What if we could go back in time and vote again on past presidential elections? Who would we vote for, using 20/20 hindsight? Scripps Howard News Service polled Americans to find out. What winner would have lost? Well, Nixon, of course, would have lost his re-election bid in 1972. And Bush 42 would have lost — twice. 1964 Lyndon B. … Read More
Web’s 15th Birthday Approaching
On August 6, 1991, Tim Berners-Lee, a consultant at a physics lab in CERN in Switzerland, made — for the first time — computer files available to the public which allowed people to build their first web pages. The first web page appeared at http://info.cern.ch/. It provided an explanation about what the World Wide Web was, how one could own … Read More
The 9/11 NORAD Tapes
Everybody’s talking about this Vanity Fair piece, citing it as one of the "best examples of online journalism" to date. It’s a compelling story of how the U.S. Air Force responded to the events of 9/11, including excerpts from never-heard-before tapes acquired from NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command). These were the first guys who knew that something was … Read More
Things I Did Know, But Not Completely
Christopher Columbus was a real prick. I mean, I knew about how he subjugated and mistreated all the local natives that he came across in the New World. I’d even heard this story: Between the evening of October 11 and the morning of October 12, a sailor on the Pinta named Juan Rodriguez Bermejo called out, "Land, land!" Isabella had … Read More
Smart = Sexy
Albert knew: Albert Einstein had half a dozen girlfriends and told his wife they showered him with "unwanted" affection, according to letters released on Monday that shed light on his extra-marital affairs. The wild-haired Jewish-German scientist, renowned for his theory of relativity, spent little time at home. He lectured in Europe and in the United States, where he died in … Read More
The Truman Show
Bush and Rice have been quoting Harry Truman a lot recently, as part of their never-ending propaganda war to reclaim support for the real one. Nobody’s buying it: Bush and Rice are correct that Truman saw tyranny as a threat to world peace and believed in resisting it, by means that included force. At West Point, Bush quoted Truman’s famous … Read More
“You Are No Jack Kennedy”
The debate: Quayle: …I have far more experience than many others that sought the office of vice president of this country. I have as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency. I will be prepared to deal with the people in the Bush administration, if that unfortunate event would ever occur. Judy Woodruff: … Read More
Last Titanic Memory Survivor Dies
Lillian Asplund of Worchester, Massachusetts was the last Titanic survivor to remember the "night to remember". She died Saturday at the age of 99. She was five on the fateful night in the middle of the Atlantic in April 1912 (photo on right is Lillian in 1912). There are still two Titanic survivors still alive, but both of them were … Read More
45 Years Ago Today…
…mankind first broke the surly bounds of this planet. Just thought you ought to know.
Top Ten Mistakes The Bush Administration Is Repeating From Vietnam
This is very good, and you should read the whole thing. My favorite from the list: 1. Underestimating the enemy. As in Vietnam, the superpower’s potent military has been astounded by the tenacity and competence of a nationalist rebellion attempting to throw a foreign occupier from its soil. For example, the U.S. military, a hierarchical organization, views the Sunni insurgency … Read More
Enigma Message Decyphered
In WWII, the Germans used the Enigma coding machine to send messages back and forth. The Enigma code, which you can read about here, was so good that even after the Allies obtained an Enigma machine, it still was difficult — if not impossible — to crack certain messages. The M4 Project is a shared computing project. Shared computing is … Read More
I Hate It When My Myths Are Shattered
I always liked the story about the etymology of the term "computer bug" (and similar terms, like "debugging". You may know the tale: Moth found trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9 September 1945. The operators affixed the moth to the computer … Read More
Carter And The Killer Rabbit
I knew the story about President Jimmy Carter’s encounter with a crazed and deranged "swamp rabbit", a story that was fodder for late night talk show hosts of the day. I just didn’t know there were pictures of it.
From The Memory Hole
Flashback to 1973. Senate Council Sam Dash asks John Ehrlichman if he believes the break-in of Ellsburg’s psychiatrist’s office to be legal. Ehrlichman responds that, legally and constitutionally, the President can have such a thing done if he does so in the interests of national security. Watch the video, courtesy of Crooks & Liars. We know better now, right?
Jews vs. Tea
Sounds like UNC law professor Eric Muller is having a lot of fun, and I’m a bit envious. He is at the National Archives in D.C., doing research for his book about internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. In this very recent blog post, he notes that back in the 1940s, the War Department (that’s the "Department of Defense" for all … Read More