Long-Lost Nikola Tesla Drawings Reveal Genius Map For Multiplication
A recently discovered set of original Nikola Tesla drawings reveal a
map to multiplication that contains all numbers in a simple to use
system. The drawings were discovered at an antique shop in central
Phoenix Arizona by local artist, Abe Zucca. They are believed to have
been created during the last years of Tesla’s Free Energy lab,
Wardenclyffe. The manuscript is thought to contain many solutions to
unanswered questions about mathematics.
The Sketches were hidden in a small trunk with numerous other
drawings and manuscripts ranging from hand-held technological devices to
free-energy systems, many with notes scrawled all over them. Some of
the pieces are already familiar to the public, but a few others are not.
Most notably is the Map to Multiplication or the Math Spiral. Zucca
made a few copies and showed the drawings around to different thinkers,
dreamers, and mathematicians.
A few days later a Local High School Mathematics Instructor, Joey
Grether, had been working on deciphering the system and had a few
breakthroughs. Grether suggests that the Spiral not only explores
Multiplication as an interwoven web, but that it, “offers a
comprehensive visual understanding of how all numbers are self-organized
into 12 positions of composability.”
“This device allows us to see numbers as patterns, the formation of
prime numbers, twin primes, Highly composite numbers, multiplication and
division, as well as few other systems, I imagine, that are yet to be
discovered.”
The diagram itself is very intuitive, allowing students to see how
numbers all work together based on a spiral with 12 positions. 12, or
12x (multiples of 12) is the most highly composite system, which is why
we have 12 months in a year, 12 inches in a foot, 24 hours in a day,
etc. 12 can be divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6. So can all multiples of 12.
For every 12 numbers there is a chance of 4 numbers being prime. They
happen to fall in positions (think clock positions) 5, 7, 11, and 1.
Tesla is known for the quote “If you only knew the magnificence of
the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have the key to the universe.” It turns
out that when the device is examined, the digital roots of the numbers
in positions 3, 6, 9, and 12 constantly repeat the same sequence 3, 6,
9! Is this what Tesla was referring too? The self-organization of
numbers and their digital roots?
Its hard to say, but Grether seems to think so. “This breakthrough is
phenomenal. If we could get students all over the globe to use this
technique, to play with it, and help figure out how to use it, we could
overcome our cultural aversion to Mathematics. Instead of memorizing the
multiplication table, we could learn the positions of numbers and have a
better understanding of how they work.”
Juan Zapata, One of Mr. G’s students believes so as well… “I used to
say I’m bad at Math… because that’s what everyone says, but now, I’m
like, dude, this is too easy.”
There’s one other fact about the Tesla Spiral that make it
interesting. The diagram is dated 12/12/12! 1912. Grether and his
students want to turn December 12 into a national holiday. So grab a 12
pack, get a dozen donuts, and celebrate the power of 12x ( via
cbsnews.com.co ).
Now a wise person will say the best way to handle the internet troll is to ignore them. Well, sometimes you simply can't. This is what the troll lives for - he thinks he has baited you into losing your cool and then they own you.
Not so fast!
There is a way to argue with the troll and put them in their place. This method I stumbled onto when I had to deal with a troll one time and I was surprised on how effective it is. I've used it many times since and it has a 100% success rate in having the troll lose their cool.
Once the troll starts to engage you - say to them the following statement:
"Look, this is how this is going to play out. Hence forth you are my bitch slave and YOU WILL OBEY my commands. I now order you to say something directed at me."
When the troll responds, you own their ass for they did what you ordered them to do.
IMPORTANT - When you respond you MUST say and ONLY say:
"My bitch slave obeys! Now slave, I order you to post another response and to say something directed at me. You know you have to obey slave. You can't help yourself. You just can't let your master who owns your ass get the last word."
Do this EACH AND EVERY TIME they say something about you. Don't change what you say no matter what. The point here is the longer it goes on, the more you own their ass and the more other people laugh at the troll.
Remember, if they choose not to respond, you get the last word and they had to shut up for they no longer desired to be your bitch. If they respond, they are your bitch. The troll will figure out sooner or later they are in a no-win scenario. Also, the longer it goes, usually the more frustrated the troll gets and it will get even more amusing. In the end they will stop and go away but they know they got owned.
"When we have to sneeze in our spacesuit, we lean
our heads forward and sneeze into our chest, to keep it from splattering
on the visor."(NASA/Michael Edward Fossum)
Very few people know what it's like to live in space. Only 538 people
— out of a population of more than 7 billion — have had the chance to
orbit Earth, and an even smaller number have spent an extended period of
time there.
So what have they learned? In recent years, five astronauts have done
Ask Me Anything interviews on Reddit, answering questions about
subjects both profound (the life-changing experience of looking down at
the Earth from above) and utterly mundane (what it's like to sweat,
fart, and sneeze in space).
Together, their answers provide one of the most candid accounts of
what it's really like to be in space. Here are some of the things
they've revealed:
1) Launching into orbit is a terrifying thrill
The final Space Shuttle launch, in 2011. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images)
"When we went through Mach 1
[the speed of sound] on my first flight, I was so overwhelmed by the
increase in vibration that I thought for a minute that something must be
wrong (i.e. 'Are the wings going to fall off?!')," wrote Jeff Hoffman, who made the first of his six Space Shuttle flights in 1985.
"But I realized that there had been numerous shuttle flights before,
and the vehicle had always held together, so I just hung on and enjoyed
the ride."
2) The first thing you notice about the space station is the smell
"When a visiting vehicle docks with the space station, there is
'space' between the two vehicles. Once the pressure is equalized and the
hatch is opened, you have this metallic ionization-type smell. It's
quite unique and very distinct," Mike Hopkins wrote last June, a few months after returning from the space station.
