the sonora flying club and antigravity

"Dellschau (1830-1923) was an enigmatic self-taught artist -- a Texas butcher who spent his retirement cloistered in an attic painting large-scale books of flying machines. Forgotten for nearly fifty years after his death, his books were unearthed in the late 1960s.."

But he is also the centre of an engagingly demented theory about a secret society which developed new forms of flight in the 1850's, in machines which were mistaken for UFO's over the next 150 years.

In the true pattern of the outsider myth, his work was found in the garbage thirty years after he died.

The story of Dellschau and the Sonora Flying Club is picked in by Rawvision:

american moments

UPI distributes "insider notes" about American politics. According to the Washington Times, the edition for June 8th was quite remarkable.

Morgan Reynolds is a Bush insider - the former chief economist for the Department of Labor, once director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas and now professor emeritus at Texas A&M; University. He is claiming in public that

"the official story about the collapse of the WTC is "bogus" and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7."

He said: "If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling."

I don't believe a word of it; a former high official in the Bush fedayeen is a card carrying member of the tinfoil brigade. I am left to wonder if he was like that when he had the job.

Meanwhile, senior army officer in Iraq Major General Joseph Taluto has broken ranks on the administration line that the insurgents are bad, bad al Quaeda, suicidal foreigners and/or Baathists.

He said "said he could understand why some ordinary Iraqis would take up arms against U.S. forces because "they're offended by our presence." Taluto added, "If a good, honest person feels having all these Humvees driving on the road, having us moving people out of the way, having us patrol the streets, having car bombs going off, you can understand how they could (want to fight us). There is a sense of a good resistance, or an accepted resistance. They say 'okay, if you shoot a coalition soldier, that's okay, it's not a bad thing but you shouldn't kill other Iraqis.'" "

By the way, there is a bill before the Congress to repeal the 22nd amendment. That is the one that says Presidents can only serve two terms. To become law, it needs to be "ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification".

Watching that travel around the states will be fun.

All via Blogdex.

with a classy asian touch

To my delight, the capable and adventurous Rowan Atkinson of Sailing Close to the Wind has joined the imaginary bus meme with this fine contribution.

All part of my obsession that we need to recruit more readers to the blogosphere. Grow the whole thing.

And yes, I yam delighted.

engrossments

If you have a bit of time to spare, there's a new history carnivale thing out.

I love them.

joke capped and belled, both together at once

Daily Flute is a very fine man, who responded to my "Have you read a blog today" imaginary bus advertising campaign.

Today he sent me this, which had me in stitches.

Very, very fine.

in out in out in out in out in out..

"Every once in a while (say every few months) I keep doing the same thing. I start thinking about the way I breath, and soon I can't do it automatically. I have to control it mentally. It's really distracting because it takes up all my mental capacity and I have to find ways to distract myself to get myself to breathe normal again (like chew gum or keep drinking water or sing). It normally lasts for about a week, but I'm afraid it will last forever eventually. Is it normal to start thinking about a body function so much you can't do it w/o thinking about it? "

This is an anonymous statement from a site where you can find out if your strange little oddities are normal or not. The rest of us get to vote. I am a bit frightened of the idea that 39% of the sort of people who read this site think that having to breath consciously for a week at a time is normal. However, I am relieved that 92% of respondents think that serious procrastination is normal, perhaps because they were procrastinating as they voted.

This site can suck you in. You may start to wonder about your own obsessiveness. Sometimes creepy, often pitiful, endlessly fascinating.

75% think that feelings of violence towards loud eaters is normal too..

But only 27% think this is normal:

"I use a bike to travel to work every day, which is about 30 miles away from my house. I especialy like it when there is lots of rain, wind and blizzards so the ride is as difficult as possible. Having done this for about a year (12000 miles) I now get up every morning with a terrible nausea, probably related to some form of exaustion. There is a bus station 2 minutes away from my house which goes directly to my workplace, yet for some reason I can't get myself to use it even once..."

Oh no, I can't stop myself.

