here is what you can do to help:

1. Call Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno: (518) 455-3191
Tell him: "I Urge You to Take Up and Pass Microstamping Legislation.
Help New York Police Solve Handgun Crimes."

2. Forward this e-mail to friends, family, and colleagues in New York.

3. Click here to contribute to our efforts in New York and across the country.

For more information on this legislation or to get involved locally in the gun violence prevention movement, please contact the New York Million Mom March Chapters, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and Gun Free Kids.

Thank you for helping to reduce gun violence in New York!

Sincerely,

Sarah Brady, Chair

Donate to Support the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

You can also mail a check to:
Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
1225 Eye Street NW, Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20005

Soon the pines...

'Quantum of Solace' Curse Continues - Cinematical

Pinewood West on the east end of Long Island, the tallest soundstage in New York State (reported 40 feet) was opened in hope that the summer Hamptons film crowd might stay around before leaving for the coast and make a film there. It was blessed by Princess Thunderbird of the Shinnecock. They had something to do with America's first golf course, 12 holes, nearby, reported in the Scotsman online. There is a Hamptons film festival and Stony Brook University film festival (submit for free) which Southampton College just became a part of, where a yearly writers conference is held.

Newsvine - Bush to Iran: 'All options' are open over nukes

Newsvine - Bush to Iran: 'All options' are open over nukes

Just the other day in 1981, Israeli jets flew over international airspace shaped like an errant airliner on radar to bomb the French built nuclear power plant in Iraq suspected of making nuclear weapons. A few years earlier the US had a compound of almost 4000 Grumman employees in Iran training them to fly and service the F-14 jet fighter/bomber (Tom Cruise flew one in "Top Gun") for the Shah of Iran. Before the "hostage crisis" when Iranian students took over a US Embassy in protest of, in part, of being spied on by Savak, the then secret police of Iran, while attending school in the US, they had asked Henry Kissinger no less what could be done, he replied nothing, also out of office himself. The "Aegis" system aboard a US Navy ship shot down an Iranian commercial jetliner full of pilgrims for Mecca. The payoff was quick and large. There was a picture of the Ayatollah in the press with a gift of the President Reagan family Bible. I once sat with the F-14 test pilot when it was announced on TV we were going to blowup all the F-14s if the USSR made a move for their then mutual border. He said the air-to-air missiles would upset the balance of power in the world in their hands, on his belated birthday. His wife had been in Iran as part of the Grumman family. The Iranians also made an offer for the space station Mir before it was lowered out of orbit.

One of the Israeli pilots who flew that incredibly precise mission, who would later become an astronaut, perished in the Space Shuttle Columbia burnup on re-entry. His sketchbook was found in Texas and is being conserved.

Great news photos...

Water, Water, Everywhere - The Big Picture - Boston.com

It goes to show that there should be a more mobile definition of "military" one that helps its people not necessarily by killing others "the state" thinks has to be. Where is the research on the nuclear accident reported elsewhere that happened with this earthquake?

"Nuclear Explosion Occurred Near Epicenter of the Sichuan Earthquake, Expert Says" Epoch Times June 3, 2008

Tetchy, tetchy, tetchy...what is Elizabeth Taylor's entry in the dictionary.

Newsvine - What's This About Obama's Birth Certificate?

Interesting research. My father never had a birth certificate, born the day after Christmas on the kitchen table, the youngest of eleven at 660 Water St., NYC. The doctor forgot to file one! In that case a Catholic baptismal certificate was accepted instead. His dad was a real estate reporter, made some extra cash knowing where the new coal contracts would be. His son perished in the "Hall of Records" in the elevator shaft in a wheelchair, Basil O'Connor, represented them, they got $5000, a "lot of money in those days" for the accident from the City. My dad was just about to ship out, had a weeks bereavement leave instead, before ending up in Italy, the coldest winter in 100 years. His sister's husband was a law clerk in FDR's law office. This could be an unpopular issue with the troops who I read vote Democrat mostly. A VP candidate Wesley Clark would be a good choice, once thought to have been Hillary Clinton's. Or both from different parties a better choice. HA!

tetchy - TOUCHY (the ~ manner of two women living in the same house -- Elizabeth Taylor (novelist d. 1975) - Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary - Tenth Edition

You Don’t Know Jack

New Jack the Ripper Exhibit in London | Newsweek Culture | Newsweek.com

"A new museum exhibition opens the case file on Jack the Ripper—and affords a grim look at the London of the time—a city made for murder."