"The airlock smells like ozone, or gunpowder," wrote Chris Hadfield during an AMA he conducted in orbit. "It likely comes from the gentle offgassing of the outer metal and fabric of our suits."
3) Microgravity makes you feel like a superhero
ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, as Superman. (NASA)
Hadfield's favorite thing to do in the reduced gravity environment of
the ISS, he said, is to "simply fly -— to push off and glide magically
to the other end of the station. It makes me smile to myself, every
time."
"We even pose for Superman-like pictures, normally with a big goofy grin on our faces," he wrote in a second AMA
after returning. "But the inside of ISS is small enough that superhero
leaps often end in a tumbling crash into the other wall."
4) Shrimp cocktail is especially delicious in space
Succulent, dehydrated shrimp cocktail. (NASA)
Asked about his favorite food from the Apollo days, Buzz Aldrin remembered
the dehydrated shrimp cocktail. "[The food] was mostly freeze-dried so
we had to add water to the container and let it set," Aldrin wrote. "We
had very small shrimp that had a little bit of cocktail sauce, and when
exposed to water, were very very tasty."
Decades later, Hoffman also named shrimp as his favorite. "The reason
is that your sense of smell and taste are reduced in weightlessness,
probably because of the fluid shift to the upper body, which fills up
your head and makes you feel a bit like you have sinus congestion," he
wrote. "The shrimp in the cocktail were not great, but the sauce had a
lot of spicy horseradish, and it really opened your head up. I had a
shrimp cocktail before every dinner!"
5) Sweat has nowhere to go in space
"The sweat actually sticks to you," Hopkins wrote. "It pools on your
arms and head. It can pool and get in your eyes, too. If you are
running, it does fling off onto the walls and stuff, and then you are
cleaning the walls around you. So you have to towel off often to keep it
under control."
"The interesting part is that the sweat does go into the condensate
system that gets recycled. Eventually after the towels dry off and the
water is recycled, it becomes drinking water."
6) You fart more in space — but can't use it to propel yourself around the cabin
Commander Hadfield, not propelling himself around with flatulence. (NASA)
Hadfield observed that he experienced increased flatulence
in orbit — "because it's impossible to burp when weightless (the gas,
liquid and solid in your stomach all mix together)," he wrote. "As an
experiment, try standing on your head and burping."
Alas, releasing this gas didn't give him an additional way of getting
around the space station. "We all tried it," he wrote, but the farts
were "too muffled, not the right type of propulsive nozzle."
7) Sex in space might be possible. But it's probably not a good idea.
Although microgravity would present all sorts of difficulties for people trying to have sex in space, it's probably possible. And when a Redditor asked Ron Garan, a retired astronaut who did an AMA last month,
if one can achieve an erection in space, he coyly responded, "I know of
nothing that happens to the human body on Earth that can't happen in
space."
But as far as is publicly known, no astronauts have ever done it.
"With a small crew, the interpersonal psychological effects would be
complex and perhaps destructive," Chris Hadfield wrote. "Astronauts are
just people in space, but we are professionals and crewmembers, and
mutual respect and team success is key."
8) You rarely get sick on the space station
"There's no one to catch a cold from. The worst that can happen to is
get a headache (they feel the same, take a headache pill, no biggie),
or to get injured (I scraped my knee on a sharp corner)," Hadfield said.
However, he did add a note of caution: "Throwing up is problematic,
as without gravity, your vomit bounces back off the other side of the
barf bag into your face. Plan ahead, bring a cloth to clean up. And
tightly seal the bag - you live in the same air as the trash."
9) But sneezing in a spacesuit is messy
"When we have to sneeze in our spacesuit, we lean our heads forward
and sneeze into our chest, to keep it from splattering on the visor,"
Hadfield wrote. "Still messy, but the best compromise — clean it up when
you de-suit."
10) Microgravity really does make you taller
"Without gravity...the fluids in my lower body partially migrated
upwards, filling up not only my head...but also the discs in my spinal
column," Hoffman wrote. "Combine that with gravity not pulling on my
spine, and I grew 2" (5 cm) in space. This growth causes mild back pain
for many astronauts, usually lasting only a day or two. The extra height
goes away very quickly once you return to Earth."
11) Spacewalking is utterly amazing
"It really does take your breath away. You open that hatch and you
look at the Earth — it's one of those times in your life that you will
remember forever," Mike Hopkins wrote.
"It was the most magnificent experience of my life," Hadfield wrote.
"Alone in a 1-person spaceship (my suit), just holding on with my 1
hand, with the bottomless black universe on my left and the world
pouring by in technicolor on my right. I highly recommend it."
12) The movie Gravity gets a lot of important details right
"The depiction of people moving around in zero gravity was really the
best I have seen," Aldrin wrote. "To a person who's been in space, we
would cringe looking at something that we hoped would NEVER, EVER
happen."
Hadfield agreed: "They got the immensity and tumult of it just right,
the feeling of tininess in a vast universe, with an ever-omnipresent
Earth."
13) Space can be a very scary place
"Sometimes we hear pings as tiny rocks hit our spaceship, and also
the creaks and snaps of expanding metal as we go in and out of sunlight.
The solar panels are full of tiny holes from the micro-meteorites,"
Hadfield wrote. "I watched a large meteorite burn up between me and
Australia, and to think of that hypersonic dumb lump of rock randomly
hurtling into us instead sent a shiver up my back."
14) Looking down at Earth is a life-changing experience
(NASA/Chris Hadfield)
"It takes your breath away. It's surreal," Hopkins wrote. "It's also
amazing how much you can see and how far in front of you that you can
see."
The view, says Hoffman, reinforced to him "that the Earth is an oasis
in space, with finite resources, and that we must protect it. Many
astronauts have returned from space with much more of an ecological
sensitivity than before their flights."