Via Linkmachinego.

an open heart at f/4.5

The Mimi Scheiblauer school for deaf/mute children, Switzerland, 1944

Werner Bischoff was a Swiss photographer, born in 1916, who had moved from exquisite formalism to tender photorealism by the end of the War. He was a founder of Magnum.

Shortly after taking this photo in the Peruvian village of Pisac in 1954, he was killed when his car plunged into a gorge. He was 38 years old.

This site is very beautiful. The downloaded photos are much larger.

Under the fold, I have put something to remind us what those flint hearted bastards who control our immigration policy have forgotten.

these people know no limits

Arrest of Falun Gong practitioners in China

Every now and again, I read something that makes it very difficult for me to actually straighten my fists to hit the keyboard.

Scum. Bastards. Arseholes. Toads. Pieces of filth. Detritus of corpse bowels.

That calms me down just enough to write this out.

The Chinese government has a standard practice, like any other undemocratic regime, of persecuting the family members of refugees. Rule one from the handbook, really. How else do you keep your residents from running away?

On May 16th, at Villawood, around 20 Chinese refugees, some of them from Falun Gong, were locked down and denied access to lawyers, visitors or supporters.

Then, to quote the SMH, they were "interrogated by officials of the Chinese Government". Separately.

Lest you think that was an accident, a further 25 were interrogated in Baxter and Port Augusta.

"One Falun Gong member, who has an asylum claim pending, said four Chinese officials identified themselves as "middlemen" and asked questions about his life in China and Australia. "They asked me if you are a Falun Gong practitioner [and] do you know who the head of your local security bureau was," he said in a letter smuggled out of Villawood."

Smuggled out of Villawood.

"Refugee advocates say it raises disturbing questions about the Federal Government's complicity with China and whether its actions have endangered the detainees and their families.

Some of the detainees interviewed were political dissidents and members of Falun Gong in the middle of asylum claims, the advocates said. Others were preparing appeals."

"Pamela Curr, the campaign co-ordinator for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said the department's statement did not match what Chinese detainees at Baxter had said.

"Basically, the Chinese officials were given carte blanche to interview anyone who was Chinese," she said.

"That included those who were seeking asylum from the Chinese Government. It's unbelievable that the Australian Government allowed their potential persecutors to interrogate them and get their details, including those of their families and children."

What did the deparment actually say?

"A spokesman for the Immigration Department said last night that none of those interviewed had asylum claims pending and they were merely being assessed so they could be provided with passports."

Some of them had "restarted their claims afterwards". I presume that means they were so frightened and intimidated they actually resurrected claims they had abandoned in despair and frustration.

In other words, Australian officials actively co-operated in the persecution of refugees, using our prison system, and tried to keep it secret. Sort of like extraordinary rendition to Baxter.

Let's reframe this for a moment in popular culture terms. Let's imagine it is 1938, and Jews who escaped from Hamburg are being kept in an Australian prison while we processed their application to stay. What would we say if we discovered that the government had allowed Nazi interrogators to interview them, without constraints, in prison?

We would say that they colluded in the persecution of Jews.

------------------

Just as an addendum, the SMH added a bit more about the Chen Yonglin defection.

"Last week it emerged that Australian officials repeatedly discouraged a Chinese diplomat, Chen Yonglin, from defecting, even though he claimed to have valuable intelligence.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, told Parliament yesterday that he had spoken to the Chinese ambassador, Fu Ying, about the matter before Mr Chen went public, but that she had initiated the talks.

"At no time did I nor any [Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade] official improperly convey information about Mr Chen's intentions [to the Chinese]," Mr Downer said.

The Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, defended her department's handling of the case. She confirmed that immigration officials had contacted the Chinese consulate the day Mr Chen attempted to defect. However, she said Mr Chen had voluntarily provided telephone numbers, and at no point did he say he was seeking Australia's protection.

Mr Chen, who is in hiding, says this is untrue."

I think I know who to believe. How low can these people go?

From Road to Surfdom, which is collecting comments.

just building a little rapport here

Time Magazine has published a fragment of an interrogator's log at Gitmo, for 23/11/02. As located by Juan Cole.

