Michael Mace on Twitter the telegraph at Gettysburg:

With our obsession for newness, those of us who work in the tech industry often fail to understand the historical roots of our technologies. Case in point: telegraph operators more than 150 years ago were sending short messages called "graphs" that were surprisingly similar in form and content to Twitter tweets.

One remarkable example was recently discovered in the Museum of Telegraphy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It is the transcript of a telegraph operator's comments during Abraham Lincoln's famed Gettysburg Address in 1863. The transcript was shared with me by a friend on the museum staff, and I'm pleased to reproduce it here:

---

Still waiting for the Pres. to commence his speech. #gettysburg

Good heavens, I should have foresworn that fifth corn dodger for lunch. #gas #dontask #gettysburg

Starting now. Pres. waves to crowd. #gettysburg

Four score and… WTF is a score? 25? #pleasespeakenglish #gettysburg

Okay, it's twenty. So "87 years ago the country was founded." Why not just say that? Duh. #gettysburg

[...]

It turns out that former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan was laughing all the way to the (run on the) banks:

[Following the release of the minutes of the meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee's meetings for 2001-2006...]

It makes for quite a fun read if you get past all the boring economic analysis parts. In fact, if the stenographer was accurate, the Committee broke into laughter 45 times in just the January meeting! That's at least 45 jokes (some didn't get laughs – if only we knew the quality of each laughter!). I would have guessed that would be a lot relative to other meetings, right? I mean how funny would it be if the top of the housing market was also when the FOMC was telling the most jokes in their meetings?

Well, being a data nerd with nothing better to do on a Thursday night, I looked into it. To be precise, I went back for just the last six years (2001-06) and searched for how many times the stenographer's notation for laughter appeared in the released transcripts of each FOMC meeting.

Suffice it to say the data is funny…

Sadly, the minutes of meetings of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee are written in a rather dry, formal style, so there doesn't seem to be much scope for a similar analysis of economic policymakers' behaviour over here.

[Via The Morning News]

When Paul Rosenblatt answers the phone, he says "Bananas!", or, All you ever wanted to know about the science of making bananas ripen at the right time in the right place, on an industrial scale. Fascinating stuff.

[Via Pruned]

How would they vote? is fanfic with a somewhat unusual focus. Take, for example, The Breakfast Club's "Princess", Claire Standish:

Soon after joining the Breakfast Club, Claire realised there was more to life than pearl earrings and skiing trips to Colorado. Where was the reward in having life delivered to you on a silver platter?

Enter John Bender. While Bender had started off as simply a grab for attention from her quibbling parents, it soon became apparent that he was much more than that. Reforming John Bender would become Claire's personal Fix-Her-Upper, the challenge that would bring fulfilment to her otherwise vacuous life. And she loved him for it.

Despite initial misgivings about Bender, Claire's conservative parents came round to the young man, admiring his 'organic entrepreneurial spirit' and it wasn't long before the couple was happily married. Claire studied PR and encouraged John to enrol in a community college course in business studies. When he wavered with his software design idea, she pushed him forward.

She was also successful in her own right. Upon graduating, she entered into a big-name PR firm and managed several big accounts during the early '90s, including for Sega, Pepsi Max, and Janet Jackson. She voted Clinton in '92, purely out of respect for his rapport with the common man, but swung right in 2000, under the influence of her husband's anti-tax, small government crusade.

By 2008, Claire's talent for PR had started to get noticed by the right people in Washington. When she received a call to help out a struggling Hilary Clinton in the race against Obama to secure the Democratic nomination, Claire couldn't refuse. That fall she came up with her best idea yet – the infamous 'red phone' ad.

Despite Clinton's failed run at the presidency, Claire stayed in Washington and it wasn't long before she had made the seamless transition from Clinton to the other side of politics, recruited by the Koch brothers to work on strategies for undermining the Obama administration in the lead-up to 2012.

The focus of the site seems to be on characters from US and Australian TV, which leaves something of a gap in the market. What would Detective Inspector Jack Regan have made of members of the Met being bussed up to the Yorkshire coalfields to put striking miners in their place? Would Tom Good, having presumably ended the 1970s as a classic wooly Liberal, have ended up in the Green Party, or been seduced by New Labour? Would Alan B'Stard still be a Tory?¹

[Via MetaFilter]

1. OK. Stupid question! ↩

Sometimes a picture truly is worth a thousand words.