In a work of fiction, by fencer, Mike Resnick in "Redchapel" (2001) he has the Chief of Police in NYC at the time help solve the mystery, Theodore Roosevelt and "Jack" is not (SPOILER midwife tired of prostitutes). The film about "Jack" filmed in Prague I think, was "From Hell" and showed just after 9/11/01 (followed by "Spy Game" in my viewing history in Bridgewater, NJ, recovering from flood, half-crazy over the anthrax in the mails.)

Who's your White House Press Secretary?

National Archives published an article of "White House Press Secretaries" and in it the claim was Cabinet Member George B. Cortelyou (3 cabinet posts would have been 4 today, last Postmaster General under President T. Roosevelt) was the first when he invited the press in to talk about President McKinley's condition, whom he stood next to, after what was then the attempted assassination of the President. He died eight days later, VP Theodore Roosevelt, hiking Mt. Marcy in the Adirondacks, from Tahawas Lodge in NY, was driven down on buckboard relay through the night to North Creek, NY where he boarded a special train for Buffalo, NY after McKinley passed on, to be inaugurated. Other Press Secretaries were listed but not the first woman to hold the job Dee Dee Myers, who left to get married a few years (?) before the article was published. Historians have overlooked G.B. Cortelyou, who besides being Chairman of the Republican Party, and an early CEO of ConEd in NY, taught shorthand and was descended from the French surveyor of Brooklyn, Jacques Cortelyou, for the early Dutch in New Amsterdam. They're important today. McClellan: "I Have Accepted" - Couric & Co.

Moon Movie Gets a New Writer

Beats me why NASA's "Ares" is back to the Moon and "Phoenix" is on Mars. Then again Apollo was the sun god. Good lunar story would make for good entertainment, maybe they could find "Hawk Hawkins" (Tommy Lee Jones in "Space Cowboys" [2000]) or the original LEM "Eagle" (which landed later crashed somewhere, the others crashed for seismic readings, I think they know where.) I worked in early desktop computer 3-D and the author of one software was a laser physicist tracking the Moon, bouncing lasers off the mirrors left there by the Apollo astronauts which led to the math for modeling of desk items, for example, 3-D from two photos. Jake Gyllenhaal's Moon Movie Gets a New Writer - Cinematical

Spike Lee joint and Clint Eastwood village

EXCLUSIVE: 'Miracle at St. Anna' Poster Premiere! - Cinematical

Well, it would be better than the "Buffalo Soldiers" (the name of the football field at West Point Military Academy, once buzzed by two Navy F-14s in a snow squall [1992?]) used in the early twentieth century experiment (the camels got away) in bicycle mounted troops across the land (early "mountain bikes"?) or some of the racist actions that occured in the segregated services. My Dad served in Italy was a white "Black Panther" but his brother with polio perished in a wheelchair in the elevator shaft in NYC "Hall of Records" (represented by Basil O'Connor) and my father missed his overseas ship, instead landed later in Italy. Their sister's husband had been a law clerk for FDR. There's still no monument to FDR in NYC.