According to the main article, the prisoner is Mohammed al-Qahtani, a follower of Osama bin Laden's and the man believed by many to be the so-called 20th hijacker. He had tried to enter the U.S. in August 2001, allegedly to take part in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"23 November 2002
0225: The detainee arrives at the interrogation booth a Camp X-Ray. His hood is removed and he is bolted to the floor. SGT A and SGT R are the interrogators. A DoD linguist and MAJ L (BSCT) are present

0235: Session begins. The detainee refuses to look at SGT A "due to his religion. This is a rapport building session.

if its on the internet, it must be true

At his spiffing new website, Tim Lambert has a peek at Christopher Pearson's new-found expertise on climate warming.

Since he now thinks that Federal cabinet ministers should be dethroned for disagreeing with a demented conspiracy website from the US, it may be that even the Murdochistas will notice something funny.

Global warning is caused by volcanoes?

towns in the desert

There is a persistent myth across cultures that certain people justify the existence of humanity to God.

Diogenes reminds us of this account from December 2003 by a Jesuit priest in New Mexico:

"I live in a tiny, remote, impoverished, three block long town in the desert of northeastern New Mexico. Everyone in town--and the whole state--knows that I am against the occupation of Iraq, that I have called for the closing of Los Alamos, and that as a priest, I have been preaching, like the Pope, against the bombing of Baghdad.

Last week, it was announced that the local National Guard unit for northeastern New Mexico, based in the nearby Armory, was being deployed to Iraq early next year. I was not surprised when yellow ribbons immediately sprang up after the press conference.

But I was surprised the following morning to hear 75 soldiers singing, shouting and screaming as they jogged down Main Street, passed our St. Joseph's church, back and forth around town for an hour. It was 6 a.m., and they woke me up with their war slogans, chants like "Kill! Kill! Kill!" and "Swing your guns from left to right; we can kill those guys all night."

Rosicrucians enslave London with ray from Mars

Via Nabakov and a search that led to Wired, I bring you the British equivalent of the American Stalin poster below.

The photographer was Perry de Havilland; the year was 2002; the location was London.

Most discussions centre on Orwell, but the surroundings makes me think Quatermass.

I reckon they should give conductors contact lenses just like that.

we, of course, are civilised

In 1615, the splendidly garbed Hasekura Tsunenega led a Japanese embassy to Rome. With 3000 labourers and 45 days they built a replica of a Spanish galleon, and sailed across the Pacific to Mexico. They travelled on, across Central America, the Caribbean, Cuba, the Atlantic, Portugal, Spain and the Meditteranean.

It was an epic journey, but here I want to share just one small document. Stopped by the weather, they stayed a few days in St Tropez. This is what a local observer said of them:

"They never touch food with their fingers, but instead use two small sticks that they hold with three fingers".

"They blow their noses in soft silky papers the size of a hand, which they never use twice, so that they throw them on the ground after usage, and they were delighted to see our people around them precipitate themselves to pick them up".

"Their swords cut so well that they can cut a soft paper just by putting it on the edge and by blowing on it."

In other words, the residents of St Tropez, sophisticates to the bottoms of their kidskin shoes, were not using knives and forks. History does not record what the Japanese thought of the spectacle or whether they really were "delighted" to see the locals fight over their used tissues.

From a terrific Wikipedia article about the early contact between Japan and Europe.

"necessary to create the conditions"

Last month's Downing Street Memo, published in full by the Sunday Times and preserved until hell freezes over by this very website, is provoking an ambiguous frisson in The Thunderer.

It's a Murdoch rag, so they are supposed to think that the war is a jolly jape in the service of freedom by squeaky clean paragons of honesty. On the other hand, The Times has been proclaiming the perfidy of the American colonies since just after the Revolution.

And perfidious they have turned out to be.

The minutes to the July 2002 meeting did not contain a briefing paper, which has now also been liberated by The Times. It is the basis for the conclusions reported in the minutes that the US was not adequately planning the aftermath, and had already decided to attack.

The minutes turn out to be a squeamish rendering of the background paper.

"The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.

This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action...

