Newsvine - Air Force Vet Breaks Silence on What Hit Pentagon on 9-11

I saw a part of the security video tape from I think was a parking garage. It was unbelievably fast and unbelievably low. But I'm not a pilot, nor am I paid to be one on TV. I wanted to see it over the controversial opinion by some Arab authorities, that a system exists for guiding planes remotely in some cases and they thought they could not discount the opinion as it appeared almost surreal in execution. However GPS and other controls might make it possible? What I found highly "ironic" if there could be a use of the term for this tragedy, was the point of impact. The Pentagon had just begun retrofitting its facility ("largest office building in the world") with bulletproof glass and other mods according to Preservation news, and while the section was partly empty due to that fact, it seemed a chosen point of impact in terrorist thinking. A horrible fleeting moment on tape.

Newsvine - Air Force Vet Breaks Silence on What Hit Pentagon on 9-11

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Newsvine - Neanderthals made mammoth jerky

Why do they leave out what was once touted as "Nature's First Flower Children" the Neanderthal burials found in Iraq in Shanidar Cave by Ralph Solecki? The presence of flower pollen in the burials suggested to some the ritual burial of Neanderthals and accompanying flowers back then. It seems important enough to consider the cave in the Zagros Mountains, actually between Iraq and Iran and east of the "Fertile Crescent" that there would at least be some inclusion in the discussion. After all the specimens are not like the "Tabor child" jaw bone found in Canada and thought from a juvenile at first analysis to be from a Neanderthal in North America, but washed into the river from some unknown provenience in the local eroded rock along the river. It was a hand-out at one of the American Association for the Advancement of Science meetings, not sure if it was the one "streaked". I once worked on some historic archaeological materials from the Coopers Dam Park in New Jersey in his lab at Columbia University years ago before he went to teach in Texas as part of the dam improvement where there had been a chair factory.

Newsvine - Neanderthals made mammoth jerky

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Behind the Scenes: Woodstock Memories - Lens Blog - NYTimes.com

I was in Woodstock, NY the summer before, 1968 a young dishwasher in Timber Lake Camp near Phoenicia, NY time off a destination for a film or a dinner, so I was surprised that the promoters (NY Times ad: “Three Men With Unlimited Capital…” also title of their book) had chosen it as a name, and fortunate it had not taken place as planned in Walkill, NY that due to an argument over port-a-potties. Standing by the chain-link as it came down, with a ticket, I realized like the later line from “Jaws” they were going to need a bigger everything, i.e., the stage Boston’s “Quarry” played on, the Hogfarm commune were parked at (weren’t they in “Easy Rider” and later smallpox eradication in India?) and where Wavy Gravy camped at and Joan Baez came down to sing was way too small! Though at the time, I thought a good place for me to be. I hope the museum about to open does well, and I’ve heard from recent concert goers it’s a real treat now to go there and hear some of the best in the business in a nice outdoor setting and a great place to bring the kids. I don’t think they’ll have to worry that the tickets sales were kinda’ low and then have people pouring in from all over the proverbial place!

Behind the Scenes: Woodstock Memories - Lens Blog - NYTimes.com

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Showcase: Sight/Site - Lens Blog - NYTimes.com

It’s interesting, a panorama of the city, is stated to have been the first art museum or exhibit in the 18th century in New York City, though one stood in it. It stood near northeast corner of City Hall Park and one could see the cityscape in the round by entering the building I recall not too far from this. It was said to inspire P.T. Barnum, who replaced it with his own idea of entertaining the public before moving to a larger location. Today, near the statue of Horace Greeley and a small monument to Joseph Pulitzer, (across the street, “Newspaper Row”) is another monument I recall, working in the archaeology of the “First Almshouse” cemetery, also once under the city Commons, is an American Engineering monument to the “first fine art museum” in NYC, the city depicted in the round.

Showcase: Sight/Site - Lens Blog - NYTimes.com

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The Launch Pad: The Way Forward

Growing up in the "Cradle of Aviation" on Long Island, NY where the Grumman Corporation's friend's parents were involved in aerospace, i.e., the Lunar Excursion Module (L.E.M.) or nearby one might spot a one man helicopter flying over the potato fields from Gyrodyne, today an area developed out of farms into the growing Stony Brook University, I was struck by the implied military focus, if you will, of most of it. The F-101 Voodoos, nuclear capable, redesigned into the F-14 Tomcat, 80 sold to the Shah of Iran, where they were also supplied with over 3,000 employees to train Iranians for it, in a compound outside Tehran, were the mainstay of the US and Canada air-strike capabilities. Beyond the military emphasis, we must encourage more civil aviation at the "ground" level that will encourage more women into the civil aviation field, so that future pilots and personnel are more balanced by gender for the future non-military uses of space. I look forward to Tighar "finding" Amelia Earhart and perhaps Fred Noonan this season.