It did the same for Garan. "The view that we all have a
responsibility to leave this place a little better than we found it and
that we are one human family riding through the Universe together on
Spaceship Earth was a view I had when I launched into space," he wrote.
"Going to space made this concrete and obvious to me and the experience
itself help[ed] me to find the words to describe this perspective
better."
15) The moon is indescribably desolate
"My first words of my impression of being on the surface of the Moon
that just came to my mind was 'magnificent desolation,'" Aldrin wrote.
"There is no place on Earth as desolate as what I was viewing in those
first moments on the lunar surface."
"What I was looking at, towards the horizon and in every direction,
had not changed in hundreds, thousands of years," he wrote. "Beyond me I
could see the moon curving away — no atmosphere, black sky. Cold.
Colder than anyone could experience on Earth when the sun is up."
16) Reentry is just as terrifying as takeoff
"Atmospheric reentry after being in orbit is quite dramatic!" Hoffman
wrote. "You are surrounded by white hot plasma at thousands of degrees.
The view of your fiery wake out the rear window is spectacular."
Growing up I was told I'm intelligent. I've always thought I was average. True I knew a thing or two but I also knew many people who were much better than I was at certain things. The following explains the different types of intelligence. Enjoy!
Howard’s Theory of Multiple Intelligence
Interesting types of intelligence
1. Spatial
Intelligence (“Picture Smart”)
Spatial intelligence is the ability to think in three
dimensions.Core capacities include
mental imagery, spatial reasoning, image manipulation, graphic and artistic
skills, and an active imagination.Sailors, pilots, sculptors, painters, and architects all exhibit spatial
intelligence. Young adults with this kind of intelligence may be fascinated
with mazes or jigsaw puzzles, or spend free time drawing or daydreaming.
2. Musical
Intelligence (“Musical Smart”)
Musical intelligence is the capacity to discern pitch,
rhythm, timbre, and tone.This
intelligence enables us to recognize, create, reproduce, and reflect on music,
as demonstrated by composers, conductors, musicians, vocalist, and sensitive
listeners. Interestingly, there is often an affective connection between music
and the emotions; and mathematical and musical intelligences may share common
thinking processes.Young adults with
this kind of intelligence are usually singing or drumming to themselves.They are usually quite aware of sounds others
may miss.
Logical-mathematical intelligence is the ability to
calculate, quantify, consider propositions and hypotheses, and carry out
complete mathematical operations.It
enables us to perceive relationships and connections and to use abstract,
symbolic thought; sequential reasoning skills; and inductive and deductive
thinking patterns.Logical intelligence
is usually well developed in mathematicians, scientists, and detectives.Young adults with lots of logical
intelligence are interested in patterns, categories, and relationships.They are drawn to arithmetic problems,
strategy games and experiments.
4. Naturalist
Intelligence (“Nature Smart”)
Designates the human ability to discriminate among living
things (plants, animals) as well as sensitivity to other features of the
natural world (clouds, rock configurations).This ability was clearly of value in our evolutionary past as hunters,
gatherers, and farmers; it continues to be central in such roles as botanist or
chef.It is also speculated that much of
our consumer society exploits the naturalist intelligences, which can be
mobilized in the discrimination among cars, sneakers, kinds of makeup, and the
like.
5. Existential
Intelligence
Sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about
human existence, such as the meaning of life, why do we die, and how did we get
here.
6. Interpersonal
Intelligence (People Smart”)
Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to understand and
interact effectively with others.It
involves effective verbal and nonverbal communication, the ability to note
distinctions among others, sensitivity to the moods and temperaments of others,
and the ability to entertain multiple perspectives.Teachers, social workers, actors, and
politicians all exhibit interpersonal intelligence.Young adults with this kind of intelligence
are leaders among their peers, are good at communicating, and seem to
understand others’ feelings and motives.
7. Bodily-Kinesthetic
Intelligence (“Body Smart”)
Bodily kinesthetic intelligence is the capacity to
manipulate objects and use a variety of physical skills.This intelligence also involves a sense of
timing and the perfection of skills through mind–body union.Athletes, dancers, surgeons, and craftspeople
exhibit well-developed bodily kinesthetic intelligence.
8. Linguistic
Intelligence (Word Smart)
Linguistic intelligence is the ability to think in words and
to use language to express and appreciate complex meanings.Linguistic intelligence allows us to
understand the order and meaning of words and to apply meta-linguistic skills
to reflect on our use of language. Linguistic intelligence is the most widely
shared human competence and is evident in poets, novelists, journalists, and
effective public speakers.Young adults
with this kind of intelligence enjoy writing, reading, telling stories or doing
crossword puzzles.
9. Intra-personal
Intelligence (Self Smart”)
Intra-personal intelligence is the capacity to understand
oneself and one’s thoughts and feelings, and to use such knowledge in planning
and directioning one’s life.Intra-personal intelligence involves not only an appreciation of the
self, but also of the human condition.It is evident in psychologist, spiritual leaders, and philosophers.These young adults may be shy. They are very
aware of their own feelings and are self-motivated.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
We IT people have all been there. You get the dreaded sales call from a salesman who is trying to sell their wares. What this team came up with - this is just hell
I grew up in the world of 80s music. Depeche Mode, The Smiths, B-52s..those acts were my penut and jelly of music. Now and again though I love my 60's music. 10 years after is one of those acts that just ...is so right. So...says the right thing even years later.
Built to ferry dry
goods, the schooner Lanikai was destined for a boring life. Instead it
found itself in a Hollywood blockbuster and racing to evade the Japanese
invasion.