...justify military action was to place Saddam Hussein in a position where he ignored or rejected a United Nations ultimatum ordering him to co-operate with the weapons inspectors. But it warned this would be difficult.

“It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject,” the document says. But if he accepted it and did not attack the allies, they would be “most unlikely” to obtain the legal justification they needed.

The suggestions that the allies use the UN to justify war contradicts claims by Blair and Bush, repeated during their Washington summit last week, that they turned to the UN in order to avoid having to go to war."

The whole thing was a big fat juicy sham.

So how has the US responded to the earlier revelations, which are like a stick of dynamite stuck fizzing in the jaws of the family dog?

we expect our leaders to be less naive than we are

Elsewhere, the Thunday Thunderer has published the complete briefing paper, short the last page.

In the interests of fairness, I should quote part of the preamble:

"Summary

Ministers are invited to:

(1) Note the latest position on US military planning and timescales for possible action.

(2) Agree that the objective of any military action should be a stable and law-abiding Iraq, within present borders, co-operating with the international community, no longer posing a threat to its neighbours or international security, and abiding by its international obligations on WMD."

No mention of oil; they did believe in WMD; they didn't mention democracy; they didn't mention economic benefits; they recognised that "post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise; although they didn't expect the current situation.

Dumb but not malicious. I wonder about those verbal reasons they tossed around in small groups, leaning on the fireplace, standing outside with the gaspers, cosied up in the marriage bed surrounded by state documents and legal briefs.

Here is the whole thing. You are reading the raw material of history, of the biggest mistake since Suez.

"the Dr Who creature"

This is a photograph of a missing kidnap victim on the Avondale and Somerset Constabulary website. I kid you not.

Originally, this was a simple case of theft:

"Police are appealing for help to trace a Dalek which was stolen from Wookey Hole Caves.

The Dr Who creature was stolen overnight on June 6 and 7 from the site.

Police believe thieves may have had to use a vehicle to move the Dalek."

Then, to the horror of official contact PC Wolstenholme, a ransom note was received and the case became a full blown kidnapping.

"The 5ft model, believed to be an original from the cult BBC Dr Who series, was taken from Wookey Hole Caves near Wells on Monday.

On Thursday, staff found the plunger arm and a ransom note on a doorstep.

The note read: "We are holding the Dalek captive. We demand further instructions from the Doctor."

The group, signing themselves Guardians of the Planet Earth, added: "For the safety of the human race we have disarmed and removed its destructive mechanism."

A police spokeswoman said: "The owners reported this morning they had found what they are calling a ransom note, along with part of the Dalek.

"If it is a stunt there is an issue of wasting police time."

Wookey Hole manager Daniel Medley told BBC News: "The arm has been removed quite carefully, it hasn't been ripped off, there's no torture involved.

"So if we get the rest of the Dalek back, we should be able to put it back together like a jigsaw.

"The police think it was probably taken by kids or students, but there is also the idea that it could be heading to Edinburgh for the G8 protests."

Oh no - its becoming a full blown terrorism case. Colin Baker, the sixth Dr Who, has offered to help.

out of the mouths of babes and sucklings

I am always cautious about evolutionary psychology, but this has a horrid ring of truth:

"The baby-face effect has been identified in two papers published today in the journal Science. The first study, led by Alexander Todorov, of Princeton University in New Jersey, examined US Senate races in 2000, 2002 and 2004, and US House of Representatives contests in 2002 and 2004.

Volunteers were asked to view pictures of the two leading candidates in each race, and asked to rate their faces for seven traits: competence, intelligence, leadership, honesty, trustworthiness, charisma and likeability. The results were ignored if either candidate was recognised.

The researchers found that scores for competence accurately predicted the results of the elections 70 per cent of the time, a much higher effect than would be expected by chance. None of the other factors had any measurable impact. In the second paper, Leslie Zebrowitz, of Brandeis University in Massachusetts, said that the results appeared to reflect the relative “baby-facedness” of the candidates.