File under Things it had never occurred to me existed: ¹ a training yard where technicians learn how to climb utility poles.

[Via BLDGBLOG]

1. It's quite logical that there should be a need for such a facility, but I suppose if I'd ever given the matter any thought I'd have assumed that technicians would learn to climb poles in the field. Presumably there are similar – but larger – training sites somewhere for those whose job is to climb electrical pylons. ↩

"In theory" is one of the scariest phrases in the world of computing. Take this story about vulnerabilities in the computer systems used to run some federal prisons in the USA:

While the computers that are used for the system control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems that control prison doors and other systems in theory should not be connected to the Internet, the researchers found that there was an Internet connection associated with every prison system they surveyed. In some cases, prison staff used the same computers to browse the Internet; in others, the companies that had installed the software had put connections in place to do remote maintenance on the systems.

[Emphasis added]

[Via Bruce Schneier]

Christoph Niemann: My attempt at live-illustrating the New York City Marathon.

Assange versus Zuckerberg.

[Via Ghost in the Machine]

Chris Sims gathers the views of The (Fictional) 1% on #OccupyWallStreet:

Instead of paying taxes to support a corrupt system, I put my money where it does the most good: A utility belt full of sharp pieces of metal that I throw at the mentally ill. I am the 1%.

Bruce Wayne
(Alias) Batman

[Via Crooked Timber]

The Human Slingshot.

Three thoughts:

1. You couldn't pay me enough money to ride that thing!
2. Is it wrong to be mildly disappointed that the passenger remains attached to the slingshot throughout?¹
3. Throwing footballs at the slingshot's passenger is just not on.

[Via MetaFilter]

1. As opposed to continuing forwards and landing in a suitably padded receptacle a few fields over… ↩

When lightning strikes …

Be sure to take a look at picture #19: that's not something you see every day.

[Via Gary Farber]

The Ira Glass Sex Tape:

"Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Each week, of course, we pick a theme and bring you a variety of stories on that theme. This week's theme…my sex tape."

F***ing hilarious, and an absolutely spot-on parody to boot!¹

[Via The A.V. Club]

1. It tells you a lot about my podcast-listening habits that I got about 80% of the references to other NPR personalities. ↩

After their splashdown in the Pacific, the Apollo 11 astronauts had to fill in their customs paperwork upon their arrival at Honolulu airport, just like every other inbound traveller.

I can't help but notice that the one section of this paperwork that might have been considered of some practical importance – i.e. the part asking about the possibility of spreading disease – had to be answered TO BE DETERMINED, what with the astronauts still being in quarantine at that point.

[Via The Brooks Review]

File under 'Famous last words': Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet:

A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America's Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots' every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones.

The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military's Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech's computers, network security specialists say. [...]

"We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back," says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. "We think it's benign. But we just don't know." [...]

Retaliation for Stuxnet, or someone too high up the chain of command to be told what to do getting a bit careless with their USB drive and bringing in some malware they picked up on their home PC?

In the preface to a new edition of Good Times, Bad Times, former Sunday Times and Times editor Harold Evans finds one small consolation in the wake of his having left the News International empire:

On my departure from the Times I became a non-person, and it proved a very happy experience. For years my birthday had been recorded in the Times, a matter I felt more and more to be an intrusion into private grief. After my resignation, my name was left out of the birthdays list. I then came to regard each passing year as not having happened since it had failed to be recorded in the paper of record, and I adjusted my stated age accordingly. More recently my name has been put back in the birthdays list, which is a pity. Perhaps this new edition of Good Times, Bad Times will generate another act of rejuvenation.

Lt. Col. Dan Ward, USAF urges military procurement professionals to heed the lessons of the Death Stars:

The truth is, Death Stars are about as practical as a metal bikini. Sure, they look cool, but they aren't very sensible. Specifically, Death Stars can't possibly be built on time or on budget, require pathological leadership styles and, as we've noted, keep getting blown up. Also, nobody can build enough of them to make a real difference in the field.

The bottom line: Death Stars are unaffordable. Whether we're talking about a fictional galaxy far, far away or the all too real conditions here on Planet Earth, a Death Star program will cost more than it is worth. The investment on this scale is unsustainable and is completely lost when a wamp-rat-hunting farmboy takes a lucky shot. When one station represents the entire fleet (or even 5 percent of the fleet), we've put too many eggs in that basket and are well on our way to failing someone for the last time.