Saxophone Played by President Bill Clinton

Presidential Saxophone from the National Music Museum

Saxophone Played by President Bill Clinton

For Sale 1983 Volvo Turbo

 

Response to the former ambassador

Obama the naive - Los Angeles Times former Ambassador John Bolton's op-ed

We had 80 F-14s and an almost 4000 Grumman employee compound teaching the Shah's pilots and ground crews to fly them, which as I recall was to be 100, just before, students took over our embassy, mad as they were complaining to Henry Kissinger they were being spied on in the US by the Shah's secret police, Savak. Then Iraq was an ally sort of after the "hostage crisis" and before we shot down the Iranian commercial jetliner with our Aegis system, killing all the pilgrims for Mecca aboard. What did the Republicans expect from President Carter, send the fleet against our own F-14 fighter bombers? F-14 vs. F-14. Whose foreign policy made this all possible? There had been a terrible toll almost 1 million already over the Iran-Iraq War. I think issuing threats over the mainstream-media to force some sort of ideological panic is no way to run an airline. Reign in our arms dealers too.

Mr. Franken (schteen)

Alec Baldwin: The Importance Of Electing Al Franken - Politics on The Huffington Post

I want to say thanks to Al Franken from the Bronx, NY in the borough where his daughter teaches public school. It was fun when they launched "Air America" to have someone who was known for humor and satire on the air, a block from where Regis Philbin grew-up on Cruger Ave. We were all shocked over the bickering about the tribute to Paul Wellstone and the partisanship of politics. I want to thank Mr. Franken for one of his books he had out then which brought me some solace here after 9-11 and encouraged me to read further. I say that as a shameless plug for the good work he seems to inspire in others, though I'm not sure the White House Press will ever recover from his findings of their loss of records of previous speakers and events he once reminded them of. Keep mushing, I know out there somewhere in Minnesota one of the descendants of Yukon King is yapping and looking forward to winter...

The Sodium Ambassador

Nearly Seven Years Later, A Surreal Day In Court For KSM - Couric & Co. The former US Ambassador to the UN wrote (Jeane J. Kirkpatrick w/ sociologist Bradbury in 1968): Part I "Loyalty and Disaffection in Chinese Soldiers" "I. Determinants Of Loyalty and Disaffection In Chinese Communist Soldiers During the Korean Hostilities" pps. 3-105. And with Pio D. Uliassi in Part II "IV. Adjustment of Chinese Soldiers to the Communist Demand for Ideological Participation" pps. 160-206. (of 377 pages). So why did the current administration put a NY Times journalist in prison? Ambassador Bolton? There were two unsuccessful attempts to "citizen arrest" him in England a couple of days ago for "war crimes" where he spoke, reported in their press.

Hal Spacejock

Free eBook! Western Australia science-fiction comedy! Free software! I just finished reading the first book of Hal Spacejock, and his friendly robot Clunk, who’s a little like Bender, a little like 3CPO and often saves the day like R2D2, with their panache, their résumé, their savoir-faire (and probably their batteries). This story reads well and is very often funny and leaves me wondering what are they doing out there on the "Woomera Prohibited Area (WPA), a military area 127,000 square km in area (the largest testing area in the world)" Wikipedia. One answer was a great many rocket launches: Woomera (Encyclopedia Astronautica)

Download Hal Spacejock by Simon Haynes here: http://www.spacejock.com.au/Hal1Download.html

Remember to visit the Spacejock Software home page: http://www.spacejock.com

Nearly Seven Years Later, A Surreal Day In Court For KSM - Couric & Co.

This reminds me of the former US Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick in part authored (it appears) the publication "Mass Behavior in Battle and Captivity - the Communist Soldier in the Korean War" research studies directed by William C. Bradbury (1968, University of Chicago) where some perhaps were held in captivity for their own protection. Nearly Seven Years Later, A Surreal Day In Court For KSM - Couric & Co.

Talking about Katie Couric's Notebook: Remembering RFK - Couric & Co.

I recall I went to work in a summer camp as a dishwasher (hello Timber Lake!) in NY's Catskills, under a tarp on a stake truck. It was haunting a bit working in food service, RFK had been shot in that kind of area and he a champion for many. I had been in Canada the summer before where there was 29 days of uninterrupted fog and rain, though the sun came out on Indian Beach one day and I made my first money dulse-picking on Grand Manan Island across the channel from Campobello Island, where the Roosevelt's used to sometimes vacation. They've renamed the Tri-Borough Bridge in NYC after RFK but how many people will get "take the RFK to JFK" without a mistake? Katie Couric's Notebook: Remembering RFK - Couric & Co.