Previous research has shown that people of any age who appear baby-faced, with a round face, large eyes, a small nose, a high forehead and a small chin, tend to be rated as less competent — though often as more trustworthy as well. “Although the study doesn’t tell us exactly what competence is — there are many kinds, including physical strength, social dominance and intellectual shrewdness.

Baby-faced people are perceived to be lacking in all these qualities,” Dr Zebrowitz said.

“The association between facial maturity and perceived competence is ubiquitous: baby-faced individuals within various demographic groups are perceived as less competent.”

The effect, she said, was also demonstrated by a study at Colgate University in New York state, in which scientists morphed the faces of the former US presidents Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy to make them appear more baby-faced. Volunteers found the altered images looked less strong, dominant and cunning.

Dr Zebrowitz, a psychologist and author of the book Reading Faces: Window to the Soul?, said that the evolutionary importance of detecting attributes such as emotion and character is probably responsible for the tendency to make snap judgments based on looks.

As the facial characteristics of babies signal vulnerability, people tend to generalise and assume that adults with similar features have similar qualities.

The effect applies across age, sex and race, although Dr Zebrowitz pointed out that women tend to have more child-like features that may place them at a disadvantage in politics."

I have to say this has a certain ring of truth to it, because we know from personal experience that neotonic or childlike features bring out the protective in us. It is like a giant button mounted right in the middle of our foreheads. Mickey Mouse has an amazing squirrel grip on our culture, but would you vote for the little horror?

At the same time, the photos above demonstrate just how strongly a political image is constructed by the editor's choice of images. I would not be surprised if the grid of convincing and childlike is an important and vaguely conscious part of these decisions.

One distorting factor - the more rugged the face, the easier the caricature. This may help to explain the results of this contest:

Myself, I don't think the Bush image is convincing at all, or even particularly adult; the Kerry image comes from CNN in 2001, before he was even a candidate. For an instructive snapshot of the attack on Kerry, just google Kerry in the image area. The people who do this kind of thing also claim that we on the Left are the haters.

I first noticed this meme at Science blog.

flying today in a parallel universe

Slumped in front of an evilly bad History channel doc on rocket aircraft, I was confronted with the story of the Saunders-Roe SR.45 Princess.

This ten-engined 1953 monstrosity is bigger than Howard Hughes's Spruce Goose, and flew just fiiiiine.

The three prototypes were mothballed for years because the Americans expressed interest in them to test their atomic plane proposal. This particular notion collapsed because they could build small reactors, but needed too much shielding. They produced a plan to hire old pilots, because they would die of natural causes before they developed radiation-induced cancers. When Kennedy discovered this proposal in 1960, he said it was like coming down for breakfast and finding a walrus in the dining room.

It was unwanted for commercial aviation because the idea was simply wrong. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the runway which breaks up and sloshes around, for your three day once-in-a-lifetime flying experience to Australia, stopping at night to find a comfy hotel. Absolutely the world's most compelling business plan.

But I am very sorry that flight didn't end up like that. Flying Boat to London, catch the Zep home...

Cameron Riley has built an aeroplane blog which will quickly grow into a fine collection of snaps.

The parent site for the photograph above is pretty fine too, while the ultimate compendium of flying boat photos seems to be here.

death on a summer afternoon

Two sorrowful priests, two hours after the crash, walk among the dead, to whom they had administered last rites.

To cap my moment of carby-and-piston nostalgia, here (and under the fold) is an account of the 1955 Le Mans, in which the duel between Mercedes and Jaguar created the worst accident in motor racing history. When Mike Hawthorn, the major surviving protagonist, was killed in a D-Type Jaguar flying sideways into the back of a truck on the Guilford Bypass, my father was devastated and gloom hung heavy over our Darwin house.

Life Magazine carried an account at the time, with grainy photos but without the later research.

a whooshing sound close to the brain

I do love the Journal of Improbable Research, as much for its deadpan passion for the truth as its nose for the surreal.

"Annals of Improbable Research | May-June 2005 www.improbable.com" contains this:

“The Psychotic Patient as Security Guard,” J.A. Silva, G.B. Leong and R. Weinstock, Journal of Forensic Sciences, vol. 38, no. 6, November 1996, pp. 1436-40.