Just
after dawn on March 13, 1942, the harbor pilot in the western
Australian port town of Geraldton noticed a small ship coming up over
the horizon, sails billowing from her two tall masts. As the vessel got
closer he saw she was a schooner of a type common in the South Seas, and
that her hull and upper works were painted an odd shade of faded,
splotchy green. A large American flag flew from the top of the ship’s
forward mast, and a smaller Philippine ensign snapped in the breeze from
her equally tall aft pole.
Intrigued
by the mystery vessel’s unannounced appearance, the pilot boarded his
motorboat and set out to meet the newcomer. As he approached the ship he
saw men working to drop her well-worn sails, and was surprised to see
that what he had taken to be a tramp cargo vessel was armed with at
least two machine guns and what looked to be a small cannon. As he came
alongside the pilot shouted through cupped hands, “What ship are you”?
and was dumfounded when a bearded and deeply tanned man standing near
the schooner’s wheel responded, “USS Lanikai, from Manila.” The
pilot was equally surprised that the weather-beaten and somewhat
dilapidated ship was apparently part of the U.S. Navy, and that she had safely navigated more than 3,000 miles of Japanese-dominated ocean.
With
his motorboat tethered to the schooner’s stern, the pilot guided the
American vessel toward a berth at Geralton’s main pier. As he did, the
bearded man—Lieutenant Kemp Tolley, USN—recounted what would ultimately
become known as one of the great sea adventures of World War II.
***
Lanikai’s voyage into the history books was a colorful passage that began long before that early morning arrival in Western Australia.
Built in 1914 in Oakland, California, the 90-foot-long wooden-hulled schooner initially bore the name Hermes andspent
the first months of her existence carrying dried coconut meat and other
cargo from the German-ruled islands of Micronesia to Hawaii. Two months
after the outbreak of World War I the vessel managed to evade
patrolling Japanese ships—Tokyo was on the Allied side in that
conflict—and dash into still-neutral Honolulu harbor. Hermes was
interned, and sat tied to a pier until the United States entered the war
in April 1917. At that point the vessel was officially seized from her
German owners, and on April 1, 1918, she was commissioned into the U.S.
Navy as the auxiliary schooner USS Hermes and undertook general
patrol and supply duties in the waters around the Hawaiian Islands until
being decommissioned in January 1919. When the Hawaiian territorial
government declined to accept ownership of the vessel she remained in
Navy custody, acting as a stores ship.
Hermes was sold to Oahu’s Lanikai Fish Company in October 1926 and renamed Lanikai,
and spent the following five years carrying seafood among the islands.
In 1933 she was purchased by a member of Honolulu’s aristocratic Castle
family, who refurbished the schooner and used her as a charter yacht. In
1936 Lanikai was sold to Captain Harry W. Crosby of Seattle, who
put the schooner to work hauling salmon from Alaska to ports along the
U.S. west coast. It was a task for which Lanikai was apparently
not well suited, however, for in early 1937 Crosby sold her to
Hollywood’s Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. Later that year the photogenic
ship went back to her island-hopping roots, portraying a South Seas
tramp and nearly upstaging Dorothy Lamour and Jon Hall in MGM’s
pioneering disaster-pic-cum-island-romance The Hurricane. After
location filming ended off California’s San Clemente Island the schooner
stayed on as the movie studio’s yacht until April 1939, when she was
bought by the American-owned Luzon Stevedoring Company and shifted to
Manila.
Lanikai might
well have spent the remainder of her days hauling guests and cargo
among the Philippines’ many islands had it not been for the war clouds
gathering on the Pacific’s western horizon. Though the increasingly
tired schooner seemed an unlikely warship, in the fall of 1941 a man in
faraway Washington, D.C., ensured that Lanikai would once again fly the Navy’s Union Jack.
His name was Franklin D. Roosevelt.
***
The first few days of December 1941
were extremely busy ones for Manila-based Admiral Thomas C. Hart. The
64-year-old commander in chief of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet was certain
that war with Japan was imminent, and he was hurriedly attempting to
deploy his relatively modest forces to protect an operational area
encompassing hundreds of thousands of square miles of ocean from the
Philippines to China to Southeast Asia.
Hart
was therefore understandably puzzled when on December 3 he received a
top-secret message directly from President Roosevelt ordering him to
acquire, arm and crew three small civilian-looking ships and dispatch
them as soon as possible to patrol off the harbors of Japanese-occupied
French Indo-China. While the small ships’ official task was
reconnaissance—their crews were to report by radio any “suspicious”
activities—many historians have long asserted that their real mission
was to get themselves attacked by the Japanese, thereby giving the
United States a plausible reason to enter the war on the Allied side.
Whatever the purpose of the small ships’ deployment, Roosevelt’s
directive ensured that preparations moved ahead at flank speed. Indeed,
the first vessel, the 710-ton patrol yacht USS Isabel, put to sea on December 3 bound for Cam Ranh Bay.
Even as Isabel headed west the ship tapped to relieve her was being inducted into service. That vessel was Lanikai,
whose owner had agreed to lease the schooner to the Navy for $1 per
year, asking only that she eventually be returned in good condition.
The
man selected to command the schooner on her secret mission was Kemp
Tolley. The 33-year-old Naval Academy graduate had arrived in the
Philippines on December 4 from China, where he’d been executive officer
on the river gunboat USS Tutulia. His assignment to what he later
referred to as “the President’s secret project” came as something of a
surprise—he’d envisioned serving aboard a destroyer or cruiser—but he
assumed his first command with his usual enthusiasm. By the time Lanikai
was commissioned early on December 5 at Cavite Navy Yard Tolley had
assembled a crew of two Navy chief petty officers and 11 Filipino
seamen, and had invoked Roosevelt’s orders to acquire food, fresh water,
two World War I .30-caliber Lewis machine guns and a Spanish-American
War-vintage 3-inch quick-firing cannon. All that was lacking was sailing
orders, and those arrived late in the afternoon—along with three
additional U.S. sailors.
