And it’s FOR REAL.
Category Misc
So Much For My Life As An International Jewel Thief
Yesterday, I had an experience I hadn’t entirely anticipated having at this stage of my life: I got fingerprinted by the Cambridge Police Department.
The biotech company where I work part-time is planning to start selling products that require them to have a particularly lethal neurotoxin on premises, as well as some other chemicals that can be used in the creation of narcotics. Those substances will be kept in a secure area, but anyone who has to have access to said area has had to go through a security clearance process that includes having fingerprints on file with the FBI’s bioterrorism unit. As one of the IT guys, I will have to have access to the Chamber Of Death, so off I went to the Cambridge PD at lunchtime. There, in a small room, a young woman firmly took each of my fingers, rolled them on an inkpad, and pressed them onto a pair of cards to be sent to the Feds.
I remarked to her that I was surprised that the process had not gone digital. Digital fingerprinting is actually pretty common these days. She informed me that they do, in fact, have a digital system in the booking area where arrestees are processed because it’s faster and easier, which is key when dealing with uncooperative people, but the traditional ink print is still preferred. The room where she fingerprinted me was only just around the corner from the front entrance of what is a fairly large building, so it must be a common enough procedure to do non-arrest-related prints.
As I alluded to above, I also had to have a basic criminal background check, the result of which is that I now have some clearance number from the FBI that I can use if I go to another job that requires such things. I assume the same holds true of the prints — once they’re on file I doubt they ever have to be done again. Now that I’m marked man, though, whatever madcap crime spree I may or may not have been planning will be all that easier to foil. Curses!
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Seeing Chicago By Rail
Salon, of all places, had a wonderful article last week featuring a slew of gorgeous posters designed for the various passenger rail lines that serviced Chicago and the region surrounding the city, as well as the Chicago Transit Authority. The posters are mostly from the 1920s, and they feature many Chicago landmarks, some of which are gone but not all. There are also nature scenes and other travel poster style images of such “exotic” destinations as the Ogden Dunes in Indiana and Benton Harbor, Michigan. Toward the bottom of the article, there are even some photographs of the actual posters “in the wild” at “L” stops in Evanston and Wilmette. Though the posters pre-date the iconic art of the WPA, it’s clear where some of the aesthetics for WPA-period travel posters comes from when you look at these.
Thanks to my old Northwestern University grad school classmate Nina Berry for pointing me to this link.
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Beijing Then And Now
Here’s a recent photo of Beijing from a Chinese blogger. It’s not quite as glamorous as some pictures of the city, but there’s no doubt that the Chinese government pushed through a huge amount of construction and urban renewal in the years leading up to the 2008 Olympics.
The blog “Poemas del Rio Wang” recently came across a cache of photos taken for LIFE magazine in 1946, just prior to the Chinese Revolution that may represent one of the few photographic records of what Beijing looked like for hundreds of years prior to its modernization. Almost nothing of Old Beijing remains other than the Forbidden City and other areas preserved as historical sites, which really isn’t all that uncommon for most major cities, except that there was a lot more photographic material from places like London or Paris or New York. There’s a lot of really wonderful things to see, so do visit the link.
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Year Of The Pizza Dragon
It may be the end of January but we are just a week into the New Year according to the Chinese lunar calendar. Not only is it the Year of the Dragon, there is a second astrological system traditional in China that is based on the five elements of fire, earth, water, metal and wood that overlays the 12-year cycle so that children born this year will be “Water Dragons”: not just lucky, but smart and judicious as well.
I, and my fellow 1963 babies, am a “Water Rabbit”, as described here:
Delicate and docile, Water Rabbits will pretty well go with the flow to avoid any conflict or argument. These situations hurt them and bother them because they are such sensitive creatures. They are usually sociable and relaxed, although sometimes they get withdrawn and introspective. They are supportive with family and friends as well as business partners and display an empathy that makes people flock to them for friendly advice and comfort. Sometimes, they can easily be taken advantage of because they are so generous with themselves and their emotions. So they have to be careful not to let their guards down so quickly.
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Toons Of The World UNITE!
