Open Thread Friday – Anne Frank’s Birthday

Ann Frank was born on June, 12, 1929, she was given a blank diary on her 13th birthday.  The rest is a revelation.

Anne Frank

Fair use images: link

In light of  what occurred on Wednesday at the US Holocaust Museum, her birthday and the injustice and indignity that she suffered become even more tragic  as she describes what are man’s injustices to man.

Anne Frank died at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in early March 1945 (aged 15) of typhus. Her older sister shared her fate.

If you are ever in Amsterdam, be sure to visit the Anne Frank House. If you first read the accounts in her diary, you can understand at least a semblance of her dreadful experiences in occupied Holland.

This is an open thread and as such you are most welcome to comment on any subject here and are also welcome to comment in the threads below.

Senator Doolittle

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Steve Sack, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

The real bia$

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle Editorial Cartoonist and Animation Artist.
For Nick’s animations, visit Nick Anderson: Animation Archives.
For Nick’s cartoons, visit Nick Anderson.

Invest in the wedding industry — stat!

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Steve Sack, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

FDA to be Given Power to Regulate Tobacco

In a step that many will see as more Socialism, Congress is about to pass a bill to allow the Food and Drug Administration the ability to regulate tobacco products.

As Republican Richard Burr noted:

the FDA, which is in charge of ensuring the safety of food and drug products, was the wrong place to regulate an item that is injurious to health.

Others, however, see the regulation of tobacco products as a way to decrease health care costs caused by the use of tobacco. The bill seeks to ban candied or flavored tobacco products. It would also force tobacco companies to list the ingredients of their products.

The bill would overturn a 2000 Supreme Court ruling which held the FDA did not have the authority to regulate tobacco products under then-current law. Bush opposed previous FDA regulation bills, effectively allowing tobacco companies to make and sell unregulated disease-causing products to Americans. Obama supports the legislation.

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Thursday – Open Post, FM Radio and Just About Everything Else

On June 11th in 1935, Edwin Armstrong first publicly demonstrated FM radio.

This man invented virtually all of the technologies used to transmit and receive radio signals used today. From kids walkie talkies to cell phones and everything in between. He did not make any contributions to digital transmission, but he could be excused as he died in 1954.

He was pursued by false claimants and corporations that saw their cash cows in peril. A Supreme Court totally unenlightened in the nuances of electronics and Maxwell’s Equations ruled against him in cases involving  AM transmission and reception. AT&T and RCA were his most determined tormentors and their efforts drove him to suicide. This was perhaps the worst travesty of justice in the history of patent law. His widow persevered in court and collected damages from this ruthless gang.

Please feel free to  comment here in this post and on any posts below.

Acquiescent media, complaisant media, obliging media, deferential media, subserviant media — any term but OBEDIENT

Created for TheZoo by Paul Jamiol
All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World

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Stephen Strong: Army of Me – Basic Training

(A reminder that The Colbert Report is doing a 4 part series on location in Iraq)

Stephen doesn’t get any special treatment when he participates in 10 full hours of basic training.

Stephen Strong: Army of Me – Basic Training Pt. 2
As much as Stephen doesn’t want to admit it, it’s time for him to graduate from basic training.

Formidable Opponent – Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Stephen debates.. well… Stephen.

Wednesday – Open Thread, First Apple II Ships

June 10, 1977 marks the day that the first Apple II shipped.

If you click on the link above, you can spend your entire work day reading about Apple trivia. Wikipedia also has entries on the Apple II and Apple, Inc. There is a technical discussion from Byte here that contains details of the internals of the machine. As a bonus, the left side panel can be used to travel down memory lane and access similar discussions on some of the golden oldies (It ends in 1993).

A key feature of the Apple II was the 8 expansion slots which could accept peripheral cards which allowed additional hardware features.

The original machine was a technical innovation, but was strapped by a max 48K of user memory and a tape input/output system.  The peripheral cards allowed an escape from these limitations. In July 1978, Apple added the Disk II sub-system which allowed two 113.75K 5.25 inch floppies to be added to the machine. The memory limitations were resolved by adding peripheral cards that added up to 128 KB of addressability for a total of 176 KB of user memory. Parallel processor cards were available that supported up to 16 MB of memory, but the cost was prohibitive for any but the wealthy or corporations.

At the time that the Apple II came out, IBM had a Personal Computer under development that used proprietary CPU, memory and support chips. This was to be based on the IBM 5100 which was being marketed for $20,000 at the time. That effort was canned with the realization that the IBM could not match the Apple II’s entry price using proprietary chips.

As is always the case, you can comment on any subject in this open thread and we encourage you to join in the discussions that develop in the threads below.

President Obama orders General Odierno to shave Colbert’s head in Iraq

Raw Story:

President Barack Obama ordered General Ray Odierno to shave Stephen Colbert’s head during the first of four shows in Iraq.

This was pretty funny…

Night sky of Timelapse

This video is very short, but absolutely fascinating.