The Triboro is now the RFK Bridge

Will Anyone Really Call It the R.F.K. Bridge? - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog

There’s still no monument in NYC to FDR, other than the highway. They should have something on Governors Island (besides a monument to doing nothing with it) like the “Walk of Fame” in the Bronx, designed by Stanford White (assassinated by a “madman”) where many of our cultural and historical icons can be thought about and remembered. Happy National Maritime Day! (started by FDR, celebrated on May 22, to commemorate the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, the Savannah built in NY/NJ, which left Savannah, Georgia that day for Liverpool, England. Later “unfitted” of steam, it sank in a storm off Fire Island). — Posted by George Myers

Sorry that’s “Hall of Fame for Great Americans” (former NYU Bronx campus) and the “Walk of Fame” is modern.

Narwhals and unicorns...

The Unicorn Tapestries | Explore & Learn | The Metropolitan Museum of Art They're back!

My Comments - myarchN

I work in the US in "contract" archaeology when it's available. Or have been. I am afraid however that it's not being correctly recorded, though the new technology has arrived to do so. In other words, the record of architecture as it was, and what influences, solutions, problems, etc., that it was built in reponse to, may be lost, once removed, which leaves us with a lot of classical architecture to look at and no continuum (Q, folk-urban, or other).  My Comments - myarchN

The secret whisky?

Scottish Blog - Talisker I sometime vacation with a friend on Eaglemere Road in Tuftonboro, NH on the neck by the same name next to Mirror Lake by Lake Winnepesauki, as do many others. Tuftonboro Neck was once owned by one of the first Supreme Court justices of Canada, Peter Livius who "battled" in London with the future Governor of Nova Scotia, who became New Hampshire's former governor after the American Revolution, over the charge of family nepotism (Peter Livius vs, Governor John Wentworth). I suppose it was their "rewards". The small cabin was named by the previous owner, a William Skinner, as "Skye Legend" and this is certainly quite a "story" about whisky without the "e" (said son of an Urquhart).

What-the-hell Science: The Future Is Not Now, But Seven Years Ago

What-the-hell Science: The Future Is Not Now, But Seven Years Ago

I read that the lack of dialog, letting the music become a big part of "2001" was one of its successes. A Kubrick museum in Germany, with many of the props from the film has held exhibits for a number of years now and has also started to travel. A Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra (1993) recording of "Also sprach Zarathustra op. 30 (1896)" (Theme From 2001) also includes composer Richard Strauss' "Metamorphosen" which he wrote when he was 80 years old. Conceived as an "act of mourning for Munich" commissioned by the Collegium Musieum in Zurich, while Germany was collapsing in ruins in World War II, it suggests "in its splendour and affirmation of the plenitude of life...a moving epilogue to a richly varied existence." (Uwe Kraemer) I also find it odd that HAL reads lips in the film or does it? Perhaps a reminder that more dialog will help to prevent unintended consequences in this new age of telecommunications.

SF Musical Pioneers: RIP for Two Great Science Fiction Soundtrack Composers

That's fascinating. "Remember Me" was also the song by "Steve Augeri and Journey" for the film "Armageddon" (1998 J.J. Abrams co-wrote the screenplay, currently directing the new Star Trek film) that was left on the soundtrack CD but cut from the film. My cousin is married to Steve Augeri. Today "Journey" has another lead singer, from the Philippines, guitarist Neil Schon discovered on YouTube, they said on the CBS "Sunday Morning" show today. CBS also carries "Star Trek: The Original Series" on-line. Fun watching "Memory Alpha". SF Musical Pioneers: RIP for Two Great Science Fiction Soundtrack Composers