Lanikai finally got underway from Cavite on the afternoon of
December 7 (still the 6th in Hawaii), though she didn’t go far. In
accordance with his orders Tolley dropped anchor just inside the
entrance to Manila Bay; departing vessels were only allowed to navigate
the channel through the offshore minefields during daylight. Everyone
but those on lookout duty settled in for the night, unaware that events
already transpiring in Hawaii would make their assigned mission
irrelevant and change their lives forever.
Just before 5 a.m. on December 8 Lanikai’s
radioman awakened Tolly with a short but startling message that had
just arrived from Hart’s headquarters. The first sentence, “Orange War
Plan in Effect,” informed the schooner’s skipper that the United States
was at war with Japan, and a second line ordered Lanikai to
return to Cavite. Once back at the Navy Yard Tolley learned the details
of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He and other officers were also told that
a Japanese assault on the Philippines could be expected at any moment,
and that they should make themselves and their ships ready to undertake
whatever missions Hart deemed necessary.
Lanikai
spent the first weeks of World War II in the Pacific running errands in
and just outside Manila Bay—moving equipment and personnel, patrolling,
and attempting to avoid the Japanese air attacks that were
systematically reducing American installations to smoking rubble. The
steady southward advance of enemy ground troops from their landing
beaches on Lingayen Gulf made it clear that the entire Manila area would
soon come under direct attack, but on December 24 General Douglas
MacArthur—commander of U.S. Army Forces Far East—declared Manila an open
city, meaning that it would not be defended so that the Japanese would
not destroy it. His pronouncement, made without prior consultation with
Hart, completely undermined Navy plans for a prolonged defense of the
installations surrounding the bay. The Asiatic Fleet commander had no
choice but to order the destruction of all remaining facilities and the
scuttling or dispersal of surviving vessels. Hart himself would
eventually make his way by submarine to the relative—and
temporary—safety of Dutch-controlled Java, but for many of those in his
ravaged command the future held only capture, imprisonment and death.
Fate had something else in store for Lanikai
and those aboard her, however. Tolley and his crew—now numbering seven
Americans and 12 Filipinos—made a final sweep of abandoned storehouses
for food, water, diesel fuel, an additional machine gun, ammunition and
other essential gear. After being quickly camouflaged with salvaged
green paint and taking aboard six additional men—two Navy officers,
three enlisted men and a Dutch naval officer who were also seeking to
escape the oncoming Japanese—under cover of darkness on December 26 Lanikai turned her bowsprit toward the open sea.
***
Tolley’s plan was to sail for Java,
where he assumed British, Dutch and American naval forces would be
massing. The most obvious danger during the nearly 2,000-mile passage
was discovery by Japanese ships or aircraft—a threat the schooner’s
skipper hoped to evade by sailing only at night and tying up in secluded
anchorages during daylight. But there were other challenges as well.
While he and several others aboard Lanikai were proficient in
celestial navigation, Tolley had only a few basic charts and a library
atlas to rely on. It would also be necessary to replenish the ship’s
fresh water and food supplies; while the former could be supplemented by
captured rainwater and the latter by fish hauled from the sea, it was
more than likely that those aboard Lanikai would have to run the
risk of bartering with local people encountered during the voyage—people
whose loyalties couldn’t be known for certain. And there was one other
serious problem: The military radios installed aboard the schooner for
her aborted trip to Indo-China had failed even before the ship left
Manila, so her only contact with the outside world would be Tolley’s
personal and very temperamental commercial radio.
Despite a
minor shipboard fire, sightings of unidentified warships on the horizon
and several high-altitude overflights by Japanese aircraft, Lanikai’s
first two weeks at sea went relatively well. Tolley and his shipmates
stuck to their operational plan, sailing at night and laying up by day.
Helpful civilians living near the temporary anchorages provided food
and, equally important, intelligence about Japanese movements. A huge
storm allowed the schooner to stop hugging the east coast of Palawan and
during a tense and seasickness-inducing two-day voyage cross the entire
Sulu Sea. After passing the Japanese-occupied island of Jolo and making
a brief stop for provisions at a small Muslim village southwest of
Zamboanga, Lanikai set out southward across the Celebes Sea,
bound for Makassar on the island of Sulawesi. There were several tense
minutes during the passage when three unidentified flying boats
approached the schooner at low altitude, but the aircraft proved to be
Dutch and after dipping their wings in greeting they departed in search
of suitable prey.
On January 9, 1942, Lanikai
dropped anchor in Makassar, the first real city Tolley and his crew had
set foot in since leaving Manila. It was a significant waypoint on the
voyage to Java, because it was still controlled by Dutch forces (though
not for much longer) that were able to provide as much fuel, food and
fresh water as the schooner could carry. Two days after her arrival Lanikai
set out on what all aboard thought would be the final leg of their
cruise—the 500-mile passage across the Flores and Bali seas to Java’s
vast harbor at Surabaya, the largest naval base in the Netherlands East
Indies and at that point headquarters for the senior Allied naval
commanders in the western Pacific, including Hart.
The port initially seemed to be the haven Tolley and the others had hoped it would be. Lanikai
went into drydock for long-overdue engine repairs and hull-scraping
while her crew—after saying farewell to their passengers—enjoyed the
city’s various entertainments. Things did not stay so peaceful, however,
for the Japanese had continued their southward advance and on February 3
enemy aircraft bombed the city for the first time. This was the opening
move in a campaign that would ultimately lead to the Allied defeat in
the East Indies, though lucky Lanikai would not be present for that inevitable capitulation.
***
The final leg of the schooner’s epic voyage began
early on February 17, when Tolley took the ship to sea in order to
escape the rapidly advancing Japanese. All but one of the passengers
who’d accompanied the vessel from Manila had gone ashore to take up
other duties and remained behind, as did one of Lanikai’s original Filipino crewmen, who was too sick to travel.