The music is Chopin Piano Concerto no. 1, 2nd Movement. It ends too soon, but I liked watching it anyway.
Being able to look into the night sky makes you suddenly realize how very small and insignificant we really are in the big picture…

Under the video by 46°Project it says “In Japan of The Utsukusi ga hara”. I looked it up. I think this is where the video was shot:

The Utsukushi-ga-hara-kogen Highlands area is located at the center of Nagano, in the north section of Yatsugatake Chushin Kogen Quasi-National Park. It is a flat tableland of a lava plateau that extends along the highlands at an altitude of 2,000 meters, above Matsumoto City, Ueda City, and Nagawa Town.

The view from Ogato, the highest spot in the Utsukushi-ga-hara-kogen Highlands, is magnificent. You can enjoy its 360 degree panoramic view and look out upon the Northern, Central and Southern Japan Alps, as well as the Yatsugatake Mountains, Mt. Fuji and Mt. Asama-yama.

Bomb threat…

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle Editorial Cartoonist and Animation Artist.
For Nick’s animations, visit Nick Anderson: Animation Archives.
For Nick’s cartoons, visit Nick Anderson.

Tuesday – Open Thread, Ed Ames – The Tomahawk Event

The sequence is a classic from the Tonight Show during the 1965 season.

This open thread offers a respite from the last few open threads relating to war.

Feel free to coment on this thread (Knowing the subject, keep it clean!) or any others that may open below.

R.I.P. Kenny Rankin

LA TImes:

Kenny Rankin, a singer-songwriter and musician whose song “Peaceful” was a hit for Helen Reddy and who had popular covers himself of a pair of Beatles hits, has died. He was 69. 

Rankin died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The cause of death, according to his management company, was lung cancer, which was diagnosed three weeks ago. 

His career, which spanned more than five decades, almost defied categorization. A well-regarded guitarist, he played in Bob Dylan’s backup band on the influential 1965 album “Bringing It All Back Home.” He also spent several years on the road opening for comedian George Carlin.

Rankin appeared on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson more than 25 times. Carson was such a fan that he wrote the liner notes for Rankin’s 1967 debut LP, “Mind Dusters.” 

As a singer with a velveteen tenor voice, he had highly successful covers of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” and “Penny Lane” in the mid-1970s and in 1976 recorded an LP of standards, “The Kenny Rankin Album,” with a large orchestra conducted by Don Costa. More…

Monday Open Thread – Marines Rescue Scott O’Grady on June 8, 1995

USAF F16

In line with the US Military’s policy of  doing everything possible to retrieve its downed warriors, living or dead, a team of  US Marines rescued the USAF pilot, Capt. Scott O’Grady, alive, on this date in 1995.

He had been shot down behind Serbian lines. Hiding during the day and foraging the landscape for sustenance (water, ants and grass, no – not pot) at night, he eluded Serbian searchers for six days prior to being rescued. He maintained radio silence for the first three days and did not broadcast a verbal message, only short beacons on a rescue channel until the sixth. This strategy gave the rescuers a heads-up and insured the success of the rescue mission.

This incident has all the thrills for an adventure movie. In fact, 20th Century Fox made one which did not thrill Capt. O’Grady.

This is an open thread. Please feel free to offer your comments in this thread or in threads below this one.

Extreme Makeover: Fossil fuels edition

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Steve Sack, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Limbaugh + bin Laden = BFs 4ever!

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World

Tank Man becomes Big Rig Man

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Jeff Danziger, Syndicated Political Cartoonist

Nice to know…

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World

Pyramid Scheme…

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Jack Ohman, Portland Oregonian

Should this man be waterboarded?

I’d like to post this on every Conservative blog on the internet.

The man charged with murdering a high-profile abortion doctor claimed from his jail cell Sunday that similar violence was planned around the nation for as long as the procedure remained legal, a threat that comes days after a federal investigation launched into his possible accomplices.

This is about as close to the ticking time-bomb scenario as we’re going to get. This man claims to have knowledge about planned murders.

So, under the Bush/Cheney/Jack Bauer/Justice Scalia doctrine, should this man be waterboarded?

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Bush: The Gift that Keeps on Giving…

if you’re KBR, that is:

In July 2008, the Army said a new dining facility was badly needed at the Camp Delta forward operating base because the existing one was too small, had a saggy ceiling, poor lighting and an unsanitary wooden floor.

KBR was awarded a contract in September. Work began in late October as American and Iraqi officials were negotiating the agreement setting the dates for the U.S. troop withdrawal

But during an April visit to Camp Delta, the commission learned that the existing mess hall had just been renovated. The $3.36 million job was done by KBR and completed in June 2008.

This $30 million unneeded dining facility is to be completed on Christmas Day, 2009.

“With American forces scheduled to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, the U.S. will use the new facility for two years at most.” In other words, in the waning months of the Bush Administration, when the American economy was “cratering,” the Bush Administration gives a $30 million contract to KBR to build an unneeded and unnecessary dining facility.

How many other multi-million dollar projects Bush gave away in his waning days as President has yet to be seen…

Gee, thanks Dad!

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Steve Sack, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

In an effort to stay appealing…

All photos are posted with the artist’s express permission to TheZoo.
Bent Objects.