The answer isn't to build more, partly because we can't and partly because the underlying concept is so critically flawed. Instead of building Death Stars, we should imitate the most successful technology in the saga: R2-D2.

[Via MetaFilter]

The Tempest Milky Way timelapse captures stars and storms.¹ Definitely one to watch full screen in HD.

[Via Bad Astronomy]

1. Plus an inquisitive deer, 1 minute and 57 seconds in. ↩

Holy Smoke provides an … innovative … means of remembering your loved ones:

The process of having cremated ash placed in live ammunition begins when you contact us. You tell us what type of hunting or shooting that the decedent practiced and we can help you decide what will best suit your needs. [...]

Once the caliber, gauge and other ammunition parameters have been selected, we will ask you (by way of your funeral service provider) to send approximately one pound of the decedents ash to us. Upon receiving the ashes our professional and reverent staff will place a measured portion of ash into each shotshell or cartridge.

Example: 1 Pound of ash is enough to produce 250 shotshells (one case).

I can't say it'd be for me or mine, but¹ then I can't think of a single reason why those for whom hunting and shooting was a way of life shouldn't have the option of being remembered in the same vein.

[Via MetaFilter]

1. Assuming that the whole site isn't an elaborate joke. ↩

An Oral History of Friday Night Lights describes the genesis of the Best Married Couple on Television:

[Series creator Peter] Berg: [In the original Friday Night Lights movie], Connie Britton's role was sort of Pretty Wife Clapping in the Stands, which is about the shittiest job an actress can have. At least Talia Shire got to own a pet store and go ice-skating with Rocky.

[Actress] Connie Britton: When Pete got in touch with me and said, "We're going to make a Friday Night Lights TV show. Why don't you come play that part?" I was like, "No way!" The only thing worse than playing a nothing part in a movie is [playing it] for years and years on TV.

Berg: She said, "Are you fucking kidding me? You think I'm going to spend 10 years sitting on a hard-wood bleacher getting splinters in my ass and cheering on Kyle Chandler? You're out of your mind." I said, "I promise. We'll create a character. We'll give you a job. We'll give you dimension. We'll give you a real voice."

[Imagine Television executive David] Nevins: I had to convince her that the wife was going to have a much more significant role, and that the marriage would be the heart of the show. But you never know if that's going to be true. I tried to convince myself so I could convince her.

Britton: It really was a leap of faith, initially, because I only had three scenes in the pilot script. So I remember even going into the pilot and saying, "OK, Pete, just so we're clear: What's here on the page in the pilot, that's not what we're talking about, right?"

[Actor Kyle] Chandler: I'd never met Connie. I didn't know her from her work either, and I don't think she knew me from mine. But it didn't take long – probably 25 steps on the way to go get brunch – that I had an idea that she was going to be a lot of fun to work with.

Berg: I was really worried. Connie and Kyle developed a very flirtatious, precocious relationship right off the bat. And Kyle, of course, is married. They announced they were going to drive to Austin together from L.A. to move out, and I threw myself in front of that bus. I said it was a horrible idea for multiple reasons. They ignored me. Connie dismissively told me she knew what she was doing and she didn't need my advice. I was convinced they would be having some torrid affair by the time they reached Santa Fe and Kyle's marriage would be over by the time they got to Austin. I was wrong about that, thank God.

Friday Night Lights¹ has just ended in the States after five seasons; over here ITV4 showed season 2 last year – only three years behind the NBC run of the show – at 1am. Just to make the show's that little bit harder to get into, ITV4 ran episodes five nights a week.² It's just a crime that such a fantastic show got buried in the wee small hours.

I know that at first glance Friday Night Lights looked like a corny, sentimental show about a bunch of pretty high school kids playing American Football, but trust me: it was so much more than that.

1. Previously. ↩
2. I think that 'stripping' a one hour drama across multiple nights a week is a terrible idea; instead of inviting a potential viewer to devote one hour a week to keep up with your new show, you're asking them for five hours of their time. I know that in theory in this age of DVRs viewers can let episodes stack up and watch them at their leisure, but in practice I suspect that pushing out five hours a week of a show – especially a newish show which you're just barely bothering to advertise – simply makes it that much more likely that viewers will look at the backlog of episodes building up over a fairly short time and decide to skip the show completely. ↩