The authors explain that:
The job of the security guard is generally regarded as stressful because of the potential for violent or other hostile confrontation. Although the public assumes that only mentally healthy individuals who possess the capability to handle stressful situations become employed as security guards, this may not be the case.

A series of 15 individuals who suffered from psychotic disorders while working as security guards is studied and discussed... One case is described in detail in order to highlight important issues resulting from being psychotic while working as a security guard."

What do they mean by "important issues"?

“Ear Candles -- Efficacy and Safety,” Daniel R. Seely, Suzanne M. Quigley, and Alan W. Langman,
Laryngoscope, vol. 106, no. 10, October 1996, pp. 1226- 9. (Thanks to Iain Noble for bringing this to our attention.) The authors explain that:

Ear candles are a popular and inexpensive alternative health treatment advocated for cerumen removal. A hollow candle is burned with one end in the ear canal with the intent of creating negative pressure and drawing cerumen from the ear. If effective, significant savings could result from the use of ear candles.

This study evaluates the efficacy and safety of this alternative method for cerumen management. Tympanometric measurements in an ear canal model demonstrated that ear candles do not produce negative pressure. A limited clinical trial (eight ears) showed no removal of cerumen from the external auditory canal. Candle wax was actually deposited in some.

A survey of 122 otolaryngologists identified 21 ear injuries resulting from ear candle use. Ear candles have no benefit in the management of cerumen and may result in serious injury."

three frames to a frozen heart

A softer world is wonderful at the moment,

although I too didn't sign nothing.

the IP monster stirs again

Once again the deranged copyright meme raises its ugly head. (I wonder if it should be meme©?)

In 1999, the Professional Photographers of America, a trade association, sued K-Mart for reproducing copyright images without permission of the holder. That is, people lifted images from some other source like the internet, or used their digital cameras to photograph posters and such, and then paid K-Mart to put them through the automated printing system.

In 2000, K-Mart settled, paying a hundred grand, and agreeing to implement systems to prevent this from happening.

This, of course, is a deranged agreement. How can you stop it, particularly when there is no system of metadata watermarks for images?

Don't take your happysnaps to be copied in places like Walmart and K-Mart in the US. If they look too good, the clerk won't let you take the images home. You are safe if you have written authorisation from the copyright holder, but how do you prove that?

Strewth. The home printer manufacturers are laughing. Mind you, I am not sure how the local chemist would respond if I fronted up to their new autoprint just-like-art photoprinting machine with the Mapplethorpe image above.

Via Waxy.org and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

testing the patience of the very stones

At School- Souad Ramadan Mouhamad, age 13, East Cairo
Felt pen on paper, at the Stone Soup Museum Collection

I won't ruin this story by quoting a single line of it. Big Pharaoh describes what happened when Laura Bush and Mrs Mubarak visited an Egyptian USAID school which the bureaucrats thought was too tatty to display.

Kafka meets Bertolt Brecht.

"The Solution

After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?"

From the sharp eyes of Danny Yee.

in the milk of human kindness

It is one thing to love your pet so much you construct movies showing how they see the world. If that pet is a rat, you probably live in a subculture. The site contains everything you could possibly want to know, as you convince yourself these creatures can be your friend.

Apparently a new breed of rat - called a "blue" - which originated in Australia is prone to a mutation which enhances resistance to Warfarin, but gives them a kind of haemophilia. The alert was spread partly by Scampers Rattery, from where I purloined the photograph.

Via Attu, which contains the instructions to wash your rat in the washing machine.

sing Irony! and fly the flag..

Once upon the Soviets made posters like this, which were visually very distinctive, even though the cinema posters are often much better.

Now this poster has turned up on a commuter train between Baltimore and New York.

I am simply awed by the comparison. The designer has even included the Red Flag in the rear. It looks completely deliberate to me - someone was telling the bluntest of truths. "Watch, Ride and Report".

Snow Moon not only confirms it is not a hoax, s/he points out that it has a Silver Addy Award from the American Advertising Federation.

The story apparently started here, among train nerds. I found it via Artloop.