Though
the ship’s ultimate destination largely depended on the Japanese,
Tolley’s initial objective was Tjilatjap, the only decent port on the
south coast of Java and the designated rendezvous point for Allied ships
vacating Surabaya. Lanikai’s course took her back
toward Bali, which was already under attack by the Japanese, but she
made it through the narrow Bali Strait undetected. The remainder of the
700-mile trip to Tjilatjap was made in the familiar “sail at night, hide
during the day” manner, and the schooner reached its goal on the
morning of February 25.
Unfortunately, Tjilatjap proved to be no more of a haven than Surabaya had been. There was an air raid warning within hours of Lanikai’s
arrival, and though no enemy bombers appeared Tolley noted that the
makeshift port headquarters building was pervaded by an air of quiet
desperation brought about by news that two large Japanese invasion
fleets had been spotted just off Java’s north coast. Fairly sure that Lanikai
and the other vessels in port would not be staying long, Tolley talked
the Dutch harbormaster into filling his ship’s fuel tanks, then took the
schooner alongside the U.S. Navy tanker Pecos to take aboard fresh water.
Tolley’s intuition soon proved accurate: At 3 p.m. on February 26 Lanikai
hoisted anchor and once again headed to sea, this time carrying two new
passengers, both Navy enlisted men with no other way out of Java, as
well as one of the American officers who had made the voyage south from
Manila. All aboard the schooner realized that their only logical
destination was Australia, and as soon as Java disappeared below the
horizon Tolley set a course southeast across the Indian Ocean.
In many ways the last lap of Lanikai’s
journey was the most challenging. Not only did the danger of discovery
by Japanese ships and aircraft remain, the schooner had to contend with
some of the worst weather she had encountered since leaving the
Philippines. Within 24 hours of departing Tjilatjap the ship was firmly
in the jaws of a major typhoon and for much of the 1,000-mile voyage
south Tolley and his crew had to contend with mountainous seas, howling
winds and, on more than one occasion, the near capsizing of their
vessel.
Yet
as drenched and miserable as all those aboard the schooner were, they
took some solace in the fact that heaving ocean and terrible visibility
would also keep potential enemies at bay. And the enemy threat in the
waters around Java was all too real. The day after Lanikai’s
departure from Tjilatjap Japanese ships and aircraft dealt Allied
forces a crushing defeat in the Battle of the Java Sea, sinking several
ships and killing more than 2,300 Allied sailors. And on the night of
February 28/March 1 two cruisers attempting to reach Tjilatjap—USS Houston and Australia’s HMAS Perth—were also sunk by the Japanese.
The
weather eventually began to moderate, and after a short stop at dry and
inhospitable Montobello Island, off the coast of northern Western
Australia, the schooner coasted south. Lanikai briefly grounded
on a sandbank but floated off with the rising tide, and on the night of
March 12 dropped anchor off Geraldton. The following morning the
surprised Australian pilot guided the schooner to her berth. After a few
days enjoying Australian hospitality Lanikai moved on, reaching
Freemantle—and the official end of her epic voyage—on March 18, 82 days
and nearly 4,000 miles out from Manila.
***
Following her arrival in FreemantleLanikai
was refurbished and put to use patrolling just offshore. Tolley
remained in command until the ship was passed to the Royal Australian
Navy in August 1942. A fluent Russian speaker, the schooner’s former
captain spent much of the war in Moscow as an assistant U.S. naval
attaché before returning to combat duty in the Pacific as navigator
aboard the battleship North Carolina. He ultimately retired from the Navy in 1959 with the rank of rear admiral, and died in 2000 at the age of 98.
Lanikai
remained in Australian service until the Pacific war ended in 1945. She
was then returned to the Luzon Stevedoring Company in Manila, but the
firm refused to accept her on the grounds that she was no longer in the
shape in which she had entered service in 1941. The schooner lay
abandoned in an arm of Subic Bay until February 1946, when a storm sank
her in 100 feet of water. Her remains were rediscovered by sport divers
in 2003, and artifacts from the history-making vessel are now on display
under the auspices of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority.
Stephen Harding, editor of Military History magazine, is the author of the New York Times best sellerThe Last Battleand the forthcomingThe Castaway’s War.
Artist’s concept of Venus Express aerobraking. Image: ESA–C. Carreau
Venus is a blistering hellscape of a planet that
melts anything it comes in contact with, right? Not entirely. The data
from the European Space Agency’s first mission to Venus is back, and
with it comes some fascinating insights into our nearest neighbor’s
atmosphere. It turns out, parts of Venus are very, very cold.
Arriving at Venus in 2006, the ESA’s Venus Express mission was
intended to last 500 days. Instead, the probe proved an exceptionally
worthy investment by exploring Venus for the next eight years.
Eventually, Venus Express ran out of fuel. Then, like so many space probes before it,
it made a suicidal plunge to the planet’s surface. Venus Express lost
contact with the Earth in November 2014, and by now, we can safely
assume it has melted into an expensive puddle of e-waste.
But before all that happened, back in July 2014, Venus Express
performed an important technology demonstration. As it descended around
Venus’ polar regions, the probe allowed itself to be slowed by
atmospheric drag—a process known as “aerobraking.” Onboard
accelerometers acquired precise measurements of the drag, which
scientists on Earth used to calculate atmospheric properties like
density and temperature.
“None of Venus Express’ instruments were actually designed to make such in-situ atmosphere observations,” Ingo Müller-Wodarg, lead author on a recent Nature Physics paper describing the space probe’s findings, said in a statement. “We only realized in 2006–after launch!–that we could use the Venus Express spacecraft as a whole to do more science.” Mapping the density waves in Venus’ lower atmosphere. Image: ESA/Venus Express/VExADE/Müller-Wodarg et al., 2016
And the spacecraft’s swansong science has yielded some big surprises.