The Communist Manifesto as performed by Mickey Mouse, Felix The Cat, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, and many more of your favorite cartoon characters:
If you aren’t too distracted by the cartoons, this is an excellent distillation of the basic ideas Marx wrote in the Communist Maninfesto about the history of class struggle and the reductive nature of capitalism. Americans have been so thoroughly indoctrinated to immediately assume that communism is wrong, evil, or both that the simple truths of Marx’s analysis don’t even register with us. Maybe by explaining them with visual language that practically anyone can relate to, more people might grasp the seriousness of the death spiral capitalism has trapped us all in.
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Slow News Day Digest
Good Evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and All The Ships At Sea!
FLASH!
The New York Daily News recently reported that one Colin Hagendorf of Brooklyn, New York has completed his quest of eating a slice of pizza from every single pizza place in Manhattan. For his next quest, Mr. Hagendorf will make use of every public toilet in Manhattan.
FLASH!
The citizens of Dog Shit Village in Guizhou Province, China, were ecstatic to learn that the government has finally awarded their town with a new name. Until the presentation of the new town sign.
FLASH!
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich told a group of Florida voters yesterday that if he is elected he will order NASA to build a colony on the moon. No, really, he did. No joke. Except for Gingrich himself, of course.
And now let’s go live to our correspondent for breaking news from a situation developing on the expressway…Steve, over to you…
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Danger, Will Robinson!
If you are a contemporary of mine, you will immediately recognize the fellow on the right in the photo above. That is Robot B-9, the automated companion of the Space Family Robinson from the classic 1960s television show “Lost In Space”. But you may not recognize the humanoid to his left. That is Dick Tufeld, longtime announcer and voice-over specialist, and the man who voiced the Robot and made immortal the line “Danger, Will Robinson!”.
Dick Tufeld passed away over the weekend at the age of 85. My two favorite showbiz bloggers, Mark Evanier and Ken Levine, each had something nice to say about him and his career.
(The fellow who actually performed INSIDE the robot suit, actor Bob May, passed away in 2009.)
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And Here’s Skip With The Weather
It was pushing 60 around here yesterday, which might ordinarily qualify as our “January Thaw”, except we’ve seen enough 50-degree weather this winter that nothing’s all that frozen. We did get a few inches of snow last Friday and Saturday, and like an idiot I went out and shoveled it on Sunday, not knowing that if I waited another 36 hours it would all disappear on its own.
Aaaaanyway, things were VERY different this time last year. Check out this cool satellite photo of a massive bank of cumulus clouds just off the coast of New England exactly one year ago yesterday, as we were recoiling from one of the massive snowstorms that pummeled the Northeast. You almost can’t even SEE Nova Scotia. This effect is called “cloud streets” because of the lane-like appearance of the striations.
Meanwhile, over on the other side of the continent, our dear friend Karan is getting the treatment we were getting this time last year. Here’s yesterday’s “Photo of the Day” from the Earth Observatory, showing the extent of the snowfall in Washington and Oregon:
Somehow I don’t think that’s gonna melt itself away overnight.
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Another Episode Of “Lives Of The Presidents”
The last time I posted about President Grover Cleveland, it was the little-known story about his bout with cancer, but today I want to share with you the kerfuffle surrounding the origin of the name of the Baby Ruth candy bar. Suzy Evans, who writes the “History Chef” blog recently covered this: as she explains it, the candy bar was re-named from “Kandy Kake” to “Baby Ruth” in 1920, which, not coincidentally, was at the height of Babe Ruth’s career. In those days, there was no such thing as official licensing or merchandising of a public figure’s name and likeness, so there were a lot of products named after the Babe, who in turn fought back with lawyers. So the company that then made the candy bar came up with a more-or-less plausible counter-claim, namely, that the candy was not named after the baseball hero, but after the daughter of Grover Cleveland, Ruth, who died as a child.
Cleveland’s marriage to his wife, Frances, was somewhat scandalous because she was significantly younger than he was, but their first child, Ruth, was born in between his non-consecutive presidential administrations, and her death occurred in 1904, after the end of his presidency and even long before the creation of the candy bar itself in 1916. In other words, by 1920, nobody really gave a damn about Ruth Cleveland, but everybody DID love Babe Ruth. But the Curtiss Candy Company stuck with the story, and it still remains the official story today, even though the candy bar is now made by Nestle and Babe Ruth has been gone for decades.