The Launch Pad: The Way Forward

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NY Times "archaeology" and "pothunters" - a view from the field

Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 12:03:30 -0700 From: George Myers Subject: Re: NY Times Article For some of the reaction to the NY Times I read over at the New York Archaeological Council's listing for PANYC the letter by Joan H. Geismar, Ph.D. President, Professional Archaeologist of New York City (PANYC). I would like to offer a few experiences. On one site, which recently was sold as the most expensive real estate in Manhattan, the former federal US "Assay Site" we had an electronic transit or "total station" stolen while guards were on duty, both apparently submitted and passed lie detector tests. On the outside of those cases is the warning that all "Laser thefts are investigated by the FBI" and I must say using it and its replacement I was never questioned by them, nor anyone else. On another site I recall a taunting picture with the heads cut out of the Polaroid, sent reportedly to the NYC Landmarks Commission by a group of "bottle hunters". It prompted the further excavation there on site one early winter in Brooklyn near Fort Greene where the "Prison Ship Martyrs Monument" is with some of the remains of the over 14,000 who reportedly perished during the American Revolution under what I theorize, due to recent formal British forensic evidence, may have been a plot to poison the king by Admiral Cornwallis, based on the amount of arsenic in his wig and proximal location. He who also ran the occupation of New York city and his brother General Cornwallis were defeated after the long march by combined French troops marching from Rhode Island and meeting up with Washington's troops on the Hudson River, where the "divide and conquer" was to take place, separating the northern and southern colonies by the river and the chain of forts into Canada. Convinced by the facts of French naval support to have success there instead of New York city, indeed the world was turned upside down. But I digress. On this site was also a sort of "squatters house" and also it was reported a young minority individual was arrested and taken into custody for being nosy about the site, surrounded as they are in NYC by thousands of people, some not too happy on the deals perhaps made with the Planning Commission or the various "uncollected" agencies, i.e., no one "Building Department" that have various roles to play in development sometimes out-of-sync with each other and perhaps argue with the community, which of course, is no reason to gut features in a site. However, I also wonder if vigilante protection might also get out of hand and not particularly happy to have armed guards over it or reports of the curious incarcerated over it. Machinery is often available, also sometimes vandalized, but however, perhaps large steel plates over a feature or two would discourage looting and provide a safety factor for the public. But as we know these jobs often have gone to the "lowest bidder" either by fact or design. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:09:04 EDT From: Ron May Subject: Re: NY Times Article If you cannot move steel plates over an excavation, I have often thought a roll of chainlink could do the trick if you got those screw-type metal loops for tying dog leashes on each corner and then simply chained and locked the chainlink down. No bottle hunter in his right mind would cut through all that. Ron

Talking about Newsvine - Cities Rediscover Waterways They Paved Over

Newsvine - Cities Rediscover Waterways They Paved Over

Back in the '90s, when the Yonkers redevelopment was gettin' off the ground, hometown of Ella Fitzgerald, a statue there in her memory, one of the proposals for the "second largest sugar refinery in the world" where Otis Elevator had started, elevators and flush toilets would bring the architecture era as we know it to bear, was for a "co-generation" plant that would connect by underground cable to the Dunwoodie power grid site. It presented some interesting problems for the required archaeology review due to the ground filling and the proposed "snaking" of the cable under intersections without impeding traffic. Not sure if it went anywhere, the parties could not agree on the sale price per kilowatt. The first successful American operetta, written by the "Pied Piper of Catherine Slip" a "Setauketeer" from Setauket, NY, Micah Hawkins, was entitled "A Saw Mill River, or a Yankee Trick" said to have been done in part in "blackface". Micah Hawkins used to play the pianoforte under the counter of his store on Catherine Slip in Manhattan for customers, his wife from a family of New Jersey carriage makers and wrote many pieces often patriotic.

- Fri Jul 24, 2009 1:06 PM EDT

Talking about Lunar Pioneer: The Pet Moon Rock flies again

Lunar Pioneer: The Pet Moon Rock flies again

I once visited the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, working on the nearby Watervliet Shaker cemetery site for their "Power and Light" research facility then proposed and was amazed, besides the breadth of the exhibits there, the fact that a small piece of the Wright brothers plane that flew at Kitty Hawk, NC, had been left on the Moon as part of the Apollo program. I had met one of the directors of the Long Island, NY "Cradle of Aviation" a former F-14 test pilot when we were to blow all 80 of them up outside Tehran, Iran, where the Grumman Corporation, the LEM builders, had over 3000 employees teaching the Iranians how to fly and service the F-14 back in 1979 under the Shah. I recall they made a bid for the Mir space station before it was forced down. I worked in close-range photogrammetry for a while, and one of the spin offs of the lunar laser measuring project, beside the haze compensation was a 3D application on the desktop that was promoted by the Road Scholar software firm, creating wireframe from photos. A similar though down-to-earth application is the infrared "total stations" surveyors use, that I used in archaeology recording, a "corner prism" application.

July 24, 2009 5:09 PM