From Jellyroll to Jagger

Our seven year old is infatuated with the Rolling Stones circa 1965.

He has a vintage (read that, old) Sony stereo setup with a great vinyl turntable which has not stopped turning since the holiday school break began.

While listening to his favorite Rolling Stones song,Satisfaction, from the album Out of Our Heads for the six hundredth time, something dawned on me: that song is fifty. years. old.

Would anybody in 1965 have been listening to Jelly Roll Morton, Al Jolsen or Irving Berlin songs from 1915 on the hi-fi and dancing around the room? I doubt it and there must be some meaning hidden deep in the grooves of vinyl LP's that we just don't understand quite yet.

Puzzling us is the nature of the game.

Image: Songwriter Jelly Roll Morton ca 1915 and Mick Jagger ca 1965.


(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, Words & Music Keith Richards & Mick Jagger, ©1965 ABKCO Publishing

(With a professional songwriter as a significant other, I am conditioned to add songwriter attribution wherever and whenever required!)

#rollingstones   #mickjagger   #satisfaction    #jellyrollmorton  

Show less

Touching Enola Gay

Atomic Secrets
Who gets tossed out of a museum?

I'll admit it. Aside from me, I know of no other person tossed out of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. I blame it on atomic energy.

Most folks traverse the wonderful exhibits at Air & Space maintaining a sense of decorum. And most are satisfied to admire the various aircraft and spacecraft from afar. But, not I on that particular day in 1998.

My downfall was the Enola Gay exhibit in Gallery 103. Somehow, standing next to the very airplane that dropped the first atomic weapon in history drew me to that decision point where bank robbers open bank doors and regular schmoes like me become willful scofflaws. I decided to touch the airplane.

I milled around the exhibit casing the joint and waiting for the crowds to thin a bit before making my move. I located the barrier with the least distance between me the plane's nosegear.(see the attached image)

I considered the length of my arm's reach against the fulcrum presented at my stomach as I leaned in and determined it could be done.

I looked at the nosegear, then I looked at the security guard standing in the shadow near the main entrance door. I narrowed my eyes, fixed my glaze upon him and he upon me likewise in the fashion of two cowboys facing off in the dusty street in front of the saloon. It was him or me now.

The guard took a step forward from the shadows never breaking his gaze on me. "You aren't going to touch the exhibit are you?", he asked. "Yes, I am.", I croaked in my best Harry Callahan voice.

Doing so, he informed me, would be sufficient cause for him to escort me to the front door of the museum and throw me out. I replied, "That's fine."

At that precise moment I leaned over, stretched out and touched the nosewheel assembly; the guard grabbed me under the arm the way law enforcement officers are trained to do, and we silently made our way to one of the entrance doors on Independence Avenue. He released my arm and pushed me through the open door and I landed back in sunshine. 

I turned around as he called out to me. "You can go around to the other side and come back in. I know why you touched it but I gotta do my do my job. Just don't touch any more exhibits today, brother." 

I thanked him then walked around the building and re-entered the museum on the Mall side with a scofflaw's spring in the step and atomic glint in the eye. I had touched history.

Current Enola Gay exhibit at National Air & Space Museum: http://goo.gl/x4iwmE

Image: National Air & Space Museum, Washington, DC website.


#enolagay   #nationalairandspacemuseum  #hiroshima   #littleboy   #atomicenergy  #atomicbomb   #b29   #tibbets  

The Convenience Store War

....Why Your Quadrotor will be Banned

Seven-11/Nine-Eleven
The September 11th attacks on the United States changed the scope and scale of war forever. After centuries of set-piece warfare with armies massed along imaginary battle lines and supported with massive rear-guard supply chains, we entered into the era of the Convenience Store War.

The 9-11 attackers were few but they were able to establish a command and control system from internet cafes and public libraries on both coasts of the US; picked up wire transferred funds at the neighborhood grocery store; bought throwaway cell phones for field communications; bivouacked in weekly rental apartment houses; chowed down on nachos and beer from the corner convenience store then, lastly, rented four weapons of mass destruction from the airlines. The age of the convenience store battle had arrived.

Mastedon vs Mice
Like a scene from The Borrowers, the 9-11 attackers collected small items for their task with little or no notice. Individually, nothing stood out about these purchases, but in total, they added up to destruction on a massive scale.

Our response to this threat was simplistic: large scale conventional warfare and drones and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to deliver conventional weapons to conventional targets. So far, the success of our remote war campaign is not clear but this approach will not work in the future. 

What will be next? Think small; think mobile and add drones, quadrotors and small UAV's to your list of weaponry. And, if you believe that these small UAV's are incapable of carrying effective weaponry, you may need to re-think your position on that. 

Black Carded
That $300 drone on the internet may only have a fifteen minute battery life at its maximum all up weight, but a quick calculation of its operating range at its nominal flight speed can be a chilling thought.

Now, imagine the simultaneous launch of a hundred of drones each with a portion of the total payload. Scrambling jets or launching missiles to counter this threat will not be effective. Add open source availability of gps waypoints for complete autonomous mission operations to the mix and the safety of elected officials

Drone and UAV control technology is open source and globally available to anyone with a credit card or online bank account. After consideration of capabilities against market availability, we can expect governments around the world to call for an across the board ban on UAV's, and this will be futile and counterproductive.

The marketing convenience and near-anonymity of the internet opens the door for another episode of The Borrowers with a bad end. Let's hope we are ready this time.


The Borrowers: ©1953, Mary Norton
Image: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, ©1997 New Line Cinema.


#drones   #uav   #worldtradecenter   #smartbombs