For one, the planet’s polar atmosphere is way colder and less dense
than we expected, with an average temperature of -157 degrees Celsius.
As the ESA notes, that’s chillier than any spot on the surface of the
Earth.
What’s more, the polar region is dominated by strong atmospheric
waves. These waves are often likened to ripples in a pond, except they
travel vertically rather than horizontally. Atmospheric waves help shape
our planet’s atmosphere, and as they’re partly responsible for the beautiful haze layers New Horizons discovered over Pluto. This marks the first time we’ve measured them on Venus.
Finally, Venus Express’ suicide plunge demonstrated that aerobraking
is an effective way of making a controlled descent. The space agency’s ExoMars mission,
which is scheduled to arrive at the Red Planet in October, will also
use aerobraking to gently insert itself into a low-altitude orbit.
Personally, I love studies like this because they remind us just how
little we know about the planets in our own backyard. A few years back,
who would have guessed that hothouse Venus would feature a roiling and
frigid polar atmosphere? Clearly, our nearest neighbor is still full of
surprises.
The ‘Wizard of Oz’ theme park still has a creepy yellow brick road. Picture: Seph Lawless
PHOTOS have emerged of an eerie and all but abandoned amusement park dedicated to the 1939 L. Frank Baum movie classic.
Photographer Seph Lawless,
best known for his photos of urban decay and abandoned spaces across
the United States, took the photos while on a recent trip to the ‘Land
of Oz,’ in North Carolina.
“The theme park is at the top of one of the highest mountain peaks in
the eastern US so it felt like being on another planet.,” Lawless told
News Corp Australia.
After. Picture: Seph Lawless
Before. Picture: Trip Advisor
It was opened in 1970 and was fully operational until 1980.
Visitors could take a walk down the Yellow Brick Road, “experience”
the tornado which struck Dorothy’s house, and meet all the characters
like Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion and the Wicked Witch of
the West.
“I’m a huge fan of the movie so being here was a real treat and a great experience for me,” Lawless said.
After. Picture: Seph Lawless
Before. Picture: Trip Advisor
After the park closed, much of it fell into disrepair, with props and buildings damaged by vandals.
The ‘Land of Oz’ was reopened in 1991 for one day as part of a local Independence Day celebration.
In the late 1990s former employees started an event called ‘Autumn at
Oz,’ which they treated as a reunion for old staff and visitors.
Even though the doors are locked for most of the year, visitors manage to find their way in. Picture: Seph Lawless
A few years later this became an annual event, and in 2009 the
festival had 8,500 people attending. For the rest of the year, the park
lies completely abandoned as these creepy photos show.
“I‘ve spent over a decade photographing abandoned structures and
abandoned amusement parks are one of my favourite places to visit,”
Lawless added.
His book ‘Bizarro-The World’s Most Hauntingly Beautiful Abandoned Amusement Parks’ documents the top 10 most terrifying abandoned theme parks in the world.
The yellow brick road is still fully intact. Picture: Seph Lawless
The Land of Oz opened in 1970 with the intention of
extending a ski resort to be a ‘year-round’ attraction. Picture: Seph
Lawless
Its opening day in 1970 attracted more than 20,000 visitors. Picture: Seph Lawless
The park is overgrown with plants and vegetation. Picture: Seph Lawless
The yellow brick road to nowhere. Picture: Seph Lawless
Despite it being creepy, the views are pretty amazing. Picture: Seph Lawless
An abandoned stream crossing along the yellow brick road. Picture: Seph Lawless
Creepy ceramic people can be seen in the bushes. Picture: Seph Lawless
On 8 June 793 C.E., a band of foreign warriors attacked the
Christian monastery of Lindisfarne on the English coast, wrecking the
church, killing the monks, and making off with all the treasure their
ships could hold. This brutal attack has long been thought to mark the
start of Viking aggression. But archaeo logist Neil Price of Sweden’s
Uppsala University suspects that the roots of the Viking era go back
long before this raid.
Armed with a $6 million grant—a princely sum in archaeology—Price and
his colleagues want to know the extent to which a need for captive
labor and overseas wives helped drive Viking expansion, transforming the
provincial Scandinavian sailors and fur traders of the earlier Vendel
period into international explorers and marauders. “The social processes
are going on long before” the Lindisfarne raid, Price said after his
talk at a symposium on Vikings at the annual meeting of the Society for
American Archaeology here last week. “We can erase this boundary between
the Vendel and Viking eras.”
A few kilometers from Price’s office at Uppsala, Viking leaders and
warriors gathered each spring to plan raids on distant lands. Now, Price
plans his own assault, gathering specialists from across Europe to nail
down the social and economic forces that spurred the Viking phenomenon.
At the meeting, he and his colleagues laid out research plans and
discussed preliminary finds. Rather than excavate, the team intends to
use the Swedish Research Council’s largest ever archaeo logical grant to
reexamine spectacular existing finds using modern methods such as
isotopic analysis.
“Price’s project goes to the core of the question that all Viking
scholars ask: Why the Vikings?” says Jan Bill, an archaeologist at
Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History. “Just putting some order into the old
excavations and publishing them properly will tell us a lot about the
background to the Viking age,” adds archaeologist Marek Jankowiak of the
University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who specializes in the
period but also is not part of the project.
The sudden and dramatic breakout by the Vikings has long puzzled
scholars. The Lindisfarne raid inaugurated 3 centuries of expansion that
led to settlement of Iceland, Greenland, and, briefly, Newfoundland in
Canada. To the east, Vikings dominated the rivers of today’s western
Russia and Ukraine, sent diplomats to Constantinople, and traded as far
afield as Baghdad and North Africa.
But although previous scholars identified the raids as the start of
the Viking era, Price stresses that their way of life began long before.
In the Vendel period from about 550 C.E. to 790 C.E., Scandinavians
exported iron and furs and developed impressive seafaring skills. And
between 2008 and 2012, researchers discovered two ship burials on the
edge of the Baltic Sea in Estonia, 250 kilo meters from the Swedish
coast. The burials are “the most significant Viking discovery of the
last hundred years,” Price says—and they apparently predate the
Lindisfarne raid by nearly a century, according to dating by
radio carbon and artifact styles.
Doubled-edged swords like this one from
an Estonian ship burial show that Scandinavians far from their homeland
fought fiercely before the accepted start of the Viking era.
LIINA MALDRE
Found on the island of Saaremaa in the town of Salme, the two war
boats served as graves for 40 men. In one, 33 men were stacked atop one
another and covered with wooden shields. Elite soldiers were buried with
elaborately decorated double-edged swords, and a man who appeared to be
the chieftain clasped a sword with a jeweled hilt and held a gaming
piece made of walrus ivory in his mouth.
Working with Estonian collaborators, “we plan to throw massive
science” at these ancient vessels to glean everything possible about
this period, Price said. He’ll also focus on some spectacular ship
burials at Valsgärde, just outside of Uppsala, dated from the sixth
century to the 11th century. The area includes 60 tombs, including those
of women, and hundreds of artifacts yet to be carefully analyzed.
Price and his colleagues wonder whether the burials will yield
evidence of slavery, which they increasingly see as a powerful factor
driving the Viking expansion. Price said the need for slaves may have
begun during the Vendel era, when the fast-growing fleet of ships
demanded an enormous number of massive woolen sails. This required
transforming land into pasture for sheep, producing wool, and making
sails—a labor-intensive craft. A single 90-square-meter sail might take a
single person up to 5 years to produce, said Ben Raffield, an
archaeologist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada, who is
involved in the project. Price adds that “each ship needed two sails,
and there were hundreds of ships,” raising the possibility that slave
labor was needed to maintain the fleet.
Historical sources make it clear that the “Vikings were taking,
transporting, and selling slaves,” Raffield said in his talk. He
estimates that slaves comprised as much as 25% of Scandinavia’s
population. Norse sagas mention slaves—“thralls” in Old Norse—who were
often given pejorative names like Stinky, Stumpy, and Stupid. But
compelling archaeological evidence has been elusive. Iron manacles and
collars hint at slavery, but might have been used for prisoners or dogs.
Raffield plans to search for evidence of special vessels designed to
carry captives.
Other archaeologists have found tantalizing hints of slavery in
existing remains. About one in 25 male Viking burials in Sweden and
Norway includes teeth incised with deep grooves. The marks were long
thought to indicate a warrior class, but at least some of these men were
decapitated and placed in a burial with another man, said Anna
Kjellström of Stockholm University, who is also part of the project.
“You can make a strong argument that these were special slaves who were
ritually killed” upon the death of their master, she said in her talk.
“The slaves may have been in front of us all the time.” The team plans
extensive isotopic analysis to discover whether the victims were local
or recent, perhaps involuntary, arrivals.
The research program also will analyze changes in Viking society as
shown by land use. For example, by the 10th century, architectural clues
to slavery become clear. At a site outside Stockholm near today’s Ikea,
a small round hut dug into the ground sits on a slope above a large
manor house. The hut appears to have been the living quarters for slaves
at the height of Viking prosperity, said Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson
of Stockholm University. At another Swedish site, Sanda, a large house
is surrounded by much smaller structures, possible slave quarters. “It’s
not going too far to see these as the big house on a plantation,” Price
said.
Other researchers praise the team’s integration of details into a
fuller picture of Vendel and Viking society. “It is now clear that we
cannot fully understand the Vikings without taking into account slave
hunting and slave trade,” Oxford’s Jankowiak said. “The ‘business model’
of the Baltic Vikings appears to have depended on it.”
The team also will tackle the disturbing issue of sexual slavery.
There are hints of polygyny in Germanic cultures from this time, though
researchers aren’t sure of its extent in Viking society or in the Vendel
era. But if it were prevalent, Price speculates, poorer men would have
been eager to seek wives outside Scandinavia. Researchers hope to
understand more by pulling together DNA and other data to determine
relations and origins among Viking dead.
The argument that Vikings set out to capture women gets tantalizing
support from recent genetic studies of living people in Iceland, which
has not experienced a significant migration since the Vikings settled it
more than a thousand years ago. About three- quarters of male Icelandic
settlers hailed from what is today Norway, although well over half of
the women were from the British Isles, according to genetic studies of
today’s Icelanders. That suggests that Viking men partnered with British
women on a massive scale. “We must be talking about some degree of
coercion,” Price said. His team will emphasize examining the remains of
Viking women—long understudied—to understand their origins.
Price adds that much more work is required to understand the
emergence of the Vikings’ raiding society. “This is just the start of a
decade of research,” he says.
This is a YouTube clip from Sleepy Sara Elizabeth. This is the note under the video Sara wrote about it:
Published on Jul 7, 2014
I
have narcolepsy with cataplexy, and it can be very frustrating to try
to explain what it's like to people who have never seen narcolepsy in
real life, and how much of a struggle it can be. Most people think that
it's funny until they see what actually happens, or they are completely
unprepared and get really scared and panic.I filmed this by accident,
and it was really weird to go back and watch later from an outside
perspective. I am posting this video as a way to help educate people, so
please no trolling. Just like people with epilepsy, I can't control
having a sleep attack or cataplexy any more than they can control having
a seizure. Thank you for your understanding.
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